She studied him. Considering. He’d seen that expression a hundred times before at a Rake table, as players stared at their opponents and asked themselves: do they really have the cards to beat me?
Then she snorted, disgusted at herself for allowing him to threaten her.
‘This is ridiculous, and I don’t have time for it any more. It’s all over now, besides. I’ve got you.’ She drained her whisky and got to her feet. ‘You’re done.’
‘This is a parley, Trinica. Neutral ground. Sharka guarantees our safety,’ he grinned at her. ‘Can’t get me here,’ he added, rather childishly.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But I can get your craft.’
‘You don’t even know where she is.’
‘Certainly I do,’ she replied. ‘You’re berthed in the Southwest Labourer’s Quarter. Of course you registered under a false name, but I had every dock master in the city keeping an eye out for a Wickfield Ironclad-class cargo-combat hybrid. There aren’t many around with the Ketty Jay’s specifications, and I do know that craft quite well. I listened to you talk about her enough.’
Frey was unperturbed. Trinica noted his lack of reaction.
‘Obviously, you guessed I’d do something like this,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. How many men do you have, Frey? Five? Six? Can you afford to keep that many?’ She looked around the room; he bored her now. ‘I sent twenty.’
Twenty, thought Frey, keeping his face carefully neutral, the way he’d learned to at the card table. Oh, shit.
‘What if I did the same?’ he said. ‘What if my men are on your craft, right now?’
Trinica rolled her eyes. ‘Please, Darian. You never could bluff well. You’re too much the coward: you always give in first.’
She sighed and looked down at him, as if pitying a dumb animal. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You’re predictable. That’s why I almost caught you at the hermitage. Once Thade told me about you and his daughter I realised that was the first place you’d go. You always did think with the wrong organ.’
Frey didn’t reply. She had him there.
‘You want to know why I’m a good captain and you’re not? Because you don’t trust your people. I’ve earned my men’s respect and they’ve earned mine. But you? You can’t keep a crew, Darian. You go through navigators like whores.’
Frey kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t argue. There was nothing to say.
‘And because I know you, I know you’d never trust anyone with your aircraft,’ she continued, walking past him towards the door. ‘The Ketty Jay is your life. You’d rather die than give the ignition codes to someone who might fly off with her. That means your crew are outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped, defending an aircraft that’s nothing more than an armoured tomb.’ She cocked her head. ‘Perhaps you were thinking of some clever flanking manoeuvre. Perhaps you’re going to bring in reinforcements behind my men. Whatever you try, it makes no difference. You just don’t have the numbers.’
Frey’s shoulders slumped. Twenty men. How long could Jez, Silo and Harkins hold out against twenty men? Everything had relied on timing, but it was only now he truly realised how desperate the situation was. The plan had sounded so fine coming out of his mouth. But he was the only one not risking his life here.
Trinica saw how it hit him like a hammer. She touched his shoulder in false sympathy and leaned down to whisper in his ear, her lips brushing his lobe. ‘By now they’ll be dead, and my men will have filled the Ketty Jay with so much dynamite, the explosion will be heard in Yortland.’
