anywhere. No civilisation. Nothing but the tiny smudges of aircraft heading for the coast, hopelessly distant.
To abandon her here would be to lose her for ever.
‘I’ve an idea,’ said Dracken, addressing Frey. ‘It seems the only other person who knows the ignition code is dead, and I’d rather not kill you until after you’ve given us a confession. But a daemonist . . . well, he could be problematic. They have all kinds of . . . arts. Probably easier to get rid of him now.’
Crake saw what was coming. She lifted her gun and pointed it at his forehead in what was becoming a depressingly familiar state of affairs.
‘Unless you’ve something to tell me, Frey?’ she prompted.
Frey’s face had gone stony. Crake had seen that impassive expression before, when Lawsen Macarde put him in a similar situation. Except this time, there was little doubt that Trinica’s gun was fully loaded.
A strange calm came over him. Let it end, then.
‘You have until three,’ said Trinica. ‘One.’
He was tired. Tired of struggling against the grief and shame. Tired of living under the weight of one arrogant mistake, to think that he might summon one of the monsters of the aether and come away unscathed. Tired of trying to understand that awful twist of fortune that had led his niece to his sanctum on that particular night, instead of any other.
Leave her here, amid the ash and dust. If he didn’t wake her up, no one ever would. Let her sleep, and perhaps she’d dream of better things.
‘Two.’
He closed his eyes, and to his faint surprise, dislodged a tear. He felt it trickle down the side of his face, over the hump of his cheekbone, to be lost in his beard.
He’d worked so hard to be great. It had ended in ignominy, disgrace and failure. What was a world worth, that treated its inhabitants so?
‘Thr—’ Trinica began.
‘Stop!’ Frey snapped.
Crake’s eyes stayed closed. Hovering on the razor-blade edge between existence and oblivion, he dared not tip the balance with the slightest movement.
‘Seven sixty-seven, double one, double eight,’ he heard his captain say.
There was a long pause. His body shook with each thump of his heart. He didn’t even hope. He didn’t even know if he wanted to be left in the world of the living.
But the choice wasn’t his to make. He felt the chill metal of the revolver muzzle leave his forehead. His eyes fluttered open. Dracken had stepped back, and was regarding him like a child who has just spared an insect. Then she turned to Frey and raised an eyebrow. Frey looked away angrily.
Crake felt detached from himself, clothed in a dreamlike numbness. He watched as Dracken’s crew carried Bess away from the Ketty Jay. Then, with obvious glee, they stood her on her feet. A hunched metal statue, a monument to their victory. He heard Dracken order the man with the steel ear to assign two men to fly the Ketty Jay behind them. Frey wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye: he’d been broken by Dracken, and was burning with a hate and fury such as Crake had never seen him show.
But it all seemed far away and inconsequential. He was still alive, somehow, although he wasn’t sure he’d fully returned from the brink yet.
Someone
