‘It ain’t you I’m concerned about,’ came the reply, and then he knocked on the door and Trinica called for them to enter.
Trinica’s cabin was well ordered and clean, but the dark wood of the bookcases and the brass fittings of the dim electric lamps gave it a close, gloomy feel. Trinica was sitting behind her desk at the far end of the room, on which a large logbook lay open next to a carefully arranged writing set and the brass compass-like device they’d used to navigate the minefields of Retribution Falls. She was looking out of the sloping window. Beyond, night had fallen.
She didn’t acknowledge Frey as he was brought in. The bald man stood him in the centre of the room. After a moment, without turning from the window, she said:
‘Thank you, Harmund. You can go.’
‘Cap’n,’ said the big man, and left.
Frey stood uncertainly in the centre of the room for a moment, but still she didn’t speak to him. He decided he’d be damned if he’d feel awkward in front of her. He walked over to a reading-chair by one of the bookcases and sat down in it. He could wait as long as she could.
His eyes fell to the compass on the desk. The sight of it inspired a momentary surge of bitterness. That would have been his proof. That device and the charts that came with it would have won him his freedom. He’d been so close.
He fought down the feeling. No doubt Trinica had put it there to inspire just such a reaction. Railing against the injustice of his circumstances would do him no good now. Besides, for the first time he could remember it felt just a little childish.
‘You’re going to hang, you know,’ she said at last. She was still staring out of the window.
‘I’m aware of that, Trinica,’ Frey replied scornfully.
She glanced at him then. There was reproach in her eyes. Hurt, even. He found himself regretting his tone.
‘I thought we should talk,’ she said. ‘Before it’s over.’
Frey was puzzled by her manner. This wasn’t the acerbic, commanding woman he’d met back in Sharka’s den; nor did he recognise her behaviour from the years he’d loved her. Her voice was soft, the words sighing out without force. She seemed deeply tired, steeped in melancholy.
Still suspicious of a trick, he resolved not to play into her hands. He’d give her no sympathy. He’d be hard and bitter.
‘Talk, then,’ he said.
There was a pause. She seemed to be seeking a way to begin.
‘It’s been ten years,’ she said. ‘A lot’s happened in that time. But a lot of things stayed . . . unresolved.’
‘What does it matter?’ Frey replied. ‘The past is the past. It’s gone.’
‘It’s not gone,’ she said. ‘It never goes.’ She turned away from the window and faced him across her desk. ‘I wish I had your talent, Darian. I wish I could walk away from something or someone, and it would be as if they never existed. To lock a piece of my life away in a trunk, never to be opened.’
‘It’s a gift,’ he replied. He wasn’t about to explain himself to her.
‘Why did you leave me?’ she asked.
The question took him by surprise. There was a pleading edge to it. He
