place as any to hide from the sharks.
‘I just . . .’ he said. ‘It’s just . . . I thought he was my friend.’
‘He is your friend. Kind of. Just depends on your definition, really. I had lots of friends, back in the day, but most of ’em wouldn’t have thrown me a shillie if I was starving.’ He opened a drawer in the dresser and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid. ‘Rum’s done. Have a suck on this.’
‘What is it?’ Crake asked, holding out his mug. He was already pleasantly fogged and long past the point of being capable of refusing.
‘I use it to swab wounds,’ Malvery said.
‘I suppose this is a medicinal-grade kind of conversation,’ Crake said. Malvery blasted him with a hurricane of laughter, loud enough to make him wince.
‘That it is, that it is,’ he said, raising his glasses to wipe a teary eye.
‘So why are you here?’ Crake asked. ‘Guild-approved doctor, big job in the city, earning a fortune. Why the Ketty Jay?’
Malvery’s mood faltered visibly, a flicker of pain crossing his face. He looked down into his mug.
‘Let’s just say I’m exactly where I deserve to be,’ he said. Then he rallied with a flourish, lifting his mug for a toast.
‘To friends!’ he declared. ‘In whatever form they come, and howsoever we choose to define them.’
‘Friends,’ said Crake, and they drank.
Five
Night had fallen by the time they arrived at Marklin’s Reach. The decrepit port crouched in the sharp folds of the Hookhollows, a speckle of electric lights in the darkness. Rain pounded down from a slow-rolling ceiling of cloud, its underside illuminated by the pale glow of the town. A gnawing wind swept across the mountaintops.
The Ketty Jay sank out of the clouds, four powerful lights shining from her belly. Her outflyers hung close to her wings as she descended towards a crowded landing pad. Beam lamps swivelled to track her from below; others picked out an empty spot on the pad.
Frey sat in the pilot seat of the Ketty Jay’s cockpit, his eyes moving rapidly between the brass-and-chrome dials and gauges. Jez was standing with one hand resting on his chair back, looking out at the clutter of barques, freighters, fighters and privateer craft occupying the wide square of flat ground on the edge of the town.
‘Busy night,’ she murmured.
‘Yeah,’ said Frey, distracted. Landing in foul weather at night was one of his least favourite things.
He watched the aerium levels carefully, venting a little and adding a little, letting the Ketty Jay drift earthward while he concentrated on fighting the crosswinds that bullied him from either side. The bulky craft jerked and plunged as she was shoved this way and that. He swore under his breath and let a little more gas from the trim tanks. The Ketty Jay was getting over-heavy now, dropping faster than he was comfortable with, but he needed the extra weight to stabilise.
‘Hang on to something,’ he murmured. ‘Gonna be a little rough.’
The Ketty Jay had picked up speed now and was coming in far too fast. Frey counted in his head with one eye on the altimeter, then with a flurry of pedals and levers he wrenched the thrusters into full reverse, opened the air brakes and boosted the aerium engines to maximum. The craft groaned as its forward momentum was cancelled and its descent arrested by the flood of ultralight gas into its ballast tanks. It slowed hard above the space that had been marked out for her, next to the huge metal flank of a four-storey freighter. Frey
