The Ace of Skulls

Four

Pelaru the whispermonger lived on the most exclusive of Timberjack Falls’ three islands. Frey and his companions were taken there by motorised carriage, after first picking up their delivery from the Ketty Jay. The bridge guards eyed the scruffy passengers suspiciously as they approached the gates to the island, but they knew Pelaru’s man and waved them through.

The villa was set back from a woody lane on a steep hill. Evergreens rustled in the night; nocturnal animals chirruped and hooted from the undergrowth. The carriage was met at the entrance to the grounds by several men who checked Frey and his crew for weapons. After that, they were taken up a sharply sloping drive which wound past ornamental rock pools and skeletal arbours to the house itself.

The villa was designed in what Frey vaguely recognised as a foreign style, adorned with domes and porticoes. It was asymmetrical to accommodate the rise in the land, and surrounded by multi-layered gardens containing fountains and sculptures bizarre to his eye. A summer place, built for warmer times. On a still winter night in Aulenfay, it just looked bleak.

Pelaru was waiting for them outside the main door, along with a pair of discreetly armed bodyguards. He was a tall, straight-backed man in his thirties, with the statuesque, arrogant features typical of Thacians. He had olive skin and neat black hair, and was wearing fashionable trousers and a waistcoat that looked far too light for the weather.

The carriage pulled to a stop and Frey stepped down from the passenger seat. Pelaru walked over to greet him.

‘Captain Frey,’ he began, in the lilting accent of his people. ‘It’s my pleasure to-’

He trailed off as he caught sight of something over Frey’s shoulder. Frey looked back, following his gaze to the carriage. Malvery and Silo were climbing down, but it wasn’t them he was staring at. It was Jez. And Jez was staring at him, an intense, mesmerised stare, and oh, damn it her eyes were shining in the moonlight.

I knew I shouldn’t have brought her.

‘You want to see your payment?’ Frey prompted quickly, to distract him. ‘Silo, Malvery, show the man what we brought him.’

Pelaru seemed to notice he was there again. ‘Ah, er. . Forgive me, I don’t seem to be. . quite myself tonight.’ He shook it off and focused. ‘Captain Frey, we must talk. Walk with me.’

‘Don’t you, er. . the relics, though?’ Frey motioned towards the heavy chest which Silo and Malvery were manhandling out of the trunk.

‘Ah, yes, the relics,’ said Pelaru, not in the least bit interested. He put his hand on Frey’s arm and steered him away. ‘Come. We have things to discuss.’ He took one last look at Jez, who’d evidently unsettled him, and then led Frey towards the side of the villa, leaving Malvery and Silo holding the chest between them.

‘Oi!’ Malvery yelled after them. ‘What are we supposed to do with this?’

Frey gave him a helpless shrug. Your guess is as good as mine.

‘Well, that’s just great,’ Malvery grumbled. He was sobering up and getting ratty. Frey winced as he dumped his side of the chest on the ground. The crash that followed probably halved the value of its contents.

He followed Pelaru along a path through the courtyards and round to the back of the villa. The whispermonger seemed deep in thought. Frey hoped he hadn’t been too disturbed by the sight of Jez. He’d known she might be a risk, but he’d needed her along in case things went bad. They might not be able to carry weapons into a whispermonger’s house, but Jez was a weapon herself.

Behind the house was a tiered cliff garden overlooking the vast, rushing river. The sound of the falls was loud, rumble and hiss, and when the wind blew against him Frey could feel water mist on his face. He could see another island half a klom away, a black hump in the water, dotted with friendly lights.

Out here, it was hard to imagine there was a civil war going on at all. But the war was young, and Vardia was vast. Frey wondered how long it would be before it reached even remote spots like Timberjack Falls.

Pelaru walked to the edge of the garden, where a twisted metal railing guarded against the drop. Frey joined him warily. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew one thing: if the whispermonger tried to pitch him over that cliff, he was bloody well coming too.

‘There a problem?’ he asked. ‘I thought we had a deal.’

‘We did,’ said Pelaru. His face was impassive and serene as he gazed out across the water. ‘I’m changing it.’

‘You’re changing it,’ said Frey flatly.

‘Yes.’

Frey looked out over the vista and took a long breath. The beauty of his surroundings did little to calm the anger boiling up inside him. The whole reason he’d started dealing with high-level people was to avoid situations like this. He’d had enough of betrayals.

‘You’re a whispermonger,’ he said. ‘A whispermonger. You’re expensive as gold-plated cowshit and you live and die on your reputation. That means you don’t spread secrets you aren’t paid for, and you don’t change deals.’

‘I think my reputation will survive one disgruntled freebooter,’ Pelaru said. ‘But for all that, I am sorry. It is necessary.’

His infuriating calm broke through Frey’s last shreds of restraint. ‘Necessary?’ he shouted. ‘I couldn’t give half a damn about necessary! Tell me where she is!’

His voice rang out into the night and was swallowed by the churning waters. He shut his mouth, feeling suddenly exposed. Had his crew heard that on the other side of the house? Had Jez, with her inhuman perception?

As far as any of them knew, he was busy locating their next target, just like he’d located the last. In a way, they were right. But the target wasn’t what they imagined.

It wasn’t riches he was hunting. It was Trinica Dracken.

Pelaru was studying him with new interest after his outburst. ‘She means a great deal to you,’ he observed. ‘I didn’t see that before.’

Frey gave him a hateful glare, then turned his head and spat over the railing. He’d given himself away. She’d always had the power to make him do that.

‘She owes me money,’ he lied.

Pelaru didn’t say anything.

‘What do you want?’ Frey asked at length.

‘You can keep the relics,’ said Pelaru. ‘Sell them as you wish. Instead, I want your help. If you play this right, you’ll not only come away with the information you seek, you’ll be a great deal richer.’

‘Or I could just go to another whispermonger,’ said Frey.

‘You could,’ said the Thacian. ‘You could give up the money you’ve already paid me and leave. But Trinica Dracken is a hard woman to find. She is a pirate, after all, with a hefty price on her head. Suffice to say there was a certain amount of good fortune involved in tracking her down. Another whispermonger might take longer than I did. By then, she may be somewhere you’ll never find her.’ He turned his pale green eyes on Frey. ‘I suspect you don’t want to take that risk.’

He suspected right. The past three months had been dedicated to the search for her, even if the crew weren’t aware of it. But Trinica could be anywhere in the known world by now, and having a civil war to deal with didn’t help. His chances of finding her by chasing rumours were close to zero. That was why he’d employed Pelaru.

Since they returned from Samarla, every score had been made to bring them closer to this moment. First he had to raise the money to set Pelaru on the trail. Then he’d paid a different whispermonger for the tip-off on their last job, in order to get the remainder of Pelaru’s fee. He’d done it right, damn it, he’d done everything right! But now this. And three months was already too long.

‘What’s the deal?’ he asked.

Pelaru walked away from the cliff edge, wandering slowly into the gardens, where marble statues waited in the moonlight. Frey rolled his eyes and followed, as he was meant to. Everything about this man annoyed him. He was so damned poised. Frey wanted to trip him, just to see him stumble.

‘You may have surmised that I have an interest in Awakener artefacts,’ Pelaru said. ‘You would be wrong. I think they’re childish junk, relics of a transparently manufactured religion created by Royalists in order to make a hero of their last mad King.’ He shook his head. ‘You people and your Kings and Dukes and Oracles.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Frey in a bored tone. ‘Thace and its wonderful republic, I know. Except while you’ve all been sitting on your arses playing lutes and drawing each other naked, your neighbours in Samarla have been tooling up to invade the rest of the world. Lot of good all that culture’s gonna do you in chains.’

Pelaru ignored the insult. ‘My business partner is the collector,’ he said, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. ‘Two days ago, he located a site where he believed there was a cache of great value. He immediately set out with a group of men to find it. He has not returned.’

Frey waited. ‘So?’

‘So I need you to go after him.’

‘You’re serious? This is a rescue?’

‘If he’s alive.’

‘And if he’s not?’

‘Then I want to know.’

Frey thought this over. ‘Y’know, if one of my crew was a day or two late coming home, I’d just assume they were drunk or they’d found a willing member of the opposite sex to have a bit of fun with. I think you’re just overprotective. You’d better hire someone else to do your babysitting.’

‘I can’t!’ Pelaru snapped.

Frey allowed himself a small smile. A crack in that armour of serenity. Frey had a talent for pissing people off.

‘He means a great deal to you, doesn’t he?’ Frey said. ‘I didn’t see that before.’

Pelaru scowled, his features twitching with suppressed emotion. ‘There’s no time for anyone else. The cache was in a buried shrine in Korrene.’

Frey stopped walking. Pelaru went on a few steps before noticing.

‘Korrene,’ said Frey. ‘You want us to fly into a warzone.’

‘It’s because it’s a warzone that I need you at all,’ said the whispermonger. ‘The shrine was situated in an uncontested area of the city. Now the battle fronts are closing in on that position.’ He gave Frey a steady gaze. ‘I have to find him before then.’

‘You have to find him? I thought we were taking all the risk?’

‘No. I’ll be going with you.’

‘Ah,’ said Frey. That made things interesting. He folded his arms. ‘Now why would you want to do that?’

‘That’s not your business,’ Pelaru said coldly.

‘On my craft it is,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I heard. I heard the Ketty Jay was the kind of place where a man might not be asked awkward questions.’

That was true enough, though perhaps less so now than in the past. But he could guess Pelaru’s motives anyway, so he didn’t push it further. Whoever this business partner was, he was important. Pelaru wanted to be there to make sure they did everything they could to save him. Or maybe just to bring back his body.

‘You can come,’ said Frey. ‘Alone. I’m not having hired muscle on my craft. That’s how hijacks happen.’

Pelaru opened his mouth to protest. Frey cut him off.

‘That’s the deal, or there’s no deal at all,’ he said. ‘Seems like we’re both looking for someone. Difference is, I only have your word that you’ve found Trinica. I’m not flying my crew into a warzone for that. So you come alone, and the moment we find this man of yours — dead or alive — you tell me what I need to know. And if I don’t like what I hear, if I don’t believe you, I swear I’ll shoot you right there and then.’

Frey saw the conflict on Pelaru’s face, and felt a small, private sense of triumph. He’d learned this tactic at the Rake tables. Don’t let someone else dictate the play. Always be the one asking the questions. You only learned what a man had when you pushed him. The whispermonger had shown weakness. He hadn’t given away all the cards in his hand, but he’d given away the best one.

Now he’d see what Pelaru’s information was worth, and whether he was willing to guarantee its value with his life.

‘Done,’ said Pelaru. He sounded disgusted at himself.

‘We keep whatever we find inside this shrine, too.’

‘Done!’ Pelaru cried.

‘Alright, then,’ said Frey. ‘Be at the docks tomorrow at ten.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Pelaru said, but Frey was already walking away.

‘Half my crew are drunk and I need to sleep. You think you can find a better crew faster, be my guest. Otherwise, I’m the captain, and we set off when I say.’

Frey waited for a response. Pelaru didn’t give one. He took that as capitulation. That’s what you get when you try to screw me, you sneaky Thacian bastard.

He felt a little better now that he’d clawed back some advantage, but he was still disappointed and angry about the way it had turned out. He felt bad enough about deceiving his crew this far. They were making a healthy profit, it was true, and if this job came off they’d make a lot more of it; but he didn’t want to put them in further danger. He wanted to be straight with them. He just couldn’t.

The whole thing was too personal. Frey had never been comfortable talking about emotions, and certainly not to the gang of piss-takers and reprobates that he shared the Ketty Jay with. He knew what they’d say, if they found out what he was up to. They’d say he was deluded. Trinica had made her feelings perfectly clear last time they met. She never wanted to see him again. Aside from that, she was a dangerously unhinged pirate captain who dressed up like Death’s bride, and she’d stabbed him repeatedly in the back. On paper, she wasn’t much of a potential mate.

But he’d made a promise to himself. A promise to make right what he’d done. And he had to find her, before it was too late, before she forgot who she was, what she’d been and how she loved him once.

Korrene, he thought. How am I ever gonna explain this one to the crew?

WANTED FOR PIRACY AND MURDER.

Frey sat on his bunk, his back against the metal bulkhead, a straining hammock full of luggage suspended above him. He was staring at a creased handbill, its edges bent and pinched from thoughtless storage. Beside a list of his crimes, a younger Darian Frey stared back at him. The ferrotype was a close-up of his face, a little blurred due to cheap ink and paper. He wore a smile that managed to be both posed and genuine. Not the face of a pirate or a killer. Hard to believe he’d turned out that way.

Frey wasn’t much for mementoes. He’d never seen the point in recording his experiences; he’d always looked forward rather than back. But these days he found himself wishing he’d taken better care of the past. This portrait of himself, smiling and accused, was the closest thing he had to a picture of Trinica.

‘Come on! Quick! Quick!’

Breathless hurry. The whirr of the camera timer.

‘Here! Stand there! Smile!’

‘It’s not even pointing at us!’ he said.

‘Oh! You’re right! Left, left, quick!’

‘Right, you said? Over here?’

‘Left!’ Laughing now. ‘Quick! Quick!’

She pulled him to her by his arm, he flashed his teeth, and the camera shutter snapped, biting off that moment, preserving it on a plate. Of all of the ferrotypes they ever appeared in, that one was most perfectly them. Later, the authorities would take that picture and cut Trinica out of it, leaving only the face of a criminal-to-be. But in his mind, the picture was whole, and would always remain so.

He was there with her now, as she squeezed him and kissed him, then ran off towards the camera. He watched her go, her light summer dress blowing about her pale legs as she hurried across the meadow. The sun was hot on his neck that day, but there was a cooling breeze from the mountains at his back. She went to the camera and worried at it, as if she could open it up then and there and find the moment they’d caught inside.

‘I want to see!’ she said.

‘All things come to those who wait,’ he told her sagely, because it was something her father would say, one of a thousand jokes they shared.

‘Oh, you’re no fun!’ she said, in tones that suggested the opposite. ‘And you’ve never waited for a thing in your life!’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘When there’s something I want, I go right ahead and take it!’ He chased up the meadow towards her, and she squealed like a little girl and fled. When he caught her, he picked her up and lifted her, and with her face turned down to his she kissed him, her long blonde hair falling across his cheek.

Was it like that? Was it truly the way he saw it in his memory? Had the sunlight caught the floating dandelion seeds and turned them to gold? Had the grass smelt so fine? Did he realise the perfection of the moment at the time, or was it only perfect through the lens of loss?

The lovers that day had no idea of what was to come, the betrayal and tragedy that would turn their happiness to grief and send them both spinning out into the world, shattered and bitter, careering towards a violent future. That day, they knew nothing but the moment. Perhaps that was how they should have stayed. If he’d loved more fearlessly, instead of poisoning their joy with doubt, then they’d still be together now. But then, maybe it couldn’t have been any other way. Maybe they had to break apart to know each other.

Once upon a time, before the days of guns and drink and treachery, he’d run in a meadow with a woman he loved entirely. Those days were gone. He wanted them back. It had been that way once; he had to believe it could be so again.

If he could find her.

If he could change her mind.

It had been more than five years since Jez last slept. She didn’t miss it. She’d never been much of a dreamer anyway.

Her favourite time was the small hours, when the crew were usually asleep and the Ketty Jay was full of ticks and creaks and large empty silences. Then it was only her and the cat and the rats in the hold.

Sometimes she joined Slag in the hunt, her thoughts mixing with his as he stalked his prey through the vents, ducts and secret places. She shared in the kill and tasted the blood on her tongue. Other times she chose the rats, melting into their hot busy minds.

When the mood took her, she’d take control of a rat, replacing its instincts with her commands. She’d guide it through the ducts to the spot where Slag lay in wait, and stay with it as it was torn apart. Those sharp, sharp claws sank into her back as they sank into the rat’s, and the pain was almost beyond endurance. But she hung on to those death agonies until there was nothing left to hang on to, and when it was over she felt fiercely alive, her mind clear, and the voices were silenced for a time.

But they always came back.

She crouched, perfectly balanced, on a walkway railing that overlooked the Ketty Jay’s cavernous cargo hold. She liked to be high up. The way her crewmates moved bored her: walking on the floor, labouring up stairs, following paths laid out for feet. She wanted to leap from perch to perch, zigzagging through her environment. She wanted a three-dimensional world, not one restricted to flat surfaces and prescribed routes. When she was in company she resisted her impulses, knowing how it disturbed the others. But at night, alone, she was free.

She had more in common with the cat than the Cap’n these days. Sometimes that concerned her, sometimes it didn’t.

Ashua was asleep below her, wrapped in a sleeping bag and tucked up in her little nest, a padded nook in the bulkhead. Jez could hear the sigh of her breath, the slow beating of her heart. Elsewhere, she heard the soft chink of Bess’s chainmail parts moving in the faint breeze from the Ketty Jay’s air circulation system. The golem was dormant and still, an empty suit standing in Crake’s makeshift sanctum at the back of the hold, hidden by a wall of crates and a tarpaulin curtain.

There were other sounds too, sensed rather than heard. The mutter and babble of dreaming minds. The distant call of the Manes, a plaintive howl like a wolf-pack missing a member. Loudest were the thoughts of the pilots, labourers and customs officials who walked the docks outside. They came to her in a whispered susurrus, a confused mess of voices on the edge of understanding.

She could listen to them, if she wanted, though it was frustratingly hard to make sense of what she heard. It came as stitched-together patches of nonsense, windows of clarity in a shifting haze. She made it a point never to consciously spy on the crew’s thoughts, but she couldn’t help overhearing some things. She knew the Cap’n’s concerns about her. She shared them herself.

At least he thought it was only her uncanny hearing he had to worry about. If he knew the truth, he’d kick her off the Ketty Jay for sure.

Frey had wondered how she knew so much about that Awakener freighter in the storm. Things that couldn’t possibly be accounted for by hearing alone. The truth was, she’d been listening to the mass of thoughts from the people it carried, gleaning titbits from the muddle.

‘. . should have told her when I. .’

‘. . emember to fill this up before. .’

‘. . is he now? What is he. .’

‘. . not my problem anyway, no matter what they. .’

‘. . feel sick. Been a month now since I’ve felt right. Should see a. .’

She brought herself back to her body with an effort. It was perilously easy to lose herself in other people’s worries and desires. Too many minds nearby, even at night. During the day it was worse. In a crowd, it required constant concentration just to keep herself together. She felt that if she let go, she’d scatter like light, flying away in a thousand directions at once.

I’m losing it, she told herself. Losing myself.

Riss had warned her. The more she tested herself, the more she practised her newfound Mane abilities, the more like them she’d become. She’d accepted that. She’d chosen to change. But it was hard to let go of what she once was, what she’d always been. It was hard to let go of the world that surrounded her.

She’d drifted into an unknown sea, with no shore to navigate by and no lights to guide her. She was becoming estranged from both her companions and herself, and getting closer to nobody. It frightened her.

Then she saw Pelaru.

The thought of him focused her mind. The voices from outside faded. She saw his face, clear as if he was standing there beside her on the walkway. His olive skin, the sculpted hauteur of his features, the curve of his mouth, the straight set of his shoulders.

Beautiful.

Beautiful, in a way that startled her. Beautiful like an infant saw beauty as it stared in wonder at the sunrise. Incomprehensible, overwhelming, penetrating to the core.

What did it mean? What had she seen, when she saw the whispermonger?

Jez had always been detached, even before that day in Yortland when the Manes came. She’d yearned to connect with others but never could. She had friends and family and partners, but the deep, passionate link that she craved in her adult life had always eluded her. Aspects of human relationships that other people seemed ready to kill and die for had never seemed that important to her.

Once she’d slept with a man forty years older than her just to get the Cap’n’s neck out of a noose. Most people would have been appalled by the notion. For her, it was simply the most expedient way of getting something done. She hadn’t been defiled by the experience. She hadn’t felt much of anything about it.

Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe she wanted to feel more than she had a right to, more than she was capable of. That was why she’d chosen the Manes, in the end. They promised togetherness, companionship, the kind of unity that was beyond anything she’d experienced before.

But now this. Was this what the Cap’n felt when he thought of Trinica? This astonishing, stunned sense of wanting? Was she in love? And if that was so, was it too late to turn back from the path she’d chosen?

Was it too late to choose to be human?