The Black Lung Captain

Forty-Two

Sister.

Comrade.

Beloved.

The hurricane of joy that met her almost swept her away. A thousand voices, risen in greeting. At last their discordant song made sense. They were no longer terrifying, but wonderful. They were welcoming her. Welcoming her as one of them.

She'd fought the daemon inside her every inch of the way, in those long years since the day of her death. Frightened of the temptation it presented. Terrified of being subsumed. Desperate to keep hold of herself.

But when she saw the Manes break into the engine room of the Storm Dog, when she saw her crew - her friends - standing in the path of that savage fury, she abandoned her resistance at last. This time, it was no hostile invading force that took her against her will. This was a surrender.

Strength surged into her body. Confusion was replaced with clarity of thought. She sprang from the walkway where she'd lingered unnoticed, in a daze, while her friends shot down Grist's men. And the Manes halted before her.

But these Manes were not the horrors she knew. She saw past skin and muscle and bone, to the cascade of harmonics within, a music that could be seen and sensed in all its marvellous subtlety. Each Mane was a symphony to themselves, yet each had movements and passages in common. The daemon that possessed each of them was one entity split among many bodies. That was the uniting force. Otherwise, they were as different as earth and sky. The Manes were human, only more so. So much more, that they'd passed beyond the understanding of the beings they once were.

She was still herself. They welcomed her, they wanted her, but it was Jez that bathed in their love. The same Jez it had always been. It was a delight she could never have imagined.

What had she ever been afraid of?

She wanted to speak, but speech was impossibly clumsy. There was no need, anyway. Her thoughts were transparent to them. Yet still she tried, forming words with her mind, because she knew no other way.

Not these, she thought. You must not harm them.

And the Manes knew what she knew. They shared her memories of Frey, of her crew, her time aboard the Ketty Jay. They sensed her gratitude at being given a home when no one else would give her one. They learned how the crew had accepted her, even in the face of their own ignorance and fear of the Manes. They saw the beautiful simplicity of their friendships.

She knew, then, that they wouldn't be harmed. Not by any hand here.

And yet, for all this astonishing completeness that she felt, there was greater yet to come. She'd connected with them on the most rudimentary level. The intoxicating sense of kinship and understanding was only a fraction of what she might feel, if she took the Invitation wholeheartedly.

The daemon inside her had accepted her surrender, but only temporarily. It didn't want her unwilling. The Invitation was just that: an invitation. It could be refused. It was just that very few ever did, with this heaven of belonging within their grasp. Who, when offered this, would choose the lonely isolation of humanity?

Jez was only partway there. To be a Mane in its fullest sense meant accepting the Invitation. And she knew that there was no returning from that.

They spoke to her without words.

Will you join us?

Frey's gun was still levelled at Grist's head. Grist's gun was pressed against Trinica's, at a considerably closer range. Jez was on the far side of the barricade, crouched like a cat. The unearthly howl she'd made was dying away in her throat. The Manes stood at bay before her.

Nobody dared make a move.

What in the name of buggery is going on?

Then Jez straightened and turned. Frey saw the awful change that had been wrought in her, just like on the All Our Yesterdays. Her face was not physically different, but something else lived behind it now. Something feral and mad, something other. It was in her posture and her expression, and above all in her eyes. She jarred against his senses, and terrified him.

Then she spoke. Her voice was straining, gasping, horrible, as if she was unfamiliar with the workings of her own throat. A flock of whispers that coalesced into sound.

~ This one speaks for the Manes ~

'Jez?' said Malvery. 'That you?'

~ This one is she. She is our mouthpiece. We have lost your way of speech. You are mute to us, as we are to you ~

Frey felt his skin crawl. He summoned up a little defiance for form's sake. 'What have you done to her?'

~ Nothing she has not chosen. Be calm, Captain Frey. You and your crew will not be harmed. This one places great value on you ~

'Her, too,' Frey said immediately, pointing at Trinica. 'She's done you no wrong.'

Jez didn't reply to that. Instead, she said, ~ Captain Grist. Let the woman go. Bring us the sphere ~

'No funny business, Frey,' Grist warned.

Frey put up his weapon. Grist let go of Trinica, and she scrambled out of his grip and backed away from the Manes towards Frey. Frey moved closer, carefully, as if fearing a sudden move would lead her to be snatched from him again. Relief crashed in as his hand closed around her wrist and he pulled her towards him. He felt a fierce desire to take her in his arms and hold her, but something in her manner prevented it. She was no longer the kind to be held and comforted.

Grist had picked up his cutlass from where it had fallen during the struggle with Trinica, and shoved it in his belt. Now he retrieved the sphere from where it lay, bundled up in a coat. He stepped past the barricade and walked towards Jez, still clutching his pistol in his right hand. 'You know why I came here, don't you?' he said.

~ Yes ~

'Give me the Invitation.'

~ We know what you want ~ She took the sphere from Grist and stared at it, brow furrowed in concentration.

Frey felt the air go slack. It was as if some tight wire, that had been tugging at the edge of his mind, had quietly snapped. The sensation was noticeable only by its absence. He hadn't realised he was detecting the sphere, even in the faintest way, until it stopped broadcasting. Now, finally, it was silent.

'I brought you a thousand new recruits,' said Grist, eyeing Jez warily. 'My offerin' to you. All I want's to be one of you. To live always. It's all I want.'

Jez's gaze went from the sphere in her hands to Grist. ~ We came to find the sphere. We came believing that our long-lost brethren were in peril. But there were no Manes there ~

'I had to find you,' Grist said. A note of uncertainty had crept into his voice. 'It was the only way.'

~ Hundreds of our kind and yours have died today, Captain Grist. All so you could come here before us ~

'I did what had to be done,' he growled. Even in the face of a crowd of Manes, he prickled at having his decisions questioned. He addressed the horde defiantly. 'Don't pretend you're strangers to killin', yourselves!'

~ We kill to survive. What your kind call kidnapping, we call recruitment. We must grow in number, and we have no other way of reproduction. But the sight of us inspires terror in your kind. They are apt to resist. We are forced to defend ourselves ~

'Aye,' said Grist. 'But it all adds up to a whole heap o' bodies, whichever way you cut it.' He swept the Manes with a hard stare. He wasn't a bit afraid of them. 'Now, I've proved myself, ain't I? I want the Invitation.'

~ No-

Grist's face darkened. 'No?'

~ We are not monsters. We do not want you ~

Grist drew a cigar from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a match. A dangerous calm had settled on him. 'Am I to understand,' he said, puffing, 'that after two years of searchin', after turnin' over every rock and stone in Vardia, after I lost my whole damn crew and chased you to the North bloody Pole . . . That ain't enough?'

~ It will never be enough. We do not give the Invitation to everyone. Some are unsuitable ~

'Unsuitable, you say? You realise, o' course, that by refusin' me, you're condemnin' me to death from the Black Lung?'

~ You should not concern yourself. Your death will come considerably sooner than that. You are far too dangerous to be allowed to live ~

Grist surveyed the ranks of ghouls before him. 'I reckon you're right, at that.' Then he turned around and looked over his shoulder. His eyes met Frey's across the barricade between them. Frey could see the suppressed anger there, his fury at being thwarted at the last. He'd come all this way, and lost.

Grist gave him a grudging salute. Frey returned it just as grudgingly. Both of them knew that he'd reached his end, but Frey couldn't help respecting him for the way he faced it.

'Well,' he said, 'death, then.' He spun around, switching his pistol to his off-hand and drawing his cutlass. 'Which o' you bastards wants it first?'

With a roar, he ran at the Manes, firing his pistol as he came. They fell on him in a howling frenzy as he plunged into them, cutting and slashing this way and that, shooting point-blank at his opponents until his bullets ran out. With long nails and crooked teeth they tore at his skin and raked at his face, but he shook them off time and again, bellowing his defiance. He hacked off limbs and heads to his left and right, a gory and fearsome figure amid the thrashing mass. All control had left him now: he was berserk with rage, more animal than man, a force of nature. As feral as the Manes that surrounded him. At last they pulled him under, overwhelming him by weight of numbers, but a moment later he struggled to his feet again, throwing them back with irresistible strength. They flung themselves at him, biting and scratching, rending strips of flesh from his arms and shoulders, but he battered them away.

'Come on!' Grist howled. 'You ain't even tryin'!'

Frey stared, appalled by his courage. Grist was surrounded by pieces of dead Manes, a butcher in a slaughterhouse, bleeding from dozens of wounds. He was visibly weakening, but he still kept his feet. No matter how they fought, they couldn't bring him down.

In the end, it was his own blood that did it. He slipped on the slick floor, and disappeared beneath the tide. This time, he didn't come up again.

They savaged him as he struggled on the floor. They plucked out his eyes and tore out his tongue. They ripped his belly open and pulled his innards from them in great loops. They gnawed his hands while he still thrashed, peeled muscle from bone, shredded him.

Frey had never heard screaming like it.

Then, at last, it was over. As much as Frey had hated Grist, he was glad when they were done, and silence returned. As if at a signal, the Manes began to retreat, melting away into the depths of the craft. What was left of Harvin Grist was scarcely recognisable as human, a bag of red and broken bones connected by strips of sinew.

Malvery cleared his throat. 'In my professional opinion,' he said, 'that feller is dead.'

Jez, who'd stood apart from the fighting, walked up to Frey. ~ The sphere is deactivated. The vortex is closing. You must move with haste ~

'What about Jez? You ain't keeping her!' Malvery said.

~ We do not hold her captive. She has chosen her path ~

'Oh, aye? And what path is that?'

~ She was given the Invitation. She refused ~

'I didn't know you could refuse,' Frey said. 'Of course she refused, then! Why wouldn't she?'

~ Few do. You cannot understand the choice she has made ~

Frey wasn't going to argue about it. But the creature before him was still not Jez, his navigator. 'Then what is she, if she's not one of you?'

~ A half-Mane ~

'Wasn't she one already?'

~ It is different now. She has accepted her Mane side, as we have accepted her humanity. She no longer resists us. In time, she will learn to control those aspects of us that she bears, or find others to teach her ~

'There are others?'

~ Some are agents of our cause in the world beyond the Wrack. Others tread their own way. One day our kind and yours will meet, in war or peace. On that day, there may be need of those who can bridge the gap between us ~

Frey was too tired and numb to take it all in. It was all too much for him right now. He just wanted to go. He wanted to take his crew and Trinica and leave as fast as he bloody well could.

~ She chose you over us, Captain. That is a rare honour indeed ~

Then a shadow passed from her, some dark alter ego departing, and she sagged and staggered. When she raised her head, the feral look was gone from her. The shift in her aspect was subtle but unmistakable. She was back. She pushed some loose hair away from her forehead and gave them a wan smile.

Malvery thundered over to her and swept her up in a bear hug, planting a huge kiss on her cheek. Silo came next, and laid his hand on her shoulder. Their eyes met, and a certain understanding passed between them, something that Frey had no knowledge of. But whatever it was, the half-Mane navigator and the silent Murthian shared something in that moment. Unless Frey was mistaken, Silo was proud of her.

Frey joined them, and hugged her too. She was the smallest on his crew, but sometimes she was tougher than all of them. To have her back, to be chosen by her, filled him with a nameless gladness. She was precious, like all of his crew, and it was only then that he truly realised what a loss it would have been if she'd left them.

Jez laughed as she pushed him away. 'Give a girl some space, you bunch of lunks!' she said. 'We don't have time for all this. That big hole in the sky isn't going to be there too much longer, and I for one am not staying. So anyone who doesn't want to spend the rest of their lives stuck at the North Pole . . . run for it!'

By the time they came up on the deck, the dreadnought was detaching itself and pulling away from the Storm Dog. Other dreadnoughts were in the sky, droning out of the grey mist, shadows that took on shape and detail as they approached. Returning combatants from Sakkan, some smoking from wounds in their hulls.

Frey and the others sprinted back to the Ketty Jay. The crew fanned out to their posts, fired by their captain's urgency. Frey put Jez in the pilot's seat.

'Get us out of here!'

Jez didn't need any further invitation. She released the magnetic clamps and had the Ketty Jay airborne in moments. It was only when she lit the thrusters that Frey realised something was badly wrong.

'Silo!' he called. He pushed past Trinica and Crake, who were just arriving in the cockpit, and headed down the corridor towards the engine room. He stuck his head through the open door. 'What's that noise?'

'Engines are iced, Cap'n,' came the reply. The Ketty Jay's engine room was like a miniature version of the Storm Dog's. Silo, as usual, was invisible, lost somewhere in the walkways. 'She can't take these temperatures. There's cracks in the tanks.'

'Hold her together! Just till we get out!'

Silo didn't bother to reply to that. Frey returned to the cockpit, listening anxiously to the clattering noise coming from the thrusters. Trinica and Crake hovered about. They could do nothing to help.

'She sounds bad, Cap'n,' said Jez, whose mental clarity had apparently returned. She seemed no worse for her experience. In fact, she seemed considerably better.

'Don't push the thrusters if you can help it,' he told her.

Til do what I can.'

The Ketty Jay moved away from the Storm Dog, leaving her hanging in the sky, empty and abandoned. In another time and another place, Frey would have cheerfully stolen her. But all he wanted now was to get to safety in one piece.

The bleak world of ice and the strange city in the distance were lost to sight, as Jez turned the craft away and took them into the deeper mist. They slipped past the dreadnoughts that were gliding in the other direction. Later, maybe, he'd think about the things he'd seen here, and marvel at the day's events. For now, he was too preoccupied.

Trinica was watching him. Her mind was a mystery, as it ever was. He'd known better than to expect gratitude, but it still rankled that he'd had no word of thanks from her. No words at all, in fact. He'd risked his life and the lives of his crew to come here and get her. They might yet all die on her account. Wasn't that worth a little praise?

Instead, she studied him as if he was some new and mildly fascinating thing she'd never noticed before. Her attention made him slightly uncomfortable.

You stabbed me in the back and I saved your life in return. I'm better than you. Live with that.

He was conscious of an awkward pressure against his ribs. Irritably, he opened his coat and pulled the rolled-up sheaf of papers from his inside pocket. Since Crake was nearby, he held them out to him.

'What's this?' Crake asked.

'Grist's father's research. Apparently it's compelling evidence that the Awakeners have been using daemonism to create Imperators.'

'They've what? Crake exclaimed. He snatched them from his grasp. 'Give me that!'

'Yeah, didn't I mention it? When you were away we went to Bestwark University, and we met—'

'No, you bloody well did not mention it!' Crake began leafing through the papers excitedly, their predicament suddenly forgotten.

'To tell you the truth, I sort of forgot about it till I was in Grist's cabin. Didn't seem all that important.'

Crake stared at him, aghast. 'Do you know what this means? he asked, brandishing the folio.

'Reckon so. If it got into the Archduke's hands, it could help bring down the Awakeners, or something,' he said offhandedly. He didn't much care whether the Awakeners were around or not, but Crake certainly did.

'Spit and blood! This is incredible!'

'Yeah, well, enjoy it,' said Frey, listening to the labouring thrusters. 'It won't be so incredible if the prothane engine doesn't hold out.'

The mist closed in around them, and the wind began to pick up fast. The Ketty Jay started to shake and rattle. Jez stared out into the gloom. What she was seeing, Frey couldn't tell. The route back was invisible to him, but she seemed to know exactly where she was heading. She twitched the flight stick, banked and dived. Frey steadied himself against the navigator's desk. It was going to be rough.

The wind buffeted them as they flew further in, and Jez was forced to manoeuvre more and more.There was a screeching noise coming from the port thruster. Frey bit his lip and hoped. If the thrusters failed now, they'd be tossed about in the tempest until they came apart.

If only he'd had the time and money to get the parts Silo had been asking for. If only he didn't live this hand-to-mouth, breadline existence. If they died today, it would be his mediocrity that was to blame.

You can do it, girl, he thought, addressing his aircraft. Hang on.

The Ketty Jay bucked and surged as she fought through the storm.

Lightning flickered in the clouds. Frey felt useless. He wanted to be doing something, but there was nothing he could do. Having given up his seat as pilot, he was just a passenger. He watched Jez, or gazed out at the mist, or listened to the disturbing sounds coming from the engine. Mostly, he willed the aircraft to stay together, and tried to keep his balance as they were jostled around. There were safer places to be while the Ketty Jay was fighting through such savage turbulence, but no one would leave the cockpit.

Time ticked by. Moment after agonising moment. Frey lost track of it altogether.

'Not far now,' Jez said.

Frey exchanged a cautiously optimistic look with Crake. Crake, who was clutching the papers tight in one hand and steadying himself with his other, gave him a brave smile. Maybe they'd make it after all.

Then the thrusters coughed and hacked and, with a final bang, the engine blew out.

No.

Frey felt himself go cold. The world seemed deadened, the silence profound. The injustice was like a blade under the breastbone. To have got so close. So close, and to fall at the final hurdle.

No.

Outside was the endless, empty grey. They drifted, somewhere in the vague, strange space between the Wrack and Sakkan.

No.

Then the wind hit them, and this time there was no way to ride it. The Ketty Jay was flung hard, throwing Frey off his feet. He crashed into Trinica and they went down together, sliding along the floor to fetch up against a bank of instruments. Crake was thrown against the navigator's station. He cracked his head on the side of the desk and fell senseless to the floor, papers scattering all around him.

Jez stabbed at the ignition frantically. The thrusters didn't respond. Frey tried to get to his feet, but the Ketty Jay plunged, and he was lifted from the floor and slammed down hard. Jez wrestled with the controls, but her efforts were futile.

Everything was futile.

They were shaken like a rag in a dog's mouth. Without thrust, they had no control. Everything not fixed down went flying about the cockpit. There was the squeal of tearing metal from the corridor. The jolts came fast and from all directions, making it impossible to find their feet. Something snapped and crashed down in the cargo hold. The windglass cracked.

The craft was breaking up. And there was nothing any of them could do about it.

Frey crawled across the floor towards Trinica. One of her black contact lenses had fallen out in the chaos, revealing the green eye he knew. That eye was the one he focused on. The eye of the woman he'd loved. There was the woman he'd risked it all to save. And she was scared; he could see it. Frightened of the end. She didn't want it to be over.

He reached out a hand to her. She snatched it and clutched it hard.

Her hand in his. He could think of worse ways to die.

At least he'd tried, he thought. It was reckless, headstrong and stupid, but it was real and it was worth it. With a little more luck, he'd have made a story that every freebooter, raconteur and drunk would have told for a decade. The man who went into the Wrack, rescued the dread pirate Dracken, and came back to tell the tale. They'd all know the name of the Ketty Jay then. If he never did anything else, at least he'd have done that, and made a tale worth telling of his life.

He just needed a little more luck. But everyone's luck ran out sometime.

'Cap'n!' Jez cried. 'Cap'n, look!'

The tone of her voice drove him to his feet. He pulled Trinica up with him, and they staggered a few steps to clutch the back of Jez's seat.

Bleary lights in the mist. Electric lights, and a huge shadow behind them. Another dreadnought? No, dreadnoughts flew without lights. Then what?

'It's the Delirium Trigger!' said Jez, an amazed smile breaking out over her face. 'It's the bloody Delirium Trigger!'

And it was. Vast, ugly, brutal, looming from the cloud. The wind couldn't threaten a frigate of her size. Thick snakes uncoiled from her shadowy decks and slammed into the hull of the Ketty Jay. Magnetic grapples, clamping on. The lines went taut, and the Ketty Jay began to move through the storm, hauled inexorably forward by the Delirium Trigger's massive engines. They were pulled towards the mouth of the vortex, and the safety of the world they knew.

Frey couldn't believe it. It didn't seem possible. Jez was cheering in her seat, but he just stared, gaping, unable to credit their reprieve.

'How did they find us?' he asked. 'In all this mist, how did they find us?'

Trinica held up her left hand before him. On her finger was the silver ring he'd given her. The ring that was linked to a compass, which Trinica had given to her bosun when she took it from Jez, back in Grist's hangar.

He looked from the hand to her. She smiled at him. A genuine, beautiful smile, that filled him with such happiness it made tears prickle at his eyes.