The Iron jackal

Fourteen

Nine nights left, thought Frey, as he knocked on the door of the curio shop. Next to him, Crake stamped his feet and shivered. The unseasonable cold snap showed no signs of letting up.

‘Spit and blood,’ Crake muttered. ‘If this is autumn, I don’t want to be here for winter.’

‘Not to worry,’ said Frey. ‘Chances are I’ll be dead by then.’

‘That attitude’s not going to do you much good, now, is it?’

‘Just trying to look on the bright side.’

The curio shop was dark. At this time of night, all the shops were closed. There were only two people visible, a pair of men buried in greatcoats, hats and scarves, muttering to each other as they walked past.

Frey knocked again impatiently. ‘Doesn’t anyone hurry any more?’ he griped. He peered through the shop window, and saw a faint light in the back, and movement. ‘Finally. Someone’s coming.’

‘I don’t like this plan you’ve got, Cap’n,’ Crake murmured.

‘That’s because it’s barely a plan at all. If I had something better, I’d use it. But we’ve got no leverage. So we either get the relic out of him this way, or we go to plan B.’

‘Plan B? Isn’t that just code for ‘‘wade in there and shoot anything that moves’’?’

‘Exactly. And that means bullets flying everywhere. And because I don’t like getting shot much, I try to avoid Plan B when I can.’

‘Remarkable how often we end up using it, though,’ Crake commented.

‘That’s because Plan A never bloody works.’

The door was opened by a pinch-faced bruiser with hulking shoulders. A little bell tinkled cheerily overhead. ‘Mr Frey and Mr Crake, right?’

‘ Captain Frey,’ said Frey.

The thug gave him a long and deeply unimpressed stare. Frey returned a cheesy grin.

‘ Captain Frey,’ the thug said at length. ‘Come in, then.’ He let them through, locked the door behind them, and then searched them for weapons. They weren’t carrying any, for the same reason that Frey had only brought Crake from his crew. They were going to try and do this the nice way.

The curio shop was an unsettling place. Shelves of glass-eyed dolls stared down at them as they were led towards the back. They passed a stuffed beast that Frey didn’t recognise, some kind of hunting cat with a mane of spikes like a porcupine. He was half-convinced it was going to spring to life and snap at him. Ticking toys shifted restlessly in the dark: the kind of clockwork junk Pinn was fond of. He was reminded of the night Pinn had rashly announced his intention to be a famon iftous inventor. The pilot appeared to have forgotten all about it, which was probably for the best.

Mind on the job, Frey. You’ve got one chance to play this right. Don’t mess it up like you did with Trinica.

He shut away that memory. Her scorn had burned him. He’d never even had the chance to tell her about the curse.

Nine nights left. Was it really true? It had been three nights since he’d seen the vision in the cargo hold and spoken to the sorcerer, and there’d been no sign of the daemon in between. Despite Crake’s strange readings, despite the sorcerer’s words, he still couldn’t fully convince himself of the threat. He kept trying to reason his way out of it. A simple hallucination wasn’t too much to worry about, really. Maybe Crake’s readings were skewed. And the sorcerer was hardly reliable: he might be as much a charlatan as the Awakeners were.

He couldn’t quite believe that there was a daemon out there, waiting to get him. That margin of doubt was what kept him going.

Crickslint sat behind a desk in a small area at the back of the shop. There was a single electric lamp hanging from the ceiling above his head. He had a jeweller’s glass fixed to his eye, peering at a small golden casket that he was turning over in his hand. Two more bodyguards, inconspicuously armed, stood at the edge of the light. Frey and Crake settled themselves in antique seats that had been placed in front of the desk.

Crickslint ignored them for a while. Darian waited. He was used to these boring displays of importance from people he dealt with.

‘Darian Frey,’ he said eventually. He put the casket aside, took out the jeweller’s glass, steepled his fingers and smiled a chrome-toothed smile. ‘We meet again.’

Frey winced inwardly. He’d forgotten how irritatingly theatrical Crickslint was. Every movement, every expression was exaggerated; his conversation was full of dramatic pauses and flamboyant surges in volume. The annoying piece of shit seemed to think he was the Dread Lord of Vardia or some such bollocks, instead of a weasel-faced runt with a voice like a girl.

‘Yes,’ said Frey, as neutrally as possible. ‘Apparently we do.’

‘And who is your friend?’ asked Crickslint, drawing out the syllables, tapping a finger against his cheek as if pondering deeply. His face lit up. ‘Why, it looks like Grayther Crake, the daemonist.’

‘How do you do?’ Crake said politely, seemingly unfazed by Crickslint’s over-the-top delivery. Coming from the aristocracy, he was probably used to odder things.

‘Now,’ said Crickslint. He adjusted the sleeves of his jacket and made a show of arranging himself. ‘What business might you two gentlemen have with me?’

Frey sized up his opponent, trying to spot anything that might give him an angle. Crickslint’s teeth were new, since the last lot had been knocked out. He could have had a natural-looking set made up, but he clearly preferred to think of himself as fearsome, so he’d chosen metal. His face was sallow as ever, with small weak eyes. Thin blond hair was slicked back over a long skull.

Frey knew his sort. He was just like the weedy, sickly children at the orphanage where Frey grew up, the ones who got beaten up and pushed about their whole adolescent lives. Frey had to resist the urge to bully him now. Something about him made it instinctive.

But Frey would have to tread carefully. Crickslint had grown sly, and he’d gained the power to get revenge on the world for all those humiliations. That made him dangerous.

‘Trinica Dracken sold you a relic recently,’ Frey said.

‘She did.’

‘I’d like you to loan it to me.’

Crickslint blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

‘A loan. You know. Two weeks. I’ll pay, of course, and I can leave you a Firecrow as collateral. I just need to borrow it.’ He shrugged. ‘You lend money to everyone, right? This is the same thing. You can still sell it on at full price after I’m done.’

Crickslint looked faintly amused. ‘That’s an odd proposition. And what do you intend to do with it?’

‘That’s my business. But you have my assurance, my absolute assurance, that it’ll be returned to you in perfect condition.’ It was an easy enough promise to make, since Frey wasn’t thinking much further than getting his hands on the relic at this stage.

Crickslint leaned forward across the desk, so that the light from above fell onto his face, calculated to lend him a sinister air. ‘Do you even know what it is, Captain Frey? The relic, I mean?’

‘No,’ said Frey. ‘Do you?’

‘Perhaps.’

Frey narrowed his eyes. ‘I reckon you don’t. I bet you don’t even know where it came from.’

‘Oh, I can tell you that quite easily. It was found by an explorer. Ugrik vak Munn kes Oortuk, in fact.’

‘Uh-huh. I’m guessing he’s not from around here.’

‘He’s a Yort. Huo; ot fe’s actually quite famous.’

‘Never heard of him. Where’d he get it from?’

‘That, I’ll admit, I don’t know.’

‘So how’d the Sammies get hold of it?’

‘They caught him. Sammies don’t like people wandering about outside of the Free Trade Zone. Especially not those who go around stealing their ancient relics.’

‘And you heard about it. Through a whispermonger, I’m guessing. And then you sent Trinica Dracken to get it for you.’

Crickslint clapped slowly. ‘Very good, Captain Frey. None of which gets you any closer to having it yourself.’

Frey leaned back in his chair. If there was a time to make his move, it was now. ‘I like your new teeth,’ he said.

Crickslint gave him a sharklike smile. ‘Flattery. You must really have nothing to bargain with.’

‘My friend here’s got something similar. Show him your gold tooth, Crake.’

Crake leaned forward and offered a dazzling grin. His tooth glittered in the light from overhead. Crickslint, half-interested, glanced at the tooth. Then a strange expression crossed his face and he peered closer.

‘That is a nice tooth,’ he said.

Frey felt a stirring of hope as he saw Crickslint’s eyes glaze over. He’d seen it happen to people before, as they stared into their own reflections in Crake’s daemon-thralled tooth. They became mesmerised and suggestible. If he was lucky, the bodyguards wouldn’t even notice what was going on.

‘It is a nice tooth, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Listen, Crickslint, we go way back. Why don’t you just lend me that relic, and let’s not worry about a price. I’ll bring it right back to you when I’m done with it. How’s that sound?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Crickslint, not taking his eyes off Crake’s tooth. ‘Yes, that sounds fine. Whatever you want.’

‘Really?’ Frey was faintly surprised at how easily he’d agreed.

Crickslint got up in his chair and leaned across his desk to get a closer look. ‘Yes, yes, take it. Just one thing I’d ask, though.’

‘What’s that?’

Crickslint hit Crake hard across the face, a ringing slap that echoed through the empty curio shop.

‘Don’t embarrass yourselves by trying any more of that daemonist shit with me!’ he hissed, and sat back down. He motioned to one of his thugs. ‘Get him out of here.’

Crake was shocked, holding the side of his face. ‘He slapped me!’ he said to Frey in indignation.

‘I saw,’ said Frey grimly, as the thug descended on Crake and dragged him out of the shop. The bell above the door tinkled happily as Crake was flung out on to the street.

Crickslint had steepled his fingers again, gazing steadily at Frey, having returned to his self-appointed role as pantomime villain. ‘Now that… distraction is out of the way, perhaps we can negotiate man-to-man?’

‘Can’t blame a feller for trying,’ said Frey. The tooth only worked on people who were weak-willed or stupid. Crickslint was apparently neither.

‘I believe you were interrupted in the process of making me a ridiculous offer? You were asking me to entrust to you a valuable Samarlan relic, many thousands of years old, with a Firecrow as collateral? You do know the market’s been flooded with second-hand Firecrows since the Navy upgraded their fleet?’

‘Crickslint,’ said Frey. ‘It’s a classic aircraft. And you could own one, for a limited time.’

Crickslint laughed, a high, hysterical laugh that sawed through the brain and down the spinal column. Frey had to clutch the sides of his chair to resist punching him. He was just so punchable. Although it might be pretty hard on the knuckles with those chrome teeth in place.

‘You could own one! Very amusing. No, I think we’ll forget about the Firecrow.’

Frey was sort of relieved. He didn’t fancy explaining to Harkins that he’d have to do without his beloved aircraft, even though it technically belonged to Frey.

‘What about I do some jobs for you?’ Frey suggested. ‘For free, of course. You always need smugglers, right? I’m good at that.’

I really hope he doesn’t remember how good I was at stealing from him, too, Frey thought. But if Crickslint did remember, he wasn’t showing it.

Crickslint sat upright, one finger pressed against his lips in a classic pose of thought. The very artificiality of it made Frey murderous. He hated having to beg like this. He had half a mind to leave and come back with Plan B – B for ‘Bess tears everyone’s heads off’ – when Crickslint spoke again.

‘I have a proposal,’ he said. ‘I hear you have an exceptional pilot on your crew by the name of Artis Pinn.’

Pinn. Pinn with his arm in a sling.

‘What of it?’ Frey asked carefully.

‘I have a way that you could do me a service. After that, I might consider loaning you the relic you need.’

‘Go on.’

‘I know a man who owes me a lot. He’s also quite the gambler. I have an interest in seeing him lose a large amount of money. Then I’ll call in his debt and bankrupt him.’

‘Won’t that mean that you lose some of your money?’

‘Yes. But by bankrupting him I’ll be doing a far more valuable service to his rival. It’s a game of checks and balances, Captain Frey; you really don’t need to worry about it.’

‘So what do I have to do?’

‘There are races held outside the city. Single-seater craft, racing round a circuit. They’re illegal and unregulated, and a lot of money changes hands on them. The man I want is the backer for a pilot named Gidley Sleen. He places big bets on every race. I’m given to understand that Sleen is a virtual certainty to win tomorrow; the competition is feeble. Short odds will mean his backer will place an even bigger bet than usual to get a good return.’

‘You want me to enter Pinn in the race?’

‘I want you to enter him, and I want him to win. He’ll go in as an unknown. I’ll back him myself: the odds will be very favourable. When he wins, I’ll make a lot, and my target will lose a lot, I’ll call in my debt at the right moment and-’ He clicked his fingers.

‘Then you’ll loan me the relic?’

‘For two weeks. And if it’s not back in my hands by then, I will find you.’ He snapped his teeth together. ‘You don’t want that.’

‘Done,’ said Frey. ‘And don’t worry. Pinn’s the best damn pilot in Vardia.’

‘I’m gonna do what? ’ Harkins shrieked, at the same time as Pinn cried: ‘He’s gonna do what?’

Frey pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. To Crake, who was sitting with his feet up on the table of the Ketty Jay ’s mess, the Cap’n looked tired and harassed. Good,

‘It’s pretty simple,’ Frey said. ‘Harkins, you’re gonna pretend to be Pinn tomorrow, and fly the race in his place.’

‘Him?’ Pinn cried, pointing at Harkins. ‘I’m a better pilot even with my arm in a sling!’

Harkins muttered something unintelligible, but probably insulting.

‘You can’t fly properly with one arm, Pinn,’ said Frey. ‘You barely managed to land the Skylance in Thesk without crashing it.’

But Pinn was in the midst of a tantrum and wasn’t really listening. ‘I wanna fly!’ he said. ‘This is a fringement of my human rights!’

‘A fringement?’ Crake said in weary disgust, rousing from his sulk.

‘Fringement!’ Pinn snapped. ‘Like when someone’s in your fringe!’

Crake opened his mouth, and shut it again with a sigh. He couldn’t be bothered.

‘Is that even a word?’ Frey asked Malvery, who was stirring a pot of soup at the stove. Malvery shrugged without turning around. He didn’t want to get involved.

Slag watched the conflict with half an eye, having decided to join the crew in the mess. He’d plonked himself down in a languid curve on the table and was surreptitiously lapping at a patch of spilled coffee when he thought nobody was looking.

‘Crickslint doesn’t know what you look like,’ Frey told Pinn. ‘As far as he knows, Artis Pinn is skinny and balding and loud noises give him a heart attack.’

‘Instead of someone resembling an angry potato with an attitude problem,’ Crake added.

‘You shut up, you milky little ponce,’ said Pinn. ‘You just got slapped by a guy with no teeth.’

‘Hey, he had teeth! Big shiny ones!’ Crake protested, but nobody was listening.

‘I am not pretending to be him!’ Harkins declared, thrusting a trembling finger at Pinn.

‘He is not pretending to be me!’ Pinn said.

‘Yes. He. Is,’ said the Cap’n. ‘Because we need that relic back.’

‘ You need that relic back,’ Pinn corrected.

‘Yes, I need it,’ said Frey, who was getting to the end of his tether. ‘And if I end up dead, what do you think happens to you lot? No more Ketty Jay. Are you all going to go and get jobs or something?’

Pinn went pale at that. Before anyone could offer anything else, the cat suddenly sprang up, arched his back and hissed.

‘Here comes Jez,’ said Malvery, without taking his eyes off the soup.

Sure enough, Jez climbed down the ladder a moment later. Slag bolted, leaping off the table and onto the counter-top, and finally up on top of a cupboard, where he sat crooning malevolently.

‘That cat really hates you,’ Crake observed.

‘He hates everyone,’ said Jez dismissively. She turned to the Cap’n. ‘Course plotted for the race site. It’ll take us two hours, more or less.’

‘Fine,’ said Frey. ‘Early start tomorrow, lads.’ There were general groans at the news. ‘I know, I know. But we have to get there in plenty of time. We need to tune up the Firecrow. She’ll have to be at her best if we’re gonna win this race.’

‘If I’m gonna win it,’ said Harkins, puffing out his chest. Thin as he was, it didn’t puff too far.

‘Oh? I thought you didn’t want to race?’ said Frey wryly.

Harkins glanced at Jez and coughed. ‘Well, you know… I changed my mind! If there’s flying to be done, I’m the man to do it. Artis Pinn!’

Pinn gave a strangled cry of rage and lunged across the mess at Harkins, who gave a less than manly squeal and hid behind Frey. Jez watched the whole thing in bewilderment.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ said Crake, getting to his feet. ‘I think I’ll leave you all to it.’

He slipped through the melee and climbed the ladder to the relative peace of the Ketty Jay ’s main passageway. From there, he made his way down to the hold to check on Bess.

It was chilly and gloomy in the hold. Crake preferred that to the sweltering heat of Samarla. He was glad to be out of that country, if only because his bowel movements had finally steadied. His stomach really didn’t get on with Samarlan fare at all.

In the middle of the hold were the Rattletraps. One of them was halfway disassembled, with Silo’s tool box resting on its hood. The man himself was nowhere to be seen. Crake was glad aboe wth="20ut that. Since they’d held up that train in the desert, Silo had been in a foul mood. Now he spent most of his time in the hold, fixing up buggies with a furious intensity, and if anyone so much as spoke to him they got an irritated glare and no reply. Crake wondered if the engineer had something on his mind, but he knew so little about him that it was hard to tell.

In fact, it wasn’t just Silo that was acting oddly. There was a strange atmosphere on the Ketty Jay now. Everyone knew that the Cap’n was in trouble, everyone was thinking about it, but no one wanted to talk about it. So they all ran around getting on with whatever they could, or stayed away from the craft altogether.

Nobody wanted to admit it, but the Cap’n’s life might be measured in days. And all this, this world aboard the Ketty Jay they’d created for themselves, would come to an end then. Without Frey, there was no crew. Nobody really thought they could carry on if the Cap’n was gone. They would each end up going their separate ways. It would be inevitable. They had very little in common, beyond the Ketty Jay.

He’d reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out onto the floor of the cargo hold when he heard a soft clank from the shadows.

His senses prickled. There was a change in the air. The chill he felt wasn’t entirely due to the temperature.

‘Bess?’ he said quietly, although something told him it wasn’t her. Dread trickled through him. He stared into the darkness at the edges of the hold.

Something shifted there. Something taller than a man.

Spit and blood. It’s here.

He took a step backwards. He was defenceless. There was a daemon here and he was defenceless and it wasn’t even meant to be coming for him, it was meant to be Frey!

‘Bess!’ he called, though this time it was more like a shout.

There was a soft growl. It moved to the edge of the light. Somehow it was still impossible to make out a shape, but he saw a claw, a huge iron claw with bayonets for fingers, and then a muzzle like a dog’s, wrinkling into a snarl.

‘Damn it, Bess! Where are you?’ he yelled in panic.

She came thundering from the sanctum, emerging from behind the barrier of crates and tarpaulin at the back of the hold. A mountain of metal and chainmail and leather, boots stamping hard enough to make Silo’s tool box slide off the hood of the Rattletrap and crash to the ground.

But by the time she’d arrived, there was only blackness where the thing had been. Crake stared at the emptiness, his heart thumping in his chest. Bess cast about in agitation, searching for whatever had alarmed Crake.

After a moment, Crake patted her on the arm. ‘Easy, girl,’ he said. ‘It’s gone now. It’s gone.’

Bess allowed herself to be gentled. Crake led her back to the sanctum, glancing over his shoulder at the spot where he’d seen – where he thought he saw – the daemon. Already it didn’t seem real.

No. I saw it. Just like Frey did.

But what had shaken him, more than the sight of the daemon itself, was the feeling of helplessness he’d experienced in that moment. He’d never faced a daemon before without his machines, without layers of sonic defences and carefully calculated formulae to hand – without preparation. But this one was loose, unconstrained by interference fields or echo chambers.

He was a daemonist. Dealing with daemons was his whole purpose in life. But he realised that he had absolutely no way to fight the thing that had come on board the Ketty Jay.

That, he told himself, would have to be remedied.