‘A little awe would be nice, yes.’
She sipped her whisky. ‘I assume you’re appealing to my better nature? Wondering how I could be part of such a terrible miscarriage of justice? How I could willingly let you take the blame for the death of Hengar when I know it was Grephen’s idea?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘Because Grephen is paying me a lot of money. And because, frankly, I’d do it for free. You deserve it.’
‘It doesn’t concern you to be an accomplice to the murder of the Archduke’s son? Don’t you think there might be bigger implications involved?’
‘Possibly there are,’ said Trinica. ‘But that’s none of your concern, since it’ll all be over for you very soon.’
‘Come on, Trinica. Hengar’s death is only the start. You must know if Duke Grephen is planning something.’
Trinica smiled. ‘Must I?’
Frey cursed her silently. She wasn’t giving anything away. He wanted to push her for more information, but she wouldn’t play the game. Telling her that he knew about Grephen was intended to lead her up the wrong path, but he couldn’t reveal that he knew about the coup, or her mysterious hideout. That would tip his hand.
‘One question,’ he said. ‘The ferrotype. The one on the Wanted posters. How did they get that, if you didn’t give it to them?’
‘Yes, I was surprised, too,’ she said. ‘We had it taken when we were up in the mountains. Do you remember?’
Frey remembered. He remembered a time of romantic adventure, a couple newly in love. He was a lowly cargo pilot and she was the daughter of his boss, one of the heirs to Dracken Industries. He was poor and she was rich, and she loved him anyway. It was breathless, dangerous, and they were both swept giddily along, careless of consequences, armoured by their own happiness.
‘It was my father who gave it to them, I’d imagine,’ she said. ‘I suppose the Navy had no pictures of you, and they knew you had worked for Dracken Industries before that. They were probably hoping for a staff photograph.’
‘He kept that one?’
‘He kept it because I was in it. I imagine that’s how he’d like to remember me.’
The Wanted posters had only shown Frey’s face, but in the full picture, Trinica was clinging to his arm, laughing. Laughing at nothing, really. Laughing just to laugh. He remembered the ferrotype perfectly. Her hair blowing, mouth open and teeth white. A rare, perfect capture; a frozen instant of natural, unforced joy. No one would connect that young girl with the woman sitting in front of him.
In that moment, Frey felt the tragedy of that loss. How cruel it was, that things had turned out the way they did.
But Trinica saw the expression on his face, and correctly guessed its cause. She always knew his thoughts, better than anyone.
‘Look at yourself, Darian. Cursing the fate that brought you here. One day, you’re going to realise that everything that’s happened to you has been your own fault.’
‘Dogshit,’ he spat, sadness turning to venom in an instant. ‘I’ve tried my damnedest. I tried to better myself.’
‘And yet here you are, ten years later, barely scraping a living. And I am the captain of a crew of fifty, infamous and rich.’
‘I’m not like you, Trinica. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon shoved up my arse. I didn’t have a good education. Some of us don’t get the luck.’
She looked at him for a long moment. Then her black eyes dropped to the face-down cards, scattered on the table.
‘I remember when you used to talk about Rake,’ she said, idly picking up a card and flipping it over. It was the Lady of Crosses. ‘You used to say everyone thought luck was a huge factor. They said it was all about the cards you were dealt. Mostly luck and a bit of skill.’ She flipped over another: Ten of Fangs. ‘You thought they were idiots. You knew it was mostly skill and a bit of luck.’
The Ace of Skulls came next. Frey hated that card. It ruined any hand in Rake, unless it could be made part of a winning combination, which could hardly ever be done.
‘A good player might occasionally lose to a mediocre one, but in the long run, the good players made money while the bad ones went broke,’ Trinica continued.
The next card came up: the Duke of Skulls. Any Priest would give her a five-card run to the Ace of Skulls, an unbeatable combination.
She turned the final card: the Seven of Wings. The hand was busted. Her gaze flicked up from the table and met his.
‘Over time, luck is hardly a factor at all,’ she said.
Belowdecks, the Delirium Trigger was in chaos. A slow, steady pounding reverberated through the dim passageways. Metal screeched. Men shouted and ran, some towards the sound and some away from it.
‘It’s in the cargo hold!’
‘What’s in the cargo hold?’
But nobody could answer that. Those inside the hold had fled in terror when the iron-and-leather monstrosity burst out of its crate and began rampaging through the shadowy aisles. Barrels were flung this way and that. Guns fired, but to no avail. The air had filled with splinters as the intruder smashed through crates of provisions and trade goods. It was dark down there, and the looming thing terrified the crewmen.
Those on the deck above, operating the winch, had peered fearfully through the hatch into the cargo hold at the first signs of a disturbance. The light from the hangar barely penetrated to the floor of the hold. They scrambled back as they caught a glimpse of something huge lunging across their narrow field of view. It was only then that one of them thought to raise the winch.
In the confusion that ensued, nobody noticed three strangers, now dressed in the dirty motley of crewmembers, making their way belowdecks.
Those who had managed to escape from the cargo hold had slammed the bulkhead door behind them and locked it shut, trapping the monster inside. But the monster didn’t like being trapped. It was pounding on the inside of the door, hard enough to buckle eight inches of metal. Enraged bellows came from behind.
‘Get your fat stenching carcasses over here!’ the burly, dirt-streaked bosun yelled. The men he was yelling at had come to investigate the sound, and were now backing away as they saw what was happening. They reluctantly returned at his command. ‘Weapons ready, all of you! You will defend your craft!’
A rotary cannon on a tripod was being hastily erected in the passageway in front of the door. The bosun knelt down next to the crewman who was assembling the cannon. ‘When that thing comes through the door, give it everything you’ve got!’
Malvery, Crake and Pinn skirted the chaos as best they could, and for a time they were unmolested. The Delirium Trigger was only half-crewed, and almost all of them were occupied with the diversion Bess was creating. They did their best to avoid meeting anyone, and when they were seen it was usually at a distance, or by somebody who was already hurrying elsewhere. They managed to penetrate some way into the aircraft before they came up against a crewmember who got a good look at them, and recognised them as imposters.
‘Hey!’ he said, before Malvery grabbed his head and smashed his skull against the wall of the passageway. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
‘Not big on talking your way out of things, are you?’ Crake observed, as they dragged the unfortunate crewman into a side room.
‘My way’s quicker,’ he said, adjusting his round green glasses. ‘No danger of misunderstanding.’
The side room was a galley, empty now, its stoves cold. Crake shut the door while Malvery ran some water into a tin cup. The crewman—a young, slack-jawed deckhand—began to groan and stir. Malvery threw the water in his face. His eyes opened and slowly focused on Pinn, who was standing over him, pointing a pistol at his nose.