‘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 dumped the gas from the tanks and she dropped neatly into the vacant spot, landing with a heavy thump on her skids.
He sank back in the chair and let a slow breath of relief escape him. Jez patted him on the shoulder.
‘Anyone would think you were worried for a moment there, Cap’n,’ she said.
Water splattered in puddles on the landing pad as the crew assembled at the foot of the Ketty Jay’s cargo ramp, wrapped in slickers and stamping their feet.
‘Where’s Malvery and Crake?’ Frey asked.
Silo thumbed at the ramp, where a slurred duet could be faintly heard from the depths of the craft.
‘Hey, I know that one!’ Pinn said, and began to sing along, off-key, until he was silenced by a glare from Silo.
‘What are we doing here, Cap’n?’ Jez asked. The others were hugging themselves or stuffing their hands in their pockets, but she seemed unperturbed by the icy wind.
‘There’s a man I have to see. A whispermonger, name of Xandian Quail. There shouldn’t be any trouble, but that’s usually when there’s the most trouble. Harkins, Pinn, Jez, grab your guns and come with me. Silo, you take care of the docking permits, watch the aircraft and all that.’ The tall Murthian nodded solemnly.
‘Think I might need to do some diagnostics,’ blurted Harkins suddenly. ‘Check out the Firecrow, you know? She was all tick-tick-tick on the port side, don’t know what it was, best check it out, probably, if you know what I mean. Don’t want to fall out of the sky, you know, zoooooom, crash, haha. That wouldn’t be much good to anyone, now would it? Me dead, I mean. Who’d fly it then? Well, I suppose there’d be nothing to fly anyway if I crashed it. So all round it’d be best if I just ran my eye over the internals, make sure everything’s ship-shape, spickety-span.’
Frey gave him a look. He squirmed. It was transparently obvious that the thought of a gunfight terrified him.
‘Diagnostics,’ he said, his voice flat. Harkins nodded eagerly. ‘Fine, stay.’
The pilot’s face split in a huge grin, revealing a set of uneven and lightly browned teeth. ‘Thank you, Cap’n!’
Frey surveyed the rest of his crew. ‘What are we all standing around for?’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘Get to it!’
They hurried through the drenched streets of Marklin’s Reach. The thoroughfares had become rivers of mud, running past the raised wooden porches of the shops and houses. Overhead, strings of electric light bulbs fizzed and flickered as they were thrown about by the wind. Ragged children peered from lean-to shacks and alleyways where they sheltered. Water ramped off awnings and gurgled down gutters, the racket all but drowning out the clattering hum of generators. The air was thick with the smell of petrol, cooking food, and the clean, cold scent of new rain.
‘Couldn’t we go see this guy tomorrow instead?’ Pinn complained. ‘I’d be dryer underwater!’
Frey ignored him. They were already cutting it fine. Being held up in Scarwater had put them behind schedule. Quail had been clear in the letter: get here before the end of Howl’s Batten, or the offer would go dead. Frey had been lazy about picking up his mail, so he hadn’t got the message for some time. With one thing and another, it was now the last day of the month of Howl’s Batten, and Frey didn’t have time to delay any longer.
‘Gonna end up with pneumonia, that’s what’s gonna happen,’ Pinn was grumbling. ‘You try flying when your cockpit’s waist-deep in wet snot.’
Xandian Quail lived in a fortified compound set in a tumbledown cluster of alleys. His house hulked in the darkness, square and austere, its tall, narrow windows aglow. The grinding poverty experienced by the town’s denizens was shut out with high walls and stout gates.
‘I’m Darian Frey!’ Frey yelled over the noise of the downpour. The guards on the other side of the gate seemed nonplussed. ‘Darian Frey! Quail’s expecting me! At least, he bloody well better be!’
One of the guards scampered over to the house, holding the hood of his slicker. A few moments later he was back and indicated to his companion that he should let them in.
They were escorted beneath the stone porch, where another guard—this one wearing a waistcoat and trousers and sporting a pair of pistols—opened the main door of the house. He had a long face and a patchy black beard. Frey recognised him vaguely from previous visits. His name was Codge.