‘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.