‘Ah, shut your clam trap. You don’t know how these things work.’
Frey frowned in disbelief. Was that Pinn? Pinn and Harkins, bickering away like always? It didn’t seem real. He listened to them yell at each other for a short while more. It was strangely comforting.
‘I’m here,’ he said at last.
‘Cap’n!’ they both cried together, and the joy in their voices made something twist in his chest.
‘You decided to come with me, then?’ he asked. Their presence felt like an endorsement. He’d made the right choice.
‘What?’ said Harkins. ‘No, Cap’n, we came to bring you back.’
Frey’s brief good feeling withered. ‘I’m leaving, Harkins,’ he said. ‘I told you that.’
‘Something I’ve got to tell you first,’ said Pinn. ‘A message from Balomon Crund.’
Crund? What did he want? The man had always hated him, jealous of Trinica’s affection.
‘He made me promise, Cap’n. If I could find you, I had to tell you. He said you’re the only one outside the crew who ever gave a shit about Trinica. The only one who might be able to do something about it.’
‘Just spill it, Pinn.’
‘Trinica’s not gone,’ said Pinn. ‘That’s what he told me. He said he knows. The old Trinica’s still in there, under the daemon.’
The words piled like stones onto Frey’s heart. The dreadful weight of responsibility, expectation, obligation. Of all people, Balomon Crund was reaching out to him, asking him to save Trinica. He’d persuaded himself that there was no chance, that his love was a lost cause, and now here was Pinn to shatter that certainty and let in the vile, deceitful light of hope.
No. He wouldn’t believe it. ‘What does Crund know?’ he said bitterly. ‘What in damnation makes him so sure? What is it, a feeling he’s got? Some bloody intuition? Why’s he trying to lay this on me?’
Pinn seemed confused by Frey’s tone. Perhaps he’d expected gratitude instead of scorn. ‘Er. .’ he said. ‘I don’t know. He just said to tell you she’s been carrying a book around.’
That caught him. ‘What?’
‘Yeah,’ said Pinn. ‘Some book you gave her. He says she started carrying it about after she got turned. Reading it sometimes.’
Frey went cold. There was only one book he could possibly mean. The Silent Tide. He’d given it to her in Samarla as a present over dinner, a token of love back before he’d even admitted his feelings to himself. And for a moment he was there again, on the veranda of the most expensive restaurant he’d ever sat in, with the river in the background and the city lights reflecting in its dark waters.
‘What’s it about?’ he heard himself ask her, for he hadn’t known himself. He couldn’t even read the title; it was in Samarlan.
‘It’s a classic romance,’ she replied, her eyes shining.
‘Do they get it together at the end?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘They die. It’s a tragedy.’
Frey’s breath grew short. What would a daemon be doing reading a classic romance in Samarlan? There was only one explanation Frey could think of. Trinica, the real Trinica, had somehow exerted enough control to make it happen. Maybe she’d disguised its significance from the daemon; maybe the daemon thought it didn’t matter. Or maybe it was just some old instinct, a last act of tough and stubborn love.
However he looked at it, it meant only one thing. A cry for help. Not from Crund, but from Trinica. A signal that had reached him, against all the odds, across thousands of miles, across the frontier of a war.
Tears welled in Frey’s eyes, blurring his vision. She was alive in there, a prisoner in her own body. It was too awful to bear.
‘That’s not all, Cap’n!’ Harkins enthused, oblivious to his reaction. ‘Listen to this!’
‘Oh, right,’ said Pinn. ‘Yeah! The Azryx device, the one that took out the Coalition Navy? Guess who’s carrying it.’
‘The Delirium Trigger!’ Harkins cried gleefully.
‘Oi! He was meant to guess!’
Frey pulled off the earcuff and cut their voices to silence. Now all he could hear was the Ketty Jay, the one precious constant all through his adult life. He stared out at the empty sky ahead.
Yes, of course, it made sense. Turn the captains of the biggest frigates into Imperators to keep them loyal, and then have them carry the Azryx device. The Delirium Trigger was the most formidable craft in the fleet, even more than the flagship. Naturally they’d put it there.
Frey felt the walls of the cockpit closing in on him. All he wanted was to be free. To fly off into nothingness and never to have to deal with pain or misery or suffering ever again. To cut his losses and fold his hand while he still could.
But life wouldn’t let him. The same tides of fate that had brought him to this point were now trying to suck him back. As much as he tried to suppress it, a plan was forming in his mind. A way to save Trinica, and incidentally to save Thesk and the Coalition as well. A plan that only he could carry out.
It’s not my responsibility, he thought. Then, with gritted teeth, he hit the dashboard with his fist. ‘It’s not my responsibility!’
Silo, standing by, said nothing.
But the crack that Pinn had made in his shell of denial was widening. Everything he’d stuffed inside came spilling out in a flood, filling him with breathless hope, panic, joy and resentment. He wanted to burst into tears; he wanted to kill somebody; he wanted to dance and rage all at the same time.
Was loving Trinica worth his death? Would a life not loving her be worth anything? Everything, everything rested on him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to force him to a choice like that.
‘Do you think we can do it, Silo?’ he said quietly.
Silo could not have heard half the conversation that he’d had with Pinn and Harkins, but it didn’t matter. He knew what Frey was talking about.
Frey waited. If he detected even a hint of doubt, the merest shred of uncertainty, then he was determined to hit the throttle and never look back. If he thought the man at his side had anything less than absolute faith, it wouldn’t be enough to give him the courage he needed to do this. It wasn’t the danger that frightened him; he’d faced danger plenty. It was the thought of getting back on the horse that had thrown him. It was the possibility of failure.
‘Cap’n,’ said Silo at length. ‘I known you a long time now. And I ain’t never met nobody so good at screwin’ up a winnin’ hand as you are.’
Frey blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
‘But I also ain’t never met nobody so good at turnin’ a losin’ hand to winnin’,’ Silo continued. ‘You took this crew o’ outcasts and misfits, people who didn’t have no place in the world, and you made us into somethin’. Don’t you remember, Cap’n? We took down the Awakeners once already, back at Retribution Falls. Saved the Archduke’s hide that time.’ His voice became unexpectedly passionate as he went on; it wasn’t something Frey was used to hearing from his first mate. ‘We took on the Manes, Cap’n! We flew behind the Wrack and we looked ’em in the eye and we came back to tell about it. And after that, what d’you reckon we did? This team o’ alcoholics and layabouts and shit knows what else that you pulled together? We found a damn Azryx city right in the heart of Samarla! We saw a Juggernaut! And what we brought back, it pretty much set off this whole war they all fightin’ back there! None of us weren’t nothin’ on our own, but ’cause of you, we shook the damn world!’
He put his hand on Frey’s shoulder. Frey felt the warm strength of it through his coat.
‘We a losin’ hand, Cap’n,’ he said. ‘But you the Ace of Skulls. Anyone can turn us to winnin’, you can.’