There was her bookshelf, full of academic tomes and literature in both Vardic and Samarlan. There was her chair, and her massive desk next to the sloping window. Light from explosions outside flickered across charts that had been laid out there, and the book that lay across them. A beautifully embossed book.
A book he recognised.
‘Cap’n!’ said Crake. He was standing in the doorway, encumbered by his heavy pack. Frey held up a hand to silence him. He was aware of the need to hurry. This was more important.
He moved slowly across the room. When he got to the desk, he reached out and turned the book over so that he could see the title. It was in Samarlan, but it didn’t matter. He recognised it anyway.
The Silent Tide.
So it was true. Balomon Crund hadn’t been lying to him. Trinica had been carrying this book with her, reading it. In spite of the daemon that controlled her, she’d managed this. A cry for help. A message in a bottle.
‘Cap’n?’ Crake asked again, uncertainly.
He left the book, turned, and hurried back out. Crake moved aside as he pushed through. ‘Come on,’ he said sharply. ‘She needs me.’
They made their way onward, catching up with Kyne and Samandra, who’d hung back to wait for them. The other soldiers had moved up the corridor and were engaged in a new battle. They were about to follow when a blast rocked the Delirium Trigger, sending Crake tottering into the wall.
‘Not Samarlan,’ said Kyne. ‘Must be the Manes getting through. Seems it’s the Awakener convoy they’re after. I doubt it’ll hold for long.’
‘Sounds like the end of the world out there,’ said Crake.
‘Might well turn out to be the case,’ Samandra commented.
‘Hey,’ said Frey. ‘Stairs.’ He pointed down a cross-corridor, where a set of stairs were just about visible halfway along.
‘We should stay with the soldiers, Cap’n,’ Crake said nervously.
‘Soldiers are too damn slow,’ said Frey, starting up the corridor. He glanced over his shoulder at Kyne and Samandra. ‘You’re Century Knights, aren’t you?’
Samandra looked at Crake and shrugged. ‘I’m all good with reckless.’
Frey touched his hand against his chest as they descended. The amulet that Crake had given him was cold against his skin. It seemed a pretty poor defence against what was to come. He didn’t have a great deal of faith in daemonism at the best of times, but Crake’s skills had served him well in the past, and he’d put his trust in worse things before.
He had to believe. That was all there was to it.
The lower decks had wider corridors than the ones above. There was nobody in sight when they emerged, and it was eerily still. It seemed that the majority of the pirates had gone to fight off the boarders. Frey looked left and right suspiciously, his pistol in one hand and his cutlass in the other, listening. The lights here were dim, and the seething gloom was a hot threat.
The daemon, he thought. He could sense it, warping the edges of his consciousness, tingeing the scene with paranoia. She was close.
He looked back at Crake, who nodded in confirmation. He felt it too.
They moved on warily, heading for the hold. The Delirium Trigger seemed to breathe like some vast beast. He heard the clanking of her iron heart, the hiss of her vents, felt her shudder as another shell exploded close by. At any moment, he expected an attack. Yet for all the gunfire and explosions that echoed through the hollow corridors, nothing came for them. Nothing until-
‘Frey!’
He whirled, his arm outstretched and his pistol aimed. As he fired, he caught a glimpse of an ugly face ducking back from a doorway, framed by a dirty mop of black hair. The sound of the gun bounced away down the passageway, and the darkness in the corners seemed to blacken, as if some terrible thing had just turned its attention their way.
‘It’s me, you fool!’ growled a voice from the doorway. ‘Balomon Crund!’
Frey was breathing hard. He was more keyed up than he’d realised. ‘What do you want?’ he said.
Crund showed an empty hand, then poked his head out again. ‘It’s this way!’ he said. He looked up the corridor. ‘Quick, they’ll have heard you! They’re waiting by the door to the hold!’
Frey hesitated. He’d never been liked by Crund, and they’d been enemies more than allies. He didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
‘I brought you here, didn’t I?’ he snarled, angry that Frey should doubt him. ‘There’s another way in! A side door!’
There were running footsteps coming from up the corridor. ‘Reckon he ain’t lyin’ about his mates, at least,’ said Samandra. She spun her shotguns around in her hands; they crunched as they were primed. ‘Sounds like a lot of ’em.’
Still Frey didn’t move. Still he wasn’t sure. He’d been betrayed too many times by Trinica and her crew.
‘You can save her, can’t you?’ Crund asked, and there was something imploring in his eyes, something desperate. It was that look that decided Frey in the end. He saw himself in that: a man caught up in his devotion, helpless against it. A man like that would do anything. He might even betray his mistress for her own good.
‘Yeah,’ said Frey. ‘I can save her.’ And he went after Crund through the doorway, with Crake and Kyne on his tail, their packs clanking and clattering. Samandra followed them through.
‘They seen us,’ she said. ‘Be quick.’
They ran through narrow, dark chambers full of steaming pipes. Orange lights gave glimpses of deeply shadowed faces, eyes fierce and intent. Bullets skipped off the metalwork, forcing them to duck. Samandra, bringing up the rear, dropped into a crouch behind the cover of a pipe and started shooting back at their pursuers.
‘Keep goin’!’ she called over the gunfire. ‘I’ll take care of this lot!’
‘Samandra!’ Crake cried. He came to a halt, reluctant to leave her behind. She spared him a moment, and the two of them locked eyes across the room.
‘This is your show now, honey,’ she said. ‘Do your stuff.’
Kyne grabbed his arm and pulled him onward. They heard Samandra’s shotguns blasting away as they left.
‘She’s a Century Knight,’ said Kyne as they ran. ‘Don’t worry about her. Worry about what’s ahead.’
Balomon, who’d been lumbering in front of them like some shaggy troll, suddenly halted at a narrow metal door. ‘Through here,’ he said, and tapped a code into a keypad. The door slid open, and they stepped through.
The Delirium Trigger’s cargo hold was a cavern of dark, grimy metal, its roof supported by enormous girders that acted as pillars, running round the outside edge. It was cool here, and water dripped from the ceiling, where the outline of a loading hatch was faintly visible. Electric lamps shone weakly from the walls, but they struggled to illuminate such a large space.
Between and behind the pillars, a dizzying range of equipment and loot was stacked and lashed together. There were ammo crates, chests of ducats and tanks of liquid aerium. Shadowy vehicles lurked behind piles of spare parts. Near the back was an enormous bronze head as large as a man.
But it was what was in the centre of the hold that drew their eyes. There, a space had been cleared, and there stood the Azryx device that had destroyed the Coalition fleet.
Frey felt a crawling dread. Here in the belly of the Delirium Trigger, it was more sinister than the first time he’d seen it. An ill, mesmerising light washed out from the towering cylinder at its heart. The lightning that flickered inside the swirling gas suggested a pattern, some snickering code to mock him. The bone-like material that encased the cylinder seemed like a growth, some awful tumour crawling up the glass-like casement. The inscriptions on the brassy towers at its four corners were warnings in an ancient tongue.