‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘They call them watchpoles,’ said Trinica. ‘They were quite common on the south coast once, but many have been taken away for study, and many more have been broken or stolen. You can still find a few here and there, in remote places. The language is Old Isilian.’
Now Frey knew why he recognised it. It bore a passing similarity to writing he’d seen in the Azryx city.
‘Look on the south side,’ she said. ‘The one facing the cliff edge. For some reason they always built them with one side facing south. The other two sides show scenes of history or myth, but that one. . well, see for yourself.’
Frey did. The flat side was mostly worn away below chest height, but he could make out the topmost shape. It showed a creature standing on all fours, facing outward, with fearsome eyes but a mouth in a perfect O.
Then he realised. No, it wasn’t a mouth. It was supposed to be a tube. A cannon.
‘That’s a Juggernaut,’ he said. ‘That’s what it looked like.’
Trinica was watching him closely, eyes bright with excitement. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure as I can be.’ Frey was recalling that monstrous beast, flesh and machine fused, striding over the city in its last moments, before it was consumed in a ball of silent lightning. He’d seen some strange things in his time, but not much stranger than that.
‘This pillar is about nine thousand years old,’ she said. ‘The people who made it were the first settlers in Vardia, as far as we know. They shared the legend of the Juggernaut with the early Samarlans. The Samarlans remember, but we have forgotten.’
‘Yeah. I remember you talking about it, back in Shasiith. The Nameless and all that, right?’
‘You did learn something, then,’ she said, with a smile to show she was teasing. He grinned at her. Damn, it was good to be with her when she was like this. Her moods were treacherous at times, but when she was happy, it felt perfect.
He walked to the cliff edge and looked out across the island. His attention had been dominated by the pillar thus far, but now he saw something he hadn’t noticed at first. At the foot of the cliff, the island dropped away into a massive sinkhole, a gaping maw of rock, its edges shaggy with foliage. Anchored inside the sinkhole was the dark bulk of the Delirium Trigger.
The sight of it dimmed the day a little. Wherever Trinica was, the Delirium Trigger wasn’t far away. He wondered how many craft the Awakeners had like it, tucked away in secret niches all over the delta.
‘The Samarlans see the Juggernauts as the gods’ punishment for their ungratefulness,’ Trinica said. ‘But these people,’ she touched the pillar reverently, ‘they see them differently. They believe that their civilisation was once poisoned, corrupt, oppressive. The Juggernauts set them free.’
‘How? By destroying everything in sight?’
‘Sometimes you have to burn a house to the ground before you can rebuild it,’ said Trinica.
Frey felt grim unease edge into his heart. ‘Is that why you showed it to me?’
She didn’t reply. He could see men moving about on the deck of the Delirium Trigger. He watched them for a time.
‘What do you feel, Trinica?’ he said. ‘About us?’
‘That might be the first time you ever asked me that,’ she replied. ‘You’re normally so afraid of the response.’
‘I’m still afraid of it,’ he murmured.
She laid a hand on his arm, briefly. He turned to face her, and she withdrew it, as if to touch him had committed herself too far. But she didn’t answer him, and so he felt he had to speak, to try to make her understand something of why he’d followed her here.
‘What I did back then. .’ he began. ‘Leaving you on our wedding day and. . everything that happened after. .’ He felt his throat closing up as he thought of it. The child that would never be born because of him. Because of her. ‘I just. . I. .’
‘No, Darian,’ she said quietly. ‘We’ve both done terrible things. But we were young. We were so very young. What we did then, we can perhaps forgive ourselves. But what we’ve done since?’ She took a breath, and tears stood in her eyes. ‘Look at us,’ she whispered. ‘We’re ridiculous.’
He wanted to say something to that, to offer her comfort, but her expression hardened and she became angry. She swept away from him, away from the cliff edge.
‘What do you want for us, Darian? A house? Children? A soft life in the country? Do you think either of us could live that way after what we’ve seen, what we’ve done?’
‘I don’t know!’ said Frey. Her anger aroused his own. He followed her back towards the trees, shouting after her. ‘I don’t care how we live! Why are you always trying to stop this from working? I want to be with you, that’s all! Why does it have to be complicated?’
‘Because I have a crew! And so do you! We have responsibilities! I thought you understood that?’
‘They’re not your dependants. If you walked away, they’d get on fine.’
‘And me? How would I get on? What would I be then?’
‘You’d be Trinica Dracken. As you are now. Not the woman in the make-up, not the pirate captain. And you could do whatever you wanted!’
The heat went out of her as fast as it had come, and she saddened. ‘I’ve been a pirate for a long time now,’ she said. ‘Everything I wanted was given to me, until the day I left home. From that point on, I fought for every damned thing that I’ve got. I won that craft and I won its crew-’
‘And someday someone will take it from you,’ said Frey. ‘You know what happens to pirates in the end. They don’t live out their lives counting their ducats. They don’t retire to Retribution Falls. They hang on too long and they bloody die, whether it’s fast from a bullet or slow from the grog.’
She went silent. The look on her face made him feel that he’d been cruel, and he decided not to press his point. He walked over to her, wanting to hold her, not knowing how.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘They can sense weakness,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re like wolves with the scent of blood in their nostrils.’ She raised her head and looked at him, and he was shocked to see fear in her eyes. ‘I thought turning my back on you would make it better, but it didn’t. Not two weeks ago, I had Crund haul up a man in front of the crew and I had him hanged. Once that would have cowed them. Now it’s made them hate me.’
Suddenly she clutched herself to him, pressing herself hard against his chest.
‘They know,’ she whispered.
Her body was warm, so wonderfully warm, but Frey had gone cold. He felt cheated. He’d waited so long to have her in his arms again, but not like this. He’d dreamed of affection; he found desperation instead. He sensed real terror in her, and that inspired terror in him too. He felt a powerful need to comfort and protect her, but he wasn’t sure if he could. So he held her, and her arms tightened across his back.
He knew what she feared. He’d thought about it enough. It wasn’t dying. It was the loss of her world, the world that had sustained her and kept her stitched together after the horrors she’d suffered. Attempted suicide, the loss of a child, her kidnap and the dreadful ordeals that followed. She’d become steely and cold and vicious because that was what it took to survive and thrive in the hell where she found herself. But change was threatening, from within and without. That was worse than any bullet.
‘Don’t go back,’ he said to her. ‘Come with me. We’ll get on the Ketty Jay and fly out of here, and damn them if they try to stop us.’