She gave a cynical little chuckle, and he knew that he’d lost her. His time was up. She broke away from him gently, and when she did she was different. More bunched, more businesslike.
‘The Awakeners have a compound a few kloms northeast of the main base,’ she said. ‘They’ve invited me and the other frigate captains to visit it tonight. I expect they intend to share their plans with us. There are rumours that the Lord High Cryptographer himself has been seen, the supreme leader of the Awakeners. If there is any news of Azryx technology, we may well hear it there.’
Frey was disappointed by the change in her. She’d withdrawn. Not all the way, not into sharp pitilessness, but she’d closed up all the same. ‘And after that?’ he asked.
‘Then I will decide what to do next. I am not going to die for the Awakeners’ coin. Unless they have some great plan in store, it’s hard to see how they can win this war. I suspect other captains feel the same, and the Awakeners are keen to keep the bigger craft on side. So we shall see what we shall see.’
‘That wasn’t really what I meant,’ Frey said.
‘I know.’ She softened a little. ‘As to that, I can’t say. Every time we meet it’s different. Every time we meet it all begins again.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. He understood that strange sense of renewal and reset each time they were brought together. ‘Yeah, that’s how it is.’
She walked back to the cliff edge, and looked down at the Delirium Trigger. ‘You should go,’ she said. ‘Crund will be back at the clearing soon to pick you up. I have to change.’
She meant it literally. Not her clothes, but herself. The crew wouldn’t recognise the beautiful woman before him. They only knew the ghoul in the make-up with the black, black eyes.
He wanted to stay with her until everything was resolved. He feared to let her out of his sight. But she wouldn’t have that. Her moment of weakness had been only a moment. So he could only do as she said, and take what she’d given him. It had already been more than he dared to dream. She still felt for him, that was clear. That would have to be enough for now.
‘Will you see me again tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, without turning around. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Sixteen
Crake stared down at the inert form of his brother. Condred lay there on the bed, pale and still, dressed in a red silk gown. His hair, once dark, was now white peppered with grey. Even in repose the folds around his mouth were deep, and he wore a troubled look.
Crake could not match the figure on the bed to the one in his memory. Condred was a man who strode into a room and demanded attention, a man with all the hauteur of their father but none of his modesty or restraint. He was high-handed, patronising and infuriating, and Crake had all but hated him.
Yet he’d given up his revenge. Even after Crake had cost him his wife and child.
Why didn’t you want to punish me? Crake thought. The Condred he knew would have been full of wrath. He’d have pounded the table and demanded satisfaction. Crake would have done the same, in his place. But Condred had called off the Shacklemores instead.
Why?
Two burly orderlies and a nurse were standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He motioned to them.
‘Bring him,’ he said.
The orderlies carried in a stretcher and busied themselves with loading Condred onto it. The nurse hovered nearby.
‘They say it’s a plague, sir,’ she said. She was a mousy woman in her middle forties with a nervous disposition. ‘There’ve been cases all over. Master Rogibald had all the best doctors in, but as you can see. .’ She gestured at his brother.
When Crake didn’t offer a reply, she asked: ‘Begging pardon, sir. Are you a doctor?’
‘Of a sort,’ said Crake, and left it at that.
The nurse stayed to tidy up while the orderlies took Condred from the building and across the grounds. Crake walked ahead of them. Gardeners stopped to stare when they saw him. Servants watched from the windows. More than one of them made a sign against evil as the procession passed.
Superstitious lot, Crake heard his father say. His eyes went to the Shacklemores that patrolled the manor grounds. Is this how bad it’s got out in the country?
It made him angry to see his father so diminished, hiding behind armed guards for fear of the locals. Rogibald was a man who’d built an industrial empire from modest beginnings. Even though Crake had the misfortune to be his son, he respected his father’s drive. It was wrong for a man like that to be threatened in his own home by the ignorance of the common folk, baying at the call of those damned Awakeners. It offended his sense of order. Vardia’s aristocracy was far from perfect, but they deserved better than that.
And his father had fallen far indeed, if he’d called on the Shacklemores to bring him Crake. The very sight of his second son was loathsome to him. It was the act of a desperate man, and he must have choked on his pride to do it.
The servants knew it too. He saw it in their faces. They might not have been here at the time, but they’d heard the stories. Murderer, they thought. Daemonist. They’d never thought to see him back, not without a noose round his neck. Yet here he was, leading a pair of orderlies, bearing their master’s son away from the mansion and back towards the house where Crake had once lived with Condred and his family.
Back towards his sanctum.
As they approached the house he kept his features stony to disguise the fact that his insides were turning to water. His hand went to his pocket, felt the weight of a heavy brass key that he’d once kept close to him at all times. The key to the wine cellar. The place where all his nightmares began.
His skin prickled as he stepped into the foyer. A mirror showed him his reflection, hollow-eyed and haggard. A clock ticked on the wall. Everything had been dusted, everything was in its place. . but nothing was right.
At first he thought it was just old memories reaching for him out of the past, but it was something more than that. Long years practising the Art had honed his instincts. Paranoia lurked on the edge of his consciousness. Something sinister hung in the air.
Had he done this? Had he poisoned the house with his crime, turned the very walls and floor evil?
Stop it, he told himself. You’re a man of science. Act like one.
The orderlies hesitated at the threshold. Perhaps they sensed it too. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he snapped at them, and he stalked into the house.
It had been two weeks since Condred fell asleep and didn’t wake. Servants still lived here, but the house felt chill and unoccupied nonetheless. And still, that sense of faint but pervasive dread lingered.
A narrow set of stairs led down to the servant’s quarters. In an out-of-the-way alcove near the bottom was a door. It was heavy and small and made of dark oak. Crake stood before it for a long moment before he drew the key from his pocket.
He should have warded the door. It would have been easy to fashion something to deflect attention. But Condred and his wife had always been sneeringly dismissive of their lodger’s mysterious experiments, and the servants had been ordered not to pry, so there didn’t seem much point. Besides, he was afraid of getting it wrong and drawing suspicion upon himself. They thought he was nothing more than a budding and inept scientist; better to let them keep thinking that. A locked door was enough.
But a locked door hadn’t been enough to keep a curious child out.