‘Don’t shoot! It’s me! It’s me!’
Me was Crake, who had suddenly found himself with Frey’s revolver pressed against his nose. Frey blinked in bewilderment. In an instant, everything had changed. There was no crying baby. The sense of paranoia had lifted, with only his hammering heart as evidence that it had ever existed. He looked over his shoulder at the spot where the squirming thing had been. He knew before he turned that there would be nothing there.
He lowered his pistol. Crake glared at him and rubbed his nose resentfully. There was a small iron ball at Frey’s feet, resting against his boot. He shoved it away with the side of his foot.
‘Crake,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going mad.’
Crake watched as the ball rolled away, slowed, and then reversed direction to bump against Frey’s boot again.
‘What worries me, Cap’n,’ he said, ‘is that you may not be.’
‘And you’re sure you didn’t see or hear anything? ’ Frey asked.
‘We’ve been over this. I’m quite sure,’ Crake replied. He sipped his coffee and stared off thoughtfully into the distance. In the Ketty Jay ’s cramped mess, that wasn’t very far. It was a grim little room, comprising the fixed table where t [tabke repliedhey sat, a stove and worktop, and some metal cabinets for utensils. Frey had been meaning to pretty it up for ever, but the prospect of the task always defeated him. Interior decorating was not his strong suit.
He frowned in frustration. ‘And you don’t have any idea what this
… signal is?’
‘All I know is that it’s coming from you.’
It wasn’t enough. Frey had submitted himself to almost two hours of Crake’s tests, wired up to various ticking and humming machines in the sanctum while the daemonist twiddled knobs and scribbled formulae. He trusted Crake to provide him with some answers. But Crake had come up with none.
Crake scratched the back of his neck. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
‘Is it daemonic?’
‘Could be. Could be mechanical.’
‘A device on me? Something that’s transmitting?’
‘On you or in you.’
Frey was feeling fragile already. He didn’t need that.
‘The Imperators?’ he suggested.
‘I doubt it,’ said Crake. ‘They wouldn’t trouble themselves with giving you hallucinations. If they were after you, they’d just kill you.’
Frey found that oddly reassuring. He had special reason to be wary of the Imperators. A few months ago he’d delivered certain documents to a professor named Kraylock. Maurin Grist’s research notes, which all but proved that the Imperators were secretly daemonic half-men. Since the Awakeners had ruthlessly persecuted daemonists for over a century, Frey found it somewhat amusing that they’d been caught employing daemons themselves.
The Archduke had been less amused when he saw the notes. He issued a public demand for the Awakeners to hand over all their Imperators to establish the truth of the accusation. The Awakeners refused. Tension across the land was unpleasantly high, and getting higher. Things in Vardia were not looking good, which was half the reason Frey had ducked out to Samarla for a while.
If the Awakeners had discovered Frey’s hand in the situation, his life wouldn’t be worth crowshit. But Crake was right. This didn’t feel like them.
‘What’s going on?’ he lamented. There was too much about this situation that was unknown. It scared him when he didn’t know who his enemy was.
‘I might be able to find out i [to wasf I could get to a decent sanctum,’ Crake said, with a complaining tone to his voice that Frey had heard a lot recently.
‘Your friend Plome has one, doesn’t he?’ Frey suggested quickly, before Crake could start on about the lack of facilities aboard the Ketty Jay.
‘I think I’ve abused his friendship quite enough for the time being,’ Crake replied. ‘Anyway, he won’t be at home. It’s coming up to election time, and he’s running for a seat in the House of Chancellors. He’ll be all over the duchy, pressing flesh and kissing babies.’
Frey drummed his fingers on the table. The terror he’d felt in the hold had already receded. The whole incident seemed like a nightmare, and like a nightmare it faded in the face of reality. He was beginning to wonder whether it was just a product of general bad living, or a delayed flashback from some particularly dirty narcotics he’d experimented with in his younger days. But then there was this… signal. He didn’t really understand Crake’s methods, or what frequencies and bandwidths had to do with daemonism, but his friend’s manner told him he should be concerned.
There was a clattering from overhead, and raucous voices. Pinn came clambering down the ladder from the passageway above. He missed his grip halfway down and landed heavily on his amply padded arse, making the mugs on the table jump and spill. Apparently he’d forgotten he had one arm in a sling. He looked stunned for a moment, then burst out laughing. Gales of laughter came from overhead. Malvery and Ashua. Both plenty drunk, by the sounds of it.
Frey let his head sink into his arms. He wasn’t in the mood for this now.
‘You’re back early,’ Crake commented, as Malvery and Ashua climbed unsteadily down the ladder and into the mess.
‘Spenn all my money,’ said Pinn, who had tipped over to lie on his back. ‘An’ these two won’ gimme no more.’ He thrust a cupped hand into the air. ‘Need an advance, Cap’n!’
Frey raised his head. They’d obviously been going at it hard tonight. ‘What’s she doing here?’ he said, nodding at Ashua. ‘I thought we were all done with her.’
Malvery crushed her in a huge embrace. ‘She’s alright, she is!’ he slobbered. ‘She’s… she’s like the daughter I never had!’ He swallowed a toxic burp. ‘Or wanted.’
Ashua tugged at his bushy white moustache. ‘It’s like having my own personal walrus!’ she beamed.
‘Somebody kill me,’ Frey murmured in despair. ‘Look, if I give Pinn some money, will you all bugger off?’
‘What’s up with him?’ Malvery inquired of Crak [uiriv›e.
‘He just had a traumatic experience,’ Crake replied.
‘Oh, I see,’ Malvery said gravely. He disengaged himself from Ashua, crouched down next to Frey and put a hefty arm round his shoulders. Then, in a tone more suited to pets and infants, he cooed: ‘Did the Cap’n have a twaumatic expewience?’ Pinn exploded with laughter.
‘Piss off, Doc. It’s serious,’ Frey snapped, shaking himself free of Malvery’s arm.
Malvery looked put out. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Someone’s in a grump.’
‘What’s wrong with your hand?’ Ashua asked. It took Frey a moment to realise that the question was directed at him. He looked down at his hand, and his blood ran cold.
There was a black spot in the centre of his palm, an uneven circle the size of a small coin. Dark tendrils of gangrenous purple spread away from it in an ugly starburst.
All the humour drained out of the room as they stared at it.
‘Doc?’ Frey asked tremulously.
‘What’ve you done to yourself, Cap’n?’ Malvery asked. The way he said it, weak and shocked, struck dread into Frey’s heart.
Pinn, sensing the change in the room, got to his feet and staggered over to look. He sucked in his breath over his teeth. Frey expected him to make some dumb crack, but he didn’t, and that meant that things were really serious.
‘It was the blade,’ said Ashua. ‘You said it bit you when you picked it up.’
Yes, the blade. The sharp pain, like a pin, that caused him to drop the relic. Frey had barely thought about it. He’d just assumed it had been a tiny, sharp edge that he hadn’t seen, a flaw in the hilt that had nipped him.