‘Course, the Aerium Wars helped with that,’ she said, grimly. ‘You can only have a hundred Knights, and they gotta die or quit to make spaces. We lost a lot of ’em round then.’
Crake, for his part, talked of a childhood in the aristocracy, as the son of a steel tycoon. He spoke of a father who was overbearing and distant all at once, and an arrogant elder brother who scorned him for his lack of interest in the family business. He recalled his time at Galmury, his disillusionment with the life of politics he was being pushed towards, and his discovery of daemonism there.
There was much that they both left out. Her work and the training methods of the Knight’s Academy were secret. Crake couldn’t tell her the real reason he joined the Ketty Jay, the summoning that went terribly wrong and resulted in the death of his niece and the creation of the golem that bore her name. But she had a plain and straightforward way of speaking that charmed him, and he found himself talking more freely than he had in months. He wanted her to know him. It wasn’t something he’d felt for a long time.
There’d been women in his life before, but thbefademey’d all been of aristocratic stock. He hadn’t mixed with less privileged people in his youth; he found the men frighteningly rough, and the girls were scornful of his airs and graces. It was only his time on the Ketty Jay that had brought him into contact with society’s more… fragrant individuals. He liked to think he was a little more worldly-wise these days, although the truth was, it was not by much.
Samandra was anything but aristocratic. She swaggered. She laughed loud instead of tittering. She said exactly what she thought, and she drank like a trooper. It certainly helped that she was beautiful enough to melt lead, but Crake was not Frey: beauty was not the be-all and end-all when it came to women. He suspected he would have fallen for Samandra Bree even if he’d been blind.
He was having such a wonderful time that he almost forgot he had a job to do. It was late, and they were both quite drunk, when Samandra said:
‘How’s your captain, anyway? Whatsisface, the cocky son of a bitch
…’ She slapped the table. ‘Frey!’
That name sucked the joy out of Crake. Suddenly, he thought of the daemon, and of what he’d come here to do. Samandra thought he’d come to see her of his own accord, but the truth was, he’d never have had the guts if he hadn’t been pushed. He never imagined she’d be so pleased to see him. He hadn’t envisioned spending the evening as the sole object of her attention.
But now he was reminded of the real reason he’d come, and the moment was cheapened by deceit. Crake thought of himself as an honourable sort, when it came down to it, but what he intended to do was certainly not honourable. Yet it had to be done, for Frey’s sake.
She saw it on his face. ‘That bad, huh?’
‘He’s having some problems,’ Crake said awkwardly. When he didn’t elaborate, Samandra merely nodded.
Crake looked out of the window, to the Archduke’s palace, lit up by electric floods on its perch above the city. ‘I’d like to see inside the Archduke’s palace one day,’ he said.
She went with the change of subject. ‘Maybe you will,’ she said. ‘Mannered feller like yourself.’
‘There must be many rare treasures and works of art in there,’ he said.
‘Sure. All kinds of stuff like that.’
He turned to her, raised an eyebrow, tried to sound casual. ‘Has he made any new acquisitions recently?’
‘Antiquities ain’t really my thing.’
He looked out of the window again, pondering. in, re Damn, how to put this? How to make it seem natural?
‘Say if he did,’ Crake said. ‘Would they go straight to the palace, do you think?’
‘Would what go straight to the palace?’
‘The antiquities.’
‘I expect the head of the Archaeologists’ Guild would want to mess around with them first. Why’re you so interested?’
‘I’m always interested in culture,’ he said. Spit and blood, this was clumsy. He could only hope that Samandra was drunk enough not to notice. ‘So, hypothetically, if the head of the Archaeologists’ Guild acquired a new object, something rare or valuable, say… where would he take it?’
There was a faint flicker of suspicion in her eyes. Crake was surprised by how sharply it wounded him.
‘I guess I don’t know,’ she said slowly. A lie.
I wish you hadn’t done that, he thought. Because he saw, at that moment, that she did know, that she must have heard about the acquisition of the relic, and that she’d never tell him where it was. There were no words that could persuade her. She was one of the Archduke’s elite, and she’d never help him steal from her liege. A gulf had opened between them.
But Frey’s life was on the line.
He grinned. Her gaze flicked to the gold tooth that glinted in his mouth, and stayed there.
‘You can tell me,’ he said.
Crake felt like the lowest person on the planet. He walked through the streets of Thesk, soaked in misery, despising himself. The fact that he’d got what he wanted didn’t matter. The fact that it might end up saving the Cap’n was small consolation.
He shouldn’t have done that to her.
Employing the tooth required a delicate balance. Push too hard, and the victim would notice, alarm bells ringing in their subconscious as they felt themselves influenced by the daemon thralled to the gold. Even with all the practice he’d had, the tooth wouldn’t have worked on Samandra when she was sober. It’d been a terrible risk even when she was drunk. He suspected that it was only her good feeling towards him, and the fact she had her guard down, that let him in.
That made him feel worst of all.
Once she’d explained where the relic was and how to get it, he told her to forget he’d even asked. He meant it literally. But he couldn’t forge amp;rs›Once she amp;t, and afterwards, he could hardly look at her. It was a harmless act, to make her give up a scrap of information, but he’d taken the choice away from her all the same. It felt like he’d violated her. And even though she didn’t remember the conversation they’d just had, she started acting oddly. Not quite so easy in his company as before. As if she sensed something was wrong but didn’t know what. Or maybe she just picked up on Crake’s torment.
Soon after, he made his excuses and left.
‘You come see me agai n soon, Grayther Crake,’ she told him.
‘I will,’ he said. But he wasn’t altogether sure that he would. He wasn’t sure he could, any more.
Damn you, Cap’n, he thought bitterly. The fact that the Cap’n had been responsible for his meeting Samandra in the first place, for the happiness he’d felt in her company, just made him angrier. It wasn’t fair that things had worked out this way. Wasn’t fair at all.
Using the tooth was exhausting in that state. It leached his vitality, sucked at his will as it sucked at the will of its target. It was only now that he realised how much he’d drunk while they were talking. Too much. He felt weak and depressed and unsteady.
A barque was lifting off from the docks over the rooftops. He headed in that direction, back towards the Ketty Jay. At least he could tell the Cap’n what he’d learned. Then he could lay his head down and pretend this whole awful turn of events had never come about.
But he shouldn’t have done what he did. Not to her.
Nineteen
Blood. It was all about blood in Samarla.
The stadium crowd roared in Ashua’s ears. Sammies and Daks surged to their feet from tiered benches. Somewhere down on the court, an Urchin had been intercepted by an opposing Juggernaut. Ashua hadn’t seen the ensuing tackle – the crowd got in her way – but by the excited comments of her neighbours, the Urchin had very likely been killed, or at least crippled for life.