‘My,’ said Crake. ‘Manners. Whatever next?’
‘My toe in your arse, if you don’t get on with it.’
‘Ah, that’s more like the Cap’n I know,’ said Crake, drawing out his skeleton key. He still didn’t feel right after last night, and breaking into the Mentenforth hadn’t helped. His fingers felt slightly numb, his grip weak and his forearm was a block of ice. There was a price to pay for using thralled daemons, even the weak, senseless ones in their earcuffs. He’d improved the earcuffs so that the effect was negligible, but the tooth and the skeleton key were hungrier entities. They fed on the user’s strength, and he needed time to recover. He vaguely wondered if he might be doing permanent damage to himself.
Well, once more won’t hurt, he said to himself, although he was pretty sure it would.
The lock was a complex one, made for a specialised key, intended to defeat thieves. Crake’s key didn’t even touch the sides, but that didn’t matter. The daemon’s invisible influence expanded to fill the space, feelin sped to defeg out the interior, pushing and twisting and testing until it understood the lock and defeated it. But it was a clever lock, with many parts, and Crake’s arm was trembling and numb to the shoulder by the time the key turned.
‘There,’ he said weakly. He wanted to be sick.
‘You alright?’ Frey asked him, concerned. ‘You don’t look alright.’
‘Let’s just get that relic,’ he muttered. He wanted this over with. He wanted to forget that today and yesterday ever happened. He wanted to sleep, and be miserable, and be left alone.
Silo pushed the door open. The chamber beyond was circular with a domed roof. Arranged in a semicircle were a half-dozen glass display cases on veined marble plinths. Crake’s eyes widened. The most precious treasures that the various guilds possessed, gathered in this room. But he didn’t see the relic on display.
A worm of uncertainty crawled into his gut. He glanced at Frey, and knew that he felt it too.
Spit and blood, please don’t let me be wrong about this.
Silo crouched down and examined the floor inside the doorway. ‘Wait,’ he said, then pointed to a pair of slabs and added ‘Don’t step there.’
They watched as Silo did a cursory check of the room. Crake examined the slabs so he didn’t have to think about what he’d say to the Cap’n if it turned out Samandra’s information had been inaccurate. It was actually quite easy to see the seams of the pressure pads, when you knew what to look for.
Silo returned. ‘Room looks clean,’ he said. Then he pointed at one of the display cases. ‘Relic’s in that one.’
Crake felt a wonderful moment of relief at those words. They stepped over the pressure pads and into the chamber, and went where he’d indicated. The relic case was inside, closed and lying flat on the bottom, which was why they hadn’t seen it from the doorway. Frey had told Crake about the double-bladed object inside, but at the moment it just looked like a black, featureless oblong. It wasn’t arranged for display like the other objects. It had simply been put there.
Frey’s eyes lit up as he saw it, but only for a moment. ‘There’s something not right,’ he muttered.
‘They’ve only had it a few days,’ said Crake. ‘That’s not enough time to study it, really. No point putting it on display till they know what it is.’
‘So, what, they’re just keeping it here?’
‘In the vault? Why not?’ Crake said absently. He’d a. Hsquo; s ilready strayed to the other exhibits in the chamber. An enormous and beautiful vase from pre-republic Thace. And there… Spit and blood, could that suit of armour have come from the War of Three? And look! An engraving from ancient Samarla, showing men and women worshipping at the feet of the God-Emperor. There was a plaque next to it, dating it to PU 1400 or thereabouts, long before the unification of Vardia under Wilven the Successor. He did a quick calculation and marvel led. Four thousand eight hundred and fifty years old, or near enough.
Silo came up to stand beside Frey. ‘Problem, Cap’n,’ he grunted.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Frey said. ‘Pressure pads underneath the exhibits.’
‘Yuh,’ said Silo. ‘My guess is, we lift one of ’em off, that gate by the door slams down.’
Frey blew out his cheeks. ‘How in damnation are we gonna get that relic out of that case, then?’
‘Boys, I’d say that’s the least of your worries right now.’
Frey and Silo swivelled at the sound of the voice, guns flashing into their hands. But they froze when they saw who it was.
Crake didn’t need to see. He knew, and it caused a crawling nausea in his stomach. But he turned and looked anyway, because there was nothing else to do.
Standing in the doorway of the chamber, guns trained on them, were Samandra Bree and Colden Grudge.
Twenty-One
Bree and Grudge, of the Century Knights. Sometimes they’d been allies to Frey, sometimes enemies. Tonight, they were definitely the latter.
Colden Grudge towered over his companion, shaggy-haired and bearded, clad in dirty plates of armour, carrying an autocannon cradled under his arm that could put a hole in a man the size of… well, pretty much the size of a man. Bree looked positively delicate next to him, her twin lever-action shotguns puny in comparison. They stood just outside the doorway to the circular chamber, covering the room. Three guns for three targets.
This wasn’t going to go well.
‘Samandra…’ Crake began limply.
‘You shut your meat-hole,’ she snapped, raising the shotgun in her left hand, aiming at his head. ‘I don’t mind admittin’ to a certain amount of disappoieeplyht=ntment, Grayther Crake. Thought you were better than this.’
Crake looked crushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You weren’t supposed to remember.’
‘You think that makes it better?’ she cried, and Frey saw with some surprise that she was genuinely angry. ‘You got in my head, you bastard! I oughta gun you down like a dog!’
‘Hey,’ said Frey quickly. ‘Let’s nobody shoot anybody. Crake here had a good reason to do what he did.’
‘Yeah, I know the reason,’ she sneered. ‘Grothsen’s new acquisition.’ She spat on the floor. ‘Damn daemonist trickery. For all the tales told about you, you ain’t much more than thieves.’
‘I need that relic,’ Frey said. ‘This isn’t about stealing. See, there’s a thing called the Iron Jackal, it’s a daemon of some kind, and I’ve got a curse on me that-’
‘Don’t,’ said Crake, holding up his hand. He looked at Frey sadly. ‘Don’t bother. Even I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.’
‘Well, then,’ said Samandra. ‘If you’re quite done bullshittin’, gentlemen, I suggest you lower them guns.’
Frey’s eyes flickered around the room, skipping over the exhibits. His mind raced. A plan, a plan. Fighting was out of the question. Apart from being crack shots, the Century Knights had the advantage of cover. Frey and his companions were out in the open; the Knights only had to duck behind the doorway. He didn’t much rate his chances of making it behind one of those marble plinths with all his organs still functional.
‘I ain’t gonna ask twice,’ Samandra warned.
But Frey knew that the moment he lowered his pistol, he was as good as dead. He wouldn’t even make it to the gallows. It wouldn’t be the Knights that killed him, though. They’d find him in a dark cell, a scream of terror frozen on his face, torn to ribbons by bayonets. The metal claws of the Iron Jackal.
There were a thousand ways he might die. But it wouldn’t be helpless in a cage.
‘You really gonna start a gunfight in here?’ he asked, his mouth running to buy time. ‘With all these valuable artefacts?’
‘Won’t be much of a fight, way I see it,’ said Samandra. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t miss much.’
‘That feller’s got an autocannon,’ Frey pointed out.