Even Jez, who didn’t drink, had picked up the mood and was merry. She’d been making an effort to involve herself more with the crew whenever she could, trying her hardest to fit in. Little Jez, always loyal, always efficient. Jez, her brown hair tied back with a strip of pipe lagging, looking perfectly comfortable in her baggy jumpsuit even though everyone else was sweltering. Jez, who was half-daemon, and who was dead by most people’s standards.
Next to her was Crake, who seemed happier these days than Frey had ever known him. He was a handsome fellow, with a close-cut blond beard, aristocratic features and the glimmer of a gold tooth in his smile. In the past he’d always had a haunted look about him, but the shadow had lifted from his brow of late. Frey didn’t know why, and he didn’t want to know. He was of the opinion that a man’s business was his own unless he chose to share it. It was something of an unwritten rule on the Ketty Jay. But he was glad that his friend had dealt with whatever was troubling him.
Crake was a smart man, highly educated and eloquent. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum was Pinn, who could be outwitted by a whelk. Pinn was stocky, ugly and stunningly dumb, but he was an incredible pilot and good fun to drink with. Every group needed a scapegoat, a lightning-rod for abuse. Pinn was the best kind of target, because he usually didn’t realise they were making fun of him, and even when he did he forgot about it moments later. Right now he was barely coherent, his eyes drifting in and out of focus, swaying in his seat.
Frey felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of affection for all his crew. It was almost two years since Jez had come on board the Ketty Jay and completed the group. In that time, his rag-tag bunch of no-hopers had found a balance that had seen them rise from bottom-feeding freebooters to bar-room celebrities. He couldn’t imagine what he amp;rsqr w what huo; d do without them.
‘A toast!’ he declared suddenly, surging to his feet. ‘To all of you! And Harkins and Silo, who can’t be with us, on account of how one is scared of his own shadow and the other-’
‘Cap’n…’ Jez warned, glancing round the room meaningfully.
Frey swept the bar with a disparaging glare, suddenly annoyed by the presence of the locals, who were doing their best to ignore him. Sammies and Daks, any of which would attack Silo on sight. Murthians were considered dangerous animals in Samarla, fit only for back-breaking labour and concentration camps.
‘Yeah, well, we know why Silo can’t be out with us tonight,’ he said, then rallied with a flourish. ‘But he’s here with us in spirit, or something! So, anyway, I just wanted to say…’
He fought for the words to express the warm feeling of camaraderie that had seized him, his gratitude to them all just for being here with him. But his head was too cloudy, and nothing came. Before he had a chance to recover, Pinn pounded his fist on the table, making them all jump.
‘I’ve made a… a decision!’ he slurred. He swept the table with a bleary gaze, for effect, then raised one finger. ‘I’m gonna be a famous… a famous inventor.’
There was a pause, a perfect vacuum of incredulous shock, during which everyone stared at Pinn in amazement. Then, as one, they burst out laughing.
Indignation roused him from his stupor. ‘I am!’ he protested, but nobody could hear him. Malvery was holding his belly, tears rolling down his face. Between his helpless guffaws he pleaded for everyone to stop laughing, because he was going to burst his appendix if they didn’t.
It took a full minute for everyone to calm down, by which time Pinn was in a black sulk, with a face like a thunderhead. Crake leaned forward over the table, hands folded under his chin in an attitude of intense interest.
‘An inventor, you say?’ he inquired. ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with your absent sweetheart, would it? Whichever sweetheart it is; I lose track.’
‘ ’S only one woman for me,’ Pinn said, narrowing his piggy eyes. But, since everyone was paying attention now, he drew something from his pocket and placed it delicately onto the table.
It was a small chrome egg on a pedestal. He tapped it, and it opened out into four quarters. Inside was a tiny clockwork bird in a cage, which began spinning around and making a feeble cheeping noise.
It was a trinket, a gewgaw from one of the local markets. The Samarlans loved their clockwork gadgets.
Pinn was mesmerised by it. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘What’s amazing is that you paid money for that piece of junk,’ said Malvery, still chuckling.
Pinn closed it up and snatched it away resentfully. ‘Well, kicking around with you lot isn’t getting me rich, is it? Gotta get rich. Can’t go back to Lisinda till I do.’
‘Emanda,’ Crake reminded him.
‘Yeah, her,’ he waved in the air vaguely. ‘Anyway, reckon I’ll just invent something. Something… something no one’s thought of yet. You lot won’t be laughing then.’
‘Well,’ said Frey, ‘since you hijacked my toast, here’s to you. Professor Pinn, the inventor!’
And they cheered, and drank, and Frey thought that all was well with the world.
Three
The Ketty Jay groaned and shrieked as she lifted off her struts and began to rise above the landing pad. She was a solid, brutish thing with a humped back, short, downswept wings and a stumpy tail end: a hybrid cargo hauler and combat craft, built tough at the expense of beauty. With her belly lights shining, she ascended into the sultry night, her ballast tanks filling with ultralight aerium gas.
Crake watched from the cockpit as the landing pad fell away beneath them. The aircraft on the ground were all Vard or Yort in design: this was a pad reserved for foreigners. Samarlan Navy craft glided through the sky, blade-sleek predators underlit by the city glow.
Let’s hope we don’t have to tangle with any of them tonight, he thought.
Jez was in the pilot’s seat. The Cap’n sat at the navigator’s station, bruised and battered and looking generally dejected. Crake knew how much he hated letting anyone else fly his beloved aircraft.
It had been a few days since Frey’s introduction to Ashua’s boot, but his face had healed up quickly, although it was still a little lumpy and faintly discoloured. According to Malvery, the rest of him hadn’t done so well. His back and ribs were a mass of yellow and purple from the fall he took. He winced whenever he moved.
Harkins hung by the door, pilot’s cap scrunched up in nervous hands, his hangdog face animated by some intern, bal distress. No doubt he was feeling lost without his Firecrow. The two fighter craft that normally travelled with the Ketty Jay had been left on the landing pad tonight.
Pinn and Harkins had taken some persuading to leave their craft in Shasiith. Pinn entertained the strange belief that he could fly by instinct alone; Harkins was terrified of being separated from his aircraft. The Cap’n had finally convinced them both by making them walk around blindfold and counting how many things they bumped into. Then he reminded them what would happen if they did that at three hundred kloms an hour. They would be travelling over unfamiliar terrain without lights, on a moonless night, in near total darkness. The only member of their crew who could fly like that was Jez, due to her inhumanly sharp vision.
Ashua was here too, leaning against a bulkhead with her arms crossed, keeping an eye on things. Crake found the young woman distasteful. She had a surly arrogance that bothered him. Someone from such an obviously poor background shouldn’t carry themselves with that kind of aggressive confidence. It offended his sense of the order of things.