Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [102]
“He kept that one?”
“He kept it because I was in it. I imagine that’s how he’d like to remember me.”
The Wanted posters had shown only Frey’s face, but in the full picture, Trinica was clinging to his arm, laughing. Laughing at nothing, really. Laughing just to laugh. He remembered the ferrotype perfectly. Her hair blowing, mouth open and teeth white. A rare, perfect capture; a frozen instant of natural, unforced joy. No one would connect that young girl with the woman sitting in front of him.
In that moment, Frey felt the tragedy of that loss. How cruel it was that things had turned out the way they did.
But Trinica saw the expression on his face and correctly guessed its cause. She always knew his thoughts, better than anyone.
“Look at yourself, Darian. Cursing the fate that brought you here. One day you’re going to realize that everything that’s happened to you has been your own fault.”
“Dogshit,” he spat, sadness turning to venom in an instant. “I’ve tried my damnedest. I tried to better myself.”
“And yet here you are, ten years later, barely scraping a living. And I am the captain of a crew of fifty, infamous and rich.”
“I’m not like you, Trinica. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon shoved up my arse. I didn’t have a good education. Some of us don’t get the luck.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then her black eyes dropped to the facedown cards scattered on the table.
“I remember when you used to talk about Rake,” she said, idly picking up a card and flipping it over. It was the Lady of Crosses. “You used to say everyone thought luck was a huge factor. They said it was all about the cards you were dealt. Mostly luck and a bit of skill.” She flipped over another: Ten of Fangs. “You thought they were idiots. You knew it was mostly skill and a bit of luck.”
The Ace of Skulls came next. Frey hated that card.
“A good player might occasionally lose to a mediocre one, but in the long run, the good players made money while the bad ones went broke,” Trinica continued.
The next card came up: the Duke of Skulls. Any Priest would give her a five-card run to the Ace of Skulls, an unbeatable combination.
She turned the final card: the Seven of Wings. The hand was busted. Her gaze flicked up from the table and met his.
“Over time, luck is hardly a factor at all,” she said.
BELOWDECKS, THE DELIRIUM TRIGGER was in chaos. A slow, steady pounding reverberated through the dim passageways. Metal screeched. Men shouted and ran, some toward the sound and some away from it.
“It’s in the cargo hold!”
“What’s in the cargo hold?”
But nobody could answer that. Those inside the hold had fled in terror when the iron-and-leather monstrosity burst out of its crate and began rampaging through the shadowy aisles. Barrels were flung this way and that. Guns fired, but to no avail. The air had filled with splinters as the intruder smashed through crates of provisions and trade goods. It was dark down there, and the looming thing terrified the crewmen.
Those on the deck above, operating the winch, had peered fearfully through the hatch into the cargo hold at the first signs of a disturbance. The light from the hangar barely penetrated to the floor of the hold. They scrambled back as they caught a glimpse of something huge lunging across their narrow field of view. It was only then that one of them thought to raise the winch.
In the confusion that ensued, nobody noticed three strangers, now dressed in the dirty motley of crew members, making their way belowdecks.
Those who had managed to escape from the cargo hold had slammed the bulkhead door behind them and locked it shut, trapping the monster inside. But the monster didn’t like being trapped. It was pounding on the inside of the door, hard enough to buckle eight inches of metal. Enraged bellows came from behind.
“Get your fat stinking carcasses over here!” the burly, dirt-streaked bosun yelled. The men he was yelling at had come to investigate the sound and were now backing away as they saw what was happening. They reluctantly returned at his command.