Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [123]
Retribution Falls.
FREY COULD SEE NO indication of where he was supposed to land, no spotlights to guide him in, so he squeezed into a vacant spot on the main pad. When he and his crew opened the cargo ramp to disembark, they found someone waiting for them. He was tall and doughy around the belly and face, with one lazy eye and a gormless smile.
“You signed in yet?” he asked Frey.
Frey was momentarily lost for an answer. The man had just watched them set down. He considered asking how he might possibly have gotten to the dockmaster’s office and back while still in midair, but eventually he settled on an easier response.
“No.”
“You should sign in. Orkmund’s orders.”
Frey felt a thrill of excitement at the name. That settled it.
This was Retribution Falls, alright.
“Where’s the dockmaster?”
“You the captain?”
“Yeah.”
“Follow me, I’ll take you.”
Frey told the others to wait by the Ketty Jay and then trailed after the man toward the dockmaster’s office. It was a grim, low-ceilinged affair, more like a large shed than an administrative building. Dirty windows were divided into small rectangular panes. The door stuck and had to be wrenched open, the frame having warped in the dank air.
Inside, the gloom was barely leavened by a single oil lantern. The dockmaster—a thin old man with a pinched face—was hunched over a desk, writing with a pen. On the other side of the room was a lectern, where a huge book lay open. It was full of names and dates.
Frey waited to be noticed. The man with the lazy eye waited with him. The smell from the swamp lingered in the nostrils, faintly disgusting. Frey suspected that the locals didn’t notice it anymore.
After a short time, the dockmaster looked up. “Well, sign in, then!” he snapped, indicating the book on the lectern. “Olric, honestly! Why don’t you just tell him to sign in?”
Olric looked shamefaced. Frey went over to the book and picked up the pen that lay next to it. He scanned over the entries. Each line bore the name of a captain, the name of an aircraft, and the date and time of arrival and, in some cases, departure. At the bottom of each double page, the dockmaster had signed his name and title in crabbed script.
He flicked back a few pages, idly searching for someone he knew. Maybe Trinica would be in here.
“Busy recently, aren’t you?” he commented. “You usually get this much traffic?”
“Just sign,” the dockmaster said impatiently, not looking up from his records.
FREY’S DECISION TO CONFINE most of the crew to the craft wasn’t popular with one man in particular.
“You stinking bastard, Frey!” Pinn cried. “You didn’t even believe Retribution Falls existed until now! I told you we should come here when we were back in Yortland, but oh, no! You thought: let’s all laugh at Pinn! Well, I called it right, and I deserve to come.”
“Shut your fat meat-hole, Pinn,” Malvery said. “Cap’n’s given you an order.”
“Oh, really? Well, he can stuff it up his arse with all the other orders he’s given me!”
Frey looked at Silo. “If he tries to leave, shoot him,” he said, only half joking.
“Cap’n,” Silo replied, priming his shotgun with a crunch.
Pinn looked around at the rest of the crew, finding no support, and then stamped back into the depths of the craft, muttering mutinously.
“Jez, Malvery, come on,” he said. “We keep a low profile, have a look around, keep our ears open. And don’t anybody call me anything but Cap’n, okay? I don’t want to hear my name spoken outside the Ketty Jay.”
“Right-o.”
“Everyone got revolvers? Good. You never know.”
They headed across the landing pad toward the bridge to the town. Frey was rather pleased with himself for standing firm against Pinn’s outburst. Pinn was envisioning a night out in this pirate haven, but Frey needed to be able to effect a quick escape if necessary, without the need to go searching under bar tables for his drunken crew. Taking the