Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [133]
“What?”
“All this time, you never told me your niece’s name. You’ve avoided it.”
Crake stared at her with red eyes. “You know her name.”
“Say it!” she demanded. Because she needed this final closure before she could walk away.
He swallowed and choked down a sob.
“Bessandra,” he said. “Bessandra was her name. But we all just called her Bess.”
Chapter Thirty
ORKMUND’S ADDRESS—A FAMILIAR OBJECT—FREY PUTS IT ALL TOGETHER—“GOTCHA!”
y midday, a crowd had gathered outside Orkmund’s stronghold.
In a rare moment of architectural forethought, the stronghold had been built in front of a large square, which was employed for the purpose of meetings, markets, and occasional executions or bouts of trial-by-combat. A wooden stage, now groaning under the weight of spectators, stood in the center for just this purpose. Another, more temporary one had been erected just outside the stronghold and was guarded by burly men with cutlasses. This would be Orkmund’s podium.
Frey pushed through the press of bodies, with Malvery clearing the way ahead. Pinn and Jez came behind. Pinn had been subdued by his confinement in the Ketty Jay the night before, and Frey had extracted promises of good behavior today. He charged Malvery with enforcing them, knowing how the doctor liked to bully Pinn.
It was fun to torment the young pilot now and then, but Frey knew how much it meant to him to see Retribution Falls before they left. Just so he could say he’d been. Just so he could tell Lisinda of his adventures, on that day when he returned in triumph to sweep her into his arms. Having asserted his authority, Frey was happy to give Pinn a little leash.
The stronghold was constructed in a squared-off horseshoe shape, with two wings projecting forward around a small interior courtyard. It was grim and forbidding, with square windows and iron-banded doors. Its walls were dark stone, streaked with mold. A place built for someone who had no interest in flair or aesthetics. A fortress.
Surrounding the stronghold was a ramshackle barricade of metal spikes and crossed girders, eight feet high and surmounted by wooden watchtowers. The watchtowers were manned by rifle-wielding pirates, who scanned the crowd below them, no doubt deciding who they’d shoot first if they had the chance. In the middle of the barricade was a crude gate, a thick slab of metal on rollers that could be slid back and forth to grant access to the courtyard.
Frey and the others fought their way to a vantage point as the gate began to open and the crowd erupted in ear-pummeling cheers. The floor shook with the stamping of feet. It occurred to Frey that they were standing on a huge platform that was held up by a scaffolding of girders, and that it might not be built to take this kind of weight. It would be an ignominious end to his adventure, to sink to the bottom of a fetid marsh beneath a hundred tons of unwashed pirate flesh.
It wasn’t until Orkmund climbed the steps to his stage that Frey caught sight of him. The pirate captain Orkmund, scourge of the Coalition in the years before the Aerium Wars, who disappeared fifteen years ago and was thought by most to be dead. But he wasn’t dead: he was building Retribution Falls. A home for pirates, safe from the Navy. A place where they could conduct their business in peace—with a hefty cut for Orkmund, of course.
Though he must have been in his mid-fifties, Orkmund still cut an impressive figure. He was well over two meters high, bald-headed and thickset, with squashed features that gave him a thuggish look. Tattoos crawled over his throat, scalp, and arms. He wore a simple black shirt, tight and unlaced at the throat, to emphasize an upper body and arms that were heavy with muscle. He walked up to the stage with a predator’s confidence, surveyed the cheering crowd, and raised his arms for silence. It took some time.
“Some of you know me by sight,” he shouted. His voice, though loud, was still faint and thin by the time it reached Frey’s ears, and he had to concentrate to hear. “Some don