Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [140]
“One,” he said. “In the infirmary. She’s dead, though I ain’t sure what of.”
Trinica looked at Frey for an instant. “You’re sure she’s dead?”
“Yes, Cap’n. She don’t have a pulse, and she ain’t breathing. I listened at her chest, and her heart ain’t beating. I seen a lot of dead men and women, and she’s dead.”
“She hit her head,” said Frey. “When you shelled us.” He indicated Malvery. “The doc tried to help her, but he couldn’t do much. All the damage was inside.”
Malvery caught on and nodded gravely. “Terrible thing. Fine young woman,” he murmured.
Crake felt a chill go through him. He was remembering that night on the Feldspar Islands when they’d gone to Gallian Thade’s ball at Scorchwood Heights. The night when Jez had really fallen and hit her head. Fredger Cordwain, the man from the Shacklemore Agency, had taken her pulse then too. He’d also been convinced she was dead. At the time, Crake had assumed he was mistaken in the heat of the moment, but now he wondered.
How had she managed to fool them both?
“You want us to get rid of her?” the crewman asked Dracken.
“No,” she said. “Leave her where she is. We’ll need the body to show the Duke. How are they getting on with the golem?”
“Coming out now, Cap’n,” he replied, gesturing at the half-dozen men who were manhandling the inert form of Bess down the ramp.
“What are you doing with her?” Crake blurted in distress, before good sense could intervene.
Dracken’s black eyes fixed onto him. Crake had a sudden and dreadful feeling that he’d done something very foolish in drawing her attention. “That thing is yours, is it?” she asked. “You’re the daemonist?”
Crake swallowed and tasted ash in the back of his throat. Dracken sauntered over toward him, raking her gaze along the line of prisoners as she went.
“Very clever, what you did in Rabban,” she murmured. “And surprising too. I’d have expected a daemonist to abandon their golem and make a new one, but you actually rescued it from my cargo hold.” She studied him with an intensity that made him squirm. “That’s very interesting.”
Crake kept his mouth shut. He had the impression that anything he said would only damn him further.
“Still, interesting as it is, I’m not stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice,” she said. “And I’m not having that thing wake up on the journey back. So your golem is staying here.”
Crake felt weakness flood through him. The horror of it almost made him stagger. He looked around wildly, taking in the endless, trackless expanse of gray that surrounded them. There were no signs of life anywhere. No civilization. Nothing but the tiny smudges of aircraft heading for the coast, hopelessly distant.
To abandon her here would be to lose her forever.
“I’ve an idea,” said Dracken, addressing Frey. “It seems the only other person who knows the ignition code is dead, and I’d rather not kill you until after you’ve given us a confession. But a daemonist … well, he could be problematic. They have all kinds of … arts. Probably easier to get rid of him now.”
Crake saw what was coming. She lifted her gun and pointed it at his forehead in what was becoming a depressingly familiar state of affairs.
“Unless you’ve something to tell me, Frey?” she prompted.
Frey’s face had gone stony. Crake had seen that impassive expression before, when Lawsen Macarde put him in a similar situation. Except, this time, there was little doubt that Trinica’s gun was fully loaded.
A strange calm came over him. Let it end, then.
“You have until three,” said Trinica. “One.”
He was tired. Tired of struggling against the grief and shame. Tired of living under the weight of one arrogant mistake, to think that he might summon one of the monsters of the aether and come away unscathed. Tired of trying to understand that awful twist of fortune that had led his niece to his sanctum on that particular night, instead of any other.
Leave her here, amid the ash and dust. If he didn’t wake her up, no one ever would. Let her sleep, and perhaps