Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [153]
He was a chatty sort, keen to keep them updated on the details of their imminent demise. Through him, they’d learned that Duke Grephen was at an important conference and was on his way back as soon as he could get away and find a judge. “To execute the sentence nice and legal,” the gaoler grinned, drawing out the word execute, just in case they missed how clever he was being by using it. “But don’t you worry. There ain’t no hurry, ’cause not a soul knows you’re here. Nobody’s coming to your rescue.”
There were two guards, in addition to the gaoler, though the prisoners rarely heard them speak. They were there to keep an eye on things. “Just in case you try any foolery,” the gaoler said, with a pointed look at Crake. They’d evidently been warned that there was a daemonist among the prisoners. Crake’s golden tooth would be useless: he couldn’t deal with three men. His skeleton key was lying somewhere in the Ketty Jay’s cargo hold, equally useless.
No way out.
He’d been swallowed by an immense sense of emptiness. It had come upon him in the moment they’d lifted off from the Blackendraft to be taken on board the Delirium Trigger. The news that the Ketty Jay had disappeared did little to alleviate it. Bess was gone.
His thoughts went to the small whistle hidden in his quarters aboard the Ketty Jay. Only that whistle, blown by the daemonist who had thralled it, had the power to wake her from oblivion. He’d never get to blow that whistle now. Perhaps that was best.
He should never have tried to save her. In attempting to atone for one crime, he’d committed one far greater. And now she’d be left, neither dead nor alive, for an eternity.
Did she sleep? Was she aware? Was she trapped in a metal shell in the endless waste of the ash flats, unable to move or scream? How much was left of the beautiful child he’d ruined? It was so hard to tell. She was more like a faithful dog than a little girl now, muddled and jumbled by his clumsy transfer, prone to fits of rage, insecurity, and animal violence.
He should have let her die, but he couldn’t live with the guilt of it. So he’d made her a monster. And, in doing so, made himself one.
A distant howl made Crake, Silo, and Malvery look up as one. The voice was Frey’s, coming from the torture room, just beyond the cell he shared with Pinn and Harkins.
“They’ve started up again,” said Malvery. “Poor bastard.”
Crake stirred himself. “Why’s he bothering to hold out? What does it matter if he signs a confession or not? We’re all going to be just as dead with or without it.”
Malvery grinned beneath his white walruslike mustache. “Maybe he just likes being an awkward bugger.”
Silo actually smiled at that. Crake didn’t take up the humor. He felt Malvery put a huge arm around his shoulder.
“Cheer up, eh? You’ve had a face like a soggy arse since Dracken caught us.”
Crake gave him an amazed look. “You know, all my life I’ve been under the illusion that the fear of death was a common, almost universal part of being human. But recently I’ve come to think I’m the only one on this crew who is actually worried about it in the slightest.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I bet the other cell is half full of Harkins’s shit by now, he’s so scared,” Malvery said with a wink. “Then again, he’s afraid of just about everything. The only reason he’s still a pilot is because he’s more afraid of not being a pilot than he is of getting shot down.”
“But … I mean, don’t you have regrets? Thwarted hopes? Anything like that?” Crake was exasperated. He’d never been able to understand how the vagabonds of the Ketty Jay lived such day-to-day lives, never seeming to care about the future or the past.
“Regrets? Sure. I’ve got regrets like you wouldn’t believe, mate,” said Malvery. “Told you I was a doc back in Thesk, didn’t I? Well, I was good at it, and I got rich. Got a little flush with success; got a little fond of the bottle too.
“One day a messenger from the surgery turned up at my house. There was a friend of mine,