Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [154]
Crake noted that the lighthearted tone was draining out of Malvery’s voice. He realized suddenly that he was in the midst of something serious. But Malvery kept going, forcing himself to sound casual.
“Well, I knew I was drunk, but I also knew it was my friend and I believed I was the best damn surgeon for the job, drunk or sober. I’d gotten so used to being good that I thought I couldn’t do no wrong. Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Some junior doc tried to stop me, but I just shrugged him off. Wish he’d tried harder now.”
Malvery stopped abruptly. He heaved a great sigh, as if expelling something from deep in his lungs. When he spoke again, it was with a deep resignation in his tone. What had been done had been done and could never be undone.
“It should have been easy, but I got careless. Slipped with the scalpel, went right through an artery. He bled out right in front of me, on the table, while I was trying to fix him up.”
Even obsessed with his own misery, Crake felt some sympathy for the big man. He knew exactly how he felt. Perhaps that was why they’d instinctively liked each other when they first met. Each sensed in the other a tragic victim of their own arrogance.
Malvery cleared his throat. “I lost it all after that,” he said. “Lost my license. Lost my wife. Spent my money. Didn’t care. And I drank. I drank and drank and drank, and the money got less and less, and one day I didn’t have nothing left. I think that was about when the Cap’n found me.”
“Frey?”
Malvery pushed back the round green-lensed spectacles on his broad nose. “Right. We met in some port—I forget which. He bought me some drinks. Said he could use a doctor. I said I wasn’t much of a doctor, and he said that was okay, ’cause he wasn’t gonna pay me much anyway.” He guffawed. “Ain’t that just like him?”
Crake cracked a smile. “Yes. I suppose it is.”
“I ain’t never picked up a scalpel since that day when I killed my friend. I don’t think I could. I keep those instruments polished in the infirmary, but I’ll never use ’em. I’m good for patching you up and a bit of stitching, but I’d never trust myself to open you up. Not anymore. You wanna know the truth, I’m half a doctor. But that’s okay. ’Cause I found a home on the Ketty Jay, and I’ve got the Cap’n to thank for it.” He paused as Frey screamed from down the corridor. A spasm of anger crossed his face but was gone again in an instant. “He’s a good man, whatever faults he’s got. Been a good friend to me.”
Crake remembered how Trinica had put a gun to his head and how Frey had given up the code to his beloved aircraft rather than see the daemonist shot.
“Yes,” he said. “To me too.”
Crake knotted his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the cell. Silo, Harkins, and now Malvery: Frey certainly had a thing for picking up refugees. Granted, they were all useful to him in some way, but all owed a debt of gratitude and loyalty to their captain that Crake hadn’t detected until recently. Perhaps Frey’s intentions had been entirely mercenary—it could be that he just liked cheap crew—but at least half his men viewed him as a savior of sorts. Maybe Frey didn’t need them, but they certainly needed him. Without their captain, Silo would end up lynched or sent back to slavery in Samarla, Harkins would be forced to face a life without wings, and Malvery would be a destitute alcoholic once again.
And what of the rest of them? He himself had found a place to hide while he stayed ahead of the Shacklemores. Pinn had found a place that would tolerate him, where he could forever avoid the reality of his sweetheart in his doomed search for riches and fame. And Jez? Well, maybe Jez just liked to be in a place where nobody asked any questions.
Like it or not, Frey gave them all something they needed. He gave them the Ketty Jay.
“Ain’t one of us who’s not running from something,” Crake said wryly. Malvery’s words, spoken weeks