Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [39]
Chapter Ten
JEZ HAS VISIONS—TRINICA DRACKEN—AN ULTIMATUM FROM CRAKE—FREY TAKES A STAND
t was a still day. Light flakes of snow drifted from a sky laden with gray cloud. The silence was immense.
Jez stood on the edge of the small landing pad, wrapped up in pelts, holding a cup of cocoa between her furred mittens. She’d bought her new arctic attire soon after arriving. Her meager possessions had been left behind in a room at the lodging house in Scarwater. Truth be told, despite the temperature, she didn’t need to wear anything at all. The cold didn’t seem to affect her nowadays. But it was essential to keep up appearances: her safety depended on it. Anyone in their right mind would kill her if they knew what she was.
The landing pad was set on a raised plateau above a great, icy expanse. On the horizon, a range of ghostly mountains lay, blued by distance. A herd of snow hogs was trekking across the plain.
Yortland. A frozen, hard, and cruel place, but the only place on the continent of North Pandraca where the Coalition Navy held no sway and Coalition laws didn’t apply. The only place left for the crew of the Ketty Jay to run to.
She took a sip of her cocoa.
I could stay here, she thought. I could walk out into that wilderness and never be seen again.
Behind her sat the Ketty Jay and her outfliers. Snow had settled on the Ketty Jay’s back and wings, several inches deep. Nearby, an elderly Yort was hammering at the struts of his craft, knocking off icicles. He looked strong despite his age, with a thick neck and huge shoulders. He was bundled up in heavy furs, only his bald and tattooed head exposed to the elements. His ears, lips, and nose were pierced with rings and bone shards. Otherwise, there was nobody to be seen.
Besides the Ketty Jay, there were a couple of Yort haulers and some small personal racers, which Jez had already examined and mentally criticized—a habit born from a life as a craftbuilder’s daughter. They were blockish, dark, and ugly, built for efficiency without a care for aesthetics. Typical Yort work. In such an excessively masculine society, owning a craft of elegant design was viewed at best as pointless, at worst as potential evidence of homosexuality. Not something to be taken lightly, since sodomy carried the death penalty out here. As a result, Yorts designed everything to suggest that the owner was so enormously virile, a woman would need armor-plated ovaries to survive a night with him.
Jez’s eyes unfocused as she stared out across the plain.
Get away from everyone, she thought. Maybe that’s best. Get away from everyone, before it’s too late.
But the loneliness. She couldn’t take the loneliness. What was the point of existence, if you were forever alone?
Scattered across the plateau was the settlement of Majduk Eyl. Yorts built mostly underground for insulation, and their dwellings were barely visible. All that could be seen from the pad were the shallow humps of their dome-shaped roofs, the doorways that thrust through the snow, the skylights sheltered by overhanging eaves. Smoke rose from three dozen chimneys, curling steadily up to join the clouds. A small figure, hooded and cloaked, was scattering grit from a sack over the slushy trails that ran between the dwellings.
The crew of the Ketty Jay was in one of those buildings. They were just another set of companions, like the ones before, and the ones before that. She kept herself aloof from them. It would make it hurt less when she had to leave.
Sooner or later they’d notice something was different about her. The little things would begin to add up. The way her bullet wound had healed so fast, the way she never seemed to sleep, the way she never got tired. The way animals reacted to her.
Then she’d have to move on again, find a new crew. Keep going.
Going where? Doing what?
Anywhere. Anything. Just keep going.
She drank her cocoa. She ate or drank these days only because she liked the taste, not out of need. During the month of Swallow’s Reap, as an experiment, she’d gone without