Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [95]
A serving girl in an appealingly low-cut dress met him at the back rooms and directed him to one of the private gaming areas. Sharka’s was all bare brick and brass—not pretty, but Rake players distrusted glitz.
He stepped into a small, dim room. A lantern hung from the ceiling, throwing light onto the black baize of the Rake table. A pack of cards was spread out in suits across it. A well-stocked drinks cabinet rested against one wall. There were four chairs around the table.
Sitting in one of the chairs, facing the door, was Trinica Dracken.
The sight of her was a jolt. She was lounging in the chair, small and slim, dressed head to toe in black: black boots, black coat, black gloves, black waistcoat. But from the buttoned collar of her black shirt upward, everything changed. Her skin was powdered ghost-white. Her hair—so blond it was almost albino—was cut short, sticking up in uneven tufts as if it had been butchered with a knife. Her lips were a red deep enough to be vulgar.
But it was her eyes that shocked him most. Her lashes were almost invisible, but her irises were completely black, dilated to the size of coins. It took him a moment to realize they were contact lenses and not the product of some daemonic possession. Worn for effect, no doubt, but certainly effective.
“Hello, Frey,” she said. Her voice was lower than he remembered. “Long time.”
“You look terrible,” he said as he sat.
“So do you,” she replied. “Life on the run must not agree with you.”
“Actually, I’m getting to enjoy it. Catching my second wind, so to speak.”
She looked around the room. “A Rake den? You haven’t changed.”
“You have.”
“I had to.”
He gestured at the cards on the table between them. “Want to play?”
“I’m here to parley, Frey, not play your little game.”
Frey sat back in his chair and regarded her. “Alright,” he said, “Business it is. You know, there was a time when you liked to sit and talk for hours.”
“That was then,” she said. “This is now. I’m not the person you remember.”
That was an understatement. The woman before him was one of the most notorious freebooters in Vardia. She’d engineered a mutiny to become captain of the Delirium Trigger, and her reputation for utter ruthlessness had earned her the respect of the underworld. Rumor held her responsible for acts of bloody piracy and murder as well as daring treasure snatches and near-impossible feats of navigation. She was feared by some and envied by others, a dread queen of the skies.
Hard to believe he’d almost married her.
RABBAN WAS ONE OF the nine primary cities of Vardia, and, like the others, it bore the same name as the duchy it dominated. Though it had suffered terribly in the Aerium Wars, it was still large enough to need more than a dozen docks for aircraft. These docks were the first things to be repaired after the bombing stopped six years ago. Some were little more than islands in a sea of shattered stone, but even these were busy with passenger shuttles, cargo haulers, and supply vessels. Transport by air had been Vardia’s only viable option for more than a century and, even in the aftermath of a disaster, there was no way to do without it.
Only a few of the docks, however, were equipped to deal with a craft the size of the Delirium Trigger.
She rested inside a vast iron hangar, alongside frigates and freighters: the heavyweights of the skies. A web of platforms, gantries, and walkways surrounded it at deck height, busy with an ant swarm of engineers, dockworkers, and swabbers. Everything was being checked, everything cleaned, and a complex exchange of services and trade goods was negotiated. A craft like the Delirium Trigger, with a crew of fifty, needed a lot of maintenance.
The Delirium Trigger