The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [126]
Frey did dimly recall wanting to join the Navy at some point, but it seemed unimaginable now.
“Then you decided you were in love with me, and you wanted to be with me forever, and we all know how that turned out.”
Again, there was no hurt or accusation in the tone. Simple fact. He was a little offended that she could talk about it so lightly.
“I did join the Navy!” he said, suddenly remembering. “Second Aerium War, flying cargo to the front.”
“You didn’t join the Navy,” she said. “You flew a lot of insanely dangerous freelance missions with the intention of getting yourself killed. And when you almost did, you blamed the Navy and you’ve hated them ever since.”
She had him there. He tried to think of a rejoinder and couldn’t.
“Sorry, Darian. I don’t mean to rake over old coals. I’m just making a point. You don’t know what you want. You never have.”
Frey thought of Amalicia Thade, how he’d run away from a life of luxury with a beautiful woman. “Things seem so much better in theory than in practice. I even wanted to be a pirate for a while, like a real pirate. But it turns out I’m not that cold-blooded. No offense.”
“None taken,” she said, sipping at her coffee.
“I suppose, at some point, you have to make a choice and stick to it,” he said unconvincingly. “Make the best of things.”
“So they say.”
“Hardly seems fair, does it? All that compromise. Never quite getting what you dreamed of.”
“No one gets what they dream of, Darian. That’s why they call them dreams.”
“You think so?”
“Even if you get everything you ever wanted, it’s rarely all it’s cracked up to be. The rich are as unhappy and screwed up as the poor. Just in a different way.” She looked down into the black surface of her coffee. “You can’t get away from yourself.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you’re still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you’ll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Frey protested indignantly.
“I’m speaking generally. The thing a person has to change is themselves.”
“Like you did?”
“Like I did.”
“And you’re happier?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m alive.”
She gave him a sad sort of smile. Frey was overwhelmed by a surge of affection. That smile made him want to sweep her up in his arms, to protect her from all harm, to erase the damage of the past somehow.
“I forgot what it was like, talking to you,” he said. “I mean, really talking, without all the threats and recriminations and stuff.”
“We have a lot to recriminate about,” she said.
He opened his mouth to speak, to say something complimentary, something to express his feelings, even in a small way. But she’d already detected the change in him. She’d seen the tenderness in his eyes and heard the softening of his voice.
“Darian, don’t,” she said quietly.
So he didn’t. The feeling curled up and died in the heat of bitterness and embarrassment. He got to his feet and threw some money on the table.
“Let’s go see this professor, then,” he said.
Trinica nodded wordlessly, left her coffee, and followed him.
PROFESSOR KRAYLOCK WAS A small, thin, elderly man, with a tidy white mustache and a bald head speckled with liver spots. Little round glasses perched on a nose purpled with broken veins: the sign of a man who enjoyed his hard liquor. He was dwarfed by his chair and a colossal desk of walnut and leather. Sunlight beamed through two tall arched windows behind him, edging him in dazzling light and casting his face into shadow. Blazing dust motes hung in the air around him.
Frey and Trinica sat on the other side of the desk. Trinica and the professor were talking and laughing. Preamble stuff: greetings, inquiries about each other’s health,