The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [155]
“Now,” she said to Roke. “Grist. Where?”
Roke just gasped at her. She shot him in the hand, pulverizing it into a bloody mash of tendon and shattered bone. He found his voice then.
“He’s in Sakkan! Two hundred kloms northwest of Marduk! Warehouse complex on the east edge of the city! That’s where we always hid out. He moves his drugs through it. Heavily guarded! He’s got his own hangar there and everything! Big enough for the Storm Dog!”
Trinica shrugged at Frey. “That’s where he is,” she said, and she shifted her aim to Roke’s forehead.
“Trinica!” said Frey sharply. She looked over at him. He shook his head slowly.
“Whyever not?” she asked. “This way he can’t talk to anyone else.”
The stark logic in her voice chilled him more than the freezing air. Over the past month he’d almost begun to believe this side of her had faded away and a new tenderness had replaced her steely brutality. The fact that he’d been mistaken came as an unpleasant shock.
“Don’t be like this, Trinica,” he said.
“But this is how I am, Darian,” she replied.
Roke whimpered and blubbered on the ground, his eyes fixed on the barrel of the pistol pointed at his head. Trinica’s gaze was locked with Frey’s.
Frey had seen enough murders in his time. He’d just watched his engineer throw a man off the roof. But that was done in anger, was heavily provoked and, to Frey’s mind, well deserved. Roke might be a scumbag, maybe even a traitor, but he’d given them the information they wanted. To shoot him now was too cold-blooded.
Or maybe it was just that it was Trinica holding the gun. Maybe, if she pulled that trigger, he’d lose her forever.
Please don’t be like this.
Frey’s heart thumped in his chest. Snow drifted through the space between them. Seconds crawled past.
“Very well,” she said at last. “As you wish.” Then she lowered her gun and walked off toward the Ketty Jay without another word. Frey let out the breath he’d been holding.
“I need a doctor!” Roke cried suddenly. He was cradling his destroyed hand, face slack with shock. “Someone get me a doctor!”
Frey turned to Malvery.
“Don’t look at me,” Malvery said. “I’ve barely got enough supplies to look after you lot. I ain’t wasting any on him.”
“Sorry,” said Frey to Roke. “Looks like you’re on your own.”
“Maybe you can ask one of the factory workers for help,” Malvery added maliciously.
Roke was still howling when they left him, and he kept howling until the sound of the Ketty Jay’s engines drowned him out.
A PLACE FOR PARTINGS—A GIFT—THE GROG HATCH—THE PATHS OUR HEARTS TAKE US
he Delirium Trigger hung at anchor over the docks, between the frozen land and the ice-blue sky. She floated silently on aerium ballast, linked to the ground by thick chains. Fresh welding scars and burn marks marred her skin, tokens of her battle with the Storm Dog. The patch-up job hadn’t been pretty, but that was the price of speed.
Frey and Trinica stood by a wooden railing on a hillside path that overlooked the Yort settlement of Iktak. Here the path bulged outward, perhaps intended as a rest point, a place for carts to pass, or even a convenient spot to take in the view. Frey couldn’t imagine it was the latter. There was little to view in Iktak, just a depressing, industrial knot of pipes and factories and grimy snow that never quite thawed. That, and the bleak tundra beyond, an empty expanse broken by streaks of shrubbery in toxic colors.
Frey had stood in this exact spot when he’d said his goodbyes to Crake, a month ago. Back then the Delirium Trigger had been going in for repairs. Now it seemed they were all but completed.
A place for partings, then, he thought. For there was another one coming, and he’d feel this one even more keenly than the last.
After they left Endurance, a hasty conference in the cockpit had determined their next move. Fly to Iktak, collect the Delirium Trigger, and then move on Grist’s hideout in full force. Trinica was confident that her craft would be ready. She knew the workshop and said it was the best in