The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [159]
It had been a hard month, after all. Worrying about Lisinda, trying to work out what he should do. Suffering that bitch Dracken for the Cap’n’s sake. Even after she peeled off the ghoul mask and it turned out she was hot underneath, he still hated her. Not enough that he’d have said no, but you didn’t have to like a woman to sleep with her. It was simply a matter of letting the pressure off. A man had to let the pressure off every so often. Otherwise, he was apt to do all kinds of stupid things. That was just nature.
So the first thing Pinn did when he got out on his own was to let the pressure off. There was nobody giving him orders, nobody to stop him, nobody to make him drink coffee and sober up. It took him two days to spend all the money he had in the world.
It was only now, in the cold light of impending poverty, that he remembered why he’d stopped at Kingspire in the first place. In his haste to reach Lisinda, he’d been pushing the afterburners hard, and they’d eaten up all his fuel. He was running on fumes when he touched down in Kingspire and, unless some kind of miracle had occurred in the meantime, that was still the case.
The bartender was right. It was as if the world was conspiring against him. Trying to thwart his attempts to reach his sweetheart. If there really was an Allsoul, it certainly seemed to have a grudge against Pinn.
Miserably, he assembled a roll-up. He considered offering one to the bartender—it would be good to befriend him, since Pinn would be tapping him up for drinks later—but his tobacco was low and he wanted it for himself. He was just licking the paper when someone eased onto the bar stool next to him, arriving in a wave of strong perfume.
“Got one of those for me, stranger?” she asked.
She was plump, heavily rouged, and showing a terrifying amount of cleavage. Red hair spilled in curls over a mole-pocked expanse of white flesh. One of her front teeth slightly overlapped the other. She was at least twenty years older than he was, but she dressed like a woman half her age.
He handed over his roll-up, as if in a daze, and lit it for her with a match. She took a drag and smiled at him. It might have been the booze, but Pinn thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
“Strange and mysterious, the paths our hearts take us,” said the bartender sagely. But nobody was listening to him, so he drifted off to the other side of the bar, where there was another drunken soul in need of a sympathetic ear.
PLUME’S CONFESSION—CONVERSATIONS IN THE SANCTUM—AN ENDING, OF SORTS
ummer had got hold of Tarlock Cove, and Jez was glad to feel the sun on her face. After all that time in the arctic north, it was a pleasure to be reminded that not every day was a hostile one. She took winding lanes up the mountainside, past streets turned sluggish in the heat. The distant sound of crashing waves drifted up to her as the sea patiently battered at the coast far below.
The address that Crake had left with the Cap’n turned out to be a tall, narrow house tucked away down a well-kept cobbled alley. She approached the door and composed herself. Now that she was here, she felt nervous. She’d not seen Crake since that day on the All Our Yesterdays when her Mane side had taken over. By the time she was out of the infirmary, he was long gone. She had no idea what to expect from him.
Would he welcome her or be angry? Would he resent her for coming and scorn her attempts to talk him back to the Ketty Jay? Would he despise her for being part Mane? Or would he offer to help her, as she hoped? That was, after all, her reason for coming.
Yes, she wanted him back on the crew, for everyone’s sake. Yes, she was concerned about his well-being and worried that he might be in some kind of trouble. But first and foremost, she needed him for his expertise. Because she had a daemon inside her, and who but a daemonist could drive it out?
If anyone could help her deal with what she was, it was Crake.