The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [163]
“Well, yes, I—”
“Well, nothing! You think I haven’t considered that? All this time when I suspected you were a Mane? I was your friend, Jez. You think I hadn’t wondered if I could fix you?”
Jez had a sinking feeling in her guts. “Can you?” she asked.
“No!” he crowed. “No! No one can! Because you died, Jez! Because your heart doesn’t beat! I could drive that daemon out of you, but it’s the only thing that’s stopping you being actually dead. Without that daemon, you’re just a corpse. Accept that! Make that a part of you!”
Jez was shocked by the viciousness in his voice, the hate on his face, the glee with which he crushed her hopes. Tears prickled at her eyes. She struggled to maintain her composure. She’d hurt him, and he wanted to hurt her back. She understood that. It didn’t make it hurt any less.
No wonder he left as soon as it was clear that she was a Mane. Maybe that was the spur he needed. He didn’t want her to ask him. He didn’t want to tell her that there was no help for her. That she was condemned to slowly turn into something else.
She fought to come up with some kind of argument, some way to persuade him that he was wrong. But his reasoning was infallible. In fact, had Jez not been so desperate to rid herself of the invader in her body, she might have seen it herself. Even someone who knew nothing about daemonism could have worked it out. But, just like Crake, she’d believed what she wanted to believe, what was necessary to keep going. And, just like him, she’d been doomed to failure from the start. Some things couldn’t be changed, no matter how hard you wished.
But now that she came to it, she found there was none of the disappointment or sorrow or misery she’d expected. Instead, she felt a bleak, sad sort of resignation. The peace of a prisoner as they walked to the gallows, knowing that all possibility of reprieve or escape was gone. Maybe she’d always known, deep down, that there was no going back.
“Alright,” she heard herself say. “I believe you.”
“Good,” he said.
She walked around the room. “There’s no chance.”
“None.”
“The way I am is the way I am.”
“Exactly.”
She shook herself, brushed a strand of hair back from her face, and nodded. “Then that’s how it is,” she said quietly.
Crake gazed mournfully at the empty shell of the golem. “That’s how it is,” he agreed.
She raised her head. “We’d like you to come back, Crake.”
The daemonist surveyed the room, strewn with the wreckage of his studies. “Yes,” he said. “I’m finished here.”
THEY HELD A SMALL gathering on a hillside on the way back to Iktak. There was nothing to bury, so they simply raised a marker: a slab of metal that they’d scored with one of Silo’s screwdrivers.
Bessandra Crake
Beloved niece of Grayther Crake
DY 138/32–147/32
The whole crew attended, except Pinn, who was no longer with them. Crake was glad of that. He’d only have asked moronic questions. The others understood well enough, though. They didn’t know the dead girl, nor why Crake was honoring her now when she’d died two years ago. But they came anyway and kept silent. Because he asked them to. Because he wanted them there, and they were his friends.
And though they couldn’t have failed to notice the similarity between the name on the grave and Crake’s golem, he knew they’d never guess the truth. It was too terrible, too impossible. Easier to assume he’d named the golem in her memory.
On reflection, Crake decided they were right.
Bess herself—the golem Bess—stood off to one side, her ball clutched in her massive hands, shifting restlessly. She’d picked up on the mood and made sad cooing noises, but he wasn’t sure whether she fathomed what was happening here. If his niece really was inside that armored skin, he’d surely have seen more of a reaction. She was witnessing her own funeral, after all. But the way she behaved was no more than might be expected of a faithful dog.
The wind was warm, rippling the grass, and sunlight