The Black Lung Captain (5 page)

It was the thought that sprang into his head, in that moment when he realy believed he was going to die.

What will I leave behind?

He couldn't think of a single thing. No property, no family. If he was erased right now, what evidence would there be that he'd lived? What was he worth, except a few drunken toasts from a loyal crew? There were six people in his life he could count as friends, and they were a rag-tag bunch at best.

Suddenly, it didn't seem enough.

What about Retribution Falls, eh?
he asked himself.
You pretty much saved the Coalition back then!

He felt a smal surge of pride as he remembered the events of the previous winter, when he'd been framed for the murder of the Archduke's son. In the process of wriggling out of that particular predicament, he ended up averting a coup against the Archduke by leading the Navy to a hidden pirate army at Retribution Fals.

But even that didn't feel like much, if he was honest. He didn't give a toss about the Coalition. One Archduke was much the same as the other to him. He hadn't been acting out of noble intentions; he'd been trying to save his own hide. And besides, the only people who knew about his involvement were some Navy personnel and a few Century Knights. Better that way. If the pirate community ever found out about his rather spectacular betrayal, he wouldn't last long.

It didn't
mean
anything. Nothing
meant
anything.

He swigged his grog. The year since Retribution Fals had been squandered, like al the years before it. The money they made had been spent. And now here they were again, living day-to-day, scrabbling for enough ducats to keep the
Ketty Jay
in the sky. Silo would need parts for the engine, of that he was sure. Frey wouldn't have enough to buy them. It was a miserable state of affairs.

He wondered what would have happened if they'd got away from Retribution Fals with
all
the treasure, instead of the measly portion he ended up with. Would he have used it to buy a tavern, perhaps? Would he have settled down with a sweetheart and raised children? Or would he have wasted it on games of Rake with ever-higher stakes?

It wasn't even a question, realy.

His whole life he'd been obsessed with defending his freedom. Freedom from commitments and responsibility. He'd dreamed of a buccaneer's life, of riches and adventure. But somehow the riches always eluded him, and what adventures he had were less than romantic in reality.

Living without anchors had its consequences. It was dangerously easy to drift.

His thoughts were interrupted by the smel of perfume. He looked to his left. There, on a stool, was the pretty redhead who'd been watching him in the other room. She brushed her hair behind one ear and gave him a shy smile.

'Helo,' she said.

Later, when they were together beneath the covers, he tried to make himself care about her. He thought about the hopes and dreams she'd bored him with on the way to her bedroom, and attempted to feel something. That was what a decent man would do, surely?

But whenever he closed his eyes, he saw a corn-haired young woman, as he'd known her before her life turned to death and tragedy. A woman he'd almost married, but ruined instead.

The redhead's slender body moved beneath him, but it was Trinica Dracken he felt there.

Four

A Rude Awakening — Grist's Proposition —

An Explorer's Tale — Risky Business — A Hard Bargain

Someone was caling Frey's name. He snorted and snuffled and did his best not to wake up. He could smel cigar smoke, but he wasn't curious enough to find out why.omeone was caling Frey's name. He snorted and snuffled and did his best not to wake up. He could smel cigar smoke, but he wasn't curious enough to find out why.

'Cap'n!' Jez's voice. Damn that woman! Whenever she woke him up it meant trouble. The cloying muzziness of sleep and the weight of a mild hangover helped him resist the cal to action.

'Cap'n, I know you're awake, and if you don't get up now I'l shoot you.'

Frey sighed and opened his eyes. He was in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed. Standing at the end of it were Jez and three strangers. One he recognised as the redhead he'd slept with last night. That explained the room and the bed. He struggled to remember her name and failed.

The other two he'd never seen before. One was a big, burly man with a thick black beard and a fat cigar chomped between yelowed teeth. He had a broken, lumpy nose, smudged black with frostbite at the tip, and a cauliflower ear. A heavy cutlass and a brace of pistols hung from his belt, deliberately visible underneath his dirty greatcoat.

His companion was slightly built and better dressed, with an aristocratic look about him. He wore a finely tailored shirt and trousers, loose and casual, and he had a long face and strong nose. He'd gone prematurely bald on top of his head, which made him look older than his face and eyes suggested.

Frey took stock of the situation. The redhead looked rather alarmed and was chewing her lip. She hadn't dared refuse these strangers entry when they came knocking, but now she wondered what she'd done. The last thing she wanted was someone murdered in her bed. Apart from anything else, the cleaning bil would be horrendous.

Jez was standing behind and to the left of the big man. She had her hand on her pistol butt, to let Frey know she had him covered. She shot her captain a look, but it was too early in the morning to decipher what she meant.
Relax? Danger?
He couldn't tel.

'Darian Frey,' said the big man with the cigar. He sounded like he was gargling with gravel. 'You're a hard man to find.'

'That's why I'm stil alive,' he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. 'Mind teling me how you did it?'

'Heard about the orphanage. Sounded like your handiwork. After that it was just a matter of askin' around.'

Frey gave Jez a baleful glare. 'And how did
you
find me?'

'Women's intuition, Cap'n,' said Jez, holding up a smal compass, out of sight of the others. Frey flopped back against the pilow and groaned. Another of Crake's little devices. The compass was linked to a thin silver ring worn on Frey's little finger. Both were thraled with weak daemons that oscilated at the same frequency. So Crake had told him, anyway. The upshot was that the needle of the compass always pointed towards the ring. Crake had thought it would be a good idea to be able to find their captain in times of emergency, especialy as he had a habit of disappearing on three-day drunken Rake sessions without teling anyone where he was. Frey complained that they were treating him like a wayward adolescent, but in the end he agreed because he thought the ring looked good on him.

'Could this not have waited til I got back to the
Ketty Jay
?' Frey asked.

Jez shrugged. 'They said it was urgent. Wasn't any teling when you'd be back. Might not have been til next week.'

'And we ain't got that kind of time,' said the big man. He looked at the redhead and sucked on his cigar. 'Forgive the intrusion, ma'am. We'l be out o' your hair shortly.'

'You're not going to hurt him, are you?' the redhead asked anxiously. Damn, what was her
name?

The big man chuckled, smoke leaking out between his teeth, rising around his head in a cloud. 'Hurt him? No, ma'am. I'm going to offer him a job.'

*

Thirty minutes later, Frey found himself back in Thornlodge Holow's only tavern, enjoying a breakfast of chicken, potatoes and a morning beer to shake off the effects of last night's grog.

There were four of them at the table: Frey, Jez and the two strangers. The cigar-smoking man was Harvin Grist, captain of the
Storm Dog.
His aristocratic companion had introduced himself as an explorer, by the name of Rodley Hodd.-

Frey was enjoying every bite of his breakfast. Food tasted better when it was bought by someone else. 'Seriously,' he said around a mouthful of chicken. 'Why me?'

'You are
the
Darian Frey, aren't you?' said Hodd. 'The Darian Frey who robbed the
Delirium Trigger
while she was berthed in a hangar in Rabban? Who stole Trinica Dracken's treasure from right under her nose?'

That story had grown in the teling, it seemed. It had been charts, not treasure, he'd stolen. Charts that showed the location of the hidden pirate town of Retribution Fals. But he was happy to claim the glory either way.

'What if I am?'

'Then you travel with a daemonist, don't you?' said Grist. 'A man who controls a great metal golem.'

Frey was immediately on his guard. Crake had been on the run from somebody or something ever since he'd come on board the
Ketty Jay,
but Frey had never asked what. There were plenty, like the Awakeners and their folowers, who thought daemonists should be hanged for dabbling with strange and terrible entities.

'What if I do?'

'Then I got a proposition for you,' said Grist. 'A dangerous expedition, it's true, but there's vast wealth at the end of it.'

Frey's suspicions abruptly faded into insignificance. 'Vast wealth, you say?'

Grist chewed his cigar and grinned. 'Vast.'

Frey sat back in his chair and took a swig of beer. Wel. For once, it was looking like being a day worth getting up for. 'Speak your piece,' he said.

Grist leaned forward, splaying thick, caloused fingers across the table. The smel of sweat and dirt clung to him, old smoke and new. 'I got certain
interests
,' he said. 'I'm a smuggler, to be plain. Mostly I run Shine and rumble-dust, but now and then I deal in more unusual bits 'n' bobs. Exotic artefacts and the like. Samarlan antiques, Thacian spices. Been known to steal rare aircraft for colectors, when the mood takes me.'

'Can't blame a man for making a living,' Frey said. His ears had pricked up at the mention of Shine. He was partial to a drop or two himself.

'My point is, I get around, and I hear a lot,' said Grist. 'One day I heard there was some explorer shooting his mouth off about something he'd seen.' He thumbed at Hodd. 'So I found him, and I asked what it was al about. Says he found a downed aircraft in a rainforest. A craft ful o' treasures, just lying there, abandoned. Waitin' for someone to come take 'em.'

'A rainforest?' Frey asked. He raised his flagon and looked over at Hodd. 'Where were you? Samaria?'

'Kurg.'

Frey choked into his beer, spraying a cloud of froth out of the flagon and al over his face. He wiped it away with his sleeve and stared at Grist.

'You want to go to
Kurg?
'

'Aye,' said Grist. 'And I want you and your crew to come with me.'

Frey blew out air between his lips. Kurg. The vast island off Vardia's north-eastern coast. Impenetrable. Hostile. Populated by beasts so horrible that the mere mention of them made the local wildlife scatter.

You must be joking,
he thought. But Grist most certainly wasn't.

'I assume you've got some proof of your story?' Jez asked Hodd.

'Oh yes!' Hodd said eagerly, as if he'd been waiting the whole conversation for this moment. He drew an object from his pack, al bundled up in cloth. He laid it on the table and unwrapped it with a flourish.

It was a piece of black metal, of bizarre and foreign design, the length of an arm. Circles, semicircles and curves, stacked on top of each other or interlinked.

There was the suggestion of pattern and symmetry, but Frey couldn't quite force it to make sense. Jez craned in to look closer.

'Ever seen anything like
that?
Hodd chalenged.

'No,' said Frey. 'But there's plenty I haven't seen. Could be from somewhere far off. Peleshar? Nobody knows
what
that lot are up to.'

'I'l tel you who made it,' said Hodd, his voice dropping to a whisper. 'The Azryx!'

Staring at the object was giving Frey a headache, so he stopped. 'The who?'

'Azryx,' Jez murmured, stil gazing at the strange design. Her eyes had become unfocused in that strange way they sometimes did. 'A lost civilisation with highly advanced technology. They're supposed to have died out and disappeared beneath the northern ice. At least that's if you believe the rumours. There's never been any real evidence they ever existed.'

'Until now!' said Hodd, stabbing the table with his index finger.

'You appear to know your stuff, ma'am,' said Grist. 'Care to say how?'

Jez blinked as she surfaced from her daze. 'I used to be the expedition navigator for a man caled Professor Malstrom. He was an authority on the Azryx. We spent months hauling al over Yortland looking for clues. Never found any.'

'Ah, the Professor! I know him wel!' Hodd cried. 'How is the old bugger?'

'You can't know him
that
wel. He's been dead more than four years,' said Jez.

Hodd looked awkward for a moment, then made an airy gesture with his hand. 'It's so easy to drift out of touch. Especialy when you're off in the far corners of the world.'

Lost civilisations?
It was al sounding a little bit ridiculous now, and Frey had already pegged Hodd as a braying halfwit. If not for the presence of Grist, Frey wouldn't be entertaining this fool at al. But Grist seemed like a man who knew his business, so he supposed there must be something to the story.

Frey patted the object on the table. 'Why don't you tel us where you got this, and let
us
decide if it comes from some made-up civilisation or not? It'l give me a chance to finish my breakfast, if nothing else.'

His patronising tone was lost on his target. 'Of course, of course. Alow me to convince you.'

Frey waved a fork at him, his mouth already ful. 'Please try.'

'I'm an explorer of some renown, even if I do say so myself,' Hodd began. 'I take on the missions that others won't touch. Men more short-sighted than I wil map New Vardia and Jagos while I search for the truth yet unknown, for mysteries beyond imagining!'

Frey glanced at Grist, and was pleased to see the other captain rol his eyes. At least
one
of them wasn't an idiot.