When you stacked it all up, he’d done a pretty shabby job of things.
Maybe he just wasn’t cut from the right cloth. It seemed like there were people who carried the burden of the big decisions lightly. People born to a life of command: aristocrats and officers and leaders. Their choices saved lives and cost them, too. Those weren’t the kind of decisions that should be left in the hands of a shiftless orphan boy.
His whole command was a sham. Unwittingly, he’d tricked his crew into trusting him. By pretending to be a captain, he’d somehow become one, and for a time he believed he deserved it. But he didn’t. The evidence was pretty clear on that.
At least Trinica had the sense to turn her back on him before he destroyed her life a second time.
He dug into his pocket and brought out the compass that Crake had given him once upon a time. The silver ring was on his finger. The compass pointed at him now, accusingly. He tossed it onto his bunk and unscrewed the cap on the Shine bottle.
Damn it, what was the point? He’d tried to do everything right by Trinica and it still hadn’t worked. The first time, at least, had been his choice and his fault. When he ran out on their wedding, the overwhelming emotion was relief. Relief that he’d escaped her, and the child she carried. Relief that he was out of the trap. Regret had come later, and slowly. By the time he changed his mind it was too late.
But this time was like nothing he’d ever felt before. There was a tight point of pain just below his breastbone. He was taken by a sense of enormous absence and dumb bewilderment.
Everything around him had faded since she left him. The crew slid in and out of his world like ghosts. He barely listened to them and replied on automatic. Only when the Ketty Jay had been going down did he sharpen up, threat pulling him from torpor. But mostly he was mired in an exquisite misery, complex, layered and pervasive.
He looked at the bottle of Shine in his hands. A drop in each eye, and the cloudy joy of a drugged sleep. It was as good a way out as any. Was it really worth clinging to the faint hope that the Ketty Jay would come to life again in time to get them to where they were going? It all seemed pretty futile, in the end.
You’ve been losing since the day you were born, he told himself. You’ll never be a hero. You’ll always be an underdog. So take the drug. Stop fighting. Stop trying to be something you’re not.
He nodded to himself. He was right. All this time, he’d been trying to be something he wasn’t.
He flung the bottle of Shine against the wall. It smashed with a tinkle and a splatter of clear liquid.
Time to stop pretending, then.
‘Ugrik!’ he snapped as he slid down the ladder into the mess.
The Yort coughed through a faceful of cake, spraying crumbs across the table. It was one of Malvery’s sugar-laden creations that had been sitting in the pantry since the dawn of civilisation. Ugrik quickly slobbered down some coffee straight from the pot, as if fearing it would be snatched away from him.
Frey regarded him with mild disgust. Ugrik was still dressed in the plain beige prison uniform they’d found him in, except now it was covered in coffee stains. He wiped his bearded chops with his sleeve and burped. The oil lantern in front of him flared briefly.
‘We had a deal,’ Ugrik said. ‘You were meant to take me back to where that relic came from. Wouldn’t have let you break me out otherwise.’
‘What do you think I’m trying to do, arse-for-brains?’ said Frey, who was frankly in no mood for any bullshit. He stamped over – an awkward process on the slanted floor – and stood across the table from the Yort. ‘Now I need some answers, and I need them now, and if I hear one cryptic comment out of you I swear I’m gonna take every piece of cutlery in this room and shove it up your arse!’
He slammed his hands down on the table, making Ugrik jump. ‘This place we’re going. How far?’
‘Fifty kloms or so,’ said Ugrik.
Now they were getting somewhere. Fifty kloms, though. Too far to get there before tomorrow night on foot.
‘You’ve been there before, right?’ he asked Ugrik. ‘Course you have, that’s where you got the relic. So how’d you get there the first time?’
Ugrik rolled his eyes as if it was a stupid question. ‘Ridin’ on a ka’riish. Out here with some Sammie nomads.’
‘A ka-what? That an animal?’
‘Aye.’
‘And how did you find it? Where did you get that relic, anyhow?’
‘I had an idea where it was,’ he said, answering the first question but ignoring the second. ‘Found some tracks and followed ’em.’
‘Tracks?’
‘Aye. I got lucky. It was a still day, no wind. The sand hadn’t covered ’em up yet.’
‘What kind of tracks?’
‘Tyre tracks.’
Frey slammed his hands down on the table again, this time in triumph. Ugrik jumped a second time.
‘Wish you’d stop doin’ that,’ he mumbled.
‘Can you find it again? This place?’
‘Aye. Due east. Can’t miss it. Well, actually you can, but I—’
‘Right,’ said Frey sharply. ‘Get up. We’re going.’
‘Can I finish me cake first?’
‘No!’ Frey snapped.
Ugrik gave a resigned sigh. He pushed out his chair, as if he was about to get to his feet. Then, suddenly, he lunged across the table and snatched up the cake, stuffing as much of it as he could into his mouth before Frey wrestled it off him. Ugrik glared at him resentfully, chewing.
‘Baftard,’ he said.
Frey filled a bag with supplies from the mess and then bullied Ugrik down into the cargo hold. He encountered nobody on the way. Crake was in his quarters, being nursed by Malvery for a mild concussion. Pinn and Jez were out of it. Harkins was hiding, Silo was working, and he had no idea where Ashua was.
Nobody to stop him, then.
He slung the bag in the back of one of the Rattletraps parked in the middle of the hold, then walked over to the lever that controlled the cargo ramp and threw it. The cargo ramp whined and screeched as it opened, letting in moonlight and the chilly desert breeze. It bumped to a stop several feet off the ground, due to the fact that the Ketty Jay’s tail was tilted in the air.
‘Get the straps,’ he told Ugrik. He pointed to a corner of the hold. ‘And grab some fuel from over there.’ Ugrik got to work on the restraining straps that stopped the Rattletrap from sliding about. Frey stalked purposefully towards Crake’s sanctum at the back of the hold. He threw aside the tarp and walked in.
The relic was lying in a tangle of wires and cables, where it had been thrown in the crash. The blade still sat in its cradle inside its smooth black case. Frey walked over, snapped the case shut and picked it up.
A curious cooing noise from behind him made him turn. It was Bess, hunched in the shadows. She stirred and the chips of light behind her face-grille glinted into life.
‘Only me, Bess,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’
Bess sagged again, and the lights of her eyes went out.
When he returned, he found Ugrik putting canisters of fuel in the back of the Rattletrap, along with a bundle of tarp and some twine. He didn’t bother to ask why they needed tarp. He was just keen to be out of here before any of his crew happened along.
‘You reckon this thing’ll run?’ Ugrik asked, as they climbed in.
‘You said you saw wheel tracks. Silo says it’s only the delicate stuff on the Ketty Jay that’s gotten messed up. And these Rattletraps are about as basic as you get.’ He fired the ignition, and the Rattletrap growled into life. ‘Like I said.’
Ugrik looked around the empty hold. ‘Ain’t nobody else comin’?’
‘Reckon they’ve done more than enough on my behalf already,’ said Frey. ‘This is just you and me.’
‘Well, alright,’ said Ugrik with a grin. ‘I like a man who goes down swingin’.’
‘That’s the thing about underdogs,’ Frey replied. ‘We never kn
ow when we’re beaten.’
He stamped on the accelerator. The Rattletrap raced across the hold, down the cargo ramp, and leaped off the edge into the night.
Thirty-Eight
Deserters – The Vanishing Isle – The Real Story – Tarpaulin – A Mirage, Possibly
The sun, the relentless sun.
Frey had briefly wondered why Ugrik had bothered to pack a sheet of tarpaulin while they were loading up the Rattletrap. He’d assumed it was another facet of the Yort’s general oddness. It wasn’t until dawn, when they stopped to fix the tarp to the roll cage with twine, that he saw the sense in it. Frey had brought water, but he hadn’t thought about shade. He never was much of a forward planner.
He drove stripped to the waist, his back running with sweat. The sand was bright enough to blind. The morning had been the worst, when they were driving into the sun. Now it was overhead, and the tarp was doing its work, but his eyes still hurt from the light and the sand thrown up by the Rattletrap’s wheels
He took a swig of warm water from a canteen and passed it to Ugrik in the passenger seat. Ugrik was also half-naked, revealing a scarred torso covered in tattoos. He had a bit of a gut on him, but he was built like a bulldog.
Ugrik had been muttering for an hour now. The conversation he was conducting with himself veered from argument to agreement and back again. Frey could only imagine what was being said. He couldn’t understand a word of the yawling, snarling Yortish tongue.
Eventually, Frey couldn’t bear it any more. He had to talk. He needed something to distract him from the monotony of the journey and of other, darker thoughts. And besides, he was beginning to feel left out.
‘So what’s your story, Ugrik?’ he asked.
‘Eh?’ Ugrik seemed confused by the interruption.
‘You’re an explorer, right?’
‘Aye,’ came the suspicious reply.
‘Explore anything good?’
‘Oh, plenty,’ he said. ‘I was on the first craft out after they found New Vardia. Spent years out there, I did. Trailblazin’ and so forth.’
‘Yeah?’ Frey was interested. He’d always thought of New Vardia as a possible bolt-hole if he managed to screw things up too badly in the country of his birth. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Wild out there. Every man for himself.’ He ran a clenched hand down the red braid of his beard and tugged at the end absently. ‘My kind of place.’
‘The broadsheets reckon that whole towns full of people disappear out there. Without a trace. That true?’
‘Aye,’ said Ugrik. ‘Gone. Hard to tell if they upped and left or if something did for ’em. Some head into the wilderness ’cause they don’t want to pay the Archduke’s taxes. They say there’s a whole lot of people all banded together in secret under a man named Red Arcus, who don’t answer to no Archdukes or Chiefs or God-Emperors, nor no Speaker for the Republic like they got in Thace.’
Frey steered the Rattletrap along the flank of a dune, careful not to skid on the loose sand. ‘You ever seen any of ’em?’
‘Not a sign,’ he said. ‘Lot of stuff goes missin’ out there, but it’s the frontier.’ He cackled. ‘Course, that’s only one story. Lot of worse tales they tell. Some say New Vardia weren’t as deserted as we thought when we set down, and them that were there don’t take kindly to sharin’ their land.’ He scratched his cheek and snorted. ‘But I got nothin’ to say about that.’
‘Ever been to Jagos?’ Frey asked, keen to keep him talking. He was better entertainment than the silence.
‘Aye. I was one o’ the first.’
‘What’s there?’
Ugrik’s face darkened. ‘Fog ’n’ shadows. Seems like the Wrack reaches right down into that land. A barren place, I saw, and damn if there’s not somethin’ fearful unnatural about it.’
‘Didn’t reckon on a famous explorer being superstitious,’ Frey said, with a sidelong glance.
‘I know what I know. Strange things happen there. They’re settlin’ New Vardia as fast as they’re able, but only madmen go to Jagos.’
Frey opened his mouth to point out the irony in that statement, then decided not to bother. ‘Anywhere you haven’t been?’
‘Peleshar,’ he grunted. ‘That’s next on the list. It’s a big ’un.’
‘You haven’t heard? It’s disappeared, or some such bollocks.’
‘Oh, aye? Your broadsheets tell you that, did they?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. He’d seen headlines in some of the more lurid publications. PELESHAR: THE VANISHING ISLE! Crake had sniffed at it and dismissed it as rubbish.
‘Well, this time they’re right. Sammies lost it.’ He chuckled. ‘Don’t mean I can’t find it again.’
Frey raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously? You actually believe there was a whole country that disappeared?’
‘Lot of things we don’t know about Peleshar,’ Ugrik said. ‘Only one aircraft came back from the Sammie’s first expedition out there, and the pilot had some tales to tell, but not many that made much sense. Then the stupid bastards sent a war fleet, ’cause that’s how Sammies are. Invade, invade, invade. Those fellers didn’t ever come back either.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Frey scoffed. ‘You’re making it up.’
‘Believe what you like,’ Ugrik huffed. ‘Only one of us is the son of the High Chief of Yortland, y’know. We got spies just like everyone else.’
Frey drove on for a while. He wasn’t sure whether Ugrik was taking him for a ride, or the other way round. The sun beat down, and the Rattletrap growled and sputtered.
‘Really?’ he asked at length, unable to resist. ‘I mean, the Sammies had a war fleet? And they lost them?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why didn’t anyone hear about it? I mean, it’s bad enough that they have a war fleet at all, but—’
Ugrik muttered something to himself, then waved a calloused hand at Frey. ‘Most people don’t know a thing about what goes on down here. Anyway, that was more than twenty years ago. A few years before the First Aerium War. They had plenty o’ aircraft then.’
‘You’re joking. They’ve known about Peleshar for that long? That’s . . .’ he worked it out, ‘That’s before Crewen and Skale discovered New Vardia.’
‘Crewen and Skale were lookin’ for Peleshar,’ said Ugrik.
‘Bullshit!’ Frey said. ‘You’re having me on.’
‘Course they were! Your lot heard about what happened in Samarla, with your spies and whatnot, and you sent your fellers out to look. Only the Great Storm Belt was kicking up again, and with aircraft not being so good back in those days, lot of men got lost and some got blew off course. New Vardia was an accident.’
‘Bullshit!’ he said again, although he wanted to believe it. It fitted with his sense of the world, that it was a random and ridiculous place.
‘You don’t have a bloody clue, do you? Half the reason they had the First Aerium War was ’cause Samarla felt threatened by having Peleshar over there – that ’n’ wounded pride – and they needed the aerium to tool up an even bigger fleet!’
‘Bullshit!’ Frey cried.
Ugrik roared with laughter. ‘It’s true! Then the Storm Belt really kicked up, and for the next fifteen years or so you couldn’t even get across the Ordic Abyssal from Pandraca, and meantime we were all at bloody war and no one much fancied goin’ the other way round the planet to try ’n’ find it again. After the storms cleared and everyone had stopped killin’ each other, they all headed out west again. But Peleshar wasn’t there no more.’
‘It’s been seven years or so since they’ve been heading west to settle!’ said Frey.
‘Aye. Seven years since the Sammies knew Peleshar had gone. Seven years since your Archduke knew, and my father, and everyone else wi’ spies in the right places. Took your broadsheets a sight longer to catch up.’
Frey shook his head. ‘That is quite a tale,’ he said. ‘I could dine out on that one for a while.’
‘Heh,’ said Ugrik. He
took a swig from the canteen.
They drove on into the late afternoon. Ugrik drowsed in the heat. Frey steered the Rattletrap across the dunes, always heading east by the compass.
He found himself unexpectedly light of heart. He’d cast himself out into the wilderness, alone but for his guide, and there was liberation in that. He wasn’t intimidated by the endless emptiness of the desert or the punishing sun. He welcomed the threat of it all.
For the first time in years, he only had himself to worry about. His crew were behind him. Their fates were beyond his ability to influence. Trinica was gone, a remnant of an old life. He put her out of his mind as best he could. He’d grieve tomorrow, if he ever got there.
All he needed to think about was tonight.
His life had been compressed to a handful of hours, and the proximity of death unburdened him. If he survived, if he somehow evaded the doom that awaited, the years would stretch out before him again, unfolding like a concertina into the future. Then he would have to return to the Ketty Jay and deal with his broken aircraft, his marooned crew. But for now, just for this one day, he was free. It was only now he realised how heavily his responsibilities had laid on him.
‘It’s gonna be alright, Darian,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Gonna be alright.’
The Rattletrap’s engine sputtered, clunked and juddered before coughing its last in a wheeze of noxious black smoke. The buggy rolled gently to a halt.
Ugrik opened his eyes to find Frey thumping his forehead against the steering wheel. He blinked, rubbed his eyes and looked around.
‘Why’ve we stopped?’ he asked.