Jez had spent her whole life looking for her place. For as long as she could remember, she'd been unable to fit in. She'd always had friends, but somehow it never seemed like the friendships she read about in books. She liked them, and they liked her, and it went no deeper. If she never saw them again, she wouldn't have shed a tear. Nobody said so, but she knew they felt the same about her.
Her childhood was spent watching her companions with secret envy. She was always the last to be involved. The cog in the gears that didn't quite mesh.
When she was a little older, she began to blame her father. Him and his obsession with trying to improve her position in life. He was a craftbuilder, an artisan, more respected than the peasantry but still a world away from the scholars, officials and aristocrats.
Once he'd been content with his lot; but after the sickness took her mother, he changed. Suddenly, a craftbuilder's life wasn't good enough for his daughter any more. He forced her to study when she wasn't helping him in the workshop. He saved up for a tutor who'd knock the common edges off her accent. By the time Jez reached the age where she just wanted to be the same as everyone else, she was already different in a thousand little ways.
Her apologetic displays of knowledge intimidated her friends. She found herself frustrated by their lack of ambition. Her horizons had been expanded through literature, but theirs hadn't, and she couldn't understand how they could think so small. They were still friends, as they'd always been; but no matter how she tried, she was faintly alien to them now.
There was no help among the educated, either. They spotted her immediately, and despised her as a try-hard attempting to rise above her station. A few small friendships blossomed, but they could only survive in isolation, and circumstances eventually put an end to them.
She hardened herself to rejection. She embarked on adolescent romances, and found them as unsatisfying as her friendships had been. She always broke them off before her partner could.
Her father talked of university, but it was his dream and not hers. Someone like her didn't get into places like that. And even if she did, she'd never escape her birth. It would be just another round of being on the outside. So when the time came, she broke her father's heart and went off to see the world in the little A-18 he'd built for her sixteenth birthday. Out there, she'd find her place. Or if not, at least she'd be alone on her own terms.
Funny, how things turned out.
She walked out of sight of the men in the dell and picked her way through the trees to a likely looking rock, where she sat down. There, she pulled out a book and opened it. The writing was all circles and arcs. It still smelled of the captain's cabin in the dreadnought.
The patterns made no sense to her, but she stared at them anyway.
'Awakeners,' said Crake. 'I hate Awakeners.'
Frey wasn't too fond of them himself. It was the Awakeners that had been behind the attempt to frame him and his crew for the murder of the Archduke's eldest son. And now, if Crake's daemon was to be believed, they were behind the theft of Grist's mysterious power source.
He shifted uncomfortably on the ridge and angled the spyglass down at the Awakener's compound. It was a collection of grand buildings, the size of a small town, with the look of a sprawling university or an ancient library complex. A high wall surrounded it, studded with guard posts, overlooked by a clock tower that rose from the central quad. It sat on a bare island in the midst of a deep blue lake that ran the length of the valley. Next to it was a landing pad, upon which several aircraft sat dormant. Hovering at anchor over the lake was the dirty black bulk of the Delirium Trigger, spoiling the sense of idyll entirely.
Frey felt a surge of irritation and anger. What was Trinica doing, working for the Awakeners again? Hadn't she learned her lesson last time, after the whole debacle with Duke Grephen? She was probably already under sentence of treason because of that little affair. But she just had to get involved, didn't she? She had to get in his way. Just to spite him.
There was a bigger question here than Trinica's involvement, however. What interest did the Awakeners have in a crashed Mane aircraft? Why had they sent anyone at all?
He scanned the outer wall. Sentinels walked there, armed with rifles. They wore grey, high-collared cassocks and carried twinned daggers in their belts. On their breasts was the Cipher, the emblem of their faith, a tangled design of small, linked circles.
Huge lamps like lighthouses had been built on every corner, no doubt powered by generators inside the compound. Approaching unseen across the lake and the barren island would be impossible, whether by day or night.
Grist lay next to him, smoking angrily. 'You see a way in?'
'There isn't a way in,' Frey said.
'There's always a way in,' Grist replied.
Frey put down the spyglass. 'Well, I don't much fancy assaulting a heavily fortified compound with a handful of men, if that's what you're thinking. Might as well shoot each other now, save everyone a bit of time.'
'Can't we sneak inside?' suggested Crattle, raising his head to look over his captain at Frey.
'Even if we could, which we probably can't, what happens then?' Frey asked. 'Follow the arrows to the treasure? Look how big that place is. We'd need days to search it.'
'In disguise, then?' Crattle persisted.
'You'd be caught,' said Crake, who lay on Frey's other side. 'Without even a basic knowledge of the Cryptonomicon, they'd identify you as a fraud before the end of your first conversation.'
Frey looked over at the daemonist. He certainly seemed brighter and sharper today than he had been of late. Frey had found him awake early, polishing Bess while Silo patched up rust spots on her armour and fixed broken rings in her chain mail. And Frey had to admit, Crake had stepped up when it came to do his part. He had no idea what the daemonist had gone through to find the whereabouts of the sphere, but he was sure it hadn't been easy.
Grist took a puff on his cigar and scowled. His good cheer had been almost entirely absent since Trinica had robbed them. Without it, he was an unpleasant man to be around.
'So if we can't get in, what do we do now?'
Frey rolled his shoulders, which were getting stiff from lying there. 'Now, we find out what the Awakeners are up to, why they're interested in the sphere at all, and why they went to the trouble of hiring a pirate to get it instead of doing it themselves. Once we know that, we'll have a better idea of how to get our hands on it.'
'And how d'you propose to do that?' Grist asked.
'I'm gonna do my best not to propose at all,' Frey said grimly.
Crake caught on. 'Amalicia Thade,' he said with a grin.
Frey had the look of a man facing a firing squad. 'Amalicia Thade.'
There was a long, grave and meaningful pause before Grist said:
'Who?'
Sixteen
Amalicia Thade -— A Warm Welcome —
Invitations — How The Rich Live
The Thade estate sprawled across the forested hills, an island of carefully maintained paradise. Raked paths meandered round well-tended lawns and willow-fringed lakes, past fountains and gazebos built in pre-Revolution style. Statues of monarchs and dukes stood on plinths. A glassy arboretum was perched on a hilltop. Next to it was a hunting lodge and an observatory with the lens of a huge brass telescope poking through a slit in the dome. At the centre of the grounds, a vast manse sat foursquare and impressive, with walls of robin's-egg blue, tall windows and alabaster eaves.
Frey lounged in the back of the open-top motorised carriage, and let the sun warm his skin. This far south, springtime felt like summer. A manservant sat on the driver's bench up front, gripping the steering wheel as if it was something unfamiliar. He was dressed in a stiff uniform of white and cream, and doing his best not to sweat and ruin it.
Frey ran his knuckles over the leather of the seat and looked out at the estate as they puttered up the drive. All of this was Amalicia's. And this place was only a fraction of her holdings. He knew the Th
ade family was rich, but he hadn't quite imagined the scale of it.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
What would their reunion be like, he wondered? He had to admit to a certain amount of trepidation. After all, he'd been indirectly responsible for the death of her father. But then Amalicia had been rather keen on getting him hanged anyway. She hated him for cloistering her in an Awakener hermitage. That was also Frey's fault, since he'd been the one who deflowered her, but Frey wasn't about to take the blame for her father's prudishness.
Gallian Thade's death made Amalicia the head of the Thade dynasty and the inheritor of all that he saw before him and more. But still, girls were apt to get cranky when you got their dads shot by the Century Knights. He just hoped she was in the mood to look on the bright side.
The carriage pulled up in front of the house where half a dozen manservants were lined up outside the grand double doors. As he was dismounting, the doors were thrown open and Amalicia walked through.
He caught his breath as he saw her. She was more dazzling than he remembered. She must have been twenty-three by now, or thereabouts, but she seemed unaccountably mature for her age. More the elegant young lady and less the frisky, fiery girl. Her long black hair had been cut short to show off her neck. She wore riding boots, hip-hugging trousers and a silk blouse. There were hints of silver at her throat and wrist.
'Darian,' she said with a smile, as she descended the steps. Frey managed to get down from the carriage without falling. He gawked at her, dazzled. This was the woman he'd forgotten about, the woman he'd left behind in an Awakener hermitage without a second thought? This was the one whose letters he'd been ignoring? What was wrong with him?
She presented her hand. He stared at it for a few moments before realising what he was supposed to do, then raised it to his lips and kissed it.
'Come inside, please,' she said.
He followed, dazed, wrongfooted by the change in her. She was confident where before she'd been arrogant. Assured where she'd been spoiled. She'd grown to suit her new role quickly and well.
The entrance hall was colossal, with a curving staircase of polished stone. Thin pillars drew the eye to the arched moulding on the ceiling. Valuable urns rested on pedestals with the casual precariousness only found in houses that didn't have dogs or children in them.
A manservant stood by the doors to a drawing room. He opened them and Amalicia led Frey through into a beautiful room with gold-chased panelling and a fireplace that would embarrass a duke. Settees and divans were arranged near a side table of sweetmeats and refreshments. A servant was pouring tea as they entered.
Amalicia clapped her hands. 'Leave us,' she said. 'Darian and I have a lot of catching up to do.' The servant scurried out, and the handsome manservant pushed the doors closed. As he did so, Frey caught his gaze. The manservant winced in sympathy, and then the doors clicked shut.
Frey didn't like that wince. He had a dreadful premonition of what was coming. He turned around to see Amalicia advancing on him with terrible purpose, her serene, aristocratic smile turned to an ugly snarl. 'Now wait a mi—' he began, but he was interrupted by the heel of her riding boot connecting with his jaw hard enough to send him tumbling over the back of a settee.
He was still seeing stars as she pulled him up by the collar of his shirt. Where was the pretty, cultured lady of a moment ago? Surely she couldn't be this rabid harpy, drawing back a bunched fist to drive into his eye socket?
'Where . . . were . . . you?' she screeched, punctuating each word with a savage strike to the face. 'Where . . . were . . . you?'
'Will you let me explain?' he spluttered. A couple of his teeth felt loose.
'No! You always do that! You explain, and I stop being mad, and I forgive you and then you leave me again! You're a liar, Darian. A damned liar!'
'I never lied to you!' he lied.
She stared at him, open-mouthed, and then kicked him between the legs. 'Don't you dare try and weasel out of this one! Don't you dare!'
He barely heard her words. They seemed to come from a great distance away, floating through a fog of perfect agony. There was a strange, sad void in his lower belly, a grey pall of aching misery, as if his guts were attending the funeral of his reproductive system.
'Why weren't you there when I got out of that hermitage, Frey?' she demanded. 'Where was my dashing buccaneer lover waiting to sweep me off my feet? What about all those things you said?'
Frey tried to protest that she wouldn't have got out of there at all if not for him, but the only noise that emerged was a shrill whimper at a pitch audible only to bats.
'Not a word! For a year!' Amalicia shrieked. 'Don't even pretend you didn't get my letters, Frey! I sent them everywhere!'
Frey held up a hand and swallowed against a hard lump in his throat that may or may not have been one of his own testicles. 'I thought . . .' he croaked. 'I thought . . .'
'Thought what? Thought I'd forgotten your promise? Thought I'd forgotten that you said you'd marry me?'
Technically, Frey had done no such thing, but he thought it unwise to argue the point, given his present situation. 'I thought . . . you'd reject me.'
'You thought what?'
He caught his breath. The ache in his groin was a little less unbearable now, enough that he could manage a coherent sentence. 'I thought I wasn't good enough for you.'
'Oh, that's just rubbish!' Amalicia scoffed. 'What an excuse!'
'Look around you!' he said, swinging out an arm. 'You see? Look at what you have! You're a lady. Sure, you loved me when your father was alive. What better way to piss off Daddy than by hitching up with some lowlife freebooter, right? But the game's changed now. Daddy's gone. We dreamed of running away, but now there's nothing to run away from. What do you need me for, when you have all this?'
Amalicia looked shocked. 'It was never about that!'
But she was already on the back foot, and Frey kept pushing. 'Don't you think I know what would have happened next? The society balls, the dinner parties, mixing with the rich and powerful? How long would it have been before I embarrassed you? How long before you got bored of me and found someone who knew how to eat soup without slurping?'
'Darian, that's not true,' she protested, but it came out weak and unconvincing. She'd been so busy being angry and lovesick that it had probably never occurred to her until now.
'It is true, and you know it,' he said, getting delicately to his feet with the help of a nearby chair. He felt himself to be sure everything was still where it was supposed to be.
Amalicia stamped huffily over to the windows, frustrated at having her righteous wrath blunted. She crossed her arms and stared out over the lawns of her estate. Regrouping. After a moment she whirled and came back. 'So you just decided it was over?' she snapped. 'You just left without a word?'
'No,' he said. 'I always meant to come back to you. But not as some filthy pirate. I wanted to come back as a man worthy of a lady like you. I wanted to come back rich and respectable. But I failed you, Amalicia. I failed.'
The Pinn Defence. Neat, deadly, and virtually impossible to refute. Nothing cut a girl's legs out from under her like a noble justification of an apparently ignoble act. The angrier they were, the worse they felt when you sprang the trap.
Tears shimmered in his eyes, more from the pain in his pods than sorrow, but that didn't matter to Amalicia. Her anger blew out like a candle.
'You didn't think you were worthy of me?' she asked, and he knew by the tone of her voice that she'd forgiven him right then. It was that I-can't-believe-how-sweet-you-are-you-delightful-thing kind of tone that, in Frey's experience, was generally employed in response to a thoughtful and unexpected present, or one of his rare displays of tenderness.
'I've tried to go straight, tried to make my fortune by honourable means,' he said. 'I could start a business, maybe buy some land. But . . .'
'Spit and blood, Darian. All this time you've been thinking I wouldn't want you?'
Frey hel
d his aching jaw. He could feel a bruise forming where her heel had caught him. 'You mean you do?' he asked, with the expression of a man who hardly dared to hope.
'Of course I do, Darian! Why do you think I was writing to you all this time?'
'After everything I've done, you still want me?'
'Yes!' she laughed. She took his rather damaged face in her hands and gazed up into his eyes. 'Yes! I never stopped wanting you.'
'Oh, Amalicia!' he hammed. 'I've been a fool! A damned fool!'
The melodrama was lost on her. 'Darian!' she swooned, and she kissed him with such brutal passion that he feared she'd end up swallowing one of his loosened teeth.
'Come on,' she said eagerly, as soon as they'd surfaced for breath. She tugged him towards a door. 'The bedroom's this way.'
Frey clutched at his pulverised groin. 'I'm not sure I can . . .'
'Darian,' she said, with an unmistakable warning in her voice.
Frey took a steadying breath. 'Alright,' he said. 'I suppose I'll manage.'
*
It took a while to entice his traumatised equipment into action, but once he got going, he managed a passable performance. Amalicia didn't seem to mind that he was sub-par. She detonated with a scream that had Frey hurriedly clamping a hand over her mouth in case the household guards should burst in and shoot him.
Later, they lay in bed together. She was curled up against him, he on his back, looking up at the ceiling. 'What are you thinking about?' she asked him.
'Nothing,' he replied.
What he was thinking was how fine it was to lie here in an expensive bed with a beautiful young woman beside him. They could lie here all night and all day, if they wanted. And the next night, and the next. He'd never have to go back to his mouldy bunk on the Ketty Jay, with that threadbare hammock hanging over his head, always threatening to snap and crush him beneath an avalanche of luggage. How would it be, to live this way?
That was what he was thinking, but he said none of it.
She stirred against him and raised her head. 'Why did you come back?' she murmured.