The Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding

  'I never bloody thought she was going to get out of that hermitage!' Frey said. In fact, he hadn't really thought about the consequences at all. He rarely did when he was making promises to women. The idea that he might have to fulfil them one day rarely crossed his mind, as long as he got what he wanted right then.

  'Isn't she the head of the Thade dynasty now?' Crake asked. 'Powerful woman.'

  'And filthy rich, too,' said Malvery. 'Not a bad catch, Cap'n. Can't think what she sees in you.'

  'I expect it's my rugged charm and roguish demeanour.'

  'Must be.'

  Frey undid the string and flicked through the rest of the letters. 'There's one here for you, Pinn.'

  'For me?' Pinn asked in surprise.

  'Oh, that's right,' said Rusk. 'It didn't have your name on, Frey, but it was addressed to the Ketty Jay, so . . .'

  Frey handed the letter to Pinn, who tore it open.

  'And who's writing to you?' Malvery demanded, descending on Pinn like a slightly inebriated vulture.

  'I don't know till I read it, do I?' Pinn said, shrugging him off. He squinted at the letter, concentrating hard, mouthing the words as he processed them. Pinn could just about read and write, although it required a bit of effort. After a few lines his face cleared and a huge smile split his chubby face.

  'It's from my sweetheart Lisinda!'

  Malvery choked on his beer and sprayed it all over the back of Frey's neck.

  'She says . . . she says . . .' Pinn began, then realised he hadn't read that far and went back to the letter. Slowly his smile faded.

  'What's the matter?' asked Frey, mopping himself angrily with his scarf. 'What does she say?'

  Pinn looked up at them, and his eyes were bewildered and shocked. His expression was one of profound distress.

  'She says she's getting married.'

  After they left the Butcher's Block, they toured the bars of Marlen's Hook, looking for information about Dracken and the Delirium Trigger. Rusk hadn't been wrong: the port was noticably quieter than usual. Frey complained that many of the familiar faces were absent. It was bad luck that the Navy had come visiting recently.

  Crake trudged along, uninterested in the chase. He was rather annoyed that they kept shifting venue, wasting valuable drinking time by wandering the filthy streets. But for once Frey's mind was on the job, not on the booze. He led them here and there, chatting to barmen and interrogating drunks.

  Pinn hung about looking glum. He'd barely said a word since reading the letter from his sweetheart, and nobody spoke to him about it. No one was quite sure how to deal with his stunned grief.

  Malvery looked particularly awkward. Presumably he was feeling guilty because of all the times he'd said that Lisinda didn't exist.

  Privately, Crake sneered at Pinn. His own stupidity had put him in this position. He'd abandoned Lisinda years ago for some absurd quest for glory, and he deserved what he got. If she'd finally woken up and dumped him, well, Crake couldn't really have cared less. Pinn's pain was laughable in comparison to Crake's.

  Besides, he wasn't sure if Pinn was even smart enough to feel pain in the way other humans did. It was more like separating animal companions in a zoo, and watching one of them pine for the other.

  Eventually, Pinn put them all out of their misery and wandered off back to the Ketty Jay. The mood lightened immediately, though not by much. Crake had been hoping for a raucous night, ending in oblivion, but Frey was too preoccupied and Malvery had something on his mind.

  Well, at least there was the booze. He didn't need much more than that.

  At one point, they bumped into Grist, Crattle and a few men from the Storm Dog in the street. Grist seemed to be having a similarly frustrating time. Crake, nicely smashed by this point, allowed himself a bitter smile. Good. He'd come to despise Grist, and was quite scared of him. No matter how much Crake had wanted to plunge a machete into Hodd's neck himself, it was inexcusable that Grist had lost control like that. What was a man if he didn't have control? Nothing better than those savages from Kurg.

  Let Dracken disappear without trace, he thought. She outwitted us. Move on.

  When they got to a bar, Crake and Malvery were largely left to their own devices while Frey went to work charming the clientele. They took their drinks to a corner and set to work on them. Conversation was minimal. Malvery kept on glancing at him, as if he was about to speak, and then didn't.

  'What?' Crake asked irritably.

  'Nothing,' said Malvery.

  It was the eighth or ninth bar they'd visited, and they were both unsteady on their feet, when Malvery broached the subject he'd been working up to all night.

  'Know how long I've been an alcoholic?' he asked.

  Crake picked up their bottle of rum and filled Malvery's mug, narrowly avoiding igniting the sleeve of his coat on the candle that sat in the centre of the table.

  'Oh, you're not an alcoholic,' Crake said. 'You just like a drink.'

  Malvery barked a laugh. 'No, mate. Whatever way you cut it, I'm an alcoholic. Five years now.'

  Crake didn't quite know what to say. 'How's that going?' he managed eventually.

  Malvery grinned. 'Suits me, actually. I don't mind a bit.'

  'Hmm.'

  They both drank from their mugs. Crake had a suspicion that something more was coming, but he wasn't going to be the one to prompt it.

  'Listen,' said Malvery. He leaned forward. His green-lensed glasses sat askew on his broad nose, and droplets of rum hung from his big white moustache.

  Crake waited. When Malvery still hadn't said anything after several seconds, he said, 'Um . . .'

  Malvery held one thick finger in the air to silence him. 'Remember . . .' he said. 'Remember I told you what I did?'

  There was only one thing he could be referring to. Several years ago, he'd operated on a friend while drunk, and killed him. It had cost him his livelihood, his wife, and everything he had.

  'I remember,' said Crake.

  Malvery's eyes drifted out of focus. 'I always thought . . . things could've gone two ways that day,' he said. Suddenly he snatched up the bottle of rum and held it between them. 'See, I could've said, "Oi, mate, you know who killed your friend? That bottle in your hand! Get rid of it!" And I'd have gone clean and sober. That would've been the sensible thing to do.' He put the bottle down. 'But instead I just drank more. Wanted to. I wanted to block it out. To forget.'

  Crake was watching the mesmerising play of candlelight in the curve of the bottle. 'That, I understand,' he said.

  Malvery wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. 'Let me tell you. Doesn't work.' He tapped the bottle with a finger. 'This bottle ain't gonna forgive you, Crake. You've got to do that yourself.'

  Crake's eyes went to Malvery's. 'Some things can't be forgiven,' he said.

  'Then they can't be forgotten, either,' Malvery replied.

  'I suppose not,' Crake conceded.

  Malvery sat back in his chair. 'So you can't forgive yourself and you can't forget. Fine. Now what?'

  Crake was confused by that, and irritated by the turn of the conversation. 'There is no "now what",' he said.

  "Course there is,' said Malvery. 'You just keep on living, don't you?'

  Crake shrugged.

  'Look, mate. It was you that persuaded me to pick up a scalpel again, after all those years. We saved Silo, between us. Remember that?'

  'Of course I do.'

  'Now I ain't never going to be the surgeon I once was, and I've still got a liver blacker than pickled shit, but I know how to save a life. Maybe I've got ten years left, maybe just one, but maybe in that time I can save someone else. Maybe you.'

  'What's your point? That you figured out how to be a doctor again? Malvery, you're still drinking.'

  'It's far too late for me,' he said. 'Besides, I'm a damn good alcoholic.' He swigged his rum to prove the point, then wagged a finger at Crake. 'But I ain't nobody's role model. Why'd you wanna go this way?'

  'I'm n
ot your bloody apprentice, Malvery,' Crake said. 'This isn't about you.'

  But Malvery wasn't about to be put off. 'You're a smart feller. Careful. Polite. You think things through. But lately, mate, you've been getting nasty when you drink. And that's not you.'

  This was ridiculous. Crake felt like he was being preached at, and it made him angry. 'So what's the diagnosis, doc?' he said, his voice dripping with scorn. 'How do you propose to cure me?'

  'I faced my daemons, mate. You made me. Now you gotta face yours.'

  'What do you know about my daemons?' Crake sneered.

  Malvery shrugged. 'Not much, not much. But I know you've got 'em, and they're big ugly bastards at that. Otherwise you wouldn't be spending half your life in a bottle.'

  'More than half,' Crake said, refilling his mug. 'So what?'

  Malvery studied him for a moment. 'How'd it feel, when you fixed that door for us?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The door in the dreadnought. The one you popped open.'

  Crake thought about that. 'It felt good,' he said. 'I felt useful.'

  'You like all that daemonist stuff, don't you?'

  'I wouldn't be a daemonist if I didn't,' Crake replied. He ran his fingers through his scruffy blond hair. 'Obsession comes with the territory. Once you've seen the other side . . .'he trailed away.

  'And how much have you done, these last couple of months?'

  'Excuse me?'

  'How much daemonism, mate? New stuff, I mean. Testing your boundaries, learning your craft, all of that.'

  'I don't see what you're driving at.'

  Malvery leaned forward on his elbows. 'I see the stuff you've made. Frey's cutlass, your gold tooth, those little ear thingies the pilots wear, that skeleton key you've got. Some of those things are real damn clever.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Now how many of them did you make in the last six months?'

  Crake opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.

  'I expect you've been all tied up in research, trying out some new method or something, ain't you?' Malvery prompted. 'Maybe you're working on something really special?'

  Crake glared at him. Malvery- sat back and folded his arms. Point made.

  Crake took a resentful swallow from his mug. Being called an alcoholic was easy enough to take, but he didn't like having his commitment to the Art questioned. And yet, he couldn't deny Malvery had a point. He didn't have any excuses. He'd stopped practising daemonism almost entirely of late. The thrill of it, the allure of new discoveries, had disappeared.

  For a while, he'd rather enjoyed the challenge of working aboard the Ketty Jay. Being without a sanctum forced him to think of creative ways to get the best out of his portable, sub-standard equipment. But as the weeks passed there were fewer and fewer hours in the day when he was clear-headed enough to study the formulae he needed. He seemed to be always hungover or drunk, and it became a huge effort to turn his brain to the complex problems of daemonism. Easier to leave it until the next day. He told himself he'd do some work then. But the next day was the same as the last, and somehow it just never happened.

  He looked at the bottle on the table. It was the first time it had occurred to him that his drinking was affecting his Art. Without that forbidden knowledge to set him apart he was just another layabout aristocrat, no better than Hodd. The idea appalled him. He considered himself better than that. Yet the evidence indicated otherwise.

  Then an idea occurred to him. A drunken, stupid, furious idea born out of frustration at being faced with his own inadequacies. Something he never would have dared consider when he was sober. But he was keen to prove Malvery wrong, keen to show the doctor -and himself - that he was still worth something. He was more than a privileged idler with a hobby; he was extraordinary. So he said it aloud, and once said, he was committed.

  'I think I know a way we can find that sphere.'

  'How?'

  'I'm going to ask a daemon.'

  Fourteen

  An Unexpected Visit —

  Crake's Request — The Summoning

  Crake raised his hand to knock on the door, hesitated, and let it fall. He looked both ways up the winding, lamplit alley.

  Narrow, elegant, three-storey dwellings were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder along the cobbled path. The air was fresh with the salt tang of the sea. There were voices coming from beyond the end of the alley, but nobody he could see. It was an innocuous, out-of-the-way house that he'd come to, and that was exactly how its owner liked it.

  Crake turned up the collar of his greatcoat and raised his hand again, knuckles bunched to rap on the wood. His skin was clammy and his palms were damp. Everything felt closed-in and unreal, as if seen through a camera lens. The taste of whisky still lingered in his mouth. His heart skipped a beat now and then. It was a distressing new development that he'd noticed lately, usually when he was hungover.

  I shouldn't have come here.

  He thought about making up an excuse. He could rejoin the crew in the morning and tell them he'd tried and failed. No harm done. Maybe it was better they didn't find Dracken anyway.

  But he wouldn't lie like some common scoundrel to his friends. That would be too much of an injury to his pride.

  Pride? A failed daemonist, drinking himself numb? Where's the pride in that?

  Self-disgust spurred him on. He knocked on the door.

  'You told them you'd do this,' he murmured to himself. 'What's a man, if he doesn't do what he says he will?'

  He heard footsteps, and the door was opened to reveal a short, round man in a brocaded jacket, wearing a pince-nez. He was bald on top of his head, but a thin fringe of grey hair fell to his collar. His eyes bulged at the sight of Crake.

  "Rot and damnation, will you get out of sight!' he snapped. He grabbed Crake by the arm and yanked him inside, then looked both ways up the alley and shut the door.

  'A pleasure to see you too, Plome,' said Crake, smoothing out his coat and admiring the hallway. 'How have you been?'

  'You can't keep turning up on my doorstep like this!' Plome spluttered. 'There are procedures for this sort of thing! A letter, a clandestine rendezvous, disguises! Be more circumspect, won't you?'

  'Noted, Plome,' said Crake. 'But I'm here now, and nobody saw me. Will you please relax?'

  Plome produced a frilled handkerchief and mopped his brow. 'I'm running for the House of Chancellors, you know,' he said.

  'I didn't,' Crake replied. 'Congratulations.'

  Plome harumphed and flounced into the sitting room. 'The slightest whiff of scandal, do you understand? The slightest whiff could ruin me.'

  Crake followed him in. The sitting room, like the hallway, was panelled in dark wood and hung with portraits. Two armchairs sat to either side of an unlit fireplace, with a lacquered side table between them. Plome went to the liquor cabinet and pulled the stopper from a crystal decanter.

  'I'm sorry,' said Crake. 'I wouldn't have come if I wasn't in desperate need.'

  Plome poured two glasses of brandy and held one out to Crake. He'd intended to resist the temptation of alcohol - he'd need a clear head for the night's work - but his resistance crumbled at the sight of it. A clear head was no good without steady nerves, after all, and he didn't want to risk causing offence by refusing. He took a sip, and felt a bloom of warmth and well-being.

  'As you see, we have electricity in Tarlock Cove at last,' said Plome, indicating the light fixtures. 'And a great improvement it is too.'

  Crake made an admiring noise. It wasn't news to him; he'd seen it mentioned in a sidebar in the broadsheets months ago. He wouldn't have come otherwise.

  Last time he'd visited, Tarlock Cove had run exclusively on gas. The portable generators that provided many remote settlements with electricity had been outlawed. They were too noisy for a picturesque coastal town, and they put out unpleasant fumes. Instead, the town's founders had built a small, quiet power plant, and now charged the residents for their supply. It was the way it was done
in the cities, and it was rapidly spreading to smaller settlements as the technology became cheaper.

  Crake was all for progress in that regard. He needed a steady flow of electricity for what he had in mind, and using a generator would be risky. Generators broke down too easily.

  Plome settled himself in an armchair with a nervous glance at the windows to make sure the blinds were secure. Crake sat in the other, the brandy glass cupped in his hand.

  'So you're to be a politician?' Crake prompted.

  'I hope so,' said Plome. 'I have the support of the Tarlocks, and they have been most thorough in introducing me to other aristocracy in the Duchy. I'm the horse they're backing, so to speak. The incumbent has proposed some unpopular motions to the House and all indications are that he's on his way out.' He took a sip. 'I stand in good stead, but it's still two months to the ballot.'

  'Isn't it dangerous to put yourself in the public eye like that? I thought you were trying to keep out of sight?'

  'A calculated risk,' said Plome. 'I hope to obtain enough leverage to quieten anyone who might discover my less socially acceptable activities. At the very least, I should escape the gallows if I'm caught.' His tone changed, became wary and grave. 'They say things about you, Crake. What you did. Why you're on the run from the Shacklemores.'

  Crake looked at his reflection in the lapping surface of his brandy. He swirled the liquid to break it up. 'It didn't happen the way they say.'

  Plome shook his head. 'Spit and blood, Crake. If it happened at all . . .'

  'It wasn't me!' said Crake sharply. 'At least ... it was my body doing it, but I wasn't there. You understand? I reached too far, Plome. A procedure got out of control.'

  Plome left his seat and paced the room in agitation. Crake stared at the fireplace. What would come next? Accusations? Recriminations? Would he be thrown out? It would be less than he deserved. At least then he wouldn't have to go through with this ill-advised plan of his.

  Plome returned holding the crystal decanter. He topped up Crake's glass and his own, then put the decanter down between them and sat.

  'I don't have the words,' he said. He shook his head. 'The price we pay for our calling is sometimes . . . terrible. Terrible.'