The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,118
the atmosphere in the mess. She had a fussy, precise way of eating that Frey had always found sort of adorable.
He ate a pastry himself. For a short while, they didn't speak. Absurdly, Frey began to feel comfortable. Like they'd known each other for ever. Like it was no big thing that they were sitting together in the grounds of an ancient university eating pastries on a sunny day. The whole situation was bizarre in its normality.
'Trinica, do you ever question what you're doing?' he said.
She peered suspiciously at the pastry in her hand. 'Should I?'
'No, I mean, do you ever wonder if you're on the right road?'
'My road chose me, rather than the other way around.'
'But, I mean . . . You're rich, right? Even without your family. You could sell your craft, retire. Do anything you wanted.'
She laughed a little laugh. 'Like what? Keep bees? Potter about my manse looking at the flowers?'
'You could read. You always liked to read.'
Trinica gave him a look that was midway between indulgent and patronising. 'I rather think it's you we're talking about here, not me.'
She was right. It had begun as an idle thought, but it had always been heading somewhere. He knitted his fingers behind his head, trying to think of a way to explain the empty, directionless feeling he'd had ever since this whole affair began.
'Let me guess,' said Trinica. 'You're looking for something, but you don't know what it is.'
He was amazed that she'd summed it up so neatly. 'How'd you know?'
'Because you've been saying the same thing since you were seventeen.'
Frey looked blank. 'Have I?'
'Yes!' she said. 'When I met you, you were flying for my father. You'd mortgaged yourself to the eyeballs to afford a second-hand rust bucket called the Ketty Jay, but you were regretting it already, because you'd decided you wanted to join the Navy and fly a frigate.'
Frey did dimly recall wanting to join the Navy at some point, but it seemed unimaginable now.
'Then you decided you were in love with me, and you wanted to be with me for ever, and we all know how that turned out.'
Again, there was no hurt or accusation in the tone. Simple fact. He was a little offended that she could talk about it so lightly.
'I did join the Navy!' he said, suddenly remembering. 'Second Aerium War, flying cargo to the front.'
'You didn't join the Navy,' she said. 'You flew a lot of insanely dangerous freelance missions with the intention of getting yourself killed. And when you almost did, you blamed the Navy and you've hated them ever since.'
She had him there. He tried to think of a rejoinder and couldn't.
'Sorry, Darian. I don't mean to rake over old coals. I'm just making a point. You don't know what you want. You never have.'
Frey thought of Amalicia Thade, how he'd run away from a life of luxury with a beautiful woman. 'Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice. I even wanted to be a pirate for a while, like a real pirate. But it turns out I'm just not that cold-blooded. No offence.'
'None taken,' she said, sipping at her coffee.
"I suppose, at some point, you just have to make a choice and stick to it." he said, unconvincingly. 'Make the best of things.'
'So they say.'
'Hardly seems fair, does it? All that compromise. Never quite getting what you dreamed of.'
'No one gets what they dream of, Darian. That's why they call them dreams.'
'You think so?'
'Even if you get everything you ever wanted, it's rarely all it's cracked up to be. The rich are as unhappy and screwed-up as the poor. Just in a different way." She looked down into the black surface of her coffee. 'You can't get away from yourself.'
'What does that mean?'
'Well, wherever you go, whatever you do, you're still you. You can change your surroundings, start a new life, but you'll always fall into the same old patterns, make the same kind of friends, commit the same mistakes. The thing you need to change is yourself.'
'What's wrong with we?' Frey protested indignantly.
'I'm speaking generally. The thing a person has to change is themselves.'
'Like you did?'
'Like I did.'
'And you're happier?'
'No,' she said. 'But I'm alive.'
She gave him a sad sort of smile. Frey was overwhelmed by a surge of affection. That smile made him want to sweep her up in his arms, to protect her from all harm, to erase the damage of the past somehow.