The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,14

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 telling, it seemed. It had been charts, not treasure, he'd stolen. Charts that showed the location of the hidden pirate town of Retribution Falls. 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 followers, 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. Well. For once, it was looking like being a day worth getting up for. 'Speak your piece,' he said.

Grist leaned forward, splaying thick, calloused fingers across the table. The smell 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 collectors, 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 all about. Says he found a downed aircraft in a rainforest. A craft full 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 all 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, all 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 challenged.

'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'll tell 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, still 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