The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,163

took out his watch and tossed it over. Crake pressed the catch and the case sprang open.

'You late for something?' Malvery asked irritably.

'Oh, no,' said Crake. 'Right on time.'

He smiled wryly. It seemed like a long time since he'd smiled. As if a tombstone had been laying on his chest, heavy and cold, which was now gradually lifting away.

The grief he felt at the death of his niece was both old and new. He'd always known in his heart that he could never get her back, but he could never make himself believe it. Not until he'd tried. Now that he had, now that he'd seen the sheer impossibility of it, the weight of the task he'd placed upon himself was lessening day by day. It had taken Jez's harsh words to make him face up to himself.

It was strange. Bess, his niece, was dead. It was his responsibility, his hand that had wielded the blade. He would never shed the guilt of that. And yet he felt better now than he had for two years. He'd finally accepted what he'd done, instead of trying to change it.

It hurt. Of course, it hurt, like a bright blade in his guts. But it was a clean hurt. The pain of healing. Not the slow, grim death that he'd been trying to blot out with alcohol. For the first time since his niece had died, he saw light. Sharp and hard, but light. And he wouldn't look away, no matter how it brought the tears to his eyes.

Malvery was suspicious of Crake's smile. He narrowed his eyes. 'You've got something up your sleeve, haven't you?' He hunkered down next to Crake and poked him in the ribs with a meaty finger. 'What you up to, eh?' he asked.

'You remember the first time Dracken captured us?' he said. 'Just outside Retribution Falls?'

'Ain't likely to forget it. We all nearly got hanged on account of her.'

'We put down in the Blackendraft,' said Crake. 'An endless, trackless waste of ash, far as the eye could see. I put Bess to sleep so she wouldn't attack anyone and get us all killed. Trinica left her there when we flew off.'

'Right,' said Malvery. 'You were all in a gloom, thought you'd never see her again. But Jez found her. S'pose because of those Mane abilities she's got.' He paused. 'Never thought of that till now.'

'Yes. But if we hadn't got out of being hanged, or if Jez hadn't found Bess, then she'd have stayed asleep for ever. Like a metal statue in the middle of the wastes.'

'Where you heading with this, Crake?'

'Back in Marlen's Hook, you asked me if I'd done anything useful lately. Any new daemonic artefacts, any new techniques, that sort of thing.'

Malvery waved it off, embarrassed. 'Aw, mate. I was just giving you a kick in the arse, you know. Trying to get you to lay off the booze before you ended up like me.'

'I know,' said Crake. 'And I want to thank you for that. You and Jez, you both helped me a lot.'

Malvery shrugged. 'That's what friends do, right? They give it to you straight. Speaking of which, get back on the subject.'

'Look, the point was, what you said got me thinking. About that time with Bess. How it could happen again, and I might not be so lucky next time. If I put her to sleep, and I lost that damn whistle . . . then what? I might never be able to wake her up.'

'S'pose not. So what?'

'So, I taught her a few more whistles. A few more frequencies, you see. You can't hear them, and it takes a daemonist to make them work, but to Bess they're loud and clear. They make her do different things, rather than just put her to sleep indefinitely.'

'Like what?'

He looked at Malvery's pocket watch again. 'Like putting her to sleep for . . . oh, about half an hour.'

Malvery grinned. Crake grinned with him. Malvery took back his pocket watch and snapped the case shut.

'It's bloody good to have you back, mate,' said the doctor.

In the distance, the gunshots and screams began.

Something was amiss on the Ketty Jay.

Slag opened his eyes slowly and licked his chops. The fur around his face still carried the taste of rat blood. But it wasn't rats that had brought him out of his doze.

He got up and loped through the ventilation ducts, towards the cargo hold. Slag was the master of these hidden byways. It was his