The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,57

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