‘Hey, we freed him, didn’t we?’
They reached the building wit buildinhout seeing anyone else. It was a low, bleak box of a place, with a fringe of floods around its roof that blasted out light. A generator rumbled somewhere nearby. By chance, they’d approached it on a side which had an entrance: a stout-looking metal door, firmly sealed.
‘They must really want these people solitary, to keep them all the way down here,’ said Ashua.
‘Bess, get the door, would you?’ Frey asked.
Bess made a gleeful bubbling noise and punched her fist through the door, then pulled it off its hinges.
‘She’s very direct, isn’t she?’ said Ashua to Crake.
‘She just likes smashing things,’ said Crake, with a hint of apology in his voice. ‘It doesn’t help that the Cap’n encourages her.’
‘You should see her when she’s really mad,’ said Frey eagerly.
Gunfire sounded from within the building. Bullets sparked from Bess’s armoured skin. Frey ducked as a ricochet almost parted his hair.
Bess shook the door off her arm and thundered in through the doorway with a roar. The sounds of crashing and rending followed, and agonised screams.
Ashua tilted her head, listening to the carnage. ‘I suppose this makes me the third most psychotically lethal female on the Ketty Jay, then,’ she observed.
‘Must be a humbling moment for you,’ commiserated Crake.
‘I feel practically harmless,’ she complained.
‘You’re not that harmless,’ said Frey. ‘My back teeth are still loose from when you kicked my face in.’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said, smiling. ‘The day we met.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘Good times.’
‘I think Bess is done,’ said Crake, now that the screams had stopped. He leaned in through the doorway and came back looking nauseous. ‘Yes, she’s done.’
Frey went inside. All but one of the overhead lights had been smashed. Bess hulked in the shadows, her eyes twinkling in the black depths of her face-grille, with a long chain of someone’s bloody spine hanging from her fist and a very surprised-looking face at the end of it.
Frey stepped inside, his boot squishing into something he’d rather not think about. Fog seeped through the doorway in his wake, lazily invading, fouling the clean air. There wasn’t much left of the furniture in the room, but it seom, but emed like a foyer of some kind, where paperwork might have been processed. To his right was a wooden door; to his left, a metal one. The kind for keeping prisoners behind.
Bess obligingly wrenched it open.
He followed the corridor beyond. Bess trudged along behind him, swinging the head as she walked. Crake and Ashua trailed after.
There was a row of cell doors to his right. Each door was solid metal, with a riveted porthole for viewing the cell, and a sealed slot.
‘Ugrik!’ he yelled. ‘I’m looking for Ugrik! Anyone seen him?’
There was no reply. He peered into the first cell. It was plain and bare, with a bunk, a chamberpot and little else. There was a Sammie in there, dressed in a plain hemp shirt and trousers. He was pacing the room, and as he saw Frey he ran to the porthole and began frantically saying something. His words were muted by the soundproofed door. The Sammie indicated the slot below the porthole, miming that Frey should open it. Frey didn’t bother. Then Bess leaned in behind him, and the Sammie silently screamed and retreated to the back of the cell.
He looked in on the other prisoners, and their reaction was much the same. There were Sammies and Daks in here. None of them looked particularly dangerous. Frey wondered what was so terrible about them, or what knowledge they possessed, that would merit putting them here.
Each of them reacted in the same way as the first. They’d heard the explosions outside, and thought they might be rescued. He seemed like salvation, until they saw the gore-spattered metal monster he’d brought with him. Then they were less keen to leave the protection of their cells.
In the last cell on the corridor there was a Yort.
He was sitting on his bunk, picking at his fingernails. A short man, but broad-shouldered and stocky, wearing the same prison uniform as the others. His hair was a deep red, matted and dirty. It hung in three thick braids down his back, and his long beard was braided too. There were bones and beads and little ornaments tangled in amongst it all.
Frey unbolted and opened the slot in the door. The Yort looked up. He was in his mid-forties, his face lined and weathered. There were blue stripes inked on his cheeks, above the line of his beard, and a ring through his nose like a bull.
‘Ugrik?’
He got up and stood there grinning, exposing wide-set teeth. He had odd-coloured eyes: one green and one blue. Frey wondered what he was grinning at.
‘You Ugrik?’ he said again.
‘That I am,’ Ugrik replied.
‘Remember that relic you had when the Sammies caught you?’
‘That I do.’
‘Can you take me to where you found it?’
Ugrik was still grinning. ‘Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.’
Frey wondered if he was a moron. He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘And maybe I’ll leave your bearded arse to rot in this cell. How’s that?’
Ugrik came up to the porthole, and pressed his face to the glass. He rolled his eyes to take in Frey’s companions. The sight of Bess didn’t seem to perturb him in the least.
His eyes rolled back and fixed on Frey. ‘You messed with it, didn’t you?’
Frey pulled off his glove and slapped his corrupted hand up against the glass, right against Ugrik’s face. Ugrik didn’t move back, but regarded the hand from the distance of a few centimetres. Far too close to actually see anything.
‘How long?’ Ugrik asked.
‘Tomorrow night, at full dark.’
Ugrik paced away from the porthole. Frey put his glove on again. His patience was wearing thin. Maybe they’d tortured him, or addled him with drugs. ‘Look, do you want out of here or not?’
‘Here’s the deal, stranger,’ said Ugrik, with his back turned. ‘I’ll let you break me out of here on one condition.’
‘You’ll let us break you out?’
‘Aye.’
‘What’s the condition?’
‘That you take me straight back to where that relic came from.’
Frey blinked. If he’d been prone to migraines, he’d be getting one about now. He looked to Crake, but the daemonist was equally bewildered.
‘Ugrik,’ said Frey. ‘Am I right in thinking you’re mad as a bag of otters?’
The Yort looked over his shoulder and grinned. ‘I’m not the one with the black spot on my hand,’ he replied.
Frey opened his mouth, then shut it again. He’d just roused a small army, organised air support, and fought his way through a fortified compound to get to this man. After going. After through all that, a little gratitude and cooperation wasn’t too much to ask. It was all getting on top of him a bit.
He took a long, calming breath and walked away up the corridor. ‘I really, really don’t have time for this,’ he said. He thumbed over his shoulder. ‘Bess, get the door. That feller’s coming with us.’
Thirty-Five
Jez lay on the operating table in the Ketty Jay ’s infirmary. If he ignored the fact that she was covered head to foot in other people’s blood, Frey would never have guessed that she’d been tearing people’s throats out an hour ago.
She lay serenely, unmoving. Her chest didn’t rise or fall. She wasn’t dead, as far as he could tell. Well, no more dead than normal. It was just that she wouldn’t wake up.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ he asked Malvery.
‘Dunno,’ said the doctor. ‘She passed out the first time she did this. Was out for a while, as I recall. Second time she didn’t, but I reckon she had it a bit more under control then. This time…’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t do much but wait and see.’
It was lucky they’d found her at all. One of the Murthian slaves had rescued her, in fact. He’d tripped over her, lying unconscious on the quarry floor. Seeing that she wasn’t a Dak or Sammie, he figured her for an ally and helped her. Nobody equated her with the shrieking horror that had terrorised the enemy; most of them had only seen her in shadowy glimpses, if at all.