The Black Lung Captain

Four

A Rude Awakening — Grist's Proposition —

An Explorer's Tale — Risky Business — A Hard Bargain

Someone was calling Frey's name. He snorted and snuffled and did his best not to wake up. He could smell cigar smoke, but he wasn't curious enough to find out why.omeone was calling Frey's name. He snorted and snuffled and did his best not to wake up. He could smell cigar smoke, but he wasn't curious enough to find out why.

'Cap'n!' Jez's voice. Damn that woman! Whenever she woke him up it meant trouble. The cloying muzziness of sleep and the weight of a mild hangover helped him resist the call to action.

'Cap'n, I know you're awake, and if you don't get up now I'll shoot you.'

Frey sighed and opened his eyes. He was in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed. Standing at the end of it were Jez and three strangers. One he recognised as the redhead he'd slept with last night. That explained the room and the bed. He struggled to remember her name and failed.

The other two he'd never seen before. One was a big, burly man with a thick black beard and a fat cigar chomped between yellowed teeth. He had a broken, lumpy nose, smudged black with frostbite at the tip, and a cauliflower ear. A heavy cutlass and a brace of pistols hung from his belt, deliberately visible underneath his dirty greatcoat.

His companion was slightly built and better dressed, with an aristocratic look about him. He wore a finely tailored shirt and trousers, loose and casual, and he had a long face and strong nose. He'd gone prematurely bald on top of his head, which made him look older than his face and eyes suggested.

Frey took stock of the situation. The redhead looked rather alarmed and was chewing her lip. She hadn't dared refuse these strangers entry when they came knocking, but now she wondered what she'd done. The last thing she wanted was someone murdered in her bed. Apart from anything else, the cleaning bill would be horrendous.

Jez was standing behind and to the left of the big man. She had her hand on her pistol butt, to let Frey know she had him covered. She shot her captain a look, but it was too early in the morning to decipher what she meant. Relax? Danger? He couldn't tell.

'Darian Frey,' said the big man with the cigar. He sounded like he was gargling with gravel. 'You're a hard man to find.'

'That's why I'm still alive,' he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. 'Mind telling me how you did it?'

'Heard about the orphanage. Sounded like your handiwork. After that it was just a matter of askin' around.'

Frey gave Jez a baleful glare. 'And how did you find me?'

'Women's intuition, Cap'n,' said Jez, holding up a small compass, out of sight of the others. Frey flopped back against the pillow and groaned. Another of Crake's little devices. The compass was linked to a thin silver ring worn on Frey's little finger. Both were thralled with weak daemons that oscillated at the same frequency. So Crake had told him, anyway. The upshot was that the needle of the compass always pointed towards the ring. Crake had thought it would be a good idea to be able to find their captain in times of emergency, especially as he had a habit of disappearing on three-day drunken Rake sessions without telling anyone where he was. Frey complained that they were treating him like a wayward adolescent, but in the end he agreed because he thought the ring looked good on him.

'Could this not have waited till I got back to the Ketty Jay?' Frey asked.

Jez shrugged. 'They said it was urgent. Wasn't any telling when you'd be back. Might not have been till next week.'

'And we ain't got that kind of time,' said the big man. He looked at the redhead and sucked on his cigar. 'Forgive the intrusion, ma'am. We'll be out o' your hair shortly.'

'You're not going to hurt him, are you?' the redhead asked anxiously. Damn, what was her name?

The big man chuckled, smoke leaking out between his teeth, rising around his head in a cloud. 'Hurt him? No, ma'am. I'm going to offer him a job.'

*

Thirty minutes later, Frey found himself back in Thornlodge Hollow's only tavern, enjoying a breakfast of chicken, potatoes and a morning beer to shake off the effects of last night's grog.

There were four of them at the table: Frey, Jez and the 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 the rumours. There's never been any real evidence they ever existed.'

'Until now!' said Hodd, stabbing the table with his index finger.

'You appear to know your stuff, ma'am,' said Grist. 'Care to say how?'

Jez blinked as she surfaced from her daze. 'I used to be the expedition navigator for a man called Professor Malstrom. He was an authority on the Azryx. We spent months hauling all over Yortland looking for clues. Never found any.'

'Ah, the Professor! I know him well!' Hodd cried. 'How is the old bugger?'

'You can't know him that well. He's been dead more than four years,' said Jez.

Hodd looked awkward for a moment, then made an airy gesture with his hand. 'It's so easy to drift out of touch. Especially when you're off in the far corners of the world.'

Lost civilisations? It was all sounding a little bit ridiculous now, and Frey had already pegged Hodd as a braying halfwit. If not for the presence of Grist, Frey wouldn't be entertaining this fool at all. But Grist seemed like a man who knew his business, so he supposed there must be something to the story.

Frey patted the object on the table. 'Why don't you tell us where you got this, and let us decide if it comes from some made-up civilisation or not? It'll give me a chance to finish my breakfast, if nothing else.'

His patronising tone was lost on his target. 'Of course, of course. Allow me to convince you.'

Frey waved a fork at him, his mouth already full. 'Please try.'

'I'm an explorer of some renown, even if I do say so myself,' Hodd began. 'I take on the missions that others won't touch. Men more short-sighted than I will map New Vardia and Jagos while I search for the truth yet unknown, for mysteries beyond imagining!'

Frey glanced at Grist, and was pleased to see the other captain roll his eyes. At least one of them wasn't an idiot.

Hodd didn't notice. 'I was alone in the rainforests of Kurg when I saw it. It was—'

'Hold on,' said Frey. 'What were you doing there in the first place?'

'I was engaged in the search for a hidden tribe of savages, mentioned in ancient texts from the days of the Angroms, the first dynasty, founded by Wilven the Successor when he united all of North Pandraca. These texts have lasted almost three and a half millennia, preserved by a curing process unknown to us today. They speak of a people on Kurg who could see the future, by means of an elixir. If such knowledge existed, I had to find it.'

'An elixir that lets you see into the future?' Frey asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow.

'Think of it!' Hodd enthused.

Frey returned to his food. 'Oh, I am.' He wondered if there was a similar elixir that would allow him to reclaim the lost minutes of his life he'd wasted listening to this drivel. 'And you went there alone? To Kurg?'

'Oh, no, not alone. I have some connections, you see, and wealthy investors willing to finance my expeditions. With their help I assembled a team of—'

'And this team, where were they when you found the object?'

Hodd's eyes shifted nervously. 'They . . . um . . .'

'They got eaten,' said Grist. 'The ones that didn't get poisoned by the bad food, or died of the rot in their wounds, or sickened with the chills 'cause they went in winter without the right gear.'

'The chills? In a rainforest?' Frey asked.

'Kurg's cold,' said Jez. 'The northern parts are above the Arctic Circle. It's a bit warmer on the south coast, but it's still no fun in winter, especially at night.'

'Oh,' said Frey. This was news to him. His knowledge of geography outside of Vardia was shocking.

'You're a smart man, Cap'n, and I see what you're drivin' at,' said Grist. 'Bumble-butt rich folk, more money than sense. This man Hodd couldn't plan an expedition if you nailed a shopping list to his arse.'

'Hey!' said Hodd, looking hurt.

'The issue ain't what he does or how he does it, nor what he thinks about this or that. It's what he found.'

They looked expectantly at Hodd. The explorer was sulking and didn't seem in the mood to talk to anyone.

'Ah, come on, Hodd,' said Grist, giving him a hearty slap on the shoulder. 'Don't take offence. It's just how we captains talk. Always makin' fun. No harm meant, eh, Frey?'

Frey put up his hands with an innocent face. 'Like he says. It's just how we talk.'

'I suppose so,' said Hodd, reluctantly.

'But just to be clear,' said Grist, leaning over to Frey, 'I'm in charge of this one.'

'Right,' said Frey, considerably relieved. He turned his attention back to Hodd, who was rearranging his ruffled feathers. 'So you were making your way out of Kurg, presumably a little the worse for wear, and you found an aircraft crashed in the rainforest. What kind of aircraft?'

'Like nothing I'd ever seen before,' said Hodd. 'Like nothing anyone has ever seen.'

'Can you describe it?'

'Er . . .' said Hodd. 'It was big. Hard to get a good look at, really, all broken and tangled in the forest as it was.'

'Tangled?' said Jez. 'The forest had grown up around it?'

'Oh yes,' said Hodd. 'It's been there a long time. Thousands of years, no doubt.'

'Listen to the next part,' Grist advised Frey.

'As you can imagine, I was thrilled at my discovery,' said Hodd. 'I immediately set about exploring it. The craft was quite deserted, but I was in no doubt that it was of a design unfamiliar to Vardia or any of its neighbours. There was writing, in letters I have never seen. And such strange artefacts! Those alone would have convinced me. I have an extensive knowledge of antiques, you know. My father was quite the collector. There has been nothing like this in our histories or anyone else's.'

'Tell them about the door,' Grist said impatiently.

'The door. Yes. Well, despite the vessel's broken hull, I could only access certain parts of the craft. You can imagine my excitement when I found a mysterious door.'

'A mysterious door,' Frey repeated, deadpan.

'Quite so! But when I touched it, the most abominable sensation came over me. My stomach turned, my head swam, and I was flung back, as if by invisible hands.'

'Hmm,' said Frey.

'I tried again, with the same result. I believe it was some form of Azryx technology, meant to guard their treasures. A barrier of some kind, composed of forces beyond my understanding. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get in. Then I heard some creatures approaching -what kind of horrors, I couldn't say - so I grabbed the artefact you see before you and I fled. Not long after that, I found my way to the landing-site where our aircraft were, and I escaped.'

'Now I know this sounds far-fetched,' said Grist, as Frey opened his mouth to say so. 'Sounds that way to me, too. But before you speak, remember that Hodd here is willing to lead us back to that place. He's gonna show us every word is true. And I made it awful clear that if all ain't as he says, then he's gonna be wearing his guts round his neck.'

'Please,' said Hodd distastefully. 'There's no need for that. I'm an honourable man, and no liar.'

Frey gazed coolly across the table at Grist. Grist smiled back. The end of his cigar glowed red.

'So that's why you need my daemonist,' Frey said.

'Whatever trickery they put on that door, the one person who might be able to fix it is a daemonist,' said Grist. 'Am I right?'

Frey shrugged. 'I suppose so. I'd have to ask him.'

'Well, daemonists are a secretive lot, and yours is the only one I know how to find. Word spread of the golem you lot used in Rabban when you took on the Delirium Trigger.' He took the cigar from his mouth and exhaled slowly. 'Also, I'm short on time. Hodd here told everyone and their wives about this craft before I found him.'

'I was trying to raise the money to go back!' Hodd cried. 'Nobody believed that what I'd found was a genuine—'

Grist talked over him. 'Regardless, I've wasted weeks trackin' you down, Frey. If anyone's of a mind to take his story seriously, they'll be lookin' for that aircraft too. But what they don't have is Hodd here to guide them.'

'Can you find it again?' Jez asked Hodd.

'Most certainly! I'd bet my life on it.'

'You are betting your life on it,' Grist reminded him. He tapped ash from his grubby cigar on to the table and scratched behind his cauliflower ear. 'I'll be straight with you, Frey. I don't need you or your crew. I just need your daemonist.'

'We're a package,' said Frey.

'I reckoned as much. So I'll cut you in. Mark me, there's treasure on that craft. Your crew and mine, we'll find it. I can get it to people who'll know it's worth, and that worth is gonna be huge. Whatever I make, we split. Eighty-twenty.'

'That's very generous,' said Frey. 'And what will you do with your twenty per cent?'

Grist's eyes hardened, just a little. 'Seventy-thirty.'

'Fifty-fifty,' Frey countered.

'Sixty-five, forty-five,' Grist snarled.

'That adds up to a hundred and ten,' Jez pointed out.

'Fifty-fifty,' Frey said again, 'or we say goodbye right here. Your "plan" stinks like rancid dogshit and the only evidence of this vast wealth you're talking about is a lump of twisted metal and the promises of some half-baked inbreed. Frankly, I'm inclined to forget the whole thing and count myself one breakfast richer.'

'Half-baked inbreed?' Hodd squeaked.

'It's just how we talk,' Frey said, dismissing his protest.

Grist rolled his cigar around his mouth. 'Sixty-forty,' he said. 'And it's final. I got to pay Hodd's five per cent out of my cut, and I'm damned if I'm making less than you on my own expedition.'

'Five per cent? That's all you're giving him?'

'I had some trouble raising the finance, and I was getting rather desperate,' said Hodd, looking defeated. 'Captain Grist drives a hard bargain.' He brightened. 'But fame is my reward! I'll be the expedition leader on paper. That was the deal. At the least I'll get a lifetime membership to the Explorer's Guild. Probably.'

Frey finished his breakfast and pushed his plate away. This whole idea seemed shaky, and the idea of going to Kurg was deeply unappealing, but Frey wasn't in a position to be picky right now. Something had to be done to lift the crew of the Ketty Jay out of their rut. These past few months they'd been purposeless, moving from job to job, hauling cargo here, running escort there. The pay was pitiful, the work generally dull. For a brief time, after the destruction of Retribution Falls, they'd felt like buccaneers, lords of the sky. But then real life had seeped back in. Adventure had been in short supply ever since.

A man didn't get too many chances to make a fortune, and he had to grab them when he could.

This time he'd do it right. This time he'd make them all rich. He'd buy himself a place, somewhere. Something solid, firm, real. Somewhere he could come back to between adventures. A home. He'd never had a home of his own. Maybe that'd help. Maybe that'd fix things.

But he'd been burned before. The last time he went for the big money, he'd landed himself and his crew in the worst trouble of their lives.

But we got through it, he thought. And it made us into a crew.

He looked over at Jez, hoping to read her. Her opinion would help him decide. But she refused to show him anything. You're the Cap'n, Cap'n.

'Kurg,' he said to Grist. 'Monsters and beast-men. It's quite a risky business you're proposing.'

Grist puffed on his cigar. Pungent clouds surrounded his dirty, bearded face. He leaned forward, looming through the smoke with a yellow grin.

'Some things are worth riskin' everythin' for,' he said. He held out a rough-skinned, grubby hand across the table.

Frey stared at it for a long moment. Why not? It was better than being bored and poor the rest of his life. He held out his own hand. 'Fifty-five, forty-five.'

'Done, you thievin' son of a bitch!' Grist beamed, and clasped his hand in a crushing grip. 'Damn, but your men better pull their weight for that kind o' cut.' He glanced at Jez. 'And your women too, beggin' your pardon.' Then he slapped Hodd on the back and pointed at Frey. 'Now that's how you drive a hard bargain.'