“We need to know it works first,” Sigoral said, gesturing at the plinth.
Clay disentangled himself from his cousin, giving the plinth a brief glance before turning back to the crystal. “All in good time,” he said.
“Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral said, stepping into his path and jabbing an insistent finger at the plinth.
“Not quite ready to try it yet, Lieutenant,” Clay replied, stepping around him. “Kriz ain’t fully healed. And we don’t have what we came for.”
“I’m afraid I must insist, Mr. Torcreek,” Sigoral stated in an unambiguous tone of command. Clay turned to find the Corvantine regarding him with a steady, determined gaze, the butt of his carbine against his shoulder.
“I ain’t on your crew, Lieutenant,” Clay reminded him. “And I didn’t come all this way to leave without answers. We ain’t done here.”
“I am done here.” Sigoral raised his carbine, centring the sight on Clay’s chest.
Seeing the hard, implacable determination in the Corvantine’s gaze Clay recalled the words of Silverpin’s ghost. You led a lot of people into certain death . . . it wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d had a choice. But whatever compulsive power she alluded to didn’t appear to be working on the lieutenant just now. Just like hers didn’t work on me.
“Thought you had a duty,” Clay said.
“My duty is to return home and report everything I’ve seen here.”
“And what good’s that gonna do if no one understands it? Do you? Got any answers to share? Some great insight the rest of us missed, maybe?”
“Enough of this shit,” Loriabeth said, moving to wedge herself between them, pushing Sigoral’s carbine aside.
The Corvantine met her gaze, jaw clenching as he tensed. “I have no desire to see you hurt, Miss Torcreek,” he said. “But I have to get out of here. We have to get out of here. You know I’m right. It’s only a matter of time before some fresh horror appears. And I suspect our luck is wearing thin.”
“Like my patience iffen you don’t lower that weapon,” Loriabeth grated, returning his glare in full measure.
“No . . . way . . . out.”
They turned at the sound of Kriz’s thin, croaking voice. She was on her feet, leaning heavily on the curved flank of the huge stone egg. Although the crystal’s healing light continued to bathe her, she regarded them with bright, pain-filled eyes, features pale and slack from blood loss.
“What?” Sigoral demanded, the muzzle of his carbine moving to point at her.
“No . . . way out,” Kriz repeated, raising a hand in a weak fluttering gesture at the shaft above.
“This will take us out,” Sigoral insisted, stepping closer to her. “It leads back to the surface.”
“Not . . . now,” she told him, her hand falling limply to her side. “Too much . . . ice.”
“Ice?” Sigoral’s face took on a reddish tinge as he moved closer to Kriz, speaking through clenched teeth. “Enough riddles. Tell me exactly what you mean.”
“Ice . . . less when we . . . built it all,” Kriz replied, then winced as a spasm of pain wracked her. “Not any more. So many . . . years.”
“What?” Sigoral demanded, moving closer still.
“The ice,” Clay said. “She means it was thinner in her day. Guess it’s built up over the years to cover this whole place. The spire was the only bit of it still visible.” He glanced up at the shaft. “Even if we get to the top of this, there’s no way out.”
“Then why,” Sigoral grated at Kriz, finger twitching on the carbine’s trigger, “did you bring us here?”
Kriz blinked her too-bright eyes and turned towards the egg, running her hand over the surface. “To see . . . my father.”
CHAPTER 41
Hilemore
“. . . and so I commend my soul to the King of the Deep,” Hilemore read. The logbook lay open on the desk before him, just as he found it on entering the cabin occupied by the Dreadfire’s captain. “I avow my firm knowledge that He, alone amongst all the gods, will afford me the most fair and careful judgement. To any who may one day read these words know that I die with the greatest contrition burning in my heart. I have lived as a pirate, but I perish as a penitent. Signed Arneas Bledthorne, Master of the Dreadfire, on this day 17th Termester in the Queen’s Year 1491.”
“Pretty way with words for a pirate,” Skaggerhill observed.
“Yes.” Hilemore scanned the finely rendered script flowing across the page. “I suspect Captain Bledthorne may well have been a fellow of some education.”
“Fat lot of good it did him,” Scrimshine muttered, casting a glance at the corpse lying on the cabin’s only bunk. Despite the many decades since his death, the cold ensured Arneas Bledthorne’s body retained a fair amount of its flesh, desiccated and blackened though it was. His stiff, grey hands lay on his chest, one of the fingers still lodged in the trigger-guard of an antique flint-lock pistol. A large hole in the top of the captain’s skull provided further evidence of how he had contrived to make his exit from the world. Before undertaking his final repose Bledthorne had clad himself in a fine set of well-tailored clothes, the cuffs and lapels braided with gold in the manner of an admiral. So far this was the only gold they had found aboard the Dreadfire.
“Don’t s’pose he makes mention of where he stashed his treasure, Skipper?” Scrimshine asked Hilemore, brows raised to a hopeful angle.
“If he had any treasure he didn’t feel compelled to record it here.”
Hilemore leafed through the log, noting how each entry grew shorter as the voyage progressed towards its fateful conclusion. It told a tale of thievery, murder and mutiny, all recorded in Bledthorne’s unwaveringly elegant script and eloquent phrasing. It appeared the Dreadfire had encountered a full squadron of Royal Mandinorian Navy ships after an abortive attempt to seize a freighter off the south-east Arradsian coast. In response Captain Bledthorne embarked upon a series of desperate navigational gambles in an effort to evade his deserved meeting with the hangman. The farther south they sailed the more fractious the crew became, forcing the captain to resort to what he termed, “Mortal punishment, undertaken with the barbed, three-tongued whip, for it creates the more lasting impression on the weak-minded.” After that the log became a grim litany of repeated mutiny and bloody murder until Bledthorne found himself sailing alone in icy waters, reduced to a mere passenger on a ship he had no crew to sail. Hilemore doubted the judgement afforded by the King of the Deep would have been as merciful as Bledthorne hoped.
Hilemore looked up as a heavy hand knocked on the cabin door. “Enter.”
Steelfine came in, standing to attention before the desk and saluting smartly. “Inspection complete, sir.”
“Excellent, Number One. In what state do we find our new command?”