Deep Space Blues
Prologue. Full Sail
Three hundred Crowns, alive.
That's what the man on the black ship is worth. It's more than Jace Keller has made all year.
His ship is out of food. His helm has one crystal left. And the black ship is faster.
So he's going to jump.
Chapter 1. Chainport Blues
Chainport Blues — Chapter 1
Jace hits the smuggler's deck rolling and comes up with his hand cannon pointed at the only man on board.
The man straightens his green coat and checks his moustache with one gloved finger. He doesn't put his hands up.
Lionel Drey: That was a very stupid jump, friend. Do you know how many people miss that?
Jace Keller: Nope. I never stick around to count.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: Lionel Drey. I sell paper. Ship licences, travel passes, the odd pardon. And you are?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Broke. And you're three hundred Crowns, payable by the Helm Licence Office on Crown Spire.
[Picture: writ lionel]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: Three hundred? That's insulting. I sell a single licence for three hundred.
[Picture: writ lionel]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: So here's a better deal. You let me go, I give you a blank helm licence with a real Dominion seal. No navy patrol stops you ever again.
[Picture: licence]
Jace Keller: What's the catch?
[Picture: licence]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: None. Well, it's stolen. But it's beautifully stolen.
[Picture: licence]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Jace! The helm's making a noise Edie doesn't like! Edie's fixing it. Also, there's a navy patrol coming.
Lionel looks at the patrol lights on the horizon. Then he runs for the rail. He gets two steps before Jace catches him by the collar.
Lionel Drey: Worth a try. I always run first. I find it saves time.
Jace Keller: I'll take the three hundred.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Crown Spire is a tall gold station above the Dominion's capital. Its customs hall checks every ship and every cargo that comes through, and it's very proud of that.
A thin clerk in a white coat looks at the bounty paper, then at Lionel in his cuffs, then at Jace's red cloak, which is dripping on his clean floor.
Roland Fenwick: Lionel Drey, delivered alive. Three hundred Crowns. Your name, please. Neatly, if you can.
Jace Keller: Jace Keller. Do I get it in gold?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Roland Fenwick: In a moment. First, the licence for your ship.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: My what?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Roland Fenwick: Your helm licence. Every ship in Dominion lanes carries one. You... flew in here without one?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Roland Fenwick: That's a fine of three hundred Crowns. I'll take it out of the bounty. Which leaves you...
[Picture: receipt]
Edie Marlowe: Edie did the math. Zero.
[Picture: receipt]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: I did offer you a licence.
[Picture: receipt]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Fenwick stamps the receipt twice, very hard, and slides it across the desk. It's for nothing.
[Picture: receipt]
Two Dominion guards take Lionel by the arms. At the door he stops and looks back over his shoulder.
Lionel Drey: Keller. Red cloak, flies like a lunatic. You're the pilot from Fog Harbour, aren't you? The one who let the singer go.
Jace Keller: Never heard of it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lionel Drey: Funny. A man was asking about you on the Night Bazaar last month. Polite fellow. Soft voice. He paid very well for your name.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The guards take him through the door. Jace watches it close and doesn't move.
Edie Marlowe: Jace? Who's the soft voice man?
Jace Keller: Nobody, kid. Come on. Let's go find somewhere cheap.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Three days later. Chainport, on the prison world Gallow. It's raining, and the Last Meal is the only warm room on the street.
Jace Keller sits at the bar with his boots up and his red cloak dripping on the floor. Beside him, a barefoot girl with bright red hair is taking apart the bar's lamp.
Petra Lusk: Boots off my bar, Jace. That's a Crown for the polish and two for the look you're giving me.
Jace Keller: I'm not giving you a look. This is just my face.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Then it's three for the face. What'll it be?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: What's cheapest?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Water. And you still owe me for last week's water.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie fixed your lamp, Petra. It was sad. Now it's bright. Also, Edie ate the last of the food on the ship.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: All of it? There were four tins.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: There were four tins. Now there's Edie.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A small round white drone with one teal eye bobs over Edie's shoulder and beeps twice.
[Picture: rufus]
Edie Marlowe: Rufus says he helped. Rufus is lying. Rufus doesn't eat.
[Picture: rufus]
Jace Keller: So we've got no food and one crystal in the helm. How far does one crystal get us, kid?
[Picture: crystal]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Up. Not very far up. Then down again, but faster.
[Picture: crystal]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Sounds like you need work. Lucky for you, I sell news. Five Crowns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I've got two Marks and a button.
[Picture: button]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Then you get the cheap news. Look at the window.
[Picture: button]
[Picture: previous speaker]
A young woman sits alone at the window table with a bowl of stew she hasn't touched. She has dark red hair, freckles and a burn scar on one hand. She watches the door.
Petra Lusk: Clara Moran. Escaped prisoner. The Harrow Company posted her three days ago. A hundred and fifty Crowns, alive.
[Picture: writ clara]
Jace Keller: A hundred and fifty? For her? What'd she do, steal a warship?
[Picture: writ clara]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Ask the four in the corner. They've got a signed writ, and they've been nursing one drink each for two hours.
[Picture: writ clara]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Four men sit in the back corner in long coats. The biggest one has a folded paper tucked in his hat band. None of them have touched their drinks.
Behind the bar, through the kitchen door, a gray-faced man sits on a stool peeling potatoes. He doesn't look up. He doesn't blink much either.
Edie Marlowe: Petra, your kitchen man is very cold. Rufus doesn't like him.
[Picture: rufus]
Petra Lusk: That's my husband's brother. He peels. He doesn't talk. Leave him be, sweetheart.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Hunters don't sit and wait like that. Unless they've got a reason.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: They won't start anything inside. Not in my place. They'll wait for her out on the porch, like they always do.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Kid. Go see if the ship still has a pulse.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie's going. Rufus, come. Don't sniff the kitchen man.
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace picks up his water and walks to the window table. He sits down across from Clara without asking.
Clara Moran: That seat's taken.
Jace Keller: By who?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Clara Moran: By nobody. He's quiet and he doesn't ask questions.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I'm not gonna ask questions. I'm just gonna sit here and drink this very expensive water.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She hums under her breath. It's an old work song, and her hands are shaking.
Jace Keller: Okay, one question. What'd you do?
Clara Moran: I walked off a reactor shift. There was a leak. My friend was on the floor and I carried her out.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Clara Moran: The court on Coldwell called it a walkout and sold my sentence to the Harrow Company. They sent me here to work the towers.
Jace Keller: And you got out how?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Clara Moran: A clerk changed my file. A woman with round glasses. I never even learned her name. She just stamped it and said go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Huh.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Clara Moran: If they take me back, they'll ask who she was. I'll tell them. I won't want to. But I will.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace looks at the four men in the corner. Then he looks at her bowl of stew.
Jace Keller: Eat your stew. You're gonna need it.
Clara Moran: You're not one of them?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Lady, hunters get paid. Look at me. Do I look like I get paid?
[Picture: previous speaker]
At nine, a tired man in a Company guard coat comes in for the prisoners' bread. He sees Jace at Clara's table and stops. Then he comes over fast and talks too quietly.
Gareth Doyle: I'm not here. I mean, I'm here for the prisoners' bread, same as every night. Gareth Doyle. Company guard, but not the bad kind. Mostly.
Jace Keller: Gareth. Breathe.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: There's a shuttle. A Company shuttle. The Ditch Dogs stole it, it's in the Runner Caves up north. Nobody in the gang can fly it. You're the pilot, right? The one who flies people out?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Who says I fly people out?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: The cook. The dock boys. Half of Chainport, honestly. They say it nicely.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: I'll get you to the caves. The gate guard knows my truck. I just want a seat. I owe the Company more than I'll ever make. I want off this rock.
Petra Lusk: My kitchen door opens onto the back lane. Five Crowns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I've got two Marks and a button.
[Picture: button]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: Give me the button. I'll put it on your tab.
[Picture: button]
[Picture: previous speaker]
The four hunters stand up at the same time. They put their coins on the table and walk out the front door. Through the window, they take up spots on the porch.
The four hunters wait on the porch in the rain, hands near their guns. Inside, Jace stands in the front doorway with his red cloak hanging off one shoulder, his hand resting on his hand cannon.
Behind him, Petra holds her kitchen door open. Clara slips through it with her head down.
Jace Keller: Evening, gentlemen. Nice night for standing outside.
The biggest hunter taps the writ in his hat band. He doesn't say a word.
Jace Keller: Yeah, I saw it. Good paper. Very official. You guys want a drink? Petra's got water. It's expensive.
The hunters don't move. Jace doesn't move. Somewhere behind him, a back door clicks shut.
Jace Keller: Well. This was fun.
The biggest hunter looks past Jace at the window table. It's empty. His eyes go to the kitchen door.
Out in the back lane, an engine coughs to life.
Jace Keller: That'd be my ride. Night, gentlemen.
Jace slams the front door in their faces and drops the bar across it. Then he runs through the kitchen, past the gray man peeling potatoes, and out the back.
Petra Lusk: That's three Crowns for the door, Jace Keller!
The hunters come around the side of the building at a run. Gareth's truck is already rolling down the lane, and Edie and Clara haul Jace over the tailgate by his cloak.
The biggest hunter raises his rifle. Then he lowers it. The writ says alive, and he won't risk hitting the girl.
Edie Marlowe: Edie told Gareth to start the truck. Gareth said no. Edie told him again, louder.
Clara Moran: Won't they come after us?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: On foot, across the salt, at night? Ask Gareth how that goes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
An old Company truck rolls north across the salt flats with its lights off. The gate guard waved it through without looking. Gareth drives with both hands and talks the whole way.
Gareth Doyle: Okay, rule one, we stay on the road. Nobody walks on the salt after dark. There's things living under it. I've seen what they leave behind.
Edie Marlowe: Edie loves things. What kind of things?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: The kind that eat you!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Clara Moran: The truck's slowing down.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: That's the engine. It's stopping. That's not great.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie can fix it. Edie needs a minute. And to stand on the salt. Just a little.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie hops down barefoot onto the white crust and opens the engine. Clara climbs down after her to hold the lamp. Rufus spins in a slow circle and starts to beep very fast.
[Picture: rufus]
WARNING SHEET. PAN SPIDER. Danger low. Lives under the salt on Gallow and waits. Never walk on the salt at night.
[Picture: stamp low]
The salt cracks open a few steps from Clara. Long white legs come up out of it, then a pale round body the size of a cart. It has been waiting there under the crust the whole time.
[Picture: pan spider front]
Jace Keller: Clara. Don't run. Walk to me.
Clara Moran: It's looking at me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: It's looking at everybody. You're just closer. Walk.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace fires. The bolt hits the salt beside the spider and blows up a white cloud. Jace grabs Clara's arm and pulls her up onto the truck as the legs slam down where she stood.
[Picture: pan spider side]
Edie Marlowe: Edie fixed it!
Jace Keller: Then drive, Gareth! Drive!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gareth Doyle: I'm driving! This is me driving!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nine hours later, the truck rolls into a cave mouth in the hills. Inside, twenty young men and women in torn prison gray sit around a dead shuttle with a Company seal painted over in black.
Ivo Brisk: Gareth. You brought friends. You barely bring bread.
Gareth Doyle: I brought a pilot, Ivo. An actual pilot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ivo Brisk: Ivo Brisk. I run the Ditch Dogs, which is a fancy name for twenty people hiding in a hole. You can fly that?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I can fly anything. Whether it flies back is a different question.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ivo Brisk: It's dead. We stole the most beautiful shuttle on Gallow and it won't even turn on. Twelve runaways in here have been sleeping next to it for a month, praying at it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: It's not dead. It's sulking. Somebody cut the wires to the helm so it couldn't leave. That's mean.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Rufus, light. Edie's going in.
[Picture: rufus]
Edie crawls under the helm with her shock baton in her teeth. She hums. Four minutes later, every lamp on the shuttle comes on at once.
Edie Marlowe: Edie fixed it.
Ivo Brisk: Four minutes. We've been staring at it for a month. Where did you find her?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I didn't find her. She found my cargo hold.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dawn. The stolen shuttle roars out of the cave mouth and skims low over the white salt flats, so low its belly kicks up spray.
Jace is at the helm, grinning. Clara and Gareth hold on in the back with the twelve runaways. Edie hangs out the side hatch, laughing, with Rufus tucked under her arm.
Far behind them, the Company gate tower flashes its warning lamp. By the time anyone looks up, the shuttle is a speck.
Ivo Brisk: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Fly safe, Red Cloak! Bring the shuttle back sometime! We'll steal it again!
Clara Moran: I can see the sky. A whole year, and there was always a guard standing in front of it.
Jace Keller: There's a Compact hauler waiting past the dock lane. It'll take you all the way to Coldwell. Go see your mom.
Clara Moran: I don't have anything to pay you with.
Jace Keller: Good. Then I can't lose it.
The next night, Jace and Edie walk back into the Last Meal, soaked, hungry and exactly as broke as before.
Petra Lusk: You came back.
Jace Keller: Left my ship here. And my tab.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: The hunters left this morning. Somebody at the Harrow Office says the clerk who freed that girl got away clean too. Funny, that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Very funny. Hilarious. Can I get some water?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Petra Lusk: On the house. Just this once. Don't tell anyone I've got a heart.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie fixed the dock radio while we were gone. It works now. It never stops talking.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Also, there's a big bounty on the Night Bazaar. Eight hundred Crowns. For a thief who robs the Syndicate's money men.
[Picture: writ thief]
Jace Keller: Eight hundred?
[Picture: writ thief]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Rufus heard it twice. Rufus is very sure.
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Kid. How far does one crystal get us?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: To the Night Bazaar. Just. If nobody sneezes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 2. Lamps and Locks
Lamps and Locks — Chapter 2
The Night Bazaar is a black market station made of old ship hulls welded together. The Counting House sits at its center, where the Syndicate keeps track of who owes what.
Behind a long brass counter, a tiny woman with copper curls pours tea into a cup that's too big for her.
Tansy Cobble: Welcome in! Sugar? Lovely. I'm Tansy. I keep the books. Everybody in this station is a line in my books, sweetheart, and I'm so happy to meet a new line.
[Picture: teacup]
Jace Keller: I'm here about the thief. Eight hundred Crowns, right?
[Picture: teacup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy Cobble: Eight hundred, alive. She's robbed eleven of my collectors this year. Eleven! Do you know what that does to my numbers?
[Picture: teacup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: She?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy Cobble: A woman, small, quick, wears a hood. That's all anyone remembers. She's very rude to my collectors and very polite to everyone else.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie likes her already.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy Cobble: Of course you do, dear. Everyone likes a thief until she robs them. Now, here's your paper. Sign here. And here. And here, that one says if you die, you still owe me for the tea.
[Picture: writ thief]
[Picture: previous speaker]
A tall figure stoops through the doorway behind them. He's a seven-foot lizard-headed Vasht in a long brown duster, with green-gray scales and calm yellow eyes. A folded writ sticks out of his pocket.
[Picture: writ thief]
Royce Kendal: Good evening, Miss Cobble. I believe I am on the same paper as this gentleman.
Tansy Cobble: Mr. Kendal! My favorite. Never late, never rude, never breaks a writ.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: Royce Kendal. Forty-one brought in. Two lost. I do not intend to make it three.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Jace Keller. I've brought in... let's say some. I lose a lot. I'm very relaxed about it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: Mr. Keller. I have heard of you. You are the pilot who lets people go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: That's a nasty rumor. Who's spreading that?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: Everyone, Mr. Keller. Good luck to you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The Hull Market fills the gutted shell of an old warship. Hundreds of stalls crowd its decks, selling stolen cargo, guns, fake Old Maker pieces and things nobody will name out loud.
Edie Marlowe: Jace! Lamps!
At the end of a row, a small stall is full of brass lamps and old locks. Every lamp is lit. Edie walks into the glow like a moth.
[Picture: brass lamp]
The woman behind the counter has two short black horns, a thin tail, gray skin and solid gold eyes. Her black hair is cut in a choppy bob, and a red silk band is tied around one horn.
[Picture: brass lamp]
Gemma Drury: Look at you, Sparks. You've got good eyes. That one came off a Dominion warship. This one's off a Compact raider. And that one was my grandmother's, and she was a terrible woman.
[Picture: brass lamp]
Edie Marlowe: Edie wants all of them. Edie has no money.
[Picture: brass lamp]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Nobody here has money. That's why it's a market.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Her gold eyes move to Jace and stay there.
Gemma Drury: And who's the cloak? Let me guess. Bounty hunter, broke, here for the big paper, sleeps in his boots.
Jace Keller: That's... mostly right. I take the boots off sometimes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Gemma Drury. I sell lamps. Want one, Red? I'll give you a deal. Twelve Crowns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I've got two Marks. I had a button, but I spent it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Oh, you're adorable. A man with no money and a big red cloak. That's either a poet or a pilot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Pilot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Shame. Poets are cheaper to feed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She leans across the counter to straighten his collar. She smells like lamp oil and smoke. When she leans back, she's smiling.
Gemma Drury: Come back when you've caught your thief, Red. I'll sell you a lamp to celebrate.
Edie Marlowe: Jace. Rufus says your pocket's lighter.
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace pats his coat. His wallet is gone. So is the writ he signed. Gemma's stall is suddenly closed, with a sign on it that says BACK SOON.
Jace Keller: She took my wallet.
Edie Marlowe: She took two Marks. Edie thinks she's going to be very disappointed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A hiss of chewing metal comes from the next deck. Something is eating a parked skiff.
WARNING SHEET. SCRAP MITE. Danger low, but never alone. Cleaning machines gone loose. A swarm can strip a skiff in one night.
[Picture: stamp low]
Hundreds of tiny cleaning machines swarm over the skiff's hull, each the size of a fist, chewing off its brass plates with little steel jaws.
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
[Picture: scrap mite front]
Edie Marlowe: Mites! Hello, mites! Who's a good little mite? Not you. You're eating a ship. Bad mite.
Jace Keller: Kid, step back. Those things bite.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Only if you're metal. Edie is mostly Edie.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie whistles a low note. Rufus answers it. The whole swarm stops, turns and follows the drone down the deck like a line of ducks into a scrap bin. Edie shuts the lid.
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: scrap mite side]
[Picture: scrap mite side]
[Picture: scrap mite side]
[Picture: scrap mite side]
[Picture: scrap mite side]
Edie Marlowe: Edie fixed it. Edie wants to keep one.
Jace Keller: No.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie's keeping one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Later that night, a Syndicate collector walks the lower deck with a heavy bag of coin. Two small brass guard drones float beside him, each with a rune plate and a lamp. A hooded shape drops from the beams above.
[Picture: sentry drone front]
[Picture: sentry drone front]
The hooded thief knocks the collector flat, grabs the bag and runs. The guard drones swing their lamps after her, flashing red.
Jace runs after her, red cloak flying. She vaults a fruit stall. He goes through it. She swings up onto a hull beam. He jumps for the same beam and barely makes it.
Jace Keller: You know, most people just walk in a market!
Gemma Drury: Most people don't get paid for this, Red!
She drops through a floor hatch. Jace drops in after her and lands in a dark storage hold, face to face, with his hand cannon up.
The hood is down. It's Gemma. She's breathing hard and grinning.
Gemma Drury: Hi, Red. Want to buy a lamp?
Jace Keller: I'd like my wallet back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Two Marks. I was very disappointed. I'm keeping the wallet out of spite.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Eleven collectors this year. What do you do with it all?
[Picture: previous speaker]
She stops grinning. She holds up the coin bag so he can see the tags tied to it. Each tag has a family name and a number.
Gemma Drury: Every family that works the Rush Kitchen owes the Counting House. They mix the Rush, and the job pays them in debt. Each of these is somebody's rent.
Gemma Drury: I take it from the collectors, and I pay it back in. Quietly. The Syndicate thinks the money vanishes. It doesn't. It goes home.
Jace Keller: So you rob the Syndicate to pay the Syndicate.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: It's very confusing for them. I love it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Footsteps clang on the deck above. Two guard drones drop through the hatch, lamps flashing. Behind them comes a tall shadow in a brown duster.
Royce Kendal: Mr. Keller. Well done. You have found her. Please step aside, I hold the same paper.
Gemma Drury: Oh, good. The lizard. He's very polite. He's never lost anyone.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: Twice, miss. I have lost two.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace whips off his red cloak and throws it over the nearest guard drone. The drone panics, spins and shoots off down the dark corridor with the red cloak flapping behind it.
Jace Keller: She's running! Red hood, that way!
Royce turns and goes after the red shape in long strides. Behind him, Gemma slips into a crawl space no bigger than a cat flap. Her tail is the last thing to vanish.
Ten minutes later, Royce comes back up the corridor. He is carrying the red cloak, folded neatly over one arm.
Royce Kendal: Your coat, Mr. Keller. It was attached to a drone.
Jace Keller: Huh. Weird. Drones these days.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: You have cost yourself eight hundred Crowns, Mr. Keller. I hope she was worth it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: No idea what you're talking about.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: No. Of course not. Good night.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The Blue Hour is Jace's charter skiff. It's small, old and fast, all wood and brass with one red sail. Edie sits cross-legged on the helm chair, talking to it.
Edie Marlowe: Jace. The helm's full. Somebody put three crystals in it. Big ones.
Jace Keller: We didn't buy crystals.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: No. We bought nothing. We can't buy nothing. Edie checked.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A hatch in the floor creaks open. Gemma climbs up out of the cargo hold, eating a biscuit.
Gemma Drury: Consider it rent, Red. Three crystals. That's roughly a year of your wallet.
Edie Marlowe: That's Edie's hold. Edie found it first.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Then we're roommates, Sparks. I'm very tidy. I steal less from friends.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: That's Edie's last biscuit.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Was.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Get off my ship, Drury.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Oh, Red. You don't throw people off ships. The whole station knows that about you.
[Picture: brass lamp]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace looks at her. Then at the full helm. Then at Edie, who's already smiling at the lamp Gemma has set down on the console.
[Picture: brass lamp]
Jace Keller: You're off at the next port.
[Picture: brass lamp]
Edie Marlowe: He said that to Edie too. Ten months ago.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 3. The Long Watch
The Long Watch — Chapter 3
Two days out from the Night Bazaar. Gemma has taken over the navigator's stool. She has a map of a vault spread across the console, held down by Edie's scrap mite in a jar.
Gemma Drury: The Counting House vault. Three locks, two guard drones, one sleepy clerk. Behind the door, the debt papers for every family in the Rush Kitchen.
Gemma Drury: I walk in. I burn them. Four hundred families wake up owing nothing. Beautiful, right?
Jace Keller: No.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: You didn't even look at the map, Red.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I looked at the word "vault." That's enough map for me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I need a crew. A pilot. A girl who can talk to drones. And about two thousand Crowns for gear. I've got the plan, you've got the ship. Fifty fifty.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Fifty percent of nothing, plus jail.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie likes the plan. Edie wants to talk to the drones.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Kid, nobody's talking to any drones.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The dock radio crackles. Edie turns it up. A woman's voice reads out the new papers, one after the other, flat and bored. Then she stops and reads one twice.
Edie Marlowe: Jace! Five thousand Crowns! From Boss Table!
[Picture: writ boss]
Gemma Drury: Boss Table? The Nine Bosses themselves?
[Picture: writ boss]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: For whoever's selling black crystal into the Rush. The radio lady says people who take the new Rush go quiet. They stop talking. Their hands go cold.
[Picture: writ boss]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma goes still. She puts the map down very carefully.
Gemma Drury: I've seen them. On Vesk. People sitting in the fog, not blinking. Everyone says it's a bad batch.
Jace Keller: Five thousand from the Syndicate to catch someone poisoning the Syndicate's drug.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: The Syndicate pays us, and we spend it robbing the Syndicate's vault? Red, that's poetry. It covers the vault gear and then some.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Where's it coming from?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: A freighter with no name docks at the Bazaar once a week. Cold crates, no checks. It comes in from the Dark Rim. Last stop before the Rim is Marl Port, on Vigil.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Then we go to Marl Port.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Oh, so now it's "we."
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: For five thousand Crowns, it's "we."
[Picture: previous speaker]
Marl Port on Vigil is a gray town of water mills and signal towers. The Long Watch is a tavern built inside the hull of an old Order supply ship. Knights, tower crews and hired guns drink at long tables under a ceiling of ship's ribs.
The owner is a huge Gorr with gray-green skin, worn tusks, a thick gray moustache and one arm. His left sleeve is pinned up. A faded pale blue knight's tunic shows under his leather apron.
Jace Keller: Hi. We're looking for news about a freighter. No name. Cold crates.
The big man looks at him. Then he puts three bowls of stew on the bar and walks away.
Gemma Drury: Charming. He's perfect.
Edie Marlowe: Edie loves the stew.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They ask again at noon. He gives them bread. They ask at sunset. He gives them more stew. He doesn't say one word all day. He just watches.
[Picture: stew]
Jace Keller: Okay, big man. That's six bowls of stew. Are you gonna talk to us or just keep feeding us until we explode?
[Picture: stew]
Ottar Brack: Ottar Brack. I watch a new crew for a day. Then I decide.
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: The little one fixed my pump and my lamp and my door. The horned one stole a spoon and put it back. You paid for the stew with a button. Off your own coat.
Jace Keller: It was a good button. I've got two more.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: It was. I'll allow it. Eat first, kid. Then we talk.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Don't call me kid.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Everyone is kid. I'm sixty. Eat.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At a long table near the door, three hired fighters in Compact coats are buying rounds for the whole room. Their leader is a wiry man with a scar on his chin and a big friendly grin.
Milo Danner: Drinks on me! Knights, tower boys, and the new crew at the bar. They look like they need one!
Milo Danner: Milo Danner. That's Haldor and Damon. We ride with the patrols. Hush runs, Rim runs, anything with a bit of danger and a lot of pay.
Gemma Drury: Hush, you said? We're very interested in Hush.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Milo Danner: Then you're in luck! A patrol rides out tonight past Cold Acre. We're the guides. Come along, we'll show you the road.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Behind the bar, Ottar sets down a mug a little too hard.
Ottar Brack: Three patrols lost this year. You rode with every one of them, and you came back without a scratch.
Milo Danner: We were lucky, old man. We've told the story a hundred times.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: The same story. Three times. Ambush. Fog. Ran for help. Came back alone.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Twelve knights rode out of Fort Carrow tonight with you as guides, and you're sitting here drinking. Who's guiding them now?
The room goes quiet. Milo stops smiling.
Milo Danner: You're a tavern keeper with one arm, Ottar. Sit down.
Ottar reaches up behind the bar and takes the old knight's sword off the wall. It's longer than Edie is tall. He vaults the bar one-handed.
Haldor swings a bottle. Ottar ducks it. Damon pulls a knife. Ottar knocks it out of his hand with the flat of the blade. Milo goes for his pistol, and Ottar puts him through a table with one arm.
Ottar Brack: I said sit.
Gemma Drury: Grandpa! I'm keeping him.
Haldor and Damon run for the door. They don't look back.
Jace Keller: They're going to the patrol. Big man, where's Cold Acre?
Ottar Brack: North. Bring a lamp. Bring every lamp.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie has lamps. Gemma's lamps. Edie took some.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Sparks!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie learned from the best.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Cold Acre is a round patch of plain a kilometer wide where frost never melts, even at noon. Lamps burn low here. Nothing grows. Animals won't go near it.
[Picture: frost]
At the edge of the frost, twelve knights stand in a loose circle. They are perfectly still. Their breath doesn't fog.
[Picture: frost]
WARNING SHEET. HUSK. Danger low, one at a time. The Vhal touched them. The body walks. The person is gone. Light burns them.
[Picture: stamp low]
One turns its head. Its skin is gray and its eyes are open and empty. It doesn't make a sound. Then all twelve begin to walk toward the lamps.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: husk front]
[Picture: husk front]
[Picture: husk front]
[Picture: husk front]
[Picture: husk front]
Edie Marlowe: Rufus says they're cold. Not cold like snow. Cold like nothing.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: rufus]
Ottar Brack: They're husks. The Vhal touched them. The body still walks and still obeys. The man inside is gone.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Gone where?
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Nobody knows. I've asked for thirty years.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: There's someone in the middle. He's moving wrong. Like he's still scared.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Then he's still alive. Lamps up. Light burns them. Stay in the light.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar walks into the frost holding a brass lamp high in his one hand. The husks flinch away from it like it's a fire. Gemma and Edie follow with two more lamps from the stall.
Jace runs through the gap they make. In the center of the circle, a young knight kneels in the frost, shaking. Jace hauls him up and gets his arm over his shoulder.
Jace Keller: Hi. I'm the rescue. I know, I don't look like it.
Behind them, the lamps start to flicker. The husks step closer every time the light dips.
Ottar Brack: Walk, kid! Don't run. Running looks like dinner.
They walk out backwards, step by step, with the lamps held high, until their boots crunch off the frost and onto the dry grass.
Past midnight. The young knight is asleep by the stove under three blankets. Milo is tied to a chair with what's left of a table. Haldor and Damon were last seen running south.
Milo Danner: All right! I'll talk. I'm a talker, everyone knows that.
Milo Danner: We walk the patrols to the cold. We leave. Somebody pays us. Good money, in Crowns.
Jace Keller: Who's paying?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Milo Danner: The money comes from a camp on Hush. Dimlight. The boss there pays the patrols on Hush to look away, and he pays us to make sure there's fewer patrols. He's digging something up in the south. Black stones. Cold ones.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Milo Danner: That's all I know. I swear. I never even met him.
Ottar stands at the window for a long time. Then he takes off his apron and folds it on the bar.
Ottar Brack: Somebody's paying knights to look away. I gave thirty years and an arm to the Order. That makes it my business.
Gemma Drury: Grandpa's coming?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Grandpa's coming. I've seen your ship's galley from the window. It's a crime. Somebody has to feed you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Who said you're on my crew?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I'll bet you five Crowns you say yes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I don't have five Crowns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Then you can't lose the bet. Yes?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace looks at the folded apron, the sword, and the old Gorr, who is already packing a bag of flour.
Jace Keller: Fine. Yes. But we need fuel and papers to get onto Hush, and we're broke.
Ottar Brack: I know a job. Racing station. A pilot needs an escort and pays well.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Racing? Edie's never seen a race. Edie already loves it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 4. Far Turn
Far Turn — Chapter 4
Sprint Ring is a Syndicate racing station far out in open space. A ring of floating buoys and stone gates marks the track around it. The Last Lap is its party deck, loud, crowded and lit up in every color.
A woman in a red racing suit stands on a table with a drink in each hand. She's a slim Wayfolk with warm brown skin and short pointed ears, and the whole deck is cheering for her.
Rielle Vant: Drinks are on me! Every pit crew, every mechanic, every sad little betting clerk! Tomorrow I win the Grand Loop and I'm buying the whole station a sandwich!
Gemma Drury: I like her. She's loud and she's paying.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Rielle Vant. Best racer in the Low Spiral. Never lost the Loop. Never flew a safe line in her life.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: And she needs an escort because...?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Ask her. Not on the table. Later. Champions talk different when nobody's cheering.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Later, the deck is half empty. Rielle sits at the end of the bar with one drink, not two. Her hands won't stay still.
Rielle Vant: You're the escort crew? You look like a shipwreck that learned to walk.
Jace Keller: Thank you. We worked hard on it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rielle Vant: A man named Saverio Dunst bet a fortune that I lose tomorrow. He offered me money to throw the race. I said no.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rielle Vant: Two nights ago somebody burned my spare engine. A whole year of work, black on the stand. Two other racers who said no to him crashed this season. One's still in a hospital bed.
Jace Keller: So you want someone flying next to you who can shoot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rielle Vant: I want someone flying next to me who doesn't run. Two hundred Crowns now. A thousand if I cross first.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: And if you don't cross first?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rielle Vant: Then I'm probably dead, and you can keep the two hundred and the sandwich.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A tiny Cogling woman in grease-stained overalls stomps up to the bar. She has a big head, bright eyes, pointed ears and three wrenches in her belt.
Tilly Gorse: Rielle! You fly in twelve hours! Your old engine runs hot, your fuel line's half new, and you're up on a table with a drink!
Rielle Vant: It's one drink, Tilly.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tilly Gorse: It's three drinks! I counted the glasses! I count everything!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tilly sees Edie. Edie sees Tilly. They both stop.
Tilly Gorse: Who rewired your shock baton? That's a double coil. Nobody's crazy enough to do those.
Edie Marlowe: Edie does a double coil.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tilly Gorse: That's illegal on this station.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie's not on this station. Edie's on a ship.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tilly Gorse: Come to the pits. Right now. I need to see what else you've done wrong.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Pit Row is a long hall of garages under the grandstand. Racers' skiffs hang on chains. Rune engines hum on their stands. The air smells like hot brass.
Rielle's spare engine sits black and ruined. Tilly can't look at it. Edie walks straight past it to the track drones lined up along the wall.
Edie Marlowe: These drones are sad.
Tilly Gorse: They're buoy drones. They keep the track. They don't have feelings.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: This one has new wires. Somebody opened it and put in wires with sad hands. Shaky hands. Look.
[Picture: previous speaker]
WARNING SHEET. BUOY DRONE. Danger low, unless somebody holds the rod. Race marshal. Fires harpoons at whatever it's told to.
[Picture: stamp low]
A brass barrel the size of a man floats on the rack, with a lamp on top and a harpoon gun folded under its belly. A new bundle of wires runs from its rune plate to a socket marked with a scratched brass ring.
[Picture: buoy drone front]
Tilly Gorse: That's a control rod socket. Whoever holds the rod can fly it anywhere on the track.
Ottar Brack: Like the Far Turn. On lap three.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Who's got shaky hands and knows rune drones?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tilly Gorse: Paul Roche. Best rune mechanic on the station. He's in the Debt Hold for gambling. Three hundred Crowns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: And let me guess. Every time a racer crashes, somebody takes Paul out of the Debt Hold for a "garage shift."
[Picture: previous speaker]
An hour later, Ottar comes back down the pit row with a nervous, wiry man in prison gray. The Debt Hold guard got a pot of stew. He's very happy about it.
Paul Roche: I'm not supposed to talk. They told me what happens to my brother if I talk. Martin.
Jace Keller: Nobody's gonna hurt your brother. We just want the drones fixed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Paul Roche: Fixed. Unfixed. Fixed back. I put two in. Two. Here and here. They're for the Far Turn, lap three. Rielle.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rielle Vant: You were gonna kill me!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Paul Roche: They were making me do it! That's different. Okay, it's not that different. I'm sorry.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Paul, look at Edie. You do wires. Edie does wires. So we undo the sad ones together, yes?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Paul Roche: I wrote it down. Every wire. Ten minutes each. If your hands are steady.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie's hands are always steady. Edie's feet are cold, though.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They work all night. Edie talks to every drone by name. She names them as she goes. Paul starts to smile around the third one. By morning, one drone is clean.
Paul Roche: The second one's gone. They took it out to the track an hour ago. The rod's with the fixers. A man in a green coat.
Jace Keller: Then we'll take it from him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Meanwhile, I'm going to Odds Hall. Rielle's paying us two hundred up front. I'm betting all of it on her.
[Picture: chits]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: All of it?
[Picture: chits]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Red, I've seen her fly and I've seen her drink. Anyone who can do both like that is going to win. The odds are nine to two. That's a thousand Crowns.
[Picture: chits]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I'll take five on Rielle too.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: You don't have five.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I do now. I won it off you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The Grand Loop. Twenty racing skiffs scream around the ring of stone gates. Rielle's red skiff leads by a length. The Blue Hour flies just off her shoulder, red sail out, Jace at the helm.
Lap three. At the Far Turn, a fixer boat swings out of the shadow of a gate. Men in green coats fire nets. Behind them, a brass buoy drone turns its harpoon toward Rielle.
Jace Keller: Edie! The drone!
Edie Marlowe: Edie sees it. Rufus, fetch!
Edie throws Rufus overhand like a ball. The little drone shoots across the gap and slams into the fixer in the green coat. The brass control rod spins out of his hand and into open space.
The buoy drone freezes. Then it blinks its lamp, turns around, and floats politely back to its gate. Jace swings the Blue Hour across the fixer boat's bow and they scatter.
Rielle Vant: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Did you just throw a tiny drone at a man?
Edie Marlowe: ◉ ▂▄▆█ That's Rufus! He's a good boy!
[Picture: rufus]
Rielle's red skiff tears through the last gate a full length ahead. The grandstand explodes. Confetti and lamp flares go up all over the station.
High in the steward's box, a heavy man in a dark suit sets his glass down on the table. He does it very, very slowly.
Rielle Vant: ◉ ▂▄▆█ A sandwich for everyone! I promised! I keep my promises!
That night, the Last Lap is the loudest place in the Low Spiral. Rielle is back on a table. Tilly is asleep under it. Rielle paid off Paul Roche's debt, and he walks out of the Debt Hold with his brother. Gemma's bet paid a thousand Crowns.
[Picture: confetti]
Gemma Drury: A thousand Crowns, Red. That's the vault gear and fuel to Hush and a new cloak for you, because that one has a hole in it.
[Picture: confetti]
Jace Keller: It's a ventilation hole. I'm proud of it.
[Picture: confetti]
[Picture: previous speaker]
A heavy man in a dark suit takes the stool next to Jace. He has a broad clean-shaven face and very calm eyes. He orders water. He doesn't drink it.
[Picture: confetti]
Saverio Dunst: Saverio Dunst. You cost me a great deal of money today, Mr. Keller.
Jace Keller: Yeah. Sorry. Not really.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Saverio Dunst: I told Miss Vant I would never lay a hand on her. I keep my word. I won't touch her. Ever.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: That's not how you say that if you mean it nicely.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Saverio Dunst: I keep my word to the letter, Mr. Keller. What it means is my business. I'll remember the red cloak.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He leaves the water and a Crown on the bar and goes. Jace watches him all the way to the door.
Ottar Brack: That one's the dangerous kind. The quiet kind.
Jace Keller: They're all the quiet kind, big man. That's the problem.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Across the deck, Gemma is at the card tables. There's a pile of chips in front of her. Then there's a smaller pile. Then there's a very small pile.
[Picture: chits]
Edie Marlowe: Jace. Rufus says Gemma's money is going away.
[Picture: chits]
[Picture: rufus]
Jace Keller: Drury! Stop playing!
[Picture: chits]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I'm on a streak, Red! It's a bad streak, but it's a streak!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ten minutes later, she sits down at the bar beside him with two hundred Crowns and a very polite smile.
Gemma Drury: So. Good news. We still have fuel money for Hush.
Jace Keller: And the vault?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: The vault is going to have to believe in me a little longer.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I won my five Crowns. I'm buying everyone soup.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie loves soup. And racing. Edie wants to come back and race.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Kid, we can't afford to come back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Then we go to Hush. I know which patrols take money and which don't. We'll get you in.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 5. Asleep Since 870
Asleep Since 870 — Chapter 5
Hush is a dead black world. Its sun went dark in the year 870, and it's been night there ever since. The Order keeps it under quarantine. Nobody is allowed to land.
Ottar sits at the radio with his one hand flat on the console, talking to a patrol ship in a low, slow voice.
Ottar Brack: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Brother Anselm. It's Ottar. Yes, that Ottar. No, I didn't die. I'm told I'm too stubborn.
Ottar Brack: ◉ ▂▄▆█ A salvage run. Four of us. Small skiff. You never saw us, and I never saw you take the Dimlight money last spring.
There's a long silence on the radio. Then the patrol ship turns its lamp away.
Gemma Drury: Grandpa! Blackmail? From a knight?
Ottar Brack: I said I'd keep my oaths. I never said I'd keep my mouth shut.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Jace. Edie doesn't like this planet. It's too dark. Rufus doesn't like it either. Rufus is hiding in Edie's shirt.
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: It's just a planet, kid. The dark can't hurt you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Below them, a single cluster of lights glows on a white plain. It's a huge crashed freighter, half buried in the ice, with smoke coming out of its stacks.
Dimlight is an illegal salvage camp built inside that freighter. About a hundred and fifty people live there. Its engines still run, so it has heat, light and air. The Hot Plate is its old galley, now a tavern and the only warm room on Hush.
By the door hangs a board of fees. Heat, ten Bits a night. Air, five Bits. Boots dried, two Bits. At the bottom, in neat handwriting, it says "Camp boss, L. Reeve."
Jace stops in front of the board. He reads the name twice. Then he walks on to the bar and doesn't say anything.
Gemma Drury: Red? You okay? You went a funny color.
Jace Keller: Cold. It's cold. Let's get a table.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At the back table, a tall woman with dark eyes and frost in her eyebrows is drinking alone. She pours a second cup without being asked and pushes it across.
Yelena Marek: Sit. Drink. You're new here, and new people always need a drink.
Yelena Marek: Yelena Marek. Three years on Hush. And before you ask, no, I'm not crazy. Everybody in this room thinks I'm crazy. They're wrong.
Gemma Drury: I like her. Why does everyone think you're crazy, Yelena?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: Harlan Farms. It's a village out on the plain, frozen since the year 870. The families are still sitting at their tables. You get used to it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: Two weeks ago I went into a farmhouse there for food tins. And there was a woman. Alive. Setting the table. She asked me if I'd come about the milk.
Ottar Brack: Alive? In Harlan Farms?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: Alive! I told the boss. He laughed at me. He told me to keep my story to myself, and he sent his own crew to dig up her cellar the next day.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Why'd he dig up her cellar?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: Black stone. Black crystal. His crew digs it everywhere. He sells it to people in hoods. Nobody asks.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: I'm going back for her. Nobody else will. You want to come or not?
Edie Marlowe: Edie's coming. Edie wants to meet the milk lady.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Harlan Farms sits under a black sky with no stars. Every house has frost on the windows. Inside them, through the glass, gray shapes sit at their tables in the dark.
One farmhouse has a lamp lit. Inside it, the table is set for two. A woman in an old gray wool dress and white apron is pouring tea. Her light brown hair is braided around her head. Her lips are faintly blue.
[Picture: farm cup]
Hanna Harlan: Oh. Visitors. You'll forgive the cold, the stove won't take. Have you come about the milk?
[Picture: farm cup]
Gemma Drury: No, ma'am. We came to see if you're all right.
[Picture: farm cup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: I'm quite all right, thank you. Hanna Harlan. My husband Tobias is in the barn. He's been very quiet since the sky went dark. Everyone has.
[Picture: farm cup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: I fell asleep in the cellar. The night the sun went out. We had a black stone down there, Tobias dug it from the north field. It kept the milk cold. I must have slept a long while. My neck is stiff.
Ottar Brack: Mrs. Harlan. What year is it?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: It's 870, of course. What a question.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nobody says anything. Edie looks at Jace. Jace looks at the floor. Ottar looks at Gemma. Gemma sits down at the table across from Hanna.
Gemma Drury: Mrs. Harlan. Do you want the plain truth, or the gentle one?
Hanna Harlan: The plain one. I've always wanted plain answers. I never forget a lie.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: It's 1042. You slept a hundred and seventy-two years. The stone kept you. Everyone in the village is gone. Some of them are still sitting at their tables, but they're gone.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna sets the teapot down. She straightens the cups so the handles line up. She doesn't cry. Her hands shake once, then stop.
Hanna Harlan: Thank you for telling me plainly. That was kind.
Hanna Harlan: I'd like to take Tobias his tea now. If you'll excuse me.
In the dark barn, a man stands between the stalls with frost in his hair and his arms at his sides. His skin is gray. His eyes are open. He hasn't moved in a very long time.
Hanna walks up to him with a cup of tea held in both hands. She puts it in his cold hand and closes his fingers around it.
Hanna Harlan: There, love. Drink while it's hot. You always let it go cold.
The tea steams. The husk doesn't move. Behind her, Gemma holds the barn door and stares at the floor.
Gemma Drury: My brother sat like that. At the end. After the Rush. You talk to them anyway. You don't know what else to do.
Rufus pops out of Edie's shirt and turns slowly toward the south. Edie's little radio on her belt starts to crackle. Under the static, there's a faint sound. It sounds like humming.
[Picture: rufus]
Edie Marlowe: Jace. The radio's humming. Nobody's humming. Edie's not humming.
Jace Keller: Turn it off, kid.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie turned it off. It's still humming.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Out in the dark, something howls. Then something else answers. Then a lot of somethings.
WARNING SHEET. HUSK HOUND. Danger low, a pack is not. The dogs of Hush. They don't bark. They hate bright light.
[Picture: stamp low]
A pack of dogs comes across the frozen field. They were the farm dogs of Hush once. Now their fur is white with frost, their eyes are gray and empty, and they don't bark. They just run.
[Picture: husk hound front]
[Picture: husk hound front]
[Picture: husk hound front]
[Picture: husk hound front]
[Picture: husk hound front]
Yelena Marek: Damn it. They come to light. They always have.
Jace and Yelena hold the farmhouse porch back to back, firing into the snow. The gray dogs come out of the dark in a wave.
Ottar stands at the top of the steps with the brass lamp held high in his one hand. Every dog that runs into its light falls back yelping, frost smoking off its fur.
Ottar Brack: Stay in the light! The light's the only thing they hate more than us!
Jace Keller: Big man, they hate us?
Ottar Brack: They hate everybody, kid! Shoot!
The last dog turns away at the edge of the light. Then the whole pack melts back into the dark.
In the barn doorway, Hanna has watched all of it. She walks out to Ottar slowly. She looks at the lamp, and at the pale blue knight's tunic under his coat.
Hanna Harlan: You're a knight. My mother said knights came with lamps, in the bad times. She said the light lets the lost ones rest.
Ottar Brack: It does, ma'am. If they're let.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: Then let him rest. Please. I'll sing for him. He liked it when I sang.
[Picture: previous speaker]
In the dark barn, Ottar raises the brass lamp in front of the gray, frozen man. The old knight's head is bowed. His lips move with an Order prayer.
Hanna stands beside her husband with her hand on his arm. She sings an old chapel hymn of Hush in a clear, steady voice. The light grows. The frost on Tobias's hair melts away.
Hanna Harlan: Rest now, love. The cows are fed. I'll be along.
The light fills the barn. When it fades, Tobias is gone. The teacup sits on the straw, still warm.
They bring Hanna back to Dimlight on Yelena's sled. The Hot Plate gives her a stew she doesn't eat and a blanket she doesn't want. She sits up very straight and watches everything.
Yelena Marek: Alive! What did I say? Laugh now, you frostbitten idiots!
Hanna Harlan: Miss Marek, you're shouting. It's very rude.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yelena Marek: Sorry, Mrs. Harlan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Jace. Edie's sad. Edie doesn't like being sad. Can Edie stop now?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Soon, kid. Eat something.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: He's learning.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The door opens. Cold air rolls in. Everyone at the bar goes quiet at once, the way people do when the boss walks in.
A tall man in a fur-lined gray coat stands in the doorway with a long scoped rifle on his shoulder. He takes off his fur hat. His eyes are very blue.
Lucan Reeve: Hello, Jace.
Chapter 6. Hello, Jace
Hello, Jace — Chapter 6
Lucan Reeve hangs his rifle on a hook by the door like it's an umbrella. He walks to the bar, and people get out of his way without being asked.
He's about forty, handsome, with a neat short beard that has one gray streak in it. His coat is lined with fur. His voice is very soft.
Lucan Reeve: Jace Keller. On Hush. Do you know how long I've waited to say that? Of course you do. You counted too.
Jace Keller: Hi, Lucan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: "Hi, Lucan." Twelve years, and it's "Hi, Lucan." You haven't changed. You look well. Prison suits you. It always did keep you from thinking.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma's eyes go from Lucan to Jace and back. Her tail goes very still.
Lucan Reeve: Stew for the table, please. And for the lady in the blanket. She's had a long sleep.
Hanna Harlan: I don't know you, sir.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: No, Mrs. Harlan. But I know your cellar. My men dug it out. That stone kept you for a hundred and seventy-two years. Do you know how much that's worth to the right buyer?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: I don't care for your tone.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: Nobody does. They still pay my fees.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: You pay the patrols on Hush to look away, and you pay men to walk knights into the cold.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: Ottar Brack. One arm, thirty years of service, and a tavern full of gossip. Yes. I do. Is that a question, or are you just saying things you know?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: It's a promise.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: Wonderful. I collect those too.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He turns back to Jace and sits down on the next stool. He doesn't look at the crew again.
Lucan Reeve: I have a job for you, Jace. Flying cargo. Cold crates, Hush to the Night Bazaar, once a week. Good pay. Like old times.
Jace Keller: I've seen what's in your crates. I'll pass.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: You'll pass. You passed on the singer too, remember? Fog Harbour, the rain, the pretty one in the red dress. You opened the hatch and said "go."
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Lucan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: One word, and you threw away my whole life. I lost my name in the Low Spiral, and my ship with it. I came out here to the ice and started over.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: And look. I've done so well. I'm very rich now. I'm grateful, really. Without you, I'd never have found the cold.
His hand goes into his coat pocket. For one second, Gemma sees what he's turning over between his fingers. It's a small black stone ring.
[Picture: black ring]
Lucan Reeve: Stay the night. Enjoy the heat. It's on the house. Think about the job.
[Picture: black ring]
He stands up, takes his rifle off the hook and stops beside Gemma on the way out.
[Picture: black ring]
Lucan Reeve: He always lets people go, you know. Ask him why. It's a good story.
The door closes behind him. The room starts breathing again.
Gemma Drury: He had a black ring in his pocket.
Ottar Brack: The cult carries those. The ones who want the Rim Gates open. They carry the ring, they never wear it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Red. Who's the singer?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Nobody. Long time ago.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: That was a very polite "nobody." I invented polite, Red. I know it when I hear it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: He's got a dig in the south. Black crystal. Whatever he's selling, it's going into the Rush. That's our five thousand. Let's go get it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Changing the subject. Very smooth, Red. Fine. We do it your way. For now.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Midnight. Lucan's office is the freighter's old bridge, high above the camp. Lamps burn low. A map of the south is pinned to the wall, with crosses in black ink.
Gemma kneels at the desk with a lockpick between her teeth. Edie is on her back under it, talking quietly to a guard drone's wiring.
Gemma Drury: Three locks, all old. Nobody bothers picking old locks, so that's where he keeps the good stuff.
Edie Marlowe: The drone says hi. It's very lonely. Edie told it a joke, and now it's asleep.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: What joke?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie can't tell you. It's a drone joke. You wouldn't get it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The last lock opens. Inside the drawer is a thick ledger bound in gray leather. Gemma flips it open. Names, dates, crates, Crowns. Pages of them.
[Picture: ledger]
Gemma Drury: Oh, Lucan. You wrote it all down. What a careful man.
[Picture: ledger]
Edie Marlowe: Gemma. Rufus says somebody's coming up the stairs.
[Picture: ledger]
[Picture: rufus]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Then we're leaving through the window. Can you climb?
[Picture: ledger]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie can climb anything. Edie's barefoot.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Five kilometers south of Dimlight, the ice is black. Not dark. Black. A field of black crystal pushes up through the snow like broken glass. It's so cold here that the air hurts.
[Picture: frost]
Jace and Ottar lie on a ridge, watching. Below them, sleds and lamps and twenty men with picks.
[Picture: frost]
Ottar Brack: Look at the lamps. They're burning blue. Burning low. That's what happens near the Vhal.
[Picture: frost]
Jace Keller: Big man. How much of that stuff does it take to turn someone?
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Hold it too long and you go cold, then quiet. After that, you're not you.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Below the ridge, Lucan's men cut black crystal out of the ice with picks and pack it into crates lined with straw. The lamps around them burn small and blue.
At the edge of the light, a figure in a long hooded cloak waits beside a sled. Next to him stands a horned man in black holding a plain black mask. The hooded figure lifts a shard of black crystal and turns it in the lamp light.
Lucan walks up to them, rifle on his shoulder, and shakes the masked man's hand.
Jace Keller: That's who he's selling to.
Ottar Brack: Black mask. Hood. Those are the ones who want the gates open. If they're buying this much, they're building something.
Something moves in the black ice behind the dig. Something big. The men with picks scatter and run toward the sleds.
[Picture: frost]
WARNING SHEET. BLACK CRYSTAL BRUTE. Danger high. A husk the black crystal grew over. Slow. Very strong. Don't stand still.
[Picture: stamp high]
It stands up out of the crystal field. It was a man once, or a bear, or both. Now it's covered in spikes of black crystal, taller than Ottar, with frost pouring off it like smoke.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: black crystal brute front]
Ottar Brack: Run, kid.
[Picture: frost]
Jace Keller: Big man, you said don't run. Running looks like dinner.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I changed my mind! Run!
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace and Ottar slide down the far side of the ridge and run across the snow. The brute comes over the top behind them, crushing ice with every step, black spikes glittering.
Out of the dark sky, the Blue Hour drops in low and wobbly, red sail flapping, skimming the snow. Edie is at the helm. Gemma hangs off the side rail with one hand out.
Edie Marlowe: Edie's flying! Edie's never flown! This is Edie flying!
Gemma Drury: Grab my hand, Red! Grandpa, grab anything!
Jace grabs Gemma's hand and swings up onto the deck. Ottar catches the rail with his one hand and hangs on. The brute swings at the ship and misses by a sail's width.
The Blue Hour climbs out of the dark and up into open space. Hanna sits on a crate in the corner, wrapped in her blanket, holding her teacup.
Hanna Harlan: I took the liberty of getting aboard. I didn't care for that man.
Ottar Brack: Nobody does, ma'am. Welcome to the crew.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie flew the whole ship! Jace, did you see? Only one rock!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I saw, kid. You flew great. Never do it again.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: We have the ledger, Red. Every crate. Every buyer. Every Crown. That's five thousand from Boss Table, guaranteed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The radio crackles. A soft, polite voice comes through, very clear.
Lucan Reeve: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Jace. You took my book. That's all right. I have a good memory. Did you see him? Down there on the ice, watching you run? I let you go. I wanted you to know how it feels.
Lucan Reeve: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Say hi to Nella for me. Tell her I still remember the song.
The radio goes quiet. Jace sits at the helm and doesn't touch the controls. Nobody says anything for a while.
Gemma Drury: Red.
Jace Keller: I used to fly for him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: That's it. That's the story. I used to fly for him.
Ottar Brack: That's not the whole story, kid.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: No. But it's the part I can say.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma flips open the ledger. Near the back, on its own line, in Lucan's neat handwriting, it says "N.Q., Brass Cup, Aurica. Still loose."
[Picture: ledger]
Gemma Drury: Who's N.Q.?
[Picture: ledger]
Jace Keller: Set a course for Aurica, kid. We're going to the Brass Cup.
[Picture: ledger]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 7. Torch Song
Torch Song — Chapter 7
Aurica is the capital of the Dominion, a world of gold and white spires. Down in the lower city, by the docks, is the Brass Cup. It's the busiest crew tavern in Low Aurica, full of pilots without licences and captains without questions.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
Tonight, a woman is singing on the little stage. She has long auburn hair falling over one shoulder, green eyes and a deep red dress with brass buttons. The room is quiet for her.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
Gemma Drury: So that's N.Q.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
Jace Keller: That's N.Q.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Nella Quint. Owns the place. Won it in a card game, sings on slow nights, knows everybody's business. I asked three people. They all sighed when they said her name. All three. Even the old one.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: You've been busy.
[Picture: character Nella Quint happy]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I'm always busy, Red. You're the one staring at the stage like it owes you money.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie likes the song. It's sad. But it's nice sad.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: It's a dock song from Vesk. Old one. You hear it in the Low Spiral, not up here.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The song ends. The room claps. The singer looks out over the tables and stops when she sees a red cloak at the bar. Her smile doesn't move at all. She walks over slowly, like she's got all night.
Nella Quint: Well. Look what the lanes dragged in. Did you lose your way, pilot? Or did you finally find it?
Jace Keller: Hi, Nella.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: That's it? Twelve years, and that's what you brought me?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: He says that to everyone. He said it to a man who wants to kill him. It's his whole move.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: And who's this? Does your pilot always travel with a thief, or is tonight special?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: How'd you know I'm a thief?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: You've touched my bracelets twice since I walked over. Did you think I wouldn't notice?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I was admiring them.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: With your fingers?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie likes her. She's like Gemma but taller.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella sets a bottle and two glasses on the bar. She pours one for Jace and one for herself, and nobody else.
Nella Quint: So. Why now? Why tonight? You've known where I was for years, haven't you?
Jace Keller: Lucan's got your name in his book. "Still loose."
[Picture: ledger]
[Picture: previous speaker]
For the first time, her smile slips. Just a little.
[Picture: ledger]
Nella Quint: Still loose. Of course I am. He never forgets a loose end. Did you think he'd forget me?
[Picture: ledger]
Fog Harbour on Vesk, twelve years ago. Green fog and rain. A younger Jace, barely twenty, in the same red cloak, sits at the helm of a small skiff at the end of a pier.
On the dock stands a younger Lucan with his scoped rifle raised. Down the pier runs an eighteen-year-old girl in a red dress, soaked and terrified. It's Nella.
Nella Quint: I sang in a dock bar on Vesk that year. One night a Syndicate boss shot a man at table six. I was looking right at him.
Nella Quint: He put a price on me. Lucan took the job. He brought a young pilot, very quiet, very good at flying in fog.
The young pilot looks at the girl. Then at the rifle. Then he reaches over and opens the skiff's side hatch.
Jace Keller: Go.
Nella Quint: And I went. And Lucan lowered his rifle and looked at you. Do you remember how long he looked?
Jace Keller: I remember.
Nella Quint: The boss wanted someone to pay. Lucan lost every job he had in the Low Spiral. He ran for the Dark Rim. You went home to Tallis and flew cargo. And I came here and sang.
Nella Quint: Do you want to know the rest, pilot? The part you don't know?
Jace Keller: There's a rest?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: Three years ago, you flew a cargo into Gallow. You didn't know it was stolen. The Harrow Company was waiting at the dock. Six months in a cell. Didn't you ever wonder who tipped them off?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace doesn't answer. He just looks at her.
Nella Quint: I hear everything here. The man who paid for that tip came in from the Dark Rim. Neat beard. Soft voice.
Nella Quint: You were a loose end, pilot. So am I. He's just been very patient.
Jace finishes his drink. He sets the glass down very gently. Then he walks out onto the back porch without a word.
Gemma watches him go. Then she slides onto his stool and takes his empty glass.
Gemma Drury: So you're the one.
Nella Quint: The one what?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: The one he let go. The reason he lets everybody go, me included. He threw his cloak over a drone for me, you know. I thought that was about me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: Are you jealous, little thief? Or just counting?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I'm always counting. It's a habit. Rush took my brother, and I've been counting what everybody owes ever since.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I just want to know if I'm about to lose something. That's all.
Nella Quint: He was twenty. I was eighteen. We had four days on a skiff in the fog and then I never saw him again. That isn't a love story. That's a rescue.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: The one who stays on his ship and steals his biscuits? Isn't that the love story?
Gemma Drury: Edie told you about the biscuits.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: Edie told me everything. Edie is very chatty.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie is very chatty.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar stands up from the corner table. He doesn't say anything. He just puts his one hand on the hilt of his sword and looks at the front door.
Ottar Brack: Six men by the door. They've been drinking water all night. Nobody drinks water at the Brass Cup.
Nella Quint: They've been here a week. They come every night and wait. I thought they were waiting for me. Were they?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: No, ma'am. They were waiting for him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The front door bangs open. A seventh man walks in. He has to turn sideways to fit. He's huge, with blue-stained lips and hands, and veins that stand out like ropes.
WARNING SHEET. RUSH BRUTE. Danger medium. Years of Rush made him this. Feels no pain. Remembers nothing. Keep the bar between you.
[Picture: stamp medium]
The Rush brute is taller than Ottar and twice as wide. Years of the blue powder made him into this. He doesn't blink. He picks up a table and throws it across the room like it's a chair.
[Picture: rush brute front]
Jace comes back in through the porch door at a run, his hand cannon already out.
The Brass Cup explodes. Six gunmen open fire from the door. Jace and Gemma end up back to back in the middle of the floor, him shooting, her ducking under his arm to throw a chair leg.
Nella flips her red dress back, pulls a small pistol from a strap on her thigh, and fires from behind the bar without spilling her drink.
Gemma Drury: You've got a gun on your leg?
Nella Quint: Don't you?
The brute grabs Ottar. Ottar grabs the brute. The old Gorr throws him over the bar with one arm, into the shelf of bottles.
Ottar Brack: Not in a lady's bar!
Edie Marlowe: Rufus! Lights!
Edie jams her shock baton into the wall lamps. Every light in the Brass Cup goes out at once. In the dark there are three more shots, two thuds and a crash. Then silence.
When Edie turns the lights back on, six gunmen are on the floor, and the brute is asleep in a pile of broken bottles. Jace and Gemma are still standing back to back, breathing hard.
[Picture: smoke]
Gemma Drury: We're good at that, Red.
[Picture: smoke]
Jace Keller: We're okay at that. Don't let it go to your head.
[Picture: smoke]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Too late. It went straight there. It lives there now.
[Picture: smoke]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella comes out from behind the bar. She puts her pistol back on her leg and looks at the wrecked room. She doesn't seem upset. She seems tired.
[Picture: smoke]
Nella Quint: You've broken every bottle I own, pilot. Do you know what that costs?
[Picture: smoke]
Jace Keller: I've got two hundred Crowns.
[Picture: smoke]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: Keep it. You'll need it more than I will.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She takes his face in her hands for a moment. Just for a moment. Then she lets go.
Nella Quint: He doesn't want me, Jace. He never did. I'm just how he gets your attention. He wants you to come to him.
Jace Keller: First time in twelve years you've used my name.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: It's the first time in twelve years you've needed it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Come with us. He'll send more.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nella Quint: And leave my bar? Who'd sing? No. I'll be here. I'll sing another night.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma flips the ledger open on the bar and runs her finger down the buyers. The black crystal goes three places. The Mask Auction on the Night Bazaar. Lucan's own vault. And a place on Vesk called the Fallen Stack.
Gemma Drury: The Fallen Stack. That's in the slums. Under the fog. That's where I grew up.
Ottar Brack: What's there?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: A soup line. For people who are burned out on Rush. A woman runs it. Everyone says she's very kind.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Then that's where the cold crates end up. And where the quiet people come from.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 8. Cold Spot
Cold Spot — Chapter 8
Vesk is the capital of the Syndicate, one huge city built straight down under a green fog that never lifts. The Blue Hour drops into it like a stone into soup.
Gemma hasn't made a joke in two hours. She's sitting very straight on the navigator's stool, and she's being very polite to everyone.
Gemma Drury: Thank you, Sparks, the tea is lovely. And what a nice biscuit, Grandpa.
Edie Marlowe: Jace. Gemma's being nice. Gemma's never nice. Is Gemma sick?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: She's home, kid. Some people get nice when they're home.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: And some get very quiet. I've noticed it's often the same people.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna sits in the corner, knitting a scarf out of a sail rope Edie unpicked for her. She doesn't look up.
Ottar Brack: Talk, little thief. Before we go in. A soldier talks before the fight, or he talks in his sleep after.
Gemma Drury: My brother worked in a Rush lab down here. He was sixteen. He was funny. He used to do voices.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: He started taking a pinch to get through the shifts. A few months later he quit doing the voices. Then he quit talking. He never made it to twenty.
Gemma Drury: That's it. That's the story. Thank you for asking. I'm fine.
Jace Keller: That was a very polite "I'm fine."
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Don't you dare use my moves on me, Red.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The Fallen Stack is a slum tower that fell over in a storm ten years ago. It lies on its side, half sunk in the fog. A gang called the Mire Rats lives in the top. Burned-out Rush users sleep in the bottom.
In the middle, in an old stairwell lit with candles, there's a soup line. A thin Ashen woman with gray skin, short horns and a long thin tail stands behind the pot with a ladle. She smiles at everyone.
[Picture: ladle]
Odette Venn: Come in out of the fog, dears. There's soup for everyone, and no one pays.
[Picture: ladle]
Odette Venn: You're not hungry, though, are you? You've come to look. That's all right, dear. Most people do.
[Picture: ladle]
Gemma Drury: I grew up three decks down. Gemma Drury. You knew my mother.
[Picture: ladle]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odette Venn: Oh, I knew everyone's mother, dear. And everyone's brother. Such sad, tired boys. I give them soup, and when they're very tired, somewhere quiet to rest.
[Picture: ladle]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Where's somewhere quiet?
[Picture: ladle]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odette Venn: Downstairs. Would you like to see? I never turn a visitor away. They're good for the tired ones.
[Picture: ladle]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie stops at the bottom of the stairs. Rufus spins in a tight circle and makes a sound like a kettle.
[Picture: rufus]
Edie Marlowe: Edie's cold. Edie's never cold. Edie walks on ice barefoot.
Jace Keller: Kid. Stay with Hanna on the ship.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: No. Edie's crew.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Above them, on the ceiling of the stairwell, something shifts. A shape that was a man once hangs upside down from the old pipes, gray and silent, its broken legs folded under it like a bug.
[Picture: crawling husk front]
WARNING SHEET. CRAWLING HUSK. Danger medium. A husk with broken legs. Climbs walls and ceilings. Look up.
[Picture: stamp medium]
It drops. It lands on all fours on the stairs, then scuttles up the wall again as fast as a spider, its gray head turned all the way around to watch them.
[Picture: crawling husk side]
Ottar Brack: There's a husk on your ceiling, woman, watching your soup line!
Odette Venn: He keeps an eye on the tired ones for me. He used to be one of them. He's very loyal now. Aren't you, dear?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar raises his lamp. The husk hisses without a voice and pulls back into the dark of the pipes.
The room downstairs is lined with black crystal. Every wall. The floor is white with frost. A single lamp burns tiny and blue.
[Picture: frost]
Along the walls, a dozen young people sit on benches, very still. Some of them are blinking slowly. Some of them aren't blinking at all.
[Picture: frost]
Gemma Drury: Oh, no. Half of them are kids.
[Picture: frost]
Odette Venn: They were in so much pain, dear. Now they aren't. Isn't that kind? The cold takes the pain first. Then it takes everything else.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: This is where Lucan's crates go. You're making husks.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odette Venn: I'm making peace, dear. Mr. Reeve sells me the stones. I pay him well. Everyone here is very peaceful.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace steps into the room to grab the nearest kid. Behind him, the iron door slams shut. A bolt slides across on the outside.
[Picture: frost]
Inside the black room, Jace pounds on the iron door. Frost creeps up his boots, over his knees, onto the red cloak. The tiny blue lamp gutters.
Around him, the still young people turn their heads slowly to look at him, all at the same time.
Jace Keller: Okay. This is a very cold room. It's fine.
His hands are going gray at the fingertips. His breath stops fogging. He sits down against the door without meaning to.
Jace Keller: Huh. It doesn't even hurt. Pretty sure that's the problem.
Outside the door, Odette folds her hands and smiles at the crew.
[Picture: frost]
Odette Venn: Mr. Reeve asked me to keep him, if he came. He asked for him by name. "Jace Keller," he said. "He'll come. He always comes."
[Picture: frost]
Gemma Drury: Open the door.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Odette Venn: I don't have a key, dear. The cold keeps that door now.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Then I'll take the door.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar sets down his lamp. He grabs the iron bolt with his one hand, plants his boots, and pulls. The bolt bends. The hinges scream. The whole door tears out of the black crystal wall.
Frost pours out. Ottar walks into the cold room, scoops Jace up off the floor and throws him over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
Ottar Brack: Not today, kid. Not on my watch. I've lost enough crew to the cold.
Behind him, Gemma runs in with Edie and Hanna's lamp. They pull the young people up off the benches one by one. The ones who still blink stand up. The ones who don't, don't.
Gemma Drury: Up. You're coming with me. I know you're tired. Get up anyway.
Seven of the twelve walk out of that room. Five stay sitting. Gemma looks back at them once, then shuts what's left of the door.
Ottar ties Odette's hands with her own apron strings. She doesn't fight. She doesn't stop smiling.
Odette Venn: You're angry, dear. That's all right. Mr. Reeve sells to the ones who carry the ring, you know. Not just to me. They're buying all of it. They're building something very large and very cold.
Odette Venn: He'll be so pleased you came. He wanted you to see this room, and what he does now. Because of you.
Gemma Drury: Grandpa. Can I hit her?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: No. We bring her in. Alive pays full.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Then can I be very rude to her the whole way?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: That I'll allow.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hours later. Jace wakes up in the cargo hold under five blankets, a pile of sail cloth and Edie's scrap mite jar, which is somehow warm. His fingertips are pink again.
Ottar sleeps in a chair beside the bunk with his old sword across his knees. A bowl of stew sits on the crate next to Jace, still steaming.
[Picture: stew]
Edie Marlowe: Jace is awake! Rufus, look! Edie said he'd wake up. Rufus didn't say anything. Rufus doesn't talk.
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: rufus]
Jace Keller: Hey, kid. Did we win?
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Seven came out. Five didn't. Gemma's up top with them. She's giving them all Edie's biscuits. Edie said it's okay. Edie means it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace looks at the old Gorr asleep in the chair. He looks for a long time.
Jace Keller: Thanks, big man.
Ottar Brack: Eat first.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar doesn't open his eyes. After a moment, Jace picks up the stew.
Chapter 9. The Big Score
The Big Score — Chapter 9
The Blue Hour is docked at the Night Bazaar again. Down in the hold, Odette Venn sits tied to a crate, humming. Ottar sits across from her with his sword, not humming.
Up the ladder, an Order lantern ship waits at the next berth with its great lamp dimmed. Hanna stands at the bottom of its ramp with her knitting bag and her teacup.
Hanna Harlan: Mr. Brack has found me a bed at the hospital on Ashfall. With the knights. I'm told they need someone who can sweep and sing and doesn't mind the cold.
Ottar Brack: They'll fight over you, ma'am. I wrote them a letter. It's mostly about your tea.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: Thank you. I've finished your scarf, Miss Drury. And yours, Edie. Jace, I didn't make you one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Wow. Okay.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: You're planning to leave them. I can tell. My Tobias had that same face the winter he decided to go to the mines alone. I didn't knit him a scarf either.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. Harlan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hanna Harlan: I know a lie, young man. I never forget one. Mind you come back. Plainly.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She walks up the ramp and doesn't look back. The lantern ship lifts away with its lamp glowing.
Edie Marlowe: What's Hanna talking about? Jace isn't leaving. Edie would know. So would Rufus.
[Picture: rufus]
Jace Keller: Nobody's leaving, kid. Go check the helm.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie goes. Gemma doesn't. She folds her arms and leans in the hatchway.
Gemma Drury: That's your lying voice, Red.
Jace Keller: Can you just, for one day, not be you?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Wow.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Nobody asked you on this ship. Not you, not Edie, not the big man. You all just showed up, and now everyone's eating my food and fixing my helm and stealing my wallet.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Your wallet had two Marks in it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: It was my two Marks!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: That's a very bad fight, kid.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I know. I'm bad at the kind with people. Give me one with guns.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: You want to go to Hush alone, because he asked for you by name and left Odette to hold you for him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: He wants me. Nobody else has to be there.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Then we do the vault first. Tonight. Collect the bounty, rob the place, burn the papers. Then we talk about Hush. All of us.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Fine. The vault first.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: He said "fine" too fast.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: I know. I heard it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy Cobble reads the gray ledger at her counter with her teacup in one hand. Behind them, two Syndicate guards hold Odette by the elbows. Odette is still smiling.
[Picture: teacup]
Tansy Cobble: Oh, this is lovely. Every crate. Every buyer. Every Crown. Mr. Reeve writes such a neat hand.
[Picture: teacup]
Tansy Cobble: Boss Table will be thrilled. Five thousand Crowns, as promised. Sign where it's marked, dear. You know how this goes.
[Picture: teacup]
Gemma Drury: We'd love to sign. Can I see the inside of the vault while we wait? I've always wanted to.
[Picture: teacup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy Cobble: Of course not, dear. Nobody sees the vault. That's what makes it a vault. Sugar?
[Picture: teacup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Two, please. Thank you. You're lovely.
[Picture: teacup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Tansy counts five thousand Crowns into a canvas bag. It's so heavy Ottar has to carry it. While she counts, Gemma's fingers rest on the counter, right next to Tansy's ring of keys.
[Picture: coin bag]
Three hours later. The Counting House is closed. In the hall outside the vault, the lamps are low, and two brass guard drones float at the door, slowly turning.
[Picture: coin bag]
WARNING SHEET. SENTRY DRONE. Danger low. A guard with a list. If your name isn't on the plate, it shoots.
[Picture: stamp low]
Each drone is a brass ball the size of a man's head with a lamp for an eye and a rune plate on its side. Each one has a list of who may pass carved into the plate. Nobody on the crew is on it.
[Picture: sentry drone front]
[Picture: sentry drone front]
Edie Marlowe: Hello, drones. Edie's here to talk to you about your lists. Your lists are wrong. Edie's on them now. So are her friends. And Rufus.
[Picture: rufus]
Gemma Drury: Three locks. Tansy keeps the keys on her belt, and I keep wax in my pocket. I made copies while she counted.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: Someone's coming up the stairs. Night clerk.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Then hold the door, Grandpa.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: I'm very good at doors.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma kneels at the vault door with three wax keys in her teeth, working the locks one after the other. Edie lies on her back under the drones with her shock baton in their rune plates. Their eyes blink from red to a calm blue.
At the top of the stairs, Ottar braces his back against a heavy door. Someone pounds on the other side. Ottar yawns.
The vault door swings open. Inside are rows and rows of iron racks, stacked with papers bound in string. Every bundle has a family name on it.
Gemma Drury: Rush Kitchen. Third rack. Four hundred families. Every debt they owe the Syndicate, all in one place.
On the bottom shelf of the last rack, there's an old box marked with a date twelve years ago. Gemma pulls a paper out of it. It's a writ, yellow and soft with age.
Gemma Drury: Sparks. Look at this. A writ on Lucan Reeve. Twelve years old. A boss on Vesk put it up after the Fog Harbour job. Four hundred Crowns, alive.
[Picture: writ lucan]
Edie Marlowe: Somebody signed it. A big signature. Very neat. R. Kendal.
[Picture: writ lucan]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: The lizard. Royce had the writ on Lucan. And he never brought him in.
[Picture: writ lucan]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Royce lost him! Royce said he lost two!
[Picture: writ lucan]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Keep it. Now hold the light, Sparks. This is the part I've wanted for ten years.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma strikes a match. She holds it to the first bundle of debt papers. Then the next. Then she tips Edie's lamp oil along the whole rack.
The Rush Kitchen rack goes up in a sheet of flame. The light fills the vault. Gemma stands in front of it with her gold eyes shining, and she isn't smiling. She's crying, very quietly.
Gemma Drury: That's for you, Tobin. You and your stupid voices.
Edie puts her hand on Gemma's arm and doesn't say anything at all. For Edie, that's a lot.
They come down the back stairs of the Counting House at a run, smelling like smoke, with the drones floating politely behind them. The plan is simple. The Blue Hour waits at Hook 9 with the hatch open and Jace at the helm.
Hook 9 is empty.
Edie Marlowe: The ship's gone. Where's the ship? Edie parked it. Edie remembers parking it.
Ottar Brack: He left. The fool left.
[Picture: previous speaker]
On the dock, where the ship should be, there's the canvas bag with the five thousand Crowns. On top of it is a folded note, held down by a lamp.
[Picture: jace note]
Gemma Drury: He left us the money. All of it.
[Picture: jace note]
Gemma unfolds the note. It's short. The handwriting is terrible.
[Picture: jace note]
Gemma Drury: "Burn the papers. Keep the money. Don't follow me. Edie, feed Rufus. Big man, thanks for the stew. Drury, next port. J."
[Picture: jace note]
[Picture: rufus]
Gemma Drury: Next port! That's what he said the first night! He thinks that's funny!
Ottar Brack: It's not funny. It's a goodbye. He just doesn't know how to say one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: When we find him, I'm going to be extremely polite. He'll hate it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie put a tracker on the helm. Ages ago. When Edie first got on. In case Jace tried to leave Edie somewhere.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: Sparks. You beautiful little lunatic.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: Edie knows. The ship's going to Hush. Obviously. But we don't have a ship.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Footsteps on the dock behind them. A tall shape in a brown duster comes out of the fog.
Royce Kendal stands at the next berth beside a long, dark hunter's ship with a brass prow. He holds up a yellowed paper in his scaled hand. It's a copy of the twelve-year-old writ on Lucan Reeve.
Royce Kendal: Miss Cobble sent word that a ledger came in tonight, with a name I have not seen in twelve years. I came at once.
Royce Kendal: I have never broken a writ. I do not intend to start. Mr. Reeve is one of the two I lost.
Gemma Drury: Is that a ride, lizard?
Royce Kendal: It is a ride, Miss Drury. Get in. Mind the paint.
Ottar Brack: How fast is your ship, hunter?
Royce Kendal: Faster than Mr. Keller's. Most things are.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: That's not true! Edie tuned it! It's very fast now!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Royce Kendal: Then we had better hurry.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 10. Last Call
Last Call — Chapter 10
Dimlight, on Hush. The Hot Plate is empty for the first time anyone can remember. The stove is lit. The stew is on. Nobody is eating it.
Jace walks in alone, shaking snow off his red cloak. A salvager at the door points up the stairs without a word, then leaves.
Up in the old bridge, Lucan sits at his desk with two cups of tea. The steam rises straight up. His rifle leans against the window.
Lucan Reeve: Jace Keller. You came alone. I told Odette you would. Sit. I made tea. You still take it with too much sugar?
Jace Keller: I don't drink tea, Lucan.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: No. You never did. I made it anyway. I've had twelve years to get good at doing things anyway.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace sits down. Neither of them touches the cups.
Jace Keller: You set me up on Gallow. Three years ago. The cargo.
Lucan Reeve: I did. Six months. I'd hoped for longer. You're very good at being let out.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Why now? Why all of this? The patrols, the cold room, Nella's name in your book?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: Why do you think, Jace? You're the one who always knows what everybody's feeling. You knew exactly what that girl felt on the pier. You never once asked about me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: I was twenty-eight. I had a name, a ship and a partner I liked very much. Then a skiff door opened, and you said one word. "Go."
Jace Keller: She was eighteen, Lucan. They were gonna kill her.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: Yes. And instead they ruined me. You did the right thing, and I paid for it. I've never forgiven you. I don't think I'm going to start tonight.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The lamps in the office dip. Just for a second. Then they dip again, and stay low and blue.
Lucan Reeve: Ah. They're early.
Jace Keller: Who's early?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: My buyers asked me to dig deeper this month. Much deeper. They wanted the big stones from the bottom of the field. They pay very well for those. I told them it might wake something up. They said that was the idea.
[Picture: previous speaker]
South of the camp, the black crystal field has split open. Frost pours up out of the crack like steam out of a kettle. Every lamp for a mile goes out at once.
[Picture: frost]
Small black flakes, each the size of a fist, drift up out of the dark like ash. Wherever one touches a lamp, the lamp dies.
[Picture: frost]
WARNING SHEET. FROST STRIDER. Danger very high. A thing from past the Rim. Thirty feet tall. Light turns it back. Nothing else does.
[Picture: stamp very high]
Then it comes. A Vhal creature on four impossibly long, thin legs, each as tall as a tower. Its body is a dark mass thirty feet above the snow. It walks out of the south, slowly, and every step leaves a print of frost.
[Picture: frost]
[Picture: frost strider front]
The strider steps over the ridge toward Dimlight. Below it, Lucan's diggers run for the camp in the dark, dropping their picks. The black flakes swarm over their lamps one by one.
In the black sky above the camp, a long dark hunter's ship with a brass prow drops through the clouds, its lamp blazing.
Royce Kendal: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Mr. Keller. This is Royce Kendal. I have your crew. They have been very rude to me the whole way.
Gemma Drury: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Hello, Jace Keller! How very nice to see you! How lovely that you left us a note!
Jace Keller: Drury?
Gemma Drury: ◉ ▂▄▆█ This is me being polite, Red! You'll know when I stop!
The camp's engines groan below them. The heat is going. The lights in the freighter flicker, then dim, then die. A hundred and fifty people are about to be in the dark.
Edie Marlowe: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Jace! The engines are going to sleep. The cold's getting in the wires. Edie can fix it. Edie needs the engine room.
Jace Keller: Deck nine, kid. Under the galley. Go!
Ottar Brack: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I've got the roof, and every lamp I can find. Light holds them, kid. Remember that.
Lucan stands up from his desk. He picks up his rifle and walks toward the door, perfectly calm.
Jace Keller: Where are you going?
Lucan Reeve: Out to watch. I sold them this. I'd like to see what I bought.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Deep in the freighter's engine room, Edie stands barefoot on the main rune engine with her shock baton jammed into its heart. Sparks pour off her. Rufus spins around her head like a little moon.
Edie Marlowe: Wake up, engines! Edie's not asking. Edie's telling!
Every rune engine in Dimlight roars back to life at once. Every lamp in the crashed freighter blazes so bright it turns the snow white for a mile.
On the roof, Ottar stands with a lamp in his one hand. Beside him, Gemma holds up the brass lamp from her stall, the one Edie loved on the first night. The light pours out across the plain.
Edie Marlowe: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Edie fixed it!
The black flakes burn up in the light like sparks. The Frost Strider stops at the edge of the glow. Its legs shiver. Then, very slowly, it turns and walks back into the dark of the south.
In the new light, two men stand in the snow at the edge of the camp, where the black field begins. One in a red cloak. One in a fur coat with a long rifle.
[Picture: snow]
Lucan Reeve: Your little crew is very good, Jace. Better than you deserve.
[Picture: snow]
Jace Keller: I know.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lucan Reeve: So. How does this end? You let me go? You always let them go.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Not this time.
[Picture: snow]
[Picture: previous speaker]
In the snow, in the blaze of the lamps, Lucan swings his long rifle up. Jace draws his hand cannon. For one second they are twelve years younger, on a wet pier in the fog.
Two shots. Lucan's bolt tears through the red cloak and misses Jace by an inch. Jace's bolt hits the rifle and blows it out of Lucan's hands. Lucan goes down on one knee in the snow, his hand bleeding.
Something small and black falls out of Lucan's coat pocket and rolls into the snow. A little black stone ring. He doesn't pick it up.
Lucan Reeve: You were always faster. I hated that too.
Jace Keller: I'm not letting you go, Lucan.
Lucan Reeve: No. I can see that. Good for you, Jace. Really. You finally learned something.
A tall shape in a brown duster walks up through the snow behind him. Royce Kendal takes a pair of steel cuffs from his belt and closes them around Lucan's wrists. He holds up the old yellow writ.
Royce Kendal: Lucan Reeve. Alive. I have carried this for twelve years.
Royce Kendal: Forty-two.
An hour later, Dimlight is warm and bright. The salvagers are back at the Hot Plate, eating stew and staring at the barefoot girl who saved them, who is asleep on a bench with a drone on her chest.
[Picture: stew]
Ottar is cooking. Of course he is.
[Picture: stew]
Ottar Brack: Eat. All of you. Fighting the dark is hungry work. I've done it for thirty years.
[Picture: stew]
Gemma Drury: Red.
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: Drury.
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: You left us on a dock with a note, Red. Your handwriting's terrible, by the way.
[Picture: stew]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: I know. I'm sorry.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma stares at him. Ottar stops stirring. Even Edie opens one eye.
Ottar Brack: He said it. Did everyone hear that? I'll bet anyone five Crowns he never says it again.
Gemma Drury: No bet. Nobody's taking that bet.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Days later. The Blue Hour sails away from Hush with its one red sail out and its hold full of nothing. Royce got the old bounty for Lucan. It was his writ. He was very polite about it.
Jace Keller: Okay. We still have Boss Table's five thousand, right? Where's the bag?
[Picture: coin bag]
Gemma Drury: Oh, I gave it to the Rush Kitchen families. Before we took off from the Bazaar. All of it.
[Picture: coin bag]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Jace Keller: All of it?
[Picture: coin bag]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma Drury: You left it to me, Red. I'm very generous with your money.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie Marlowe: We're broke! Edie loves it. Broke means there's another job.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Ottar Brack: And there's soup. There's always soup.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Edie's little radio crackles on her belt. Under the static, very faint, there's a sound from somewhere far to the south. It sounds like humming.
Edie Marlowe: Jace. The radio's humming again.
Jace Keller: Turn it down, kid. That's a job for another day.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gemma sits on the arm of the helm chair, the way nobody's allowed to. Jace doesn't tell her to move. Neither of them says anything that matters out loud. They don't need to.
Gemma Drury: So, Red. Next port?
Jace Keller: Next port.
[Picture: previous speaker]