It doesn't help that after the first two books in the series were released, Retribution Falls and The Black Lung Captain, the series lost its US publisher. Luckily for us, Titan publishing came to save the day and we now have the last two books published in the US this year. In fact, they were published just in the last few months and here's the entirety of the series:
Tales of the Ketty Jay:
1) Retribution Falls
2) The Black Lung Captain
3) The Iron Jackal
4) The Ace of Skulls
What brings us here today is the recent release of that final volume and I have an exclusive excerpt from that latest, The Ace of Skulls. Enjoy!
Two
The Intruder – Sentinels –
Crowd Control – Marinda – Pinn Receives a Prophecy
From the darkness, a monster emerged. It loomed into sight, filling up the passageway: a
shadowy hulk, hunched and massive. The crash had shorted
out the lights of the Awakener freighter, but emergency
backups flickered fitfully, providing horrific glimpses of the
intruder.
It was an ogre of tarnished metal and chainmail,
standing eight feet high and five broad. Its face – if it had a face – was set low between its
enormous shoulders and hidden behind a circular grille. Two malevolent and
inhuman eyes peered out, cold chips of light shining in a void.
The Sentinels crouched in doorways or took what
cover they could find. They were the guardians of the Awakeners, soldiers for
the cause. They wore grey cassocks with high collars and the emblem of the
Cipher emblazoned in black on the breast.
They aimed their rifles and let fly. Bullets
sparked off the creature’s armour. It flinched, bellowed, then came stamping
onward with a roar. The foremost of the Sentinels broke cover and ran. Seeing
him falter, others followed, backing away in fear. One man, full of the zeal of
the faithful, stepped bravely out into the centre of the corridor.
‘Stand your ground!’
he cried. Tor the Allsoul!’ And he
fired his rifle at point-blank range through a gap in the creature’s
face-grille, right between its eyes.
He hit nothing. There was a series of sharp,
metallic echoes as the bullet ricocheted about inside the monster’s body. The
Sentinel had only an instant to wonder how an empty armoured suit was storming
an Awakener freighter, before he was backhanded into the wall with the force of
a steam train. The other Sentinels lost all taste for the fight then, and they
fled shrieking. The monster thundered off in pursuit.
When the coast was clear, Frey and his crew stepped
into the passageway, revolvers and shotguns in their hands. They followed
warily in the monster’s wake, pausing only for the captain to examine the
spread-eagled form of the dead man, who was still embedded in the wall in the
midst of an artistic splatter-pattern. He was wearing a startled expression, as
if surprised to find that he was a corpse.
‘Good or Bess,’ Frey said approvingly.
‘She ain’t subtle, but she gets the job done,’
Malvery agreed.
Grayther Crake, the Ketty Jay's daemonist and the man behind the monster, felt
vaguely sick. Bess’s rampages never failed to distress him. It wasn’t the sheer
ferocity with which she maimed and crushed her opponents. It was because she
took such childish glee in the carnage.
The whole crew was here, with the exception of
Harkins, who was even more useless with a gun than Crake was. Leading the way
was the Cap’n, sporting a daemon-thralled cutlass and a surplus of charm to
hide his many and varied flaws. Next to him was Malvery, a man of great size
and enormous mirth, with a ring of white hair and round, green-lensed glasses
perched on his wide nose. Silo, the Ketty
Jay's Murthian first mate, walked alongside. Bringing up the rear
was Jez. Jez, half Mane and getting more so every day, in Crake’s opinion.
There was a jostling at his elbow, and Pinn pushed
past him down the corridor. Oh yes, he’d forgotten Pinn. He had warm feelings
for the rest of the crew, even the cowardly Harkins, but Pinn he didn’t like at
all. Crake was a man who valued intelligence, and Pinn was only slightly more
intelligent than yeast.
‘Are you coming?’ Pinn asked impatiently, eager to
shoot something.
‘After you,’ said Crake, barely concealing his
disdain.
Pinn went off up the passageway. Behind him, the
man embedded in the wall peeled away and slumped into the corridor. Crake
focused all his concentration on keeping his supper where it was meant to be.
He found Ashua at his shoulder, the ginger-haired,
tattooed girl from the slums and most recent addition to the crew. ‘Don’t
worry,’ she said. ‘You know Awakeners. They’re pushovers.’
‘Unless they’ve got Imperators on board,’ Crake
said.
‘On a craft like this? Doubt it,’ she said. She
gave him a pat on the shoulder. ‘Besides, that’s what we’ve got you here for,
isn’t it?’
Crake laughed nervously and stepped over the dead
man, doing his best not to look.
They caught up to the others just as they were
preparing to burst into a room off the passageway. The door was shut, and Frey
and Malvery had taken position on either side. Bess was around the corner,
terrorising those Sentinels who hadn’t run far enough the first time.
Frey gave the nod to the doctor, who pulled the
sliding metal door open. Screams of fright came from within. Frey peered
inside, then relaxed and waved to the others. Silo, Ashua and Jez covered the
passageway while Frey, Pinn and Malvery went in. Once Crake had judged it was
safe, he followed.
It was a small assembly chamber, with' benches
arranged in rows and screwed into the floor, facing a low platform. Huddled
against one wall were a group of Awakeners. They were mostly women and old men,
wearing the beige cassocks of Speakers, the Awakeners’ rank-and-file preachers.
Each of them had the Cipher tattooed on their forehead.
‘Calm down,’ Frey was saying, as he checked between
the benches. ‘No one’s getting hurt. We’re just after, your stuff.’ He had one
hand held up reassuringly, while the other pointed a pistol at them. It was a
rather contradictory message, in Crake’s opinion.
‘We don’t have anything!’ protested one young
woman. ‘We’re Speakers. We only spread the word of the Allsoul.’
‘Really?’ Frey cocked his head. ‘Word has it you
lot have been transporting all your relics and valuables from your hermitages
to a hidden base on the coast, ’cause you’re afraid the Archduke will get hold
of them. You wouldn’t have any on board, would you?’
The group stayed quiet. Frey and Malvery slipped
between the benches and approached them.
‘Listen,’ said Malvery, in a friendly fashion.
‘We’re gonna ransack the place anyway. Save us some time, eh?’
‘Those relics are the property of the Allsoul!’
snapped one old man, bald and wrinkled like a turtle.
Frey grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out
of the crowd. ‘And you just volunteered to tell me where they are.’
‘I’ll never tell!’ he declared shrilly.
Malvery cranked his
lever-action shotgun and pressed it to the side of the old man’s head.
‘Follow the corridor! Third door on the left!’
‘Thanks,’ said Frey, giving him a slap on the
shoulder. He turned to Pinn. ‘Keep an eye on ’em. We’ll go get the loot.’
Pinn looked appalled. ‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re who I asked. Just do it. Can’t have
them running about all over the place.’
Pinn cursed and kicked one of the benches, then
went very quiet, bit his lip and tried to pretend he hadn’t almost broken his
toe. Frey and Malvery headed off out the door. Crake moved to follow them.
‘You!’ said the old man suddenly. Crake realised
that the Speaker was pointing at him. ‘Are you responsible for that thing out there?’
If only you knew how
responsible, thought
Crake. But the old man’s tone inspired defiance and a quiet anger. He turned
calmly to face his accuser. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am.’
The crowd muttered in horror. The old man sneered.
‘I thought so. None of these others had the look. How do you live with
yourself, daemonist? What bargains have you made with the unnatural?’
‘Your own Imperators are daemons,’ Crake said.
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Lies, perpetrated by daemonists like you,’ said
the Speaker, waving a gnarled hand to brush the words aside. ‘You’ve always
despised and feared the Awakeners.’
‘You have hanged quite a lot of us,’ Crake pointed
out. Then he grinned nastily, and his gold tooth glinted in the faint glow of
the emergency lights. ‘Unfortunately for you, you missed one.’
Pinn listened to the distant gunfire with a
resentful scowl on his face. The others were all out there having fun while he
was stuck with guard duty. On top of that, his toe hurt like buggery. It was
all so bloody unfair.
He leaned against the wall of the assembly chamber,
shotgun cradled in his arms. The Speakers watched him fearfully, huddled
together like sheep. He glared at them, blaming them for the whole woeful
situation.
One of them, a man in his sixties who still had a
full head of blond hair, cleared his throat. ‘We’re not men of violence,
friend,’ he ventured.
‘Well, maybe you should learn,’ said Pinn. ‘Stop
people like us robbing you.’
‘What I mean is, there’s no need for the gun. We
won’t cause any trouble.’
Pinn hefted the shotgun in his arms and made a show
of studying it. ‘What, this? You want me to put it away?’
The blond Speaker nodded hopefully.
‘But what if I want to shoot one of you?’ Pinn
asked.
The Speaker’s face fell, and some of the women
gasped. Pinn’s lips curved into a nasty smirk. He wasn’t above enjoying a
little cheap bullying now and then.
‘I’ll tell you why you won’t give me any trouble,’
he said. He brandished the shotgun to show them, patting the barrel for
emphasis. ‘Because this little baby will put a hole in you big enough to—‘
He was interrupted by a deafening boom as the
shotgun went off in his hands, blowing a chunk, out of the bench next to him.
The Speakers all began to scream at once, falling over each other in their
desperation to get away from him. Pinn was no less panicked. He chambered a new
round and pointed his weapon at the crowd.
‘Stop screaming!’ he screamed, desperate to shut them up. But all
they saw was a pudgy red-faced man waving a shotgun at them, and that made them
scream all the more. They scattered across the room, scrambling for cover,
tripping over their cassocks.
Not knowing what else to do, Pinn ran away. He fled
clumsily over the benches, through the door, and yanked it shut behind him.
Out in the passageway, he leaned against the wall,
catching his breath. He needed a moment to get over his fright. The freighter
was quiet and deserted in Bess’s wake. Even the gunfire in the distance had
stopped. He listened as the screams from the assembly room gradually died down.
A movement to his left made him bring up his
shotgun sharply. But it was only Silo, sauntering round the corner. He regarded
Pinn with a long, slow stare. Emergency lights reflected in dim arcs from his
shaven skull.
‘Cap’n asked me to check on you,’ he rumbled.
Pinn raised a hand. ‘All under control,’ he said
breezily.
Silo stared at him a moment longer, then turned and
disappeared without a word.
Pinn blew out his cheeks, waited a few moments,
then opened the door again. There were yelps of fear from the cowering
Speakers. He held up one hand as he entered the room, the shotgun dangling from
the other.
‘Everybody calmed down a bit?’ he said. ‘Good.’
He shut the door behind him, then walked over to
the low platform where he could command a good view of the room. The Speakers’
eyes followed him from their hiding places behind the benches.
‘Now, as I was saying,’ he continued, in a soothing
tone suitable for explaining things to infants and particularly dull domestic
animals. ‘This shotgun here, it’ll put a hole in you big enough to fly a
frigate through. So if everyone will just—’
Someone shrieked in the audience, and one woman
slumped to the floor in a dead faint. Pinn looked down and realised he was
patting his shotgun again.
‘Oh, right.’ He stopped patting it and held it up
instead. ‘Hair-trigger. Very sensitive. Better watch out.’
At the far end of the room, one of the Speakers
slowly stood up, her hands in the air. She had a cloth satchel hanging from one
shoulder. ‘May I approach?’ she asked.
Pinn had never had anyone ask him that before. It
made him feel rather grand. ‘If you like,’ he said.
She made her way out from the benches and walked up
the aisle on one side of the room. As she got closer, Pinn got a better look at
her. She was young, about his age, with chin-length strawberry-blonde hair and
wide, honest eyes. Despite her lack of make-up and the unflattering cassock she
wore, Pinn decided she was really quite attractive. It was a pity she had a
great big Cipher tattooed in black on her forehead. It seemed like a waste of a
good face.
She lowered her hands as she came closer, and spoke
softly. ‘What’s your name, brother?’
‘I’m not your brother,’ Pinn replied. Mostly
because it would make the things he was imagining into incest.
She smiled anyway. ‘We are all brothers and sisters
in the Allsoul. Each of us is connected, each a part of its great code, its
wonderful communication.’
Pinn meant to tell her to shut up, that he couldn’t
stand the Awakeners’ religious babble and he wasn’t interested in becoming a convert. But she was cute, so the
words came out as: ‘Really? Tell me more.’
‘I’ll show you,’ she said. She laid a hand on the
cloth satchel she carried. ‘If I may?’
He waved his assent with the barrel of his shotgun.
To her credit, her flinch was barely noticeable.
She stepped up onto the platform and joined him.
‘My name is Marinda,’ she said.
‘Artis Pinn,’ he replied absently. He was curious
to see what she was going to do next.
The other Speakers watched from behind the pews as
Marinda drew out a small, shallow wooden saucer, a metal flask and a long
needle. She knelt down and poured some of the flask into the saucer, until it
was full of milk.
‘A saucer of milk?’ Pinn asked, confused. ‘Is your
god a cat or something?’
‘Silly,’ said Marinda indulgently. She picked up
the saucer and held it in one hand, fingers spread underneath. In the other
hand she held the needle. ‘The Allsoul isn’t a god. Gods belonged to the old, primitive religions, in the
days before King Andreal dictated the Cryptonomieon. The Allsoul is the wind
and the water, the harmonies of song, the flight of butterflies and the
stirring of the earth. The Allsoul is the great system of interconnectedness, a
being formed of all the processes of the world. It is the planet we live on,
and we are its greatest triumph.’
‘Not a cat, then?’
‘No. Well, yes, I mean, cats are part of the
Allsoul too, just like birds and—’
‘So your god is
a cat?’
The slightest hint of frustration crept into her
voice. ‘Not just a cat.’
‘So why the saucer of milk?’
She took a deep breath. Pinn had the distinct
impression that she was silently counting to ten. When she was done, she smiled
sweetly and held up the needle.
‘I need a drop of your blood.’
Pinn was startled. ‘What for?’
‘The will of the Allsoul makes itself known to us
through signs. Things that seem random are not random at all. A Speaker has learned to interpret those signs.
Some do it by calculating important numbers in your life. Some do it by turning
cards. The Allsoul speaks to me through the swirl of blood in milk. Give me a
drop of your blood, and I will tell you your future.’
Pinn snorted. ‘You’re gonna tell my future?’
‘You don’t believe me,’ she said, with a knowing
quirk of her mouth. ‘That’s alright. You will.’
The confidence in her voice unsettled him. ‘Listen,
right. You’re pretty and all, which is the only reason I’ve listened to you
this far, but if you think I’m going to let you stab me with a—’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
That stumped him. ‘Thank you for what?’
‘It’s kind of you to say I’m pretty.’
‘Well,’ he shrugged. ‘Still, I—’
‘It’s a pity you have someone waiting for you.’
Pinn gaped. ‘How did you know about Emanda?’ He
felt almost guilty to be reminded of his sweetheart when he’d just been thinking
deviant thoughts about the woman in front of him.
Marinda just gazed at him with those wide, honest
eyes, letting him draw his own conclusion. Then she held up the bowl and the
needle. ‘Give me your finger,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
‘I’m not afraid,’
he scoffed. She waited expectantly. Pinn realised that, having said so, he was
now required to prove it.
‘Fine,’ he sulked. He looked out over the assembly
room. Suddenly he felt like the unwilling victim of a stage magician. He
brandished his shotgun in one hand. ‘Don’t anyone try anything! Remember what
this gun can do! Big enough to fly a frigate through!’
Once he was satisfied his audience was sufficiently
cowed, he held his finger out to Marinda. She positioned the wooden saucer
beneath it and aimed the needle at the tip of his finger.
‘Hold still,’ she said, and jabbed him.
Pinn had never been stabbed in the fingertip by a
needle before. The pain was unexpectedly enormous. He yelled an elaborate curse
at the top of his lungs, and only just managed to rein in the impulse to shoot
her.
She ignored him, stepping back, her eyes fixed on
the saucer. There was considerably more than a drop of his blood in the milk.
His finger was squirting enthusiastically. He stuck it in his mouth.
‘You pierced my damn artery!’ he cried, but she
couldn’t understand him because he was sucking his finger at the time. She held
up a hand and Pinn shut up. Half of him was convinced he was dying of a mortal
wound, but the other half wanted to know what kind of prediction she was about
to make.
‘You’re going on a journey,’ she said, studying the
saucer. ‘Somewhere you’ve never been before.’ She frowned. ‘I see death.’
‘Death?’
‘Death.’
‘The good kind, or the kind that happens to me?’
‘Don’t interrupt. I see death. That’s all.’
‘Okay,’ said Pinn, although privately he was a
little put out. The specifics were sort of important.
‘I see a stranger with dark hair.’
‘Is she hot?’
‘It’s a man.’
‘Oh.’
‘You will find something. Something important.
Something you never knew was there.’
Pinn was relieved. ‘I reckon I can’t be dead, then.
Not if I’m busy finding stuff.’
Her face turned grave. ‘Tragedy will fall on
someone you hold dear.’
He was suddenly worried again. ‘Is it Emanda?’
‘The signs are unclear. But one thing is certain.
When all these things have come to pass… you
will believe.’
Their eyes met. Pinn felt himself held, caught by
the certainty within, the challenge he saw there.
Then the door of the assembly
chamber was suddenly pulled open, and someone called his name: He jumped and
discharged his shotgun into the platform at his feet with a terrifying roar.
Marinda recoiled from him with a shriek, blood and milk spilling everywhere.
The Speakers disappeared behind the benches like rabbits into their holes.
Frey was standing in the doorway. He surveyed the
scene with one eyebrow raised. Pinn became suddenly aware that he was standing
at the head of the room as if he was the leader of a congregation.
‘I won’t ask,’ Frey said. ‘We’re done here. Let’s
go.’
 |
| UK version |
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