Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding

this all this time and you never told anyone?’
    ‘There’s plenty secrets this crew ain’t told each other, I reckon,’ said Malvery. ‘I forgot about it, mostly.’
    ‘How did you get it?’
    ‘First Aerium War, I was a field surgeon on the front line. Saved a few fellers once, pulled ’em out of a firefight. They gave me a medal.’
    ‘So why keep it quiet? Aren’t you proud of it?’
    ‘Course I am. Prouder than I ever was about anything. Just seems it belongs to that younger feller who won it, not to me.’
    ‘Hey!’ Pinn said indignantly, raising his head. ‘Who cares about some stupid medal? I’m dying, here!’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Malvery, with a bland look at Crake. ‘Who cares? Now can you get me that carbolic, like I asked?’
    The Ketty Jay ’s engine room was like an oven.
    Silo was no stranger to this heat. He’d been born in it and had grown up in it. He’d felt it in the cells, in pens and camps, in factories and in the jungle after he’d escaped his captors. It wasn’t the same as any summer in Vardia. It was hotter, drier, carrying the smell of baked earth and dust. It drew sweat from the skin and punished the energetic. An oppressive, hateful heat.
    Samarla was out there, and it wanted him. He should never have come back here.
    He moved through the cramped maze of metal walkways that hugged the Ketty Jay ’s engine assembly, testing this and that, hovering like a restless wasp at an apple. His adjusted the electromagnets that pulverised refined aerium into ultralight gas. As usual, it was unnecessary. Everything was in order. The whole assembly had only been put in a few months ago, by some of the best engineers in Yortland. Silo had become somewhat redundant after that. Gone were the days when the Ketty Jay ’s engine just barely held together, and only Silo’s frantic industry kept her alive.
    He missed those days.
    Slag, the Ketty Jay ’s ancient cat, was lying on the injector pipe, drowsing in the heat. Silo normally liked having Slag around. He approved of the cat’s silent company and his independence. Slag wouldn’t suffer to be petted. He came and went as he pleased. But the cat’s presence irritated him now. The fact that the engine ran so damned well irritated him. Everything irritated him.
    Shoulda spoke up , he told himself. He thought in Vardic nowadays, in the same rough border dialect that he spoke. He hadn’t heard or spoken Murthian in almost a decade. Shoulda said somethin’ to the Cap’n.
    But what would he have said? Leave me in Vardia, I don’t want to go with you? Where would he stay? A Murthian wouldn’t last long on his own. If he wasn’t lynched by people itching to settle old scores from the Aerium Wars, he’d be kidnapped and returned to Samarla. His former masters offered a reward for returned slaves.
    Even in Vardia, he was scarcely more free than he’d been in Samarla. At least in Samarla, he’d been able to see the chains.
    Enough o’ that, he thought in disgust. I’m still a man, ain’t I? And on this crew, what I say, it got weight. Maybe I don’t say much, but that’s alright. I chose that path. Chose to keep my silence after what happened.
    But a man gotta raise his voice if he got a ’pinion. Or he can’t blame no one but himself when he suffers.
    Not long ago he’d met a Samarlan. It was the first time he’d seen one since Frey flew him out of the jungle. That encounter had reminded him of something he’d spent years trying to forget. He was a slave. He’d always be a slave, no matter how far he ran.
    He’d killed that Samarlan. Thrown him off the roof of a building. It had felt like liberation, for a while. But one man’s death didn’t liberate him. He still skulked out of sight, keeping his head down, hiding in the engine room. He still kept his opinions to himself. He still did what he was told.
    Anger boiled up inside him. A sudden, uncontrollable fury. He felt it coming, and fought to cap it. He gritted his teeth,