by Philip Reeve
“Won’t make any difference to us,” her guard growled. “It’s you who’ll suffer for it. Arkangel’ll be here soon. We won’t need an airship to get off your poxy town once it’s in the Scourge’s belly!”
As they neared the ballroom door Freya could hear a rising babble of voices coming from inside. The captives must have seen the fire, too, and were talking excitedly, while their guards hollered for quiet. Then something flashed past her head, and Masgard’s lieutenant went backwards without a cry. Freya thought he’d slipped, but when she turned there was a crossbow-bolt jutting from the front of his helmet and a thick dribble of blood starting to drip from one of the horns.
“Eww!” she said.
In an alcove beside the ballroom door a long shape unfolded itself from the shadows.
“Professor Pennyroyal?” Freya whispered. But it was Hester Shaw, already fitting a fresh bolt into the big crossbow she was carrying.
“You’re back!” gasped Freya.
“Oh, what a clever piece of deduction, Your Radiance.”
Freya flushed with anger. How dare the girl mock her? It was her fault this was happening! “You sold our course! How could you? How could you?”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” said Hester. “I’m here to help.”
“Help?” Freya was speaking in a hoarse, furious whisper, fearful that the guards in the ballroom would overhear. “How can you help? The best help you could have given us was to have never come anywhere near my city! We don’t need you! Tom didn’t need you! You’re selfish and wicked and cold and you don’t care about anybody but your horrible self…”
She stopped talking. They had each remembered, at the same instant, that Hester was holding a loaded crossbow, and that with a slight twitch of her finger she could pin Freya to the wall. She considered it for a moment, touching the tip of the bolt to Freya’s breast. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I’m evil. I take after my dad that way. But I do care about Tom, and that means I have to care about you and your stupid city as well. And I think you need me now.”
She lowered the crossbow and glanced down at the man she had just killed. There was a gas-pistol stuffed into his belt. “Do you know how to use that thing?” she asked.
Freya nodded. Her tutors had gone in more for etiquette and deportment than small-arms training, but she thought she grasped the general idea.
“Then come with me,” said Hester, and said it with such an air of command that it never occurred to Freya to disobey.
The hardest part so far had been getting rid of Tom. She did not want to lead him into danger, and she could not be Valentine’s daughter if he was with her. In the dark of the Aakiuqs’ parlour she had pulled him close to her and said, “Do you know any back ways into that Winter Palace? If the place is crawling with Huntsmen we can’t just walk up to the main entrance and announce we’re here to see Masgard.”
Tom thought for a moment, then fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a small, shining object that she’d never seen before. “It’s a lock-pick from Grimsby. Caul’s people gave it to me. I bet I can get in through the little heat-lock behind the Wunderkammer!”
He looked so excited and pleased with himself that Hester couldn’t stop herself from kissing him. When she’d finished she said, “Go, then. Wait for me in the Wunderkammer.”
“What? Aren’t you coming?” He didn’t look excited now, only scared.
She touched her fingers to his mouth to hush him. “I’m going to scout round by the airship.”
“But the guards—”
She tried to look as if she wasn’t frightened. “I was Shrike’s apprentice, remember? He taught me a lot of stuff I’ve never got round to using. I’ll be all right. Now go.”
He started to say something and then gave up, hugged her and hurried away. For a second or two she felt relieved to be alone; then she suddenly needed very badly to have Tom back, to be in his arms and tell him all sorts of things she should have said before. She ran to the back door, but he was already out of sight, following some secret route towards the palace.
She whispered his name to the snow. She did not expect to see him again. She felt as if she were sliding too fast towards an abyss.
Pennyroyal was still crouching at the bottom of the stairs. Hester pushed her way back past him into the kitchen and took an oil lamp from a cupboard above the sink. “What are you doing?” he hissed as she lit it. The yellow glow gathered slowly behind the smoky glass, then spread, lapping across the walls and windows and Pennyroyal’s soap-pale face. “Masgard’s men will see!”
“That’s the idea,” said Hester.
“I won’t help you!” the explorer quavered. “You can’t make me! This is madness!”
She didn’t bother with the knife this time, just pushed her gargoyle face close to his and said, “It was me, Pennyroyal.” She wanted him to understand just how ruthless she could be. “Not you. I’m the one who sent the Huntsmen here.”
“You? But Great Poskitt Almighty, why?”
“For Tom,” said Hester simply. “Because I wanted Tom for myself again. He was to be my predator’s gold. Only it didn’t go how I planned, and now I’ve got to try and put things right.”
Footsteps crunched through the snow outside the kitchen window, and there was a sigh as the outer heat-seal was tugged open. Hester slid backwards into the shadows beside the door as the sentry from the docking-pans pushed his way into the room, so close that she could feel the breath of cold coming off his snow-caked furs.
“On your feet!” he barked at Pennyroyal, and turned to check for other fugitives. In the instant before he saw her Hester stuck out her arm and pushed her knife into the gap between the top of his armour and the bottom of his cold-mask. He made a gargling noise and the twisting of his big body dragged the knife-handle out of Hester’s grasp. She flinched sideways as his crossbow went off, and heard the bolt slam through a cupboard door behind her. The Huntsman was groping at his belt for his own knife. She grabbed his arm and tried to stop him. There was no sound but their harsh breathing and the crunch of crockery under their feet as they stumbled to and fro, with Pennyroyal scrambling to keep out of their way. The Huntsman’s wide green eyes stared out at Hester through the windows in his mask, furious and indignant, until at last he seemed to focus on something very far away beyond her, and his gargling stopped and he fell sideways, almost pulling her down with him. His feet kicked for a while; then he was still.
Hester had never killed anyone before. She had expected to feel guilty, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything. This is what it was like for my father, she thought, helping herself to the dead man’s cloak and fur hat and pulling on his cold-mask. Just a job that had to be done to keep his city and his loved one safe. This is how he felt after he killed Mum and Dad. Clear and hard and clean, like glass. She took the Huntsman’s crossbow and its quiver of bolts and said to Pennyroyal, “Bring the lamp.”
“But, but, but –!”
Outside, snow swarmed like white moths under the harbour lamps. Crossing the docking-pans, shoving the terrified Pennyroyal ahead of her, she glanced through a slot between two hangars and saw a big, far-off smudge of light on the eastern sky.
The hatchway of the Clear Air Turbulence stood open. Another Huntsman was waiting there. “What is it, Garstang?” he shouted. “Who’ve you found?”
“Just an old geezer,” Hester yelled back, hoping that the cold-mask would muffle her voice, the fur cloak disguise her skinny outline.
“Just some old man,” the Huntsman said, turning to speak to someone inside the gondola. Then, louder, “Take him to the palace, Garstang! Shove him in with the others! We don’t want him.”
“Please, Mr Huntsman!” Pennyroyal shouted suddenly. “It’s a trap! She’s—”
Hester swung the crossbow up and squeezed the trigger and the Huntsman went screaming backwards. As his comrades tried to push their way out past his thrashing body Hester grabbed the oil lamp from Pennyroyal
and lobbed it in through the hatch. A Huntsman’s cloak caught light, and fire blazed up inside the gondola. Pennyroyal shrieked in terror and fled. Hester turned to follow, but after two steps she found that she was flying, lifted up by a hot wind from behind and dumped into snow that was white no longer but a Halloween dazzle of saffron and red. There was no bang, just a great, soft “woof” as the gas-cells caught. She rolled over in the snow and looked back. Men were scrambling from the burning gondola, slapping at the sparks which burrowed through the fur of their coats and cloaks. There were only two of them. One ran towards Hester, making her fumble for her fallen crossbow, but he didn’t look at her, just clumped past shouting something about saboteurs, and she had plenty of time to slip another bolt into the bow and shoot him in the back. There was no sign of Pennyroyal. She circled the burning airship, and met the last of the Huntsmen in a place where the smoke was thick and dark. Took the sword from his hand while he was dying. Thrust it through her belt. Ran towards Rasmussen Prospekt and the lights of the Winter Palace.
Uncle’s device made tiny clicking sounds in the keyhole, and the heat-lock opened. Tom slipped inside, breathing in the familiar smells of the palace. The corridor was deserted; not even a footprint in the thick dust. He hurried through shadows to the Wunderkammer, where the Stalker skeletons scared him all over again, but the lock-pick worked on that door too and he padded into the cobwebby silence between the display cases feeling shaky, but proud of himself.
The square of foil shone with a soft light, reminding him very clearly of Freya, and of the crab-cam that had watched from one of those grilles in the heat-ducts overhead as he kissed her. “Caul?” he said hopefully, peering up into the dark. But there were no burglars aboard Anchorage now, just Huntsmen. He felt suddenly, suffocatingly afraid about what Hester was doing. He hated to think of her out there, in danger, while he waited here. There was a flickery glow in the sky, somewhere near the harbour. What was happening? Should he go and look?
No. Hester had said she would meet him here. She had never let him down before. He tried to distract himself by choosing a weapon from the display on the wall; a heavy, blunt sword with an ornate hilt and scabbard. Once it was in his hand he felt braver. He paced to and fro between the cases of moth-eaten animals and old machines, swinging the sword, waiting for her to come so that they could save Anchorage together.
It was only when the gun-battle began in the ballroom and the shouts and shots and screams came booming along the palace corridors that he realized she had come in through the main entrance anyway, and had started without him.
The gas-pistol was heavier than Freya had expected. She tried to imagine shooting it at someone, but she couldn’t. She wondered if she should explain to Hester how scared she was, but there didn’t seem to be time. Hester was already at the door of the ballroom, beckoning Freya forward with quick jerks of her head. Her hair and her clothes stank of smoke.
Together, they heaved the big door open. Nobody turned to see them enter. Huntsmen and prisoners alike were watching the windows and the great sinuous wings of fire that swayed above the harbour. Freya clutched the gun with sweaty hands, waiting for Hester to shout, “Hands up!” or “Nobody move!” or whatever it was one was supposed to say in situations like this. Instead, Hester just lifted her crossbow and shot the nearest Huntsman in the back.
“Hey, that’s not—” Freya started to say, and then flung herself to the floor, because as the dead man pitched forward the man beside him turned and sprayed a long burst of gunfire at her. She kept forgetting this was all real. She squirmed on the floor and heard the bullets kick chunks out of the doors and skip off the marble beside her. Hester snatched the pistol out of her hand and the Huntsman’s face turned into a splash of red. Smew pulled his gun away from him as he fell, and turned it on a third guard, caught in the swirling panic of the captives. “Rasmussen!” somebody shouted, and suddenly the whole room took up the shout, the ancient war-cry of Anchorage, left over from times when Freya’s ancestors had led battles against air-pirates and the Stalkers of the Nomad Empires. “Rasmussen!” There were shots, a scream, a long, rattling, xylophone trill as a dying Huntsman crashed against one of the mothballed chandeliers. It was all over very quickly. Windolene Pye began organizing people to tend to the wounded, while men helped themselves to the dead Huntsmen’s swords and sidearms.
“Where’s Scabious?” shouted Hester, and somebody pushed him towards her. The engine master looked eager and clutched a captured gun. She said, “Arkangel’s coming. I could see its lights from the air-harbour. You’ll need to get this old place moving pretty sharpish.”
Scabious nodded. “But there’re Huntsmen in the engine district, and the stern-wheel’s shot. We can’t do more than quarter speed on the cats alone, and we can’t even do that until the wreckage of the stern-wheel’s cut away.”
“Get cutting then,” said Hester, discarding her crossbow and drawing her sword.
Scabious thought of a thousand other questions, then shrugged them away and nodded. He started for the stairways with half of Anchorage behind him, those without weapons grabbing chairs and bottles as they passed. Freya, frightened as she was, felt she should go with them and lead the attack like one of those long-ago margravines. She joined the growing rush towards the door, but Hester grabbed her, stopped her. “You stay here. Your people are going to need you alive. Where’s Masgard?”
“I don’t know,” said Freya. “I think he was heading for the main entrance.”
Hester nodded, a quick, small tic of a nod that could have meant anything. “Tom’s in the Museum,” she said.
“Tom’s here?” Freya was having trouble keeping up.
“Please, Your Radiance, keep him safe when all this is over.”
“But…” Freya started to say, but Hester was gone, the bullet-riddled doors swinging shut behind her. Freya wondered if she should follow, but what could she do against Masgard? She turned back into the ballroom, and saw a knot of people still cowering there; the very old and young, the injured, and those who were just too scared to join the fight. Freya knew how they felt. She screwed up her hands into tight fists to stop them shaking and put on her best margravine’s smile. “Don’t be afraid. The Ice Gods are with us.”
Tom, heading for the ballroom, met Scabious and his people pouring towards him, a dark tumble of running limbs, light glinting on metal, pale surf of set faces stark in the lamplight. They filled the corridor like the sea pouring into a foundering ship. Tom was afraid that they would mistake him for a Huntsman, but Scabious saw him and shouted his name, and the tide picked him up and swept him along, the surf breaking into grinning remembered faces: Aakiuq, Probsthain, Smew. People reached out to pat his shoulders, punch his chest. “Tom!” shouted Smew, tugging at his waist. “It’s good to see you back!”
“Hester!” Tom yelled, struggling in the tide as it carried him out of the palace. “Where’s Hester?”
“She saved us, Tom!” Smew shouted, running ahead. “What a nerve! Came into that ballroom and cut down the Huntsmen, merciless as a Stalker! What a girl!”
“But where – Mr Scabious, is she with you?”
His words were lost in the clatter of feet and the shouts of “Rasmussen, Rasmussen!” as the crowd swept past him and away, funnelling down a stairway towards the engine district. He heard shouts and gunshots echoing under the low roof, and wondered if he should go and try to help, but the thought of Hester held him back. Calling her name, he ran through the Boreal Arcade and out into the swirling snow on Rasmussen Prospekt. Two lines of footprints dotted the snow, leading towards the air-harbour. As he hesitated, wondering whether one of the tracks was Hester’s, he saw a face watching him from the doorway of a shop on the far side of the street.
“Professor Pennyroyal?”
Pennyroyal darted sideways, stumbling in the snow, and vanished into a narrow alleyway between two boutiques. Coins sprayed from his fists as he went. He had been filling his pockets with loose change fr
om the shop’s cash-register.
“Professor!” shouted Tom, sheathing his sword and running after him. “It’s only me! Where’s Hester?”
The explorer’s clumsy footprints led to the tier’s edge, where a stairway descended to the lower city. Tom hurried down it, setting his feet in the big, bear-like prints of Pennyroyal’s luxury snowboots. Near the bottom he stopped suddenly, his heart beating fast, startled by a glimpse of black wings, but it was not a Stalker-bird, only the sign outside a tavern called The Spread Eagle. He jogged on, wondering if he would have a fear of birds for ever more.
“Professor Pennyroyal?”
Masgard had not been waiting at the palace entrance, among the bodies of the men she’d killed on her way in. Maybe Scabious’s lot got him, thought Hester. Or maybe he had heard the sounds of fighting and worked out which way the wind was blowing. Maybe he was hurrying back to the harbour in the hope of finding a ship there that could take him home to Arkangel.
She pushed her way out through the heat-lock. The cold-mask cut off her peripheral vision, so she threw it away and went down the slope on to Rasmussen Prospekt with the snowflakes stroking her face like cold fingers. A long line of fresh footprints reached away from her, already filling with snow. She followed them, measuring the long strides. Ahead, a man was silhouetted against the dying glare from the air-harbour. It was Masgard. She quickened her pace, and as she drew closer she could hear him calling the names of his dead companions. “Garstang? Gustavsson? Sprüe?” She could hear the panic rising in his voice. He was just a rich city boy who enjoyed playing pirates and had never expected anyone to stand up to him. He’d come looking for a fight, and now that a fight had found him he didn’t know what to do with it.