by Philip Reeve
“Of course not,” said Wren softly. “You’d missed your target. You couldn’t blow up workers. Civilians. It would have been murder.”
“It would,” said Theo. “But that’s not what stopped me. I just didn’t want to die.”
“Bit late to decide that, wasn’t it?”
Theo shrugged. “I just sat there and cried. And after a while they came and defused my Tumbler and dragged me out and took me away. I thought they were going to kill me. I wouldn’t have blamed them. But they didn’t.
“All my life I’d been hearing stories about the cruelty of the barbarians, the way they tortured prisoners, and maybe some are like that, but these ones tended me like I was one of their own sons. They fed me, and explained how sorry they were that they’d have to sell me as a slave. They couldn’t afford to keep Green Storm prisoners aboard, you see, for fear we’d band together and revolt. But I wouldn’t have revolted. They’d made me realize how wrong the Storm are. How stupid it all is, this fighting.”
He looked up at Wren. “That’s why I gave up on the Storm. And now when they catch me, and they find out what I am and what I did, they’re going to kill me.”
“They won’t!” promised Wren. “Because we won’t let them catch you! We’ll get away somehow…”
A growl of engines drowned her out. She stood up cautiously and looked out across the gardens. A huge, battle-scarred white airship was shoving her way in through Cloud 9’s rigging.
“Great gods!” said Theo, looking over Wren’s shoulder. “That’s the Requiem Vortex! That’s her ship!”
Snub-nosed projectors mounted on the airship’s engine pods swivelled this way and that, effortlessly blasting any Flying Ferret which came within range. The Visible Panty Line and the Itsy Witsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Machiney were smashed apart by rockets, showering shreds of balsa wood and singed canvas over the crowds who cowered on the Pavilion lawns. An ornithopter called Is That All There Is? fluttered around the airship like a gnat pestering a dinosaur, but it could not pierce the reinforced envelope, and after a few seconds a flight of Stalker-birds found it and ripped it into kindling. Damn You, Gravity! plunged towards the airship’s gondola in a desperate attempt to ram it, but more rockets battered it aside and it went ploughing through the flank of one of Cloud 9’s outer gasbags. The Pavilion shuddered, the screaming guests on the lawn began to scream still louder and the whole deckplate tilted steeply as some of the gas which had been supporting it went spewing into the night.
Orla Twombley’s Combat Wombat and the other surviving Ferrets, realizing that they could do no more, turned tail and sped away.
Wren shielded her face against the dust and smoke as the Requiem Vortex swung her engine pods into landing position and touched down on the lawns of Cloud 9. Party-guests who had fled the Pavilion earlier now came fleeing back past Wren and Theo’s hiding place, or stood their ground and fashioned flags of surrender out of shirt-fronts and napkins. Redcoats hared through the shrubbery, flinging down their weapons and trying to rid themselves of their fancy uniforms. Machine guns nattered among the ornamental palms. From the open hatches of the warship’s gondolas spilled spiky, armoured shapes.
“Stalkers!” yelped Wren. She’d never seen a Stalker, had never really quite believed in Stalkers, but something about the way those armoured figures moved was enough to convince her that they were not human, and that she very much wanted to be far away from them. She started to run, calling out to Theo to follow her. “Come on! We’ll cut back through the Pavilion to the boathouse!”
The stairways of the Pavilion were deserted now. Wren and Theo climbed them quickly, stumbling over abandoned party hats and trampled bodies. On the sundeck where Shkin had sold her to Pennyroyal Wren slipped in a fallen trifle and went crashing down. The Tin Book, jammed in her waistband, grazed her spine and dug painfully into her bottom. She thought she could feel blood running down inside her trousers as Theo helped her up. She wondered if she should try to get rid of the book. Or surrender it to the Storm, and beg for mercy. But the Storm had no mercy, did they? She’d seen pamphlets and posters since she’d been in Brighton, headlines in the foreign affairs pages of the Palimpsest about More Mossie Atrocities and Further Beastliness by the Green Storm. If they found that Wren had the Tin Book…
From the entrance to the ballroom they looked back across the lawns. The battle was over, and Stalkers were moving about down there, herding crowds of captive guests ahead of them. “I wonder if Shkin’s down there?” said Wren.
“And what about Boo-Boo?” said Theo, as they pressed on, crossing the ballroom, where the lights on the walls and ceiling had failed and broken glass crunched underfoot. “What about Pennyroyal?”
“Oh, he’ll be all right.” said Wren. “I bet it was him who brought them here. Shkin said he was looking for a buyer for the Tin Book. That’s just the sort of thing Pennyroyal would do, selling his own city for a profit…”
They passed the film room, where the projector was still rattling away. By its light Wren glimpsed a movement on the spiral staircase. “Cynthia!” shouted Theo.
Their fellow slave came running down the stairs, her party costume flickering softly with the reflected colours of the film-loop. What she had been doing up there, Wren could not imagine. Perhaps she had got flustered and run the wrong way when everybody was fleeing from the ballroom. Or maybe Mrs Pennyroyal had sent her back to fetch something; she was carrying something shiny in one hand.
“Cynthia,” said Wren, “don’t be frightened. We’re leaving. We’ll take you with us. Won’t we, Theo?”
“Where is it, Wren?” snapped Cynthia.
“Where’s what?” asked Wren.
“The Tin Book, of course.” Cynthia’s expression was one that Wren didn’t recognize; cold and hard and intelligent, as if her face were under new management. “I’ve already checked Pennyroyal’s safe,” she said. “I know it was you who took it. I’ve known you were up to something ever since you came aboard. Who are you working for? The Traktionstadtsgesellchaft? The Africans?”
“I’m not working for anybody,” said Wren.
“But you are, Cynthia Twite,” said Theo. “You’re with the Green Storm, aren’t you? You killed Plovery and the others. It was you who cut Cloud 9 adrift!”
Cynthia laughed. “Ooh, you catch on fast, African!” She made a polite curtsy. “Agent 28, of the Stalker Fang’s private intelligence group. I was rather good, wasn’t I? Poor, silly Cynthia. How you all laughed at me, you and Boo-Boo and the rest. And all along, I have been working for a different mistress; for one who will make the world green again.” She held her arm out stiffly towards Wren. The shiny thing in her hand was a gun.
Numbly, Wren fetched the Tin Book out from beneath her tunic and held it up for Cynthia to see. Cynthia snatched it and stepped back. “Thank you,” she said, with a trace of her old sweetness. “The Stalker Fang will be delighted.”
“She sent you here to find it?” asked Wren, confused. “But how did she know…”
Cynthia beamed. “Oh no. She believed it was still in Anchorage. She sent an expedition to the place where Pennyroyal said Anchorage went down, but there was nothing there. So I was placed aboard Cloud 9 to spy on him, in case he knew what had really become of it. I could hardly believe my luck when I heard that you had brought the Tin Book itself aboard! I sent a message to the Jade Pagoda at once, and orders came back telling me to leave it safe in Pennyroyal’s office until help arrived. It is important. It may be the key to a final victory. My mistress does not want it copied, or sent by the usual channels. She is coming to fetch it in person. That is her ship out there on the lawn.” She looked down fondly at the Tin Book. “She will reward me well when I give it to her.”
The gunfire from the gardens had ceased. Wren could hear voices out on the sun-decks, shouting orders in a language she didn’t recognize. She stepped towards Cynthia, wary of the gun in the other girl’s hand. “Please,” she said, “you’ve got the Tin Book.
Can’t you let us go? If the Storm catch Theo…”
“They will kill him like the coward he is,” said Cynthia calmly. “I’d do it myself, but I’m sure my mistress will want to question you both first, and find out how much you know about the Book.”
“We don’t know anything about it!” cried Theo.
“That’s your story, African. You may decide to change it, once the inquiry engines get to work on you.”
“But Cynthia…” Wren shook her head, still numb with the shock of Cynthia’s betrayal. “I don’t suppose Cynthia’s even your real name, is it?”
The other girl looked surprised. “Of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?”
“Well, it’s not very spy-ish,” said Wren.
“Oh? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, nothing… Just—”
A bulging suitcase, dropped from the gallery above, hit Cynthia on the head and burst open, scattering gold coins, jewellery and valuable-looking bits of Old-Tech. “Oh—” said the girl, crumpling. Her gun went off, and punched a hole in the ceiling somewhere above Wren’s head. Theo grabbed Wren and tugged her backwards, afraid that there might be more luggage to follow, but when they looked up they saw only the round, pale face of Nimrod Pennyroyal peering down over the bannisters.
“Is she out?” he asked nervously.
Wren went to stoop over Cynthia. There was blood in the girl’s hair, and when Wren touched her neck she could feel no pulse, but she didn’t know if she was feeling in the right place. She said, “I think she might be dead.”
Pennyroyal hurried down the stairs. “Nonsense, it was only a playful little tap. Anyway, she’s an enemy agent, isn’t she? Probably have killed the pair of you if it weren’t for my quick thinking. I was just upstairs gathering a few valuables, and I heard you talking.” He chuckled as he prised the book from Cynthia’s fingers. “What a stroke of luck! I thought I’d lost this. Now come along, help me gather up the rest.”
Numbly, Wren and Theo began to do as he asked. Pennyroyal, perhaps afraid that they would try and rob him, picked up Cynthia’s gun and held it ready while he stuffed coins and statuettes and ancient artefacts back inside the case and sat on the lid to force it shut. The shouting outside drew nearer as Green Storm soldiers, attracted by the sound of the gunshot, converged on the ballroom. “There!” said Pennyroyal. “Now, ho for the boathouse. I tell you what, if you help me carry this lot, you can both come with me. But hurry up!”
“You can’t just leave,” protested Wren, trailing after him through the listing corridors while Theo stuggled along with the suitcase. “What about your people?”
“Oh, them,” said Pennyroyal dismissively.
“What about your wife? She’s probably a prisoner by now…”
“Yes, poor Boo-Boo…” Pennyroyal pushed open a door and led them out into the gardens at the rear of the Pavilion. “I shall miss her, of course – terrible loss – but time is a great healer. Anyway, I can’t risk my neck trying to rescue her. I owe it to the reading public to save myself, so that the world can hear my account of the Battle of Brighton and my heroic stand against the Storm…”
They hurried through the gardens, Pennyroyal in the lead, Wren and Theo taking turns with the suitcase. The Storm’s troops had not reached this part of Cloud 9 yet; nothing moved among the cypress groves and pergola-covered walks. Smoke drifted from the wreckage of the Flying Ferrets’ aërodrome, but the Green Storm must have thought Pennyroyal’s boathouse an unworthy target, for it still stood unharmed among the trees, bulbous and comical, specks of firelight glinting on its daft copper spines.
“I can hear engines,” said Theo, as they made their way through the trees on to the landing apron in front of the boathouse. “Someone’s opened the doors…”
“Great Poskitt Almighty!” shouted Pennyroyal.
The Peewit sat poised in the open doorway, her engines purring as they warmed up for take-off. The lights were on in her gondola, and Wren could see Nabisco Shkin at the controls. He must have given up waiting for her to bring him the Tin Book and decided to cut his losses and save his own skin. She hung back, scared of him, but Pennyroyal put on a last spurt of speed, charging towards the yacht. “Shkin! It’s me! Your old friend Pennyroyal!”
Shkin swung himself out through the hatch in the side of the Peewit’s sleek gondola and shot Pennyroyal twice with a pistol he pulled from inside his robes. Wren saw an exclamation mark of blood fly upwards into the glare of the yacht’s lights. Pennyroyal did an ungainly somersault and crashed against a heap of hawsers and was still.
“Oh gods,” whispered Wren. Pennyroyal was so much a part of her life, from all the stories she had heard in Anchorage, that she had imagined he was indestructible.
Shkin stepped down from the gondola and strode towards them with his gun held ready. “Do you have my book?” he asked.
“No,” said Theo, before Wren could answer. “The Storm took it.”
“Then what’s in the suitcase?” asked Shkin, and Theo opened it so that he could see. The slaver smiled his cold, grey smile. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” he said. “Close the case and hand it to me.”
Theo did as he was told. Shkin’s chilly eyes slid towards Wren again.
“Now what?” she asked. “You’ll shoot us, I suppose?”
“Good gods, no!” Shkin looked genuinely shocked. “I am not a murderer, child. I am a businessman. What profit would I make by killing you? It’s true you managed to annoy me, but it sounds as if our friends from the Green Storm will soon be arriving to teach you some manners.”
Wren listened, and heard harsh foreign voices drifting across the garden. Lights were moving among the trees behind the boathouse. She wanted to ask Shkin about her father, but he had already heaved Pennyroyal’s case aboard the Peewit and was climbing in after it. The engines roared.
“No!” screamed Wren. She couldn’t believe that the gods were really going to let that villain Shkin fly away unscathed. But the Peewit’s docking clamps released and she rose from the boathouse floor, engine pods swinging neatly into take-off position. “It’s not fair!” howled Wren, and then, “The Book! We’ve got the Book! Theo lied! Take us with you, and I’ll give you the Book!”
Shkin heard her voice, but not her words. He glanced down at her and smiled his faint smile, then turned his attention to the controls again. The yacht sped across its landing-apron, passed between two clumps of trees which bowed aside to let it through, and rose gracefully into the sky.
“It’s not fair!” Wren said again. She was sick of Shkin, and sick of being afraid. She understood why Mum and Dad had never wanted to talk about the adventures they had had. If she survived, she would never even want to think about this awful night.
“Why did you lie about the Book?” she asked Theo. “He might have taken us with him if we’d given him the Book.”
“He wouldn’t,” said Theo. “Anyway, if everybody wants it so badly, it must be something dangerous. We can’t let a man like Shkin get his hands on it.”
Wren sniffed. “Nobody should have it,” she said. She walked to where Pennyroyal lay and gingerly fetched the Tin Book out from inside the mayor’s torn robes. One of Shkin’s bullets had made a deep dent in the cover, but it looked otherwise unharmed. The touch of it disgusted her. All the trouble it had caused! All the deaths! “I’m going to throw it into the sea,” she said, and ran with it across the smouldering, cratered airstrip towards the edge of the gardens.
But it was not the sea that she saw when she looked down over the handrail. Cloud 9 had drifted further and faster than she had thought. The white wriggle of surf which marked the coast lay several miles away towards the north, with the lights and fires of the other cities strung out along it like pearls on a necklace. Below her, the hills of Africa lay stark beneath the moon.
And as she stood there, staring at them, clutching the Tin Book in both hands, she heard running feet behind her, and turned to meet the torches and the upraise
d guns of a squad of soldiers. There were Stalkers too, one of whom seized hold of Theo, and a man who seemed almost a Stalker himself, a hawk-faced man in mechanized armour with a sword in his iron hand, who stepped in front of the others and said, “Don’t move! You are prisoners of the Green Storm!”
As the Peewit slid out through Cloud 9’s rigging into open sky, Nabisco Shkin permitted himself a thin smile of satisfaction. Most of the Green Storm’s ships were miles away, still engaged above Benghazi and Kom Ombo, and the troops they had landed in Pennyroyal’s garden had better things to worry about than the odd absconding slave-trader.
He settled into the yacht’s comfortable seats, and patted the case which lay on the deck beside him. Far ahead he could see the lights of the smaller cities twinkling in the desert night. He would set down on one of those until he was sure the Storm had finished with Brighton; then he would go and see what damage had been done to his business there. The Pepperpot would have been battered, no doubt. Servants and merchandise killed, probably. No matter; they were all insured. He hoped the boy Fishcake was still alive. But even without him, it should be possible to find Anchorage-in-Vineland, and fill the holds of a slave-ship or two…
He was still dreaming of Vineland when the raptors found him. They were part of a patrol-flock set to guard the skies around Cloud 9. Shkin thought they were just a cloud as they came sweeping down on him, dimming the moonlight. Then he saw the flap and flutter of their wings, and an instant later the birds started slamming into the Peewit’s glastic windows, tearing at her pod-cowlings, slashing her delicate envelope with talons and beaks. Torn-off steering vanes whirled away on the wind. The propellers sliced dozens of birds to scrap, but dozens more kept taking their place until the Peewit’s engines choked on feathers and slime. Shkin reached for the radio-set, opening all channels and shouting, “Call off your attack! I am a legitimate businessman! I am strictly neutral!” But the Green Storm warships which picked up his signal did not know where it was coming from, and the birds themselves did not understand. They tore and rent and clutched and worried, stripping the envelope-fabric from its metal skeleton, until Nabisco Shkin, looking up through the bare ribs, saw nothing but a kaleidoscope-churning of bird-shapes circling black and splay-winged against the sacred moon. And as the wreck began to fall, they ripped the roof off the gondola and got inside with him.