Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  Beneath her was Strut 13. The Humbug lay alongside, the three guards lounging at the foot of her gangplank. A light showed in her gondola, another in a window low down in her envelope.

  Hester turned to Theo. “Go back to our ship. Get her ready to pull out. If all goes well, I’ll be coming aboard with Lady Naga in a few minutes.”

  “You can’t go down there alone!” Theo protested. “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Then you’ll leave without me. Go east and tell your General Naga what really happened to his wife.” Hester was eager to get Theo safely out of the way so that she could start doing what she did best. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin through her veil. Everything was so intense in these moments before action, as if her brain wanted to drink in everything; every sound, every smell.

  Theo nodded, and started to say something, then thought better of it. He walked away fast along the High Street, dodging the crowds of aviators who meandered between the bars and cafés. Hester watched till he was out of sight, thinking how badly she would have fallen in love with him if she’d been twenty years younger. Then, cursing herself for a sentimental goose, she ran down the stairway to Strut 13.

  The men on guard were as bored and dozy as she’d been hoping. They were the sort of shabby, down-at-heel aviators who hung around the High Street bars looking for work. Varley must have hired them to guard his precious cargo, but they would rather have been off drinking than standing out here in the cold. She considered just killing them, and keeping hold of Pennyroyal’s gold for herself, but she couldn’t take them all down without a fight, and she didn’t want to risk that yet. She called out, “Where’s Varley?”

  The men came to life, trying to look hard and competent. “Who’s asking?” said one, pointing a spring-loaded spear-gun at her.

  Hester shook the bag she was holding and let them hear the chinkle of Pennyroyal’s gold. Is chinkle a word? she wondered. She always grew very calm at times like this, and small questions like that became intriguing. Tom would know… But she mustn’t think about Tom.

  One of the guards was backing up the Humbug’s gangway, calling through an open hatch to someone inside. After a moment he jerked the spear-gun at Hester, and the others stood aside to let her go aboard.

  In the Shadow Aspect’s gondola Theo was warming up the engines, testing the rudder controls, and hoping that no one aboard Airhaven would notice, for he had not asked anyone’s permission to depart. Behind him, Shrike paced to and fro, his heavy footfalls shaking the deck. “SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE ALONE,” the Stalker said.

  “I told you…”

  “YOU ARE NOT TO BLAME, THEO NGONI. BUT SHE SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE ALONE.” He let out a grating, mechanical noise which Theo supposed was the Stalker equivalent of a sigh. “I SHOULD BE HELPING HER TO FREE DR ZERO. IN OTHER TIMES I WOULD HAVE DONE IT EASILY. TAKEN OUT THE AIRHAVEN POWER PLANT, SOWN CONFUSION, AND GONE ABOARD THE HUMBUG WHILE THE ONCE-BORN WERE LOOKING ELSEWHERE… BUT I COULD NOT DO THAT WITHOUT KILLING.”

  “You wouldn’t get far afterwards, either,” Theo pointed out.

  Shrike didn’t seem to hear him. He stood at a porthole, staring out at the night and the silent, tethered ships. “I AM GOING TO HELP HER.”

  “But you can’t! If you’re seen…”

  “I WILL BE CAREFUL.”

  Before Theo could stop him, Shrike opened the hatch and jumped down on to the docking strut. No one was about. He crossed the strut in two long strides and dropped over the edge, his armour rippling with reflections from the harbour lights as if he were made of quicksilver. The underside of the strut was in shadow, hatched with girders. Shrike crept along them until he was beneath the docking quays, and waited while a puttering dirigible balloon-taxi passed beneath him on its way to the central ring. Then he began to pull himself along Airhaven’s underbelly towards Strut 13.

  The dirigible taxi pulled in against one of the docking-platforms in the centre of Airhaven, and its wicker gondola creaked as Sampford Spiney scrambled out, followed by Miss Kropotkin and her enormous camera. The journalist had been at a dinner on the Oberrang when he received the message from Airhaven, and he had not had time to change out of his formal robes. He swayed slightly as he made his way across the mooring platform to where the clerk from the Empyrean was waiting.

  “Well? Are you the one who claims to have seen Pennyroyal?”

  “He’s been staying in my hotel, sir.”

  “Is he there now?”

  “No, sir. He ran out not long after I sent word to you…”

  “Ran where?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Some people came to talk to him. Then he went running off. I can show you his room, sir…”

  “His room? His room? Great Thunderer! I can’t interview a room! Find me Pennyroyal himself, or you’ll not see a cent out of The Speculum.”

  The clerk hurried towards the stairs which led up to the High Street, and Spiney went with him, snapping at his photographer to follow. “And make a note, Miss Kropotkin,” he added as they climbed, “I’m pretty sure that was the Kriegsmarshal’s sky-yacht we passed as we came in. What’s the old man doing in Airhaven? Gambling? Seeing a woman? Could be a story in that…”

  The Humbug’s gondola reeked of wet nappies. The living quarters at the stern were full of them, draped on lines strung above the heating ducts. Poorly-made bookshelves covered the walls, sagging under the weight of Varley’s self-help books. In one corner a slimy-nosed baby snuffled and started to cry. “Hush, hush, hush,” his mother said, looking up nervously as one of Varley’s heavies pushed Hester in.

  Varley was waiting for her, looking more feverish and ferrety than ever, a half-eaten supper on the table in front of him. He’d taken off his jacket. His trousers were held up by snakeskin braces. “On your own this time?” he asked Hester. “Got my ten thousand?”

  “Five,” said Hester. “That’s all we can get hold of.”

  “Then I’ll be selling your Lady Naga to another buyer.”

  “Oh, yes, I noticed the enormous queue all up the gangplank when I came aboard,” said Hester. “That was sarcasm,” she added as Varley sprang up to peer through a porthole. “Face it, you haven’t got any other buyers. You’ll have to do business with me, before someone bigger and tougher hears who you’ve got stashed in your hold and comes to take her off your hands for free.”

  Varley glared at her and said nothing. She opened her bag on the kitchen table, and shook out a pile of small, plump money-bags. They jingled loudly, as well they might; two were full of Pennyroyal’s savings and the other eight were stuffed with nuts and washers which she and Theo had bought at the all-night chandlery on the High Street. “Ten bags,” she said, opening one and tipping out a stream of gold. “Two hundred and fifty shineys in each. Captain Ngoni will be bringing you the rest when I can assure him your cargo is alive and well.”

  Varley eyed the money hungrily, but he wasn’t happy. “That black kid of yours is a captain? The Green Storm must be running short of men as well as money…”

  Hester chose another money-bag and emptied a second shining drift of coin across the table-top. (“Look! Pretty!” said Mrs Varley, bouncing the baby on her knee.)

  “Take it or leave it,” said Hester.

  Varley still hesitated. “I want to see your face,” he said sullenly.

  “Believe me, you really don’t.”

  The merchant sniffed, kicked a toy aside, and told his henchman, “Watch her, and don’t go thieving any of my money.” Then he pushed past Hester and vanished up a companion-ladder into the Humbug’s envelope. The other man reluctantly prised his eyes away from the heap of gold on the table and watched Hester instead. The baby gurgled. The woman sang it a song that Hester remembered faintly from long ago, but she quickly stopped when Hester looked at her.

  “You from Oak Island?” Hester asked.

  The woman shook her head. “Red Deer.”

  You could see Red Deer Island from t
he hills above Hester’s childhood home on Oak Island, when the weather was fine. No wonder she recognized the song. She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill this woman and her baby.

  “Napster bought me in the wife-auction there…” the woman started to explain, and then stopped suddenly again, because she had heard her husband’s footsteps on the ladder, coming back down. She shifted closer to the table to give him room as he dropped into the cabin, dragging his frightened cargo behind him.

  Pennyroyal peered into half a dozen of the High Street’s crowded drinking-holes before he found what he was looking for. In fact, they found him; a gang of rowdy young militia officers up from Manchester on a twenty-four-hour pass, clutching girls and bottles, making their unsteady way from a casino above Strut 1, where they had been betting their pay on Ancient games of chance like Pick-a-Sticks and Buckeroo. Pennyroyal scurried alongside, calling out, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” and “I say,” but they paid him no attention until he shouted, “I am Nimrod Pennyroyal!”

  The Mancunians turned to stare at him.

  “Shove off!” said one.

  “Scrag him!” suggested another.

  “Chuck him off the docking ring!” roared a third.

  “Hoorah!”

  “No,” said a fifth man, slightly more sober than the rest. “He is Nimrod Pennyroyal. I recognize him from the papers.”

  “Chuck him off the docking ring anyway!”

  “Hoorah!”

  “He’s that fake explorer bloke, ain’t he?” said one of the girls, peering at Pennyroyal as if he was some mildly interesting animal in a zoo.

  “I am not a fake!” Pennyroyal shouted. “I have come to ask your help! There is a high-ranking member of the Green Storm secreted aboard an airship down on the docking ring, and I need the help of some loyal Tractionists to take her into custody!”

  “Huh huh huh huh,” went one of the Mancunians, laughing at some private joke. The rest struggled to follow what Pennyroyal was saying. One or two reached for their swords. “A Mossie? Here?”

  “Lady Naga herself! I’ve been operating undercover to discover her whereabouts. All that stuff you read in the papers was just a ruse, designed to make the enemy think I was in disgrace. I’ve actually been working for the Murnauer Geheimdeinst all along, you know.”

  The Mancunians looked blank. None of them had heard the German name for Murnau’s intelligence service before. Pennyroyal cursed their ignorance (but only quietly) and pulled out the old envelope on which he had jotted down the Humbug’s details from the arrivals board in the Floating Exchange. He squinted at his own crabbed writing for a moment, then flourished the envelope like a battle-flag. “Come gentlemen!” he cried. “Follow me to Strut 13, and to glory!”

  A bruised face; a mat of greasy hair, a thin body shaking and shaking inside a sackcloth dress. Hester was astonished at the flood of pity she felt as she watched Lady Naga come creeping down the Humbug’s companion ladder. She’s not much older than Wren, she thought, and for a moment she wanted to rush forward and hug the poor, frightened creature and comfort her and tell her that she was safe now.

  But she wasn’t safe, not yet, and anyway she would not have wanted to be hugged; she seemed as scared of Hester as she was of Varley. When Varley shoved her forwards and said, “This nice lady’s come to buy you,” she hung back and let out a whine like a scared animal. Hester, in her black coat and her black veil, looked like the Goddess of Death.

  “You’re Lady Naga?” she asked.

  “Oenone,” said the young woman, blinking fearfully at her. Her glasses were held together by sticking plaster and one of the lenses was cracked.

  “Course she’s Lady bleedin’ Naga,” crowed Varley. “Look at her signet ring, and that Zagwan pendant thing. They’re extra, by the way. Now go and get me the rest of my money.”

  Hester nodded and glanced past him, judging the distance between herself and the man with the spear-gun at the bulkhead door. She turned, back to the wall, one hand moving slowly to the knife inside her coat, and saw out of the corner of her eye the baby reach towards the pile of money-bags on Varley’s table.

  What happened next happened very slowly, but not slowly enough that she had time to stop it. The child’s fat hand grabbed the bag; the bag fell; the bag burst. Across the deck at Varley’s feet there went scattering a storm of nuts and washers. Varley, realizing he’d been tricked, let out a yell. Hester snatched her knife and threw it underarm at the man on the door, hitting him in the throat. His spear-gun went off as he fell, but the spear went high, passing over Hester’s head; she heard it thud into the bulkhead above her. Mrs Varley was screaming. The baby howled. Something struck Hester a sudden, stunning blow on the top of her head. A flash of purple light went off inside her skull. She cursed and tried to turn, confused, imagining someone had got behind her. Things were falling all round her, punching her shoulders, thumping on the deck. She went down on her knees among them and saw that they were books. The dead man’s spear-gun had detached one of Varley’s homemade bookshelves from the wall, and it had struck her as it fell. It was a stupid sort of injury, but that didn’t make it any less serious. The spilled books seemed to whirl around her. Dodgy Dealing for Beginners. Investing in People. Make Your Fortune on the Bird Roads – and Survive to Spend It! She felt sure she was going to be sick.

  Varley had an arm round Oenone’s throat. “Come on, lads!” he shouted. “Get her! Get her!” Hester remembered the men outside. Squinting with the pain in her head, she tried to stand up. Footsteps shook the gondola as the heavies from the mooring strut came aboard. Hester reached into her pocket and tugged out her pistol, shooting them one at a time as they came barging through the cabin door. The gas-pistol made soft coughing sounds which she hoped would not be heard out on the High Street. The men fell on top of the body of their friend, and one of them kept struggling, so she shot him again. She could feel blood running down her face. She swung the gun towards Varley, but fainted before she could pull the trigger.

  The next thing she knew, the merchant was wrenching the gun out of her hand. He had a stupid, mad grin, and his nostrils kept flaring. He pulled down Hester’s veil and his grin grew even wider, as if her ugliness was some sort of victory for him. He spat in her face. “Well,” he said. He put down the gun (a dangerous thing to use on board your own airship) and pulled a knife out of his belt. “Nobody’s going to miss you.”

  He looked surprised when his wife picked up the gun and shot him. It seemed to take him a moment to understand that he’d been killed. His grin faded slowly, and he sank down on his knees beside Hester and bowed his head and stayed there, kneeling, dead.

  “Oh, God,” murmured Oenone.

  Mrs Varley lowered the gun. She was shaking. The baby howled and howled. Oenone scrambled across the cabin and helped Hester to her feet.

  “You’d better go now,” said Mrs Varley. She pulled a nappy down from one of the lines and started scooping the gold into it.

  Hester touched the searing, throbbing place where the shelf had hit her, and her hand came away wet and red. She felt drunk. She held on to Oenone for support and said, “We came to rescue you. Me and Shrike.”

  “Mr Shrike? He’s here?”

  “Theo too. There’s a ship waiting.” With Oenone’s help she started limping towards the exit hatch, which seemed suddenly to be miles away. “Gods, it hurts,” she grumbled. Somehow they reached the top of the gangplank. Out on the docking strut, a man was waiting. He was all alone. He had probably heard that last shot. The wind flapped his long, blue greatcoat open, and moonlight shone on the hilt of the heavy sabre in his belt.

  Hester groaned, nauseous and weary. She had no strength left to fight him with.

  “Lady Naga?” said the stranger. “I’m just in time, I see.”

  Oenone cringed against Hester as the stranger walked towards her, putting one booted foot on the gangplank. In the dim light from the Humbug’s hatchway his face looked stern, but not unkind. He held out a hand.
“I am Kriegsmarshal von Kobold. You must come with me to Murnau. Quickly, please.”

  Hester gripped the gangplank rail and glared at him. “You’ll have to get past me first.”

  Von Kobold looked respectfully at her. Her scarred face did not shock him, nor did the blood that matted her hair and dripped from her chin. He gave her a little bow. “Forgive me, young woman, but that does not seem too great a challenge. I take it you are an agent of the Storm, come to free your empress? Even if you were not wounded, you could never get her away from here. A dozen cities stand between you and your own territory, and not all of their leaders are as understanding as I. Come with me to Murnau, and I shall find a way to send you and your mistress home to General Naga.”

  A blurt of noise from the docking ring made him look round. Someone was shouting; running figures showed against the lighted windows of an all-night Ker-Plunk parlour. “We have to trust him,” whispered Oenone, and helped Hester down the gangplank. But by the time they reached von Kobold it was too late; the deckplates were thrumming with the stamp of booted feet. Along the strut towards them came six red-coated men with drawn swords, and behind them, urging them on, the podgy, hopping shape of Nimrod Pennyroyal.

  “There they are!” Pennyroyal shouted. “They’re escaping! Stop them!”

  “Who are you?” barked Kriegsmarshal von Kobold, in such a military voice that the men stopped short. Up on the High Street passers-by began to gather at an observation platform to see what was happening down on Strut 13.

  “We, sir, are officers of the Manchester Civic Guard,” said the tallest and most sober of the newcomers. “We have been informed that a dangerous Mossie is concealed aboard this airship…”

  “Blimey!” said one of his comrades, pointing. “It’s her! Naga’s wife, just like the old man said!”