by Philip Reeve
Theo leaned forward, looking up past the bulge of the envelope. The wounded airship was flying inside a dark nebula of wings, where the eyes of hundreds of birds glowed like green stars. The birds were immense; resurrected kites and condors, eagles and vultures. As the gas vented from the Shadow’s shredded cells hundreds of birds gripped her air-frame with their claws and bore her up, their wingbeats carrying her eastward across the track-scars and shell-craters of no-man’s-land.
In through one of the shattered starboard windows came a smaller bird. It had been a raven when it was alive. It perched on the handle of a control lever and turned its head, its green eye whirring as it focused on Theo. It opened its beak, and the faint, crackly voice of a distant Green Storm commander came out of the tiny radio-transmitter inside its ribs. He was speaking in a battle-code which Theo did not recognize, but Oenone did. She replied in the same harsh language, and the raven spread its wings and flew past her through the window and away.
Oenone looked at Theo. “One of the Storm’s forward observation posts saw us come under attack. They assumed we must be their agents. I have told them the truth; that I am Lady Naga, coming home. The bird gave me the coordinates of the landing field where they want us to set down.”
Theo listened to the numbers she quoted, but he barely needed to alter course; the birds were already shepherding the Shadow Aspect in the right direction. He flopped down in his seat and looked at Shrike. He was too wrung out with shock to feel more than mildly surprised when he saw that the wet, whimpering man the Stalker clutched was Nimrod Pennyroyal.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked.
“It was an accident!” said Pennyroyal fearfully, as if he thought he was about to be accused of boarding the Shadow Aspect by stealth. “I fell. Spiney and I – we fell out of Airhaven and landed on your tailfin. Well, I did. Spiney carried on down, poor devil. Still, it serves him right.” The thought of his enemy’s death seemed to restore his spirits slightly, but only for a moment; his eyes wandered past Theo to the storm of birds outside. “Ngoni, am I a prisoner?”
“I think we’re all prisoners, Professor.”
“But you’re Green Storm; they won’t harm you! I was Mayor of Brighton. You’ll tell them, won’t you, I was always an Anti-Tractionist at heart? I only accepted high office so that I could subvert the system from within. And I treated captured Mossies well, didn’t I? You can vouch for me; you had it easy on Cloud 9, didn’t you – three good meals a day and you never had to carry anything heavier than a sunshade.”
Oenone said, “I will tell them to treat you well.”
“You will? Thank you!”
“But I don’t know if they’ll listen to me. It all depends on whether the units who control these birds are loyal, or whether they want me dead.”
“Oh, Poskitt!”
Oenone squeezed Theo’s shoulder, and said, “I must go and check on your friend.”
“How is she?” asked Theo, ashamed to find that he had completely forgotten about Hester.
Oenone looked solemnly at him.
“She’ll be all right?”
“I hope so. She has a serious head injury. I’ll do all I can. Who is Tom? She keeps asking for him.”
“Her husband. Tom Natsworthy. Wren’s father.”
Oenone nodded owlishly and went aft again. Shrike dumped Pennyroyal on the deck and followed her. Left alone with the old man, Theo wondered if he should tie him up or lock him in the toilet or something. But Pennyroyal looked too trembly and sodden to try anything, and the host of Storm-birds just outside the window were surely enough to keep him in his place. Theo lay back in his seat, tasting the blood that had trickled into the corner of his mouth from a small cut on his forehead. He thought of Zagwa and his family, and wondered if he would ever see them again. Whatever happened when he landed, he must try and get word to them.
“Letter for you,” said Pennyroyal, rather sheepishly.
Theo looked round. Pennyroyal was holding out a filthy, crumpled envelope. “She left it with me to send on to you, but I must confess, I forgot. Found it in my greatcoat pocket earlier, when I was looking for a scrap of paper to jot down the Humbug’s berth on. Thought you might as well have it. Better late than never, eh?”
Theo turned the envelope over and recognized Wren’s careful handwriting. He ripped it open, and pulled out the letter, hissing with frustration as the wet paper tore. Her photograph smiled at him; the same picture that had been in the newspaper; that long, clever face, not as beautiful as he remembered her, but real, and lovely. He spread the letter on the control desk and tried to read it. The rain had fogged and buckled it until only a few phrases were legible. We are starting on a journey… loading provisions… didn’t even know London had any ruins but… A few lines on was a word that might have been survivors. Then, at the foot of the page: look for me in London.
“London?” he said. He tried not to cry, but he couldn’t stop himself. “She has gone to London?”
“What?” asked Pennyroyal, startled. “No, no; you’ve misread it; they set off on some job for Wolf Kobold, the Kriegsmarshal’s son. London? Nobody goes to London; it’s a ruin; haunted…”
There was only one more line that Theo could read. With love, it said, from Wren.
The sleeping quarters smelled thickly of blood and antiseptic oils. Hester lay with her head thrown back, her face whiter than the pillow it rested on. Looking down at her, Shrike hoped that she would die without waking. When she was a Stalker like him he would not have to suffer so much worry. Once-born were so fragile; so disposable. Loving one was agony.
Oenone knelt to check her patient’s pulse, then looked up at Shrike. In all the chaos of the fight on Strut 13 and the flight from Airhaven there had not been time for her to say, “Mr Shrike! What are you doing here?” or “Mr Shrike, how nice to see you again!” and it was too late now. Instead, she said, “She is Hester Shaw, isn’t she?”
“YOU KNOW OF HER?”
“Of course. I studied your past before I reawakened you.”
Shrike sensed the airship descending. He went to a side window and looked out. Through the darkness of the birds’ wings he could see long strings of lights flickering on the land ahead; lanterns and torches on the Green Storm’s front line. City traps and concrete sound-mirrors poked out of the mud like tombstones. Knowing that there might not be time for conversation once they landed, he spoke to Oenone’s reflection in the glass. “WHY HAVE YOU MADE ME LIKE THIS?”
“Like what?” she asked guiltily. “Do you not have all your memories back? I erased nothing; when you had destroyed the Stalker Fang I meant you to become yourself again…”
“I CANNOT FIGHT,” said Shrike. He turned to face her, feeling his claws twitch inside his steel hands. A spark of his old Stalker fury ignited inside him somewhere, like an ember glowing in a cold hearth. He wanted to kill her for what she had done to him, but what she had done to him meant that he could not kill her. “YOU MADE ME WEAK,” he said. “THE GHOSTS OF ALL THE ONCE-BORN I KILLED BEFORE HANG IN MY HEAD LIKE WET SHEETS. I HATE THE THINGS I HAVE DONE. WHY DID YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE THIS?”
Oenone moved closer. Her hand touched his armour. “I did not do it. I would not know how. These feelings come from inside you.”
“WHEN THE ONCE-BORN NATSWORTHY KILLED ME, ON THE BLACK ISLAND, I REMEMBERED THINGS. THEY FADED AS SOON AS YOU REPAIRED ME, BUT I THINK THEY WERE MEMORIES OF THE TIME BEFORE I WAS A STALKER; WHEN I WAS ALIVE, LIKE YOU… IS THAT WHERE THIS WEAKNESS COMES FROM?”
“I suppose it’s possible… Dr Popjoy had a theory about the origins of Stalkers…” She smiled. Shrike saw her white, crooked teeth; the first thing he remembered noticing about her when she dug him out of his grave. “I think it’s more likely that you have developed feelings and a conscience of your own. You are intelligent and self-aware, and you have had long enough to do it in, after all! I think you began the process long before I met you. I know how you saved Hester as a child, and how long you
sought for her after she left home. That was one of the things that made me realize you were no ordinary Stalker. You have loved Hester since you first found her, haven’t you?”
Shrike looked away. He was still a Stalker, and it was hard for him to talk about things like love. He said, “WILL THOSE MEMORIES OF MY ONCE-BORN LIFE EVER RETURN?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps, next time you die. But that won’t be for a long, long time. I built you to last, Mr Shrike.”
The ground was close now. Shrike looked down at Hester, thinking that he did not care how long he lived for as long as she was with him. He said, “I WANT TO KEEP HER SAFE AND STRONG, FOR EVER. WILL YOU HELP ME?”
Oenone did not understand what he meant. “Of course I will,” she promised. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his face. Dabs of his preservative slime came off on her lips and the tip of her nose. “Congratulations, Mr Shrike. You’ve grown a soul.”
29
FUN, FUN, FUN ON THE OBERRANG
In the argon-lit rain Harrowbarrow heaved itself out of the mud off Murnau’s starboard side like a gigantic submarine surfacing in a very dirty sea. A boarding bridge was run out, and Wolf Kobold strode across and vanished into the larger city, where an express elevator carried him quickly up to the Oberrang. A bug was waiting for him there, along with an officer who began shouting at him as soon as he stepped off the elevator, “Sir, sir, come quickly! Your father is hurt!”
“Yes, I got your radio message,” said Kobold wearily, settling himself into the bug’s rear seat. How stupid, to be dragged all the way up here just so that he could pretend to be concerned about an old man he cared nothing for. Already he was longing to be aboard Harrowbarrow again, free of these mawkish conventions. He listened half-heartedly to the driver prattling about Airhaven and Green Storm spies as the little vehicle went swerving along Über-den-Linden to the Rathaus. Outside, young officers were saying farewell to their sweethearts and workers were heaving shut the last open sections of the city’s armour, but Wolf barely noticed them. He stared at his own gaunt face reflected in the bug’s hood and thought of the long trek he had just made across the Storm’s territory, the sentry he’d strangled as he crept back through their lines into no-man’s-land, where good old Hausdorfer had had the ’Barrow waiting. He thought proudly of London, and of the fantastical machines which would soon be his.
At the Rathaus, the servants led him to the main drawing room. His father sat in an armchair, his chest bandaged, being fussed over by frock-coated medical men. Adlai Browne stood close by, having come across from Manchester with flowers and grapes and a disclaimer he wanted the Kriegsmarshal to sign, absolving the Manchester Militia of any liability for his injuries. Beside him stood the commander of his mercenary air force. Wolf had found Ms Twombley attractive once, but now she struck him as rather brassy; all that pink leather and mascara. He thought wistfully of Wren Natsworthy, her innocent beauty and bright, malleable young mind.
“Wolfram!” cried his father, waving the doctors aside and struggling up to hug him. “They told me you were away somewhere…”
“Just a little business trip,” said Kobold, disgusted by the liver spots on the old man’s arms, the white curls of hair that showed above the bandage on his chest. “I got home to Harrowbarrow the day before yesterday.”
His father studied him. “You look thin, my boy.”
Thin, unshaven, fever-eyed, Wolf waved his words away. “It’s yourself you should be worrying about. They told me you’re hurt.”
“Just a few bruises, some broken bones.”
“I got home just in time, it seems.”
“What do you mean?”
“Great Thatcher! The Mossies tried to kill you, father! It was an act of war! We must retaliate immediately!”
“Just what I’ve been telling him!” boomed Adlai Browne, with the air of a man who had been waiting impatiently to resume an interrupted conversation. “We mustn’t let them get away with it!”
“Nonsense, Browne,” snapped von Kobold, wincing with the pain as he slumped back down in his chair. “It was one of your drunken louts who shot me!”
“Youthful exuberance,” protested Browne. “If you’d not been so keen to keep the prisoner for yourself…” He appealed to Wolf. “Have you heard the news? Naga’s missus herself was loose on Airhaven, with a gang of Stalkers to protect her. Hatching some plot with that renegade Pennyroyal, apparently.”
“I see.” Usually Wolf would have scoffed at such talk; the panicky, exaggerated stuff that flew about whenever fat city men got a whiff of real war. But tonight a little panic suited him. The sooner war broke out, the sooner Harrowbarrow could begin its journey to London. “They got away alive, I take it?”
Browne turned to the aviatrix at his side. “You tell him, lass.”
Orla Twombley bowed and said, “The airship was met over no-man’s-land by more Stalker-birds than I’ve ever seen in one place. There must have been someone or something of value aboard. There was nothing I could do to stop it escaping.”
It seemed to Wolf that there was plenty she could have done, had she not valued her life more than her duty. But he simply nodded and said, “This sounds bad. Who knows what plots the Mossies have set in motion, or what they’ve learned about our plans? There’s only one thing for it.”
“You mean – attack?” asked Adlai Browne hopefully.
“It’s the best form of defence. The Mossies struck first. We must retaliate. Attack at once, all along the line.”
Von Kobold rubbed his eyes. “Surely there must be another way…”
“If you don’t feel up to commanding this place…” said Browne, all mock-solicitude.
“I shall do my part,” the old man promised wearily. “You’ll not call me a coward, Browne. If the other cities advance, Murnau will come too, and I’ll command her. Unless my son would care to take his place on the bridge?”
He looked at Wolf, who shook his head firmly. “Sorry, Father. I must get back to Harrowbarrow. When the attack begins I’ll gnaw a nice big hole for you in the Mossies’ defences.”
He shook his father’s hand, bowed to Browne and Ms Twombley and went out of the room, leaving silence behind him, and a feeling of sadness, like a lingering smell.
“Well,” said Adlai Browne, clapping his hands together. “I must inform the other mayors and Kriegsmarshals. Ms Twombley, you’ll need to get your machines aloft. The obliteration of the Green Storm starts at dawn!”
30
SHE IS RISEN
“Fulfil The Vision Of The Wind-Flower” Air Field was an oblong of flat ground bulldozed out of the mud a few miles behind the Storm’s front line. It was ringed with landing lights and bunkers and big, whale-backed barns of airship hangars. Anti-aircraft cannon squatted watchfully in emplacements made from earth-packed wicker barrels. Searchlights stretched out their colourless fingers to brush the Shadow Aspect’s envelope as the cloud of birds steered her towards her docking pan.
Soldiers came running as she touched down, and crowded into the gondola when Theo opened the hatch. White uniforms; crab-shell helmets; guns. Oenone emerged from behind the curtain at the back of the flight deck, and they recoiled from her and raised their weapons, alarmed by her filthy, bloodstained clothes and the Stalker who stood behind her. She held out her hand, letting the light glint on her signet-ring. “Before you shoot me,” she said politely, “I would like you to take care of my companions. Mr Ngoni and Professor Pennyroyal are not enemies of the Storm.”
The sub-officer at the head of the boarding-party bowed low, placing his right fist against the palm of his left hand in the old League salute. “You are safe now, Lady Naga.”
Oenone returned the bow, nervous, still not quite trusting him. “There is a woman in the cabin who needs care. Is there a field hospital here?”
The soldier pointed towards a hummock of camouflaged bunkers on the horizon. “Shall I call stretcher bearers?”
“I WILL CARRY HER,” said Shrike. He pulled the curtai
n aside and lifted Hester easily and carefully in his arms. Theo and the others made to follow him as he carried her to the open hatch, but the sub-officer, feeling things sliding out of his control, moved quickly to stop them, barring their way with a raised hand.
“She will be well looked after, Ladyship,” he promised Oenone. “But you and these other foreigners must come with me. I have orders to bring you before the sector commander.”
The part of the line where the Shadow Aspect had landed was commanded by the motherly General Xao. Sleepy-eyed but smiling she welcomed Oenone and her followers to the dugout where she had her headquarters. It was a pleasant place, as dugouts went; not too damp, the floor flagged with slates, the wooden walls whitewashed and hung with pictures. In the general’s private quarters photographs of her dead family stood among the statues of her household gods on an elaborate shrine. A pot-bellied stove gave out a dry heat that made Pennyroyal’s soggy clothes steam so much the general suggested he take them off, and made one of her plumper staff officers lend him a spare uniform and an elegant grey cloak. Oenone had also changed into Green Storm uniform, and had washed her face and hair; she still did not look like an empress, but at least she looked less like a street-urchin.
The general’s servants brought rice wine; steamed rolls; tea. Theo pulled off his flying-jacket and tried to stop himself from falling asleep on the folding chair which another servant set out for him. After the things they had been through that night, it all seemed impossibly luxurious. Although he had grown to hate the Green Storm, he had never doubted the strength or courage of their army, and it was a relief to think of all those brave soldiers and powerful guns standing between him and the cityfolk. He was not even worried about Hester, now that she was safe in the field hospital.
The general said, “My people are preparing a ship to carry you home to Tienjing, my lady. Her captain is a friend of mine; a supporter of General Naga; her crew can all be trusted. A Stalker-bird has gone east already to take the good news to your husband. I hope that it will restore his spirits.”