by Nick Travers
Chapter 45
Scud drops the pocket watch back into my hand. “That’s not your mothers watch, Nina.”
I can feel my eyes bulging and my mouth working up and down, but nothing comes out. My brain is numb.
Trent gets in first. “This is no time for jokes, Scud.”
“When they gave Mayor McGraw a watch,” Scud mumbles, “it was gold. Why would they give your mother a brass watch?”
“She was humble,” I whisper. Even as I say it, I know humble is not a word anyone would associate with my mother.
Scud carries on, as if he hasn’t heard me. “This whole crash site is a fake, Nina. It’s a set-up. The numbers on these machine parts—they were on the crates we hid behind in Warehouse 19, on Newark.”
I stumble to my feet, my mind a whirlwind of the words Scud has just spoken. I can’t grab hold of the meaning; I just hear the words over and over again. Fake… all fake… a set-up…
“And the painting of Gaia in the chapel,” Scud carries on, “it isn’t Leanne. It’s an older woman. I think the picture is your mother, Nina. I think she’s alive.”
I can feel the others staring at me, wanting a response, but I have nothing to give. Instead, I turn away and stumble into the desert. “A set-up… warehouse 19… she’s alive… alive…”
Later—I have no idea how much later—Izzy and Fernando come looking for me. I’m sitting on a rock. Izzy lowers herself gingerly beside me, not saying a word, just a companionable silence.
Fernando stands around awkwardly. Eventually he clears his throat. “Um… Nina, I’m pretty sure Scud is wrong. He doesn’t know how to handle emotion. He’s just joking.”
“Scud doesn’t joke.” In other circumstances, Fernando empathizing with Scud would impress me. But not today.
“You know what I mean.” Fernando settles himself on the rock on the other side of me. “He didn’t know what to say so he made something up… to fill the uncomfortable silence—you know how he hates that.”
“Fat Penguin,” I whisper, remembering Scud’s inappropriate remark in the Village of the Damned, and we all grin.
“I need to speak to Trent.” Once more, I need an objective view.
Izzy stands to look for Trent. “He was over…” She stops mid-sentence. “Hell’s teeth, Nina—the Shonti.”
Oh no, not the Shonti. I leap to my feet, expecting to see my beautiful airship tangled on the floor or surrounded by Reavers. Instead I see her great tail flukes sweep to the ground as she powers into the air. “What the…?”
My heart sinks further than I thought possible. My airship is leaving without me. I pull out my pistol and aim it at the ship, but even if I were close enough to hit something, I know I wouldn’t fire on my own, beautiful airship.
“Trent!” Izzy bellows. “The stupid—”
“I knew we couldn’t trust him,” Fernando fumes, drowning out Izzy’s profanities.
“—Why?” Izzy demands. “Why would he do that?”
But I know why. “Because Scud is right.”
Slowly, I re-holster my weapon, and sink painfully back onto the rock, my face buried in my hands. Why?
Izzy slips her arm around me. “Is there anything we can do?”
There it is again, “we,” not “I”. Completely detached from the disaster that is today, my mind focuses on the fact that Izzy and Fernando are an item. I should have known; I should have noticed. How could I have not known that Trent would turn against me? What have I missed that I should have seen?
Somehow, I need to figure all this out. With an effort, I heave my mind back to the present. “Yes. Find Scud, I need to talk to him.”
I clench my hands to stop them shaking, and pace while I wait. All the hope I felt when I thought my mother could not return for me has drained away. If Scud is right, she could have come back for me any time. Hell, maybe she could come back right now. Clearly she doesn’t want me. I, her own daughter, am worth nothing to her. I’m pretty worthless all around really.
I’ve led my friends on a wild goose chase: landed them in trouble, nearly got them killed, we’re wanted by every law enforcer in the known world, and for what? Nothing.
Even my friends aren’t real. Everyone wants something from me—they always have. The girl with the important mother, the girl with the infamous mother, the girl who might one day be rich, the student with an airship, an offering of adventure. Even Borker wants something from me—my blood; so, for that matter, do the Reavers. Soon we will be nothing more than bleached bones in the desert for everyone to fight over.
And now I’ve lost my airship—my scrappy, decrepit airship—and I’m stranded with my so called crew in the desert.
Borker must know my mother is alive. He’s an assassin. These airship parts, if Scud is right, were housed in the assassin’s warehouse. If Borker knows, do the New Frisco authorities know? Does the Mayor know? Does McGraw know? Seething anger grips me. Does everyone know, except me?”
“Nina, you want me?” I spin round, ready to punch someone. But it is just Scud. Scud, who is incapable of deceit, who is incapable of conditional love. How pathetic I am to need such an emotionally crippled friend. How lucky I am.
Scud avoids looking in my direction—I guess he somehow feels responsible for our situation. He is not—I am.
Deliberately I sit, take a deep breath, and try to still my racing heart. “Scud,” I coax, and concentrate on keeping my voice gentle. But he still looks up in alarm. “Why do you think the crash site is fake?”
Scud fiddles nervously with a cog in his hand. “The journal is fake too, Nina.”
“Damn,” Fernando spits. “Is there anything about this trip which is real?”
Not you! I want to scream. But I know anger will just shut Scud down so, with an effort, I calm myself.
“Leanne’s not fake,” Scud says, defending his icon.
Fernando kicks at the dirt. “We don’t even know that for sure.”
“Scud.” I try to focus everyone’s thoughts. “Why is the journal fake?”
“The clues in the journal lead to a fake crash site, Nina, so the journal has to be fake too. Besides, the curator at the museum, on Ashcroft Ascent, said they only acquired the eyes of Gaia a few years ago. The eye wasn’t even on Ashcroft Ascent when your mother left, yet that is where the journal sent us. It was written five years ago tops, maybe less.”
Suddenly, Izzy gasps and slaps her hands to her face. “The painting,” she says, breathlessly. “The painting of Gaia in the chapel—the Priestess said they restored it only a few years ago. If the painting is your mother, then she was alive at the time of restoration.”
“If,” I say, still skeptical.
“An older version of Leanne? An older version of you?” Scud shrugs. “Who else could it be?”
“A woman who looks like my mother,” I snap. “A woman who never loved her daughter.”
Tears prick at my eyes. Angrily, I wipe them with the back of my fist. I ignore the shock on the faces of my colleagues and drag my thoughts back to our present predicament. “Why has Trent taken the Shonti? And why now?”
“Trent murdered my Father.”
I envy the matter-of-fact way Izzy talks about Uncle Felix. To me, there is no logic in that line of thought, but I ask anyway. “Why? To stop him sending me a fake diary, leading to a fake crash site? Where’s the sense in that?”
She ignores me. “And now that he knows we know the truth, he runs away.”
“What about, Leanne?” Fernando asks, not even stumbling over the use of her name. “Maybe Trent just wants her. Everyone else is after her—even Microtough.”
I still don’t buy it. “He had plenty of opportunity to take her from us at Platform sixty-nine. Why now? Besides, we’re only assuming Microtough know we have her.”
Fernando presses his point. “She’s their experiment. And they’ve sent an entire fleet to retrieve her.”
“Supposition.” Though he does have a point.
“Coincidence,” Izzy cuts in.
“Whatever the answer, guys, it’s on top of that hill.” I point up to our previous destination. “So come morning, I’m hiking up there to discover the answer.”
If Leanne is just an experiment, then what am I? My mother’s experiment? Someone else’s? The Microtough fleet could, of course, be here for an entirely different reason. “What I want to know is, why go to all the trouble of a fake diary and a fake crash site?”
“To convince you your mother is dead,” Izzy continues. “Which means she’s not.”
Somehow I need to organize all this information. “So, the fake diary and fake crash are all for my benefit—”
“It’s all about you, Nina,” Scud declares.
“—Trent knows, so he must be—” I remember the look the Daughter of Gaia gave Trent on Newtonsteign before she leapt off the platform. “—in league with the Daughters of Gaia. Borker’s assassins had the fake wreckage so he must be in league with the Daughters as well.”
“The Daughters of Gaia murdered my father?” Izzy asks.
That has to be it. I always though the Daughters of Gaia, in their fight against pollution, were a minor irritation, but murder, bombing, assassination: they are monsters.
“Everything comes back to the Daughters of Gaia,” I confess. “And my mother is one of them.”
“Nina,” Scud blurts, “your mother is Gaia.”