by Philip Reeve
“This is all your fault!” he shouted. His mechanical hand swept down and grabbed a handful of her hair. He heaved her upright like a sack. “Look what your peace has led to! You told me to treat the barbarians like human beings, and now they are destroying us!”
Oenone had never imagined this. She did not know how to cope with his anger. “No, no, no, no,” she said, “TractionCities have been destroyed too; I saw them burning. You must have heard reports—”
“Lies!”
“Naga, the Stalker Fang is back! She controls this thing!”
A murmuring in the room; cries of alarm, of disbelief.
“Think,” begged Oenone. “The reports from Brighton. The limpet found in Snow Fan Province… She wants us to think the townies have the weapon, so that she can use it against us all! She is insane! We have to find the transmitter she uses to speak with it and—”
“Lies!” said Naga. “I have already discovered where the thing is controlled from. It is the London Engineers again, just like MEDUSA. Those harmless squatters we have ignored for so long started busying themselves like ants a few weeks ago, and now this happens.” He snatched a photograph from the piles on the table, an aerial view of London taken by a spy bird. “Look! You can see their bald heads! They infest that wreck like maggots in a corpse! And today a Londoner came here with some wild tale to try and put us off the scent. It is MEDUSA all over again! It all begins and ends with London!”
“Then what about Dr. Popjoy?” babbled Oenone. “Fang must have needed him to repair her, and when he had done it, she killed him…”
“Popjoy was another Engineer! We thought he had come over to our side, but he was working for his old Guild all along! That body they found in his villa was so mangled, it could have been anyone! Your former master faked his death and escaped to London to help his old Engineer friends deploy the weapon.”
“No,” whispered Oenone. But his theory made a sort of sense. How could she hope to show him he was wrong?
Naga stared at her, breathing hard. “And you were part of their plan too, weren’t you Zero?” he said. His voice had grown softer and colder. “You were their creature all along, you Aleutian sorceress. It was Popjoy who first brought you to the Jade Pagoda. How shy and sweet you seemed! But you destroyed Fang and then distracted me, whispering about peace, about love…” He drew his sword. “And all along you were just buying time for the townies until their new weapon was ready!”
Oenone tried to control her helpless trembling. She stretched out her hands toward her husband. “Please believe me. I would never betray you. All I ever wanted was peace.”
Naga struck her again, a stunning blow from his mechanical fist. She went down on her knees, keening, her hands cupped to catch the blood from her nose. He shoved her head down and drew his sword. But the thin stalk of her neck, bared in the lantern light, looked so fragile and ivory pale that he could not bring himself to sever it. She had a scurf of grime along her hairline, dirt behind her small ears, like a child.
Naga slammed his sword down, burying the blade deep in the wood of the chart table. As Oenone dropped sobbing at his feet, he wheeled around and bellowed at his officers, “Take her away! Lock her up! I’ll hear no more talk of peace!”
He tried not to watch as they dragged her to the door. A few hard-liners, old opponents of the truce, shouted out, “Kill her!” One drew his own sword, and would have butchered Oenone there and then if his friends had not restrained him.
“No!” Naga shouted. The heavy door swung shut behind his wife. It was easier to be strong now that he could not see her frightened face. “I will behead the traitor Zero myself, in public, in the main square of Batmunkh Gompa!”
A few of his listeners looked almost as woeful as Oenone had, but most were pleased by his announcement; some even cheered.
“First,” Naga told them, “we must gather what ships we can, and fly to London. We shall capture the barbarians’ transmitter and turn the new weapon upon their own cities! This war is not lost! Follow me, and we shall make the world green again!”
Chapter 44
Pillar of Fire
“Nothing that cannot be forgiven,” Oenone had said, but it seemed to Hester, as she went in the cold wind down those long stairways to the docking pans, that she had done things that no one could forgive. She did not know what she could say to Tom; and did not like to think what he might say to her. But she hated to think of him cooped up in one of those little buildings, whose roofs she could see below her in the glow from the big lamps around the pans. There was a lot of activity down there: Airships were being fueled and filled, and one of them was the Jenny, a familiar, rusty-red envelope among the white of the Storm’s warships.
Everything went blurry, and Hester had to wipe her sleeve across her eye. She was glad Oenone and Pennyroyal weren’t there to see her sniveling. Only Grike was with her (she could hear the heavy, comforting tramp of his feet on the stairs behind her), and Grike had seen her weep before.
The narrow alleys behind the pans were full of loud confusion; the Storm seemed punch-drunk, and the simple business of preparing ships was leading to squabbles and rows between the remnants of different units who spoke different languages and dialects. Pushing through them, Hester felt a tightness in her chest and throat, a building panic at the thought of seeing Tom.
She stopped a passing aviator to ask the way to the cells, and was pleased at how he started bowing and saluting when she showed him Lady Naga’s oak-leaf ring. But as she climbed the stone steps to the building he indicated, she heard running footsteps behind her.
“IT IS THE ONCE-BORN PENNYROYAL,” announced Grike.
“What does he want?” grumbled Hester, though secretly she was glad of a reason to delay her reunion with Tom.
Pennyroyal came panting up the steps to her. She knew as soon as she saw him that something had gone badly wrong. “Hester! Grike!” he gasped. “Thank Poskitt! We’ve got to flee! I mean fly! That villain Naga!”
“What’s happened?” demanded Hester.
Pennyroyal waved his arms about, trying to find a gesture big enough to express the disaster. “I didn’t know what was happening; don’t know the lingo; but some of the men in there were speaking Anglish to one another, and they were saying she was a traitor—”
“Who’s a traitor?” Hester grabbed him by the collar of his cloak and shook him. “What’s happened, Pennyroyal? Where’s Oenone?”
“That’s what I’m telling you! She’s in prison! He broke her little nose, the brute! He blames her for this terror weapon. They’re saying he’s vowed to cut off her head once the cities are defeated. Oh, the poor child! Oh, merciful Clio…”
Pennyroyal was genuinely upset, and Hester felt a pang of grief and pity too as she began to understand what he was saying. She hid it in her usual way, by growing angry. “You mean it was all for nothing? All that trouble and traveling? Losing Theo? We just got her out of one prison and into another? Can’t the silly cow be left alone for a minute without getting herself locked up?” She looked at Grike, who was staring silently at the buildings above. “Reckon we can do something? Get her out?”
“No way!” said Pennyroyal instantly. “He’s locked her in some high turret. Stalkers and men with hand cannon to guard her.”
“THERE ARE MANY ONCE-BORN THERE,” agreed Grike. “I WOULD HAVE TO KILL DOZENS OF THEM. I COULD NOT DO THAT, AND DR. ZERO WOULD NOT WANT ME TO.”
“She’d want us to save our own skins!” Pennyroyal said firmly. “What if someone seeks us out? They’re running about like mad bees up there, getting ready to fly off and attack some poor city or other. And they’re hardly going to leave us on the loose, are they? If they think Oenone is a traitor, they must think we are too, and they’ll want our heads to complete the set…” He pawed at Hester’s back, sniveling with terror as she turned away from him. “Hester, your ship’s here; you’ve got to get me away…”
Hester turned and shoved him. He went backward w
ith an indignant yelp, rolling down the steps. “We’ve traveled far enough together,” she shouted. “I told you in Airhaven, I don’t want you on my ship. You can make your own arrangements.”
Pennyroyal shouted something after her, but she did not look back. Above the noise from the docking pans she could hear other sounds: cheering and trumpet blasts coming down from somewhere above her as the remnants of the Storm celebrated Oenone’s arrest. The guard on the cell-block door heard it too, and Hester was relieved to see that he looked puzzled by it. Communications were ropy in this ramshackle harbor; no sign of telephones or speaking tubes, just small boys running to and fro with messages. It might be some minutes before word of Oenone’s fall from favor reached down here, and longer still before descriptions of her companions started to circulate.
Sure enough, the oak-leaf ring elicited more bowing and saluting from the cell-block staff. Hester was welcomed inside, while Grike explained her business in a language she didn’t know. A man ran and unlocked a heavy door, beckoning Hester through. “Wait here,” she told Grike, and stepped inside. An oil lamp had been lit, and in the slow flaring of the light she saw the prisoner sit up on his bunk and turn his face toward her.
The guard said something in his own language, but neither of them noticed. “Tom?” said Hester.
Tom rose and came toward her. He did not speak, which Hester guessed was because he was so surprised to see her; she imagined that he could not believe it was really her.
She didn’t know that Tom already knew she was in Shan Guo; indeed, from what Theo had said, Tom believed she’d been here for some days. It was a surprise to him when the cell door opened and she came in, but not a total one; surprise was not the reason why he did not speak. Hester had hurt him very badly, and when he thought of her, he still felt angry. But now that she was here, standing a few feet from him, her familiar smell blowing toward him on the draft from the open door, he found that he still loved her, too. If he could not speak, it was simply because he had too many different things to say.
“Well,” said Hester lamely. “Here we are again!”
“I left Wren in London,” he said, guessing what her first question would be.
“In London?”
“She’s with Theo; it’s all right; she’s safe, but—”
“Theo Ngoni? You mean he’s alive?”
“He found his way to London. Told us he’d seen you. How brave you’d been … Saving Lady Naga …”
The guard was staring at them. Hester swung her gun down from her shoulder and pointed it in Tom’s direction, saying to the guard in her creaky Airsperanto, “Unchain the prisoner; he’s coming with me.”
The guard shrugged; she couldn’t tell if he understood what she had said, but he seemed to get the general idea, and he quickly unlocked the shackles that chained Tom to the wall. Hester grabbed Tom by the arm and led him quickly away, nodding at the other guards. Tom wondered if he should refuse to go with her, tell her that he didn’t trust her anymore, after what she had done before. But this did not seem the moment, and besides, a part of him was glad to have her in charge again.
Outside, Grike was waiting. Tom flinched backward when the Stalker’s dead face turned to stare at him.
“It’s all right,” said Hester. “He’s a friend now.”
“Right,” said Tom, remembering what Theo had told him about the old Stalker but finding it hard to believe. “Hello, Mr. Grike. Sorry I killed you.”
Grike bowed faintly and said, “I DID NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY.”
Above their heads, with a shriek and a roar, the sky ripped open down a long seam. Light drenched them, bright as day and white as death. The ground lurched. Grike gripped his head, and his eyes flared and flickered. The shouts of the soldiers and stevedores on the docking pans changed to frightened screams, and Hester screamed too and flung her arms around Tom, tugging him close. But the sword of light that blazed above them was not aimed at Batmunkh Gompa. It stood upon the mountains farther south, blazing and shrieking, too bright to look at and too tall to comprehend. The sky filled with vapor, and blue threads of lightning crackled and flashed.
“What is it doing?” shouted Tom. “There are no cities there…”
The glare faded; the shrieking ended in a thunderclap, and then the night returned. The ground still shuddered. Hester still held Tom tight. Grike hissed and shook himself, recovering. A pillar of cloud marked the place where the light had been, and at its foot a red glow gathered, a brazier brightening among the mountains.
“Zhan Shan!” Tom heard people saying. “Zhan Shan!” he said himself. He was very frightened. Hester’s embrace was comforting for a moment, until he remembered and pushed her away. “They have turned it on Zhan Shan! The holy mountain is erupting!”
“Who’d want to blow up a volcano?” asked Hester, angry at herself for having hugged him. Around them bells were ringing, whistles blowing, white ships rising into the night. Who could say when the weapon would strike again?
“Come on,” she said.
They wove through the busy harbor to the pan where the Jenny was moored. A group of Green Storm aviators ran toward her. Hester shouted at them that she was taking this ship. A hatch at the stern of the envelope hung open; she barked at the startled ground crew to close it and stand clear. The men shrugged and saluted, but as they drifted away, a harbor officer came hurrying over, shouting in Airsperanto. “Where are your orders? What’s your unit? All ships have been commandeered for General Naga’s strike against the barbarians!”
“No.” Hester held out her hand, showing him Oenone’s ring. “I’m taking her out myself; Lady Naga commands it.”
The man had started to salute when he saw the ring, but stopped when he heard whose it was. “Lady Naga is a lackey of the Municipal Darwinist conspiracy!” he shouted, turning. “Friends! Here! The traitor Zero’s accomplices are—”
Hester made her hand into a fist and the ring flashed as she punched the man hard in the stomach and again in the head as he curled over. She thought of killing him, but she did not want to with Tom watching. Leaving him gasping in the shadows at the edge of the pan, she hurried the others up the gangplank. Other ships were taking off” from the neighboring pans, big transports going to collect troops from the plateau above. Nobody noticed the Jenny rise among them, and her red envelope faded quickly into the night as she veered away across the lake of Batmunkh Nor. By the time the harbor officer recovered enough to start shouting for help, there was nothing to be seen of her but a wreath of exhaust smoke dissolving into the air above the pan.
They flew without lights, but the light of the eruption on faraway Zhan Shan came in through the gondola windows, red and unhealthy and bright enough to read by. While Hester steered, Tom stood at the window and looked out at the crescent-shaped gash that had been torn in the volcano’s northeastern side. The mountain itself was hidden in the darkness and the distance, so the gash seemed to hang in the sky like a burning moon.
“I still don’t understand,” Tom muttered to himself. “Why attack a mountain?”
Grike heard him. “ZHAN SHAN COULD GO ON ERUPTING FOR WEEKS,” the Stalker said. “THE PUMICE CLOUDS WILL DISRUPT AIR TRAFFIC OVER THOUSANDS OF MILES. WHOLE PROVINCES WILL BE SMOTHERED. IT IS A BLOW FROM WHICH THE GREEN STORM CANNOT RECOVER.”
“Then the cities do control ODIN…”
“THE STALKER FANG CONTROLS IT.”
“The Stalker Fang’s alive?” Grike nodded.
Hester, who had been intent on steering the airship past a rearing pinnacle of rock, relaxed a little as they flew into clear air beyond it, and looked back at her passengers. “We’ll circle around and head west,” she said. “I can set you down at London, Tom.”
“What about your friend Lady Naga?” asked Tom. He had never met the unfortunate young woman, but he felt guilty at leaving her locked up. “Perhaps when Naga’s ships have flown off, we could—”
“she is under guard,” said Grike. “they would not let us
take her alive. if naga blames her for odin, there is a simpler way to save her: i will find odin’s ground station and prove who is really responsible.”
“But the ground station could be anywhere,” protested Hester.
“the stalker fang has returned to shan guo,” said Grike, turning, sniffing the musty air as if he hoped to pick up the other Stalker’s scent. He found a map of the Heavenly Mountains and spread it on the chart table. He stabbed his finger down on Snow Fan Province, then Batmunkh Gompa. “she abandoned the limpet here. she killed popjoy here. she is in these mountains somewhere. set me down, and i shall find her.”
“Anna Fang had a house at a place called Erdene Tezh,” said Tom. “We found the deeds to it among her things when we took over the Jenny.” He pointed to the place on the chart. “Maybe she’s gone home.”
“it is possible. the stalker fang claimed to have memories of her former life. perhaps they have drawn her back.”
Tom felt pleased that the Stalker liked his suggestion. “Do you think we should go back to Batmunkh Gompa and tell somebody?” he asked. “Definitely not!” said Hester.
“THEY WOULD NOT BELIEVE US,” said Grike. “THEY THINK WE ARE PAWNS OF THEIR ENEMIES. I MUST GO TO ERDENE TEZH AND SEARCH FOR HER MYSELF.”
“Is that your own idea?” asked Hester suspiciously. “Or is one of Oenone’s secret programs still running in that brain of yours?”
Grike turned to look at her. “I DO NOT KNOW. BUT DR. ZERO REBUILT ME FOR A PURPOSE. I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DESTROY THE STALKER FANG. I MUST SEEK HER OUT AND RE-ASSASSINATE HER.”
“Thought you couldn’t kill anybody.”
“STALKERS ARE NOT ALIVE, SO IT WILL NOT BE KILLING,” Grike said patiently. “EVEN IF IT WERE, IT WOULD HAVE TO BE DONE.” He waved one massive hand at the windows, at the mountain burning in the south. “IF SHE IS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE THIS DESTRUCTION, MILLIONS OF ONCE-BORN WILL PERISH.”