A Darkling Plain me-4

by Philip Reeve

“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. Grike 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 was 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 around. 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. I am starting on a journey … loading provisions … didn’t even know London had any ruins that … A few lines above 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 kriegsmarschall’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, Grike 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 Grike. 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. Grike! What are you doing here?” or “Mr. Grike, 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.”

  Grike 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 Grike. 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 armor. “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. Grike 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?”

  Grike 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. Grike.”

  The ground was close now. Grike looked down at Hester, thinking that he did not care how long he lived as long as she was with him. He said, “I WANT TO KEEP HER SAFE AND STRONG FOREVER. 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. Grike. You’ve grown a soul.”

  Chapter 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 halfheartedly 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 armor, 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’d 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 that 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 kriegsmarschall 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 stru
ck 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 clay 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 defense. 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’ defenses.”

  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 kriegsmarschalls. Ms. Twombley, you’ll need to get your machines aloft. The obliteration of the Green Storm starts at dawn!”

  Chapter 30

  She Is Risen

  Fulfill the vision of the Wind-Flower Airfield 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 colorless fingers to brush the Shadow Aspect’s envelope as the cloud of birds steered her toward 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 subofficer 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 toward a hummock of camouflaged bunkers on the horizon. “Shall I call stretcher bearers?”

  “I WILL CARRY HER,” said Grike. He pulled the curtain 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 subofficer, 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 slate, 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 potbellied 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 gray 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 that 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.”

  “He is ill?” asked Oenone, alarmed.

  General Xao looked glum. “There have been no clear orders from Tienjing for weeks. We have warned your honored husband about the buildup on the other side of the line, and the harvester suburb that raided Track Mark 16 last month. We have told him that we cannot hold these positions if the cities attack; he does not seem to care. It is as if, when he heard word of your death, he gave up all hope.”

  Oenone looked for a moment as if she would cry. She said hoarsely, “Can’t we contact him more quickly? I could talk to him by long-range radio…”

  Xao shook her head. “I dare not risk it, Lady Naga. The barbarians could intercept your message, and try again to kill you.”

  “It was not t
he barbarians who tried to kill me the first time,” said Oenone. “It was barbarians who saved me, with Theo’s help.”

  “Indeed.” The general nodded, smiling at Theo and then at Pennyroyal. “We have heard of Professor Pennyroyal’s bravery.”

  “Professor Pennyroyal’s bravery?” Theo almost choked on the roll he was munching. He wondered if the general was slightly drunk. First her defeatist talk about not being able to hold the line and now this! “What have you heard?” he asked.

  “We have listening posts deep in no-man’s-land that eavesdrop on the townies’ radio transmissions,” explained the general. She reached for some papers on her desk. “This is a news bulletin that went out on Murnau’s public screens a few hours ago.” She skimmed the transcript’s first two paragraphs, then cleared her throat and read, “The raiders were helped by an agent within Airhaven, the notorious author, charlatan, and former mayor of Brighton, Nimrod B. Pennyroyal. As the Green Storm spy ship left, several eyewitnesses saw the traitor Pennyroyal running after it, shouting, “What about my money?”

  “A traitor? Me?” Pennyroyal looked outraged.

  “Only to the Tractionist barbarians,” said General Xao. “To our people you will be a hero.”

  “But—gosh! Will I?”

  “To think that the mayor of a barbaric raft town could come to see the error of his ways so clearly that he would risk his own life to free a Green Storm prisoner,” the general went on. “Your statue will stand in the Hall of Matchless Immortals in Tienjing. Naga will reward you richly. He—”

  A junior officer entered, bowing nervously and murmuring something in Shan Guonese. The general frowned, standing up. “Forgive me; I am needed outside.”

  “What is happening?” asked Oenone.

  “Our sound mirrors are detecting engine noise from the cities… We have been expecting an attack, but not so soon. Great Gods, I’ve still not had the reinforcements I asked for last month!” A bell began to ring on the bank of field telephones in the next room; then another and another. General Xao snapped an order at her underling and said to Oenone, “Excellency, you must take ship at once. I will not risk—”