A Darkling Plain (45 page)

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."

Tom swallowed and said nervously, "I can fly you to Erdene Tezh."

"It's not our business, Tom," Hester warned him.

"It is," Tom told her. "Because if you're right, we're the only people who really know who's responsible for all this. What sort of world will be left for Wren if we let it keep happening? We have to do something." He was about to explain the connection between ODIN and the Tin Book, but that would only make Hester think it was Wren's fault, which wasn't what he meant at all.
"I
have to do something," he said weakly.

"All right," said Hester. He was as lovely and infuriating as

ever. She'd never been able to resist his stupid bravery. "All right. Let's go to this Erdene Thingy place. It's not as if I've got anything better to do. Only when we get there, you're not going to do anything heroic; you're not going to risk your life, or try and talk to the Stalker Fang. You're going to stay safe in the airship and let Grike go and kill her. And this time he'd better do it properly."

***

Wren, awakening, wonDered for a moment where she was, remembered what had happened, felt afraid, and then decided that she did not care, because Theo was there with her, breathing softly, his face pressed into the curve of her neck, the heavy, comforting weight of his arm thrown across her.

They had gone west when they'd left Crouch End, because all the roads and paths Wren knew through the wreckage led west. They had walked for hours, listening out all the time for sounds of pursuit. They had seen the pulse of fire plunge into the mountains and stood in silence, hand in hand, watching the red glow gather in the sky behind Zhan Shan, throwing the summit of the giant volcano into silhouette. At last they had settled down to rest on the very westernmost edge of the debris field, where it petered out into a rash of smaller fields, scattered chunks of track and deck

plate, towering wheels. They had taken shelter inside one of the wheels, in a cylindrical cave about twelve feet high where a crank must once have been attached. (Or a connecting rod, or a gubbins of some other kind; neither of them knew enough about the wheels of cities to say for certain.) It was, at least, dry, and not too cold, and they had cuddled together there with Wren's pack as a pillow and fallen quickly asleep.

Now a halfhearted daylight filled the circle of the cave mouth. Wren woke Theo as gently as she could, and scrambled around him to the entrance. Peeking out, she saw the deserted margins of the wreck stretching away in hazy sunlight. She craned out farther. It was too misty to make out Zhan Shan, but she could see the tower of smoke that stood above it, wet-slate gray, and as tall as the sky. The ground seemed to shake faintly, and she thought she heard a distant rumbling.

"Well, it wasn't a dream," she said. "Why would the Storm turn the weapon on their own land?"

"It must be another civil war," said Theo. He poured some water for them from the canteen Lavinia Childermass had given them. "Naga's probably zapping his rivals."

"Charming," said Wren. "And these are the people whose mercy we're going to be throwing ourselves on?"

"Either that or go back to Mr. Garamond."

"Fair point. What's for breakfast?"

"Gravel," said Theo, opening a box that Lavinia Childermass had put inside Wren's pack. "I think it started out as some kind of flapjack. It's probably very nutritious...."

"Shhhh!"

The rumbling sound was growing louder. The ground was definitely shaking, vibrations flaking small scales of rust off the old wheel.

"The volcano?" said Wren.

Theo shook his head.

They scrambled down out of their shelter and stood on the wheel's rim, staring westward. The rumblings came and went, gusting on the wind. A ridge bulged and shivered, its profile altering as they watched. A gleam of metal showed beneath the scrub, and a fist of exhaust smoke rose triumphantly into the air.

"Oh, Quirke!" said Wren.

"Harrowbarrow," whispered Theo.

Wren nodded. She had almost forgotten the existence of Wolf Kobold. Her first thought was
Thank Quirke we got out of the debris field before he arrived,
but it was drowned out immediately by another thought coming close behind it:
What about the others?

"We've got to warn them!" she said.

"Why?" asked Theo. "They'll know soon enough. If it moves as fast as it did when I saw it tear through the line, they'll hear the engines in London before long."

"But they might not," said Wren. "The lookouts are young; they've never heard town engines; they'll think it's the volcano, like we did...." She tried to tell herself that it served the Londoners right for accusing people and locking them in cages, but all she could think of were her friends: Angie and Saab, Clytie, Dr. Childermass. Even Mr. Garamond didn't deserve to be eaten by Harrowbarrow. The waste of it appalled her; those years of thought and effort and hard work--

"We've got to delay it," she said. "I'll go aboard and divert them somehow. Even if it only buys an extra half hour, it might help. Don't you see? New London has to move today; now, ready or not! Once it's out of the fields, it should be able to outrun Harrowbarrow."

"Oh, not on your own," said Theo.

"Yes, because I can't take you, because you're the mossiest Mossie in the whole world and a terrible liar and Wolf Kobold doesn't believe people like you even deserve to be alive. So you're going to go and be safe somewhere."

"Wren," he protested.

She hugged him, tight, tight. It would be so easy to just keep out of Harrowbarrow's way and pretend that none of this had anything to do with her, but it had; what would her father think of her if he knew she'd had a chance to save his city and she'd fluffed it? What would she think of herself? She kissed Theo. "Go," she said. "Harrowbarrow sends scouts out ahead sometimes, on foot. If they catch you, they won't ask questions. Please go."

"How will I find you again?"

"I don't know," said Wren, pulling away from him. Harrowbarrow's engines snarled. "I'll think of something," she promised. She couldn't quite bring herself to let go of his hands. "Look, the gods went to all this trouble to bring us together; you don't think they'd let a silly little enormously dangerous armored suburb come between us, do you?" She checked herself, because she was starting to babble. It had been the same on that air quay at Kom Ombo. She seemed to be able to say anything except the thing she wanted to say.

In the end, Theo said it instead. "I love you."

"Gosh, really? Me too! You, I mean. I, I love you." She started to move back toward him, then pulled herself away.
There,
she thought,
I've told him; now I'll have one less regret when I get down to the Sunless Country.
She turned and started to stumble away through the brambles and the gobbets of rusting wreckage, northward into Harrowbarrow's path. "Hide!" she shouted at him, seeing him standing there watching helplessly from the shadow of the abandoned wheel. "Go and hide!" She pressed on, half afraid and half hoping that he would insist on coming with her.

When she looked back again, she could no longer see him.

Theo ran a little way into the thickets of alder that filled the scooped-out hollow of an old track mark nearby. There he stopped. He wanted to be with Wren, but he knew that if the Harrowbarrovians were as bad as she'd described, he would only be going to his death, and bringing more danger down on her by making Kobold wonder why she was with an Anti-Tractionist.

Yet he could not just hide.

He turned east and started loping toward the debris field. The Londoners were not bad people. They deserved all the warning he could give them. He would run to the hangar at the west end of Holloway Road and tell the lads on guard there what was coming for them.

Wren waded through the waist-high weeds. The day was dimming as the pall of smoke from the distant volcano spread

across the sky. End-of-the-world weather. Harrowbarrow's engines had fallen silent. She wondered if Wolf Kobold was on his bridge, watching the land ahead through his periscope. She pulled off her jacket and turned it inside out. The red silk lining was tatty and faded after all her adventures, but it was still the brightest thing about. She climbed up on a nameless chunk of wreckage and started to wave the jacket above her head, shouting, "Wolf! Wolf! It's me! It's Wren!"

After a few minutes she jumped down and started plodding on again. She could feel the ground stirring underfoot as the harvester suburb drew nearer. From time to time she waved the jacket and shouted, but she couldn't even see Harrowbarrow anymore; it had squirreled down into a deep trench. Wren glanced at the sky. No Stalker-birds. Honestly, she thought, where were the Green Storm and their city-zapping super-weapon when you needed them? It was sheer incompetence, letting Harrowbarrow drive so far behind their lines.