the Nomad Empires of the North sent their undead armies against each other back in the lost years before the dawn of Traction, when men were men and cities stayed where you put them.
“But I thought that he was on
“Shhh!” hissed Theo urgently, afraid that her words would reveal their presence to the Stalkers.
But the Stalkers had other things on their minds. Fang sent Grike reeling backward with a kick, but lacked the strength to follow through; instead, she looked about for an escape route, calling out in her whispery voice for help. She gripped the handrail at the terrace’s edge and, as Grike recovered and struck viciously at her back, heaved herself over and dropped down into the gardens.
Grike jumped after her. He could hear the shouting of alarmed Once-Borns behind him and, looking back, saw Naga and his men running to the broken balcony, staring down. He ran on, following the trail of oil and ichor that the injured Stalker had left. She seemed at first to be heading toward the
Filled with pity, Grike blurted out, ” I’m Sorry.”
“The Zero woman!” hissed the Stalker Fang. “She is a traitor, and you are her creature. I should have been wiser than to put my faith in the Once-Borns…”
With a savage blow, Grike smashed the bronze mask from her face. Her head lolled backward on damaged neck joints, and moonlight fell across the face of the dead aviatrix: a gaunt gray face, black lips drawn back from olive-stone teeth, smashed green lamps where eyes should have been. She raised her maimed steel hand to hide herself, and the familiar gesture startled Grike. Where had he seen it before?
She turned suddenly away from him, awkward and broken, her blind eyes staring up at the stars. “Do you see it?” she asked. “The bright one in the east? That is ODIN, the last of the great orbital weapons that the Ancients set in heaven. It has been waiting up there, sleeping, since the Sixty Minute War. It is powerful. Powerful enough to destroy countless cities. And the Tin Book of Anchorage holds the code that will awaken it. Help me, Mr. Grike. Help me to awaken ODIN and Make the World Green Again.”
Grike severed her neck with three fierce blows, her long scream dying as the head came free.
He pitched her body over the handrail, then picked up the head and the fallen mask and flung them after it. The mask flashed in the moonlight as it fell, and Grike’s rage and his new strength seemed to drain out of him. Jagged interference patterns crackled across his mind as the secret instincts Oenone Zero had installed there shut down.
Memories came flying at him like bats. He raised his hands to ward them off, but still they came. They were not the calm, sad human memories that had filled his mind while he lay dying on the Black Island, but just the memories of every terrible thing he had done since he’d become a Stalker: the battles and the murders, the Once- Born outlaws butchered for a bounty, the beggar boy he’d broken once in Airhaven for no better reason than the simple joy of killing. How had he done such things? How had he not felt then the guilt and shame that overwhelmed him now?
And then a scarred face rose in his memory like something surfacing from deep water, so clear that he could almost put a name to it: “h… hes…”
“There it is!” shouted voices close behind him: Once-Born soldiers blundering out of the shrubbery. “Stop it! Stop, Stalker, in the name of the Green Storm!” Led by Naga in his clanking battle armor, the Once-Born approached cautiously, leveling huge hand cannon and steam-powered machine guns.
“Where is she?” Naga demanded. “What have you done with the Stalker Fang?”
“she is dead,” said Grike. He could barely see the soldiers; the scarred face filled his mind. “the stalker fang is dead. she is twice-dead. i have destroyed her.”
Naga said something more, but Grike did not hear. He had a feeling that he was flying apart, dissolving into rust, and all that held him together was that memory, that face. She was the child whom he had saved, the only good thing that he had ever done. “hes… hest…”
Forgetting the soldiers, he started to run. Stalkers came at him, and he smashed them aside. Bullets danced on his armor, but he barely noticed. Damage warnings flashed inside his eyes, but he did not see them. “HESTER!” he howled, and the gardens swallowed him.
Chapter 32
The Flight of
On Ocean Boulevard beneath a lid of smoke, streamers and paper hats lay in drifts on the tilting pavements, the debris of street parties that had ended suddenly when the air attack began.
Tom, Hester, and Fishcake crept along in the shadows, trying to avoid the gangs of looters and rebellious slaves who roamed the smashed arcades. Troupes of flames were dancing on the stage of the open-air theater, and every few minutes the deck plates shook as one of the gas tanks at the air harbor exploded, sending wreckage sleeting across the rooftops and prickling the Sea Pool into a thousand white splashes. The elaborate, tattered costumes of dead carnival-goers stirred gently in the night air like the plumage of slaughtered birds.
“They’re still rioting on the underdecks,” said Tom, listening to the noises that came echoing up the stairwells. “How are we going to get back to the
Hester laughed. She was still feeling happy and proud at the way she had been able to free Tom from Shkin’s lockups, and even his insistence on bringing Fishcake with him had not dented her good mood for long. “I forgot!” she said. “Can you believe it? In all the excitement it went clean out of my head. Tom, we don’t need the
“You mean an airship?’ asked Tom doubtfully. “How can we hope to get hold of an airship? They’ve been pouring out of the air harbor ever since the battle, and all overloaded, by the sound of them.”
Hester stopped walking and stood and beamed at Tom, while Fishcake cowered behind him. “The
She explained quickly, and then they hurried on toward the Old Steine. Shouting and the sound of smashing glass came through the smoke, and sometimes shots rang out. The bodies of minor council officials and promising performance artists dangled from the lampposts. Hester walked with her gun ready, and Fishcake watched her and remembered the promise he had made to kill her. He wished he had the nerve to do it, but she scared him too much. And there was something about the way she looked at Tom, a tenderness, that unsettled him and made him think she might not be entirely evil, and that it might be lovely to live with the Natsworthys. Shyly, he took Tom’s hand.
“Did you mean it, what you said?” he asked. “About me coming with you? You’ll really take me home with you to Vineland?”
Tom nodded, and tried to smile encouragingly. “We just have to make a stop at Cloud 9 on the way…”
But when they reached the Old Steine, he saw the severed hawsers strewn around the cable car station. Cloud 9 had gone.
“Oh, Quirke!” he shouted. “Where is it?”
It had never occurred to him that it would not still be hanging there, damaged like the rest of Brighton but airborne, and with Wren somewhere aboard it, waiting to be rescued. Now he saw how foolish he had been. That flying palace with its cloud of gasbags must have been a sitting duck for the Storm’s air destroyers.
“Wren…” he whispered. He could not believe that the gods had brought her so close to him, only to snatch her away.
Hester took his hand and gripped it hard. “Come on, Tom,” she said. “If we can get off this dump, we might still find the stupid place, ditched in the sea or adrift. It’s Pennyroyal who runs it, remember: He won’t have put up much of a fight.”
She pointed to the stained white frontage of the Nimrod Pennyroyal Experience. The front wall had a few nasty cracks in it and was sagging out over the pavement. The doors had been blown off their hinges too, and as
