“My name’s Fishcake,” said Fishcake, a bit confused himself.
“I think I am damaged,” said the head. “
“Me too,” said Fishcake. He could see the twisted fittings around the edges of the skull where the bronze mask had been torn off. He took the mask out of his coat and fixed it back into place as best he could.
“I don’t know how.”
Fishcake looked around. Bits of the Stalker’s body were edging toward him through the sand, homing in on the head. The clutching movements of the fingers made him think of crab-cams he’d repaired for Gargle. “I might be able to,” he said. “Not here. I’d need tools and stuff. If we could gather up all your bits and find a city or something…”
“Do it,” commanded the head. “Then I will travel east.
“I’ll come with you,” said Fishcake, eager not to be deserted again. “I can help you. You’ll need me.”
“I know the secrets of the Tin Book,” the head said, whispering to itself. “The codes are safe inside my memory. I will return to Erdene Tezh and awaken ODIN.”
Fishcake did not know what that meant, but he was glad to have someone telling him what to do, even if she was only a head. He stood up. A little way off, a torn gray robe flapped from the branches of a bush. Fishcake pulled it free and knotted it into a sort of bag. Then, while the Stalker Fang’s head whispered to itself about The World Made Green Again, he began collecting up the scattered pieces of her body.
Chapter 35
Marooned in the Sky
It seemed very quiet on Cloud 9 once the storm Were gone. The wind still sang through the drooping rigging, the remaining gasbags jostled against each other, and the crash of collapsing floors came sometimes from inside the burning Pavilion, but none of them were human sounds, so they did not seem to matter.
Theo and Wren carried the unconscious Pennyroyal into the shelter of a grove of cypress trees between his boathouse and the ornamental maze. There was a fountain at the heart of the grove, and they laid Pennyroyal down and did their best to make him comfortable. Then Theo sat down and rested his head on his arms and went to sleep too. That surprised Wren. Tired as she was, she knew she was far too scared and anxious to sleep. It was different for Theo, she supposed. He’d been in battles before; he was probably used to this sort of desperate uncertainty.
“Boo-Boo, my dove, I can explain everything!” muttered Pennyroyal, stirring and half opening his eyes. He saw Wren sitting beside him and mumbled, “Oh, it’s you.”
“Go back to sleep,” said Wren.
“You don’t like me,” said Pennyroyal grumpily. “Look, I’m sorry about your father, I really am. Poor young Tom. I never meant to hurt him. It was an accident, I swear.”
Wren checked his bandages. “It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s that book of yours. It’s so full of lies! About Miss Freya, and Anchorage, and about my mum cutting a deal with the Huntsmen…”
“Oh, but that bit’s true,” said Pennyroyal. “I admit I may have spiced up the facts a little here and there, purely for reasons of pacing, but it really was Hester Shaw who brought Arkangel down on us. She told me so herself. ‘I’m the one who sent the Huntsmen here,’ she said. ‘I wanted Tom for myself again. He’s my predator’s gold.’ And a few months later, among a bunch of refugees from Arkangel, I ran into a charming young person called Julianna. She’d been a slave girl in the household of that lout Piotr Masgard, and she told me she’d seen the deal done: An aviatrix came to her master with word of Anchorage’s position. A young aviatrix, barely more than a girl, with her face split in two by a terrible scar…”
“I don’t believe you,” said Wren crossly, and left him there and went out into the gardens. It
She shook her head to try to drive the disturbing thoughts away. She had better things to worry about than Pennyroyal’s silly stories. Cloud 9 was wobbling beneath her feet, and the night air was filled with the groan of stressed rigging. Smoke poured across the tilted lawns, obscuring scattered bodies and overturned buffet tables. Wren gathered up some fallen canapes and stood staring at the Pavilion while she ate them. It was hard to believe the change that had come over the beautiful building. It was stained and sagging, and the only light that came from its broken windows was the reddish glow of spreading fires. The great central dome gaped like a burst puffball. Above it, the gasbags seemed to be holding, but they were smoke blackened, and some of the fiercer flames jumping up from the roof of the Pennyroyals’ guest wing were getting dangerously close to their underbellies.
And as she stood there watching it, Wren became aware of someone standing nearby, watching her. “Theo?” she said, turning.
But it was not Theo.
Startled, she lost her balance on the steep grass and fell, hiccuping with fright. The Stalker did not move, except to brace himself against the tilting of the garden. He was staring at Wren. How could he do anything but stare, with only those round green lamps for eyes? The firelight gleamed on his battered armor and his stained claws. His head twitched.
Oil and lubricant dripped from his wounds. “you are not her,” he said.
“No,” agreed Wren in a shrill little mouse-squeak. She had no idea who the horrible old machine was talking about, but she wasn’t about to argue. She wriggled on her bottom across the grass, trying to edge away from him.
The Stalker came slowly closer, then stopped again. She thought she could hear weird mechanisms whirring and chattering inside his armored skull. “you are like her,” he said, ” but you are not her.”
“No, I know, a lot of people get us mixed up,” said Wren, wondering who he could have mistaken her for. There was no point running, she told herself, but her body, with its eagerness to go on living, wouldn’t listen. She pushed herself up and fled, slithering on the wet grass, careering down the sick slope of the gardens.
“come back !” begged Grike. ” help me! i have to find her !” He started to run after her, then stopped. Chasing the girl would only add to her fear, and he had already been appalled by the terror and loathing of him that he had seen in that strange, familiar face. He watched her fade into the smoke. Behind him, the Pavilion’s central dome collapsed into the ballroom in a gush of sparks. Catherine wheels of debris went bowling past him to crash into fountains and flower beds or bound off the deck plate’s edge entirely and plummet down into the desert.
Grike ignored them and tilted his head inquisitively. Above the noise, his sensitive ears had picked up the drone of aero-engines.
Whooping for breath, her heart hammering, Wren plunged back into the cypress grove. Pennyroyal was asleep or unconscious again, but Theo leaped up. “Wren, what is it?”
Pennyroyal groaned and stirred. Theo drew Wren gently away. “Wren, if this Stalker had wanted to kill us, it would have found us by now, wouldn’t it? It would have chased you, and be here by now.”
