Mum hit her. It was a hard, sudden slap, with the flat of Mum’s open hand, and as Wren jerked her head backward, away from the blow, Mum’s wedding bracelet grazed her cheek. Wren had not been slapped since she was small. She felt her face burning, and when she touched it, little bright specks of blood came away on her fingers from where the bracelet had caught her. She tried to speak, but she could only gasp.
“There,” said Mum gruffly. She seemed almost as shocked as Wren. She reached out to touch Wren’s face, gently this time, but Wren whirled away from her and ran along the beach and into the cool shadows under Anchorage, running beneath the old city and out into the pastures behind, with her mother’s voice somewhere behind her shouting furiously, “Wren! Come back! Get back here!” She kept to the woods so the pickers in the orchards wouldn’t see her, and ran and ran, barely thinking about where she was running to, until she arrived tearful and out of breath among the crags at the top of the island, and there was Gargle, waiting for her.
Chapter 5
Тews from the Sea
He was all kindness and concern, sitting her down on a mossy stone, taking off his neckerchief to wipe her face, holding her hand until she was calm enough to speak. “What is it, Wren? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing really. My mum. That’s all. I hate her.”
“Now, I’m certain that isn’t true.” Gargle knelt down beside her. She didn’t think that he had looked anywhere but at her face since she’d found him, and his eyes, behind the smoked blue glasses that he wore, were a friend’s eyes, kind and worried. “You’re lucky to have a mum,” he said. “We Lost Boys, we’re just kidnapped when we’re little. We none of us know who our mums or our dads are, though we dream about them sometimes, and think how sweet it would be if we could meet them. If your mum’s hard on you, I think it’s just a sign that she’s worried about you.”
“You don’t know her’ said Wren, and held her breath to stop hiccuping. When she had finished, she said, “I saw the book.”
“The Tin Book?” Gargle sounded surprised, as if he’d been so worried about Wren that he’d forgotten the thing that had brought him to Vineland in the first place. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve done in a morning what might have taken a limpet crew a week or more. Where is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Wren. “I mean, I don’t know if I should tell you. Not unless you tell me what it is. Miss Freya told me all about its history, but… why would anybody want it? What’s it for?”
Gargle stood up and walked away from her, staring out between the pines. Wren thought he looked angry and was afraid that she’d offended him, but when he turned to her again, he just seemed sad.
“We’re in trouble, Wren,” he said. “You’ve heard of Professor Pennyroyal?”
“Of course,” said Wren. “He shot my dad. He nearly led Anchorage to ruin. He stole Mum and Dad’s airship and flew off in her…”
“Well, he wrote a book about it,” Gargle said. “It’s called
Wren thought about Professor Pennyroyal. All her life she’d been hearing stories of that wicked man. She’d seen the long, L-shaped scar on Dad’s chest where Mrs. Scabious had opened him up to fetch the bullet out. And now it turned out that the Lost Boys were Pennyroyal’s victims too!
“But I still don’t see why you need the Tin Book,” she said.
“We’ve had to send our limpets farther and farther south,” Gargle explained. “Right down into the Middle Sea and the Southern Ocean, where the raft cities don’t bother to keep watch for us. At least they never used to. This past summer, we’ve started losing limpets. Three went south and never returned. No word, no distress signal, nothing. I think maybe one of those cities has got hold of some kind of device that lets them see us coming, and they’ve been sinking our limpets, or capturing them. And if some of our people are captured, and tortured, and talk…”
“They might come looking for Grimsby?”
“Exactly.” Gargle looked thoughtfully at her, as if he was glad he had chosen to tell all this to such an intelligent, perceptive girl. He took her hands again. “We need something that will get us ahead of the Drys again, Wren. That’s why I need the Tin Book.”
“But it’s just a load of old numbers,” said Wren. “It came off some old American submarine…”
“Exactly,” said Gargle. “Those Ancients had subs way ahead of anything we’ve got. Ships the size of cities that could cruise right around the world without once having to come up for air. If we had that kind of technology, we’d never have to fear the Drys again. We could set the whole of Grimsby moving and they’d never find us.”
“So you think the Tin Book is a plan for a submarine?”
“Maybe not exactly. But there might be enough clues in there to help us learn how they worked. Please, Wren. Tell us where it is.”
Wren shook her head. “Miss Freya and the rest aren’t as scary as you think,” she promised him. “Come down to the city with me. Introduce yourself. I asked my dad about you. He says you helped save Vineland. And you’ve been hurt by Pennyroyal, just like us. I expect Miss Freya will be happy to give you the Tin Book as a gift.”
Gargle sighed. “I’d like that, Wren. I’d love it. But it would all take time. There’d be so much explaining to do, so much mistrust to overcome. And all the time we stay here, more limpets might be disappearing, and whoever’s taking them may already be zeroing in on Grimsby. I’m sorry, Wren. We have to do it the Lost Boy way. Tell me where the book is, and we’ll take it tonight and be off. And maybe, when we have it and Grimsby’s safe again, maybe then I’ll return and introduce myself, and there’ll be peace and friendship between our two cities.”
Wren pulled free of him and hurried away between the trees, almost running, to a place where she could look down upon the rooftops of Anchorage. He didn’t mean what he had said about coming back, she was sure of that. He had just said it to make her feel better. Once he left this place, he would never return. Why should he, when he had a whole world to roam in? A world of cities that floated and flew and rolled beneath skies filled with airships. That’s what Gargle would be going back to, while she, all she had to look forward to was being Miss Freya’s assistant and growing old and bored in Anchorage and one day—if Mum would let her—becoming Mrs. Nate Sastrugi and having a lot of bored little children of her own.
“Wren,” he said behind her.
“No,” she said. She turned to face him, trying not to let her voice shake too much. “No, I won’t tell you where to find the book. I’ll take it myself, and bring it to you tonight. And then I’ll come with you.” She laughed and made a big gesture with both arms, trying to take in Anchorage, the lake, the hills beyond, the whole Dead Continent. “I hate this place. It’s too small for me. I want to go with you when you leave. I want to see Grimsby, and the Hunting Ground and the Traction Cities and the bird roads. That’s my price. I’ll bring you the Tin Book if you’ll take me with you when you leave.”
Chapter 6
We Are Making a Тew Цorld
Late into the night, long after the Stalker Works were quiet and empty, her busy fingers tinkering inside Grike’s chest cavity or in his open brain. And as she worked, she talked to him, filling the old Stalker in on things he’d missed during his years in the grave. She told him of how the hard-line faction called the Green Storm had seized power in the Anti-Tractionist nations of Old Asia and the North, and of their long war against the Traction Cities. She told him of their immortal leader, the Stalker Fang.
“A STALKER?” he asked, surprised. He was growing used to the Green Storm’s Stalkers: mindless, faceless things who couldn’t even recharge themselves but had to have their batteries laboriously extracted and replaced after a few days of action. They were the sort of creatures who gave the living dead such a bad name. He could not
