innocent. Tom and the Rasmussen girl had probably just gone to peer at her unrivalled collection of weird old garbage, and lost track of the time. She would find him deep in some conversation about 23rd Century ceramics or the rune-stones of the Raffia Hat Era…
Light spilled from the open doorway of the Wunderkammer, and Hester slowed as she approached it. It would be best to stride straight in with a cheery “hello”, but she wasn’t the cheery sort; she was more the lurking in dark corners sort. She found a dark corner, behind one of the Stalker-skeletons, and lurked. She could hear Tom and Freya talking, but not clearly enough to make out what about. Tom laughed, and her heart seemed to open and shut. There had been a time, after the fall of London, when she had been the only person who could make him laugh.
She slid out of her hiding place and crept into the Wunderkammer. Tom and Freya were over on the far side, half-a-dozen dusty cabinets between them and Hester. Through the many sheets of thick glass she saw them vaguely, rippling like reflections in a distorting mirror. They were standing very close together, and their voices had grown soft. Hester opened her mouth to speak, longing to make some noise that would distract them from each other, but nothing came out. And as she stood there watching, Freya reached towards Tom and they were suddenly in one another’s arms, and kissing. Still she could make no sound, only stand and stare at Freya’s white fingers moving in Tom’s dark hair, his hands on her shoulders.
She had not felt such a fierce urge to kill somebody since she hunted Valentine. She tensed, ready to snatch one of the old weapons down from the wall and hack and hack at those two, those two, at Tom — at Tom! Appalled, she turned and flung herself blindly out of the museum. There was a heat-lock in the cloister, and she pushed out through it into the frigid night.
She flung herself down into a drift and lay there, helpless, sobbing. More dreadful than the kiss itself was the fierce thing that it had stirred inside her. How could she even have thought of harming Tom? It wasn’t his fault! It was that girl, that girl, she had bewitched him; he had never even looked at another girl until this podgy margravine came along, Hester was sure of it. She imagined killing Freya. But what good would that do? Tom would hate her then, and besides, it wasn’t just Freya, it was this whole city that had won his heart. It was over. He was lost to her. She would lie here in the cold and die, and he would find her frozen body when daylight came, and be sorry…
But she had spent too long surviving to die as easily as that. After a few moments she lifted herself on hands and knees and tried to calm her ragged, painful gasps. The cold was in her throat, and gnawing at her lips and the tips of her ears, and an idea was coiled in her skull like a red snake.
It was an idea so terrible that for a little while she could not believe it was really she who had thought of it. She rubbed frost from a window and stared at her own dim reflection, wondering. Could it work? Did she dare? But she had no choice but to try; it was her only hope. She tugged up her hood, pulled her cold-mask into place and set off through snow and moonlight to the air-harbour.
It had been a strange day for Tom, trapped in the Winter Palace with the blizzard battering at the windows and Hester lost on the other side of town. A strange day, and a stranger evening. He had been sitting in the library, trying to concentrate on another of Pennyroyal’s books, when Smew appeared in full chamberlain’s garb to tell him that the margravine wanted him to join her for dinner.
From the look on Smew’s face Tom could tell that this invitation was a huge honour. Formal robes had been found for him, new-laundered and neatly pressed. “They belonged to the old chamberlain,” Smew told him, helping him into them. “They’re about your size, I reckon.”
Tom had never worn robes before, and when he glanced in the mirror he saw someone who looked handsome and sophisticated and nothing at all like him. He felt very nervous, following Smew towards the margravine’s private dining room. The wind seemed to be shoving at the shutters with less urgency than before, so perhaps the storm was lifting. He would eat as quickly as he could, and then go and find Hester.
But it wasn’t really possible to eat quickly; not a formal dinner like this, with Smew in footman’s gear bringing in dish after dish and then hurrying back to the kitchens to put on his chef’s hat and cook up more, or running to the wine cellars for another bottle of vintage red from the vineyard city of Bordeaux-Mobile. And after a few courses Tom found that he didn’t want to make his excuses and go out into the dying blizzard, for Freya was such good company, and it felt so nice to be alone with her. There was something shiny about her tonight, as if she thought she had done a very daring thing by asking him to eat with her, and she spoke more easily than before about her family and Anchorage’s history, right back to her long-ago ancestress Dolly Rasmussen, a high school girl who had had visions of the Sixty Minute War before it started and had led her little band of followers out of the first Anchorage just before it was vaporized.
Tom watched her talk, and noticed that she had tried to do something really impressive with her hair, and that she was wearing the most glittery and least moth-eaten of her gowns. Had she gone to all that trouble for him? The idea made him feel thrilled and guilty; he looked away from her, and met Smew’s disapproving gaze as he cleared the dessert things and poured coffee.
“Will there be anything else, Your Radiance?”
Freya drank, watching Tom over the rim of her cup. “No thank you, Smew. You can turn in. I thought Tom and I might go down to the Wunderkammer.”
“Certainly, Your Radiance. I shall accompany you.”
Freya looked up sharply at him. “There’s no need, Smew. You can go.”
Tom sensed the servant’s unease. He felt a little uneasy himself, but maybe that was just the margravine’s wine going to his head. He said, “Well, perhaps another day…”
“No, Tom,” said Freya, reaching out to touch his hand with her fingertips. “Now. Tonight. Listen, the storm is over. The Wunderkammer will be beautiful by moonlight…”
The Wunderkammer was beautiful by moonlight, but not as beautiful as Freya. As she led him into the little museum, Tom understood why the people of Anchorage loved and followed her. If only Hester could be more like her! He kept finding himself making excuses for Hester these days, explaining that she was only the way she was because of the awful things that had happened to her, but Freya had been through awful things too, and she wasn’t all bitter and angry.
The moon gazed down through snow-veiled glass, transforming the familiar artefacts with its light. The sheet of foil shone inside its case like a window into another world, and when Freya turned in its dim reflected light to face him, Tom knew that she wanted him to kiss her. It was as if some strange gravity was drawing their faces together, and as their lips touched Freya made a soft little contented noise. She pushed closer to him and his arms went round her without his meaning them to. She had a slightly sweaty, unwashed odour, which seemed strange at first, and then very sweet. Her gown crinkled under his hands, and her mouth tasted of cinnamon.
Then something — a faint noise from the doorway, a breath of cold air from the corridor beyond — made her glance up, and Tom forced himself to push her gently away.
“What was that?” asked Freya, whispering. “I thought I heard someone…”
Glad of an excuse to move away from her warmth and her luring smell, Tom backed to the door. “Nobody. Just the heat-ducts, I expect. They’re always rattling and scratching.”
“Yes, I know; it’s an awful bore. I’m sure they never used to before we came to the High Ice…” She came close again, holding out her hands. “Tom…”
“I must go,” he said. “It’s late. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
Hurrying up the stairs to his room, he tried to ignore the warm cinnamon taste of Freya in his mouth and think of Hester. Poor Het! She had sounded so lonely when he spoke to her on the telephone. He should go to her. He would just lie down for a bit and gather his thoughts, and then he would pull on cold-weather gear and head down to the harbour. How soft this bed was! He closed his eyes, and felt the room revolving. Too much wine. It was only the wine that had made him kiss Freya; it was Hester he was in love with. So why could he not stop thinking about Freya? “You idiot!” he said aloud.
Above his head the heat-duct rattled, as if something inside it was agreeing, but Tom didn’t notice, for he had already drifted off to sleep.
Hester was not the only one who had overseen Tom and Freya’s kiss. Caul, sitting alone in the forward cabin of the limpet while Skewer and Gargle went off housebreaking, had been flipping idly through the spy-channels when he was brought up short by the sight of them embracing. “Tom, you fool,” he whispered.
What Caul liked most about Tom was his kindness. Kindness was not valued back in Grimsby, where the older boys were encouraged to torment the younger ones, who would grow up to torment another batch of youngsters in
