Apprentice Historians’ Debating Society.
Masgard’s grin grew broader. He flicked his fur cloak aside and drew his sword. There were gasps and cries and a clatter of falling chairs as everyone in the vicinity tried to get as far back as possible. Hester grabbed hold of Tom and began pulling him away, always keeping her eye on that gleaming blade. “Tom, you idiot, leave it!”
Masgard stared at her a moment, then let out a roaring laugh and sheathed his sword. “Look! The airling has a pretty girlie to keep him from harm!”
His crew laughed with him, and Hester blushed patchily and tugged up her old red scarf to hide her face.
“Come and find me later, girl!” Masgard shouted. “I’m always at home to a pretty lady! And remember, if you have a city’s course to tell me of, I’ll give you thirty in gold! You can buy yourself a new nose!”
“I’ll remember,” promised Hester, pushing Tom quickly away. Anger flapped inside her like a trapped crow. She wanted to turn and fight. She was willing to bet Masgard didn’t know how to use that sword he was so proud of… But the dark, murderous, revengeful part of her was something she tried to keep hidden these days, so she contented herself with slipping out her knife and quietly severing the lead of Masgard’s microphone as she passed. The next time he tried to make an announcement the laughter would be directed at him.
“Sorry,” Tom said bashfully, as they hurried down to the docking ring, which was crowded now with traders and sightseers fresh in from Arkangel. “I didn’t mean — I just thought — ”
“It’s all right,” said Hester. She wanted to tell him that if he didn’t do brave, foolish things like that from time to time he wouldn’t be Tom, and she might not love him so. But she couldn’t put all that into words, so she pushed him into the space under a tier-support and, after making sure that nobody was looking, wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and pulled her veil down and kissed him. “Let’s leave.”
“But we don’t have a cargo yet. We were going to look for a fur-trader or-”
“There are no fur-traders here, only Old-Tech, and we don’t want to start carrying that sort of stuff, do we?” He looked uncertain, so she kissed him again before he could say anything. “I’m tired of Airhaven. I want to be back on the Bird Roads.”
“All right,” said Tom. He smiled, stroking her mouth, her cheek, the kink in her eyebrow where the scar cut through. “All right. We’ve seen enough of northern skies. Let’s go.”
But it was not to be so simple. When they reached strut seventeen there was a man waiting beside the Jenny Haniver, sitting on a big leather pack. Hester, still smarting a little from Masgard’s mockery, hid her face again. Tom let go her hand and hurried to meet the stranger.
“Good day!” cried the man, standing up. “Mr Natsworthy? Miss Shaw? I gather you are the owners of this splendid little ship? Golly, they told me at the harbour office you were young, but I didn’t realize quite how young! You’re barely more than children!”
“I’m almost eighteen,” said Tom defensively.
“Never mind, never mind!” beamed the stranger. “Age makes no difference if the heart is great, and I’m sure you have a great heart. ‘Who’s that handsome young chap?’ I asked my friend the harbour master, and he told me, ‘That’s Tom Natsworthy, pilot of the Jenny Haniver.’ ‘Pennyroyal,’ I said to myself, ‘that young man may be just the fellow you’re looking for!’ So here I am!”
Here he was. He was a smallish man, balding and slightly overweight, and he wore a trim white beard. His clothes were the typical outfit of a northern scavenger — a long fur coat, a tunic with many pockets, thick breeches and fur-lined boots — but they looked too expensive, as if they been run up for him by a fashionable tailor as a costume for a play set in the Ice Wastes.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well what?” asked Hester, who had taken an instant dislike to this posturing stranger.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Tom, much more politely. “We don’t really understand what you want…”
“Oh, I do apologize, I beg your pardon,” the stranger babbled. “Permit me to elucidate! My name is Pennyroyal; Nimrod Beauregard Pennyroyal. I have been exploring a little among these great horrible towering fire-mountains, and now I am on my way home. I should like to book passage aboard your charming airship.”
3
Pennyroyal was a name that rang a bell with Tom, although he could not think why. He was sure he’d heard it mentioned in a lecture, back in his days as an Apprentice Historian — but what Pennyroyal had done, or said, to make him worth lecturing about, he did not recall; he had spent too much time daydreaming to pay much attention to his teachers.
“We don’t carry passengers,” said Hester firmly. “We’re bound for the south, and we travel alone.”
“The south would be just fine and dandy!” beamed Pennyroyal. “My home city is the raft resort of Brighton, and it is cruising in the Middle Sea this autumn. I am eager to be home quickly, Miss Shaw. My publishers, Fewmet and Spraint, are desperate to have a new book from me by Moon Festival, and I need the peace and quiet of my own study to begin working up my notes.”
As he spoke, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, scanning the faces of the people on the docking ring. He was sweating slightly, and Hester thought he looked not so much eager to be home as downright shifty. But Tom was hooked. “You are a writer, Mr Pennyroyal?”
“ Professor Pennyroyal,” beamed the man, correcting him very kindly. “I am an Explorer, Adventurer and Alternative Historian. Maybe you’ve come across my works: Lost Cities of the Sands, perhaps, or America the Beautiful — the Truth about the Dead Continent…”
Now Tom remembered where he had heard that name before. Chudleigh Pomeroy had once mentioned Nimrod B. Pennyroyal in a lecture about Recent Trends in History. Pennyroyal (the old Historian had said) had no respect for true historical research at all. His daring expeditions were mere stunts, and he filled his books with wild theories and lurid tales of romance and adventure. Tom was rather fond of wild theories and lurid tales, and he had looked for Pennyroyal’s works in the Museum Library afterwards, but the stuffy Guild of Historians had refused to allow them shelf-space there, so he never did find out where Pennyroyal’s expeditions had taken him.
He glanced at Hester. “We do have room for a passenger, Het. And we could use the money…”
Hester scowled.
“Oh, money is no object,” promised Pennyroyal, pulling out a plump purse and jangling it. “Let’s say, five sovereigns now and five more when we dock at Brighton? It’s not as sweet a deal as Piotr Masgard would offer you for betraying some poor city, but it’s pretty good, and you will be doing a great service to literature.”
Hester stared at a coil of hawser on the quay. She knew she had lost. This too-friendly stranger knew just how to appeal to Tom, and even she had to admit that ten sovereigns would come in handy. She made one last effort to fend off the inevitable, booting Pennyroyal’s pack and asking, “What’s in your baggage? We don’t carry Old-Tech. Seen a bit too much of what it can do.”
“Heavens,” cried Pennyroyal, “I couldn’t agree more! I may be Alternative, but I’m not an idiot. I, too, have seen what happens to people who spend their lives digging up old machines. They end up poisoned by weird radiation or blown up by malfunctioning widgets. No, all I carry is a change of undies and a few thousand pages of notes and drawings for my new book, Fire Mountains — Natural Phenomenon or Ancient Blunder? ”
Hester kicked the pack again. It fell slowly over on to its side, but it didn’t let out any metallic noises to suggest that Pennyroyal was lying. She looked down at her feet, then down again, through the perforated deckplates of Airhaven to the earth, where a town was creeping slowly westward, dragging its long shadow behind it. Oh well, she thought. The Middle Sea would be warm and blue, a far cry from these dismal Barrens, and it should only take a week to get there. Surely she could bear to share Tom with Professor Pennyroyal for a week? She would have him to herself for the rest of their lives.
“All right,” she said, and snatched the explorer’s purse, counting out five gold sovereigns before he had time to change his mind. Beside her, Tom was saying, “We can make up a bed for you in the forward hold, Professor, and you can use the medical bay as a study if you wish. I was planning to stay here tonight and pull out at dawn.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Tom,” said Pennyroyal, flashing that odd, nervous glance towards the docking ring again, “I’d rather be off straight away. Mustn’t keep my muse waiting…”
