sword, pausing next to Freya’s chair on his way to the door. “If any of your verminous townspeople have harmed the Clear Air Turbulence, I’ll skin them alive and sell their hides as hearth-rugs.”
Freya tried to make herself small, pressing down into her chair. “It can’t be one of my people, you are holding them all…” But even as she said it she thought of Professor Pennyroyal. She hadn’t seen him in the ballroom. Perhaps he was free? Perhaps he was doing something to help? It seemed unlikely, but it was the only scrap of hope she had, and she clung to it while Masgard heaved her out of her chair and flung her at his lieutenant.
“Take her back to the ballroom!” he shouted. “Where are Ravn and Tor and Skaet?”
“Still guarding the main entrance, my lord.”
Masgard ran, and left the other man to drag Freya out of the dining room and shove her along the graceful curve of the corridor towards the ballroom. She supposed she should try to escape, but her guard was so big and strong, and so well armed, that she didn’t dare. Her relatives’ portraits stared down at her as she passed, looking as if they were disappointed in her for not fighting back. She said, “I hope somebody has set fire to your precious airship!”
“Won’t make any difference to us,” her guard growled. “It’s you who’ll suffer for it. Arkangel’ll be here soon. We won’t need an airship to get off your poxy town once it’s in the Scourge’s belly!”
As they neared the ballroom door Freya could hear a rising babble of voices coming from inside. The captives must have seen the fire, too, and were talking excitedly, while their guards hollered for quiet. Then something flashed past her head, and Masgard’s lieutenant went backwards without a cry. Freya thought he’d slipped, but when she turned there was a crossbow-bolt jutting from the front of his helmet and a thick dribble of blood starting to drip from one of the horns.
“Eww!” she said.
In an alcove beside the ballroom door a long shape unfolded itself from the shadows.
“Professor Pennyroyal?” Freya whispered. But it was Hester Shaw, already fitting a fresh bolt into the big crossbow she was carrying.
“You’re back!” gasped Freya.
“Oh, what a clever piece of deduction, Your Radiance.”
Freya flushed with anger. How dare the girl mock her? It was her fault this was happening! “You sold our course! How could you? How could you?”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” said Hester. “I’m here to help.”
“ Help? ” Freya was speaking in a hoarse, furious whisper, fearful that the guards in the ballroom would overhear. “How can you help? The best help you could have given us was to have never come anywhere near my city! We don’t need you! Tom didn’t need you! You’re selfish and wicked and cold and you don’t care about anybody but your horrible self…”
She stopped talking. They had each remembered, at the same instant, that Hester was holding a loaded crossbow, and that with a slight twitch of her finger she could pin Freya to the wall. She considered it for a moment, touching the tip of the bolt to Freya’s breast. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I’m evil. I take after my dad that way. But I do care about Tom, and that means I have to care about you and your stupid city as well. And I think you need me now.”
She lowered the crossbow and glanced down at the man she had just killed. There was a gas-pistol stuffed into his belt. “Do you know how to use that thing?” she asked.
Freya nodded. Her tutors had gone in more for etiquette and deportment than small-arms training, but she thought she grasped the general idea.
“Then come with me,” said Hester, and said it with such an air of command that it never occurred to Freya to disobey.
The hardest part so far had been getting rid of Tom. She did not want to lead him into danger, and she could not be Valentine’s daughter if he was with her. In the dark of the Aakiuqs’ parlour she had pulled him close to her and said, “Do you know any back ways into that Winter Palace? If the place is crawling with Huntsmen we can’t just walk up to the main entrance and announce we’re here to see Masgard.”
Tom thought for a moment, then fumbled in the pockets of his coat and drew out a small, shining object that she’d never seen before. “It’s a lock-pick from Grimsby. Caul’s people gave it to me. I bet I can get in through the little heat-lock behind the Wunderkammer!”
He looked so excited and pleased with himself that Hester couldn’t stop herself from kissing him. When she’d finished she said, “Go, then. Wait for me in the Wunderkammer.”
“What? Aren’t you coming?” He didn’t look excited now, only scared.
She touched her fingers to his mouth to hush him. “I’m going to scout round by the airship.”
“But the guards-”
She tried to look as if she wasn’t frightened. “I was Shrike’s apprentice, remember? He taught me a lot of stuff I’ve never got round to using. I’ll be all right. Now go.”
He started to say something and then gave up, hugged her and hurried away. For a second or two she felt relieved to be alone; then she suddenly needed very badly to have Tom back, to be in his arms and tell him all sorts of things she should have said before. She ran to the back door, but he was already out of sight, following some secret route towards the palace.
She whispered his name to the snow. She did not expect to see him again. She felt as if she were sliding too fast towards an abyss.
Pennyroyal was still crouching at the bottom of the stairs. Hester pushed her way back past him into the kitchen and took an oil lamp from a cupboard above the sink. “What are you doing?” he hissed as she lit it. The yellow glow gathered slowly behind the smoky glass, then spread, lapping across the walls and windows and Pennyroyal’s soap-pale face. “Masgard’s men will see!”
“That’s the idea,” said Hester.
“I won’t help you!” the explorer quavered. “You can’t make me! This is madness!”
She didn’t bother with the knife this time, just pushed her gargoyle face close to his and said, “It was me, Pennyroyal.” She wanted him to understand just how ruthless she could be. “Not you. I’m the one who sent the Huntsmen here.”
“You? But Great Poskitt Almighty, why? ”
“For Tom,” said Hester simply. “Because I wanted Tom for myself again. He was to be my predator’s gold. Only it didn’t go how I planned, and now I’ve got to try and put things right.”
Footsteps crunched through the snow outside the kitchen window, and there was a sigh as the outer heat- seal was tugged open. Hester slid backwards into the shadows beside the door as the sentry from the docking-pans pushed his way into the room, so close that she could feel the breath of cold coming off his snow-caked furs.
“On your feet!” he barked at Pennyroyal, and turned to check for other fugitives. In the instant before he saw her Hester stuck out her arm and pushed her knife into the gap between the top of his armour and the bottom of his cold-mask. He made a gargling noise and the twisting of his big body dragged the knife-handle out of Hester’s grasp. She flinched sideways as his crossbow went off, and heard the bolt slam through a cupboard door behind her. The Huntsman was groping at his belt for his own knife. She grabbed his arm and tried to stop him. There was no sound but their harsh breathing and the crunch of crockery under their feet as they stumbled to and fro, with Pennyroyal scrambling to keep out of their way. The Huntsman’s wide green eyes stared out at Hester through the windows in his mask, furious and indignant, until at last he seemed to focus on something very far away beyond her, and his gargling stopped and he fell sideways, almost pulling her down with him. His feet kicked for a while; then he was still.
Hester had never killed anyone before. She had expected to feel guilty, but she didn’t. She didn’t feel anything. This is what it was like for my father, she thought, helping herself to the dead man’s cloak and fur hat and pulling on his cold-mask. Just a job that had to be done to keep his city and his loved one safe. This is how he felt after he killed Mum and Dad. Clear and hard and clean, like glass. She took the Huntsman’s crossbow and its quiver of bolts and said to Pennyroyal, “Bring the lamp.”
“But, but, but — !”
Outside, snow swarmed like white moths under the harbour lamps. Crossing the docking-pans, shoving the terrified Pennyroyal ahead of her, she glanced through a slot between two hangars and saw a big, far-off smudge of light on the eastern sky.
The hatchway of the Clear Air Turbulence stood open. Another Huntsman was waiting there. “What is it,
