A Darkling Plain

“Is it?”

“Oh, it is indeed, Herr Kobold!” (Hair Kobold; his pronunciation made the kriegsmarschall wince.) “You see, sir, I’m in the air trade. A dealer in curiosities. And curious is the word for the little item I’ve got aboard my ship, sir, just waiting for the right buyer. So when I saw you, sir, walking through the park here, all alone, like, I said to myself, ‘Napster,’ I said, ‘the Gods of Trade have sent him here so you can go and tell him what a bargain is waiting for him, up at Airhaven.’”

“Airhaven?” said von Kobold, and glanced to leeward, where the flying town was drifting above a haze of city smoke a few miles away. Nobody was going to lure him to a place like that! A free port, probably a nest of Mossie spies and assassins. He stepped away from Varley and started walking back toward the town hall, calling over his shoulder, “Whatever you’re selling, Mr. Varley, I am not interested.”

“Oh, yes, you are, sir!” said the merchant, hurrying to catch him up. “Least, you will be when you find out what it is. Could be important, sir. For the war effort, like. I’m only trying to do my bit, sir.”

Von Kobold stopped, wondering what on Earth the man was talking about. Shady scavengers were always emerging from the Out-Country with bits of Old Tech that they claimed would end the war. Most of them were charlatans, but you could never be sure… “If you think it might be important,” he said, “you should take it to the authorities. Either here in Manchester or in Murnau. They’ll know what to do with it.”

“Ah, but I don’t suppose they’ll reward me for my troubles, will they, sir? And I’ve taken considerable trouble to acquire this item, so I shall want a considerable reward.”

“But if you are a good Municipal Darwinist and you think this thing can help us—”

“I’m what you might call a Municipal Darwinist second, sir,” said Varley, “and a businessman first.” He shrugged, and muttered, somewhat perplexingly, “Scatter cushions! Grandma had the right idea! I never thought it’d be so hard to find a buyer…”

Von Kobold turned away again, but before he could walk on, the merchant’s hand closed on his sleeve. “Look, sir!” he said. He was holding out some sort of photograph. Von Kobold, who was too proud to wear his reading glasses in public, could not make it out. He pushed Varley away, but the merchant stuffed the photograph into the breast pocket of his tunic and said ingratiatingly, “I expect you’ll want to come and arrange a price, sir. You’ll find my ship on Strut 13, Airhaven Main Ring. Varley’s the name, sir. And the reserve price is ten thousand shineys…”

“Well, of all the infernal—” von Kobold started to say, but he was interrupted by the voice of his aide, Captain Eschenbach. The young man was hurrying down the steps of the town hall, and Varley, seeing him, ducked between some nearby bushes and went scurrying away.

“Was that fellow bothering you, Kriegsmarschall?” asked Eschenbach, drawing level with von Kobold.

“No. A crackpot; nothing.”

“You should come inside, sir,” the young man said. “They are discussing battle plans. Deciding which city attacks which sector of the enemy’s territory. Browne has bagged the static fortress called Forward Command for Manchester; Dortmund is to take everything on the east shore of the Sea of Khazak. There’ll be nothing left for us, sir, if you’re not quick. We don’t want to lose out…”

“Lose out?” Von Kobold narrowed his eyes, scanning the park for Varley. There was no sign of him, unless he was aboard that balloon taxi lifting off from a platform at the tier’s edge. “Is this what it has all been for?” he asked. “Just so men like Adlai Browne can turn the Storm’s lands into one enormous all-you-can-eat buffet? Why can’t we let them live in peace?”

Eschenbach frowned, trying hard to understand but not quite managing it. “But they’re Mossies, sir.”

Von Kobold started to walk toward the town hall. “Poor Naga,” he said. He climbed the stairs and went inside to fight for his city’s corner, forgetting all about the photograph that Napster Varley had pushed into his pocket.

Chapter 25 Theo in Airhaven

By late afternoon the sky around Airhaven was humming with traffic. Everyone knew that Adlai Browne had brought Manchester east for the sole purpose of getting the war started again, and the air traders were eager to do as much business as possible before they took off for safer markets farther west. To and fro between the cities and the flying town went the freighters and the overladen balloons, while high above them, ever watchful, the Flying Ferrets wheeled like flocks of starlings. But Orla Twombley’s airmen were on the lookout for Green Storm attack ships, and they paid no attention to a greasy little Achebe 100 that came puttering out of the west that evening to slip into a cheap berth on Airhaven’s docking ring.

She was called the Shadow Aspect, and she had been captured from the old League long ago and converted into a merchantman. She was not much, but she was the best that Hester had been able to afford after selling her sand ship. All the way from Africa Hester had grumbled about her leaky cells and racketing engines, and cursed the used-airship dealer who had sold her such a death trap. But Theo, who had been doing most of the flying, had grown used to the Shadow’s little ways; he secretly thought she was a fine old ship, and in the quiet of the night watches he had whispered kindly to her, urging her on her way, “Go on; just a little longer; you can make it…”

And now she had made it; the long voyage was over, and the sight of all those cities arranged on the earth below him like monstrous chess pieces filled Theo with anger and fear. Cities were his enemies. They had been the enemies of his people for a thousand years. What was he thinking of, coming into the heart of this vast cluster of them? He had no hope of rescuing Lady Naga from whatever prison the townies had penned her in. She would not have expected him to try; she would not want anyone to die for her sake…

The Shadow’s docking clamps clanged against the strut. Theo cut her engines, and the sounds of Airhaven spilled into the gondola: shouts of merchants and stevedores, rattling chains, a hurdy-gurdy playing somewhere, a trader maneuvering at the next strut. A boy with a bucket and a long-handled squeegee came running to clean the Shadow’s windows, but Hester waved him away, and a glimpse of her angry, hideous face was enough to send him scuttling off.

Hester was in a foul mood. She had hoped to overtake the Humbug in midair, where she thought she could board it and rescue Lady Naga with ease. But although the Shadow Aspect had no cargo, and four engines to the Humbug’s two, it had taken Hester too long to discover where Napster Varley was going, and he had beaten them to Airhaven. Boarding the Humbug would be difficult here, where there were harbor officials and security men and passersby who would interfere. She looked around at Grike, standing statue still in the shadows at the rear of the flight deck. “Better hide yourself, old machine,” she said. “YOU MAY NEED ME.”

“Not here. There are a lot of townies aboard, and if they see you stalking about, they’ll think we’re Green Storm. Anyway, somebody might remember your last visit, when you tore the place half to pieces looking for me and Tom. Wait in the hold; if I need you, I’ll call you.”

Grike nodded and climbed the companion ladder into the envelope. Hester pulled up her veil, slipped on dark glasses, and opened the exit hatch. “Coming?” she asked Theo.

The tavern called the Gasbag and Gondola had survived through all Airhaven’s changes, and still occupied the same sprawling assemblage of lightweight huts that Hester remembered from her first visit to the free port. But in the intervening years the air trade had split, like the world below, into townies and Mossies, and the Gasbag and Gondola had become a townie haunt; NO DOGS, NO MOSSIES read a scrawled message in white paint above the door. The traders clustering around its small, dirty tables came from Manchester and Dortmund and Peripatetiapolis, from Nuevo-Mayan steam ziggurats and Antarctic drilling cities. Framed posters and cartoons on the walls mocked the Green Storm, and the dartboard was printed with the bronze face of the Stalker Fang.

Hester stopped at the shrine to the Sky Gods, just inside the door, and sighed irritably as Theo cannoned into her. She rummaged in her coat pockets and found a few pennies, which she dropped into the airship-shaped charity box of the Airman’s Benevolent Fund. A fat waitress bustled over, eyeing them roguishly, as if she thought that Theo was Hester’s boyfriend, and that Hester had done rather well for herself. Hester felt suddenly proud, as if it were true.