A Darkling Plain

Theo nodded and started to say something, then thought better of it. He walked away fast along the High Street, dodging the crowds of aviators who meandered between the bars and cafes. Hester watched till he was out of sight, thinking how badly she would have fallen in love with him if she’d been twenty years younger. Then, cursing herself for a sentimental goose, she ran down the stairway to Strut 13.

The men on guard were as bored and dozy as she’d been hoping. They were the sort of shabby, down-at- heel aviators who hung around the High Street bars looking for work. Varley must have hired them to guard his precious cargo, but they would rather have been off drinking than standing out here in the cold. She considered just killing them, and keeping hold of Pennyroyal’s gold for herself, but she couldn’t take them all down without a fight, and she didn’t want to risk that yet. She called out, “Where’s Varley?”

The men came to life, trying to look hard and competent.

* * *

“Who’s asking?” said one, pointing a spring-loaded speargun at her.

Hester shook the bag she was holding and let them hear the chinkle of Pennyroyal’s gold. Is chinkle a word? she wondered. She always grew very calm at times like this, and small questions like that became intriguing. Tom would know… But she mustn’t think about Tom.

One of the guards was backing up the Humbug s gangway, calling through an open hatch to someone inside. After a moment he jerked the speargun at Hester, and the others stood aside to let her go aboard.

In the Shadow Aspect’s gondola Theo was warming up the engines, testing the rudder controls, and hoping that no one aboard Airhaven would notice, for he had not asked anyone’s permission to depart. Behind him Grike paced to and fro, his heavy footfalls shaking the deck. “she should not have gone alone,” the Stalker said. “I told you—”

“you are not to blame, theo ngoni. but she should not have gone alone.” He let out a grating, mechanical noise that Theo supposed was the Stalker equivalent of a Sigh. “i should be helping her to free dr. zero. in other times i would have done it easily. taken out the airhaven power plant, sown confusion, and gone aboard the HUMBUG while the once-born were looking elsewhere… but i could not do that without killing.”

“You wouldn’t get far afterward, either,” Theo pointed out.

Grike didn’t seem to hear him. He stood at a porthole, staring out at the night and the silent, tethered ships, “I AM GOING TO HELP HER.”

“But you can’t! If you’re seen …”

“I WILL BE CAREFUL.”

Before Theo could stop him, Grike opened the hatch and jumped down onto the docking strut. No one was about. He crossed the strut in two long strides and dropped over the edge, his armor rippling with reflections from the harbor lights as if he were made of quicksilver. The underside of the strut was in shadow, hatched with girders. Grike crept along them until he was beneath the docking quays, and waited while a puttering dirigible balloon taxi passed beneath him on its way to the central ring. Then he began to pull himself along Airhaven’s underbelly toward Strut 13.

The dirigible taxi pulled in against one of the docking platforms in the center of Airhaven, and its wicker gondola creaked as Sampford Spiney scrambled out, followed by Miss Kropotkin and her enormous camera. The journalist had been at a dinner on the Oberrang when he received the message from Airhaven, and he had not had time to change out of his formal robes. He swayed slightly as he made his way across the mooring platform to where the clerk from the Empyrean was waiting.

“Well? Are you the one who claims to have seen Pennyroyal?”

“He’s been staying in my hotel, sir.”

“Is he there now?”

“No, sir. He ran out not long after I sent word to you…”

“Ran where?”

“I don’t know, sir. Some people came to talk to him. Then he went running off. I can show you his room, sir…”

“His room? His room? Great Thunderer! I can’t interview a room! Find me Pennyroyal himself, or you’ll not see a cent out of The Speculum.”

The clerk hurried toward the stairs that led up to the High Street, and Spiney went with him, snapping at his photographer to follow. “And make a note, Miss Kropotkin,” he added as they climbed. “I’m pretty sure that was the kriegsmarschall’s sky yacht we passed as we came in. What’s the old man doing in Airhaven? Gambling? Seeing a woman? Could be a story in that…”

The Humbug’s gondola reeked of wet nappies. The living quarters at the stern were full of them, draped on lines strung above the heating ducts. Poorly made bookshelves covered the walls, sagging under the weight of Varley’s self-help books. In one corner a slimy-nosed baby snuffled and started to cry. “Hush, hush, hush,” his mother said, looking up nervously as one of Varley’s heavies pushed Hester in.

Varley was waiting for her, looking more feverish and ferrety than ever, a half-eaten supper on the table in front of him. He’d taken off his jacket. His trousers were held up by snakeskin braces. “On your own this time?” he asked Hester. “Got my ten thousand?”

“Five,” said Hester. “That’s all we can get hold of.”

“Then I’ll be selling your Lady Naga to another buyer.”

“Oh, yes, I noticed the enormous queue all up the gangplank when I came aboard,” said Hester. “That was sarcasm,” she added as Varley sprang up to peer through a porthole.

“Face it, you haven’t got any other buyers. You’ll have to do business with me, before someone bigger and tougher hears who you’ve got stashed in your hold and comes to take her off your hands for free.”

Varley glared at her and said nothing. She opened her bag on the kitchen table, and shook out a pile of small, plump money bags. They jingled loudly, as well they might; two were full of Pennyroyal’s savings, and the other eight were stuffed with nuts and washers that she and Theo had bought at the all-night chandlery on the High Street. “Ten bags,” she said, opening one and tipping out a stream of gold. “Two hundred fifty shineys in each. Captain Ngoni will be bringing you the rest when I can assure him your cargo is alive and well.”

Varley eyed the money hungrily, but he wasn’t happy. “That black kid of yours is a captain? The Green Storm must be running short of men as well as money…”

Hester chose another money bag and emptied a second shining drift of coin across the tabletop. (“Look! Pretty!” said Mrs. Varley, bouncing the baby on her knee.)

“Take it or leave it,” said Hester.

Varley still hesitated. “I want to see your face,” he said sullenly.

“Believe me, you really don’t.”

The merchant sniffed, kicked a toy aside, and told his henchman, “Watch her, and don’t go thieving any of my money.” Then he pushed past Hester and vanished up a companion ladder into the Humbug’s envelope. The other man reluctantly pried his eyes away from the heap of gold on the table and watched Hester instead. The baby gurgled. The woman sang him a song that Hester remembered faintly from long ago, but she quickly stopped when Hester looked at her.

“You from Oak Island?” Hester asked.

The woman shook her head. “Red Deer.”

You could see Red Deer Island from the hills above Hester’s childhood home on Oak Island, when the weather was fine. No wonder she recognized the song. She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill this woman and her baby.

“Napster bought me in the wife auction there,” the woman started to explain, and then stopped suddenly again, because she had heard her husband’s footsteps on the ladder, coming back down. She shifted closer to the table to give him room as he dropped into the cabin, dragging his frightened cargo behind him.

Pennyroyal peered into half a dozen of the High Street’s crowded drinking holes before he found what he was looking for. In fact they found him: a gang of rowdy young militia officers up from Manchester on a twenty-four-hour pass, clutching girls and bottles, making their unsteady way from a casino above Strut 1, where they had been