A Darkling Plain

Wombat into a dive that would bring it up on the Shadow’s tail. Behind her, the ornithopter Zip Gun Boogie and a rocket-propelled triplane called No More Curried Eggs for Me followed suit, wings slicing the wet air like blades.

Theo shouted out in fear and frustration. He knew that his sluggish, wounded Shadow could not outrun the Flying Ferrets. He saw Grike turn toward him, and thought the Stalker was about to warn him of the pursuing machines. “I know!” he yelled.

But Grike said, ” there are stalker-birds ahead.”

“What?” Theo tried to peer out through the rain-spattered forward window, but he could see only darkness and his own terrified reflection. Then a rocket from the pursuing machines tore past the gondola and exploded ahead, and he realized that the darkness was largely made of wings. Across the empty skies of no-man’s-land, from the direction of the Green Storm’s lines, an immense flock of Resurrected birds was flapping toward him.

“Christ!” cried Theo, and slammed the steering levers over, trying in vain to turn the ship about, for he would rather face rockets than the claws and beaks of the Storm’s raptors. But the Shadow’s rudder controls had been hit; she responded slowly, and long before she could come about, the sky outside the gondola windows was filled with beating wings and the green pinpoints of the dead birds’ eyes.

Astern, wind lashed and drenched in the open cockpit of the Combat Wombat, Orla Twombley saw the cloud of wings. Cursing inventively, she swung her machine about and signaled to her companions to do the same. She had lost enough people to the Stalker-birds at Cloud 9; nothing would make her engage them in such numbers. She checked that her men were with her, then soared back toward the fastnesses of Manchester, while skeins of birds, like the fingers of some gloomy god, closed around the Shadow Aspect.

On the flight deck, Theo waited for beaks and claws to start tearing through the thin walls. Over the rumble of the Shadow’s engines he could hear whooshing wingbeats, the flutter of feathers as the birds turned, matching the little airship’s course and speed.

“They’re not here to attack us,” said Oenone softly, coming to stand behind Theo, her hand touching his shoulder. “I think they’re an escort…”

Theo leaned forward, looking up past the bulge of the envelope. The wounded airship was flying inside a dark nebula of wings, where the eyes of hundreds of birds glowed like green stars. The birds were immense: resurrected kites and condors, eagles and vultures. As the gas vented from the Shadow’s shredded cells, hundreds of birds gripped her airframe with their claws and bore her up, their wingbeats carrying her eastward across the track scars and shell craters of no-man’s-land.

In through one of the shattered starboard windows came a smaller bird. It had been a raven when it was alive. It perched on the handle of a control lever and turned its head, its green eye whirring as it focused on Theo. It opened its beak, and the faint, crackly voice of a distant Green Storm commander came out of the tiny radio transmitter inside its ribs. He was speaking in a battle code that Theo did not recognize, but Oenone did. She replied in the same harsh language, and the raven spread its wings and flew past her through the window and away.

Oenone looked at Theo. “One of the Storm’s forward observation posts saw us come under attack. They assumed we must be their agents. I have told them the truth; that I am Lady Naga, coming home. The bird gave me the coordinates of the landing field where they want us to set down.”

Theo listened to the numbers she quoted, but he barely needed to alter course; the birds were already shepherding the Shadow Aspect in the right direction. He flopped down in his seat and looked at Grike. He was too wrung out with shock to feel more than mildly surprised when he saw that the wet, whimpering man the Stalker clutched was Nimrod Pennyroyal.

“What’s he doing here?” he asked.

“It was an accident!” said Pennyroyal fearfully, as if he thought he was about to be accused of boarding the Shadow Aspect by stealth. “I fell. Spiney and I—we fell out of Airhaven and landed on your tail fin. Well, I did. Spiney carried on down, poor devil. Still, it serves him right.” The thought of his enemy’s death seemed to restore his spirits slightly, but only for a moment; his eyes wandered past Theo to the storm of birds outside. “Ngoni, am I a prisoner?”

“I think we’re all prisoners, Professor.”

“But you’re Green Storm; they won’t harm you! I was mayor of Brighton. You’ll tell them, won’t you, I was always an Anti-Tractionist at heart? I only accepted high office so that I could subvert the system from within. And I treated captured Mossies well, didn’t I? You can vouch for me; you had it easy on Cloud 9, didn’t you—three good meals a day, and you never had to carry anything heavier than a sunshade.”

Oenone said, “I will tell them to treat you well.”

“You will? Thank you!”

“But I don’t know if they’ll listen to me. It all depends on whether the units who control these birds are loyal, or whether they want me dead.”

“Oh, Poskitt!”

Oenone squeezed Theo’s shoulder and said, “I must go and check on your friend.”

“How is she?” asked Theo, ashamed to find that he had completely forgotten about Hester.

Oenone looked solemnly at him.

“She’ll be all right?”

“I hope so. She has a serious head injury. I’ll do all I can. Who is Tom? She keeps asking for him.”

“Her husband. Tom Natsworthy. Wren’s father.”

Oenone nodded owlishly and went aft again. Grike dumped Pennyroyal on the deck and followed her. Left alone with the old man, Theo wondered if he should tie him up or lock him in the toilet or something. But Pennyroyal looked too trembly and sodden to try anything, and the host of Storm birds just outside the window was surely enough to keep him in his place. Theo lay back in his seat, tasting the blood that had trickled into the corner of his mouth from a small cut on his forehead. He thought of Zagwa and his family, and wondered if he would ever see them again. Whatever happened when he landed, he must try and get word to them.

“Letter for you,” said Pennyroyal, rather sheepishly.

Theo looked around. Pennyroyal was holding out a filthy, crumpled envelope. “She left it with me to send on to you, but I must confess, I forgot. Found it in my greatcoat pocket earlier, when I was looking for a scrap of paper to jot down the Humbug’s berth on. Thought you might as well have it. Better late than never, eh?”

Theo turned the envelope over and recognized Wren’s careful handwriting. He ripped it open and pulled out the letter, hissing with frustration as the wet paper tore. Her photograph smiled at him, the same picture that had been in the newspaper; that long, clever face, not as beautiful as he remembered her, but real, and lovely. He spread the letter on the control desk and tried to read it. The rain had fogged and buckled it until only a few phrases were legible. I am starting on a journey … loading provisions … didn’t even know London had any ruins that … A few lines above was a word that might have been survivors. Then, at the foot of the page: Look for me in London.

“London?” he said. He tried not to cry, but he couldn’t stop himself. “She has gone to London?”

“What?” asked Pennyroyal, startled. “No, no, you’ve misread it; they set off on some job for Wolf Kobold, the kriegsmarschall’s son. London? Nobody goes to London; it’s a ruin; haunted…”

There was only one more line that Theo could read. “With love,” it said, “from Wren.”

The sleeping quarters smelled thickly of blood and antiseptic oils. Hester lay with her head thrown back, her face whiter than the pillow it rested on. Looking down at her, Grike hoped that she would die without waking. When she was a Stalker like him, he would not have to suffer so much worry. Once-Born were so fragile; so disposable. Loving one was agony.

Oenone knelt to check her patient’s pulse, then looked up at Grike. In all the chaos of the fight on Strut 13 and the flight from Airhaven there had not been time for her to say, “Mr. Grike! What are you doing here?” or “Mr. Grike, how nice to see you again!” and it was too late now. Instead she said, “She is Hester Shaw, isn’t she?”

“YOU KNOW OF HER?”

“Of course. I studied your past before I reawakened you.”

Grike sensed the airship descending. He went to a side window and looked out. Through the darkness of the