A Darkling Plain

Wombat’s engines had failed, and she could not restart them.

Surfing on the thermals above the burning forests, she turned toward Manchester, but Manchester was motionless, its armor holed, its tracks destroyed, tier upon ruined tier leaking flame into the scorched sky. Orla had never imagined that there could be so much fire in the world. She circled the carcass once, weeping, aghast at the thought of so many dead and dying. There was nothing she could do to help them. She steered northwest, searching for somewhere to set down. The light in the sky had gone out, but it had drawn a sweeping line of brush fires across the plains, and at points along the line great pyres were burning where suburbs and cities had stood.

At last, as the Combat Wombat began to lose height in the cooler air, an armored city loomed ahead. It was Murnau, motionless but whole, and its lookouts recognized Orla’s machine and opened a portal in the top-tier armor to let her inside. As the Wombat touched down on Uber den Linden, she felt the wheels buckle, and then the whole undercarriage gave way; she slewed to a standstill in a storm of splintering wood and snapped string, a flapping of seared canvas. She hadn’t realized how badly the poor old kite had been burned.

Hadn’t realized how badly she’d been burned until she saw the men who ran to help her staring. Her pink flying suit was charred black; her face black too, except for the patches around her eyes where her goggles had protected her.

Smoke trailed from her gauntlets as she waved the medical crew aside and staggered coughing toward the Rathaus. She had to tell someone what she had seen; for all she knew, she was the only one who had escaped alive. “I must see the kriegsmarschall …,” she spluttered.

Von Kobold met her on the Rathaus steps. “Ms. Twombley? That light—those fires—We have lost contact with Manchester, Breslau, Moloch-Maschinenstadt… What the devil is going on out there?”

“Manchester’s gone,” said Orla Twombley. She collapsed, and von Kobold caught her, smudging his white tunic with soot and blood. “They’re all gone,” she said. “Turn your city about. Retreat! Run! The Storm have a new weapon, and it destroys everything…”

“A messenger, sir! A messenger from the front!”

The voice of Naga’s aide booms and echoes around the inside of the war room in the Jade Pagoda, echoes and booms around the inside of the general’s head. He can’t imagine what the man is so excited about. All week long there have been nothing but messengers from the front, and they have brought nothing but bad news. Naga isn’t even certain where the front is any longer. Whatever luck he had has deserted him. Maybe it died with Oenone.

“General Naga!”

Well, here he is, this famous messenger, and nothing much to look at: a moon-faced subofficer from one of the listening posts in the western mountains. “Well?”

The boy bows so low that pencils shower out of his tunic pockets and rattle on the floor. “A thousand apologies, General Naga. I had to come in person. All our Stalker-birds have been reassigned to the front, and there is something interfering with radio signals—”

“What is it?” barks Naga. At least, he tries to bark it; it comes out as a tetchy sigh.

“The Lady Naga, sir!” (How bright his eyes are, this boy. Was he even born when the wars began?) “She is alive, sir! A Stalker-bird came in from General Xao’s division. It was badly damaged, but we deciphered the message. Lady Naga is on her way home.”

The boy, who seemed so porridge featured and uninteresting a few moments ago, is actually remarkably handsome; brave; intelligent. What is the Storm thinking of, making a young man of his caliber carry messages for outlandish listening posts? Naga lurches to his feet and lets his armor carry him toward the map table. “Promote this man to lieutenant. No, captain.” He feels almost young again. Oenone is alive! A hundred new strategies bloom in his head like paper flowers dropped into water. Surely one of them will halt the townie advance?

She is alive! She is alive! She is alive!

He is so overjoyed that it is almost a whole minute before he stops to wonder about the young woman who came to him out of the desert with such graphic stories of Oenone’s death.

He snatches a sword from one of his generals. Officers and Stalkers scatter before him as his armor marches him out of the war room, up the stairs. “General Naga, sir?” shouts one of the men behind him.

“The girl Rohini, you fool!” he yells—or tries to yell. (The truth is starting to dawn: What has she done to me?) “Fetch the guard!” But he doesn’t really want the guard to deal with her; he wants to deal with her himself, with this good sword; he wants to split her head like a melon.

He doesn’t bother knocking when he reaches the door of her chamber, way out in the western wing. His armor carries him through it, and shards and splinters of antique wood rattle off him as he climbs the five stairs to her living space. She is rising from her seat to greet him as he reaches the top step, lovely and demure as ever, a big window behind her opening onto a moonlit balcony.

“My wife is alive,” says Naga. “She is flying home. Are you going to keep up the mute act, or do you have any final words?”

For a moment she stares at him, hurt, frightened, confused. Then realizing it just won’t wash anymore, she laughs. “You old fool! I’m glad she’s alive. Now she’ll see where her peace has brought us! To the edge of destruction! Not even you will listen to her Tractionist lies now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You still don’t understand?” Rohini laughs again, a little wildly. “She’s working for them! She’s always been working for them! Why do you think she married you? You’re not exactly the answer to a young girl’s dream, Naga. Half a man, wrapped up in clanking armor. Not even that, soon. I’m going to kill you, general, and your people will rise up and kill your traitor wife. Then they will be ready to welcome their real leader back, when she reveals herself.”

“What are you—” Naga starts to say. And pauses, because at this point Rohini pulls off her hair, which turns out to be a wig, beneath which two things are concealed: short, blond hair, which clashes oddly with her umber face, and a small gas pistol, with which she shoots him. Naga’s breastplate saves him from the bullet, but the impact makes him take a step backward, and he goes crashing and slithering down the stairs.

“—talking about?” he asks the ceiling, as he lies in the splinters of the wrecked door, dazed.

Rohini—or whoever she is—appears at the top of the stairs. The gun is still in her hand. This time she aims at his face, not his armor. She is still smiling. She says, “Cynthia Twite, of the Stalker Fang’s special intelligence group. A few of us kept the faith, General. We knew she would rise again.”

“You’ve been poisoning me! The tea! You—”

“That’s right!” says the girl chirpily. “And now I’m going to finish the j—”

Except she doesn’t even finish the sentence, because just at that moment a shaft of light stabs in through the window, so bright that it looks solid, so hot that it sets Cynthia and everything else in the room instantly on fire. A roaring, shrieking noise drowns out her screams. In the shadows of the stairwell Naga feels the heat on his face like the breath from an open furnace. Above him Cynthia Twite is a black branch, burning. There is a sound of crashing masonry. The Jade Pagoda heaves sideways, as if it’s having second thoughts about perching here on the mountainside. Naga tries to stand, but his armor won’t obey him. Cinders of Cynthia rattle down around him as the light fades. “Help!” he yells into the smoke. “Help!”

Behind him an ancient stone wall is tugged aside like a curtain. The main part of the Jade Pagoda is gone. He is looking down into the valley where Tienjing has stood, the capital of Anti-Tractionism, for a thousand years. There is nothing there but fire, and the million mournful voices of the wind.

Chapter 39 Firelight

Wren began to feel embarrassed as she and Theo walked down to Crouch End. They had been alone in that nook in the wreckage for much longer than she’d intended. She was pretty sure she had finally got the hang of this kissing business, but she couldn’t help but feel that everyone would know what she had been doing. Even when she let go of Theo’s hand, there was a sort of electric feeling in the air between them, and they couldn’t stop glancing