A Darkling Plain

“Aleutian!” the soldier shouted. He pointed her out to his comrades, who were hurrying up behind him. “There she is, friends! The Aleutian traitor who tried to destroy the Wind-Flower and set up Naga in her place!”

Grike stepped in front of Oenone and unsheathed his finger-glaives. The soldier’s companions drew back hastily, but he held his ground, still shouting. “Your time is over, Aleutian! She is risen! We have all heard the stories! A Stalker killing a thousand townies aboard Brighton! An amphibious limpet found on the sacred mountain! The Stalker Fang has returned!”

Hester pulled out her gun, but Oenone caught her wrist before she could shoot the angry soldier. “No. Leave him. Who knows what he’s been through?”

Already some of General Xao’s men were hurrying from the docking pans to pull the troublemaker away. As they seized him, the man screamed, “Naga could not have made the cities burn like this! This is her victory! The Stalker Fang has returned to Tienjing and killed the crippled coward! Fly home, Aleutian, so she can kill you, too!”

Xao’s men bundled him away. Oenone was shaking. Hester took her arm and guided her quickly toward the docking pan. “Don’t worry. He’s mad. Or drunk.”

“I have heard the same rumors from other once-born here,” said Grike. ” the idea that their old leader had returned was a comfort to them when defeat seemed inevitable.”

“But Fang is dead, isn’t she?” Pennyroyal said, trying to shield himself behind the Stalker. “You smashed her.”

“She is dead,” said Oenone. “She must be…”

But she was still trembling slightly half an hour later as the Fury carried her into the stained sky and began the journey homeward to Tienjing.

London. The night giving way to lightless dawn. Fog everywhere. Fog on the edge of the wreck, where the debris merges into green scrub country; fog in the wreck’s heart, where it rolls among the steep mounds of corroded deck plate. Fog on the Womb road, fog on the rust hills. Fog creeping into the cabins and huts of Crouch End, fog hovering around blind lookout posts and lifeless windmills, fog drooping on the steering vanes and rigging of the Archaeopteryx in her secret hangar. Fog piled so deep over the plain that Stalker- birds on watch above can see nothing of London beyond a few tall spires of debris that rise out of the vapor like jagged islands breaking from a white sea.

Wren woke from unsettling dreams to the drip, drip, drip of moisture falling from the eaves; Theo beside her (so at least he hadn’t been a dream); her father still not home. She slipped reluctantly away from Theo’s warmth and roamed through the chilly hut, peeking into each room. “Dad? Daddy?”

His letter crunkled beneath her feet as she came back to Theo. Her head was still stuffed with sleep; she had to read his short message twice before she started to understand.

Her cry woke Theo, and she thrust the letter at him.

My dear Wren,

By the time you read this, I shall already be in the air. I’m sorry to leave without saying good- bye, but, as you wrote once to me, “you would only try to stop me.” I don’t want to be stopped, and I don’t want to remember you crying and upset, or angry at me. I will remember you always as I saw you tonight, safe with Theo.

I am going to try and explain to the Green Storm that New London is not a threat to them. This new weapon has changed everything, but I believe General Naga is a good man, and perhaps if I can make him understand that we Londoners are not so very different to his own people, he will let us go in peace. Perhaps I can even persuade him to stop using the weapon. I have to try.

I hope I shall be back in a few days, to see New London leave, but if I die, it really doesn’t matter; the truth is, Wren, I am dying anyway. The doctor I saw in Peripatetiapolis told me that. I have been dying for a long time, and I shall soon be dead, with or without any help from the Green Storm.

The strange thing is, I don’t mind too much, because I know that you will live on, and see marvelous things, and one day I hope have children of your own, who will be just as much of a worry and a joy to you as you were to me. That’s what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation. Well, I’ve had my turn, and now it’s yours, and I mean to try and make sure that you live in a world that is free of at least one threat—

Wren had her coat on and was halfway to the door before Theo even finished reading. He was glad of an excuse to stop; the letter was private, and he felt wrong for looking at it. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“The hangar, of course!”

“He’ll be gone… He says—”

“I know what he says, but we don’t know when he wrote that, do we? He’s ill; it probably took him longer than he allowed for, going all along the Holloway Road.” She wasn’t tearful, just very angry at Tom for keeping such secrets from her. And how on Earth did he hope to fly all the way to Shan Guo without her to help?

She and Theo ran off together, stopping only to cadge a flask of water from the kitchens. Angie was helping make breakfast. Wren pushed the letter at her and said, “Wake Mr. Pomeroy and show him this!” and ran off before the other girl started asking questions.

The day was gray and cheerless. It seemed to Wren to smell of ash, as if the immense pall of smoke from all those slaughtered cities had drifted east overnight to blanket London. As they ran on, the murk grew thicker; fog hid the deeper parts of the debris field, and the spires and blades of wreckage that towered on either side of the trackway took on a ghostly look.

“Is what your father said true?” asked Theo as they ran. “Is he really that sick?”

“Of course not!” Wren replied. “He’s just saying that because he thinks I won’t feel so bad then about him going off to Shan Guo. His heart hurts him sometimes, but he’s got pills for it. Green ones.”

The fog grew deeper. By the time they reached the terminus at the eastern end of the Holloway Road, they could not see ten feet in front of them, and when they finally emerged from the old duct, they found themselves in a white world where they could barely see each others’ faces even though they stood side by side, holding hands.

At first they thought both airships were gone, but when Theo collided with the Archaeopteryx’s underside tail fin, they realized that only the Jenny Haniver was missing.

“Who goes there?” shouted a nervous voice.

“It’s me! Wren!”

A grayish stain appeared in the fog and condensed into Will Hallsworth and Jake Henson. “It is, you know,” said Jake. “Pass, friend,” said Will.

“Where’s my dad?” demanded Wren, who didn’t have time for games of soldiers.

“He came by early this morning,” said Jake.

“Very early,” agreed Will. “Said Mr. Pomeroy had asked him to take the Jenny on a reconnaissance trip and he’d be back soon. I ’spect he’s circling up there now, delayed by all this fog.”

“It’s a real London particular!” said Jake.

“Why didn’t you stop him, you idiots!” screamed Wren.

“Steady on!”

“He said it was orders from the committee. We couldn’t argue with that.”

“Was he armed?” asked Theo.

Will and Jake looked sheepish. “Not when he got here, no.”

“But he made us give him one of our lightning guns. He said he might need it if he ran into any of those Stalker-birds up above all this pea soup.”

Wren turned to Theo, almost fell against him. She was tired by their journey along the Holloway Road, and she felt that she would never see her father again. She was ready to cry. “He’s gone. He’s gone forever!”