A Darkling Plain

“I agree,” said the old Engineer. “But they are scared; the birds, the war, the new weapon. Even the prospect of leaving the debris fields is enough to unsettle them after so many years. And when people are scared, it can bring out the worst in them. That is why I am going to let you go. I am sure that Theo will be able to find you shelter at one of the Storm’s settlements. I don’t imagine the war will last much longer now that the Storm have this orbital terror weapon, so you will be in far less danger there than with us.”

She reached inside her rubber coat and brought out some sort of Old Tech device; the type of thing Engineers presumably kept in their pockets all the time. It looked like a can opener and buzzed like a horsefly, and made the padlock on Wren’s cage clack open. “I brought your pack with me, Wren,” Dr. Childermass said as she moved across to Theo’s cage, and Wren, still not quite believing that they were going, fitted her arms through the shoulder straps and heaved it on.

“I should carry that,” said Theo, scrambling out of his cage.

“I can manage. We’ll take turns.”

Lavinia Childermass led them to a small back way out of Crouch End; a hole in the roof plate at its lowest point where it sloped down to touch the ground. She scrambled out with them and stood watching as they set off together into the wreckage, moving closer together as they went away from her, as if they thought an old Engineer would not approve of people holding hands and wanted to be safely hidden in the shadows before they finally touched.

Lavinia smiled. She had had a child of her own, once, but in those days the Guild of Engineers had taken all infants straight to the communal nurseries, and she had never known her little Bevis. Dead long ago, she thought, and the sudden sadness made her remember the funeral drum, and Chudleigh Pomeroy lying cold under the earth in Putney Vale. If she had not been a logical, disciplined Engineer, she would have found the world too sad a place to live in.

She watched Wren and Theo until the shadows and the wreckage swallowed them. Well, she thought, that is one less thing to worry about. And she went quickly through Crouch End and up the Womb road, returning to her work aboard New London.

Chapter 43 Homecoming

The Fury reached Batmunkh Gompa shortly after sundown, crossing the Shield- Wall by the light of a smudged and bloodstained moon. She had been heading for Tienjing when the master of a passing freighter advised her captain to reroute. “Tienjing is burning! The barbarians have a new weapon! A lance of fire that strikes from the sky! Batmunkh Tsaka is gone too! Naga has fled to Batmunkh Gompa, but not even Batmunkh Gompa can stand against the fire from heaven! Save yourselves!”

“What’s happening?” grumbled Hester, tired and crotchety after the long flight, one hand pressed to her aching head. “Surely the cities can’t have a super-weapon too?”

“Typical!” said Pennyroyal. “You wait years for an all-powerful orbital heat-ray thingy and then two come along at once.”

“perhaps the storm do not control the new weapon,” said Grike.

“But it blew up cities! We watched it! Who else would want to do that?”

“a third force,” suggested Grike. “someone who hates the cities and the storm and wants to sow confusion.”

“Like who?” asked Hester. “the stalker fang.”

“But she’s dead!” said Pennyroyal. “Isn’t she?”

“perhaps the rumors we heard from the once-born at forward command are correct,” said Grike. “I was re- resurrected. what if someone has re-resurrected her?”

“And you think she is behind these calamities?” asked Oenone. She sounded afraid, but faintly hopeful too, as if it would be a relief to learn that her husband was not responsible.

Grike said, “when the new weapon struck, i remembered something that the stalker fang said before i disabled her. she spoke of a thing called odin. ‘the greatest of the weapons that the ancients hung in heaven.’ i believe she has awoken it just as she planned. she struck at tienjing because naga would be there, and at batmunkh tsaka in the hope of killing you, oenone zero.”

“But she’s dead,” insisted Pennyroyal.

“He’s got a point, for once,” Hester agreed. “You pulled her head off, Grike. Threw the rest of her off Cloud 9. That should have done the trick.”

But Oenone looked troubled. She had looked troubled all the way from Forward Command, and now she said, “Maybe not. She was a very advanced model. Dr. Popjoy had put in experimental systems that even I may not have understood. It’s possible that if someone gathered the body parts, they might have been able to …”

Her voice faded away. She shrugged unhappily.

“Oh, fantastic,” said Hester.

“I might be wrong.” Oenone went to the window, looking south into the haze of dirty smoke from Tienjing. “I hope I’m wrong. We must ask Dr. Popjoy. As soon as we dock at Batmunkh Gompa, I’ll send for him. Popjoy will know.”

The city behind the Shield-Wall lay in silence, only a few dozen lamps burning in its dark streets. More lights shone on the valley floor, a river of lanterns pouring eastward, reflecting in the waters of Batmunkh Nor. The population was fleeing, just as they had fled the threat of MEDUSA the last time Hester was there. She thought what an odd place it must be to live if you had to keep packing all your belongings into carts and running away, and then reminded herself that MEDUSA had been nearly twenty years ago, and that a whole generation had grown up since she and Tom left this city in the Jenny Haniver.

“Gods,” she said grumpily, rubbing her head again. “I’m getting too old for this…”

Fox Spirits guided the Fury to a temporary airfield below an old nunnery on a crag. The ancient building was surrounded by what looked at first like giant lichen, a shapeless mass of gray and brown and white. It was people. Refugees from the city, and survivors of Tienjing brought in aboard the ragtag fleet of freighters and military transports moored along the edges of the field. They huddled together against the cold, wrapped in furs and blankets, sheltering under awnings and tents. As Hester, still limping slightly, led her companions past them, they started to stand up and shuffle aside, forming an avenue of staring faces. A whispering, like the wind in trees, ran through the crowd, as people pointed out the Lady Naga and her Stalker to their neighbors and their children.

Maybe they were saying that she was to blame for their disaster; that if she had not destroyed the Stalker Fang, it would be the townies suffering instead. Maybe they had heard she was dead. Maybe, seeing Grike and Hester walking beside her, they thought she was a phantom come here from the Halls of Shadow with two demons to guard her.

Oenone barely noticed the stir that she was causing. She kept thinking of the Stalker Fang. I must speak to Popjoy, she thought, and looked east toward the lakeshore, where the old Stalker builder had his retirement villa—but the evening mist lay thick above the lake, and she was not even certain that Popjoy’s place could be seen from here.

At the door of the nunnery a tired-looking subofficer greeted them. “Lady Naga! You are safe! Gods be thanked!”

Safe, thought Oenone. Yes; even if Fang had returned, Naga would sort everything out. She was safe at last. She returned the boy’s salute, remembering him from her husband’s staff at Tienjing: a friendly boy with a flop of black hair always falling across his eyes. She was glad he had survived. She said, “My husband is here?”

“The general will be overjoyed! I shall take you to him!”

Oenone followed him through the tall, carved doorway.

Hester, Grike, and Pennyroyal went with her, not knowing what else to do.

“I shall need to see the scientist Popjoy,” Oenone told their guide. “Can you find him for me?”

The subofficer seemed nervous. “He is dead, Lady Naga. Murdered at his house by the lake, about three