weeks ago. We think one of his Stalkers went wrong and …” He shrugged. “I heard what had been done to him. No human being could have had such strength…”
Oenone looked at Hester. Grike said, ” did you find the stalker that killed him?”
The boy looked startled at being spoken to by a Stalker, but he recovered, and said, “No. But Popjoy’s sky yacht was stolen. Perhaps if the killer was an experimental model, it might have had the wit to escape. Apparently Popjoy’s house was full of … horrible things.”
He addressed his words to Oenone, but he was looking past her at her companions, as if wondering for the first time who they were and whether he had been right to admit them to Naga’s emergency headquarters.
“These are my friends,” said Oenone hastily, and introduced them: “Mr. Grike; Professor Pennyroyal; Mrs. Natsworthy.”
The boy frowned. “Natsworthy?”
He took Oenone aside and they spoke for a moment in Shan Guonese. Hester heard the name Natsworthy mentioned several more times. She reached for the big gun on her shoulder and eased the safety catch off, then asked Grike, “What are they saying?”
Before the Stalker could translate, Oenone came back to join them, smiling. “Hester,” she said, “your husband is here.”
She might as well have carried on talking in her own funny language, Hester thought, for what she said made no sense at all.
“Tom Natsworthy,” said Oenone. She took Hester’s hands in hers and smiled into her face. “He arrived this morning, aboard Anna Fang’s old ship…”
“No,” said Hester, not believing it; not wanting to.
“He is being held in a cell down by the docking pans at the foot of this crag. But don’t worry; I shall tell Naga to free him at once. You should go to him, Hester.”
“Me? No.”
“Go to him.” Oenone pulled off the ring she wore and pressed it into Hester’s hand, folding Hester’s fingers over it. “Take this; tell the guards I sent you. Mr. Grike can translate for you. They will let you talk to him. Tell him that orders will soon be coming from my husband to let him go.”
“But he won’t want to see me. Send someone else.”
“You are still his wife.”
“You don’t know about the things I’ve done.”
Oenone stood on tiptoes and kissed her. “Nothing that can’t be forgiven. Now go, while I talk to Naga.”
Hester turned and went, Grike at her side, everyone in the passage turning to stare, wondering who she could be.
Pennyroyal lingered. “So Tom’s here, eh?” he said. “These Natsworthys do pop up in the most unlikely spots. But I’ll stay with you if I may, Empress. There’s the small matter of the reward you mentioned…”
“Of course, Professor,” said Oenone, and let him go with her as she followed the subofficer through the mazelike corridors. The god that was worshiped in this place went by a name different from hers, but she still felt calmed by the old incense smells and the centuries of prayers that had sunk into the carved ceilings and lime- washed walls. Nuns in nasturtium-colored robes clustered in doorways, watching. Green Storm officers hurried by, staring at her. Most of them did not look happy to see her, but she did not care. Thank God she had been able to come here! She felt glad that she had been able to reunite Hester with her husband, and looked forward happily now to her own reunion with Naga.
Up three stairs to an ancient door. The subofficer knocked, then held the door open for Oenone to walk through. Pennyroyal went with her. In his gray cloak he looked the part of a high-ranking Green Storm officer, and the guards inside saluted him smartly as he followed Oenone into General Naga’s makeshift war room.
Around a big table covered in charts stood several dozen people, the ragged remnant of Naga’s government. Some of them looked pleased to see Oenone. Naga, raising his eyes from his charts, just gazed at her. There were bruises and cuts on his face, and dents in his armor, and his good hand was mittened in dirty bandages. But he was alive.
“Thank God!” Oenone said happily. She wanted to hug him. But it would not be seemly for the leader of the Storm to be embraced, in public, in front of his captains and his councillors, so she controlled herself and lowered her eyes from his and bowed low and said, “Your Excellency.”
Naga said nothing. Around him wise people who knew how much he had longed for her nudged their moonstruck, staring comrades and started gathering up charts and swords and helmets and edging toward the chamber’s various doors, but Naga called them back. He still had not spoken to his wife.
“I heard about Tienjing,” said Oenone.
“It came from the sky,” said her husband, watching her face. “From one of those old devil weapons in high orbit, we think. A finger of light … of energy … it destroys all it touches… I am not the man to ask. When it struck Tienjing, I was flat on my back at the foot of a staircase.” He tried to gesture, but the gears in the shoulder of his battered exoskeleton grated and seized. “Damn it!” he muttered.
“Let me,” said Oenone, glad of an excuse to touch him. The watchful officers drew aside to let her go to him, but when she reached out to unscrew the bolts that held his shoulder piece in place, his bandaged fist caught her across the side of the head. She fell sideways, hit the table, and crashed to the floor amid a rattle of fallen teacups and compass dividers. Some of Naga’s officers cried out, and she heard one say, “General! Please!”
“Naga …,” Oenone said. She could barely believe what was happening. She thought his exoskeleton must have gone wrong and made him lash out without meaning to. But when she looked up at him, she saw that the blow had been deliberate.
“This is all your fault!” he shouted. His mechanical hand swept down and grabbed a handful of her hair. He heaved her upright like a sack. “Look what your peace has led to! You told me to treat the barbarians like human beings, and now they are destroying us!”
Oenone had never imagined this. She did not know how to cope with his anger. “No, no, no, no,” she said, “TractionCities have been destroyed too; I saw them burning. You must have heard reports—”
“Lies!”
“Naga, the Stalker Fang is back! She controls this thing!”
A murmuring in the room; cries of alarm, of disbelief.
“Think,” begged Oenone. “The reports from Brighton. The limpet found in Snow Fan Province… She wants us to think the townies have the weapon, so that she can use it against us all! She is insane! We have to find the transmitter she uses to speak with it and—”
“Lies!” said Naga. “I have already discovered where the thing is controlled from. It is the London Engineers again, just like MEDUSA. Those harmless squatters we have ignored for so long started busying themselves like ants a few weeks ago, and now this happens.” He snatched a photograph from the piles on the table, an aerial view of London taken by a spy bird. “Look! You can see their bald heads! They infest that wreck like maggots in a corpse! And today a Londoner came here with some wild tale to try and put us off the scent. It is MEDUSA all over again! It all begins and ends with London!”
“Then what about Dr. Popjoy?” babbled Oenone. “Fang must have needed him to repair her, and when he had done it, she killed him…”
“Popjoy was another Engineer! We thought he had come over to our side, but he was working for his old Guild all along! That body they found in his villa was so mangled, it could have been anyone! Your former master faked his death and escaped to London to help his old Engineer friends deploy the weapon.”
“No,” whispered Oenone. But his theory made a sort of sense. How could she hope to show him he was wrong?
Naga stared at her, breathing hard. “And you were part of their plan too, weren’t you Zero?” he said. His voice had grown softer and colder. “You were their creature all along, you Aleutian sorceress. It was Popjoy who first brought you to the Jade Pagoda. How shy and sweet you seemed! But you destroyed Fang and then distracted me, whispering about peace, about love…” He drew his sword. “And all along you were just buying time for the townies until their new weapon was ready!”
Oenone tried to control her helpless trembling. She stretched out her hands toward her husband. “Please believe me. I would never betray you. All I ever wanted was peace.”
Naga struck her again, a stunning blow from his mechanical fist. She went down on her knees, keening, her
