Infernal Devices

Plovery said, “Two-two, oh-nine, nine-five-seven. Twenty-second of September, nine hundred and fifty-seven T. E. It’s His Worship’s birthday.”

Shkin smiled. “Very well, Plovery. Fetch me the Tin Book.”

Chapter 21 The Flight of a Seagull

That afternoon, when luncheon was over and the preparations for dinner not yet begun, Wren wandered through the kitchen garden and out into the grounds behind the Pavilion to watch a wing of the Flying Ferrets take off on patrol. The Ferrets had set up a temporary airfield in a little-used part of the gardens behind the Pavilion. Wren knew most of the strange machines by sight now, and recognized them as they taxied out of their hangars: the Visible Parity Line and the Tumbler Pigeon, the Austerity Biscuit and the J. M. W. Turner Overdrive. The ground crews fitted them into spring-loaded canvas catapults and sent them hurtling over the edge of the deck plate while the aviators gunned their engines and prayed that their wings would find a purchase on the air before they plunged into the dirty sea off Brighton’s stern.

Wren watched from the handrail at the gardens’ brink while Ferret after Ferret pulled out of its dive and went zooming off across the rooftops, doing ill-advised aerobatics and letting off canisters of green and purple smoke. It was a spectacle that she had always enjoyed before, but today it only made her feel more homesick than ever. She would have liked to tell Dad about the Ferrets’ machines.

Behind the aerodrome stood a whale-backed hillock of copper, screened by cypress trees. Wren had noticed it from a distance before, but she had never bothered to take a closer look, assuming that it was just another of the abstract sculptures that littered the lawns of Cloud 9, bought by Pennyroyal to keep his supporters in the Artists’ Quarter happy. Today, having nothing better to do, she wandered toward it. As she drew nearer, she started to realize that it was a building, with huge curved doors at one end and a fan-shaped metal pavement outside. The copper curves of its walls and roof were studded with decorative spines, so it looked like a giant puffer fish surfacing through the grass. A spindly exterior staircase led up one side, and Wren climbed up it and peeked in through a high window.

In the shady interior sat a sky yacht so delicate and sleek that even Wren, who knew nothing about airships, could tell that it was ferociously expensive.

“That’s the Peewit,” said a helpful voice behind her. Cynthia was standing at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Wren,” she added. “I’m going to the household shrine; I simply must make a sacrifice to the Goddess of Beauty; I really want to lose weight before Moon Festival. You should come with me. You could ask her to do something about your spots.”

Wren was more interested in yachts than spots. She turned back to the window. “The Peewit… Is she Pennyroyal’s?”

“Of course.” Cynthia climbed halfway up the stairs. “She’s called a Type IV Serapis Moonshadow—very fancy. But the mayor hardly ever takes her up anymore. He keeps her polished and full of lifting gas, but the only time she gets used is when Boo-Boo goes shopping aboard another city.”

“Won’t the mayor be using her in the MoonFest Regatta?” asked Wren.

“Oh ; no; he’s got a vintage airship moored down in Brighton. He’s going to be flying her, with that Orla Twombley as his copilot. She’s going to lead a Flyby of Historic Ships, and there’s to be an Air Battle with real rockets, just like in Professor Pennyroyal’s books. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he’s had the most amazing adventures on the bird roads.”

Wren looked again at the yacht, thinking of the airship that Pennyroyal had stolen from her parents all those years before. Might it be possible for her to sneak down here at dead of night, slide open the boathouse doors, and take off aboard the Peewit? That would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it!

A faint drumbeat of hope began to throb deep down inside her. It cheered her up no end as Cynthia took her hand and led her toward the slaves’ and servants’ shrine behind the Pavilion kitchens. She barely heard her friend’s bright chatter about makeup and hairstyles. In her imagination she was already piloting the Peewit westward: She was crossing the Dead Hills, the lakes of Vineland were shining blue below her, and her parents were running to greet her as she touched down in the fields of Anchorage.

The only trouble was, Wren had no idea how to fly a Type IV Serapis Moonshadow. Or anything else, for that matter. But she knew someone who did.

Boo-Boo Pennyroyal did not like her male and female slaves to mingle. In the operas that she adored, young people brought together in tragic circumstances were forever falling in love with each other and then throwing themselves off things (cliffs, mostly, but sometimes battlements, or rooftops, or the brinks of volcanoes). Boo-Boo was fond of her slaves, and it pained her to think of them plummeting in pairs off the edges of Cloud 9, so she nipped all tragic love affairs firmly in the bud by forbidding the girls and boys to speak to one another. Of course, young people being what they were, girls sometimes fell in love with other girls, or boys with boys, but that never happened in the operas, so Boo-Boo didn’t notice. The rest were always disobeying her rule and trying to sneak into one another’s quarters, which pained Boo-Boo. But at least Theo Ngoni never gave her any cause for concern. Theo Ngoni never spoke to anyone.

Wren, though, was determined to speak to Theo Ngoni, and she found her chance a few days after her discovery of the boathouse. Boo-Boo had gone down to Brighton, and Pennyroyal had collared Wren and Cynthia to act as his towel holders while he took a dip in the pool. By a lucky chance Theo was on duty at the poolside too, carrying the mayor’s spare swimming goggles on a silver platter. While Pennyroyal dozed on his drifting air bed, Wren sidled up to her fellow slave and whispered, “Hello!”

The boy looked at her out of the corner of his eye but said nothing. Wren wondered what to do next. She had never been this close to Theo before. He was very handsome, and although Wren was tall, Theo was taller still, which made her feel young and silly as she stood there at his side.

“I’m Wren,” she said.

He looked away again, out across the gardens and the blue sea, toward a distant haze on the horizon that Wren had been told was Africa. Maybe he was homesick. She said, “Is that where you come from?”

Theo Ngoni shook his head. “My home was in Zagwa. A static city in the mountains, far to the south.”

“Oh?” said Wren encouragingly, and, “Is it nice?” but the boy said no more. Determined to keep the conversation going, she added, “I didn’t know the Green Storm had bases in Africa. That book Professor Pennyroyal lent me said that the African statics didn’t approve of the war.”

“They don’t.” Theo turned his head to look at her, but it was a cold look. “I ran away from my family to travel to Shan Guo and join the Storm’s youth wing. I thought it would be a glorious thing to fight against the barbarian cities and sweep them from the earth.”

“Gosh, yes,” agreed Wren. “I’m an Anti-Tractionist myself, you know.”

Theo stared at her. “I thought you were a Lost Girl. From that place under the sea.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” said Wren quickly, annoyed at herself for forgetting. “But Grimsby didn’t move, it wasn’t a moving city, so that makes me a Mossie through and through. Did you fight in many battles?”

“Only one said Theo, looking away again.

“You got captured on your first go? Oh, bad luck!” Wren tried to sound sympathetic, but she was fast losing patience with this sullen, gloomy boy. Maybe all that she’d heard about the Storm and its soldiers was true: They were brainwashed fanatics. Still, she was sure he must want to leave Cloud 9 as badly as she did, and she thought it unlikely that he would betray her to the hated Tractionists, so she decided to take a chance and tell him about her plan.

She glanced round and saw that Pennyroyal was asleep. The other slaves were dozing too, or whispering together on the far side of the pool, while Cynthia, who was closest, was studying her freshly polished fingernails with a frown of deep concentration. Wren sidled even closer to Theo and whispered, “I know a way we can escape.”