Infernal Devices

crescent-shaped blade that swung to and fro above it on a pendulum.

Mayor Pennyroyal? Hester had often wondered what had become of the fake explorer after he shot Tom and stole the Jenny Haniver. She had assumed that the gods would have punished him by now for all his lies and tricks; they’d had sixteen years to think of a suitable comeuppance, after all. Instead, they seemed to have rewarded him. Pennyroyal was alive. And Pennyroyal knew what she had done. She had told him herself, in the Aakiuqs’ smashed-up kitchen, while she was getting ready to murder Masgard and his Huntsmen.

She handed a bronze coin to the man at the ticket booth and went inside.

It seemed as though Brighton’s other visitors had found better ways of educating and entertaining themselves, for the Nimrod Pennyroyal Experience was almost deserted. There was a dusty museum smell, and another smell, tantalizing and out of place, that was even more familiar. Hester wandered past unimpressive artifacts in glass cases, past a reconstruction of an Ancient landfill site that Pennyroyal had once excavated. Paintings and waxwork dioramas showed Pennyroyal battling a bear, escaping from air pirates, and almost being sacrificed by a cult of Old Tech-worshipping female warriors—all scenes from Pennyroyal’s bestselling books, and all total fibs. Only one of the paintings meant anything to Hester. It showed Pennyroyal, sword in hand, fighting off a horde of savage Huntsmen, while at his side a beautiful young woman expired prettily. It was only after she had stared at the picture for a minute or more that Hester noticed the martyred girl wore an eye patch and had a fetching little scar on her cheek.

“Gods!” she said aloud. “Is that bimbo supposed to be me?”

Her voice sounded loud in the empty, echoey rooms. As it faded, Hester heard footsteps, and the man from the kiosk put his head round the door and asked, “Everything all right, madam?”

Hester nodded, too angry to speak.

“Magnificent painting, eh?” the curator said. He was a friendly man, middle-aged, with a few strands of sandy hair combed carefully across his bald head. He came and stood next to Hester and beamed proudly at the picture. “It’s inspired by the closing chapters of Predator’s Gold, in which His Worship does battle with the Huntsmen of Arkangel.”

“Who’s the girl?” asked Hester.

“You haven’t read Predator’s Gold?” asked the man, surprised. “That is Hester Shaw, the aviatrix who sells Anchorage to the Huntsmen. She redeems herself, the poor creature, by dying at Pennyroyal’s side, cut down by the chief of the Huntsmen, Piotr Masgard.”

Hester turned away quickly, climbing a dusty metal staircase toward the upper floor of the museum, barely seeing the displays she passed, her head filled with panicky, racing thoughts. Everything was ruined! Pennyroyal didn’t just know what she’d done, he’d written a book about it! There were paintings! Even if Pennyroyal had twisted the facts, the truth was still there, in black and white on the pages of his book. Hester Shaw had sold Anchorage to the Huntsmen. And when Tom found out…

Would he still love her if he knew what she was really like?

She reached the top of the stairs. The familiar smell was stronger up here, and Hester remembered suddenly what it was: a mixture of aviation fuel and lifting gas. She looked up.

The whole upper story was a single glass-roofed room, and in its center, on metal stanchions, sat an airship. It was old and tattered, and the name painted along its flank was The Arctic Roll, but Hester would have known that clinker-built gondola and those much-repaired Jeunet-Carot engine pods anywhere. She had lived in those narrow cabins for two years, and flown halfway around the world beneath that old red gasbag. It was the Jenny Haniver.

“Ugly old tub, ain’t she?”

Hester had not realized that the curator had followed her up the stairs, but here he was, standing just behind her and smiling amiably. “Hester Shaw bequeathed her to Professor Pennyroyal with her dying breath, and he flew her home to Brighton through polar storms and swarms of air pirates.”

A wooden walkway had been built beside the gondola. Half listening to the curator, Hester climbed the steps and peered in through the dusty windows, remembering the ship’s real history. There was the stern cabin, with the narrow bunk where she used to sleep with Tom. There was the pilot’s seat where she had spent so many long watches. There, on the scuffed planking of the flight-deck floor, Wren had been conceived…

She sniffed the air. “She smells ready to fly…”

“Yes indeed, madam. Aviatrix, are you?”

Hester looked round at him with a start, wondering if he had guessed who she was, but he was just being friendly. “Yes,” she said, and then, because he looked as if he wanted to know more, “I’m Captain Valentine of the Freya.”

“Ah!” said the curator, satisfied, and nodded to the Jenny again. “She’ll be leading the Flyby of Historic Ships tomorrow, Ms. Valentine.”

Hester touched the cool underside of an engine pod and imagined it roaring into life. She was starting to recover from her shock. After all, Tom knew that Pennyroyal was a liar. Why would he believe anything the old fraud said about her? Beneath her veil, she smiled her crooked smile.

“It should be a very fine display,” the curator was saying, smiling up at her. “There’s going to be a reenactment of one of Professor Pennyroyal’s most desperate adventures: a battle between The Arctic Roll and a bunch of old air tugs dressed up as pirate ships. Real rockets and everything…”

Hester looked around the big room. “How do you get her out?”

“Eh?” said the curator. “Oh, the roof opens. Opens right up, like a docking hangar. The mayor will just fly her out.”

Hester nodded, and checked the time by her pocket watch. She had forgotten her meeting with Tom, and she was already twenty minutes late. She went back downstairs, with the curator hurrying behind her. In the souvenir shop near the exit she helped herself to a copy of Predator’s Gold and flipped a couple of coins at him to pay for it.

“If I might make so bold, Ms. Valentine,” said the curator, rummaging in his cashbox for change, “I was wondering whether you might care to accompany me to the display tomorrow, and perhaps to dinner afterward?”

But when he looked up, the mysterious aviatrix was gone and the exit door was swinging softly shut.

Hester walked briskly across the Old Steine toward the cafe, stuffing Pennyroyal’s book into her pocket. The curator’s foolish, flattering request made her feel attractive and mysterious again, and the panic she had felt earlier had completely vanished. She knew now that everything would be all right. She would show Tom the book, and they would laugh together at all Pennyroyal’s lies about her. Then she would spring Wren from the slave pens, and they would reclaim the Jenny Haniver and fly away together.

The tables outside the cafe were busy, but there was still no Tom. She turned around, looking for him, annoyed. It was not like Tom to be late, and she wanted to tell him her plans.

“Hester?” asked one of the slave girls from the cafe, approaching with a folded piece of paper in her hand. “You are Hester, ain’t you? The gentleman said you’d be coming. He asked me to give you this.”

The paper was a handbill advertising the aquarium. On the back, in his neat handwriting, Tom had penciled, Dearest Het, I will see you back at the SW. Wren has been taken as a slave; I am going to a place called the Pepperpot to see about buying her back.

Chapter 24 The Requiem Vortex

The air fleet had made good time since leaving Shan Guo. They had crossed the sequined turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf and were sweeping westward now over the hills of Jabal Hammar. The four destroyers flew in line astern, and around them the air throbbed and tore with the roar of engine pods as an escort of fighter airships—Murasaki Fox Spirits and Zhang Chen Hawkmoths—scoured the sky for townie privateers.

Through a slit in the armored gondola of the Stalker Fang’s flagship, the Requiem