Infernal Devices

said. Miss Freya’s library was one of Wren’s favorite places; a treasure cave filled with thousands and thousands of wonderful old books.

It had been on the upper floors of the Winter Palace once, but nobody lived on those floors now and Miss Freya had said it was a waste heating them just for the books’ sake, so the library had been moved downstairs…

“That’s why you can’t find what you want!” she said suddenly. “The books have all been rearranged since you were last here!”

Gargle nodded, smiling at her admiringly. “Quite right,” he said. “It could take our crab-cams weeks to find the right one, and we don’t have weeks to waste. So I was wondering, Miss Natsworthy, if you’d help us.”

Wren had just taken a slurp of chocolate. Anchorage’s supplies of chocolate had run out years ago, and she had forgotten how good it tasted, but when Gargle asked for her help she almost choked on it. “Me?” she spluttered. “I’m not a burglar…”

“I wouldn’t ask you to become one,” said Gargle. “But your father’s a clever man. Friendly with the margravine, from what I remember. I bet you could find out from him where the book we want might be. Just find it and tell me, and I’ll send Remora in to do the rest. It’s called the Tin Book.”

Wren had been about to refuse, but the fact that she had never heard of the book he named made her hesitate. She’d been expecting him to ask about one of Anchorage’s treasures: the great illuminated Acts of the Ice Gods, or Wormwold’s Historia Anchoragia. She said, “Who on earth would want a whole book about tin?”

Gargle laughed, as if she’d made a joke that he liked. “It’s not about tin,” he said. “That’s what it’s made of. Sheets of metal.”

Wren shook her head. She’d never seen anything like that. “Why do you want it?” she asked.

“Because we’re burglars, and I’ve learned that it’s valuable,” said Gargle.

“It must be! To come all this way…”

“There are people who collect such things: old books and things. We can trade it for stuff we need.” Gargle hesitated, still watching her, and then said earnestly, “Please, Wren, just ask your father. Always nosing about in museums and libraries, he was, when I knew him. He might know where the Tin Book is.”

Wren thought about it as she drank the rest of the chocolate. If he had been asking her for the illuminated Acts, or for some treasured classic, she would have said no at once. But a book made of metal, one that she’d never even heard of… it couldn’t be very important, could it? It would probably never be missed. And Gargle seemed to want it very badly.

“I’ll ask,” she said doubtfully.

“Thank you!” Gargle took her hands in his. His hands were warm, and his eyes were rather lovely. Wren thought how nice it would be to tell Tildy that she’d spent the small hours of the night drinking cocoa in the cabin of a dashing underwater pirate, and then remembered that she would never be able to tell Tildy or anybody else about Gargle and the Autolycus. That made it even nicer somehow. She had never had a proper secret before.

“I’ll meet you up in the trees on the hilltop around six tomorrow,” Gargle said. “Is that all right? You can get away?”

“That’s suppertime. I’d be missed. My mum…”

“Noon, then. Noon, or just after.”

“All right…”

“And for now—would you like Remora to walk you home?”

“I’ll find my way,” said Wren. “I often walk about in the dark.”

“We’ll make a Lost Girl of you yet,” said Gargle, and laughed to show her he was only joking. He stood up, and she stood up too, and they moved through the limpet’s passageways toward the exit ramp, the newbie Fishcake peeking out at them from the control cabin. Outside, the night was cold and the moon shone and the water was lapping against the shore as if nothing had happened. Wren waved and said good-bye and waved again, and then walked quickly up the beach and through the trees.

Gargle watched until she was out of sight. The girl Remora came and stood beside him, and slipped her hand into his. “You trust her?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe. It’s worth a try. We haven’t time to hang about here searching for the thing ourselves, and we can’t do much with the crab-cams in this dump. These Drys remember us. They’ll soon put two and two together if they start hearing the patter of tiny magnetic feet inside their air ducts. But don’t worry—I’ll tell Fishcake to set a couple on watch around Wren’s house, so we’ll know if she squeals to her people about us.”

“And what if she does?”

“Then we’ll kill them all,” said Gargle. “And I’ll let you do Wren yourself, with your pretty little knife.” And he kissed her, and they turned and went back aboard.

But Wren, knowing none of this, walked home with a giddy tumble of thoughts inside her head, half guilt, half pleasure, feeling as if she’d grown up more in the past few hours than in all the fifteen years that had gone before.

Chapter 4 The Legend of the Tin Book

The next day dawned fair, the sky above the lake harebell blue, the water clear as glass, each of the islands of Vineland sitting neat and still upon its own reflection. Wren, exhausted by her adventures in the night, slept late, but outside her window, Anchorage was waking up. Woodsmoke rose from the chimneys of the city’s thirty inhabited houses, and fishermen called out good morning to each other as they made their way down the stairways to the mooring beach.

On the north side of the lake rose a brindled mountain, far higher than the Dead Hills to the south. Its lower slopes were green with scrub and stands of pine and steep meadows where wildflowers grew, and in one of these meadows a group of deer was grazing. There were many deer in the woods on the green shore, and a few had even swum across to set up home upon the wilder islands. People had spent a lot of time debating how they had come here: whether they had survived since the fall of the old American Empire, or come down from the frozen country to the north, or made their way here from some larger pocket of green much farther west. But all Hester Natsworthy cared about, as she drew back her bowstring in the shelter of the trees downwind, was how much meat was on them.

The bow made a quick, soft sound. The deer leaped into the air and came down running, bounding uphill into the shelter of the scrub—all except the largest doe, who fell dead with Hester’s arrow in her heart and her thin legs kicking and kicking. Hester walked up the hill and pulled the arrow free, cleaning the point on a handful of dry grass before she replaced it in the quiver on her back. The blood was very bright in the sunlight. She dipped her finger in the wound and smeared some on her forehead, muttering her prayer to the Goddess of the Hunt so that the doe’s ghost would not come bothering her. Then she heaved the carcass onto her shoulder and started back down the hill to her boat.

Her fellow Vinelanders seldom hunted deer. They said it was because the fish and birds of the lake were meat enough, but Hester suspected it was because the deer’s pretty fur coats and big, dark eyes touched their soft hearts and spoiled their aim. Hester’s heart was not soft, and hunting was what she was best at. She enjoyed the stillness and solitude that she found in the morning woods, and sometimes she enjoyed being away from Wren.

Wistfully, Hester remembered the little laughing girl that Wren had once been, playing splish-splash on the lakeshore or snuggling on Hester’s lap while Hester sang to her. As Wren had looked lovingly up at her and run her chubby fingers over the old scar that split Hester’s face in half, Hester had thought that here at last was someone who could love her for what she was, and not care what she looked like. Because although Tom always said he didn’t care, Hester had never shaken off the faint fear that he must, deep down, want someone prettier than her.

But Wren had grown up, and there had come a day, when she was eight or nine, when she started to see