Infernal Devices

Numbly, Wren fetched the Tin Book out from beneath her tunic and held it up for Cynthia to see. Cynthia snatched it and stepped back. “Thank you,” she said, with a trace of her old sweetness. “The Stalker Fang will be delighted.”

“She sent you here to find it?” asked Wren, confused. “But how did she know… ?”

Cynthia beamed. “Oh, no. She believed it was still in Anchorage. She sent an expedition to the place where Pennyroyal said Anchorage went down, but there was nothing there. So I was placed aboard Cloud 9 to spy on him, in case he knew what had really become of it. I could hardly believe my luck when I heard that you had brought the Tin Book itself aboard! I sent a message to the Jade Pagoda at once, and orders came back telling me to leave it safe in Pennyroyal’s office until help arrived. It is important. It may be the key to a final victory. My mistress does not want it copied, or sent by the usual channels. She is coming to fetch it in person. That is her ship out there on the lawn.” She looked down fondly at the Tin Book. “She will reward me well when I give it to her.”

The gunfire from the gardens had ceased. Wren could hear voices out on the sundeck, shouting orders in a language she didn’t recognize. She stepped toward Cynthia, wary of the gun in the other girl’s hand. “Please,” she said, “you’ve got the Tin Book. Can’t you let us go? If the Storm catch Theo…”

“They will kill him like the coward he is,” said Cynthia calmly. “I’d do it myself, but I’m sure my mistress will want to question you both first and find out how much you know about the book.”

“We don’t know anything about it!” cried Theo.

“That’s your story, African. You may decide to change it once the inquiry engines get to work on you.”

“But Cynthia…” Wren shook her head, still numb with the shock of Cynthia’s betrayal. “I don’t suppose Cynthia’s even your real name, is it?”

The other girl looked surprised. “Of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Well, it’s not very spy-ish,” said Wren.

“Oh? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, nothing… just—”

A bulging suitcase, dropped from the gallery above, hit Cynthia on the head and burst open, scattering gold coins, jewelery and valuable-looking bits of Old Tech. “Oh—” said the girl, crumpling. Her gun went off and punched a hole in the ceiling somewhere above Wren’s head. Theo grabbed Wren and tugged her backward, afraid that there might be more luggage to follow, but when they looked up, they saw only the round, pale face of Nimrod Pennyroyal peering down over the banisters.

“Is she out?” he asked nervously.

Wren went to stoop over Cynthia. There was blood in the girl’s hair, and when Wren touched her neck she could feel no pulse, but she didn’t know if she was feeling in the right place. She said, “I think she might be dead.”

Pennyroyal hurried down the stairs. “Nonsense—it was only a playful little tap. Anyway, she’s an enemy agent, isn’t she? Probably would have killed the pair of you if it weren’t for my quick thinking. I was just upstairs, gathering a few valuables, and I heard you talking.” He chuckled as he prized the book from Cynthia’s fingers. “What a stroke of luck! I thought I’d lost this. Now come along, help me gather up the rest.”

Wren and Theo began to do as he asked. Pennyroyal, perhaps afraid that they would try to rob him, picked up Cynthia’s gun and held it ready while he stuffed coins and statuettes and ancient artifacts back inside the case and sat on the lid to force it shut. The shouting outside drew nearer as Green Storm soldiers, attracted by the sound of the gunshot, converged on the ballroom. “There!” said Pennyroyal. “Now, ho for the boathouse! I tell you what, if you help me carry this lot, you can both come with me. But hurry up!”

“You can’t just leave,” protested Wren, trailing after him through the listing corridors while Theo stuggled along with the suitcase. “What about your people?”

“Oh, them,” said Pennyroyal dismissively.

“What about your wife? She’s probably a prisoner by now…”

“Yes, poor Boo-Boo…” Pennyroyal pushed open a door and led them out into the gardens at the rear of the Pavilion. “I shall miss her, of course—terrible loss—but time is a great healer. Anyway, I can’t risk my neck trying to rescue her. I owe it to the reading public to save myself, so that the world can hear my account of the Battle of Brighton and my heroic stand against the Storm…”

They hurried through the gardens, Pennyroyal in the lead, Wren and Theo taking turns with the suitcase. The Storm’s troops had not reached this part of Cloud 9 yet; nothing moved among the cypress groves and pergola- covered walks. Smoke drifted from the wreckage of the Flying Ferrets’ aerodrome, but the Green Storm must have thought Pennyroyal’s boathouse an unworthy target, for it still stood unharmed among the trees, bulbous and comical, specks of firelight glinting on its daft copper spines.

“I can hear engines,” said Theo as they made their way through the trees onto the landing apron in front of the boathouse. “Someone’s opened the doors…”

“Great Poskitt Almighty!” shouted Pennyroyal.

The Peewit sat poised in the open doorway, her engines purring as they warmed up for takeoff. The lights were on in her gondola, and Wren could see Nabisco Shkin at the controls. He must have given up waiting for her to bring him the Tin Book and decided to cut his losses and save his own skin. She hung back, scared of him, but Pennyroyal put on a last spurt of speed, charging toward the yacht. “Shkin! It’s me! Your old friend Pennyroyal!”

Shkin swung himself out through the hatch in the side of the Peewit’s sleek gondola and shot Pennyroyal twice with a pistol he pulled from inside his robes. Wren saw an exclamation mark of blood fly upward into the glare of the yacht’s lights. Pennyroyal did an ungainly somersault and crashed against a heap of hawsers and was still.

“Oh, gods,” whispered Wren. Pennyroyal was so much a part of her life from all the stories she had heard in Anchorage that she had imagined he was indestructible.

Shkin stepped down from the gondola and strode toward them with his gun held ready. “Do you have my book?” he asked.

“No,” said Theo before Wren could answer. “The Storm took it.”

“Then what’s in the suitcase?” asked Shkin, and Theo opened it so that he could see. The slaver smiled his cold gray smile. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” he said. “Close the case and hand it to me.”

Theo did as he was told. Shkin’s chilly eyes slid toward Wren again.

“Now what?” she asked. “You’ll shoot us, I suppose?”

“Good gods, no!” Shkin looked genuinely shocked. “I am not a murderer, child. I am a businessman. What profit would I make by killing you? It’s true you managed to annoy me, but it sounds as if our friends from the Green Storm will soon be arriving to teach you some manners.”

Wren listened, and heard harsh foreign voices drifting across the garden. Lights were moving among the trees behind the boathouse. She wanted to ask Shkin about her father, but he had already heaved Pennyroyal’s case aboard the Peewit and was climbing in after it. The engines roared.

“No!” screamed Wren. She couldn’t believe that the gods were really going to let that villain Shkin fly away unscathed. But the Peewit’s docking clamps released, and she rose from the boathouse floor, engine pods swinging neatly into takeoff position. “It’s not fair!” howled Wren, and then, “The book! We’ve got the book! Theo lied! Take us with you and I’ll give you the book!”

Shkin heard her voice, but not her words. He glanced down at her and smiled his faint smile, then turned his attention to the controls again. The yacht sped across its landing apron, passed between two clumps of trees that bowed aside to let it through, and rose gracefully into the sky.

“It’s not fair!” Wren said again. She was sick of Shkin, and sick of being afraid. She understood why Mum and Dad had never wanted to talk about the adventures they had had. If she survived, she would never even want to think about this awful night.

“Why did you lie about the book?” she asked Theo. “He might have taken us with him if we’d given him the book.”

“He wouldn’t,” said Theo. “Anyway, if everybody wants it so badly, it must be something dangerous. We can’t let a man like Shkin get his hands on it.”

Wren sniffed. “Nobody should have it,” she said. She walked to where Pennyroyal lay and gingerly fetched the Tin Book out from inside the mayor’s torn robes. One of Shkin’s bullets had made a