deep dent in the cover, but it looked otherwise unharmed. The touch of it disgusted her. All the trouble it had caused! All the deaths! “I’m going to throw it into the sea’ she said, and ran with it across the smoldering, cratered airstrip toward the edge of the gardens.
But it was not the sea that she saw when she looked down over the handrail. Cloud 9 had drifted farther and faster than she had thought. The white wriggle of surf that marked the coast lay several miles away toward the north, with the lights and fires of the other cities strung out along it like pearls on a necklace. Below her, the hills of Africa lay stark beneath the moon.
And as she stood there staring at them, clutching the Tin Book in both hands, she heard running feet behind her, and turned to meet the torches and the upraised guns of a squad of soldiers. There were Stalkers too, one of whom seized hold of Theo, and a man who seemed almost a Stalker himself, a hawk-faced man in mechanized armor with a sword in his iron hand, who stepped in front of the others and said, “Don’t move! You are prisoners of the Green Storm!”
As the
He settled into the yacht’s comfortable seats and patted the case that lay on the deck beside him. Far ahead, the lights of the smaller cities twinkled in the desert night. He would set down on one of those until he was sure the Storm had finished with Brighton; then he would go and see what damage had been done to his business there. The Pepperpot would have been battered, no doubt. Servants and merchandise killed, probably. No matter— they were all insured. He hoped the boy Fishcake was still alive. But even without him, it should be possible to find Anchorage-in-Vineland and fill the holds of a slave ship or two…
He was still dreaming of Vineland when the raptors found him. They were part of a patrol flock set to guard the skies around Cloud 9. Shkin thought they were just a cloud as they came sweeping down on him, dimming the moonlight. Then he saw the flap and flutter of their wings, and an instant later the birds started slamming into the
Nabisco Shkin was not usually a man who let his emotions show, but there were a great many birds, and it seemed a terribly long way to the ground. He screamed all the way down.
Chapter 30
Captives of the Storm
The man in the mechanical armor was called Naga. Wren heard his men call him that as they took the Tin Book from her and started marching her back toward the Pavilion. It was a scary sort of name, and he looked pretty scary too, stomping along inside that hissing, grating exoskeleton, but he seemed civilized enough, and told his men off when they prodded Wren with their guns to make her walk faster. She was surprised, and relieved; she’d heard stories about the Storm shooting prisoners on sight. She thought about asking Naga what he meant to do with her, but she wasn’t quite brave enough. She glanced at Theo, hoping he’d explain what the Green Storm soldiers were saying to each other in their strange language, but Theo was walking with his head down and would not look at her.
They climbed one of the Pavilion’s outside stairways, past a walled garden where a crowd of captured slaves and party guests had been penned by a company of Stalkers. Boo-Boo Pennyroyal was there, trying to keep everybody’s spirits up with a rousing song, but it didn’t look to Wren as though it was working.
She assumed at first that she and Theo were being taken to join those other captives, but the soldiers kept them moving, past Pennyroyal’s swimming pool, which had emptied itself across the tilting deck in a broad wet stain. Outside the ballroom windows stood a Stalker far more frightening than the mindless, faceless brutes Wren had seen so far. He was big and gleaming, and his armored skull piece did not extend down to hide his face the way those of the others did, but left it partly bare; a dead white face, with a long gash of a mouth that twitched slightly as his green eyes lighted on Wren. She looked away quickly, horrified at catching the thing’s attention. Was he going to speak to her? Attack her? But he just returned Naga’s salute and stepped aside, letting the Stalkers and their captives past him into the ballroom.
Someone had got the lights working again. Medical orderlies were taking Cynthia out on a stretcher. Wren heard her groan as they carried her past and felt glad that her friend was still alive, then remembered that she had only been a fake friend, and wasn’t sure if she should be glad or not.
Up on the podium where the musicians should have been playing, a group of officers had gathered. Naga marched over to them and saluted smartly, making his report. The tallest of them turned to stare at the captives. Her face was a bronze death mask pierced by two glowing emerald eyes.
“Oh!” cried Theo.
Wren knew at once that this was the Stalker Fang. Who else could it be? She seemed to exude power; it crackled in the air about her like static electricity, making the small hairs on the back of Wren’s neck stand up on end. At her side she could feel Theo shaking as if he were in the presence of a goddess.
Naga said something else, and the Stalker stepped gracefully down from the podium, her eyes glowing more brightly as he drew the Tin Book from a hatch in his armor. Snatching it, she studied the symbols scratched into its cover and gave a long, shivery sigh of satisfaction. Naga pointed at Wren and Theo and asked something, but the Stalker waved his question away. Settling herself cross-legged in the rubble, she opened the Tin Book and began to read.
“What now?” muttered Theo. “I thought she’d want to question us…”
“I think Naga thought so too,” said Wren. But it seemed they had been forgotten by the Stalker Fang. The Green Storm troops were watching her as if waiting for more orders, but she was engrossed in the Tin Book. Naga muttered something to one of his companions. Then a woman—young and pretty, in a black version of the white uniforms the others wore—spoke to him, bowed, and jumped down from the podium, making her way to where the two prisoners waited. “You will please come with me,” she said in Anglish.
Wren felt relieved. This person looked less stern than the rest of the Green Storm landing party. DR. ZERO said the printed name tag on her uniform, under a pair of squiggly characters that Wren guessed would say the same in Shan Guonese. She looked far too young to be a doctor. Her tilted eyes and broad cheekbones reminded Wren of Inuit friends at home in Anchorage, and that cropped green hair suited her elfin face surprisingly. But there was no kindness in her voice. She took a gun from one of the troopers and leveled it at the two captives. “Outside, please. Now!”
They did as she said. As she herded them out onto the sundeck, Wren glanced up and saw the big Stalker watching her again. What had she done to interest him so? She looked away quickly, but she could still feel that green gaze following her.
Dr. Zero motioned with her gun for the prisoners to cross the sundeck and go down the stairs, as if she were taking them to join the others in the walled garden. But at the stairs’ foot, on a half-moon-shaped terrace out of sight and earshot of the ballroom, she suddenly stopped them and said in her soft, accented Anglish, “What is that thing the Stalker took from you?”
Wren said, “The Tin Book. The Tin Book of Anchorage…”
Dr. Zero frowned, as if the name were one she had not heard before.
“Isn’t it what you came here for?” asked Theo.
“Apparently. Who knows?” Dr. Zero shrugged and glanced back in the direction of the ballroom, lowering her
