Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

“Ten thousand when you deliver the ship here.”

“Ten thou — !”

“The Green Storm rewards its servants well,” the commander assured him. “But we punish those who betray us, too. If you breathe a word of this, or of what you have seen at the Facility, to anyone, we will find you, and kill you. Quite painfully. Do you understand?”

“Eep!” squeaked Blinkoe, turning his hat around and around in his hands. “Um, may I ask why? I mean, why this ship is so important? I thought she might have sentimental value, as a sort of symbol for the League, but she hardly seems worth-”

“She is worth what I am offering you.” The commander smiled for the first time; a thin, cold, pained little smile, like someone thanking a distant relative for attending a funeral. “The Jenny Haniver and the barbarians who stole her could be vital to our work here,” she said. “That is all you need to know. Find her and bring her to me, Mr Blinkoe.”

All Anchorage’s doctors were dead. The best nurse who could be found for Professor Pennyroyal was Windolene Pye of the Steering Committee, who had once done a first-aid course. Sitting by his bed in a luxurious guest room high in the Winter Palace, she held his wrist between her thin fingers, checking his pulse against her pocket watch.

“I believe he has simply fainted,” she announced. “Perhaps it was exhaustion, or delayed shock after his terrible adventures, poor gentleman.”

“How come we haven’t keeled over then?” Hester wanted to know. “We went through terrible adventures too, and you don’t see us swooning all over the place like maiden aunts.”

Miss Pye, who was a maiden aunt herself, gave Hester a hard stare. “I think you should leave the professor in peace. He requires silence and round-the-clock care. Shoo, now, all of you…”

Hester, Tom and Smew retreated into the corridor, and Windolene Pye closed the door firmly behind them. Tom said, “I expect he was just overcome. He spent years trying to get somebody to fund a second expedition to America, and to find out so suddenly that the margravine’s taking her whole city there…”

Hester laughed. “It’s impossible! She’s mad!”

“Miss Shaw!” gasped Smew. “How can you say such things? The margravine is our ruler, and the Ice Gods’ representative on earth. It was her ancestor, Dolly Rasmussen, who led the survivors of the first Anchorage out of America to safety. It’s only natural that it should fall to a Rasmussen to lead us home again.”

“I don’t know why you’re defending her,” Hester grumbled. “She treats you like something she found clinging to the sole of her shoe. And I hope you know you aren’t fooling anybody with all these costume changes. We can tell there’s only one of you.”

“I am not trying to fool anybody,” Smew replied, with immense dignity. “The margravine must be attended by certain servants and officials: chauffeurs, chefs, chamberlains, footmen, et cetera. Unfortunately, they are all dead. So I have had to step into the breach. I do my bit to keep the old traditions going.”

“And what were you before? A chauffeur or a chamberlain?”

“I was the margravine’s dwarf.”

“What did she need a dwarf for?”

“The margravine’s household has always had a dwarf. To amuse the margravine.”

“How?”

Smew shrugged. “By being short, I suppose.”

“Is that amusing?”

“It’s tradition, Miss Shaw. We have been glad of our traditions in Anchorage, since the plague came. Here are your rooms.”

He flung open the doors of two rooms a little further along the corridor from Pennyroyal’s. Each had long windows, a big bed, fat heating ducts. Each was about the size of the Jenny Haniver ’s entire gondola.

“They look lovely,” said Tom gratefully. “But we just need the one.”

“Out of the question,” said Smew, bustling into the first room to adjust the controls on the ducts. “It would be unheard of for unmarried young persons of the opposite gender to share a room in the Winter Palace. All manner of canoodling might occur. Quite out of the question.” A rattling inside one of the ducts distracted him for an instant, then he turned to Hester and Tom with a sly wink. “However, there’s a connecting door between these rooms, and if someone wished to slip through, why, nobody would ever know…”

But somebody knew almost everything that happened in Anchorage. Peering at their screens in the blue dark, the watchers saw a grainy, fish-eye view of Tom and Hester following the dwarf into the second room.

“She’s so ugly!”

“She doesn’t look too happy.”

“Who would, with a face like that?”

“No, it’s not that. She’s jealous. Didn’t you see the way Freya looked at her boyfriend?”

“I’m bored with this lot. Let’s hop.”

The picture changed, jumping to other views: the Aakiuqs in their living room, Scabious in his lonely house, the steady, patient work of the engine district and the agricultural quarter…

“Shouldn’t we send word to the Aakiuqs?” asked Tom, as Smew made his adjustments to the ducts in the second room and prepared to leave. “They might be expecting us back.”

“It’s already been done, sir,” said Smew. “You are guests of the House of Rasmussen now.”

“Mr Scabious won’t be too happy about that,” said Hester. “He didn’t seem to like us one bit.”

“Mr Scabious is a pessimistic man,” said Smew. “It is not his fault. He is a widower, and his only son Axel died in the plague. He has not borne the loss well. But he has no power to stop the margravine offering you her hospitality. You are both very welcome here in the Winter Palace. Just ring for a servant — oh, all right, me — if you need anything. Dinner will be at seven, but if you would please come down a little earlier, the margravine wishes to show you her Wunderkammer.”

Her what? thought Hester, but she was sick of looking stupid and ignorant in front of Tom, so she kept quiet. When Smew had gone they opened the connecting door and sat on Tom’s bed, bouncing up and down to test the springs.

“America!” said Tom. “Just think of it! She’s very brave, this Freya Rasmussen. Hardly any cities venture west of Greenland, and none have ever tried to reach the Dead Continent.”

“No, because it’s dead, ” said Hester sourly. “I don’t think I’d risk a whole city on one of Pennyroyal’s books.”

“Professor Pennyroyal knows what he’s talking about,” said Tom loyally. “Anyway, he’s not the only one to report green places in America.”

“All those old airman’s legends, you mean?”

“Well, yes. And Snori Ulvaeusson’s map.”

“The one you told me about? The one that conveniently vanished before anybody could check it out?”

“Are you saying the professor’s lying?” asked Tom.

Hester shook her head. She wasn’t sure what she was saying; only that she found it hard to accept Pennyroyal’s tale of virgin forests and noble savages. But who was she to doubt him? Pennyroyal was a famous explorer who’d written books, and Hester had never even read a book. Tom and Freya believed in him, and they knew much more about these things than her. It was just that she couldn’t equate the timid little man who had quivered and whined each time a rocket came near the Jenny Haniver with the brave explorer who fought off bears and befriended savage Americans.

“I’ll go and see Aakiuq tomorrow,” she said. “See if he can speed up work on the Jenny. ”

Tom nodded, but he wouldn’t look at her. “I like it here,” he said. “This city, I mean. It’s sad, but it’s lovely. It reminds me of the nicer bits of London. And it doesn’t go about eating other towns, like London did.”