Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

Hester had met that fierce, dark stare before, for the commander was none other than the girl Sathya, Anna Fang’s fierce young protegee from Batmunkh Gompa. She did not feel particularly surprised. Ever since she reached Anchorage her life had taken on the strange logic of a dream, and it seemed only right that she should meet a familiar, unfriendly face here at the end of it. Two and a half years had passed since their last meeting, but Sathya seemed to have aged much more than that; her face was gaunt and stern, and in her dark eyes there was an expression that Hester couldn’t read, as if rage and guilt and pride and fear had all got mixed up inside her and turned into something new.

“Welcome to the Facility,” she said coldly.

Hester stared at her. “What is this place? Where is it? I didn’t think your lot had any bases left in the north, not since Spitzbergen got scoffed.”

Sathya only smiled. “You don’t know much about my lot, Miss Shaw. The High Council may have withdrawn League forces from the arctic theatre, but some of us do not accept defeat so calmly. The Green Storm maintain several bases in the north. Since you will not be leaving here alive, I can tell you that this facility is on Rogues’ Roost, an island some two hundred miles from the southern tip of Greenland.”

“Nice,” said Hester. “Come here for the weather, did you?”

Sathya slapped her hard, leaving her dazed and gasping. “These were the skies where Anna Fang grew up,” she said. “Her parents traded in these regions, before they were enslaved by Arkangel.”

“Right. Sentimental reasons, then,” muttered Hester. She tensed, expecting another blow, but it did not come. Sathya turned away from her towards the window.

“You destroyed one of our units over the Drachen Pass three weeks ago,” she said.

“Only because they attacked my ship,” Hester replied.

“She is not your ship,” the other girl snapped. “She is… She was Anna’s. You stole her, the night Anna died, you and your barbarian lover, Tom Natsworthy. Where is he, by the way? Don’t tell me he has abandoned you?”

Hester shrugged.

“So what were you doing alone aboard Arkangel?”

“Just betraying a few cities to the Huntsmen,” said Hester.

“I can believe that. Treachery is in your blood.”

Hester frowned. Had Sathya dragged her all the way here just to be rude about her parents? “If you mean I take after my mother, well, she was pretty stupid digging up MEDUSA, but I don’t think she actually betrayed anybody.”

“No,” Sathya agreed. “But your father…”

“My dad was a farmer,” cried Hester, feeling suddenly and strangely angry that this girl could stand there and insult the memory of her poor dead dad, who had never done anything but good.

“You are a liar,” said Sathya. “Your father was Thaddeus Valentine.”

Outside, snow fell like sifted icing sugar. Hester could see icebergs ploughing through the comfortless grey of the winter sea. In a tiny voice she said, “That isn’t true.”

Sathya pulled a sheet of writing-paper from the folder on her desk. “This is the report that Anna wrote for the League’s High Council, that day she brought you to Batmunkh Gompa. What does she say about you…? Ah, yes: Two young people: one an adorable young Apprentice Historian from London, quite harmless, the other a poor, disfigured girl who I am sure is the lost daughter of Pandora Rae and Thaddeus Valentine. ”

Hester said, “My dad was David Shaw, of Oak Island…”

“Your mother had many lovers before she married Shaw,” said Sathya, in a voice crisp with disapproval. “Valentine was one of them. You are his child. Anna would never have written such a thing if she had not been certain.”

“My dad was David Shaw,” snivelled Hester, but she knew it wasn’t true. She had known it in her heart these two years past, ever since her gaze met Valentine’s over the body of his dying daughter Katherine. Some sort of understanding had crackled between them then like electricity, a half-recognition that she had crushed as quick and as hard as she could, because she didn’t want him for a father. She had understood, though, deep down. No wonder she couldn’t bring herself to kill him!

“Anna was wrong about you, wasn’t she?” Sathya said, turning away, going to stand at the window. The snow had passed; patches of sunlight dappled the grey sea a lighter grey. She said, “You weren’t lost, and Tom wasn’t harmless. You were both in league with Valentine all along. You used Anna’s kindness to get inside Batmunkh Gompa and help him burn our Air-Fleet.”

“No!” said Hester.

“Yes. You lured Anna to a place where he could murder her, and then you stole her ship.”

Hester shook her head. “You’re so wrong!”

“Stop lying!” shouted Sathya, rounding on her again. There were tears in her eyes.

Hester tried to remember that night at Batmunkh Gompa. It had mostly been a blur of flames and running, but she had a feeling that Sathya had not acted very well. For all her fighting talk, Sathya had let her beloved Anna run off to tackle Valentine alone, and Valentine had killed her. Hester knew quite well that you didn’t forgive yourself for things like that. Instead you blotted out the memories, or sank into despair.

Or you found someone else to blame. Like Valentine’s daughter.

Sathya said, “You will pay for what you did. But first, perhaps, you can help to make amends.” She took a gun from her desk and gestured to a small door on the far side of her office. Hester walked towards it, not really caring where she went, or whether Sathya was going to shoot her. Valentine’s daughter, she kept thinking. Valentine’s daughter goes through a doorway. Valentine’s daughter goes down some iron steps. Valentine’s daughter. No wonder she had such a temper. No wonder she had been able to sell a city full of good people to Arkangel with barely a squeak from her conscience. She was Valentine’s daughter, and she took after Daddy.

The steps led to a tunnel, then a sort of antechamber. Two guards watched Hester coldly through the tinted glastic visors of their crab-shell helmets. A third man stood waiting beside a heavy steel door; a twitchy little pink-eyed rabbit of a man, gnawing nervously at his fingernails. The argon-lamps on the walls bounced bright reflections off his bald scalp. Between his eyebrows was a red wheel.

“He’s an Engineer!” said Hester. “A London Engineer! I thought they were all dead…”

“A few survived,” said Sathya. “After London exploded I was put in charge of the squadron sent out to round up survivors escaping from the wreck. Most were sent to slave-labour camps deep in League territory, but when I interrogated Dr Popjoy, and learned what his work had been, I realized he might be able to help us.”

“Help you with what? I thought the League hated Old-Tech?”

“There have always been some in the League who believed that to defeat the cities we should use their own infernal devices against them,” said Sathya. “After what you and your father did at Batmunkh Gompa their voices began to be heard more loudly. A secret society of young officers was formed; the Green Storm. When I told them about Popjoy they saw his potential at once, and agreed to let me set up this facility.”

The Engineer bared big yellow teeth in a nervous grin and said, “So this is Hester Shaw is it? She may be helpful. Yes, yes. Someone who was ‘in at the kill’, so to speak. Her presence in the Mnemonic Environment may provide just the trigger we’ve been seeking.”

“Get on with it,” snapped Sathya, and Hester saw that she, too, was extremely nervous.

Popjoy pulled a series of levers on the door, and the massive electro-magnetic locks released with hollow thuds and clangs, like docking clamps disengaging. The guards tensed, wraiths of steam scrolling from the funnels of their bulky machine-guns as they flipped the safety catches off. All this security wasn’t designed to keep people out, Hester realized. It was meant to keep something in.