Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

“Word must have reached Grimsby by now,” said Krill, one of the boys who’d been taken earlier, watching white-faced from his cage as the pens around him filled with captives. “Old Uncle will do something. He’ll rescue us.”

“Word has reached Grimsby,” said the new arrivals.

“That’s where we came from…”

“We picked up that message a couple of days ago.”

“Uncle said it was a trap and we shouldn’t listen, but we sneaked out anyway.”

“We thought our mums and dads would be here…”

Krill hung his head and started to cry. He had led raiding parties against static cities in the Western Archipelago, slaughtering any Dry who stood against him, but here in the Shkin Corporation’s warehouse he was just another lost teenager.

Wren reached through the bars and tugged at Fishcake’s sleeve. He had not spoken to Wren since they were brought in, and she guessed he blamed her for what had happened to him. Maybe he was right. If only she hadn’t been so keen to persuade him to come to Brighton!

“Fishcake,” she asked gently, “how many Lost Boys are there? All together, I mean.”

Fishcake would not look at her, but after a moment he muttered, “About sixty, I s’pose. That’s not counting Uncle and the newbies too young to ride limpets.”

“But there are at least forty of you here!” Wren said. “Grimsby must be nearly empty…”

The warehouse door rattled open, letting in another bunch of people. More prisoners, Wren thought, and didn’t even bother to look at them; it was too depressing. But the sound of tramping feet stopped beside her cage, and she glanced up to see that the newcomers were not Lost Boys, just two Shkin Corporation guards and the odious Miss Weems.

“Fetch her out,” Miss Weems commanded. Wren was alarmed. Had Miss Weems finally accepted that she was not a Lost Girl? Perhaps the Shkin Corporation had realized that she would never cut the mustard in those Nuevo-Mayan arenas and were planning to throw her overboard rather than waste any more food and water keeping her alive?

“The master wishes to see you,” said Miss Weems. The captive Lost Boys watched from their cages as Wren was led away.

A door behind the slave pens opened onto a room no bigger than a cupboard. The guards shoved Wren inside, then crowded in behind her. It was only when Miss Weems pulled a lever on the wall and Wren felt the floor jerk under her that she realized this was an elevator. The elevators of Anchorage had all been out of order for years, but this one was working perfectly: It rose so fast that Wren felt as if her stomach had been left behind.

Having been dragged to the slave pens in a net, Wren did not really understand the layout of the Shkin Corporation building. It was a tower whose lower stories, down in Brighton’s depths, held the captive slaves. The middle floors, on the city’s second tier, housed a few special cells for luxury goods and the offices of administrators. The higher levels, which poked up through the resort’s top tier in a fashionable district called Queen’s Park, were the offices of the Corporation’s founder, Mr. Nabisco Shkin. This topmost part was as white and beautiful as any iceberg, and gave no hint of the dangerous nine tenths that lurked below. Local people called the tower the Pepperpot.

The elevator stopped on the top floor, and Wren stepped out into a large, circular room. It was beautifully furnished, with plush black draperies, black carpets, and black pictures in golden frames hanging on the black walls. But what made Wren catch her breath was the view from the windows. She was looking out over the rooftops of Brighton: The sun was shining, bright flags were flying, sky yachts and air pedalos were rising from the harbor, and legions of gulls were wheeling and soaring around the chimney pots and far out over the sparkling sea. Spray from the paddle wheels blew across the city on a gentle breeze, and the sunlight shining through it filled the streets with drifting rainbows.

For a moment Wren almost forgot her misery, her hunger, the pain of her branded hand. Joy bubbled up in her. She was on a raft city, on one of the wonderful cities she had always dreamed about, and it was even more beautiful than she could have hoped.

“The girl, Mr. Shkin,” announced Miss Weems with an ingratiating whine in her voice that Wren had not heard before. One of the guards turned Wren around to face a man who sat quietly watching her from a black swivel chair.

Nabisco Shkin sat very still, one leg crossed over the other, one patent leather shoe blinking with reflected light as his foot tapped ever so slightly up and down, his only movement. A dove-gray suit; gray gloves; gray hair; gray eyes; gray face; gray voice. He said, “I am delighted to meet you, my dear,” but he didn’t sound delighted. Didn’t look it either. Didn’t look as if he’d know what delight was. He said, “Monica tells me that you claim to come from Anchorage.”

“I do!” cried Wren, grateful that someone was prepared to listen to her at last. “My name is Wren Natsworthy, and I was kidnapped—”

“Nobody comes from Anchorage.” Shkin stood up and circled her. His eyes were on her all the time. “Anchorage sank years ago, west of Greenland.”

“No, it didn’t!” blurted Wren. “It—”

Shkin raised one finger and turned to his desk. Turned back with something in his hands. It was the book that Wren had stolen from Miss Freya. She had forgotten all about it until now.

“What is this?” he asked.

“That’s the Tin Book,” she said. “Just an old curio from the Black Centuries. It’s why the Autolycus came to Anchorage. I think it’s got something to do with submarines. I helped the Lost Boys steal it, but it all went wrong and Fishcake ended up taking me hostage, and if you could take me back there, sir, I’m sure my mum and dad and Miss Freya would reward you…”

“Anchorage again.” Shkin put the book down and studied her. “Why do you persist in this ridiculous story? Anchorage is home to no one but fish. Everyone in Brighton knows that. Our beloved Mayor Pennyroyal made rather a lot of money with his book about its final days. Predator’s Gold ends with Anchorage sinking to what our ever-original mayor describes as ‘a watery grave.’ ”

“Well, Pennyroyal’s a liar!” Wren said angrily, thinking how unfair it was that Pennyroyal should have survived at all, let alone grown rich from his fibs. “He’s a coward and a liar, and he shot my dad and stole Mum and Dad’s airship so he could run away from Anchorage when he thought Arkangel was going to eat it. He can’t possibly know what happened after that. Whatever he wrote, he must have made it up.”

Nabisco Shkin raised one gray eyebrow about an eighth of an inch, which was his way of showing surprise. At the same instant, Wren had an idea. She was the only person in the whole of the outside world who knew the truth about Anchorage. Surely that must make her valuable? Far too valuable to be auctioned off with the rest of the Lost Boys as an arena slave!

She felt as if a tiny door had opened very far away from her, on the other side of an enormous, darkened room; she could see a way out.

She said, “Anchorage found its way to a green bit on the Dead Continent. It has thrived there, and I’m proof of it. Don’t you think Pennyroyal would like to know that?”

Nabisco Shkin had been about to silence her again, but when she said that, he hesitated, and his eyebrow shot up a full quarter inch. He settled into his chair again, his eyes still fixed on Wren. “Explain,” he said.

“Well, he’ll want to know about Anchorage, won’t he?” Wren stammered. “I mean, if he’s made all that money telling people about us, think how interested he’ll be to learn what really happened. He could write a sequel! He could have an expedition to take me home, and write a book about it!” And even if he couldn’t, she thought, at least life as a slave in this floaty palace thing would be better than the arenas of Nuevo-Maya. She said eagerly, “He’ll be dying to talk to me.”