Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

Was it just his eyes playing tricks, or was something moving up there?

“Wren—” he said.

Wren had the safe door open. She reached in and drew out a battered black case. “Got it.”

“Wren!” Theo shoved her, knocking her sideways. She dropped the case, and had an impression as she fell of something white whirring past her. A blade struck the open door of the safe, hard enough to throw off sparks. Whatever it was scrabbled, turned, and came flapping at her as she sprawled on the floor. Wren glimpsed ragged wings, a curved steel beak, a glow of green eyes. Then Theo’s fan batted the thing sideways, slamming it hard against the wall. Wren heard something break. The flapping thing fell on the floor and kept on flapping, flailing small clawed feet like bunches of razors. Theo smacked at it with his fan. Whimpering, Wren groped across the desk, found the picture of Boo-Boo, and smashed it down hard on the creature’s head.

Theo helped Wren up. “All right?’ he asked shakily.

“I think so. You?”

“Yes.”

For a while after that, they didn’t speak. Theo’s arms were still around Wren, and her face was pressed against his shoulder. It was a nice shoulder, warm, with a pleasant smell, and she would have liked to stay like that for longer, but she made herself step away from him, shaking her head hard to clear away all the distracting thoughts that were trying to roost there. Feathers floated about in the moonlight.

“What was it?” she asked, nervously prodding the dead bird thing with her toe.

“A raptor,” said Theo. “A Resurrected bird. I thought only the Storm used them. It must have been set to keep watch on the safe.”

“How do you think old Pennyroyal got hold of it?” Wren wondered.

Theo shook his head, puzzled and worried. “Maybe it’s not Pennyroyal’s.”

“That’s silly,” said Wren. “Who else would want to guard his safe?” She picked up the black case and opened it. Inside, the Tin Book glinted faintly in the firework light from outside. It looked as dull as ever. It was hard to believe that it had caused so much trouble. She looked at Theo. “You go,” she told him. “I’ll tidy this place up and then find Shkin.”

Theo was staring at the Tin Book. He said, “I’ll help.”

“No.” Wren felt terribly grateful to him, and didn’t want to keep him here any longer than she had to. If they were discovered and Theo were punished for helping her, she would never forgive herself. “Go back downstairs,” she said. “I’ll follow in a minute or two. I’ll find you later.”

He started to object again, then seemed to see the sense in what she said. He nodded, looked thoughtfully at her for a moment, then took up his battered fan and left while Wren set to work. Gingerly she picked the dead bird up and stuffed it into one of the drawers of the desk, along with all the fallen feathers she could find. It had left a stain of oil or blood or something on the office floor, but there was nothing Wren could do about that. She pulled the Tin Book out of its case and replaced it with Boo-Boo’s broken picture, which was of a similar weight and size.

A sound came from the corridor, someone shouting something. Wren went very still, listening. The shouting sounded angry and scared, but Wren could not make out the words, and after a moment it stopped. “Theo?” said Wren aloud.

The office gave a sudden shudder, as if giant hands had shaken the Pavilion by the shoulders. The faint sound from the ballroom diminished as conversations faltered and the orchestra stopped playing. Wren imagined the musicians looking up from their scores in alarm. Then people laughed, and the music and chatter resumed, climbing quickly back to their former level, as if someone were turning up the volume on a recording of party sound effects.

“Just turbulence,” she told herself. Or maybe there had been some sort of problem with the engine pods; now that she thought about it, the shouts she had heard might well have been echoing up the little stairway from the control room. Relieved, she went back to work. She put the case back in the safe and closed it, then hung the Walmart Strange in front of it again. Lifting the back of her long tunic, she slipped the Tin Book under the waistband of her trousers. It would be safe there, she thought, but the metal struck cold against her bare back, and the wire binding kept scratching her.

She stepped out into the corridor and locked the door, replacing the key in its hiding place. “Theo?” she hissed. There was no answer. Of course not; he would be back in the ballroom by now, safe.

Then she glimpsed a movement from the corner of her eye. The door to the control-room staircase was open, swinging on its hinges with each faint movement of the building. She stood and stared at it, certain that it had been closed when she’d passed it with Theo a few minutes earlier. Had one of the men from the control room heard them crashing about in Pennyroyal’s office and come up to investigate?

The noise from the ballroom grew suddenly loud, and then faded again. Someone had come through the door at the far end of the corridor. Wren heard footsteps approaching quickly along the polished floor. At the place where the corridor bent, a shadow grew on the wall. Panicking, Wren started to move back toward Pennyroyal’s office, but there wasn’t time to find the key again, so she darted through the open control-room door and pulled it shut behind her.

She found herself in a shadowy little cubicle where iron stairs spiraled down through the floor. She knew that they went through the floor below as well, and through the deck plate beneath it, opening eventually into that little glass bubble that she had seen from the cable car on the day Shkin brought her to Cloud 9. She pressed her ear to the door and heard the footsteps go past out in the corridor.

She was about to breathe again when a voice from below her called, “Who’s there?”

The voice sounded frightened, and oddly familiar.

“Theo?” she said. A dizzy feeling of confusion swept over her. What would Theo be doing down there, in that control room full of Pennyroyal’s men? Had he been on Pennyroyal’s side all along? Had he gone to tell them about the slave girl who had just burgled their master’s safe?

“Wren,” the voice called, “something’s happened. I don’t know what to do…”

He did sound frightened. Deciding to trust him, Wren hurried down the tight spiral of stairs, with the Tin Book jabbing her in the small of her back at every step. She passed another entrance on the ground floor, and then descended through a shaft of white-painted metal, warty with rivets, that led down through the deck plate. Theo was looking up at her from the foot of the stairs, and he stood aside to let her step past him into the control room. Through its glass walls she could see the whole of Brighton beneath her, gaudy with MoonFest illuminations. All around, fireworks were bursting in the clear air, splashing the instrument panels with pink and amber light. It was probably the best view on Cloud 9, but it was wasted on the control room’s crew, who were slumped in their seats, dead. One of them still had a knife sticking out of his neck, an ordinary carving knife from the Pavilion kitchens with Pennyroyal’s crest on the handle.

“Oh, Quirke!” squeaked Wren, wishing she hadn’t eaten so many canapés. As she bent over to puke, a rush of thoughts swirled into her head. None of them were pleasant. Hadn’t Theo been coming from the direction of the kitchens when she ran into him last night? And now he was standing in a room full of men who’d been killed with a kitchen knife, and she was alone with him.

“It’s all right,” he said, and she squeaked again as he shyly touched her arm. He didn’t understand how scared of him she suddenly was. As she edged away from him, he said, “I mean, it’s not all right. Look.” He tugged at one of the big brass levers on the instrument panel. “Broken. All broken. And here…”