Philip Reeve - Infernal Devices

On the main control desk was a fat red lever, encased in a glass box and surrounded with exclamation marks and warnings that it should be used only in an emergency. Someone had used it anyway, breaking the glass to get at it.

“What does that do?” asked Wren, but she already knew, because Brighton looked smaller than it had when she’d entered the control room, and the bangs of the bursting fireworks were growing fainter and fainter.

“Explosive bolts,” said Theo. “They’re meant to sever the cables in case Brighton sinks or something. Didn’t you feel that lurch? Wren, somebody’s cut the towropes! We’re adrift!”

Wren stared at him, appalled, and in the silence she could clearly hear the sounds of the party continuing upstairs. She and Theo were probably the only people on Cloud 9 who knew what had happened.

“Theo,” she said, “you can have the book.”

“What?”

She pulled it out of her trousers and held it out to him. Her hands were shaking, making the reflections from the metal cover dance across his puzzled face. “Wren,” he said, “you don’t think I could do this? Even if I could, why would I?”

“Because you’re after the book, like everybody else,” said Wren. “You’re a Green Storm agent, aren’t you? I knew there was something strange about you! I bet you got yourself captured deliberately so that you could get into the Pavilion and spy on us all. I bet you left that gull to watch over the safe, and now you’ve set Cloud 9 adrift so that you can murder everybody and make off with the Tin Book! That’s why you wouldn’t help me steal the Peewit, wasn’t it? So you could escape in her yourself, once you had the book!”

“Wren!” shouted Theo. “You’re not thinking!” He caught her as she tried to dash past him to the stairs, caught her by both arms and looked earnestly into her face. “If I wanted that damned Tin Book, why would I have let you steal it? I would have let the gull kill you back in Pennyroyal’s office, and taken it for myself. For all I know, you could be the Green Storm agent. You’re so keen to get this book, and you were sneaking around when Plovery was killed too. One minute you’re a Lost Girl and the next you’re not… You could be the one who did this!”

“I’m not! I didn’t!” Wren gasped.

“Well, nor did I.” Theo let her go. She edged backward, trembling, still clutching the Tin Book.

“I was on my way back to the ballroom when I heard someone shout for help,” said Theo. “I opened the door and called down to ask if everything was all right. There was no answer, but I thought I heard someone moving about, so I came down. When I got here, they were all dead. I saw that the cable had been cut, and I was going to go and raise the alarm, but I was afraid that you were still upstairs and someone would find you.” He shuddered and ran his hand over his face.

“There was someone upstairs,” said Wren, remembering the footsteps, the shadow. “I heard them go past the door. There’s nothing else along that corridor but Pennyroyal’s office. They must have been after the same thing as us. The Tin Book.”

Theo stared at her. “That would fit. They came down here first and did this, but before they could go up the stairs to the office, they heard me coming down. They couldn’t risk killing me too, in case I was a guest who’d be missed, so they slunk out through the kitchens and then cut back by the ballroom and up to the office that way… But why cut us adrift? Why not just take the book?”

Wren tried to be sick again, but her stomach was empty. “They almost saw me!” she whimpered. “If I hadn’t hidden in time, they’d have killed me like they did these men…”

Theo reached out for her but wasn’t sure if she would want him to touch her. “So you don’t still think I did it?” he asked.

Wren shook her head and went gratefully to him, hiding her face against his chest. “Theo, I’m sorry…”

“It’s all right,” he told her gently. Then he said, “As for last night, I just couldn’t sleep. I went to the shrine to say prayers for my mother and father and my sisters. It was a year ago, last Moon Festival, that I left Zagwa. Slipped out of my parents’ house while everyone was celebrating, and stowed away on a freighter, off to Shan Guo to join the Green Storm. All the preparations yesterday just made me wonder what they were doing now; whether my parents have forgiven me; whether they miss me…”

“I bet they do,” said Wren. She turned away and leaned against the window, pressing her face to the cool glass. “That’s what parents do. They forgive us and miss us, no matter what we’ve done. Look at my dad, coming all this way to find me…”

She looked toward Brighton, longing for her father. Fireworks spurted into the sky from somewhere in Montpelier, bursting in bright stars of red and gold. Wren watched them fade as they drifted slantwise down the wind, and then her eye was caught by another movement. She turned her head. There was only the sea: a shifting, sliding pattern of moonlight. But what was that? That long shadow slipping across the wave tops?

Her view was blotted out by something vast and pale. Huge engine pods slid by, followed by the open gunports of an armored gondola. Wren saw men wearing goggles and crab-shell helmets standing in gun emplacements that jutted out on gantries, and then tall steering vanes, each emblazoned with a jagged green lightning bolt. “Theo!” she screamed.

Twenty feet from where they stood, an immense air destroyer was speeding past Cloud 9.

In a cell somewhere beneath the Pepperpot’s well-appointed reception area, Tom lay half dazed, feeling his face swell where Shkin’s heavies had hit him, and fearing for Wren. It had been enough at first just to know that she was alive. He didn’t mind too much what happened to him, as long as Wren was safe. But was Wren safe? Shkin’s men had told him she’d been sold to Pennyroyal, of all people. Pennyroyal was not a bad man, but he was selfish, and thoughtless, and unscrupulous, and he had once shot Tom in the heart. The old wound hurt Tom again as he lay on the bunk, waiting for something to happen. His chest ached, and he wasn’t sure if the ache was real or just his body’s memory of the bullet.

He had quickly lost track of time in this bland, window-less room, where a loop of argon tube glowed on the beige ceiling like a halo. He had no idea whether it was night or day when the door finally rattled open.

“Brought you something to eat, Mr. Natsworthy,” said a small voice. “And this.”

Tom rolled off the bunk and sat up, rubbing his bruised face. The boy Fishcake stood in the doorway, holding a tray with a bowl and a tin cup. A few feet of drab beige corridor were visible behind him. Tom thought vaguely about escape, but his chest hurt too much. He watched as Fishcake advanced toward him and set the tray down on the floor.

“I swapped shifts with someone so I could come and see you,” the boy confessed. “It was easy. All the others want the night off, ’cos it’s Moon Festival. That’s what all the bangs and crashes are about.”

Tom listened, and heard faintly the noise of fireworks and gongs from the streets outside.

“I’m sorry you got caught, Mr. Natsworthy,” Fishcake admitted. “Wren was very nice to me. So I thought you’d want to see this.”

He took a crumpled page of newspaper from the pocket of his uniform and held it out for Tom to read. The Palimpsest. And there, in the photograph beneath the headline, kneeling among a group of other girls around a large woman with enormous hair…

“That’s Wren, ain’t it?” said Fishcake. “See? I thought you’d want to know she’s all right. It’s a good life, they say, being a house slave up on Cloud 9. Look: She’s got a fancy frock and a new hairdo and everything.”