Philip Reeve: Infernal Devices

She put her arms around him, and this time he did not pull away, although he did not exactly hug her back. She kissed him and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. She hated fighting with him. And she hated Fishcake for making them argue like this. She hoped the other Lost Boys were already using his nitty little head for a football.

Theo and Wren had not waited for the Storm to recapture them. They were running away through the gardens when they heard the Stalker Fang’s death cry echoing between the trees.

“What was that?” Wren wondered, stopping, shocked by the awful, lonely sound.

“I don’t know,” said Theo. “Something bad, I think.”

They ducked into the shrubbery as another Green Storm squad went running past. The soldiers’ helmets blinked with orange light. Peeking behind her, Wren saw that the Pavilion was starting to burn.

“Theo] It’s on fire!”

“I know,” he said. He was standing near to her, near enough that, in the firelight, she could make out the goose pimples on his bare chest and see that he was shivering slightly in the chilly air. Suddenly he put his arms around her. “You should let the Storm take you, Wren. Cloud 9 is going down. You might be safer as a prisoner. I can’t let them take me, but you could. You should go back.”

“What about you?” she asked. “I can’t just leave you here.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said, and then said it again, trying to sound more certain about it: “I will be all right. This place is sinking slowly. It’ll come down in the desert, and I’ll try and make my way south; there’s a static settlement in the Tibesti Mountains, south of the sand sea. Maybe I could make it on foot.”

“No,” said Wren. She pulled herself away from him, because when he was holding her, her brain stopped working and she found herself wanting to agree with everything he said, but she knew deep down that he was talking rubbish. Even if he survived Cloud 9’s fall, setting out across the desert on foot would be suicide. “I’m staying with you,” she said. “We’re going to find a way off, and that’s final. Come on. We’ll head back to the aerodrome. Maybe there’s a flying machine that’s still usable…”

She set off through the smoky gardens, feeling unaccountably hopeful and rather pleased with herself, but when they reached the aerodrome again, she saw that it had been destroyed more completely than she’d realized. The Ferrets’ prefab hangars and barracks had been ripped open and scattered, and of the machines that had been caught on the ground only scorched shards remained. But among the ruins of the summerhouse where she had spoken to Orla Twombley the previous night, she found a couple of fleece-lined leather jackets hanging incongruously from a coat stand that still stood upright and undamaged amid the rubble. That seemed some sort of consolation. She threw one to Theo, who pulled it on gratefully, hanging up his silver wings like an angel banished from heaven.

Snuggling into the other jacket, Wren tried to think of a new plan. “All right,” she said. “Maybe we will end up in the desert. We’ll need water, and food. And a compass would be useful…”

Theo wasn’t listening. A rustling in the foliage beyond the ruins had caught his attention. He gestured for Wren to be quiet.

“Oh, gods!” she whispered. “Not the Storm again?”

But it was only Nimrod Pennyroyal. Shkin’s first shot had slammed against the Tin Book in his robe pocket, breaking several ribs, and the second had grazed his temple, knocking him out and covering one side of his face with blood, but he had regained his senses and dragged himself down to the aerodrome with the same idea as Wren and Theo, of finding some way off Cloud 9. Looking up plaintively at them from the shrubbery, he whispered, “Help!”

“Leave him,” said Theo as Wren went toward him.

“I can’t,” said Wren. She wished she could. After all the things he’d done, Pennyroyal didn’t deserve her help, but not helping him would make her as bad as he was. She knelt down beside him and tore a strip from the bottom of her tunic to bandage his head.

“Good girl,” Pennyroyal whimpered as she worked. “I think my leg’s broken, too, from when I fell… That devil Shkin! The beast! He shot me! Shot me and flew off!”

“Well, now you know how poor Tom Natsworthy felt,” said Wren. Blood soaked through her makeshift bandage as soon as it was in place. She wished she’d paid more attention to Mrs. Scabious’s first-aid lessons back in Vineland.

“That was entirely different,” Pennyroyal said. “It was— Great Poskitt! How do you know about Tom Natsworthy?”

“Because I’m his daughter,” said Wren. “What Shkin told you about me was true. Tom’s my dad. Hester’s my mother.”

Pennyroyal made gurgly noises, his eyes bulging with terror and pain. He watched Wren tear another strip of fabric from her clothes, looking as if he expected her to strangle him with it. “Isn’t there anybody on this flaming deck plate who is who they say they are?” he asked weakly, and went heavy and limp in Wren’s arms.

“Is he dead?” asked Theo, coming up behind her.

Wren shook her head. “It’s just a flesh wound, I think. He’s fainted. We have to help him, Theo. He saved us from Cynthia.”

“Yes, but only so he could get his hands on the Tin Book again,” said Theo. “Leave him. Maybe the Storm will find him and take him with them when they leave…”

But behind him, with a roar of aero-engines, Hawkmoths and Fox Spirits were beginning to rise from behind the trees, casting long shadows on the smoke as they threaded their way out through Cloud 9’s rigging. The Storm were leaving already.

Oenone Zero had been dragged out of her dreams by the stink of burning curtains. There was a pain in her head, and when she tried to breathe, sharp smoke caught at the back of her throat and made her choke and gasp and roll over onto her back.

Above her, flames were washing across the ornate ceiling of the ballroom in rippling waves, like some bright liquid. She pushed herself up, groping for her glasses, but her glasses were smashed, and the flames were rising all around her. Among them she saw the scattered pages of the Tin Book beginning to blacken.

She plunged through a swaying curtain of fire and out onto the terrace. It was a blur of smoke and firelight and running bodies, and as she reeled through it, looking for the stairs, General Naga barred her way. She backed away from him, tripped over a fallen Stalker, and sat down, helpless, in the path of the armored man.

“Dr. Zero?” he said. “This… this attack… it was your doing?”

Oenone knew that he was going to kill her. She was so full of fear that it came seeping out of her mouth in thin, high-pitched noises. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered a prayer to the god of the ruined chapel in Tienjing, because although she’d never had much time for gods, she thought that he must know what it meant to be frightened, and to suffer, and to die. And the fear left her, and she opened her eyes, and beyond the smoke the moon was flying, full and white, and she thought it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She smiled at General Naga and said, “Yes. It was me. I installed secret instructions in the Stalker Grike’s brain. I made him destroy her. It had to be done.”

Naga knelt, and his big metal hands gripped her head. He leaned forward and placed a clumsy kiss between her eyebrows. “Magnificent!” he said, as he helped her to stand. “Magnificent! Set a Stalker to kill a Stalker, eh?”

He led her away from the fire, through staring, flame-lit groups of shocked troops and aviators, out across the lawn toward the Requiem Vortex. He took a cloak from someone and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders. “You can’t imagine how long I’ve waited for this day!” he said. “Oh, she was a good leader in those first few years, but the war’s dragged on, and she keeps wasting men and ships as if they’re counters in a game. How long I’ve tried to think of a way… And you’ve done it! You’ve rid us of her! Your friend Mr. Grike has run off somewhere, by the way. Is he dangerous?”