Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

Sorry, no time to write more. Dad is over at the air chandler’s, and I promised him I would prep the Jeunet-Carots for takeoff before he gets back. Hopefully, by the time this reaches you, I will be safe in friendly skies again. If not, look for me in London.

Wren hesitated, then wrote carefully at the bottom of the page:

With love,

From Wren

She blotted the letter and started to read through it, then realized that if she did, she would lose her nerve and crumple it up, the way she had almost all her letters to Theo. She folded it quickly and slipped it into an envelope.

A few days earlier, while she was studying the price list in the window of a photographer’s shop at the Murnau Air Exchange, Professor Pennyroyal’s journalist friend Sampford Spiney had appeared and offered to photograph her for free. She had sat in the sunshine near the harbor mouth while his colleague, Miss Kropotkin, took half a dozen portraits, and Spiney chatted pleasantly and listened with interest to Wren’s account of her adventures in Brighton. She had done her best not to expose any of Pennyroyal’s fibs, though several times Spiney had picked up on something that contradicted one of the Professor’s accounts. “He does tend to exaggerate a little,” she admitted at last, and the reporter seemed quite satisfied.

The finished photographs had arrived at the Jenny ’s berth that morning. Wren thought they made her look grown-up and serious, and they didn’t show her spots too badly, so she slipped one into the envelope along with her letter before she sealed it. She liked the idea that Theo would have it to remember her by if they never met again.

Letter in hand, she set off through the busy harbor, making for the Air Exchange. She had not gone far when she met her father coming back from the chandlery, where he had been settling the Jenny’s account. She guessed the bill had been fairly enormous, for not only had the little ship been repainted and refueled and overhauled, but Dad had bought a new compass and altimeter and filled her holds and lockers with tinned food and bottled water, and laid in stocks of rope and envelope fabric, spare valves and hoses and engine parts, enormous rolls of camouflage netting, and everything he could think of that might be needed on a voyage into hostile territory. Still, it was affordable enough when you remembered what Wolf Kobold was paying them, and Dad didn’t look too shocked.

Wren waved to him, then remembered the letter and tried to hide it behind her.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Just a letter,” said Wren. “I was going to ask one of the balloon taxi men to—”

Tom took the letter and looked at the address. “Wren!” he cried. “Great Quirke! You can’t send this! If the Murnau authorities find out you’re writing to somebody in Zagwa, they’ll think you’re a spy, and we’ll both end up in a prison on the Niederrang!”

“But Murnau’s not at war with Zagwa! The Zagwans are neutral!”

“They’re still Anti-Tractionists.” Tom put one arm around her shoulders and started to lead her back to the Jenny. “I’m sorry, Wren.”

Just then, from a neighboring pan, they heard a loud, familiar voice. “Of course, I used to fly my own ships. Got quite expert at it, riding the Boreal hurricanoes and so forth. But I can’t be bothered on these little intercity hops. I remember a time in Nuevo-Maya when—”

Pennyroyal was strolling toward a smart and expensive-looking dirigible taxi, whose crew were waiting beside the gangplank for him to board. His companion, a handsome high Murnau lady in a dress that had probably cost more than the Jenny Haniver, was listening with great attention to his anecdote, and looked annoyed when he broke off to call out, “Tom! Wren! How are you, my dears? Have you met my dear friend Mrs. Kleingrothaus? We are just on our way up to Airhaven. We have been invited to dine with Dornier Lard, the airship magnate, aboard his sky yacht there.”

“Airhaven!” cried Wren. “Then you could take this letter for me, couldn’t you? Just leave it at the harbor office and ask them to put it aboard a ship bound for Africa.”

Pennyroyal glanced at the envelope as she pressed it into his hands, along with a silver coin to pay for postage. “Zagwa?” he hissed. “Good lord…”

“I know the Murnauers would not approve, but you aren’t afraid of them, are you?” urged Wren.

“Of course not!” said Pennyroyal at once, with a glance at his companion to make sure she understood how brave and helpful he was being. He tucked Wren’s letter into the innermost pocket of his coat and winked slyly at her. “Never fear, Wren! I shall make sure young Ngoni gets your billet-doux if I have to take it to him in person!” He looked at Tom. “I noticed at the Air Exchange that you are scheduled to leave Murnau tonight.”

Tom nodded. He knew that Pennyroyal wanted to know where the Jenny Haniver was bound, but he wasn’t planning to tell him.

“I heard a rumor that you were working for young Kobold?”

“We talked,” said Tom casually.

Pennyroyal nodded, beaming. “Excellent, excellent,” he said. “Well, we mustn’t keep Mr. Lard waiting, must we, dear?” He made his bow and wished Tom and Wren bon voyage, but as his lady friend strolled gracefully toward the waiting ship, he turned and called, “Don’t miss the June edition of The Speculum, Tom! Available at all good newsagents’, and the lead article is to be Spiney’s piece on me!”

Tom waved, wondering where he would be come June. The Speculum was published in several languages and sold aboard all sorts of different cities, but he didn’t think he would be able to buy a copy among the ruins of London.

Twenty miles away, at the westernmost edge of the Green Storm’s territory, General Jiang Xiang Naga stood on a fire step in a forward trench and studied the lights of Murnau through the brass eyepieces of a periscope. An aide twiddled the knobs on the periscope tripod and the instrument turned slowly, showing Naga the neighboring lights of smaller cities and countless suburbs, another Traktionstadt farther down the line.

“New cities are arriving almost daily from the west,” said one of the officers standing in the trench. “Intelligence says that even Manchester, one of the last great urbivores, is moving toward the Murnau cluster. Excellency, they are preparing an attack.”

“Nonsense, Colonel Yu,” snorted Naga, turning from the periscope. “They are trade towns, taking advantage of the truce to come and do business with those fighting cities.”

“Yes, to sell them fresh weapons and supplies!” insisted Yu. “This truce is providing the barbarians with a breathing space; a chance to rearm.”

“It is giving us the same chance,” said his neighbor, General Xao, a short woman with a creased yellow face like an old purse. She smiled. She had lost three sons to the Green Storm’s war, and it was a long time since anyone had seen her smile. “More than a month now, and nobody killed anywhere on the line,” she said. “Even if the townies break truce tomorrow, it will have been worth it. Listen.”

Naga listened. He could hear the low voices of soldiers in the neighboring trenches, the whisper of the breeze in his wolfskin cloak, and faintly, far off, the song of a bird. Was it a nightingale? He wished he knew. He would have liked to tell his wife, when she came home from Africa, “We heard a nightingale singing, right out there on the front line!” But he had been too busy all his life with war to study such things as birds. If the peace held, he thought suddenly, he would learn all about them; birds, and trees, and flowers. He would walk with Oenone in green meadows, and they would point out the birds and blossoms to each other, and he would be able to tell her what each was called…