Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

“Now, Len,” said the lady Engineer in a warning voice.

“The Green Storm must know that you’re here,” said Wolf. “All these windmills and fields and so forth. They must have seen you.”

“I suppose so,” said Clytie Potts.

“Yet they choose to leave you in peace. Perhaps they think you are Anti-Tractionists, like them?”

“Well, they’d be wrong then,” said Angie’s father, sensing the challenge in Kobold’s question and bristling. “They don’t know our plans, no more than you do…”

“Len,” said Dr. Childermass, and Chudleigh Pomeroy cut in hurriedly to say, “Anyway, now that young Natsworthy and his chums are here, we’d best make them comfortable; decide where they’re to stay and so forth.”

“Oh ; we don’t want to trouble you,” Kobold told him. “We’ll just stop a few days, have a nose about, and then head back to the Jenny Haniver.”

“But you can’t leave so soon!” protested Pomeroy. “You’ve only just got here!”

“What he means is, you can’t leave at all,” said Mr. Garamond, who had been listening impatiently to all this from his perch near the door. “These are important times for London. We can’t risk having you tell somebody we’re here.”

“Come, Garamond,” said Pomeroy, “Mr. Natsworthy is a Londoner like us!”

“That’s as may be, but his daughter isn’t, and as for this other gentleman … As head of the Security Subcommittee I have a duty to point out that we don’t know them, and we can’t trust them.”

“Hear, hear,” said Angie’s father, nodding vigorously. “It’d be a right shame if we hung on here for all these years only for some nosey parker to go and squeal about us to a scavenger just when we’re about ready to—”

“Len!” snapped Dr. Childermass.

“But I’m afraid Garamond’s right,” said Pomeroy apologetically. “I think it would be best if our young people keep a twenty-four-hour guard on the Holloway Road and the airship park. Tom, Wren, Herr Kobold, I hope you will consider yourselves our guests, but I’m afraid that there is absolutely no question of you leaving. Another biscuit, anyone?”

Sixty miles beyond dead london, where the young mountains of Shan Guo rose steeply from the plains, stood the fortress city of Batmunkh Gompa. It guarded a pass through which, for centuries, Traction Cities had kept trying to break into the fertile Anti-Tractionist kingdoms of the east. But now that the Green Storm had pushed their frontier westward, it had become a sleepy, faded shadow of itself, like a harbor from which the sea had retreated. A small garrison still manned the Shield-Wall, but the city served mainly as a base where armies and supply convoys paused on their way west to the new battlefields of the line.

In the valley behind it, along the pleasant shores of the lake called Batmunkh Nor, lay stilted fishing lodges and the pretty, steep-roofed villas and weekend homes of senior Green Storm officials. One, prettier than the rest, stood among pine trees on a finger of land pointing out into the lake. The lights in its teardrop windows made long reflections in the water, and the roofs curled at each corner like the toes of a sultan’s slippers in a fairy tale. Anyone bold enough to peek between the bars of its high spiked gates would notice some curious statuary in the gardens and a nameplate beside the paved drive that read:

It was the home of another survivor of MEDUSA: Dr. Popjoy, late of the Guild of Engineers, and more recently head of the Resurrection Corps. The villa was his reward from the Storm for all the armies he had built them.

“That is the house,” said Fishcake’s Stalker, when he described what he could see as they came down the mountain road that night. “When Sathya was stationed at Batmunkh Gompa, we went for boat trips on the lake and looked at that house from the water. It belonged to an artist then; a master calligrapher. Sathya used to say that when she was old and rich, she would live there herself.”

Fishcake stopped at the last steep turn of the road above the lakeshore. He was cold and tired, footsore after the long trek from the hermitage, and very afraid that they would be challenged as they neared the outskirts of the city. He had insisted on walking most of the way, although his Stalker had offered to carry him, because he did not want her to think that he was weak. An ache had begun in the back of his knees after a few miles, and had now spread to every part of him, making it hard to walk at all. He knew that he should be happy that the journey was over, but he just felt afraid.

When his Stalker turned to find out why his footsteps had stopped, he said, “Don’t go down there.”

“But Popjoy can mend me,” she whispered. “Then I will be Anna all the time.”

“You don’t need him!” Fishcake said. It seemed to him that she was mended already. She had been Anna ever since the day they’d climbed up onto Zhan Shan. He was dimly starting to understand that the Anna part of her was made stronger by memories; the fluttering flags written with prayers to her old gods had woken her again, and the familiar mountains and the talks with Sathya had made her stronger than ever; perhaps the Stalker Fang part had been crushed for good. Why risk trusting this Popjoy person?

But he was too tired and shivery to explain all that to his Stalker. She came and picked him up and said, “Don’t be afraid, Fishcake. Dr. Popjoy will mend me, and then we shall go back to Sathya. Now be my eyes again, and tell me, is there anyone about?”

There was no one, and no one challenged them as she carried him to Popjoy’s gate. It was late. Batmunkh Gompa was a glittering curtain of lights drawn across the sky beyond the lake. Snow was falling, flakes patting Fishcake’s face like chilly little fingers; like the cold fingers of the ghosts of children.

The Stalker set Fishcake down and smashed the gate’s strong locks and Fishcake pushed them open, looking nervously at the lighted windows of the house that showed through the trees at the far end of a long drive. His Stalker took his hand as they stepped together through the gateway, the gate swinging shut behind them. “We shall ask Dr. Popjoy to give you some food before he works on me,” she promised.

“What if he won’t?” asked Fishcake. “Work on you, I mean?”

“I will make him,” whispered the Stalker. “Don’t worry, Fishcake.”

Fishcake looked again toward the house, and put a hand into his pocket to clasp the little horse she’d made him. He still didn’t want his Stalker to put herself at the mercy of this sinister-sounding Engineer. He almost pulled her back through the gate, but already it was too late. In the garden ahead, where shadows lapped beneath the trees, things were moving. Spiky shapes that had looked like statues suddenly turned their heads; green eyes lit like flames.

“Stalkers!” whispered Fishcake’s Stalker, hearing the clank and hiss as they came to life. She sounded scared.

“But you’re a Stalker,” Fishcake said.

“Oh, so I am. Thank you, Fishcake. I forget sometimes…” She pushed him gently behind her, out of harm’s way, and unsheathed her claws.

The house had three guardians; big, polished battle-Stalkers customized by Dr. Popjoy, finned and spiked like heraldic dinosaurs. Light silvered their spade-shaped, featureless faces as they loped across the snowy lawns. Fishcake’s Stalker limped toward them. They were stronger, but she was cleverer. She dodged their clumsy, flailing blows. Her blades flashed as she drove them through the couplings of each Stalker’s neck in turn. Sparks spewed and fluids squirted. The beheaded bodies lurched aimlessly about, colliding with one another and falling over, thrashing and clattering on the flagged path as Fishcake’s Stalker turned toward him. She reached out to him with one hand and then snatched it away, touching her own face. Her sightless eyes flared; her head jerked. “No!” she whispered.