Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

Hester was in a foul mood. She had hoped to overtake the Humbug in midair, where she thought she could board it and rescue Lady Naga with ease. But although the Shadow Aspect had no cargo, and four engines to the Humbug’s two, it had taken Hester too long to discover where Napster Varley was going, and he had beaten them to Airhaven. Boarding the Humbug would be difficult here, where there were harbor officials and security men and passersby who would interfere. She looked around at Grike, standing statue still in the shadows at the rear of the flight deck. “Better hide yourself, old machine,” she said. “YOU MAY NEED ME.”

“Not here. There are a lot of townies aboard, and if they see you stalking about, they’ll think we’re Green Storm. Anyway, somebody might remember your last visit, when you tore the place half to pieces looking for me and Tom. Wait in the hold; if I need you, I’ll call you.”

Grike nodded and climbed the companion ladder into the envelope. Hester pulled up her veil, slipped on dark glasses, and opened the exit hatch. “Coming?” she asked Theo.

The tavern called the Gasbag and Gondola had survived through all Airhaven’s changes, and still occupied the same sprawling assemblage of lightweight huts that Hester remembered from her first visit to the free port. But in the intervening years the air trade had split, like the world below, into townies and Mossies, and the Gasbag and Gondola had become a townie haunt; NO DOGS, NO MOSSIES read a scrawled message in white paint above the door. The traders clustering around its small, dirty tables came from Manchester and Dortmund and Peripatetiapolis, from Nuevo-Mayan steam ziggurats and Antarctic drilling cities. Framed posters and cartoons on the walls mocked the Green Storm, and the dartboard was printed with the bronze face of the Stalker Fang.

Hester stopped at the shrine to the Sky Gods, just inside the door, and sighed irritably as Theo cannoned into her. She rummaged in her coat pockets and found a few pennies, which she dropped into the airship-shaped charity box of the Airman’s Benevolent Fund. A fat waitress bustled over, eyeing them roguishly, as if she thought that Theo was Hester’s boyfriend, and that Hester had done rather well for herself. Hester felt suddenly proud, as if it were true.

“We’re looking for Varley,” she told the woman. “Trader. Lately in from Africa. Heard of him?”

“You’re in luck. He’s by the window there. Watch out, though; he came back from Manchester in a nasty mood.”

Outside the circular window that the waitress pointed at, the evening clouds were glowing as the sun began to set, but the young man who sat at the table beside it was not enjoying the view. He was reading a book and reaching out from time to time to pick halfheartedly at a bowl of chargrilled locusts.

“Napster Varley?”

“Who’s asking?” Varley’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, looking Hester up and down. He closed his book. It was called The Dornier Lard Way to Successful Haggling, and a dozen pages had been marked with mean, grubby stubs of paper. When he saw Hester looking at the title, he hastily turned it facedown. “I don’t know you,” he said. “What ship you from?”

“Shadow Aspect,” said Hester.

“Never heard of her.” He studied Theo, and asked him, “What city do you come from? What’s your business?”

“We’re from—,” Hester started to say. Varley cut in. “I asked the boy.”

Theo, who was not a good actor, wished Wren were there instead of him. He still remembered the way she had run rings around old Pennyroyal and Nabisco Shkin with her stories back in Brighton. Doing his best to emulate her, he lied, “We’re from Zanzibar.”

“We heard you had something that we might want to buy,” said Hester.

Varley looked interested but still suspicious. “Sit down,” he said, pushing a chair out with his foot. “Have a locust. So what have you heard about my business, and where did you hear it?”

“Grandma Gravy,” said Hester.

“You trade with Grandma?”

“We’re old friends. She told me you had a very important prisoner aboard.”

“Shhh!” hissed Varley. He leaned across the table and said in a smelly whisper, “Don’t talk about my merchandise that way, lady. I don’t know who’s listening. The Airhaven authorities don’t like the slave trade. If they thought I was trying to shift a live cargo on their patch, there’d be hell to pay.”

Theo felt so angry and disgusted that he could happily have hit the man. He still bore the scars and bruises of his time in Cutler’s Gulp, and the shame of his captivity on Cloud 9 had never completely faded: He knew all too well what that harmless-sounding phrase “live cargo” meant.

Hester seemed unmoved. “Found a buyer yet?”

“I opened negotiations with the kriegsmarschall of Murnau a few hours ago,” said Varley. “Nothing’s been finalized.”

“I’m interested in buying,” said Hester.

Varley snorted, shook his head, and returned to his locusts, eating greedily now, as if talking business had brought back his appetite. “You couldn’t afford what I’m asking,” he said through a crunchy mouthful.

“Maybe I could.”

Varley looked up sharply, and spat out a wing case. “You ain’t from Zanzibar,” he said. “Your fancy-boy might be pretty, but he’s a lousy liar. Who are you?”

Hester said nothing and kicked Theo’s ankle under the table, warning him to stay quiet too.

Varley grinned. “Gods almighty!” He lowered his voice to a whisper again. “You’re the Storm, ain’t you? I been wondering if any of you lot would turn up. Don’t worry, I’m broad-minded. Gold is gold to Napster Varley, whether it comes from the coffers of a Traktionstadt or the treasure houses of Shan Guo. So what’s she worth to you, your empress? You’ll have to hurry, mind. Everyone’s saying the fighting’ll break out again in a day or so. You’ll want to get her safe in Mossie-land before that happens, won’t you?”

“What are you asking?” said Hester.

“Ten thousand in gold. Nothing less.”

“Ten thousand?” Theo had a hollowed-out feeling in the pit of his stomach. For a moment he had let himself imagine that it might just be possible to buy Lady Naga back, but… ten thousand in gold! Varley might as well ask them for the moon!

“I’ll think it over,” said Hester calmly, pushing back her chair. “Come on, Theo.”

Varley waved a locust at her. “You do that, honeybunch. My ship’s the Humbug, over on Strut 13. Just bring me the money, and hand it over nice and polite.”

“We’ll want to see the merchandise first,” said Hester.

“Not till I’ve seen the money. And I’ve got three big lads on watch, so don’t think about trying anything funny.”

Out on the High Street, electric lamps were being lit. Large moths zoomed about in the twilight, pursued by enterprising boys with nets who planned to roast them and sell them as tasty snacks. Some lingering maternal instinct made Hester flinch each time one of the urchins darted close to the unfenced edges of the quays. She told herself not to be so soft; these kids were born in the sky, too canny to fall; even if they did, the Airhaven authorities had stretched safety nets between the mooring struts to catch anyone who stumbled overboard.

She leaned against the handrail on the outer curve of the street and pretended to be watching the last smears of sunset fading in the west. She was actually studying Strut 13, where the black-and-white striped bulk of the Humbug lay at anchor. There were indeed three men loitering on the quay outside her single hatch. They were, as Varley had promised, quite big.