Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

“Oh, great Poskitt!” he gasped as they went to meet him. “Oh, Clio! Oh, ruddy Nora!”

“We’d like a little chat,” Hester explained.

She expected him to scream for help, to call for the police and Airhaven militia. After all, last time they’d met, Hester had tried to murder him, and only her softhearted daughter had stopped her. But Pennyroyal seemed more frightened of the clerk at the front desk than of her. He peeked nervously past her at the youth (who was watching wide-eyed, with his mouth hanging open) and hissed, “We can’t talk here!”

“Your room then,” said Hester.

Pennyroyal obeyed meekly enough, fetching his passkey from the astonished clerk and motioning for Theo and Hester to follow him up the stairs. Hester couldn’t help feeling she had missed something. She had never met anyone as pleased with himself as Nimrod Pennyroyal. Why would he pretend to be someone else?

Room 128 was on the top floor: sloping ceilings, a tap dripping into a grimy metal handbasin, empty wine bottles on every level surface. Pennyroyal sank into a wicker chair beside the window. Hester let Theo in and kicked the door shut behind him.

“If you’ve come looking for Tom and Wren,” the old man whimpered, “they took off days ago. Gone north, on some job for a fellow named Wolf Kobold.”

“Tom and Wren were here?” asked Theo.

Hester seemed disconcerted by this sudden news of her family. She stared at Pennyroyal for a moment, started to say something, stopped, and then recovered herself and snapped, “That’s not why we came. We need money, Pennyroyal.”

Pennyroyal let out a humorless bark, like a seal with bronchitis. “Money? You’ve come to me for money? Hal Never been much of a reader, have you, Hester? Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Why do you think I’m hiding in this dump?” He crouched down and pulled a tattered newspaper from beneath the heap of empty bottles and discarded socks under the bed. Shoving it at Hester and Theo, he said bitterly, “See? I’m ruined! Ruined! And it’s all thanks to that daughter of yours!”

The paper was called The Speculum. A picture of Pennyroyal filled most of the front page. Beneath his smug, smiling face, heavy, black type screamed:

Theo took the paper and leafed quickly through the first few pages. “ ‘Many experts have long believed that “Professor” Pennyroyal’s archaeological work is suspect,’ ” he read. “ ‘No proof has ever surfaced to support “Professor” Pennyroyal’s stories of his adventures in America and Nuevo-Maya…’ ” Then he turned to the end of the article and gave a cry of surprise, for there was Wren. The photograph was small, and she had done something to her hair since he’d last seen her (or had she been standing on a slope when it was taken?) but it was her. He scanned the paragraphs beneath the picture and glanced nervously at Hester before he read them aloud.

“ ‘Mr. Thomas Natsworthy, a respectable air trader, is none other than the husband of Hester Shaw, whose death Pennyroyal describes so touchingly in the closing chapters of his best-seller Predator’s Gold. Fans of that book may be surprised to learn that Ms. Shaw was alive and well last Moon Festival, when she and her husband separated, and that the couple have a charming daughter, Miss Wren Natsworthy (15), who says of Pennyroyal, “He does tend to exaggerate a little.”

“ ‘It is the opinion of this writer, and of an increasing number of the professor’s readers, that Pennyroyal exaggerates more than a little; that he is in fact nothing more than a fraud, a charlatan, a confidence trickster, a lounge lizard, and a master of deceit whose presence upon Murnau’s upper tiers offends against every tradition of that noble city.’ ”

Hester chuckled appreciatively behind her veil.

“You see?” said Pennyroyal. “The little minx! Talking to Spiney like that behind my back! Or did he trick her? Twist her words about? I wouldn’t put it past him. He will use any ammunition to hurl at me. I would set my lawyers on him, but alas, all proofs of my adventures burned with Cloud 9. Now Werederobe and Spoor are claiming that I have deceived them and want me to repay the advance on my latest memoir. And I can’t! I’ve spent it! Already warrants have been issued for my arrest in Murnau and Manchester! Where am I to go? What am I to do? I fled here hoping my friend Dornier Lard would take me away aboard his sky yacht, but he refused to know me! And I dare not try to buy passage on any common trade ship, lest the aviators recognize me and alert my creditors. Unless …” He gawped at Hester, trying to hide his fear of her and look plaintive and appealing. “Do you have a ship, Mrs. Natsworthy? Perhaps, for old times’ sake … Theo, dear boy, you remember how we got off Cloud 9 together; you and me taking turns to pilot the dear old Arctic Roll…”

“Money,” said Hester firmly.

“Oh, of course I can pay my way!” Pennyroyal began to fumble his clothes open, exposing his bulging, white-furred belly and a canvas money belt with many pouches. He took off the belt and started emptying coins onto the floor. “Just a little portable wealth I carry with me in case of emergencies,” he explained. “Only pocket money, really, but you are welcome to it if you can take me away from here, and keep quiet about it.”

“Pocket money?” Hester stirred the heaps of coin with the toe of her boot. “There must be four hundred shineys here, Pennyroyal.”

“Five hundred!” said the old man eagerly, pulling a roll of coins out of the lining of his coat and throwing it down with the rest.

“It’s a wonder you could walk.”

“Well, it’s all yours, if you can help me.”

Hester nodded, thanking him. “Take it, Theo,” she said.

“But it’s not enough—”

“It’s enough to get me aboard the Humbug. Once I’m past those heavies on the quay, I’ll improvise.”

Theo still didn’t see how she planned to satisfy Varley’s greed with five hundred in assorted gold bits, but he crouched down anyway and started shoveling the coins into his pockets. Pennyroyal watched with a strange expression, both pained and hopeful. “Which quay is your ship on?” he asked. “What is she called? Is she fast? I was wondering about Nuevo-Maya; I don’t believe The Speculum is very widely read in Nuevo-Maya.”

“You’re not coming with us,” said Hester.

“But you said—”

“I didn’t say anything, Pennyroyal. You’ve been doing all the talking yourself, as usual. I wouldn’t trust you aboard my ship, and even if I did, you wouldn’t want passage to where I’m going.”

Pennyroyal started to whimper. “But my money! My money!”

“You can’t do this!” cried Theo, turning to Hester. Pennyroyal had kept him as a slave once, and he knew he should be glad that the gods had finally punished him for all his lies. But he didn’t feel glad; he felt as if he were robbing a helpless, frightened old man. “We can’t just take his money!”

“Think of it as a charity donation,” said Hester, pulling the door open.

“I shall inform the authorities!” wailed Pennyroyal. “What, and give your hiding place away? I don’t think so.”

“It’s for a good cause, Professor,” promised Theo, lingering behind as Hester strode out of the room. He touched the old man’s trembling hand and said gently, “We’ll pay it back. Lady Naga’s a prisoner in a ship here. We’re going to get her to Shan Guo. When we do, General Naga will be so grateful … he’ll pay back ten times what we took from you.”