Philip Reeve - A Darkling Plain

Grike looked away. He was still a Stalker, and it was hard for him to talk about things like love. He said, “WILL THOSE MEMORIES OF MY ONCE-BORN LIFE EVER RETURN?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps next time you die. But that won’t be for a long, long time. I built you to last, Mr. Grike.”

The ground was close now. Grike looked down at Hester, thinking that he did not care how long he lived as long as she was with him. He said, “I WANT TO KEEP HER SAFE AND STRONG FOREVER. WILL YOU HELP ME?”

Oenone did not understand what he meant. “Of course I will,” she promised. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his face. Dabs of his preservative slime came off on her lips and the tip of her nose. “Congratulations, Mr. Grike. You’ve grown a soul.”

In the argon-lit rain Harrowbarrow heaved itself out of the mud off Murnau’s starboard side like a gigantic submarine surfacing in a very dirty sea. A boarding bridge was run out, and Wolf Kobold strode across and vanished into the larger city, where an express elevator carried him quickly up to the Oberrang. A bug was waiting for him there, along with an officer who began shouting at him as soon as he stepped off the elevator, “Sir, sir, come quickly! Your father is hurt!”

“Yes, I got your radio message,” said Kobold wearily, settling himself into the bug’s rear seat. How stupid, to be dragged all the way up here just so that he could pretend to be concerned about an old man he cared nothing for. Already he was longing to be aboard Harrowbarrow again, free of these mawkish conventions. He listened halfheartedly to the driver prattling about Airhaven and Green Storm spies as the little vehicle went swerving along Über den Linden to the Rathaus. Outside, young officers were saying farewell to their sweethearts, and workers were heaving shut the last open sections of the city’s armor, but Wolf barely noticed them. He stared at his own gaunt face reflected in the bug’s hood and thought of the long trek he had just made across the Storm’s territory, the sentry he’d strangled as he’d crept back through their lines into no-man’s-land, where good old Hausdorfer had had the ’Barrow waiting. He thought proudly of London, and of the fantastical machines that would soon be his.

At the Rathaus the servants led him to the main drawing room. His father sat in an armchair, his chest bandaged, being fussed over by frock-coated medical men. Adlai Browne stood close by, having come across from Manchester with flowers and grapes and a disclaimer he wanted the kriegsmarschall to sign, absolving the Manchester Militia of any liability for his injuries. Beside him stood the commander of his mercenary air force. Wolf had found Ms. Twombley attractive once, but now she struck him as rather brassy—all that pink leather and mascara. He thought wistfully of Wren Natsworthy, her innocent beauty and bright, malleable young mind.

“Wolfram!” cried his father, waving the doctors aside and struggling up to hug him. “They told me you were away somewhere…”

“Just a little business trip,” said Kobold, disgusted by the liver spots on the old man’s arms, the white curls of hair that showed above the bandage on his chest. “I got home to Harrowbarrow the clay before yesterday.”

His father studied him. “You look thin, my boy.”

Thin, unshaven, fever eyed, Wolf waved his words away. “It’s yourself you should be worrying about. They told me you’re hurt.”

“Just a few bruises, some broken bones.”

“I got home just in time, it seems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Great Thatcher! The Mossies tried to kill you, father! It was an act of war! We must retaliate immediately!”

“Just what I’ve been telling him!” boomed Adlai Browne, with the air of a man who had been waiting impatiently to resume an interrupted conversation. “We mustn’t let them get away with it!”

“Nonsense, Browne,” snapped von Kobold, wincing with the pain as he slumped back down in his chair. “It was one of your drunken louts who shot me!”

“Youthful exuberance,” protested Browne. “If you’d not been so keen to keep the prisoner for yourself …” He appealed to Wolf. “Have you heard the news? Naga’s missus herself was loose on Airhaven, with a gang of Stalkers to protect her. Hatching some plot with that renegade Pennyroyal, apparently.”

“I see.” Usually Wolf would have scoffed at such talk, the panicky, exaggerated stuff that flew about whenever fat city men got a whiff of real war. But tonight a little panic suited him. The sooner war broke out, the sooner Harrowbarrow could begin its journey to London. “They got away alive, I take it?”

Browne turned to the aviatrix at his side. “You tell him, lass.”

Orla Twombley bowed and said, “The airship was met over no-man’s-land by more Stalker-birds than I’ve ever seen in one place. There must have been someone or something of value aboard. There was nothing I could do to stop it escaping.”

It seemed to Wolf that there was plenty she could have done, had she not valued her life more than her duty. But he simply nodded and said, “This sounds bad. Who knows what plots the Mossies have set in motion, or what they’ve learned about our plans? There’s only one thing for it.”

“You mean—attack?” asked Adlai Browne hopefully.

“It’s the best form of defense. The Mossies struck first. We must retaliate. Attack at once, all along the line.”

Von Kobold rubbed his eyes. “Surely there must be another way…”

“If you don’t feel up to commanding this place—” said Browne, all mock solicitude.

“I shall do my part,” the old man promised wearily. “You’ll not call me a coward, Browne. If the other cities advance, Murnau will come too, and I’ll command her. Unless my son would care to take his place on the bridge?”

He looked at Wolf, who shook his head firmly. “Sorry, Father. I must get back to Harrowbarrow. When the attack begins, I’ll gnaw a nice big hole for you in the Mossies’ defenses.”

He shook his father’s hand, bowed to Browne and Ms. Twombley, and went out of the room, leaving silence behind him, and a feeling of sadness, like a lingering smell.

“Well,” said Adlai Browne, clapping his hands together. “I must inform the other mayors and kriegsmarschalls. Ms. Twombley, you’ll need to get your machines aloft. The obliteration of the Green Storm starts at dawn!”

Fulfill the vision of the Wind-Flower Airfield was an oblong of flat ground bulldozed out of the mud a few miles behind the Storm’s front line. It was ringed with landing lights and bunkers and big, whale-backed barns of airship hangars. Anti-aircraft cannon squatted watchfully in emplacements made from earth-packed wicker barrels. Searchlights stretched out their colorless fingers to brush the Shadow Aspect’s envelope as the cloud of birds steered her toward her docking pan.

Soldiers came running as she touched down, and crowded into the gondola when Theo opened the hatch. White uniforms; crab-shell helmets; guns. Oenone emerged from behind the curtain at the back of the flight deck, and they recoiled from her and raised their weapons, alarmed by her filthy, bloodstained clothes and the Stalker who stood behind her. She held out her hand, letting the light glint on her signet ring. “Before you shoot me,” she said politely, “I would like you to take care of my companions. Mr. Ngoni and Professor Pennyroyal are not enemies of the Storm.”

The subofficer at the head of the boarding party bowed low, placing his right fist against the palm of his left hand in the old League salute. “You are safe now, Lady Naga.”