Philip Reeve: A Darkling Plain

“Daddy!” said Wren sternly, warning him not to tease. Then she relented, sighed, and took his hand. “Look, the reason Theo has such good manners is that he’s really posh. His family are rich, and they live in a city that was part of a great civilization when our ancestors were still wearing animal skins and squabbling over scraps in the ruins of Europe. Why would Theo be interested in me?”

“He’d be a fool if he isn’t,” said her father, “and he didn’t strike me as a fool.”

Wren gave an exasperated sigh. Why couldn’t Dad understand? Theo was in his own city, surrounded by lots of girls far prettier than her. His family might have married him off by now, and even if they hadn’t, he was sure to have forgotten all about Wren. That kiss, which had meant so much to her, had probably meant nothing at all to Theo. So she did not want to make a fool of herself by chasing off to Zagwa, knocking on his door, and expecting them to pick up where they’d left off.

She said, “Let’s go east, Dad. Let’s go and find Clytie Potts.”

Theo, who had been adrift for days on slow tides of pain and anesthetic, came to the surface at last in a clean, white room in Zagwa Hospital. Through veils of mosquito netting and smudged memories he could see an open window, and evening sunlight on the mountains. His mother and father and his sisters Miriam and Kaelo were gathered around his bed, and as he gradually recovered his senses, Theo realized that his wounds must have been very grave indeed, for instead of teasing him and telling him how silly he looked lying there all bruised and bandaged, his sisters seemed inclined to cry and kiss him. “Thank God, thank God,” his mother kept saying, and his father, leaning over him, said, “You’re going to be all right, Theo. But it was touch and go for a while.”

“The knife,” said Theo, remembering, touching his stomach, which was wrapped in clean, crisp bandages. “The rockets … They hit the citadel!”

“They exploded quite harmlessly in the gardens,” his father assured him. “Nobody was hurt. Nobody but you. You were badly wounded, Theo, and you lost a lot of blood. When our aviators brought you in, the doctors were ready to give you up for dead. But the ambassador heard of your plight— the Storm’s ambassador, Lady Naga—and she came and worked on you herself. She used to be some sort of surgeon before her marriage. She certainly knows a thing or two about a person’s insides. That is a claim to fame, eh, Theo? You have been healed by General Naga’s wife!”

“So you saved her life, and she saved yours,” said Miriam.

“She will be delighted to hear that you are on the mend!” said Mrs. Ngoni. “She was very impressed by your bravery, and takes a great interest in you.” She pointed proudly to a mass of flowers in a corner of Theo’s hospital room, sent by Lady Naga. “She came to see me herself, to tell me how well the operation had gone.” She beamed, clearly rather taken with the visitor from Shan Guo. “Lady Naga is a very good person, Theo.”

“If she is so good, what is she doing in the Green Storm?” asked Theo.

“An accident of fate,” his father suggested. “Really, Theo, you would like her. Shall I send word to the citadel to tell her that you are better? I am sure she will want to come and talk to you.”

Theo shook his head and said that he did not feel strong enough. He was happy that he had been able to stop the barbarians, and grateful to Lady Naga for saving his life, but he felt awkward at finding himself in debt to a member of the Green Storm.

He was allowed home the next day. In the weeks that followed, as he grew slowly stronger, he tried not to think about Lady Naga, although his parents often spoke about her. Indeed, all Zagwa was talking about Lady Naga. Everyone had heard how she had taken off her fine clothes and put on a doctor’s smock to save the life of young Theo Ngoni, and as the weeks went by, there were other stories about her: how she had visited the ancient cathedral church that had been hollowed out of the living rock of Mount Zagwa in the Black Centuries, and prayed there with the bishop himself. Everyone seemed to think that this was a good sign—except Theo. He suspected it was all just another Green Storm trick.

Two of the queen’s councillors came to ask him about his memories of the airship he had boarded. They told him that the aviatrix he had captured was being questioned but would not cooperate. They congratulated him on his bravery. Theo said, “I wasn’t being brave. I had no choice.” But secretly he felt proud, and very pleased that everyone in Zagwa would think of him as a hero now instead of only remembering that he had once run away to join the Storm. “I’m glad I was able to stop those townies before they hurt anyone,” he told the councillors. The councillors exchanged odd, thoughtful looks when he said that, and the younger of the two seemed about to say something, but the older one stopped him; they left soon afterward.

Outside his parents’ house Zagwa baked in the sun. The city was not quite so magnificent when you saw it from ground level; the buildings were shabby, bright paint peeling off the walls, roofs sagging. Weeds grew through cracked pavements. Even the domes of the citadel were streaked with verdigris. Zagwa’s great days were a thousand years behind it; the mighty empire it used to rule had been laid waste by hungry cities. In the shade of the umbrella tree across the street men gathered in the afternoons to talk angrily about the latest news of townie atrocities from the north. Maybe some of the young ones would grow so angry that one day they would go off to join the Storm, just as Theo had. Theo watched them from the window sometimes, and tried to remember being that sure of things, but he couldn’t.

One afternoon, almost a month after the air attack, he was reading in the garden room when his father and mother brought a visitor to see him. Theo barely looked up from his book when they entered, for he had grown used to visits from his many aunts and uncles, all embarrassingly keen to see his scars and remind him what a tearaway he’d been when he was three, or introduce him to the pretty daughters of their friends. It was not until his mother said, “Theo, my dear, you remember Air Marshal Khora?” that he realized this visit was different.

Khora was one of Africa’s finest aviators, and the commander of the Zagwan Flying Corps. He was a tall man, and handsome still, though he was nearing fifty and his hair was turning white. He wore ceremonial armor, and around his shoulders hung the traditional cloak of the queen’s bodyguard: yellow with patterns of black dots, representing the skin of a mythical creature called a leopard. He bowed low to Theo, greeting him like an equal, and small, inconsequential things were said that Theo was far too overcome to remember. Khora had been his hero since he was a little boy. When he was nine, he had whiled away a whole rainy season making a model of Khora’s flagship, the air destroyer Mwene Mutapa, with a little inch-high Khora standing on the stern gallery. It was such a surprise to see him here, actual size, in the familiar surroundings of home, that it took Theo several moments to notice that he had not come alone. Behind him stood two servant girls, foreigners dressed in robes of rain-colored silk, and behind them, in plainer clothes, another woman, very short and slight, whom Theo knew from photographs in the Zagwan news sheets.

“Theo,” said Air Marshal Khora, “I have brought Lady Naga to meet you.”

Theo knew that he ought to say, “I don’t want to; I don’t want anything to do with her or her people,” but he was still tongue-tied in Khora’s presence, and anyway, as the ambassador came toward him and he saw her delicate face and the heavy black spectacles (which she had not been wearing in those news photographs), he discovered that he knew her.