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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.
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"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
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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."
"Lady Naga?" whined Pennyroyal. "What are you talking about? She's dead!"
"Theo!" shouted Hester, halfway down the stairs.
With a last worried glance at Pennyroyal, Theo turned and followed her out of the room, out of the Empyrean Hotel, out into the chilly, starry night.
The clerk at the front desk watched them go, then wound the handle of the hotel's telephone and asked the operator to connect him to his brother, who worked in Airhaven's radiotelegraph office. "Lego?" he whispered. "It's me, Duplo. Can you send a message down to Murnau, double-quick?"
Alone in Room 128, Pennyroyal took a few deep, shivery breaths to calm himself. Curiosity was starting to get the better of his self-pity. What had young Theo meant? Could Naga's wife really still be alive? Was she really in Airhaven? And if she was, what would the Traktionstadts not give to get her for themselves? Why, the man who captured her would be a hero, no matter what alleged irregularities lay in his past....
Pennyroyal poured himself a brandy to steady his nerves, and lifted the stained curtain aside to look out at the big, sleepy shapes of the moored airships down on the docking ring. Humbug: That was the name Hester had let slip. He'd not heard of her, but it would be easy enough to find out what strut she lay at. And there were sure to be some burly
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townies in the High Steet taverns who could help him out if things turned nasty.
In his mind's eye the beastly stories that The Speculum had printed about him finally began to fade, and a new, more favorable headline appeared; something along the lines of "Pennyroyal Captures Leading Mossie...."
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27 Strut 13
***
LOW CLOUD, BLOWING IN from the west on the night wind, spread like a white carpet fifty feet beneath Airhaven, hiding the Earth below and all but the uppermost tiers of the largest cities there. An air yacht in the midnight-blue livery of Murnau came gliding through the cloud tops, curving toward a berth on the far side of the docking ring; probably some toff from the Oberrang come up to risk his inheritance in the casinos. As she leaned over the handrail of an observation deck on the High Street, the smell of mist reminded Hester of a night at Rogues' Roost, long ago.
Beneath her was Strut 13. The Humbuglay alongside, the three guards lounging at the foot of her gangplank. A light showed in her gondola, another in a window low down in her envelope.
Hester turned to Theo. "Go back to our ship. Get her
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ready to pull out. If all goes well, I'll be coming aboard with Lady Naga in a few minutes."
"You can't go down there alone!" Theo protested. "What if something goes wrong?"
"Then you'll leave without me. Go east and tell your General Naga what really happened to his wife." Hester was eager to get Theo safely out of the way so that she could start doing what she did best. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin through her veil. Everything was so intense in these moments before action, as if her brain wanted to drink in everything--every sound, every smell.
Theo nodded and started to say something, then thought better of it. He walked away fast along the High Street, dodging the crowds of aviators who meandered between the bars and cafes. Hester watched till he was out of sight, thinking how badly she would have fallen in love with him if she'd been twenty years younger. Then, cursing herself for a sentimental goose, she ran down the stairway to Strut 13.
The men on guard were as bored and dozy as she'd been hoping. They were the sort of shabby, down-at-heel aviators who hung around the High Street bars looking for work. Varley must have hired them to guard his precious cargo, but they would rather have been off drinking than standing out here in the cold. She considered just killing them, and keeping hold of Pennyroyal's gold for herself, but she couldn't take them all down without a fight, and she didn't want to risk that yet. She called out, "Where's Varley?"
The men came to life, trying to look hard and competent.
***
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"Who's asking?" said one, pointing a spring-loaded speargun at her.
Hester shook the bag she was holding and let them hear the chinkle of Pennyroyal's gold. Is chinkle a word? she wondered. She always grew very calm at times like this, and small questions like that became intriguing. Tom would know.... But she mustn't think about Tom.
One of the guards was backing up the Humbug s gangway, calling through an open hatch to someone inside. After a moment he jerked the speargun at Hester, and the others stood aside to let her go aboard.
In the Shadow Aspect's gondola Theo was warming up the engines, testing the rudder controls, and hoping that no one aboard Airhaven would notice, for he had not asked anyone's permission to depart. Behind him Grike p
aced to and fro, his heavy footfalls shaking the deck. "she should not have gone alone ," the Stalker said. "I told you--"
"you are not to blame, theo ngoni. but she should not have gone alone." He let out a grating, mechanical noise that Theo supposed was the Stalker equivalent of a Sigh. "i should be helping her to free dr. zero. in other times i would have done it easily. taken out the airhaven power plant, sown confusion, and gone aboard the
HUMBUG while the once-born were looking elsewhere.... but i could not do that without killing."
"You wouldn't get far afterward, either," Theo pointed out.
Grike didn't seem to hear him. He stood at a porthole,
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staring out at the night and the silent, tethered ships, "I AM GOING TO HELP HER."
"But you can't! If you're seen ..."
"I WILL BE CAREFUL."
Before Theo could stop him, Grike opened the hatch and jumped down onto the docking strut. No one was about. He crossed the strut in two long strides and dropped over the edge, his armor rippling with reflections from the harbor lights as if he were made of quicksilver. The underside of the strut was in shadow, hatched with girders. Grike crept along them until he was beneath the docking quays, and waited while a puttering dirigible balloon taxi passed beneath him on its way to the central ring. Then he began to pull himself along Airhaven's underbelly toward Strut 13.
The dirigible taxi pulled in against one of the docking platforms in the center of Airhaven, and its wicker gondola creaked as Sampford Spiney scrambled out, followed by Miss Kropotkin and her enormous camera. The journalist had been at a dinner on the Oberrang when he received the message from Airhaven, and he had not had time to change out of his formal robes. He swayed slightly as he made his way across the mooring platform to where the clerk from the Empyrean was waiting.
"Well? Are you the one who claims to have seen Pennyroyal?"
"He's been staying in my hotel, sir."
"Is he there now?"
"No, sir. He ran out not long after I sent word to you...."
"Ran where?"
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"I don't know, sir. Some people came to talk to him. Then he went running off. I can show you his room, sir...."
"His room? His room? Great Thunderer! I can't interview a room! Find me Pennyroyal himself, or you'll not see a cent out of The Speculum."
The clerk hurried toward the stairs that led up to the High Street, and Spiney went with him, snapping at his photographer to follow. "And make a note, Miss Kropotkin," he added as they climbed. "I'm pretty sure that was the kriegsmarschall's sky yacht we passed as we came in. What's the old man doing in Airhaven? Gambling? Seeing a woman? Could be a story in that...."
The Humbug's gondola reeked of wet nappies. The living quarters at the stern were full of them, draped on lines strung above the heating ducts. Poorly made bookshelves covered the walls, sagging under the weight of Varley's self-help books. In one corner a slimy-nosed baby snuffled and started to cry. "Hush, hush, hush," his mother said, looking up nervously as one of Varley's heavies pushed Hester in.
Varley was waiting for her, looking more feverish and ferrety than ever, a half-eaten supper on the table in front of him. He'd taken off his jacket. His trousers were held up by snakeskin braces. "On your own this time?" he asked Hester. "Got my ten thousand?"
"Five," said Hester. "That's all we can get hold of."
"Then I'll be selling your Lady Naga to another buyer."
"Oh, yes, I noticed the enormous queue all up the gangplank when I came aboard," said Hester. "That was sarcasm," she added as Varley sprang up to peer through a porthole.
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"Face it, you haven't got any other buyers. You'll have to do business with me, before someone bigger and tougher hears who you've got stashed in your hold and comes to take her off your hands for free."
Varley glared at her and said nothing. She opened her bag on the kitchen table, and shook out a pile of small, plump money bags. They jingled loudly, as well they might; two were full of Pennyroyal's savings, and the other eight were stuffed with nuts and washers that she and Theo had bought at the all-night chandlery on the High Street. "Ten bags," she said, opening one and tipping out a stream of gold. "Two hundred fifty shineys in each. Captain Ngoni will be bringing you the rest when I can assure him your cargo is alive and well."
Varley eyed the money hungrily, but he wasn't happy. "That black kid of yours is a captain? The Green Storm must be running short of men as well as money...."
Hester chose another money bag and emptied a second shining drift of coin across the tabletop. ("Look! Pretty!" said Mrs. Varley, bouncing the baby on her knee.)
"Take it or leave it," said Hester.
Varley still hesitated. "I want to see your face," he said sullenly.
"Believe me, you really don't."
The merchant sniffed, kicked a toy aside, and told his henchman, "Watch her, and don't go thieving any of my money." Then he pushed past Hester and vanished up a companion ladder into the Humbug's envelope. The other man reluctantly pried his eyes away from the heap of gold on the table and watched Hester instead. The baby gurgled. The
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woman sang him a song that Hester remembered faintly from long ago, but she quickly stopped when Hester looked at her.
"You from Oak Island?" Hester asked.
The woman shook her head. "Red Deer."
You could see Red Deer Island from the hills above Hester's childhood home on Oak Island, when the weather was fine. No wonder she recognized the song. She hoped she wouldn't have to kill this woman and her baby.
"Napster bought me in the wife auction there," the woman started to explain, and then stopped suddenly again, because she had heard her husband's footsteps on the ladder, coming back down. She shifted closer to the table to give him room as he dropped into the cabin, dragging his frightened cargo behind him.
Pennyroyal peered into half a dozen of the High Street's crowded drinking holes before he found what he was looking for. In fact they found him: a gang of rowdy young militia officers up from Manchester on a twenty-four-hour pass, clutching girls and bottles, making their unsteady way from a casino above Strut 1, where they had been betting their pay on Ancient games of chance like Pick-a-Sticks and Buckeroo. Pennyroyal scurried alongside, calling out, "Excuse me, gentlemen," and "I say," but they paid him no attention until he shouted, "I am Nimrod Pennyroyal!"
The Mancunians turned to stare at him.
"Shove off!" said one.
"Scrag him!" suggested another.
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"Chuck him off the docking ring!" roared a third. "Hoorah!"
"No," said a fifth man, slightly more sober than the rest. "He is Nimrod Pennyroyal. I recognize him from the papers."
"Chuck him off the docking ring anyway!"
"Hoorah!"
"He's that fake explorer bloke, ain't he?" said one of the girls, peering at Pennyroyal as if he were some mildly interesting animal in a zoo.
"I am not a fake!" Pennyroyal shouted. "I have come to ask your help! There is a high-ranking member of the Green Storm secreted aboard an airship down on the docking ring, and I need the help of some loyal Tractionists to take her into custody!"
"Huh huh huh huh," went one of the Mancunians, laughing at some private joke. The rest struggled to follow what Pennyroyal was saying. One or two reached for their swords. "A Mossie? Here?"
"Lady Naga herself! I've been operating undercover to discover her whereabouts. All that stuff you read in the papers was just a ruse, designed to make the enemy think I was in disgrace. I've actually been working for the Murnauer Geheimdienst all along, you know."
The Mancunians looked blank. None of them had heard the German name for Murnau's intelligence service before. Pennyroyal cursed their ignorance [but only quietly] and pulled out the old envelope on which he had jotted down the Humbug's details from the arrivals board in the Floating Exchange. He squinted at his own crabbed writing for a
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moment, then flourished the envelope like a battle flag. "Come gentlemen!" he cried. "Follow me to Strut 13, and to glory!"
A bruised face, a mat of greasy hair, a thin body shaking and shaking inside a sackcloth dress. Hester was astonished at the flood of pity she felt as she watched Lady Naga come creeping down the Humbug's companion ladder. She's not much older than Wren, she thought, and for a moment she wanted to rush forward and hug the poor, frightened creature and comfort her and tell her that she was safe now.
But she wasn't safe, not yet, and anyway she would not have wanted to be hugged; she seemed as scared of Hester as she was of Varley. When Varley shoved her forward and said, "This nice lady's come to buy you," she hung back and let out a whine like a scared animal. Hester, in her black coat and her black veil, looked like the Goddess of Death.
"You're Lady Naga?" she asked.
"Oenone," said the young woman, blinking fearfully at her. Her glasses were held together by tape, and one of the lenses was cracked.
"Course she's Lady bleedin' Naga," crowed Varley. "Look at her signet ring, and that Zagwan pendant thing. They're extra, by the way. Now go and get me the rest of my money."
Hester nodded and glanced past him, judging the distance between herself and the man with the speargun at the bulkhead door. She turned, back to the wall, one hand moving slowly to the knife inside her coat, and saw out of the corner of her eye the baby reach toward the pile of money bags on Varley's table.
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