A Darkling Plain (6 page)

As for the love, well, everybody needs to love someone, and the Stalker was all Fishcake had. She had saved him in the desert, told him what to do, told him how to rebuild her. She was a strange companion, and scary sometimes, but it was better than being alone.

"I found some couplings," said Fishcake, emptying out his bag in the corner of the chamber where he kept his stolen tools. The chamber rocked and shuddered with the movements of the city. Light spiked through the gratings, shining on the Stalker's unchanging face, her comforting bronze smile. "I'll put you together again soon," Fishcake promised. "Tonight...."

"Thank you, Fishcake. Thank you for taking care of me."

"That's all right."

Fishcake had learned that his Stalker was really two people. One was the Stalker Fang, a stern, merciless being who had ordered the Green Storm about for years and now ordered Fishcake instead. But from time to time she would jerk and quiver and go silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, she would be Anna, who was much gentler, and a bit bewildered.

At first Fishcake had thought that Anna was just the result of a short circuit inside the Stalker's complicated brain, but over the months he had come to understand that there was more to her than that. Anna remembered all sorts of things that had happened long ago, and she liked to talk about people and places that Fishcake had never heard of. A lot of her stories made no sense; they were just lists of disconnected images and names, like random pieces from a hundred mixed-up jigsaws. Sometimes she just made sobbing noises, or begged Fishcake to kill her, which he did not know how to do, and wouldn't have done even if he had, in case she turned back into the Stalker Fang while he was doing it and killed him instead. But he liked Anna. He was glad it was Anna tonight.

He found her legs, stacked in a corner beneath some newspapers. He had rebuilt them months ago, and he was quite pleased with them, even though the bottom part of the right one and the right foot were missing and he had had to use an old metal table leg instead. He had never managed to attach them to the rest of his Stalker, because he couldn't find the right couplings, but tonight in the Suq he had struck lucky at last. It was because of this truce out east; traders

were arriving in Cairo from all sorts of places that had been war zones until quite recently, from the territory of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft and the battlefields of the Altai Shan. (There was no shortage of smashed Stalker bits in the Altai Shan.)

Fishcake drank some water and set to work. He said, "We'll soon be away from here."

"You have found an airship?" whispered the Stalker. She sounded eager. (One thing that the Stalker Fang and Anna parts of her had in common was that they both kept nagging at Fishcake to finish the repairs and take them away to a place called Shan Guo. The Stalker Fang had something important to do there. Anna just wanted to go home.) "I had an airship of my own once," she whispered. "The
Jenny Haniver.
I built her myself, secretly, in Arkangel, stole parts from Stilton's salvage yards, and flew away...."

"Not an airship," said Fishcake, who was tired of that story. "How do you expect us to nick an airship? The air yards are three tiers up; it's too dangerous."

"But we cannot walk to Shan Guo. It will take too long."

Fishcake placed a leg in position and busied himself connecting wires and cords. "We won't have to walk," he said. "I picked up some news in the Lower Suq today. Guess where Cairo's heading. Brighton. We're going to park beside the seaside and trade with Brighton. Boats and things will go across. And I reckon there's still limpets in Brighton. We could get to Shan Guo easy in a limpet."

"Eyes," whispered his Stalker. She turned her face to him, showing him the smashed lenses of her eyes. "I will need to see, if we are to reach Shan Guo. You will find me new eyes."

Her voice had changed. It was still a whisper, but it was harsher and hissier, and Fishcake knew that he was in the presence of the Stalker Fang. He kept his nerve. "Sorry. No eyes. I can't find none anywhere. Maybe in Brighton, eh? Maybe I'll find some Stalkers' eyes in Brighton?"

But he had a feeling he wouldn't. In fact, several of the stalls he frequented in the Lower Suq had Stalkers' eyes for sale, big glass jars full of them, like jawbreakers. Fishcake had decided very early on that he would not be stealing any for his Stalker. He wasn't stupid. He knew that she was stronger and faster and cleverer than him. But as long as she was blind, she would need to stick with her little Fishcake.

"Maybe in Brighton," he told her again, and set to work on the other leg.

***

THE
NZIMU
FLEW NORTH-NORTHWEST all night. By dawn she was cruising in calm air above a seemingly endless desert. Theo, whose nerves had been on edge as he guided his little ship over the mountains north of Zagwa, soon started to feel rather bored. Everything was running smoothly. The ambassador stayed in her cabin, high in the envelope. Her pretty servant came down the companionway in a rustle of rain-colored silk from time to time to stare at the view from the gondola windows. Once or twice that day he turned and found her watching him. Each time, her dark eyes darted quickly away from his, seeming suddenly very interested in the ducting above the main control station, or the flickering altimeter needles.

There was something familiar about her, and it nagged at

Theo through the long, dull hours of northing. Was it Wren whom she reminded him of? But she was much prettier than Wren....

Captain Rasputra, meanwhile, turned out to be friendly, competent, polite, and perfectly sure that he could fly Lady Naga home to Tienjing without any help from Theo Ngoni. "Look, my dear fellow," he said, when he came down to relieve Theo that evening. "Let us sort ourselves out. I'm an aviator with twelve years' experience in General Naga's own squadron. You, on the other hand, are what? An amateur. A failed Tumbler pilot. I don't mean to be unkind, but you are commander of this tub for official purposes only, so that we may maintain the fiction that she is a Zagwan vessel on a trading voyage. For
practical
purposes, while we are up here in the blue, I think you had better leave things to me, eh?"

Before he turned in that evening, Theo climbed onto the top of the envelope and stood in the wind on the tiny lookout platform there, watching for trouble. He saw none, nothing but a few small desert townlets on the move, dragging their long wakes of dust behind them, too busy with their own concerns to pay attention to a passing airship. The air was empty too, except for a distant sky train heading south, its long chain of envelopes gleaming like an amber necklace in the sun.

Theo sighed, almost wishing that air pirates or assassins would attack, so that he could prove his usefulness to Lady Naga and Captain Rasputra. He imagined himself doing something heroic again (conveniently forgetting how frightened he had been aboard that Super-Gnat) and word of it

spreading along the bird roads until it reached Wren. But when he tried to picture her, he found that the only face he could call to mind was that of the servant Rohini.

Alone in her cabin in the stern of the
Nzimu's
envelope, Oenone Zero, Lady Naga, knelt and bowed her head and made a steeple of her stained hands and started to say her prayers. She did not expect God to answer her, because she did not believe he worked like that. But she had felt his presence very clearly, ever since that night on Cloud 9 when she had thought she was about to die. He gave her strength, and comfort, and courage. It seemed to Oenone that the least she could offer him in return were her prayers.

And so she gave thanks for her time in Zagwa, for the kindness of the queen and bishop and of Air Marshal Khora. She gave thanks for the bravery of Theo Ngoni, and prayed that he would come to no harm on this furtive voyage. And there she became distracted by a rather unspiritual thought. What a pity it was that her husband could not have been as young and handsome as Theo....

She opened her eyes and looked at the portrait of Naga that she kept beside her bunk; his maimed body strapped into mechanized battle armor, his battered, ocher face screwed into the awkward smile of someone who has had no practice smiling. Whenever she saw it, she wondered what it could be that made such a man love her.

She did not love him. She was just grateful for his protection, and glad that the leadership of the Green Storm had passed into the hands of a decent man. That was why she had been unable to say no when he asked her to be his wife. "Of

course," she'd said, and a feeling of numb astonishment had settled over her, which did not lift until she was dressed in her red bridal gown and standing on tiptoe to kiss her new husband in front of a vast assembly of officers and priests and bridesmaids and a nervous Christian vicar, flown in at considerable expense from some static in the Western Archipelago to give Oenone's new god's blessing to the marriage.

A gentle knocking broke in upon her memories. The cabin door opened and Rohini came in, shy and silent as ever. Oenone sat down at her portable dressing table and unpinned her hair so that the girl could brush it. In the lamplight the ends of her hair shone faintly auburn, a reminder that some of her long-ago ancestors had probably been Americans who had fled to the remote Aleutian islands after the Sixty Minute War. Yet another reason for the Green Storm's hard-liners to despise her ...

She tried to forget them and enjoy the gentle touch of Rohini's hands and the soft, sleepy shushing of the hairbrush. She was glad that the girl had volunteered to come with her on this voyage. Rohini was so much quieter and sweeter than her other servants, who all seemed slightly resentful when Oenone tried to treat them like equals. Rohini was the only one who seemed genuinely fond of her, and appeared to appreciate the kindness that Oenone showed her.

So it came as a horrible surprise when Rohini dropped the brush, looped the rain-colored belt of her robe around Oenone's throat, and, pulling it tight, hissed in a voice Oenone had never heard, "We know what you did, you miserable city lover! We know how you destroyed our beloved

leader, and seduced that fool Naga! Now you will see what the true Storm does to traitors...."

Something had woken Theo, and he could not get back to sleep. It was cold in his cabin; his bunk was uncomfortable; he missed his home very much. He turned on the lamp and looked at his wristwatch, but there were several hours to go before he was supposed to relieve Rasputra at the helm. He groaned and turned the light out and snuggled under his scratchy blankets, trying vainly to sleep again.

But as he lay there, he slowly became convinced that his ship had altered course. The sound of the wind against the envelope had changed in some subtle way. He had learned to pay attention to such details during his time aboard the carriers of the Tumbler Corps, where any unexplained course change might mean that the unit was going into battle. The
Nzimu
had not been due to alter her heading before she sighted the Tibesti Mountains, and Theo had not expected that to happen before sunrise.

What was going on? He imagined a flock of barbarian flying machines closing in from windward, or a pirate cutter rising from some lair among the dunes. Just like Rasputra to try to outrun them without even telling him! He rolled off his bunk and started pulling on his boots and coat, the only items he had taken off when he turned in.

Halfway down the central companion ladder he glimpsed Rohini on the walkway below him, heading aft toward Lady Naga's cabin. He was about to call out and ask her what had happened when he remembered that she would not hear him. Besides, he did not want to alarm her over what might

be an innocent course correction. Not until he'd talked to Rasputra.

He waited until she had gone past, then slid down the last few sections of ladder and dropped into the gondola. "What's happening?" he asked.

But Captain Rasputra could not tell him, because someone had cut Captain Rasputra's throat so deeply and so expertly that he had died before anything more than a look of mild surprise could register on his pleasant face.

"Captain Rasputra?" said Theo. A movement at his side made him jump, but it was just his own reflection in a window, wide-eyed and stupid. He stared at himself. Who had done this? Was there an intruder aboard the
Nzimu?
Had some assassin boarded his ship the same way he'd boarded those Super-Gnats over Zagwa? But no; the smell of blood, the horror of finding himself alone with a dead man in this glass-walled place, reminded him vividly of things he and Wren had seen on Cloud 9. He knew now why Rohini seemed so familiar.

He tugged down a fire axe from a hook on the wall and forced himself back to the ladder and up. As he ran along the walkway to the door of Lady Naga's cabin, he heard someone inside say something about traitors. There was a scuffling and a noise of things falling and rolling. Theo shouted to give himself courage, and swung his axe at the lock on the door. It came apart under the first blow, and the door swung open.

Inside, amid a tangle of bedding from the overturned bunk and a rolling glitter of vials and bottles from the dressing table, knelt Lady Naga, scrabbling with both hands at the belt that Rohini was using to strangle her. Rohini's look of

triumph faded only slightly when she looked around to see Theo standing in the shattered doorway.

"Can't you just
knock?"
she asked crossly.

"Cynthia Twite," said Theo.

"Surprise!" the girl replied, with a smile.

Lady Naga made a horrible gurgling noise, like the last of the bathwater heading down the plughole. Theo took a step forward and waved the axe, but he was too gentle to use it, and he knew Cynthia knew it. Remembering the girl's vanity, he said, "You look different...."

It worked. Tiring of Lady Naga for the moment, Cynthia gave the silk belt one last, sharp tug and let go. Her victim pitched forward and lay facedown, unmoving. "Good, isn't it?" asked Cynthia, indicating her own black hair, which had been blond when Theo saw her last, and her brown skin, which had been fair. She smiled as if Theo had paid her a gallant compliment. It was her only weakness as a secret agent. She was so delighted by her own cleverness that she could never resist telling her victims how she had tricked them.