Her view was blotted out by something vast and pale. Huge engine pods slid by, followed by the open gunports of an armored gondola. Wren saw men wearing goggles and crab-shell helmets standing in gun emplacements that jutted
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out on gantries, and then tall steering vanes, each emblazoned with a jagged green lightning bolt. "Theo!" she screamed.
Twenty feet from where they stood, an immense air destroyer was speeding past Cloud 9.
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28 The Air Attack
***
In a cell somewhere beneath the Pepperpot's well-appointed reception area, Tom lay half dazed, feeling his face swell where Shkin's heavies had hit him, and fearing for Wren. It had been enough at first just to know that she was alive. He didn't mind too much what happened to him, as long as Wren was safe. But was Wren safe? Shkin's men had told him she'd been sold to Pennyroyal, of all people ' . Pennyroyal was not a bad man, but he was selfish, and thoughtless, and unscrupulous, and he had once shot Tom in the heart. The old wound hurt Tom again as he lay on the bunk, waiting for something to happen. His chest ached, and he wasn't sure if the ache was real or just his body's memory of the bullet.
He had quickly lost track of time in this bland, window-less room, where a loop of argon tube glowed on the beige
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ceiling like a halo. He had no idea whether it was night or day when the door finally rattled open.
"Brought you something to eat, Mr. Natsworthy," said a small voice. "And this."
Tom rolled off the bunk and sat up, rubbing his bruised face. The boy Fishcake stood in the doorway, holding a tray with a bowl and a tin cup. A few feet of drab beige corridor were visible behind him. Tom thought vaguely about escape, but his chest hurt too much. He watched as Fishcake advanced toward him and set the tray down on the floor.
"I swapped shifts with someone so I could come and see you," the boy confessed. "It was easy. All the others want the night off, 'cos it's Moon Festival. That's what all the bangs and crashes are about."
Tom listened, and heard faintly the noise of fireworks and gongs from the streets outside.
"I'm sorry you got caught, Mr. Natsworthy," Fishcake admitted. "Wren was very nice to me. So I thought you'd want to see this."
He took a crumpled page of newspaper from the pocket of his uniform and held it out for Tom to read. The Palimpsest. And there, in the photograph beneath the headline, kneeling among a group of other girls around a large woman with enormous hair ...
"That's Wren, ain't it?" said Fishcake. "See? I thought you'd want to know she's all right. It's a good life, they say, being a house slave up on Cloud 9. Look: She's got a fancy frock and a new hairdo and everything."
"Cloud 9? Is that where Wren is?" Tom remembered the floaty palace thing he had seen hovering above the city. He
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reached forward, laying a hand on Fishcake's shoulder. "Fishcake, can you find my wife and get a message to her? Tell her where Wren is?"
"That one with the scar?" asked Fishcake, wriggling away. He looked scared and disgusted. "She's not here, is she?"
"She's in Brighton, yes. We came together."
Fishcake had gone a curious color. His hands shook. "I ain't going near her," he said. "She's evil, that one. She killed Gargle and Remora, and she'd have killed me too if she could. That's why I had to bring Wren with me. I didn't want to, but she'd have killed me elsewise."
"I'm sure Hester only did what she had to," said Tom, a little uneasily because he wasn't sure of that at all. "It was tragic, but--"
"She's evil," Fishcake insisted sullenly. "And you're as bad, even though you think you ain't. Going about with her makes you as bad as she is."
"You still brought me the paper, though," Tom said. "You're a good boy, Fishcake." He smiled at the Lost Boy, who eyed him suspiciously. Tom felt sorry for him. He must have been hurt and betrayed by so many people that he had turned to the first grown-up who showed him any sort of kindness, even though it was only Nabisco Shkin. Tom wished he could take him away from this dreadful city to the safety of Vineland, where he would have the chance of living a normal life, like the children Freya had rescued from Grimsby.
He said, "Fishcake, can you get me out of here?"
"Don't be soft!" said the boy. "Mr. Shkin would kill me."
"Mr. Shkin would never find you. I'll take you away with
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me, if you like. We'll find Wren and Hester, and we'll go away together."
"Away where? Grimsby's gone. I've got a good job here. Where would I want to go?"
"Anywhere," said Tom. "We could drop you anywhere you liked. Or we could take you back with us to Anchorage-in-Vineland and you could live with us there."
"Live with you?" echoed Fishcake. His eyes seemed to Tom to be as round and bright as the lamp on the ceiling. "What," he said, "like a family?"
"Only if that's what you wanted," said Tom.
Fishcake swallowed loudly. He didn't fancy going anywhere with Hester. Hester deserved to die, and one day he meant to make sure that she did, for he had not forgotten his vow. But he could not help liking Tom. Tom seemed kind, even kinder than Mr. Shkin. And Wren had been kind too, even if she hadn't saved him from Brighton's trap. He would like to live with Tom and Wren.
"All right," he said. He glanced at the doorway, scared that someone might have overheard. "All right. As long as you promise--"
Out in the corridor, a nasty, harsh electric bell began to ring, making Tom and Fishcake jump. Doors slammed, and boots pounded on the metal floor. Fishcake snatched the piece of paper from Tom and scampered out of the cell, swinging the door shut behind him. Standing up, Tom ran to peer through the small grille in the top of the door, but he could see nothing. The bell jarred and jangled. Men's voices shouted at the far end of the corridor, and more boots clanged. Then, a sudden, startling bang, and another.
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Someone screamed. "Fishcake!" shouted Tom. There was another bang, very close, and then Hester's voice, outside in the corridor, shouting, "Tom!"
"Here! In here!" he said, and a moment later her veiled face appeared at the grille.
"I got your note," she said. He ducked away from the door, and her gun punched holes in the lock. She kicked the door open.
"Where's Fishcake?" asked Tom. "You didn't hurt Fishcake? He was here just a minute ago! He had a picture! Wren's on Cloud 9!"
Hester pulled her veil down and kissed him quickly. She smelled of smoke, and her dear, ugly face was flushed. "Shut up and run," she said.
He ran, ignoring the warning stabs of pain in his chest. Outside the door of his cell, the corridor made a tight turn. Two men lay dead at the corner. Neither of them was Fishcake. Tom clambered gingerly over the corpses and followed his wife up some stairs, past some more bodies. Smoke hung in the air. Shouts and screams came from somewhere below.
"What's happening?" he asked. "What's going on down there?"
Hester looked back at him, grinning. "Someone's let the Lost Boys out. Careless, eh? We'd better go out the top way."
The lights went out, all at once. Tom crashed into Hester, who steadied him and said very calmly, "Don't worry."
There was inkish darkness for as long as it took Tom's heart to make five stuttering beats, then dull red lights came on. "Emergency generator," said Hester.
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Tom trailed after her, through a series of deserted offices where the blood-red light shone on the brass handles of filing cabinets and the ivory keys of typewriting machines. He wondered where Hester had found her new coat and what had happened to the old one. He was still wondering when they ran into a bunch of Shkin Corporation men hurrying in the opposite direction. "Get down!" shouted Hester, knocking Tom to the floor. "Not you!" she added, as the guards dived for cover.
The office filled with smoke and stabs of flame and a terrible noise. Not all of the men had guns, and the ones who did fired wildly. Bullets slammed against the walls, smashed the water cooler,
and ripped pages from a calendar on the desk. Tom hid behind a filing cabinet and watched as Hester shot the men down one by one. He had not been with her when she'd fought the Huntsmen, and he had always imagined that she must have been angry and afraid, but there was a terrible calm about her now. When her gun was empty, she put it down and killed the last man with a typewriter, the carriage-return bell jingling cheerfully while she smashed in his skull. When she picked up her gun and started to reload it, she was smiling. Tom thought she looked more alive than he had ever seen her before.
"All right?" she asked, pulling him to his feet.
He wasn't, but he was shaking too badly to tell her, so he just followed her again, up more stairs, and found himself back in the neat reception area where he had spoken to Miss Weems. Her chair was empty now, the sign on the door turned to CLOSED, the guard gone from his post outside. Fireworks boomed and crackled above the rooftops, punching
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shafts of pink and emerald light through gaps in the blinds. Hester shot the lock off the door and pushed it open, but as Tom crossed the room, he heard frightened breathing, then a whimper.
He went down on his knees and peered beneath Miss Weems's desk.
Fishcake's pale, terrified face looked out at him.
"Fishcake, it's all right!" Tom promised as the boy scrabbled back deeper into the shadows. He waved at Hester to keep her away. "It's only Fishcake," he told her, looking round.
"Leave him, then," said Hester.
"We can't," said Tom. "He's alone and frightened, and he's been working for Shkin. If the other Lost Boys find him, they'll tear him to pieces. Just a figure of speech," he added unconvincingly as Fishcake moaned with terror.
"That's his fault," said Hester, poised in the doorway, eager to go. "Leave him."
"But he told me where Wren is."
"Fine," said Hester angrily. "He's told you. So we don't need him. Leave him."
"No!" said Tom, more sharply than he meant to. Beneath the desk his hand found Fishcake's, and he hauled the Lost Boy out. "He's coming with us. I promised."
Hester stared at the boy and the boy stared at Hester, and for a moment Tom thought she was going to shoot Fishcake where he stood, but a thunderous howl of defiance and rage came echoing up from the depths of the Pepperpot, the roar of Lost Boys on the warpath, and she stuffed her gun away and slipped through the door, holding it open so that Tom could drag the scared, quaking child with him out of the
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building and down the steps into the plaza. Huge, reverberating bangs were rebounding from the walls of the surrounding buildings, and dazzling flashes lit up the sky. Fireworks are so much louder than they were when I was little, Tom thought, and, looking up, saw fierce white airships swooping over the city at rooftop height, raining down rockets from their armored gondolas.
"Great gods and goddesses!" shouted Hester. "That's all we need!"
"What is it?" whined Fishcake, clinging tight to Tom. "What's happening?"
What was happening was that a squadron of Fox Spirits had been detached from the main body of the Green Storm fleet to silence Brighton's air defenses. The MoonFest celebrations were disintegrating into panic as the aviators mistook the firework displays in Queen's Park and Black Rock for antiaircraft fire and started strafing them. As carnival processions writhed across Ocean Boulevard like beheaded snakes, the Requiem Vortex cut through the smoke above them, powering toward Cloud 9. Ahead stood the armored mountains that were Kom Ombo and Benghazi, smaller towns and suburbs snuggling around their skirts.
"A whole cluster of them!" shouted General Naga, gleeful as a huntsman who has just spied the fox. "That big one ate Palmyra Static a few summers back!" His mechanical armor grated and hissed as it spun him round to face the Stalker Fang, raising his one arm in a jerky salute. "So this is why you brought us west, Excellency! I knew it could not be for that moth-eaten raft resort! Permission to lead the attack ..."
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"Silence," whispered the Stalker Fang. The fires of Brighton shimmered in her bronze face. "The cluster is irrelevant. The other ships will keep those city's batteries and fighters busy, and ensure that the Brightonians do not attempt to help their mayor. Our target is the flying palace. Prepare boarding parties."
Naga had followed the Stalker unquestioningly for sixteen hard years, but this was almost too much for him. As his subofficers scrambled to relay her orders and fetch sidearms and battle armor, he stood for a moment, looking as if he'd been slapped. Then, recalling what became of officers who disputed the Stalker Fang's commands, he hurried to obey.
Wren and Theo ran to the other side of the control room just in time to see the sky between Brighton and the shore blossom with gaudy explosions of flak from Benghazi's air-defense cannon. The crackling, shifting light slid across the envelopes of four big warships and countless fighters.
"A Green Storm aerial attack unit," Theo said.
"Oh, Quirke!" whispered Wren, thinking of her father. "Do you think they'll sink Brighton? My dad's down there! Theo, he'll be killed, and it'll all be my fault!"
"They aren't here for Brighton," said Theo, taking her hand. "They've come for the book! Whoever it was who set the gull on guard and killed these men must have called these ships here, and they've cut us adrift so we can be boarded more easily."
From somewhere outside came the screech of air-raid alarms, like fingernails dragging down the blackboard of the sky.
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"We've got to get away," said Wren. "How?" asked Theo.
"On the Peewit, of course. I don't suppose anybody had time to drain her fuel tanks after last night."
Theo shook his head. "Even if we made it to the boathouse, the Storm would shoot us down before we were out of Cloud 9's airspace."
"But the Peewit's a yacht, not a warship!"
"The Storm don't care about details like that."
"But don't you know codes and passwords and things? Couldn't you radio them and tell them you're one of their own people?"
"Wren, I'm not one of their people," said Theo. "Not anymore. I failed them. If they capture me, they'll have me sent to Batmunkh Tsaka and killed."
Wren wasn't sure what that meant, but she could see that he was scared, perhaps as scared as she was. The control room shook as something hit the deck plate overhead, and a rain of sparks and burning wreckage came tumbling down past the windows. She looked up into Theo's face and tried to sound brave. "Theo," she said, "my dad's waiting for me in Brighton, and your mother and father are waiting for you in Zagwa, and they'll all be really miffed if we just hang about up here and let ourselves get killed. Come on. We have to try!"
Still holding hands, they ran up the stairs to the ground-floor entrance, the door the murderer must have left by. It opened into a corridor outside the kitchens. There was no one about. Above them they could hear screams and shouts and the rumble of feet as people fled the ballroom. Explosions in the sky outside splashed skewed diamonds of
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sour yellow light on the floor under the kitchen windows, and glinted on fallen pans and trays of sweetmeats dropped by slaves who had left in a hurry.
They ran to the nearest exit and blundered out into the gardens in front of the Pavilion. Crowds of party guests were hurrying across the lawns like frightened sheep. There was no way off Cloud 9, but they wanted to get as far as they could from the Pavilion for fear the Green Storm were about to bomb it. Anyway, they were wealthy, and used to getting everything they needed. Even if the cable car was gone, surely there would be a ship there, or an air taxi, or some plucky Brightonians organizing a rescue with air pedalos and sky yachts?
Not wanting to be caught up in the stampede, Theo pushed Wren into the shelter of one of Pennyroyal's abstract statues. They huddled together and watched moonlit exhaust trails billow in the sky around Cloud 9 like skeins of spider silk as the Flying Ferrets buzzed and tumbled, hurling themselves at the Storm's airships. It was as if each ship had a seed of fire inside it a
nd the Flying Ferrets were patiently probing for it with streams of incendiary bullets. When they found it, the airship would begin to glow from inside like a MoonFest lantern; then blinding patterns of light would checker the envelope; and finally the whole thing would become a dazzling pyre, casting eerie shadows from the cypress groves as the wind carried it past Cloud 9.
But the airships were fighting back, and so were the clouds of Resurrected eagles and condors that flew with them. The birds descended in flapping black clouds upon the
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Ferrets' flying machines, slashing at the wings and rigging and the unprotected pilots, and as the Ferrets stuggled to evade them, they made easy targets for the airships' rockets and machine cannon. Wings were shredded; fuel tanks blew apart; rotor blades came flipping and fluttering across the Pavilion's lawns like bits of an exploding Venetian blind. The Bad Hair Day, its wings ripped off, plunged burning into the cable car station. The Group Captain Mandrake veered sideways into the Wrestling Cheese, and both machines crashed together through the flank of a Green Storm destroyer and went down with it, a vast barrel of fire sinking gracefully toward the sea.
Just off the edge of the gardens, a larger ship circled, waiting for the fighters to finish off the Ferrets, and beyond it Wren could see the upper tiers of Kom Ombo rising like an armored island from a sea of smoke. A fat airship was hanging above the city, showering down clouds of tumbling, twirling things that looked like silver seedpods until they struck a fortress or a gun emplacement, where they burst with white flashes and flung wreckage high into the night. Wren felt the explosions in her chest, like the beat of a huge drum.