Infernal Devices Page 17

  The gas cells were full, just as Cynthia had told her. The fuel gauge was still on empty, but Wren had thought of a way to deal with that. She took her nightgown off and stashed it behind the instrument panel. Underneath, she was still wearing her day clothes. She said a quick prayer to the gods of Vineland, then left the airship and walked briskly across the apron in front of the boathouse and through the woods toward the Ferrets' base.

  212

  In an old summerhouse that had been commandeered by the mercenary air force, Orla Twombley and a few of her aviators were playing cards. They looked up suspiciously when Wren came tapping at the door.

  "Who's that?"

  "Looks like one of Boo-Boo's girls."

  The aviatrix stood up lazily and opened the door. "Well?"

  "I've come with a message from Mrs. Pennyroyal," said Wren. Her voice caught a little as she said it, but the aviatrix didn't seem to notice. She looked worried. Maybe she thought Boo-Boo had sent Wren here to tell her off for flirting with the mayor. Wren started to feel more confident. "Mrs. Pennyroyal wants the Peewit to be fueled at once," she explained. "She is going across to Benghazi tomorrow morning. Very early tomorrow morning, so she can find lots of bargains at the bazaar. She wonders if your ground crew would oblige?"

  Orla Twombley frowned. "Why ours? Is it not the mayor's men who should be refueling the old gasbag?"

  "Yes," said Wren. "His Worship was supposed to ask them this afternoon, but he forgot, and they've gone off duty now. So if you wouldn't mind getting your people to do it, Mrs. Pennyroyal would be ever so grateful."

  The aviatrix thought for a moment. She did not want to upset the mayoress. Boo-Boo had powerful relatives who might force Pennyroyal to dispense with the Flying Ferrets' services and hire some other freelance air force instead. Orla Twombley knew for a fact that the Junkyard Angels and Richard D'Astardley's Flying Circus were both angling to take over the Brighton contract.

  She nodded, and turned to her men. "Algy? Ginger? You

  213

  heard what the young lady said...."

  Grumpy but obedient, the two aviators set down their cards and their mugs of cocoa and went out with Wren into the night, muttering about what a waste of good fuel it was and wondering why anyone still bothered with airships when heavier-than-air was the way of the future. Wren trailed after them at a distance and watched as they ran fuel lines from the big tanks behind their airstrip and linked them to nozzles on the Peewit's underside.

  "She'll take a good ten minutes," one of the men said, turning to Wren with a friendly wink. "No need for you to hang about in the cold, kiddo."

  Wren thanked him and ran back to the Pavilion. Ten minutes would give her just enough time to fetch Cynthia.

  She had decided right from the start that she would not tell Cynthia about her scheme. Cynthia was much too giggly and forgetful to keep a secret, and would probably have blurted out the whole thing to Mrs. Pennyroyal. But Wren had no intention of leaving her friend behind. While the Peewit was being fueled, she would slip into the dormitory where the girls slept, wake Cynthia as quietly as she could, and bring her down to the boathouse. By the time they got there, the yacht would be ready for takeoff.

  Mr. Plovery used a novel lockpick that Shkin's people had taken from the Lost Boys to open the door of the mayor's private office. The office was in a tower room, with long windows reaching up toward a shadowy ceiling high above. The blinds were open and the moon shone brightly in, showing the antiques dealer Pennyroyal's cluttered desk and the

  214

  drawing by Walmart Strange behind which Pennyroyal's private safe was hidden.

  As he crossed the room, Plovery sensed a movement way up above him in the domed ceiling, and had the oddest feeling that he was being watched. He went cold with panic. What if Pennyroyal had got hold of one of those crab-camera things and was using it to guard his safe?

  He almost gave up and ran, but the thought of his mother stopped him. With the money Shkin had promised him for the Tin Book, he would be able to move Mum into one of the luxury suites on the top floor of her nursing home, with a view of the parks at the city's stern. He forced himself to stay calm. Pennyroyal wasn't clever enough to set up a surveillance crab. And if he had, he would certainly have bragged about it to his dinner guests.

  Plovery took the picture off the wall and set it down carefully against Pennyroyal's chair. The circular door of the safe confronted him. He reached for the dial and turned it right, then left, then right again. On previous visits to the Pavilion he had often seen Pennyroyal open the safe, and had worked out the combination by listening to the number of clicks the dial made. Two-two, oh-nine, nine-five-seven ... Calmly, carefully, he went through the sequence, and the heavy door swung open.

  Inside the safe was a small leather case. Inside the case was the Tin Book of Anchorage. Plovery took it out, holding it reverently, for old things were his love as well as his livelihood. There was something beautiful, he thought, about the way that human handiwork could outlive its makers by so many, many years.

  215

  As he reached up to shut the safe, he sensed a movement behind him, and turned, and--

  Wren was halfway to the dormitory when she heard the horrible, quivering scream. She squeaked and froze, then dived behind a nearby statue. The scream ended in a sort of gargling noise. The echoes faded into silence, and then the Pavilion began to fill with the sounds of doors opening and people shouting to one another. Lights came on. Glancing through the window beside her, Wren saw that light was flooding the gardens too: big security lamps flicking on, and guards running about with wobbling handheld lanterns.

  That's that, she thought, no chance of escaping now --and then felt ashamed that she was feeling sorry for herself when she should really have been worrying about whoever it was who had let out that dreadful shriek.

  She left her hiding place and ran toward the dormitory. Halfway there, she turned a corner and cannoned into Theo Ngoni, coming up a side passage from the direction of the kitchens. "Oh!" she cried. "What are you doing here?"

  "I heard someone scream ..." he said.

  "Me too...."

  "The whole house heard someone scream, my dears." Mrs. Pennyroyal was striding toward them in her billowing nightie, like a ship in full sail. Wren jumped away from Theo, wondering if they would be punished for speaking to each other, but the mayoress just looked kindly at them and said, "It seemed to come from my husband's part of the house. Let's see what has happened."

  Wren and Theo followed obediently in her wake as she

  216

  2l6

  swept toward the larboard wing. Wren thought privately that it had been the sort of scream you hurry away from, not toward, but Mrs. Pennyroyal seemed determined to get to the source of the disturbance. Perhaps she was hoping that her husband had scalded himself on a hot-water bottle or fallen off his balcony and didn't want to waste good gloating time.

  They climbed the winding stairs behind the ballroom and passed the door to a little staircase that led down to the Cloud 9 control room; it was open, with worried-looking crewmen peering out. Lights were burning in the mayor's office, and as they drew closer, Wren heard Pennyroyal's voice, shrill and wobbly with alarm, saying, "The intruder may still be at large!" Slaves and militia were crowded round the open door, but they drew aside respectfully as their lady mayoress approached.

  Pennyroyal was standing beside his desk, along with two officers of his guard. He looked up as his wife and her retinue entered. "Boo-Boo! Don't look...."

  Boo-Boo looked, and gasped. Wren looked too, and wished she hadn't. Theo looked, and seemed quite undisturbed, but then he'd been in battle and had probably seen things like this before.

  Walter Plovery lay on the floor beneath the open safe. He was clutching the Tin Book of Anchorage, and from the way that it partly hid his face, Wren guessed that he had been holding it up to try to protect himself. It had done no good. Something sharp had been driven through t
he breast of his evening robe into his heart. The smell of the blood reminded Wren very forcefully of her last night in Anchorage and the deaths of Gargle and Remora.

  217

  "Must have been a knife," one of the militia officers was saying lamely. "Or maybe a spear ..."

  "A spear?" shouted Pennyroyal. "In my Pavilion? On the night before the MoonFest ball?"

  The officers swapped sheepish glances. Like most of Brighton's soldiers, they had signed up mainly for the uniforms--fetching scarlet numbers with pink trimmings and a lot of gold tassels. They had never expected to have to face dead bodies and mysterious intruders, and now that they were, they both felt a bit queasy.

  "How did he get in?" asked one.

  "There's no sign of a break-in," agreed the other.

  "Well, I expect he took the spare key from the vase outside," said Pennyroyal. "I keep a spare key there...."

  The officers studied the body at their feet and nervously fingered the hilts of their ornamental swords.

  "It looks to me as if he was trying to burgle Your Worship's safe," decided the first.

  "Yes; what is that thing he's holding?" said the second.

  "Nothing!" Pennyroyal snatched the Tin Book from the dead man's hands and thrust it back inside the safe, locking the door behind it. "Nothing of value, and anyway, it isn't here; you didn't see it...."

  There was a thunder of fleece-lined boots on the stairs, and Orla Twombley burst into the room with half a dozen Flying Ferrets at her back. They carried drawn swords, and the aviatrix used hers to point at Wren. "That's the girl!"

  "What? I say ..." Pennyroyal turned to peer at Wren.

  "She came asking my lads to ready your sky yacht," Orla Twombley explained, taking a menacing step toward Wren as

  218

  if she thought it might be safest to run the girl through where she stood. "Had some cock-and-bull story about the mayoress here wanting the old sack of gas refueled so she could go shopping in Benghazi...."

  "Stuff and nonsense!" cried Pennyroyal excitedly. "The girl was preparing her getaway! Once a burglar, always a burglar, eh?"

  Oh, gods ' , thought Wren. She had never imagined that her careful plan could go as wrong as this. What would they do to her? Send her back to Shkin, probably, and demand a refund....

  Everybody was talking excitedly Pennyroyal raising his voice above the rest. "Plovery must have recruited her to help him rob me, only she murdered him for the loot instead! And no doubt this Mossie devil was in it with her!" he added, pointing at Theo. "Well done, Orla, my angel! Without your quick thinking, they'd have made off aboard the Peewit with the ... ah ... contents of my safe."

  "Rubbish!" said Boo-Boo, in a voice that made them all fall silent and turn nervously to look at her. She had drawn herself up to her full height and turned the color that mayoresses turn when they hear their husbands refer to attractive aviatrices as "my angel" right in front of them. She put her arm around Wren. "What Wren told Miss Twombley was entirely true. I did ask for the Peewit to be refueled. I was planning to go shopping in Benghazi tomorrow, though I don't suppose I shall feel up to it now. Anyway, Wren and Theo were with me when poor Plovery cried out; neither of them could possibly have done this dreadful deed."

  219

  Wren and Theo stared at her, astonished that Boo-Boo would lie to protect them.

  "But if it wasn't them," asked Pennyroyal, "who ... ?"

  "That is not for me to find out," said Boo-Boo haughtily. "I am returning to my quarters. Please search for your murderer quietly. Come, Wren; come, Theo. We have a busy day tomorrow."

  She turned and strode out of the room, past the chastened aviators. Wren curtsied to Pennyroyal and hurried after Theo and her mistress. "Mrs. Pennyroyal," she whispered as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "Thank you."

  Boo-Boo seemed not to hear. "What a dreadful business!" she said. "That poor, poor man. My husband was to blame, I am sure."

  "You think the mayor killed him?" asked Theo. He sounded as if he didn't believe it, but Wren knew Professor Pennyroyal was quite capable of murdering someone if it suited him. Look at how he had treated Dad! She could see now how he had fooled everyone in Anchorage for so long, for he was certainly a good actor. How shocked he had looked, standing over Plovery's body....

  "Old Tech!" sighed Boo-Boo. "It is never anything but trouble. Oh, I do not say that Pennyroyal wielded the fatal blade himself, but I expect he has set up some nasty booby trap to protect his safe. He would stop at nothing to protect that ridiculous Tin Book. What is so special about it, anyway? Do you know, child?"

  Wren shook her head. All she knew was that the Tin Book had been the cause of yet another death. She wished

  220

  she had never taken the horrid thing from Miss Freya's library.

  Outside the doors of her bedroom, Boo-Boo shooed away the guard and turned to Wren and Theo. She studied them both with a sad smile, taking Wren's hands in hers. "My dear children," she said, "I am so sorry that your attempt to fly away has failed. I'm sure that is what you were doing, Wren? Having my husband's yacht fueled so that you and Theo could fly away together?"

  "I--" said Theo.

  "Theo had nothing to do with it!" Wren protested. "I ran into him in the corridor. We were both coming to see what had happened--"

  Mrs. Pennyroyal raised a hand; she would hear none of it. She had done her best to stop this happening, but now that it had, she found that it was all rather thrilling and romantic. "You need not hide the truth from me," she said, and tears came into her eyes. "I hope I am your friend as well as your mistress. As soon as I saw you together, your tryst interrupted by the death cry of that unhappy man, I understood everything. How I wish that I had known a burning passion like yours instead of getting married off to Pennyroyal to please my family...."

  "But--"

  "Ah, but yours is a forbidden love! You remind me of Prince Osmiroid and the beautiful slave girl Mipsie in Lembit Oriole's wonderful opera Trodden Weeds. But you must be patient, my dears. What hope of happiness do you have if you escape? Runaway slaves, penniless and far from home, pursued by bounty hunters wherever you turn. No,

  221

  you must stay here awhile, and meet only in secret. Now that I know how much you long to leave, I shall do all that is in my power to persuade Pennyroyal that he must set you free."

  Wren could feel herself blushing. How could anyone imagine that she was in love with Theo Ngoni, of all people? She glanced at him and was annoyed to see that he looked embarrassed too, as if the very idea that he might be in love with Wren were ridiculous.

  "Patience, my lovebirds," the mayoress said, and kissed each of them upon the forehead. She smiled, and opened her bedroom door. "Oh, by the way," she murmured, "not a word to anyone about poor Mr. Plovery. I will not allow this terrible event to upset our MoonFest celebrations...."

  222

  23 Bright, Brighter, Brighton

  ***

  M OONFEST ! A buzz OF expectation rose from the raft city as the sun came up. Actors and artists who usually never stirred before noon leaped from their beds at gull squawk and began putting the finishing touches on decorations and carnival floats, while shopkeepers rolled up their shutters with a gleeful air, dreaming of record takings. Brighton was not a religious city; most of its people thought that religion was at best a fairy tale, at worst a con. To them, the rising of the first full moon of autumn, which was a solemn, sacred night in other cities, meant only one thing: It was party time!

  Actually, it was almost always party time aboard Brighton. When Wren arrived, the Estival Festival, a six-week celebration of the gods of summer, had been petering out in a slew of firework parties and parades. Since then there had been the Large Hat Festival, the Cheese Sculpture Biennale,

  223

  the Festival of Unattended Plays, Poskitt Week, and Mime-Baiting Day (when Brightonians were allowed to get back at the city's swarms of irritating street performers). But MoonFest still had a
special place in the hearts and wallets of Brightonians, and the growing cluster of towns on shore seemed to promise a bumper harvest of visitors. Even the editor of the Palimpsest, who would usually have been delighted to print the rumors he'd been hearing about a mysterious death on Cloud 9 during the night, relegated the story to a small column on page 4 and filled his front page with Festival news instead.

  Boo-Boo's Bevy of Beauties Boosts Brighton!

  Lady Mayoress Boo-Boo Pennyroyal predicted yesterday that this year's MoonFest celebrations will be Brighton's best ever. Mrs. Pennyroyal (39)-- pictured at left posing for the Palimpsest's photographer along with a bevy of her most beautiful handmaidens--will tonight play hostess to the Middle Sea's richest partygoers when the Pavilion opens its doors and dance floors for the Mayoral Ball.

  "Everybody who is anybody is on their way to Brighton!" said Mrs. Pennyroyal. "What better place to celebrate Moon Festival than in this white city, adrift on an azure sea?"

  Of course, it wasn't really a white city on an azure sea at all; that was just how it looked from the observation

  224