A Darkling Plain me-4 Read online

  Chapter 26 Ruined!

  The conference aboard Manchester had dragged on and on, as the leaders of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft hammered out the details of their new offensive. And “offensive” was the word, thought Kriegsmarschall von Kobold as he clambered out of the gondola of his air yacht and walked stiffly home to the Rathaus. His wife had already set off for Paris aboard the liner Veronica Lake, scared away by the rumors of war. He did not miss her. He had seen so little of her these past years that he did not feel he even knew her anymore. Glad that he would not have to spend another evening with her in their overdecorated, overscented official suite, he climbed the stairs to the small room on the top floor which he made his home when she and Wolf were away. The white walls, bare but for a portrait of his son, focused his attention on the windows, the bats flitting black outside against the afterglow, the sky streaked with the wind-combed contrails of flying machines.

  Such a peaceful evening, thought the kriegsmarschall, pulling papers from the pockets of his tunic and throwing them down on his bed. Yet in the morning he would have to sign the orders that would take his city back to war. Young men would be recalled to their units, snout guns and airships made ready… Already the women and children were on their way to peaceful cities farther west. And tonight the armor would be closed. It might be months before he would be able to look out again at the evening sky from his own bedroom window.

  He hung up his tunic and used the telephone above his dressing table to talk to his housekeeper, telling her that he would dine in his own room that night, and asking her to send up bread, cold meat, a glass of beer. As he returned to the door to check that he had not locked it, he noticed a face staring at him from the pile of papers on the bed.

  He picked up the photograph, wondering what on earth it was doing there, among the tedious, typewritten transcripts of Browne’s speech. A woman’s face. It took him a moment to realize that this was what Varley had stuffed into his pocket in the park. In all the misery of the afternoon’s planning sessions, he had almost forgotten that seedy air trader. Now he grew furious. To think that a slaver was operating within a few miles of Murnau, which had never had anything to do with slavery, and had always made it a point of honor to free the slaves of every town it ate! And to think that Varley could imagine that he, von Kobold, would be interested in buying the poor, miserable-looking waif in this picture!

  Photo in hand, he strode back to the telephone, winding the handle furiously and shouting at the startled operator to put him through at once to his chief of security. While he waited for the man to answer, he fumbled his spectacles on and looked more closely at the photograph. The girl was an easterner; dirty, bruised, huge eyed with fear. She seemed faintly familiar, though Kobold could not think why. That small, vulnerable mouth, those crooked teeth…

  He remembered, suddenly, where he had seen her before. Intelligence had sent him pictures of General Naga’s wedding. The bride in her red finery. Thick, black brows and tilted cheekbones. That mouth.

  “Herr Kriegsmarschall?” crackled the telephone. “What is it?”

  Kobold hesitated, still staring at the photograph. “Nothing, Schiller,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He returned the telephone gently to its cradle, then took a pistol from the dressing-table drawer, buckled on his heavy fighting sword, and put on the precious Kevlar body armor that his enemy had sent him all those years ago. He did not usually bother with armor, but it seemed appropriate that Naga’s gift should protect him when he went to rescue Naga’s wife.

  He pulled a greatcoat on over the top and ran down the stairs, past the housemaid who was coming up with his dinner. “Sorry, my dear,” he told her. “Change of plan.” But he took the beer, drinking it as he hurried down to his private docking pan. The ground crew were moving his yacht Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers into her hangar for the night. “It’s all right, men,” he called, tossing the empty beer stein aside as he marched toward them across the pan. “I am taking her out again.”

  “Tonight, sir?”

  “Not much fuel in her tanks, sir.”

  “I don’t need much,” said the kriegsmarschall. “I’m only going up to Airhaven.”

  “Nobody of that name here,” said the clerk at the Empyrean Hotel. A dusty argon globe buzzed and flickered, light fluttering over threadbare carpets and tobacco-colored walls. Stairs went up into shadow. “Nice place,” muttered Theo.

  Hester leaned across the receptionist’s desk. Behind her veil her blunt profile looked as hard as a fist. Theo was afraid that she was going to do something terrible to the insolent young man in the pillbox hat, but she just said, “You’re sure? Nimrod Pennyroyal. He’s a writer.”

  “Oh, I know who he is, lady,” said the clerk, with the same witless grin. “Everyone’s heard of Pennyroyal. But we ain’t got no one of that name staying here.”

  “I just saw him leave,” said Hester. “A fat man. Old. Bald.”

  “That was just Mr. Unterberg,” said the clerk. “A commercial gentleman from Murnau, staying in room 128. He said he was popping round to the harbor office to— Look, here he is now!”

  Hester and Theo both turned as the lobby door opened, letting in the noise of rowdy parties from the High Street bars, a few lost moths, and the man they were looking for. He had shaved off his beard, put on blue-tinted spectacles, and swapped his usual fine clothes for the dowdy pinstriped robes of a commercial traveler, but Hester and Theo recognized him at once.

  “Oh, great Poskitt!” he gasped as they went to meet him. “Oh, Clio! Oh, ruddy Nora!”

  “We’d like a little chat,” Hester explained.

  She expected him to scream for help, to call for the police and Airhaven militia. After all, last time they’d met, Hester had tried to murder him, and only her softhearted daughter had stopped her. But Pennyroyal seemed more frightened of the clerk at the front desk than of her. He peeked nervously past her at the youth (who was watching wide-eyed, with his mouth hanging open) and hissed, “We can’t talk here!”

  “Your room then,” said Hester.

  Pennyroyal obeyed meekly enough, fetching his passkey from the astonished clerk and motioning for Theo and Hester to follow him up the stairs. Hester couldn’t help feeling she had missed something. She had never met anyone as pleased with himself as Nimrod Pennyroyal. Why would he pretend to be someone else?

  Room 128 was on the top floor: sloping ceilings, a tap dripping into a grimy metal handbasin, empty wine bottles on every level surface. Pennyroyal sank into a wicker chair beside the window. Hester let Theo in and kicked the door shut behind him.

  “If you’ve come looking for Tom and Wren,” the old man whimpered, “they took off days ago. Gone north, on some job for a fellow named Wolf Kobold.”

  “Tom and Wren were here?” asked Theo.

  Hester seemed disconcerted by this sudden news of her family. She stared at Pennyroyal for a moment, started to say something, stopped, and then recovered herself and snapped, “That’s not why we came. We need money, Pennyroyal.”

  Pennyroyal let out a humorless bark, like a seal with bronchitis. “Money? You’ve come to me for money? Hal Never been much of a reader, have you, Hester? Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Why do you think I’m hiding in this dump?” He crouched down and pulled a tattered newspaper from beneath the heap of empty bottles and discarded socks under the bed. Shoving it at Hester and Theo, he said bitterly, “See? I’m ruined! Ruined! And it’s all thanks to that daughter of yours!”

  The paper was called The Speculum. A picture of Pennyroyal filled most of the front page. Beneath his smug, smiling face, heavy, black type screamed:

  LIAR!

  THE REAL NIMROD

  B. PENNYROYAL UNMASKED!

  By our Murnau correspondent

  SAMPFORD SPINEY

  (See pages 2, 24)

  Theo took the paper and leafed quickly through the first few pages. “ ‘Many exp
erts have long believed that “Professor” Pennyroyal’s archaeological work is suspect,’ ” he read. “ ‘No proof has ever surfaced to support “Professor” Pennyroyal’s stories of his adventures in America and Nuevo-Maya…’ ” Then he turned to the end of the article and gave a cry of surprise, for there was Wren. The photograph was small, and she had done something to her hair since he’d last seen her (or had she been standing on a slope when it was taken?) but it was her. He scanned the paragraphs beneath the picture and glanced nervously at Hester before he read them aloud.

  “ ‘Mr. Thomas Natsworthy, a respectable air trader, is none other than the husband of Hester Shaw, whose death Pennyroyal describes so touchingly in the closing chapters of his best-seller Predator’s Gold. Fans of that book may be surprised to learn that Ms. Shaw was alive and well last Moon Festival, when she and her husband separated, and that the couple have a charming daughter, Miss Wren Natsworthy (15), who says of Pennyroyal, “He does tend to exaggerate a little.”

  “ ‘It is the opinion of this writer, and of an increasing number of the professor’s readers, that Pennyroyal exaggerates more than a little; that he is in fact nothing more than a fraud, a charlatan, a confidence trickster, a lounge lizard, and a master of deceit whose presence upon Murnau’s upper tiers offends against every tradition of that noble city.’ ”

  Hester chuckled appreciatively behind her veil.

  “You see?” said Pennyroyal. “The little minx! Talking to Spiney like that behind my back! Or did he trick her? Twist her words about? I wouldn’t put it past him. He will use any ammunition to hurl at me. I would set my lawyers on him, but alas, all proofs of my adventures burned with Cloud 9. Now Werederobe and Spoor are claiming that I have deceived them and want me to repay the advance on my latest 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.

  “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 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 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…”

  Chapter 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 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.

  * * *

  “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 paced to and fro, his heavy footfalls shaking the deck. “she should not have gone alone,” the Stalker said. “I told you—”