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.
Theo hoped that if he could keep her talking long enough, some helpful god might slip an idea into his brain.
“The hair and skin were easy,” Cynthia was saying. “The eyes were the real trick. I’m wearing little Old Tech things called ‘contract lenses.’ ” She touched a finger to one eye and blinked. When she took her hand away, the eye was its old cornflower blue, gazing incongruously at Theo out of her dark face. “If you were any good,” she said, “you’d have tried to hit me then. But I see you’re still a coward. I’m rather looking forward to killing you, Theo Ngoni. That’s why I was saving you till last.”
“Please,” gasped Lady Naga, heaving about on the deck like something half drowned. “Don’t hurt him.”
Cynthia stamped on her. “We’re talking!”
“Cynthia,” shouted Theo, “why are you doing this?”
Cynthia took another step closer, fixing him with her odd-colored eyes. “This Aleutian bitch betrayed our leader so that Naga could seize power. Do you really think those of us who loved the Stalker Fang would let her get away with it?”
“But why here?” cried Theo helplessly. “Why now? You’re part of her household; you could have killed her in Tienjing… Killed Naga, too.”
Cynthia sighed sharply, exasperated by his innocence. “We don’t want Naga dead,” she explained. “That would only mean civil war, and more distraction from the real business of killing townies. We just want to make him give up this truce. If you hadn’t interfered when I called our ships in at Zagwa, it would be over already. But I’m patient. In a few minutes this old rust bucket will go down in flames. Rohini will be the only survivor, and she’ll tell Naga how Zagwa betrayed us to the townies and the townies shot us down. That ought to put the mockers on any alliance between Naga and your lot. As for the townies, well, he’s hardly going to sit down and talk peace when he hears what they did to his pretty little wifelet. The guns will begin firing again. Our mistress will reward us when she returns to Tienjing!”
“You mean Fang? But she’s dead!”
Cynthia smiled eerily. “She was always dead, African. That is why she can never be killed. She is waiting for us to end this treacherous talk of truces and conditions. Then she will return, and lead us to total victory!”
“You’re mad!” said Theo.
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from somebody who goes around smashing down doors with a dirty great axe,” said Cynthia, and with no more warning than that, she swung her foot up and drove him backward with a kick, snatching the heavy fire axe from his hands as he went sprawling through the open doorway and tumbled down the companionway to the level below.
A grated walkway hit him hard in the face, and he lay there for a moment tasting blood in his mouth and listening for the sound of Cynthia coming after him. He heard her footsteps pacing along the walkway overhead, and saw her shadow moving against the flank of the gas cell up there. He dragged himself into a crawlspace. After a moment the footsteps stopped. “Theo?” Cynthia called down. “Don’t think I’m going to come looking for you. I was looking forward to killing you, but I really can’t be bothered to play hide-and-seek. It won’t make any difference anyway. There’s a bomb under the central gas cell, set to explode at midnight. So I’m going to take one of your silly Zagwan kites and beetle off now; I’ve arranged to meet some friends of mine in the desert shortly. Toodle-oo!”
The footsteps started again, and grew quieter as she climbed away from him. Theo guessed she was making for the emergency exit in the flank of the envelope. Just inside it was a locker where half a dozen kites were stored, workaday versions of the one he’d flown in Zagwa. He waited, and heard the hatch open, the sounds inside the envelope changing as the wind rushed in. Quickly he scrambled along a lateral support to a place where a glastic porthole had been riveted into the skin of the envelope. Out in the starlight, far away, a black bat wing showed for a moment against the silver waves of the desert.
What about the other kites? Knowing Cynthia, she would have destroyed them. But maybe the delay that Theo had caused might have left her no time to deal with them. He glanced at his watch and saw with relief that there were still eight minutes to go before midnight. Ignoring the pain in his chest and side, he started climbing toward the kite locker. Even if he had not known where it was, he would have been able to find it by tracing the source of the cold wind howling in through the open escape hatch. Sure enough, the locker was empty; Cynthia had bundled the spare kites out through the hatch before she took flight herself. But when Theo stuck his head out, he saw one kite caught in the ratlines only a few yards from the hatch, and it was easy for him to reach out and drag it back aboard.