“I do!” cried Wren, grateful that someone was prepared to listen to her at last. “My name is Wren Natsworthy, and I was kidnapped—”
“Nobody comes from Anchorage.” Shkin stood up and circled her. His eyes were on her all the time. “Anchorage sank years ago, west of Greenland.”
“No, it didn’t!” blurted Wren. “It—”
Shkin raised one finger and turned to his desk. Turned back with something in his hands. It was the book that Wren had stolen from Miss Freya. She had forgotten all about it until now.
“What is this?” he asked.
“That’s the Tin Book,” she said. “Just an old curio from the Black Centuries. It’s why the Autolycus came to Anchorage. I think it’s got something to do with submarines. I helped the Lost Boys steal it, but it all went wrong and Fishcake ended up taking me hostage, and if you could take me back there, sir, I’m sure my mum and dad and Miss Freya would reward you…”
“Anchorage again.” Shkin put the book down and studied her. “Why do you persist in this ridiculous story? Anchorage is home to no one but fish. Everyone in Brighton knows that. Our beloved Mayor Pennyroyal made rather a lot of money with his book about its final days. Predator’s Gold ends with Anchorage sinking to what our ever-original mayor describes as ‘a watery grave.’ ”
“Well, Pennyroyal’s a liar!” Wren said angrily, thinking how unfair it was that Pennyroyal should have survived at all, let alone grown rich from his fibs. “He’s a coward and a liar, and he shot my dad and stole Mum and Dad’s airship so he could run away from Anchorage when he thought Arkangel was going to eat it. He can’t possibly know what happened after that. Whatever he wrote, he must have made it up.”
Nabisco Shkin raised one gray eyebrow about an eighth of an inch, which was his way of showing surprise. At the same instant, Wren had an idea. She was the only person in the whole of the outside world who knew the truth about Anchorage. Surely that must make her valuable? Far too valuable to be auctioned off with the rest of the Lost Boys as an arena slave!
She felt as if a tiny door had opened very far away from her, on the other side of an enormous, darkened room; she could see a way out.
She said, “Anchorage found its way to a green bit on the Dead Continent. It has thrived there, and I’m proof of it. Don’t you think Pennyroyal would like to know that?”
Nabisco Shkin had been about to silence her again, but when she said that, he hesitated, and his eyebrow shot up a full quarter inch. He settled into his chair again, his eyes still fixed on Wren. “Explain,” he said.
“Well, he’ll want to know about Anchorage, won’t he?” Wren stammered. “I mean, if he’s made all that money telling people about us, think how interested he’ll be to learn what really happened. He could write a sequel! He could have an expedition to take me home, and write a book about it!” And even if he couldn’t, she thought, at least life as a slave in this floaty palace thing would be better than the arenas of Nuevo-Maya. She said eagerly, “He’ll be dying to talk to me.”
Shkin nodded slowly. A smile flickered for a moment around his thin mouth, then gave up the effort. He had been irritated by the crack that Pennyroyal had made about the underdeck in his interview in the Palimpsest, reminding everyone of Shkin’s beginnings as a child thief in the dank alleys of Mole’s Combe. Maybe this girl was a gift from his gods, a way to get back his own from Brighton’s absurd mayor.
“If your story is true,” he said, “you might indeed be of interest to Mayor Pennyroyal. But how can you prove it?”
Wren pointed to the Tin Book, which lay on his desk. “That’s the proof. It’s a famous artifact from the margravine’s library…”
“I do not recall Pennyroyal mentioning it in his tediously detailed account of Anchorage’s treasures,” said Shkin. “What if he does not recognize it? That leaves only your word, and who would believe the word of a slave and a Lost Girl?”
“He can ask me stuff,” said Wren desperately. “He can ask me things about my mum and dad and Mr. Scabious and Miss Freya, stuff that’s not in his book, stuff that only somebody who’d lived in Anchorage could know about.”
“Interesting.” Shkin gave another of his slow-motion nods. “Monica,” he said, “this girl is to be transferred to the Second Tier. Make sure she is treated as a luxury item from now on.”
“Don’t forget Fishcake,” said Wren. “He’s been to Anchorage too.”
“Indeed,” said Shkin, and with a glance at Miss Weems, he added, “arrange for that boy to be brought to the questioning room. It’s time I had a word with him.”
Chapter 13
Dr Zero
As the airship that had carried her from Batmunkh Tsaka swung into the shoals of other ships above Tienjing, Oenone Zero looked down from the gondola windows, delighted by the gaily painted houses balanced on their impossible ledges, the gardens like window boxes, the sunlight silvering high-level canals, and the bright robes of the citizens thronging on the spidery bridges and the steep, ladderlike streets. This city, high in the central mountains of Shan Guo, had been the birthplace of Anti-Tractionism. Here Lama Batmunkh had founded the Anti-Traction League, and here the League had had its capital for a thousand years.
But the League was gone now, the old High Council overthrown, and the signs of the Green Storm’s war were everywhere. As the airship descended toward the military docking pans at the Jade Pagoda, Oenone found it harder and harder to ignore the hideous concrete rocket emplacements that disfigured Tienjing’s parks and the armies of ugly windmills flailing and rattling on the mountainsides, generating clean energy for the war effort. For fourteen years no one had been allowed to do anything that was not part of the war effort, and the civilian quarters of the city showed signs of long neglect. Wherever Oenone looked, buildings were falling into disrepair and the shadows of patrolling dreadnoughts slithered across decaying roofs.
The Jade Pagoda was not made of jade, nor was it a pagoda. The name was just a relic that Tienjing’s founders had brought with them when they had first fled into these mountains; it had probably belonged once to some pleasant summer palace in the lowlands, long since devoured by hungry cities. It didn’t suit the grim stone fortress that loomed over Oenone as she disembarked on the snow-scoured pan. On spikes above the outer gates, the heads of antiwar protesters and people who failed to recycle their household waste were turning dry and papery as wasps’ nests in the mountain air. Huge slogans had been painted on the walls: THE WORLD MADE GREEN AGAIN! and ONE LAST PUSH WILL SMASH THE PAN-GERMAN TRACTION WEDGE!
Soldiers of the Stalker Fang’s elite air legion manned the inner gate, and stepped out to bar the way as Oenone heaved her pack onto her shoulder and started up the steps from the docking pan.
“Papers, young man,” barked the subofficer in charge. It was a mistake that Oenone was used to. In the Storm’s lands, all surplus food was earmarked for the fighters at the front, and the yearly famines of her childhood had left her as slight and flat-chested as a boy of fourteen. She waited patiently while the subofficer checked her pass, and saw his face change when he realized who she was. “Let her through! Let her through!” he shouted, lashing at his men with the flat of his sword, punishing them in the hope that Dr. Zero would not punish him. “Let her through at once! This is Dr. Zero, the leader’s new surgeon-mechanic!”