Hester snapped off the safety on her Schadenfreude and aimed it in Uncle’s general direction. “If you don’t want to come,” she said, “you don’t have to.”
Uncle peered at her, then up at his hovering globe of screens, where there was an image of her face far clearer than the one his poor old eyes could provide him with. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m not leaving, and nor are you. We’re going to rebuild. Make the place watertight again. Stronger than ever. Make more limpets, better ones. We are none of us leaving. Tell them, Caul.”
Caul flinched and wondered what to do. He didn’t want to betray his friends, but he didn’t want to let Uncle down either. The sound of the old man’s voice made him shiver with love and pity.
He looked at Freya. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Then, with a sudden, quick movement, he jerked Hester’s gun out of her hand and pointed it at her, then at Tom.
“Caul!” Tom shouted.
Uncle cackled some more. “Good work, boy! I knew you’d come right in the end! I’m quite glad I didn’t finish hanging you now. What a shame those others scarpered off before they had a chance to meet you, Caul. You’d be an object lesson. Return of the Prodigal. All these years gone and you’re still loyal to your poor old Uncle.” He pulled a key from one of his pockets and held it out toward Caul. “Now get rid of this lot. Lock ’em in Gargle’s quarters while we have a proper talk.”
Caul kept pointing the gun at Tom, because he knew that Hester was the only one reckless enough to try and overpower him and that Hester cared more about Tom’s safety than her own. He fished the knife out of Hester’s boot, then took the key from Uncle and started shooing everyone else backward, toward the open door.
“But Caul—” Freya said.
“Forget it,” Hester told her. “I knew we were wrong to trust him. I expect this is the only reason he agreed to bring us here—so he could see his precious Uncle again.”
“You won’t be hurt,” Caul promised. “We’ll sort this out. It’ll be all right.” He didn’t know what he was going to do, only that he was glad to be a Lost Boy again. “Uncle Knows Best,” he said as he forced his prisoners down the stairs and into Gargle’s quarters, locking the doors behind them. “It’ll be all right. Uncle always Knows Best.”
Chapter 17
The Chapel
Night fall in Tienjing. above the city, the mountains hung huge and pale, a pennant of powder snow flying from each cold summit. Above the mountains, colder yet, the stars were coming out, and the things that were not stars, the dead satellites and orbital platforms of the Ancients, danced their old, slow dance in heaven.
The Stalker Grike patrolled the silent corridors of the Jade Pagoda, his night-vision eyes probing the shadows, his ears detecting conversations in a distant room, a gust of laughter from the guardhouse, the woodworm busy in the paneled walls. He roamed through galleries decorated with ancient carvings of monsters and mountain demons, none of them as scary as himself. Relishing the grace and power of his retuned body, he checked with all his many senses for the faint chemical signature of hidden explosives, or the body-glow of a lurking assassin. He hoped that soon some foolish Once-Born would try to attack his mistress. He was looking forward to killing again.
A cold breath touched him: a faint change in air pressure that told him of an outside door being opened and closed four floors below. He moved quickly to a window and looked down. A forked blob of body heat was moving through the shadows of the courtyard toward the checkpoint at the gate. Grike measured its height and stride against the data he had gathered during his time as bodyguard, and recognized Dr. Zero.
Where was she going on such a cold night, with curfew due in less than an hour? Grike pondered the motives of the Once-Born. Perhaps Dr. Zero had a lover in the lower city. But Dr. Zero had never seemed interested in love, and anyway, this was not the first time that Grike had caught her acting strangely. He had noticed the way her heartbeat raced when she was near the Stalker Fang, and smelled the sharp scent that came from her sometimes when Fang glanced her way. He was surprised that his mistress had not noticed these things herself—but then, Fang did not share his interest in the Once-Borns and their ways. Perhaps she did not realize, or did not care, that her surgeon-mechanic was afraid of her.
Grike’s eyes, on maximum magnification, watched Dr. Zero show her pass at the checkpoint and followed her until she was lost to him among the barracks and banners of Tienjing. Why was she so frightened? What scared her so? What was she doing? What was she planning to do?
Grike owed her everything, but he still knew that it was his duty to find out.
Down through the steep, stepped streets Oenone Zero went hurrying in her silicone-silk cloak, hood up, head down. The sky above the city was full of the running lights of carriers and air destroyers taking off from the military air harbor, carrying yet more young men and women away to the west, where their deaths were waiting for them on the Rustwater salient.
Guilt welled up inside Oenone, but she was used to it. Every morning she tended the Stalker Fang’s joints and bodywork, and placed her instruments against the Stalker Fang’s steel breast to check on the strange Old Tech power source that nestled where Anna Fang’s heart had once been. Every morning she told herself, I should do it now, today.
She would not be the first to try. All sorts of fanatical peaceniks and die-hard supporters of the old League had attempted to destroy the Stalker Fang, only to have their knives snap on her armor or watch her walk unscathed from the ruins of bombed rooms and the wrecks of airships. But Oenone Zero was a scientist, and she had used her scientist’s skills to devise a weapon that could destroy even the Stalker Fang.
The trouble was, she hadn’t the courage to use it. What if it didn’t work? What if it did work? Oenone was sure that without the Stalker to lead it, the Green Storm regime would fall apart—but she doubted it would fall apart so quickly that the Stalker’s supporters would not find time to kill her, and she had heard rumors about the things they did to traitors.
Lost in her thoughts, she did not notice that she was being followed as she crossed Double Rainbow Bridge and turned onto the Street of Ten Thousand Deities.
Over the centuries, Anti-Tractionists from all over Europe and Asia had fled into these mountains, and they had brought their own gods with them. Packed side by side, the temples seemed to jostle one another in the dying light. Oenone pushed her way past two wedding processions, a funeral, past shrines decked with lucky money and clattering firecrackers. She passed the Temple of the Sky Gods, and the Golden Pagoda of the Gods of the Mountains. She passed the Poskittarium, and the grove of the Apple Goddess. She passed the silent house of Lady Death. At the end of the street, sandwiched between the temples of more popular religions, stood a tiny Christian chapel.
She checked to make sure that no one was watching her before she stepped inside, but she did not think to look up at the rooftops.
Oenone had found the chapel by accident, and was not certain what kept drawing her back to it. She was not a Christian. Few people were anymore, except in Africa and on certain islands of the outermost west. All she knew of Christians was that they worshipped a god nailed to a cross, and what on earth was the use of a god who went around letting himself get nailed to things? It was small wonder that this place had fallen into disuse, its roof gone, weeds growing through the rotting pews. But on nights like this, when she felt that she must get out of the Jade Pagoda or go mad, this was where Oenone came to calm herself.