“I’m not! I didn’t!” Wren gasped.
“Well, nor did I.” Theo let her go. She edged backward, trembling, still clutching the Tin Book.
“I was on my way back to the ballroom when I heard someone shout for help,” said Theo. “I opened the door and called down to ask if everything was all right. There was no answer, but I thought I heard someone moving about, so I came down. When I got here, they were all dead. I saw that the cable had been cut, and I was going to go and raise the alarm, but I was afraid that you were still upstairs and someone would find you.” He shuddered and ran his hand over his face.
“There was someone upstairs,” said Wren, remembering the footsteps, the shadow. “I heard them go past the door. There’s nothing else along that corridor but Pennyroyal’s office. They must have been after the same thing as us. The Tin Book.”
Theo stared at her. “That would fit. They came down here first and did this, but before they could go up the stairs to the office, they heard me coming down. They couldn’t risk killing me too, in case I was a guest who’d be missed, so they slunk out through the kitchens and then cut back by the ballroom and up to the office that way… But why cut us adrift? Why not just take the book?”
Wren tried to be sick again, but her stomach was empty. “They almost saw me!” she whimpered. “If I hadn’t hidden in time, they’d have killed me like they did these men…”
Theo reached out for her but wasn’t sure if she would want him to touch her. “So you don’t still think I did it?” he asked.
Wren shook her head and went gratefully to him, hiding her face against his chest. “Theo, I’m sorry…”
“It’s all right,” he told her gently. Then he said, “As for last night, I just couldn’t sleep. I went to the shrine to say prayers for my mother and father and my sisters. It was a year ago, last Moon Festival, that I left Zagwa. Slipped out of my parents’ house while everyone was celebrating, and stowed away on a freighter, off to Shan Guo to join the Green Storm. All the preparations yesterday just made me wonder what they were doing now; whether my parents have forgiven me; whether they miss me…”
“I bet they do,” said Wren. She turned away and leaned against the window, pressing her face to the cool glass. “That’s what parents do. They forgive us and miss us, no matter what we’ve done. Look at my dad, coming all this way to find me…”
She looked toward Brighton, longing for her father. Fireworks spurted into the sky from somewhere in Montpelier, bursting in bright stars of red and gold. Wren watched them fade as they drifted slantwise down the wind, and then her eye was caught by another movement. She turned her head. There was only the sea: a shifting, sliding pattern of moonlight. But what was that? That long shadow slipping across the wave tops?
Her view was blotted out by something vast and pale. Huge engine pods slid by, followed by the open gunports of an armored gondola. Wren saw men wearing goggles and crab-shell helmets standing in gun emplacements that jutted out on gantries, and then tall steering vanes, each emblazoned with a jagged green lightning bolt. “Theo!” she screamed.
Twenty feet from where they stood, an immense air destroyer was speeding past Cloud 9.
Chapter 28
The Air Attack
In a cell somewhere beneath the Pepperpot’s well-appointed reception area, Tom lay half dazed, feeling his face swell where Shkin’s heavies had hit him, and fearing for Wren. It had been enough at first just to know that she was alive. He didn’t mind too much what happened to him, as long as Wren was safe. But was Wren safe? Shkin’s men had told him she’d been sold to Pennyroyal, of all people. Pennyroyal was not a bad man, but he was selfish, and thoughtless, and unscrupulous, and he had once shot Tom in the heart. The old wound hurt Tom again as he lay on the bunk, waiting for something to happen. His chest ached, and he wasn’t sure if the ache was real or just his body’s memory of the bullet.
He had quickly lost track of time in this bland, window-less room, where a loop of argon tube glowed on the beige ceiling like a halo. He had no idea whether it was night or day when the door finally rattled open.
“Brought you something to eat, Mr. Natsworthy,” said a small voice. “And this.”
Tom rolled off the bunk and sat up, rubbing his bruised face. The boy Fishcake stood in the doorway, holding a tray with a bowl and a tin cup. A few feet of drab beige corridor were visible behind him. Tom thought vaguely about escape, but his chest hurt too much. He watched as Fishcake advanced toward him and set the tray down on the floor.
“I swapped shifts with someone so I could come and see you,” the boy confessed. “It was easy. All the others want the night off, ’cos it’s Moon Festival. That’s what all the bangs and crashes are about.”
Tom listened, and heard faintly the noise of fireworks and gongs from the streets outside.
“I’m sorry you got caught, Mr. Natsworthy,” Fishcake admitted. “Wren was very nice to me. So I thought you’d want to see this.”
He took a crumpled page of newspaper from the pocket of his uniform and held it out for Tom to read. The Palimpsest. And there, in the photograph beneath the headline, kneeling among a group of other girls around a large woman with enormous hair…
“That’s Wren, ain’t it?” said Fishcake. “See? I thought you’d want to know she’s all right. It’s a good life, they say, being a house slave up on Cloud 9. Look: She’s got a fancy frock and a new hairdo and everything.”
“Cloud 9? Is that where Wren is?” Tom remembered the floaty palace thing he had seen hovering above the city. He reached forward, laying a hand on Fishcake’s shoulder. “Fishcake, can you find my wife and get a message to her? Tell her where Wren is?”
“That one with the scar?” asked Fishcake, wriggling away. He looked scared and disgusted. “She’s not here, is she?”
“She’s in Brighton, yes. We came together.”
Fishcake had gone a curious color. His hands shook. “I ain’t going near her,” he said. “She’s evil, that one. She killed Gargle and Remora, and she’d have killed me too if she could. That’s why I had to bring Wren with me. I didn’t want to, but she’d have killed me elsewise.”
“I’m sure Hester only did what she had to,” said Tom, a little uneasily because he wasn’t sure of that at all. “It was tragic, but—”
“She’s evil,” Fishcake insisted sullenly. “And you’re as bad, even though you think you ain’t. Going about with her makes you as bad as she is.”
“You still brought me the paper, though,” Tom said. “You’re a good boy, Fishcake.” He smiled at the Lost Boy, who eyed him suspiciously. Tom felt sorry for him. He must have been hurt and betrayed by so many people that he had turned to the first grown-up who showed him any sort of kindness, even though it was only Nabisco Shkin. Tom wished he could take him away from this dreadful city to the safety of Vineland, where he would have the chance of living a normal life, like the children Freya had rescued from Grimsby.
He said, “Fishcake, can you get me out of here?”
“Don’t be soft!” said the boy. “Mr. Shkin would kill me.”
“Mr. Shkin would never find you. I’ll take you away with me, if you like. We’ll find Wren and Hester, and we’ll go away together.”