He looked around wildly and saw what had happened. Valentine had taken a different stairway out of the central square, leaving Tom following the wrong red robe. He went running down again. Valentine was barely visible, a red speck climbing through lantern-light towards the high places of the city—and the eyrie of the great air-destroyers. “It’s Valentine!” shouted Tom, pointing, but none of the people around him spoke Anglish; some thought he was mad, others thought he meant that MEDUSA was about to strike. A wave of panic spread across the square, and soon he heard warning gongs sounding in the densely-packed terraces of shops and inns below.
His first thought was to find Hester, but he had no idea where to look. Then he ran to a balloon taxi and told the pilot, “Follow that monk!” but the woman smiled and shook her head, not understanding. “Feng Hua!” Tom shouted, remembering Anna Fang’s League name, and the taxi-pilot nodded and smiled, casting off. He tried to calm himself as the balloon rose. He would find Miss Fang. Miss Fang would know what to do. He remembered how she had trusted him with the Jenny during the flight across the mountains, and felt ashamed for turning on her in the council meeting.
He was expecting the taxi to take him to the governor’s palace, but instead it landed near the terrace where the Jenny Haniver was berthed. The pilot pointed towards an inn which clung to the underside of the terrace above like a house martin’s nest. “Feng Hua!” she said helpfully. “Feng Hua!”
For a panic-stricken moment Tom thought that she had carried him to an inn with the same name as Miss Fang; then, on one of the establishment’s many balconies, he caught sight of the aviatrix’s blood-red coat. He thrust all the money he had at the pilot, shouting, “Keep the change!” and left her staring at the unfamiliar faces of Quirke and Crome as he raced away.
Miss Fang was sitting at a balcony table with Captain Khora and the stern young Keralan flier who had been so angry at Tom’s outburst earlier. They were drinking tea and deep in discussion, but they all leaped up as Tom blundered out on to the balcony. “Where’s Hester?” he demanded.
“Down on the mooring platforms, in one of her moods,” said Miss Fang. “Why?”
“Valentine!” he gasped. “He’s here! Dressed as a monk!”
The inn’s musicians stopped playing, and the sound of the alarm-gongs in the lower city came drifting through the open windows.
“Valentine, here?” sneered the Keralan girl. “It’s a lie! The barbarian thinks he can frighten us!”
“Be quiet, Sathya!” Miss Fang reached across and gripped Tom by the arm. “Is he alone?”
As quickly as he could, Tom told her what he had seen. She made a hissing sound through her clenched teeth. “He has come after our Air-Fleet! He means to cripple us!”
“One man cannot destroy an Air-Fleet!” protested Khora, smiling at the notion.
“You’ve never seen Valentine at work!” said the avia-trix. She was already on her feet, excited at the prospect of crossing swords with London’s greatest agent. “Sathya, go and rouse the guard, tell them the High Eyries are in danger.” She turned to Tom. “Thank you for warning us,” she said gently, as if she understood the agonizing decision he had had to make.
“I’ve got to tell Hester!” he protested.
“Certainly not!” she told him. “She will only get herself killed, or kill Valentine, and I want him kept alive for questioning. Stay here until it is all over.” A last ferocious smile and she was gone, down the steps and out of the panicked inn with Khora at her heels. She looked grim and dangerous and very beautiful, and Tom felt himself brushed by the same fierce love which he knew Khora and the Keralan girl and the rest of the League must feel for her.
But then he thought of Hester, and what she would say when she learned that he had seen Valentine and hadn’t even told her. “Great Quirke!” he shouted suddenly. “I’m going to find her!” Sathya just stared at him, not stern any more, just frightened and very young, and as he ran towards the stairs he shouted back at her, “You heard what Miss Fang said! Raise the alarm!”
Out on to dark ladderways again, down to the mooring platform where the Jenny Haniver hung at anchor. “Hester! Hester!” he shouted, and there she was, coming towards him through the glow of the landing-lights, tugging the red shawl up across her face. He told her everything, and she took the news with the cold, silent glare he had expected. Then it was her turn to run, and he was following her up the endless stairs.
The Wall made its own weather. As Tom and Hester neared the top the air grew thin and chill and big fluttering snowflakes brushed their faces like butterfly wings. They could see lantern-light on a broad platform ahead where a gas tanker was lifting away empty from the High Eyries. Then there was an unbelievable gout of flame shooting out of the face of the Wall, and another and another, as if it were dragons, not airships, that were stabled there. Caught in the blast, the tanker’s envelope exploded, white parachutes blossoming around it as it began to fall. Hester stopped for a moment and looked back, flames shining in her eye. “He’s done it! We’re too late! He’s fired their Air-Fleet!”
They ran on. Tom’s ribs hurt him at every breath and the cold air scorched his throat, but he kept as close behind Hester as he could, crunching through snow along a narrow walkway to the platform outside the eyries. The bronze gates stood open and a crowd of men were pouring out, shielding their faces from the heat of the blaze within. Some of them were dragging wounded comrades, and near the main door Tom saw Khora being tended by two of the ground-crew.
The aviator looked up as Tom and Hester ran to him. “Valentine!” he groaned. “He bluffed his way past the sentries, saying he wanted to bless our airships. He was setting his explosives when Anna and I arrived. Oh, Tom, we never imagined that even a barbarian would try something like this! We weren’t prepared! Our whole Air-Fleet… My poor Mokele Mbembe… .” He broke off, coughing blood. Valentine’s sword had pierced his lung.
“What about Miss Fang?” asked Tom.
Khora shook his head. He did not know. Hester was already stalking away into the searing heat of the hangars, ignoring the men who tried to call her back. Tom ran after her.
It was like running into an oven. He had an impression of a huge cavern, with smaller caverns opening off it, the hangars where the League’s warships were housed. Valentine must have gone quickly from one ship to the next, placing phosphorus bombs. Now only their buckling ribs were visible in the white-hot heart of the blaze. “Hester!” shouted Tom, his voice lost in the roar of the flames, and saw her a little way ahead of him, hurrying down a narrow tunnel that led deeper into the Wall. I’m not following her in there! he thought. If she wants to get herself trapped and roasted, that’s her lookout. … But as he turned back towards the safety of the platform, the ammunition in the gondolas of the burning airships caught, and suddenly there were rockets and bullets flying everywhere, bursting against the stone walls and howling through the air around him. The tunnel was closer than the main entrance and he scrambled into it, whispering prayers to all the gods he could think of.
Fresh air was coming from somewhere in front of him, and he realized that the passage must lead right through the Wall to one of the gun-emplacements on the western face. “Hester?” he shouted. Only echoes replied, muddled with the echoing roar of the fires in the hangar. He pressed on. At a fork in the tunnel lay a huddled shape; a young airman cut down by Valentine’s sword. Tom breathed a sigh of relief that it was not Hester or Miss Fang, and then felt guilty, because the poor man was dead.