“Dress her,” barked the subaltern, and the men dragged Hester upright by her wet hair. They didn’t bother towelling her, just forced her weak limbs into the arms and legs of a shapeless grey overall. Hester could barely stand, let alone resist. They pushed her barefoot out of the shower-room and along a dank corridor, the subaltern leading the way. There were posters on the walls with pictures of airships attacking cities and handsome young men and women in white uniforms gazing at a sunrise beyond a green hill. Other soldiers passed, their boots loud under the low roof. Most were not much older than Hester, but all wore swords at their sides, and lightning-bolt armbands, and the shiny, smug expressions of people who know they are right.
At the end of the passage was a metal door, and behind the door was a cell; a tall, narrow tomb of a room with a single window very high up. Heat-ducts snaked across the crumbling concrete ceiling, but gave out no warmth. Hester shivered, drying slowly in her scratchy overalls. Someone flung a heavy coat at her and she realized that it was her own, and pulled it on gratefully. “Where are the rest?” she asked, and had trouble making them understand, what with her teeth chattering and the after-effects of the merchant’s drugs numbing her already-clumsy mouth. “The rest of my clothes?”
“Boots,” said the subaltern, taking them from one of her men and throwing them at Hester. “The rest we burned. Don’t worry, barbarian: you won’t need them again.”
The door closed; a key turned in the lock; booted feet marched away. Hester could hear the sea somewhere far below, hissing and sighing against a stony shore. She hugged herself against the cold and started to cry. Not for herself, or even for Tom, but for her burned clothes; her waistcoat with Tom’s photograph in the pocket, and the dear red scarf he had bought for her in Peripatetiapolis. Now she had nothing left of him at all.
The darkness beyond the high, small window faded slowly to a washed-out grey. The door rattled and opened and a man looked in and said, “Up, barbarian: the commander’s waiting.”
The commander was waiting in a big, clean room where the vague forms of dolphins and sea-nymphs showed faintly through the whitewash on the walls and a circular window looked out over a cheese-grater sea. She sat behind her big steel desk, brown fingers drumming out manic little patterns on a manilla folder. She stood up only when Hester’s guards saluted. “You may leave us,” she told them.
“But Commander — ” said one.
“I think I can handle one scrawny barbarian.” She waited till they were gone, then came slowly around the desk, staring at Hester the whole way.
Hester had met that fierce, dark stare before, for the commander was none other than the girl Sathya, Anna Fang’s fierce young protegee from Batmunkh Gompa. She did not feel particularly surprised. Ever since she reached Anchorage her life had taken on the strange logic of a dream, and it seemed only right that she should meet a familiar, unfriendly face here at the end of it. Two and a half years had passed since their last meeting, but Sathya seemed to have aged much more than that; her face was gaunt and stern, and in her dark eyes there was an expression that Hester couldn’t read, as if rage and guilt and pride and fear had all got mixed up inside her and turned into something new.
“Welcome to the Facility,” she said coldly.
Hester stared at her. “What is this place? Where is it? I didn’t think your lot had any bases left in the north, not since Spitzbergen got scoffed.”
Sathya only smiled. “You don’t know much about my lot, Miss Shaw. The High Council may have withdrawn League forces from the arctic theatre, but some of us do not accept defeat so calmly. The Green Storm maintain several bases in the north. Since you will not be leaving here alive, I can tell you that this facility is on Rogues’ Roost, an island some two hundred miles from the southern tip of Greenland.”
“Nice,” said Hester. “Come here for the weather, did you?”
Sathya slapped her hard, leaving her dazed and gasping. “These were the skies where Anna Fang grew up,” she said. “Her parents traded in these regions, before they were enslaved by Arkangel.”
“Right. Sentimental reasons, then,” muttered Hester. She tensed, expecting another blow, but it did not come. Sathya turned away from her towards the window.
“You destroyed one of our units over the Drachen Pass three weeks ago,” she said.
“Only because they attacked my ship,” Hester replied.
“She is not your ship,” the other girl snapped. “She is… She was Anna’s. You stole her, the night Anna died, you and your barbarian lover, Tom Natsworthy. Where is he, by the way? Don’t tell me he has abandoned you?”
Hester shrugged.
“So what were you doing alone aboard Arkangel?”
“Just betraying a few cities to the Huntsmen,” said Hester.
“I can believe that. Treachery is in your blood.”
Hester frowned. Had Sathya dragged her all the way here just to be rude about her parents? “If you mean I take after my mother, well, she was pretty stupid digging up MEDUSA, but I don’t think she actually betrayed anybody.”
“No,” Sathya agreed. “But your father…”
“My dad was a farmer,” cried Hester, feeling suddenly and strangely angry that this girl could stand there and insult the memory of her poor dead dad, who had never done anything but good.
“You are a liar,” said Sathya. “Your father was Thaddeus Valentine.”
Outside, snow fell like sifted icing sugar. Hester could see icebergs ploughing through the comfortless grey of the winter sea. In a tiny voice she said, “That isn’t true.”
Sathya pulled a sheet of writing-paper from the folder on her desk. “This is the report that Anna wrote for the League’s High Council, that day she brought you to Batmunkh Gompa. What does she say about you…? Ah, yes: Two young people: one an adorable young Apprentice Historian from London, quite harmless, the other a poor, disfigured girl who I am sure is the lost daughter of Pandora Rae and Thaddeus Valentine. ”
Hester said, “My dad was David Shaw, of Oak Island…”
“Your mother had many lovers before she married Shaw,” said Sathya, in a voice crisp with disapproval. “Valentine was one of them. You are his child. Anna would never have written such a thing if she had not been certain.”
“My dad was David Shaw,” snivelled Hester, but she knew it wasn’t true. She had known it in her heart these two years past, ever since her gaze met Valentine’s over the body of his dying daughter Katherine. Some sort of understanding had crackled between them then like electricity, a half-recognition that she had crushed as quick and as hard as she could, because she didn’t want him for a father. She had understood, though, deep down. No wonder she couldn’t bring herself to kill him!
“Anna was wrong about you, wasn’t she?” Sathya said, turning away, going to stand at the window. The snow had passed; patches of sunlight dappled the grey sea a lighter grey. She said, “You weren’t lost, and Tom wasn’t harmless. You were both in league with Valentine all along. You used Anna’s kindness to get inside Batmunkh Gompa and help him burn our Air-Fleet.”
“No!” said Hester.
“Yes. You lured Anna to a place where he could murder her, and then you stole her ship.”
Hester shook her head. “You’re so wrong!”
“Stop lying!” shouted Sathya, rounding on her again. There were tears in her eyes.
Hester tried to remember that night at Batmunkh Gompa. It had mostly been a blur of flames and running, but she had a feeling that Sathya had not acted very well. For all her fighting talk, Sathya had let her beloved Anna run off to tackle Valentine alone, and Valentine had killed her. Hester knew quite well that you didn’t forgive yourself for things like that. Instead you blotted out the memories, or sank into despair.