She shook her head, not yet sure. Tom followed her through the spills of thick shadow behind the fuel-tanks, and they let themselves in at the back door of the harbour master’s house. Here there was darkness, broken only by the glow of the harbour lights seeping in through frosty windows. A tornado seemed to have swept the once tidy parlour and kitchen, smashing the collection of commemorative plates, shattering crockery, dashing the portraits of the Aakiuqs’ children from the household shrine. The antique wolf-rifle which used to hang on the parlour wall was gone, and the stove was cold. Hester crunched over the broken fragments of beaming Rasmussen faces to the dresser, and opened the knife drawer.
Behind her, a loose stair creaked. Tom, who was closest to the staircase, whirled round in time to see the grey smudge of a face peering down at him between the banisters. It was gone almost at once, as whoever was hiding there went scrambling up towards the first floor. Tom shouted in surprise and quickly clamped a hand over his mouth, remembering the man outside. Hester shoved roughly past him, Mrs Aakiuq’s sharpest kitchen knife a dull gleam in her hand. There was a confused tussle in the tigerish shadows behind the banisters, a voice gasping, “Mercy! Spare me!” and the slithering thuds of a heavy body dragged back down the stairs by the seat of its trousers. Hester stood back, panting, the knife still ready, and Tom looked down at her captive.
It was Pennyroyal. Filthy and straggle-haired, white bristles thick in the hollows of his face, the explorer seemed to have aged ten years while they’d been away, as though time had passed faster aboard Anchorage than in the outside world. He whimpered slightly, his bulging eyes darting between their faces. “Tom? Hester? Gods and goddesses, I thought you were more of those damned Huntsmen. But how did you come here? Have you got the Jenny with you? Oh, thank heavens! We must leave at once!”
“What’s been happening here, Professor?” asked Tom. “Where is everybody?”
Pennyroyal, still keeping a wary eye on Hester’s knife-hand, dragged himself into a more comfortable position, leaning back against the knewel post. “The Huntsmen of Arkangel, Tom. Aero-hooligans, led by that scoundrel Masgard. They arrived about ten hours ago, smashed the drive-wheel and took charge of the city.”
“Anyone dead?” asked Hester.
Pennyroyal shook his head. “Don’t think so. They wanted to keep everyone in good shape for their beastly slave-holds, so they just rounded them all up and imprisoned them in the Winter Palace while they wait for their city to catch up. A few of Scabious’s brave fellows tried to argue, and got roughed up pretty badly, but otherwise I don’t think anyone’s been hurt.”
“And you?” Hester leaned forward into the light and let him feel her gorgon stare. “How come you’re not locked up with the others?”
Pennyroyal flicked a narrow, watery smile at her. “Oh, you know the motto of the Pennyroyals, Miss Shaw: ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Sensible Conceal Themselves Beneath Large Items of Furniture.’ I happened to be at the air-harbour when they landed. With typical quick thinking I nipped in here and hid under the bed. Didn’t emerge until it was all over. I’ve thought of presenting myself to young Masgard, of course, and claiming the finder’s fee, but frankly I don’t think he can be trusted, so I’ve been lying low ever since.”
“What finder’s fee?” asked Tom.
“Oh, ah…” Pennyroyal looked a little shamefaced, and tried to hide it with his old, roguish smile. “Thing is, Tom, I think it was me who brought the Huntsmen here.”
For no reason that Tom could understand, Hester started to laugh.
“I only sent a couple of harmless distress calls!” the explorer complained. “I never imagined Arkangel would pick them up! Who ever heard of a radio signal travelling that far? Some freak of these Boreal climes, no doubt… Anyway, it’s done me no good, as you can see. I’ve been holed up here for hours, hoping to sneak aboard that Huntsman airship and make a break for it, but there’s a dirty great sentry guarding it, and a couple more inside…”
“We saw,” said Tom.
“Still,” the explorer went on, brightening, “now you’re back with your Jenny Haniver, it doesn’t matter, does it? When do we leave?”
“We don’t,” said Hester. Tom turned to look at her, still unsettled by her talk of taking on the Huntsmen, and she went on quickly, “How can we? We owe it to the Aakiuqs, and Freya and everybody. We’ve got to rescue them.”
She left them staring at her and went to the kitchen window, peering out through the prisms of the frost. Aimless snowflakes eddied in the cones of light beneath the harbour lamps. She imagined the guards aboard their ship, their comrade out on the docking-pan stamping the cold from his toes, the rest of Masgard’s crew up in the Winter Palace, warming themselves with the contents of the Rasmussens’ wine cellar. They would be dozy and confident and not expecting trouble. They would have been no match for Valentine. Perhaps, if she had inherited enough of his strength and cruelty and cunning, they would be no match for her.
“Hester?” Tom stood close behind her, frightened by her icy mood. It was usually he who came up with rash plans to help the helpless. Hearing Hester suggest such a thing made him feel as if the world had come off its bearings. He laid his hand gently on her shoulder, and felt her stiffen and start to flinch away. “Hester, there are loads of them, and only three of us…”
“Make that two,” Pennyroyal chipped in. “I don’t want any part in your suicidal scheme…”
Hester had the knife at his throat in one swift movement. Her hand trembled slightly, setting the reflections shivering on the blade’s bright edge.
“You’ll do what I tell you,” said Valentine’s daughter, “or I’ll kill you myself.”
32
“ Eat up, little Margravine!” called Piotr Masgard from the far end of the table, waving at Freya with a half-eaten chicken leg.
Freya stared down at her plate, where the food was beginning to congeal. She wished she was still penned in the ballroom with the others, eating whatever slops and scraps the Huntsmen had given them, but Masgard had insisted that she dine with him. He said that he was only showing her the courtesy she deserved, and that it would hardly do for a margravine to eat with her people, would it? As leader of Arkangel’s Huntsmen it was his duty, and his pleasure, to entertain her at his own table.
Except that the table was Freya’s, in her own dining room, and the food had come from her own larders and been cooked in her own kitchens by poor Smew. And every time she glanced up she met Masgard’s blue eyes, amused and appraising, full of pride at his catch.
In the first horrible confusion of the attack on the Wheelhouse she had consoled herself by thinking, Scabious will never stand for this: he and his men will fight and save us. But when she and her fellow captives were herded into the ballroom and she saw how many of her people were already waiting there she understood that it had all happened too quickly. Scabious’s men had been surprised, or busy fighting the fires the rocket attack had started. Evil had triumphed over good.
“Great Arkangel will be with us in a few more hours,” Masgard had announced, circling the huddle of prisoners while his men stood watchful guard with guns and crossbows at the ready. His words boomed from the loudspeaker horns on his lieutenant’s helmet. “Behave yourselves and you may look forward to healthy, productive lives in the gut. Attempt to resist, and you will die. This city is a pretty enough prize; I can afford to sacrifice a few slaves if you insist on making me prove how serious I am.”
Nobody insisted. The people of Anchorage weren’t used to violence, and the Huntsmen’s brutal faces and steam-powered guns were enough to convince them. They huddled together in the centre of the ballroom, wives clinging to husbands, mothers trying to stop their children crying or talking or doing anything that might draw them to the attention of the guards. When Masgard called for the margravine to dine with him, Freya thought it wisest to accept; anything to keep him in a good mood.