Predator's gold

18

Hester was grateful for the wind. It hurried her away from Anchorage, but it was fickle and blustery, sometimes veering round into the north, sometimes gusting fiercely, sometimes dropping away to nothing. She had to concentrate to keep the Jenny Haniver on course, and that was good, because it left her no time to think about Tom, or the things she was planning to do. She knew that if she thought too hard about either she would end up losing her nerve, putting the airship about and flying back to Anchorage.

But sometimes, as she snatched catnaps at the controls, she could not help wondering what Tom was doing. Was he sorry she had left? Had he even noticed? Was Freya Rasmussen comforting him? “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. Soon she would make everything just as it had been before, and he would be hers again.

On the second day out she sighted Wolverinehampton. The suburb had turned south after failing to catch Anchorage, and its luck had turned with it, for it had found prey: a cluster of whaling towns driven off course by the storm. There were three of them, each much larger than Wolverinehampton, but the suburb had sped quickly from one to the next, biting away drive-wheels and skid-supports, and when Hester saw it it was turning back to devour them where they lay crippled. It looked to her as if it would be busy with its feast for several weeks, and she was glad that it would not be ranging west to menace Anchorage again and interfere with her own plans.

She flew on and on, through brief days and long, dark, bitter nights, and at last her nightly search of the radio dial was greeted by the wavering howl of a city’s homing beacon. She altered course, the signal growing clearer, and a few hours later she saw Arkangel squatting over its own prey on the ice ahead.

The predator city’s big, noisy, closed-in air-harbour made her feel strangely homesick for the peace of Anchorage, and the easy rudeness of its ground-crew and customs men made her think wistfully of Mr Aakiuq. She spent half of Pennyroyal’s sovereigns on fuel and lifting-gas, and hid the rest in one of the secret compartments which Anna Fang had installed under the Jenny ’s deck. Then, feeling sick and guilty at what she was about to do, she made her way to the Air Exchange, a big building behind the fuel-works where traders met with the city’s merchants. When she began asking where she might find Piotr Masgard the aviators glared at her disapprovingly, and one woman spat on the deck at her feet, but after a while an amiable old merchant seemed to take pity on her, and called her gently aside.

“Arkangel’s not like other cities, my dear,” he explained, leading her towards an elevator station. “The rich here don’t live up on top, but in the middle, where it’s warmest; a district called the Core. Young Masgard has a mansion there. Get off at Kael Station and ask again from there.”

He watched her carefully as she paid her fare and stepped aboard a Core-bound elevator. Then he hitched up his robes and went hurrying back to his shop on the far side of the harbour; a large, tatty, cluttered establishment called Blinkoe’s Old-Tech and Antiquities.

“Quickly, wives!” he blustered, bursting into the narrow parlour behind the shop. He waved his arms in urgent semaphore as the five Mrs Blinkoes looked up from their novels and embroideries. “She’s here! That girl! The ugly one! To think, all these weeks spent searching and questioning, and she walks into our own Air Exchange bold as brass! Quickly now, we must make ready!”

He rubbed his hands together in glee, already imagining ways to spend the bounty which the Green Storm would pay him when he brought them Hester and the Jenny Haniver.

The Core was a perplexing place: a great booming cavern, filled with the thunder of the city’s engines, hazy with smoke and drifting steam, criss-crossed by hundreds of walkways and railways and elevator shafts. The buildings sat crammed together on ledges and stilted platforms, or clung underneath like the nests of house martins. Slaves in iron collars swept the pavements, while others were whipped past in gangs by fur-clad foremen, off to perform unpleasant chores in chilly outer districts. Hester tried not to see them, or the rich ladies leading little boys on leashes, or the man who kicked and kicked and kicked a slave who accidentally brushed against him. It was none of her business. Arkangel was a city where the strong did as they liked.

Iron statues of the wolf-god Eisengrim guarded the gates of Masgard’s mansion. Inside, gas-jets burned in iron tripods, filling the big reception room with patterns of jittery light and slashing, knife-edged shadow. A willowy young woman wearing a jewelled slave-collar looked Hester up and down and asked her business. Hester gave her the same answer she had given to the guards outside: “I have information to sell to the Huntsmen of Arkangel.”

There was a buzz of engines in the shadows under the barn-high roof and Masgard came swooping down on her, riding a leather sofa which swung beneath a small gasbag, midget engine-pods sprouting from the headrest. It was a chairship, a rich man’s toy, and he steered it close to Hester and hovered in front of her, relishing her surprise. His slave-girl rubbed her head against the toe of his boot like a cat.

“Well,” he said. “I know you! You’re that scar-faced quail from Airhaven. Come to take up my offer, have you?”

“I’ve come to tell you where you can find prey,” said Hester, trying not to let her voice shake.

Masgard steered the chairship a little closer, keeping her waiting, studying the play of guilt and fear on her ruined face. His city was too big to survive any more without the help of scum like this girl, and he hated her for it.

“So?” he asked at last. “What town do you wish to betray?”

“Not just a town,” said Hester. “A city. Anchorage.”

Masgard tried to go on looking bored, but Hester saw sparks of interest in his eyes. She did her best to fan them into flame. “You must have heard of Anchorage, Mr Masgard. A great big ice city. Apartments full of rich furnishings, the biggest drive-wheel on the ice, and a nice Old-Tech engine array called the Scabious Spheres. They’re heading round the top of Greenland, bound for the western ice.”

“Why?”

Hester shrugged. (Better not mention the journey to America; too hard to explain and too hard to believe.) “Who knows? Perhaps they’ve learned about some Old-Tech site and they’re off to dig it up. I’m sure you’d find a way to prise the details out of their beautiful young margravine…”

Masgard grinned. “Julianna here was a margrave’s daughter, before great Arkangel ate her daddy’s town.”

“Then think what a pretty addition Freya Rasmussen will make to your collection,” said Hester. She seemed to be standing outside herself; she felt nothing, except a faint pride at just how heartless she could be. “And if you want a snack to keep you going on the way, I can give you the coordinates of Wolverinehampton, a predator-suburb with a fat new catch.”

Masgard was hooked. He’d had word of Anchorage and Wolverinehampton from Widgery Blinkoe a few days earlier, but the oily antiquary had not known Wolverinehampton’s present course. As for Anchorage, Masgard was not sure whether to believe a sighting of an ice city so far west. Yet this mangy sky-urchin sounded like she knew her stuff, and with Blinkoe’s report to back it up, her information would be enough to persuade the Council to change course. He let her wait a moment, so that she could appreciate just how despicable she was. Then he opened a compartment in the armrest of his flying chair and pulled out a thick sheet of parchment which he signed with a fountain pen. His slave-girl passed the paper to Hester. There were words printed on it in gothic script, and seals with the names of the gods of Arkangel: Eisengrim and the Thatcher.

“A promissory note,” explained Masgard, revving his chair’s engines and lifting away from her. “If your information proves correct you can come and collect your fee when we eat Anchorage. Give the details to my clerk.”

Hester shook her head. “I’m not doing this for predator’s gold.”

“Then what?”

“There’s somebody aboard Anchorage. Tom Natsworthy, the boy you saw me with in Airhaven. When you eat the city, you’ll let me have him. But he’s not to know it’s been arranged. I want him to think I’m rescuing him. Everything else aboard the stinking place is yours, but not Tom. He’s mine. My price.”

Masgard stared down at her for a moment, genuinely surprised. Then he flung back his head and his laughter filled the room with echoes.

Waiting at the station for an elevator that would take her back to the air-harbour, she felt the deckplates shiver as great Arkangel began to move. She patted her pocket, checking again that she had Masgard’s revised promissory note safe. How glad Tom would be when she came to rescue him from the predator city’s gut! How easily she would make him forget his infatuation with the margravine, once they were together again on the Bird Roads!

She had done what she had to, for Tom’s sake, and there was no going back. She would fetch a few bits and pieces from the Jenny Haniver and find a room somewhere to wait out the journey.

It was night again by the time she reached the air-harbour, and snowflakes were fluttering around the landing-lights at the harbour mouth. The noise of raucous laughter and cheap music drifted from taverns behind the docking pans, gusting louder whenever someone opened a door. Dim lamplight made puddles of shadow under the big, moored traders; ships with northern names, the Fram and the Froud and the Smaug. She began to feel nervous as she walked towards the low-rent docking pan where the Jenny waited. This was a dangerous city, and she had lost the habit of being alone.

“Miss Shaw?” The man surprised her, coming up on her blind side. She reached for her knife, then recognized the nice old merchant who had helped her earlier. “I’ll walk you to your ship, Miss Shaw. There are some Snowmad traders aboard; ruffianly types. It’s not safe for a young woman alone. Your vessel’s the Jenny Haniver, isn’t she?”

“That’s right,” said Hester, wondering how he knew her name and that of her ship. She supposed he must have asked around earlier, or looked it up in the new-arrivals ledger at the harbour office.

“You’ve seen Masgard then?” her new friend asked. “I suppose that has something to do with this sudden move to the west? You’ve sold him a town?”

Hester nodded.

“I’m in a similar line of work myself,” the merchant said, and slammed her against a metal stanchion beneath a trader called the Temporary Blip. She gasped, hurt and surprised, trying to gulp in enough air to scream for help. Something stung the side of her neck like a hornet. The merchant stepped away from her, breathing hard. A brass syringe flashed in the light from the distant taverns as he slid it back into his pocket.

Hester tried to put her hand to her neck, but the drug was taking effect quickly and her limbs no longer obeyed her. She tried to call out, but all that emerged was a wordless hoot. She took a step forward and fell, her face a few inches from the man’s boots. “Terribly sorry,” she heard him say, his voice wavery and far away, like Tom’s voice the last time she heard it, seeping out of the telephone in the Aakiuqs’ parlour. “I have five wives to support, you see, and they all have expensive tastes, and nag me something rotten.”

Hester hooted again, dribbling on to the deckplate.

“Don’t worry!” the voice went on. “I’m just taking you and your ship down to Rogues’ Roost. You’re wanted for questioning. That’s all.”

“But Tom — ” Hester managed to moan.

More boots appeared: expensive, fashionable, ladies’ boots, with tassels. New voices babbled overhead. “You’re sure it’s her, Blinkoe?”

“Eugh! She’s so ugly!”

“She can’t be worth anything to anyone!”

“Ten thousand in cash when I get her to the Roost,” said Blinkoe smugly. “I’ll take her there aboard her own ship, and tow the Blip ’s tender to bring me home again. Be back in no time, with bags full of money. Look after the shop while I’m gone, dears.”

“No!” Hester tried to say, because if he took her away she wouldn’t be there to rescue Tom; he would be eaten along with the rest of Anchorage and all her schemes would come to nothing… But although she tried to struggle as they rummaged for her keys she could not move or make a sound or even blink. It took her a long time to lose consciousness, however, and that was the worst of it, for she understood everything that was happening as the merchant and his wives dragged her aboard the Jenny Haniver and began the preparations for take-off.