Predator's gold

24

Grimsby was not quite what Tom would have expected of a master-criminal’s underwater lair. It was too chilly, and smelled too much of mould and boiled cabbage. The reclaimed building which had looked so magical from outside was poky and cluttered, packed like a junk shop with the spoils from years of burglary. Swags of stolen tapestry decked the corridors, the rich designs embroidered over with new patterns of mildew. On shelves, in cubbyholes, half-glimpsed through the open doors of the rooms and workshops that he passed, Tom saw heaps of clothes; mouldering moraines of books and documents, ornaments and jewellery, weapons and tools; snooty-looking mannequins from high-class shops; goggle-screens and fly-wheels; batteries and bulbs; big, greasy machine-parts torn from the bellies of towns.

And everywhere there were the crab-cameras. The ceilings crawled with the little machines; dark corners glittered with their stilting legs. With no need to hide, they crouched on stacks of crockery or crept down the fronts of bookcases, scuttled over the wall-hangings and swung from the heavy, dangerous-looking electrical cables which festooned the walls. Their cyclops eyes glinted and whirred, tracking Tom as Caul and Skewer led him up the long flights of stairs towards Uncle’s quarters. To live in Grimsby was to live forever in the gaze of Uncle.

And Uncle was expecting them, of course. He stood up from his chair as they entered his chamber, coming to meet them through the light of a thousand surveillance-screens. He was a little man; both short and thin, pallid from living so long out of the sun’s sight. Half-moon spectacles perched on his narrow nose. He wore fingerless mittens, a five-cornered hat, a braided tunic that might have belonged once to a general or an elevator attendant, a silk dressing gown whose hem drew patterns on the dusty floor, nankeen trousers and bunny-slippers. Strands of sparse white hair trailed over his shoulders. Books which his boys had snatched for him at random from the shelves of a dozen libraries poked from his pockets. Crumbs clung to the grey stubble on his chin.

“Caul, my dear boy!” he murmured. “Thank you for obeying your poor old Uncle so prompt, and bringing the Dry home so handy. He ain’t been damaged, I take it? No harm done?”

Caul, remembering how he had behaved in Anchorage, and the reports Skewer would have sent home about him, was too scared to answer. Skewer said gruffly, “Alive and well, Uncle, just like your orders.”

“Excellent, excellent,” Uncle purred. “And Skewer. Little Skewer. You’ve been busy too, I gather.”

Skewer nodded, but before he could speak, Uncle lashed out at him, striking so hard that Skewer stumbled backwards and fell over with a childish wail of pain and surprise. Uncle kicked him a few times for good measure. Beneath their cheerful bunny faces his slippers had steel toe-caps. “Who do you think you are,” he shouted, “setting up as captain without my say-so? You know what happens to boys who disobey me, don’t you? You remember what I did to young Sonar off the Remora when he pulled a trick like yours?”

“Yes, Uncle,” snivelled Skewer. “But it wasn’t my fault, Uncle. Caul talked to a Dry! I thought the rules-”

“So Caul bent the rules a little,” said Uncle kindly, and kicked Skewer again. “I’m a reasonable man. I don’t mind if my boys use their initiative. I mean, it wasn’t just any old Dry young Caul revealed himself to, was it now? It was our friend Tom.”

He had been circling closer to Tom all the while, and now he reached out a clammy hand and gripped Tom’s chin, twisting his face up into the light.

“I won’t help you,” said Tom. “If you’re planning to attack Anchorage or something, I won’t help you.”

Uncle’s laugh was a thin little sound. “Attack Anchorage? That’s no plan of mine, Tom. My boys are burglars, not warriors. Burglars and observers. They watch. Listen. Send me reports about what’s going on aboard the cities, what’s being said. Yes. That’s how I keep my boys in plunder and prey. That’s why I’ve never been found out. I get lots of reports and I put them together, compare and contrast, note things down, add two and two. I look out for names that crop up in odd places. Like Hester Shaw. Like Thomas Natsworthy.”

“Hester?” said Tom, starting forward, restrained by Caul. “What have you heard about Hester?”

In the shadows behind Uncle’s chair two guards, surprised at Tom’s sudden movement, drew their swords. Uncle waved them back. “Caul’s reports were right then?” he asked. “You’re Hester Shaw’s sweetheart? Her lover?” There was a nasty, wheedling edge to his voice now, and Tom felt himself blush as he nodded. Uncle watched him for a moment, then chuckled, “It was the airship that first made me sit up and take notice. Jenny Haniver. That’s a name I recognize, oh yes. That’s that witch Anna Fang’s ship, ain’t it?”

“Anna was a friend of ours,” said Tom.

“A friend, eh?”

“She died.”

“I know.”

“We sort of inherited the Jenny. ”

“Inherited her, did you?” Uncle let out a long, sniggering laugh. “Oh, I like that, Tom! Inherited! As you can see, I’ve got a lot of stuff down here that me and my boys have inherited. I wish we’d taken you ten years ago, Tom; we could have made a Lost Boy of you.” He laughed again, and went back to settle in his chair.

Tom looked at Caul, then at Skewer, who was on his feet again, his face still branded with the red imprint of Uncle’s hand. Why do they put up with him? Tom wondered. They’re all younger and stronger than he is; why do they do his bidding? But the answer flickered on the walls all round him, on looted goggle-screens of every shape and size, where blue images of life in Grimsby moved, and faint, overheard conversations drizzled from the speakers. Who could challenge Uncle’s power, when Uncle knew everything that they said and did?

“You mentioned something about Hester,” he reminded the old man, straining to be polite.

“Information, Tom,” said Uncle, ignoring him. Surveillance-pictures danced in the lenses of his spectacles. “Information. That’s the key to it all. The reports my burglars send back to me all fit together like the bits of a jigsaw. I probably know more than any man alive about what goes on in the north. And I pay attention to odd little details. To changes. Changes can be dangerous things.”

“And Hester?” asked Tom again. “You know about Hester?”

“For example,” Uncle said, “there’s an island, Rogues’ Roost, not far from here. Used to be lair to Red Loki and his sky-pirates. Not a bad sort, Red Loki. Never troubled us. Occupied different niches in the food-chain, him and me. But now he’s gone. Kicked out. Murdered. It’s home to a bunch of Anti-Tractionists now. The Green Storm, they call themselves. A hard-line faction. Terrorists. Troublemakers. Have you ever heard of the Green Storm, Tom Natsworthy?”

Tom, still thinking about Hester, scrabbled for an answer. He remembered Pennyroyal shouting something about the Green Storm during that chase above the Tannhausers, but so much had happened since that he could barely recall a word of it. “Not really,” he said.

“Well, they’ve heard of you,” said Uncle, leaning forward in his chair. “Why else would they have hired a spy to keep watch for your airship? And why else would your girlie be their house guest?”

“Hester is with them?” gasped Tom. “You’re sure?”

“That’s what I said, ain’t it?” Uncle sprang up again, rubbing his hands together, cracking the joints of his fingers as he circled Tom. “Though ‘house guest’ isn’t quite the phrase I’m looking for, perhaps. She ain’t comfortable exactly. Ain’t happy, exactly. Stuck in a cell, all alone. Taken out now and then for who knows what — questionings, torturings…”

“But how did she come there? Why? What do they want with her?” Tom was flustered, not sure if Uncle was telling the truth or having some sort of joke at his expense. All he could think of was Hester, imprisoned, suffering. “I can’t stay here!” he said. “I must get to this Roost place, try and help her…”

Uncle’s smile came back. “Of course you must, dear boy. That’s why I brought you down here, isn’t it? We got common interests, you and me. You’re going to go and save your poor girlie from the Roost. And me and my boys are going to help you.”

“Why?” asked Tom. He had a trusting nature — too trusting by half, Hester always used to say — but he was not so naive that he trusted Uncle. “Why would you want to help me and Hester? What’s in it for you?”

“Ooh, good question!” Uncle chuckled, rubbing his hands together, knuckles cracking like a string of squibs. “Come, let’s eat. Dinner is served in the Map Room. Caul, my boy, you come with us. Skewer, lose yourself.”

Skewer slunk out like a naughty dog, and Uncle ushered the others out of the chamber of screens by a back way, up twining staircases to a room lined from floor to rafters with wooden shelves. Rolled and folded maps had been crammed tightly into every chink of space, and sad, pasty-looking boys — failed burglars, barred from limpet-work — clambered from shelf to shelf, locating the charts and street-plans which Uncle needed to prepare fresh burglaries, replacing those he’d finished with. This is where poor little Gargle will end up, thought Caul, for he knew that after the reports he’d had from Anchorage Uncle would never send the boy out burgling again. It made him sad for a moment, imagining how the rest of Gargle’s life would be spent bird’s-nesting among these cliffs of parchment or tinkering with Uncle’s spy-cameras.

Uncle settled himself at the head of the table, switching on a little portable goggle-screen beside his plate so that he could keep watch on his boys even while he ate. “Sit down!” he cried, gesturing generously at the food laid out on the table, the waiting chairs. “Eat! Eat!”

There was nothing to eat in Grimsby except what the Lost Boys stole, and the Lost Boys stole only what boys who have no one to nag them about balanced diets and no-snacks-between-meals eat. Sugary biscuits, cheap, soapy chocolate, bacon sandwiches oozing grease, thin rounds of algae bread smeared thick with garish spreads, glasses of ill-chosen wine that kicked like airship fuel. The only concession to healthy eating was a tureen of boiled spinach in the centre of the table. “I always make sure the boys bring back a bit of greenstuff,” explained Uncle, dishing up. “Helps keep the scurvy at bay.” It spattered on to Tom’s plate like something dredged from a blocked sump.

“So why am I helping you, you ask,” said Uncle, eating quickly and talking with his mouth full, his eyes darting constantly to his goggle-screen. “Well, Tom, the fact is this. It ain’t so easy to spy on a place like Rogues’ Roost as it is aboard a city. We’ve had a listening post set up there for months, and we still don’t know what the Green Storm are up to. They’re serious bunnies. We can barely get any crab-cams inside, and I daren’t send one of my boys in; nine chances out of ten he’d be picked up by the sentries. So I thought I’d send you instead. You get a chance to rescue Hester, and I get to learn a bit about the Roost.”

Tom stared at him. “But your boys are trained burglars! If they can’t go in without getting caught, what makes you think I can?”

Uncle laughed. “If you got caught, it wouldn’t matter. Not to me. I’d still learn a lot about their security from watching how you got on, and if they questioned you you couldn’t give away any of my secrets. You don’t know where Grimsby lies. You don’t know how many limpets I’ve got. And they probably wouldn’t believe you anyway. It’ll just look as if you were acting alone, out of love for your girlie. How sweet!”

“It sounds as if you’re expecting them to catch me,” said Tom.

“Not expecting, exactly,” Uncle protested. “But we have to be prepared for all eventualities, Tom. With a bit of luck, and some help from my boys, you’ll get in, get the girl, get out, and we’ll all be sitting round this table again in a few days’ time listening to Hester tell us why the Green Storm are getting all secret and military on my patch.”

He stuffed a handful of popcorn into his mouth and turned back to his screen, flicking idly from channel to channel. Caul stared unhappily at his plate, shocked at what Uncle was suggesting. It sounded as if he just meant to use Tom as a sort of expendable, two-legged crab-cam…

“I won’t go!” said Tom.

“But Tom!” cried Uncle, looking up.

“How can I? I want to help Hester, but it would be madness! This Rogues’ Roost place sounds like a fortress! I’m a historian, not a commando!”

“But you’ve got to go,” said Uncle. “Because it’s Hester in there. I’ve read Caul and Skewer’s sad little reports about you. The way you love her. The way you’ve tortured yourself since you drove her away. Think how much worse it’ll be if you don’t try to save her now you’ve got the chance. She ’s probably being tortured for real. I don’t like to imagine the things those Green Storm are doing to her. They blame her for murdering old Anna Fang, you know.”

“But that’s not fair! It’s ridiculous!”

“Maybe that’s so. Maybe that’s what poor Hester’s telling the Green Storm interrogators right now. But I don’t suppose they believe her. And even if they do eventually decide she’s innocent, they’re hardly going to send her on her way with an apology, are they? It’ll be a bullet in the head and over the cliffs with her. Can you picture that, Tom? Good. Get used to it. If you don’t try and help her, you’ll be seeing it every time you close your eyes for the rest of your life.”

Tom pushed back his chair and strode away from the table. He wanted to find a window, to look at something other than Uncle’s leering, knowing face, but there were no windows in the Map Room and nothing to look out at anyway except cold water and the roofs of a drowned city.

On a board near the door a huge chart had been pinned up, showing Rogues’ Roost and the trenches and ridges of the sea floor around it. Tom stared at it, wondering where Hester was, what was happening to her among those little squares of buildings marked in blue on the island’s summit. He shut his eyes, but she was waiting for him in the dark behind his eyelids just as Uncle had promised.

It was all his fault. If he hadn’t kissed Freya, Het would never have flown off like that, never been captured by the agents of the Green Storm. Freya was in danger too, but she was far away and there was nothing he could do to help her or her city. He could help Hester though. He had one chance in ten of helping Hester.

He calmed himself as best he could, trying to make his voice sound steady and unafraid as he turned back to face Uncle. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“Capital!” chuckled Uncle, clapping his mittened hands. “I knew you would! Caul will take you to the Roost aboard his Screw Worm, first thing tomorrow.”

And Caul, looking on, felt himself dragged in two directions at once by rip tides of emotion such as he’d never felt: fear for Tom, of course, but elation too, because he’d been so afraid that Uncle would punish him for what he’d done in Freya’s city, but here he was, commander of the Screw Worm still. He stood up and went to Tom, who was leaning on his chair-back, staring at his hands, looking trembly and sick. “It’s all right,” he promised. “You won’t be alone. You’re with the Lost Boys now. We’ll get you into that place and out again with Hester, and everything will be all right.”

Uncle flicked quickly through the channels on his goggle-screen, because there was no telling what devilry boys might get up to if they weren’t watched all the time. Then, beaming at Tom and Caul, he topped up their glasses with more wine to wash down the pack of half-truths and outright lies he’d fed them.