A Darkling Plain (4 page)

Tom finished his coffee and said, "I'd been thinking you might want to go south this spring. Your friend Theo is still in Zagwa, isn't he? I expect we could get permission to land there...."

"Oh, I hadn't really thought about that," said Wren casually, and blushed bright red.

"I liked Theo," Tom went on. "He's a good lad. Kind and well-mannered. Handsome, too...."

"Daddy!" said Wren sternly, warning him not to tease. Then she relented, sighed, and took his hand. "Look, the reason Theo has such good manners is that he's really posh. His family are rich, and they live in a city that was part of a great civilization when our ancestors were still wearing animal skins and squabbling over scraps in the ruins of Europe. Why would Theo be interested in me?"

"He'd be a fool if he isn't," said her father, "and he didn't strike me as a fool."

Wren gave an exasperated sigh. Why couldn't Dad understand? Theo was in his own city, surrounded by lots of girls far prettier than her. His family might have married him off by now, and even if they hadn't, he was sure to have forgotten all about Wren. That kiss, which had meant so much to her, had probably meant nothing at all to Theo. So she did not want to make a fool of herself by chasing off to Zagwa,

knocking on his door, and expecting them to pick up where they'd left off.

She said, "Let's go east, Dad. Let's go and find Clytie Potts."

***

THEO, WHO HAD BEEN ADRIFT for days on slow tides of pain and anesthetic, came to the surface at last in a clean, white room in Zagwa Hospital. Through veils of mosquito netting and smudged memories he could see an open window, and evening sunlight on the mountains. His mother and father and his sisters Miriam and Kaelo were gathered around his bed, and as he gradually recovered his senses, Theo realized that his wounds must have been very grave indeed, for instead of teasing him and telling him how silly he looked lying there all bruised and bandaged, his sisters seemed inclined to cry and kiss him. "Thank God, thank God," his mother kept saying, and his father, leaning over him, said, "You're going to be all right, Theo. But it was touch and go for a while."

"The knife," said Theo, remembering, touching his stomach,

which was wrapped in clean, crisp bandages. "The rockets ... They hit the citadel!"

"They exploded quite harmlessly in the gardens," his father assured him. "Nobody was hurt. Nobody but you. You were badly wounded, Theo, and you lost a lot of blood. When our aviators brought you in, the doctors were ready to give you up for dead. But the ambassador heard of your plight-- the Storm's ambassador, Lady Naga--and she came and worked on you herself. She used to be some sort of surgeon before her marriage. She certainly knows a thing or two about a person's insides. That is a claim to fame, eh, Theo? You have been healed by General Naga's wife!"

"So you saved her life, and she saved yours," said Miriam.

"She will be delighted to hear that you are on the mend!" said Mrs. Ngoni. "She was very impressed by your bravery, and takes a great interest in you." She pointed proudly to a mass of flowers in a corner of Theo's hospital room, sent by Lady Naga. "She came to see me herself, to tell me how well the operation had gone." She beamed, clearly rather taken with the visitor from Shan Guo. "Lady Naga is a very good person, Theo."

"If she is so good, what is she doing in the Green Storm?" asked Theo.

"An accident of fate," his father suggested. "Really, Theo, you would like her. Shall I send word to the citadel to tell her that you are better? I am sure she will want to come and talk to you."

Theo shook his head and said that he did not feel strong enough. He was happy that he had been able to stop the barbarians, and grateful to Lady Naga for saving his life, but he

felt awkward at finding himself in debt to a member of the Green Storm.

He was allowed home the next day. In the weeks that followed, as he grew slowly stronger, he tried not to think about Lady Naga, although his parents often spoke about her. Indeed, all Zagwa was talking about Lady Naga. Everyone had heard how she had taken off her fine clothes and put on a doctor's smock to save the life of young Theo Ngoni, and as the weeks went by, there were other stories about her: how she had visited the ancient cathedral church that had been hollowed out of the living rock of Mount Zagwa in the Black Centuries, and prayed there with the bishop himself. Everyone seemed to think that this was a good sign--except Theo. He suspected it was all just another Green Storm trick.

Two of the queen's councillors came to ask him about his memories of the airship he had boarded. They told him that the aviatrix he had captured was being questioned but would not cooperate. They congratulated him on his bravery. Theo said, "I wasn't being brave. I had no choice." But secretly he felt proud, and very pleased that everyone in Zagwa would think of him as a hero now instead of only remembering that he had once run away to join the Storm. "I'm glad I was able to stop those townies before they hurt anyone," he told the councillors. The councillors exchanged odd, thoughtful looks when he said that, and the younger of the two seemed about to say something, but the older one stopped him; they left soon afterward.

Outside his parents' house Zagwa baked in the sun. The city was not quite so magnificent when you saw it from

ground level; the buildings were shabby, bright paint peeling off the walls, roofs sagging. Weeds grew through cracked pavements. Even the domes of the citadel were streaked with verdigris. Zagwa's great days were a thousand years behind it; the mighty empire it used to rule had been laid waste by hungry cities. In the shade of the umbrella tree across the street men gathered in the afternoons to talk angrily about the latest news of townie atrocities from the north. Maybe some of the young ones would grow so angry that one day they would go off to join the Storm, just as Theo had. Theo watched them from the window sometimes, and tried to remember being that sure of things, but he couldn't.

One afternoon, almost a month after the air attack, he was reading in the garden room when his father and mother brought a visitor to see him. Theo barely looked up from his book when they entered, for he had grown used to visits from his many aunts and uncles, all embarrassingly keen to see his scars and remind him what a tearaway he'd been when he was three, or introduce him to the pretty daughters of their friends. It was not until his mother said, "Theo, my dear, you remember Air Marshal Khora?" that he realized this visit was different.

Khora was one of Africa's finest aviators, and the commander of the Zagwan Flying Corps. He was a tall man, and handsome still, though he was nearing fifty and his hair was turning white. He wore ceremonial armor, and around his shoulders hung the traditional cloak of the queen's bodyguard: yellow with patterns of black dots, representing the skin of a mythical creature called a leopard. He bowed low

to Theo, greeting him like an equal, and small, inconsequential things were said that Theo was far too overcome to remember. Khora had been his hero since he was a little boy. When he was nine, he had whiled away a whole rainy season making a model of Khora's flagship, the air destroyer
Mwene Mutapa,
with a little inch-high Khora standing on the stern gallery. It was such a surprise to see him here, actual size, in the familiar surroundings of home, that it took Theo several moments to notice that he had not come alone. Behind him stood two servant girls, foreigners dressed in robes of rain-colored silk, and behind them, in plainer clothes, another woman, very short and slight, whom Theo knew from photographs in the Zagwan news sheets.

"Theo," said Air Marshal Khora, "I have brought Lady Naga to meet you."

Theo knew that he ought to say, "I don't want to; I don't want anything to do with her or her people," but he was still tongue-tied in Khora's presence, and anyway, as the ambassador came toward him and he saw her delicate face and the heavy black spectacles (which she had not been wearing in those news photographs), he discovered that he knew her.

"You were on Cloud 9!" he blurted out, startling Khora and the servant girls, who had been expecting some more formal greeting. "The night the Storm camel You're Dr. Zero! You were with Naga and--"

"And I am still with Naga," the woman replied with a faint, puzzled smile. She was young, and quite pretty in a boyish way. Her hair, which had been short and green when Theo first met her, was longer now, and black. The neck of her linen tunic was open, and in the hollow of her throat

hung a cheap tin cross that she must have bought from one of the stalls outside the cathedral. She reached up to touch it as she said, "So you were with us aboard Cloud 9 last year, Mr. Ngoni? I'm afraid I don't remember ..."

Theo nodded eagerly. "I was with Wren. You took us away from the Stalker Fang and asked Wren about the Tin Book...." His voice trailed off. He had just remembered the uniform she had been wearing that night. "She used to be some sort of surgeon," his father had said, but that had only been half true; she had been a surgeon-mechanic, a builder of Stalkers for the Green Storm's dreaded Resurrection Corps.

"That was you?" she asked, still smiling. "I'm so sorry. So much happened that night, and so much has happened since.... How is your wound? Healing?"

"It is better," said Theo bravely.

Khora laughed, and said, "The young heal quickly! I was wounded myself once, at Batmunkh Gompa, back in the year '07. A damned Londoner stuck his sword through my lung. It still hurts me sometimes."

"Theo, my boy," his father said, "why don't you show Lady Naga the gardens?"

Awkwardly, Theo indicated the open door, and Lady Naga followed him outside with her girls trailing at a respectful distance. Glancing behind him, he saw Khora deep in conversation with his parents, and his sisters watching and giggling. They were probably wondering which of the ambassador's servants he would fall in love with, Theo realized. Both girls were very beautiful. One was Han or Shan Guonese; the other must have come from somewhere in the south of India; her skin was as dark as Theo's, and her eyes,

which met his as he stared at her, were the blackest he had ever seen.

He looked away quickly, and tried to cover his confusion by pointing out the path that led to his favorite part of the garden, the terrace overlooking the gorge. The shadowed walk was overhung by trees heavy with orange flowers; Lady Naga stooped to pick up one that had fallen on the path, and turned it in her hands as they walked on. Watching her, Theo noticed that her small fingers were dappled with patches of bleached skin and tea-colored stains. "Chemicals," she explained, seeing that he had noticed. "I worked for a long time with the Resurrection Corps. The chemicals we used ..."

Theo wondered how many dead soldiers she had Stalkerized, and how six short months could have turned a shy little officer from the Resurrection Corps into the wife of the leader of the Storm. As if she guessed his thoughts, Lady Naga looked up at him and said, "It was I who killed the Stalker Fang that night. I rebuilt another old Stalker, Mr. Grike, and set him to attack her. General Naga was impressed. He seemed to think I'd been very brave. And I suppose he felt I needed protection, for there are a lot of people in the Storm who worshiped her, and would be glad to see me dead. And--well, you know how sentimental soldiers can be. At any rate, he took good care of me on the voyage home to Tienjing, and when we had got there, and he was secure in the leadership, he asked me to marry him."

Theo nodded. It was embarrassing, to be talking about such private things with her. He had seen Naga, a fierce warrior who clanked around inside a motorized metal

exoskeleton to compensate for his lost right arm and crippled legs. He could not imagine that Dr. Zero had been in love with him. It must have been fear, or lust for power, that had made her say yes.

"The general must miss you," was all he could think of to say.

"I think he does," said Lady Naga. "But he is a good man, and he really wants peace. He wants to see friendship restored between Zagwa and the Storm. I persuaded him that I should be the one to talk to your leaders. He thought I would be safer here. There are still elements of the Storm who hate Naga for trying to end their war, and hate me for destroying their old leader and letting Naga take over power. He thought that by flying halfway around the world, I might escape them for a while. It seems he was wrong about that."

Theo wondered what she meant. But at that moment they reached the edge of the trees; the sunlit terrace opened before them, and for a few minutes Lady Naga could say nothing but "Oh!" and "Ah!" and "What a magnificent view!"

It
was
magnificent. Even Theo, who had known it all his life, felt awestruck sometimes when he stood on this terrace and looked over the balustrade. The steep sides of Zagwa gorge dropped sheer to the aquamarine curve of the river far below, and the mountains rose above, thick green cloud forest giving way to snow, soaring up and up toward the dazzling sky where greater mountains hung: giant storm clouds, white and ice blue in the sunlight. A few wind riders were hanging on the thermals overhead, reminding Theo of his own flight, and the kite he'd lost. It occurred to him that

Lady Naga had not yet thanked him for saving her from the townie air strike. He had thought that was what she had come here for.

"Whatever made you want to leave all this and join the Green Storm?" she asked.

Theo shrugged awkwardly, unhappy at being reminded of his time as a flying bomb. "It's all under threat," he said. "The Flying Corps do their best to defend our borders, but every year more and more of our farmlands and forests are eaten. The cities of the desert move south, and bring the desert with them. I had listened so long to my father and my friends talking about it, and I just wanted to be
doing
something. I thought the Green Storm had the answer. I was younger then. You think things are simple when you're young."