Infernal Devices (8 page)

The voices of her childhood whispered in Wren's

memory as she slowly returned to her senses. She was lying on the floor of a tiny cabin that held a metal washbasin and a metal toilet. The toilet smelled of chemicals. A dim blue bulb glowed in a cage on the roof. The walls vibrated slightly. She could hear the threshing, churning sound of the
Autolycus
motors, and another sound, a creaking and whispering, which she guessed was water pressing against the hull.

Well, bad men have come to Anchorage-in-Vineland now,
she thought,
and they've escaped with what they wanted, and I've helped them. Only question left is, What are they going to do with me?

Dad had been taken by the Lost Boys once, yet he'd survived all right, and returned to Anchorage to marry Mum. So that must mean that there was hope for Wren, mustn't it? But thinking of Dad made her think of Mum, and that made her remember what Mum had done, and the memory filled her with a sick horror. Inside her head, like an echo that would not fade, she could hear the crack and spatter of the bullet hitting Gargle.

She was not sure how long she lay there, shivering, whimpering, too shocked and miserable to move. At last the hard floor grew so uncomfortable that she forced herself to stand up.
Get a grip, Wren,
she told herself crossly.

The stuff on her clothes had dried brown and crusty, like spilled goulash. She ran some water into the metal handbasin and tried to sponge it off, then washed her face and hair as well as she could.

After a long time, a key grated in the lock and the door opened. Fishcake came and looked in at her. The gun was still

in his hand. His face looked hard and white in the blue light, as if he'd been carved out of ivory. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Shut up," said Fishcake. His voice sounded hard too. "I ought to kill you."

"Me?" Wren wriggled, trying to burrow into the deck. "But I haven't done anything! I got you the Tin Book like Gargle asked ..."

"And your witch of a mother killed him!" Fishcake shouted. The gun in his hand wobbled as big sobs shook his body. Wren wondered if he was going to shoot her, but he didn't. She felt scared of him and angry at him and somehow responsible for him, all at the same time.

"I'm very sorry," she said. "About Remora too."

Fishcake sniffed loudly. "Mora was Gargle's girl," he said. "Everybody said he was in love with her. He was never really going to take you with him. I heard him and Mora talking about you, saying how stupid you were...." He started to cry again. "What are the Lost Boys going to do without Gargle?" he asked. "It's all right for him; him and Mora are down in the Sunless Country together. What about the rest of us? What about me?"

He looked at Wren again. In this underworld light his eyes looked black: two holes opening onto empty space. "I ought to kill you, just so your Mum would know how it feels to have someone you love took away. But that would make me as bad as her, wouldn't it?"

He stepped back, the door slammed shut, and the key grated in the lock.

***

"I'm going after her," said Tom.

Everyone politely ignored him. They thought that going after Wren would be impossible, but they were all too kind to say so. They thought that the shock of what had happened was making him talk wildly. And he
had
been shocked, quite numb with it when they first told him she was gone. He had run up and down the beach, shouting her name at the waves as if the Lost Boys who had taken her might hear him and relent, until his heart had twisted and kicked so painfully inside him that he thought he was going to die right then and there upon the shingle, without ever seeing Wren again.

But he hadn't died. Kind hands had led him to a boat and rowed him back to Anchorage, where now he sat with Hester and Freya and a dozen other Vinelanders in one of the smaller rooms of the Winter Palace.

"It's my fault, you see," he explained. "She was asking about the Lost Boys only this morning. I should have guessed something was going on."

"No fault of yours, Tom," said Smew, glaring at Hester, who sat silent and scowling beside her husband. "If
certain people
hadn't gone racing off ahead of the rest of us and started
shooting ..."

Several other Vinelanders muttered in agreement. They had always respected Hester for saving them from the Huntsmen of Arkangel, but they had never liked her. They all remembered the way she had killed Piotr Masgard, killed him when there had been no more need for killing, and hacked and hacked at his body long after he was dead. Small wonder that the gods would send bad luck to a woman who could do such things. It was just a shame they'd waited sixteen years to

send it, and that it had fallen on her nice husband and her lovely daughter too.

Hester knew what they were thinking. "I was only defending myself," she said. "I was defending all of us. I promised Freya once I'd look after this dump and guard it from harm, and that's what I was doing. You want somebody to blame, blame him."

She pointed at Caul, who sat awkwardly in a far corner. But nobody seemed to think badly of what Caul had done. His former friends had come asking for his help, and he had refused. You couldn't expect him to betray them. They were his people.

"What were the Lost Boys here for, anyway?" asked Mr. Aakiuq.

"Lost Girls too," said Smew, still glowering at Hester. "One of those kids she shot was just a girl."

"But what brought them back to Anchorage after all these years?"

Everyone turned to look at Caul. He shrugged. "Don't know. Didn't ask. Thought the less I knew, the better."

"Oh, gods and goddesses!" said Freya suddenly, and went running from the room. When she returned, she was carrying the empty casket that had once held the Tin Book of Anchorage. "Wren came asking about it," she said. "This was what the Lost Boys came here for."

"Why?" asked Tom. "It's not worth anything, is it?"

Freya shrugged. "I didn't think so. But here it is, gone. They must have asked Wren to get it for them and ..."

"The stupid little--" Hester started to say.

"Be quiet, Het!" snapped Tom. He was thinking of Wren

as a child, and of how, when she was frightened by thunder or a bad dream, he would hold her tight till she was calm again. He could not bear the thought of her trapped aboard that limpet, alone and afraid, with nobody to make it better. "I'm going after her," he said again.

"Then I'm coming too," Hester agreed, taking his hand. They had been parted once before, when Hester was a prisoner at Rogues' Roost, and they had vowed then that they would never be apart again. She said, "We'll go together."

"But how?" asked Freya.

"I'll help."

Caul had risen to his feet. He circled the room with his back to the wall, lamplight gleaming in his eyes. "It's my fault," he said. "I thought maybe if I didn't help them, they'd leave us alone. I didn't think they'd turn to Wren. I'd forgotten how clever Gargle can ...
could
be." He put a hand to his throat, to the shiny red scars that the ropes had left where Uncle had tried to hang him. He said, "I remember Wren being born. I played with her when she was little. I'll help. The
Screw Worm
'll take you all the way to Grimsby if need be."

"That old limpet of yours?" Hester sounded angry, as if she thought Caul was mocking them.

"I thought the
Screw Worm
broke down years ago," said Tom. "That summer that you and Mr. Scabious dug out the harbor-mouth...."

"I've repaired her," said Caul. "What do you think I've been doing with my time, down in the district? Picking fluff out of my belly button? I've been repairing the
Worm.
All right, repairing the
Worm and
picking fluff out of my belly button. She's not perfect, but she's seaworthy. No fuel, of course...."

"I reckon there might be a drop left in the old air harbor tanks," said Mr. Aakiuq. "And we can recharge her accumulators from the hydro plant."

"Then she could be ready in a few days," Caul said. "Maybe a week."

"Wren will be miles away by then!" Hester said.

"It doesn't matter," said Tom firmly. Usually it was Hester who was the firm one and Tom who did as she said, but he was utterly certain about this. He
had
to get Wren back. If Wren were lost, what would be the point of going on living? He took Hester's hand, sure that she felt the same. "We'll find her," he promised. "We've faced worse things than Lost Boys in our time. Even if we have to go all the way to Grimsby, we'll find her."

***

winding river systems of the Dead Continent. Fishcake knew his way back to the sea, for he had helped Gargle map these channels on the journey from Grimsby. It was simple enough to retrace the route that had brought the
Autolycus
through the Dead Hills to Vineland, except that all the way, Fishcake kept thinking,
The last time we passed through this lake, Gargle was here,
or,
Last time we crossed this sandbar, Mora made that joke....

He had to do something. But what could he do? He had loved Gar, and he loved Gar still, but Gar was gone, and crying would not bring him back. What could he do? He had to do
something....

Always before, there had been someone to tell him what to do. He had never acted on his own or made his own plans,

except for that one panic-driven moment back in Vineland when he'd grabbed that gun and pointed it at Wren to stop her mum from shooting him, and even that had not worked out as he had meant it to, for he had ended up with Wren as a captive, and he didn't know what he should do with her either.

On the third night after the fight at Vineland, he cut the limpet's engines and climbed out onto the roof. The Dead Hills of America rose stark against the shining sky. Certain that Lady Death and all the gods of war and vengeance watched over this land, Fishcake raised his voice so that they would all hear him. "I'll avenge you, Gargle! I'll avenge you, Mora! I'll find Hester Natsworthy again one day, and when I do, I promise you I'll kill her."

The next day the limpet reached the coast, crept across a stretch of dismal saltings, and slid gratefully into the gray sea. Safe in the deep, Fishcake set a course for home, then went aft to see his prisoner. Wren was curled up on the floor of the toilet cubicle. Staring at her fragile, sleeping face, Fishcake wished he had not had to capture her, for she was pretty, and none of this had been her fault. But it was too late now to let her go.

He prodded her with his foot. "We're at sea now," he told her as she woke. "You don't have to stay in there anymore. There's fifty fathoms of cold water above us, so don't even think about trying to escape."

"At sea?" Wren knew that the open sea was a long way from Anchorage-in-Vineland. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying.

"I'm going to take you to Grimsby," said Fishcake. "Uncle or one of the older boys will know what to do with you. You can clean yourself up if you want. You can take some of Remora's old clothes from her locker."

"Thank you," whispered Wren.

"I'm not doing it for your sake," Fishcake said sharply, to show her he wasn't soft. "It's the stink, see? I can't be breathing your reek all the way to Grimsby."

Wren went aft. For four days she had seen nothing but the inside of the toilet cubicle, and after that, even the narrow passageways of the
Autolycus
seemed roomy. Remora's locker was decorated with pictures snipped out of stolen magazines: hairstyles and clothes. There were photographs of Remora and Gargle laughing, their arms around each other. There was a bag of makeup, and a teddy bear, and a book on interpreting your dreams. Wren took some clothes and changed, then went and stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink, which wasn't really a mirror but just a sheet of polished metal bolted to the wall. Already she looked older and thinner, swamped by Remora's shapeless dark clothes. Wren the Lost Girl. When she had stuffed her own filthy clothes into one of the bags the limpet crews used for loot and tied it shut, there was nothing of Vineland left about her but her boots.

She sat in the hold, listening to Fishcake clattering about on the bridge. Her stomach rumbled, but the Lost Boy had offered her no food, and she was afraid to ask for any. It was a bit embarrassing, being held prisoner by someone so much younger than her, but Fishcake's feelings were balanced on such a knife-edge that Wren was still afraid he might kill her

if she annoyed him. Better stay quiet. She drank foul-tasting water from the sink faucet and thought about escape. Daring plans formed in her mind, only to burst like bubbles after a few seconds. Even if she somehow overpowered her little captor, she would never be able to steer the limpet back to Vineland. She was stuck here, and it was all her own fault. She had been incredibly, dangerously stupid, she could see that now, and it made her ashamed because she had always thought herself clever. Hadn't Miss Freya always said that Wren had more brains than any of the other young people in Vineland?

"Well, Wren," she said, hugging herself for comfort, "if you're going to stay alive and find your way back to Mum and Dad, you'll have to start using them."

The
Autolycus
was a hundred miles from shore when the signal came in. Fishcake thought at first that it must be a message from another limpet, although he didn't know that any others were operating on this side of the ocean. Then he noticed something strange: The signal was being broadcast simultaneously on the limpet-to-limpet frequency
and
on the wavelength that the limpets used to receive pictures from their wireless crab-cams.