Infernal Devices (7 page)

He lay in the dark and listened to his heart beat. Sometimes it seemed to him to falter, and sometimes there was a pain, or not quite a pain but a sense that something was wrong inside him, where Pennyroyal's bullet had torn into his body all those years ago. Exercise always made it worse. He should not have cut those logs this morning. But the logs had needed cutting, and if he had not cut them, he would have had to explain to Hester about the pains around his heart, and she would worry and make him go and consult Windolene Scabious, who was Anchorage's doctor, and Windolene would want to examine him, and he was afraid of what she might discover. It was better not to think about it. Better just to thank the gods for these good years he'd had with Hester and with Wren, and worry about the future when it happened.

But his future was already running toward him, down

Rasmussen Prospekt, through the Boreal Arcade, up Dog Star Court; it was through the front gate and sprinting up the steps; it was pounding hard at his front door.

"Great Quirke!" said Tom, startled, sitting up. Beside him, Hester groaned and rolled over, surfacing slowly. Tom threw the covers off and ran downstairs in his nightshirt. Through the glass panels of the front door a blurred figure loomed like a ghost, fists hammering the woodwork. A voice called Tom's name.

"Caul?" he said. "It's open."

This was not the first time Caul had awoken Tom with bad news. Once before, when Anchorage was iceborne and Hester had taken off alone aboard the
Jenny,
he had appeared out of the night to warn Tom what was happening. He had been just a boy then. Now, with his long hair and his beard and his wide, wild eyes, he looked like some maniac prophet. He burst into the hall, knocking over the hatstand and sweeping Tom's collection of Ancient mobile telephone casings to the floor.

"Caul, calm down!" said Tom. "What's the matter?"

"Wren," said the former Lost Boy. "It's Wren ..."

"Wren's in her room," said Tom, but he felt suddenly uneasy, recalling the strange way Wren had hugged him when she said good night, and that scratch on her cheek which she'd said she got walking into a thornbush. He'd sensed that something was wrong. "Wren?" he called up the stairs.

"She's gone!" shouted Caul. "Gone? Gone where?"

Hester was halfway down the stairs, pulling on her shirt.

She ran back up
;
and Tom heard her kick the door of Wren's bedroom open. "Gods and goddesses!" she shouted, and reappeared at the top of the stairs. "Tom, he's right. She's taken her bag and her coat...."

Tom said, "I expect she's out with Tildy Smew on some midnight jaunt. This is Vineland. What harm can come to her?"

"Lost Boys," said Caul. He was pacing to and fro, his hands deep in the pockets of his filthy old coat. The wild-animal smell of him filled the hall. "You remember Gargle? He left a note. Wanted me to help him. Stealing something. Don't know what. Wren must have followed me and got caught. He's using her. She's gone to him."

Hester went into the kitchen and came back with a square of paper.

"Tom, look ..."

It was a note from their daughter.

"Dearest Daddy and Mummy,"
she had written,

Hester dropped to her knees and scrabbled at the hall rug. Beneath it, set into the floor, was the safe where the merchant whose house this had been once stored his valuables. All it held now were a few cardboard boxes of ammunition and a gun. Hester pulled the gun out, unwrapping it from its oilcloth bindings.

"Where are they, Caul?" she asked.

"Het--" said Tom.

"I should have told you sooner," Caul muttered, "but it's Gargle.
Gargle.
He saved my life once...."

"A
cove on the north shore. Where the trees come down nearly to the water. Please, I don't want anyone hurt."

"Should have thought of that before," said Hester, checking the gun's action. Most of the guns she had taken from the Huntsmen of Arkangel she had thrown off the city's stern while it was still at sea, but this one she had kept, just in case. It wasn't as pretty as the others; no snarling wolf's head on the butt or silver chasing on the barrel. It was just a heavy, black .38 Schadenfreude, an ugly, reliable tool for killing people. She slipped bullets into its six chambers and snapped it shut, then stuffed it through her belt and pushed past Tom to the door, snatching her coat from the rack. "Wake the others," she told him, and went out into the night.

From the top of the island Wren could see the
Autolycus
squatting like a beached crab in the cove where she had first seen Gargle. The blue light from the limpet's open hatch gleamed on the water. She started down the sheep track toward it, slithering on loose earth, tripping on roots, the

breath cold at the back of her throat as she ran through the trees and the gorse toward the spider-crab silhouette.

Gargle was standing in the shallows, at the foot of the ramp that led up through the open hatch. Remora was with him, and as Wren drew near, she saw Fishcake come down the ramp to join them. "Ready to go?" she heard Gargle ask.

"Touch of a button," the boy replied.

The limpet's engines were idling, a thin plume of exhaust smoke rising from sealable vents on its back. A crab-cam glinted as it scurried up one of the legs and home to its port on the hull. Other cameras were creeping quickly down the beach, looking so spiderlike that Wren almost wanted to run away, but she told herself that if she was to travel with the Lost Boys, she would have to get used to them, so she made herself walk calmly between them down the shingle.

"It's me," she called softly as Gargle spun toward the sound of her footsteps. "I've got the Tin Book."

Anchorage-in-Vineland was waking up, indignant and alarmed. As Hester climbed the path to the woods, she could hear doors slamming in the city behind her, and people shouting as they prepared to go and do their bit against the Lost Boys. Some of the younger men almost caught up with her as she drew near the top of the island, but she left them behind on the descent; they stuck to the zigzag path while she just went straight down, crashing through the brush and surfing down screes in a rattle of bouncing stones. She felt excited, and happy that Wren needed her at last. Her father couldn't save her from the Lost Boys. Nobody else in Vineland could. Only Hester had the strength to deal with

them, and when she had killed them all, Wren would come to her senses and realize what danger she had been in and be grateful, and she and Hester would be friends again.

Hester slithered into a briar patch at the hill's foot and looked back. There was no sign of the others. She pulled the gun out of her belt and started toward the cove.

"Here," said Wren, sliding the heavy bag off her shoulder and holding it out to Gargle. "It's in there. My stuff too."

Remora said, "Better tell her, Gar. It's time to go."

Gargle had pulled the Tin Book out and was leafing through it, ignoring both of them.

"I'm coming with you, remember?" said Wren, starting to grow uneasy because this wasn't the welcome she'd expected. "I'm coming with you. That was the deal."

She could hear a childish, whining note creeping into her voice, and knew that she wasn't coming across as brave and grown-up and adventurous, which was how she wanted Gargle to see her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was nothing to him, nothing but a way to get hold of the Tin Book.

"That's it," said Gargle to himself. He threw Wren's bag back at her, then handed the Tin Book to Fishcake, who stuffed it into a leather satchel that hung at his side.

"I'm coming with you," Wren reminded Gargle. "I
am
coming with you, aren't I?"

Gargle moved closer to her. There was a mocking tone in his voice when he spoke. "Thing is, Wren, I've been having a think about that, and we haven't got the space after all."

Wren blinked quickly, trying to stop the tears from

coming. Flinging her bag down on the shingle, she shouted, "You promised you'd take me with you!" She could see Remora watching her, whispering something to little Fishcake that made him smirk too. How stupid they must think her!

"I want to see things!" she shouted. "I want to do things! I don't want to stay here and marry Nate Sastrugi and be a schoolteacher and get old and die!"

Gargle seemed to be angered by all the noise she was making. "Wren," he hissed, and instantly, like a furious echo, another voice out of the darkness shouted, "Wren!"

"Mum!" gasped Wren.

"Damn!" muttered Remora.

Gargle didn't say anything at all, just dragged the gas pistol from his belt and fired toward the beach. In the blue flash of the gun, Wren saw her mother striding across the shingle, barely flinching as the shot whipped past her. She held her own gun out stiffly in front of her.
Whack,
it went,
whack, whack, whack:
dull, flat sounds like books being snapped shut. The first bullet rebounded from the
Autolycus
with a clang; the next two hissed away over the lake; the fourth hit Gargle between the eyes. Something thick and wet spattered Wren's face and clothes.

"Gargle!" shrieked Fishcake.

Gargle went down on his knees, then flopped forward with his bottom in the air and his face in the chuckling waves.

Fishcake scrambled through the shallows toward him, getting in Remora's way as she pulled out her own gun. "Fishcake, get aboard!" she screamed. "Get back to Grimsby!"

Hester put two bullets through her, kicking her backward and down into the lake.

"Gargle!" Fishcake was wailing.

Hester was reloading her gun, empty shells jinking on the shingle around her feet. She shouted, "Wren, come here!" Shaking with fright, Wren stumbled gladly toward her, but suddenly Fishcake's arm was around her waist, tugging her back. The snout of Gargle's pistol ground against her chin.

"Drop the gun!" Fishcake shouted. "Or I'll ... I'll
kill
her, I'll
kill
her!"

"Mummy!" squeaked Wren. She couldn't breathe properly. She knew suddenly that she had had all the adventures she would ever want. She longed to be safe at home. "Mummy! Help!"

Hester edged forward. Her gun was raised, but she dared not pull the trigger, they all knew that; there was too much danger of hitting Wren.

"Let her go!" she ordered.

"What, so you can shoot me?" sobbed Fishcake. Twisting Wren about so that her body was always between him and her mother, he started to drag her with him up the boarding ramp. The gun was still pressed under her chin, pushing her head up. She could feel him shaking, and although she could easily have overpowered him, she dared not try, in case the gun went off. He pulled her through the hatch into the limpet, and slammed his elbow against the button that raised the ramp. A ricochet howled off across the lake as Hester shot at the hydraulics and missed. "Mummy!" shouted Wren again, and had a brief glimpse of her mother shouting something back as the hatch closed. Then Fishcake shoved her

through a doorway into the complicated electrical clutter of the control cabin. She felt the limpet shiver as he began working the controls with one hand, the other still pointing the gun at her head. "Please," she said. The cabin lurched. Wren saw lights on the hillside behind the beach. "Help!" she shouted. Waves were slapping at the cabin windows, and she glimpsed the moon for a moment, shivery and unreal through the rising water. Then it was gone, and the note of the engines changed, and she thought,
We've submerged-- never get home now!
and her stomach turned over and she fainted.

Hester ran down the beach, firing her gun at the limpet until its black hull was lost in a boiling of white water. Then there was nothing to do but shout Wren's name over and over, hoarse, useless, her lonely voice the only sound remaining as the lap and wash of the
Autolycus's
wake faded into silence.

No, not quite silence. Slowly Hester became aware of other sounds: dogs barking, shouts. Lanterns and flashlights bobbed on the hillside. Mr. Smew came charging through the gorse, waving an antique wolf rifle twice as tall as him and shouting, "Where are they, the subaquatic fiends? Let me at them!"

More people followed him. Hester went to meet them, shrugging aside the hands that reached for her, the questions. "Are you all right, Mrs. Natsworthy?"

"We heard shooting!"

"Was it the Lost Boys?"

The bodies in the shallows stirred gently as the waves broke round them, dragging long smears of red away into

the lake. Caul knelt beside one of them and said in a soft, puzzled voice, "Gargle." The air stank of gun smoke and exhaust fumes.

Tom ran up, looking stupidly about and seeing only his daughter's going-away bag lying forlorn upon the shingle. "Where's Wren?" he asked. "Hester, what happened?"

Hester turned away and would not answer. It was Freya Rasmussen, in the end, who came to him and took his hands in hers and said, "Oh, Tom, they've gone, and I think Wren is with them; I think they've taken Wren."

***

daddy, Mummy's face is
all funny."