Bridge of storms, p.16
Bridge of Storms, page 16
“You know he only became chief engineer because his father died,” said Loomis, conversationally. “Poor old Troutbeck. He fell off the stern stairs one dark night and broke his neck.”
“The stern stairs?”
“A terrible business. Young Luka stepped into his old man’s shoes while they were still warm. The lower-deck people love him, of course, but I have often wondered if the Senior Fellows were altogether wise to appoint him as our chief engineer. He is so young, and — well, he has so much nightwight in him.”
Max felt himself blush. He wished he was one of those people who went pale when they were angry — it was so much more dignified. As it was, he could feel his ears turning red. “Just because Luka’s mother was a nightwight doesn’t mean he’s not loyal to Museion! You can’t think he deliberately lowered that ramp? If he was in league with the Junkyard Dogs, he could have just shut down all the engines and let them catch us.”
“Oh, I agree. I just think it’s odd — that’s all. Something to bear in mind. Anyway, dinner in the Great Hall at six. I shall see you there.”
Carrying the envelope, Max went briskly down the stern stairs. They looked bleak and businesslike now, with none of the magic they had held when the ice was on them. At the landing where he had talked with Voss he stopped to look at the faded wreath wired to the handrail. Sure enough, it was a memorial to Voss’s father. This was the exact spot from which Mr. Troutbeck had fallen. But the handrail was high, too high to simply tumble over, surely? Unless the poor man had jumped. Or someone had pushed him.
Max stood there a moment, telling himself that he was being ridiculous, then hurried on down into the engine district to find Luka. But he was not in the control room, and no one seemed to know where he could be found.
“Repairs going on all over,” said his deputy. “Luka could be with any of a dozen crews.”
Max gave the charts to her, then returned to the upper tier by one of the internal stairways. He did not want to go past Mr. Troutbeck’s memorial again. He did not want to think the thoughts about Voss that were crowding in on him. He remembered the picture in Voss’s apartment. How different from each other the engineer’s parents had been. He found himself wondering whether Mr. Troutbeck had loved his spooky-looking wife, and whether she had loved him back. Even if he had treated her well, she might have resented him using her knowledge to improve Museion’s engines (and taking the credit for the improvements himself, no doubt). Perhaps she had spoken of her resentment to young Luka, and he had grown to hate his father. Perhaps he had grown to hate Museion itself. Perhaps, as the last of the nightwights, he had grown to hate all human beings …
It couldn’t be him, Max told himself. It simply couldn’t. But where had Luka been on the day of the battle, when the ramp went down and the fires broke out? What had he been doing, up there above the cargo holds? Had his friendliness afterward been only an attempt to throw Max off the scent?
On the top tier, night was falling and the first stars were twinkling. High on the passing mountainsides the age-old walls and crumbling stone towers of some forgotten static kingdom showed dark against the snow. Above them, the aurora spread its faint, green stains across the sky.
Dinner was well underway in the Great Hall. Max hurried to the High Table where the Senior Fellows and their guests were eating. Hilly was deep in conversation with Professor Stanislaus, but she broke off when she saw the look on Max’s face.
“Max? What’s wrong?”
“I’ve worked something out, I think.”
“What is it?”
Max settled himself in an empty seat between Stanislaus and Professor Waghorn. “I think I know who dropped the ramp. And started the fire maybe …”
“Who?”
“I think,” said Max, “I think — well, Luka Voss was down near the cargo hold when the ramp was opened.”
“Voss has a key to the control cubicle,” said Waghorn.
“But why would he put his own city at risk?” demanded Hilly.
“Because it isn’t his city. He is half nomad. Half nightwight. His mother came from beyond the Tannhäusers. Maybe she was an agent of Crawley or the Junkyard Dogs all along, and trained little Luka to succeed her …” replied Waghorn.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” said Max, because now that his concerns had escaped the confines of his head and other people were taking them seriously, he was starting to feel a perverse desire to defend Voss.
“He could not have been responsible for Bellweather’s murder and the attempt on the dean’s life,” said Professor Stanislaus. “He was down below on both occasions.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” said Waghorn, who had never liked Voss. “Does he have an alibi? There are all sorts of rat runs between the engine district and the top tier known only to him and his staff.”
“And his staff worship him!” agreed Mrs. Pringle, cottoning on. “I believe they would do anything he asked of them.”
“Even murder?” asked Max.
But no one was listening. The news about Voss was spreading along the table, and Nesrine Pott-Walloper was shouting to some of the students to run and find Dr. Twyne. “Voss is the traitor!” Max heard people yelling. “Voss is the murderer! Arrest him! Quickly!”
He stood up, his hand on the pommel of the sword Voss had gifted him. People were hurrying to the main door, leaving their dinners unfinished as they wandered out into the frosty Quadrangle. Max wondered if he should call for calm.
“I hope you are certain of your facts, Mr. Angmering,” said Professor Stanislaus, the only one left at the High Table. Max reached out to help him stand, but Stanislaus waved him away. “It is a serious matter to accuse someone of treachery and murder.”
“I know,” said Max.
“I am sure you do. Forgive me. Vespertine and I have been looking into this affair all day, and perhaps I am a little peeved that you have found the answer before us. I had planned to interview Voss this afternoon, but he said he was too busy to meet with me. A sign of guilt, perhaps. If you are right, you have saved our city. Voss must know a hundred ways to shut our engines down and make it seem an accident. Perhaps he planned to wait until we were high in the pass, then strand us there while Crawley catches up.”
Max went outside. People were gathering at the head of the stairs to watch as Dr. Twyne and some of his militia went hurrying down into the engine district. Pushing past the onlookers, Max followed the squad downstairs.
Voss was eating dinner with some of his assistants and their families in a crowded dining area behind the main engine room. It was a jollier affair than dinner in the Great Hall, thought Max, or at least it had been until Twyne and his people barged in, with Max slinking behind them. Then the talking and the laughter stopped and people stood up from the tables in alarm. Voss rose too, looking questioningly at the newcomers.
“I’m sorry, Luka,” said Dr. Twyne. “There have been accusations. Questions about your whereabouts on the day of the battle, and the night before it, and your actions since …”
“You think I am the traitor?” said Voss, and started to laugh. A murmur of shock and disbelief ran through the room. One of the children started to cry.
“I am here to bring you to the Ivory Tower,” said Twyne. “You’ll be held there until we can get to the bottom of this.”
Voss’s laughter had just been for show. It stopped, and left him looking angry and perhaps a little scared. “Who made these accusations?” he said. “Who asked these questions?” His black eyes scanned the faces of the militia lads lined up at Twyne’s shoulder, and stopped when they reached Max. Max looked away.
“This is madness!” one of Voss’s companions was shouting, shaking his fist at Dr. Twyne. “Luka’s all that’s kept this city moving. He’d never betray us! We won’t let you take him!”
The men and women around him agreed. Some picked up the knives they had just been eating with, as if they planned to fight. But Voss held up his long, pale hands and called for calm. “This is what the traitor wants,” he said. “To turn us all against one another. I will go with these fools and answer their stupid questions, and while I’m gone you will keep the engines running and the wheels turning. Mr. Vladich, you’ll take over my duties in the control room while I’m upstairs. Miss Kreva, you can take Vladich’s place in engineering.”
They were not happy about it, but they shuffled aside, and Voss walked to the door, where Twyne and the militia gathered around him. As he passed Max, their eyes met again, and there seemed to be no anger in Voss’s gaze at all, only hurt and a terrible disappointment. Max did not want to follow the squad as they marched their prisoner back up the stairs, but nor did he want to stay below and face Voss’s angry people. So he tagged along, hanging back far enough that he hoped Voss would not see him there, and at the top of the steps when Twyne led his prisoner forward toward the Ivory Tower, Max turned aft instead, and went miserably out onto the burned-out balconies behind the Temple of Peripatetia. On either side of Museion, the steep flanks of the Golgan Hills rose black against the glowing sky. Behind it, looking like a minor constellation fallen to the midnight earth, the clustered lamps of Crawley glittered with a greedy light.
If I am right about Voss, thought Max, then I have done the right thing. But he could take no pride in it, because if he was wrong he had betrayed a friend, and robbed Museion of its most brilliant engineer in the very hour of its need.
Vespertine and Small Cat were guarding the airships again. Voss was being held under arrest in the Ivory Tower, but Hilly thought it possible he had accomplices who might try to flee the city before they were discovered. So she had set Vespertine to stand watch in the hangar overnight, “since you’re the only one of us who doesn’t need to sleep.”
Vespertine did not mind. It was true, she did not need sleep. But she could not help feeling disappointed. She had liked solving crimes with Professor Stanislaus. Now the saboteur had been caught, life seemed far less interesting.
But something still worried her. Her memories of the day were very clear, and she sorted through them for a while until she found the thing that was nagging at her. It was the look on the face of Barley Bellweather, up in the navigation suite, when Loomis was talking about Crawley. Stanislaus had asked him if he had ever been aboard the suburb, and when Loomis had said, “Never,” the young woman had glanced up at him with — what? Surprise? Interest? Doubt? Vespertine was not always good at reading the emotions that flickered so rapidly over once-born faces. But she could tell that Barley had felt something. And why should that be? Why should she feel anything at all, if Professor Loomis had simply been stating a fact?
She stood pondering on it for a time, then kissed Small Cat on the top of his head and set him in his basket. He snuggled down there like a little curl of fluff, in that way that always made Vespertine feel strangely warm inside. “Sleep well, Small Cat,” she said, and went across the hangar to where the Owl of Minerva was berthed. The gondola door was locked, but the lock was weak, and had not been designed to keep out Revenants. The green glow from Vespertine’s eyes swept over the lockers on the cabin walls and the cupboards under the control console. She opened each in turn, until she found what she was looking for.
* * *
Professor Loomis was already in bed, they told Vespertine when she had climbed the many stairs to the navigation suite. It was very late by then. She wondered if she should wake Professor Stanislaus, or Hilly, but decided to let them sleep until she had found out the truth.
The lights in the sky had swirled and shimmered as Vespertine crunched across the crisp snow in the Quadrangle to Loomis’s home, in a street of houses behind the library. After she had rung the bell, waited, and rung again, she wondered if she should simply push the door in. But Loomis came at last: bleary-eyed, wearing a dressing gown over striped pajamas, and a nightcap on his head.
“Revenant?” he said, opening the door a crack and scowling at her through it. “Who sent you here? Is there some fresh emergency?”
“Nobody sent me,” said Vespertine. “There is something I wished to ask you. It is about the information you gave to Professor Stanislaus earlier today.”
Loomis blinked sleepily. “What? Can’t it wait?” He glanced down at the leather-bound book she clutched in her huge hand. “What do you have there?”
“It is the logbook from the Owl of Minerva.”
Loomis yawned. Vespertine stood patiently on the doorstep, frost settling on her armor. She could hear the aurora; it made soft, sky-filling sounds: cracklings and rustlings. She wondered if Loomis heard it too. Perhaps once-born ears were not sharp enough.
“You’d better come in,” he said at last. Vespertine followed him into his cluttered and comfortable living room. “Now, what was it you wanted to know?”
Vespertine opened the book and held it out to him. “When Professor Stanislaus asked if you had ever been to Crawley, you said, ‘Never.’ But your assistant looked surprised. I think her brother had told her about the voyages he took with you, and he had mentioned something about Crawley, and that was why your answer surprised her.”
“Extraordinary, the way that brain of yours works,” said Loomis acidly. “Almost intelligent.”
“The Owl of Minerva’s logbook lists all the air harbors she has called at,” said Vespertine. “Look: It says that she stopped at Crawley. See, here is the stamp from their harbor office. It says you stopped there for two days.”
Loomis took the book and peered at it. “So it does,” he admitted. “More than three years ago. It must have slipped my mind. But, yes, I do remember now … It was before our present troubles began. I was on a survey voyage north of the Tannhäusers, way up in the Ice Wastes. Bellweather and I must have set down at half a dozen different towns and suburbs on that trip. I had quite forgotten Crawley was among them.”
Vespertine could hear his heart going pitter-pat, pitter-pat inside his chest, as if he had a hamster running on a little wheel in there. She had seen a hamster running on a wheel like that in the window of a pet shop in Thorbury, and Small Cat had watched it with an intent interest. Vespertine watched Loomis with an intent interest now. “I am surprised you forgot,” she said.
“Human memories don’t work the way yours does, Revenant,” said Loomis irritably, and turned away. He went to a set of shelves in the corner of the room and took down a wooden box. “We don’t all have Old-Tech gadgetry wedged into our heads. Most of us have to make do with ordinary, fallible human brains. Will there be anything else?”
“No,” said Vespertine, sensing that he was dismissing her. She turned toward the door, then stopped. “Yes. There was just one more thing …”
Loomis had opened the lid of his box. Something shiny inside it cast shifting reflections on his face as he glanced up at her. “What?”
“I heard Miss Torpenhow talking about the night the dean was injured,” Vespertine said, and sifted quickly through her clever mind for Hilly’s precise words. “She said you heard it happen, and ran down to investigate. You met the others on the landing outside the dean’s office.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Loomis. “That is how I remember it. I heard a crash from the office, and the dean cried out …”
“Miss Torpenhow says it was the other way around — the cry first and then the crash.”
Loomis shrugged. “Who can be sure? It was such a wild night. We had just lost all those windows in the navigation suite. I may not have been paying full attention to noises from below.”
“How could you hear them at all?” asked Vespertine. “The navigation suite is four floors above the dean’s office. I do not believe you could have heard the sound of his window breaking. And how could you have arrived outside the office at the same moment as Miss Torpenhow and the others, who had come up from the Senior Common Room? Could you descend four flights of stairs in the time it took them to climb one?”
“Probably,” said Loomis, looking annoyed. He busied himself with the thing in the box — a big silvery flashlight. “What are you suggesting?”
Vespertine was surprised. She had thought her meaning was perfectly obvious. “You attacked the dean,” she said. “When the storm came, you went downstairs with one of the hailstones, which had broken the navigation suite windows, in your pocket. You struck the dean with some heavy object, then smashed his window and left the hailstone there to make it look as if the storm had done it. As you were leaving, you heard the others coming up to investigate, so you joined them, and pretended to be as shocked as they were. And if you are responsible for the attack on the dean, it is likely that you are the one who let the nomads aboard. You said you were making observations on the stern when the attack began, but you could easily have gone down from there to the control cubicle and used your key to gain access and lower the cargo ramp. And you are also the murderer of Rowan Bellweather. You must have been stealing books from the library when he recognized you, so you killed him.”
Loomis straightened up, holding the flashlight. “Theft, assault, sabotage, and murder, eh? And why on earth would I have done all these things?”
“Because you are in the pay of Crawley,” said Vespertine. She was working it out as she spoke.
Loomis laughed again. “Remarkable!” he said, as if he were denying it, and then, growing serious, “Remarkable,” as if he had been impressed by her reasoning. “No wonder they’re so keen to get hold of you.”
Vespertine didn’t understand what that meant. “I will warn the others,” she said.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” said Loomis.
He raised the flashlight, and Vespertine saw that in place of a bulb and a lens it had only a blank disc of metal. Loomis pointed it at her, and lightning blazed from the disc in a screeching blue-white arc. It struck her in the center of her armored chest and sheathed her whole body in a crawling scribble of cold fire. She saw Loomis’s furious face lit up by the electric crackle of the weapon. She tried to reach toward him, but the lightning seemed to hold her back. She thought sadly about Small Cat, and wondered who would look after him now. Then she toppled backward, and lay in the wreckage of Loomis’s coffee table.
