Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

“Because of you, you idiot!” the boy shouted. He ripped Tom’s bedcovers away and flung his outdoor clothes at him. “How do you think she felt, watching you snog Freya Rasmussen?”

“I didn’t!” said Tom, appalled. “It was just — And Hester couldn’t have — Anyway, how do you know about — ?” But the stranger’s urgency was beginning to infect him. He pulled off his borrowed robe, fumbled his boots and cold-mask on, pulled on his old aviator’s coat and followed the boy out of the room, then out of the palace by a side-entrance he had never even noticed before. The night was wrenchingly cold, the city a dream of winter. Off the western side the mountains of Greenland hunched themselves up out of the ice, looking crisp-edged in the moonlight and close enough to touch. The Aurora flared above the rooftops, and in the silence Tom thought he could hear it crackling and buzzing like a power-line on a frosty morning.

The stranger led him down a stairway on Rasmussen Prospekt, along a maintenance walkway under the belly of the tier, up another stairway to the air-harbour. As they emerged into the open again Tom saw he had been wrong about the noise. The crackling was the sound of ice falling from the Jenny ’s hangar as the domed roof opened, and the buzzing was her engine pods swivelling into take-off position.

“Hester!” Tom shouted, pushing himself through the snow. In the open hangar the Jenny ’s running lights snapped on, reflections flaring across the drifts. He heard a ladder that had been propped against her side fall with a crash, heard the triple clang as the docking clamps released. It couldn’t really be Hester, could it, moving about behind the darkened flight-deck windows? He scrabbled and swam through an ocean of snow. “Hester! Hester!” he shouted, and still didn’t really believe that she would take off. She couldn’t know about that stupid kiss, could she? She had been upset when he told her he wanted to stay here; she was teaching him a lesson, that was all. He kicked and struggled his way through the drifts, faster now, but when he was still twenty yards from the hangar the Jenny Haniver lifted into the sky and turned south-east, sweeping away very quickly over the rooftops and out across the endless ice.

“Hester!” he shouted, suddenly angry. Why couldn’t she just tell him how she felt, like a normal person, instead of storming off like this? The west wind was rising: carrying the airship swiftly away from him, flinging powder snow into his face as he turned to look for his mysterious companion. The boy was gone. He was alone, except for Mr Aakiuq, who was stumbling towards him and shouting, “Tom? What’s happened?”

“Hester!” said Tom, in a tiny voice, and sat down in the snow. He could feel tears soaking into the fleece inside his cold-mask as the Jenny ’s stern-lantern, a tiny flake of warmth in that great cold, dwindled and dwindled, and merged at last with the Aurora.

Tom made his way back along the under-tier walkway with a horrible, empty, kicked-in-the-stomach feeling. It was several hours since the Jenny Haniver had taken off. Mr Aakiuq had tried to contact Hester by radio, but there had been no reply. “Perhaps she’s not switched it on,” the harbour master said. “Or perhaps it’s not working: I never had a chance to test all the valves. And there is not nearly enough gas in the envelope — I only filled it to check the cells were sound. Oh, why did the poor child have to take off so suddenly?”

“I don’t know,” Tom had replied, but he did. If only he had understood sooner how much she hated it here. If only he had spared a thought for how she must feel, before he started to fall in love with this city. If only he hadn’t kissed Freya. But his guilt kept twisting round and turning into anger. After all, she hadn’t thought about his feelings. Why shouldn’t he stay here if he wanted to? She was so selfish. Just because she hated city life didn’t mean that he wanted to be a homeless sky-tramp for ever.

Still, he had to find her again. He didn’t know if she would take him back, or if he even wanted her to, but he couldn’t let it end in this horrible, messy, broken way.

The city’s engines were purring into life as he hurried up into the cold of the upper tier. He went towards the Winter Palace, stumbling along in the same flailing track that he had made earlier. He didn’t want to see Freya — his insides curled up like burning paper when he thought about what had passed between them in the Wunderkammer — but only Freya had the power to order the city to turn back and pursue the Jenny Haniver.

He was passing through the long shadow of the Wheelhouse when the door slammed open and a frantic, silk-robed apparition came blundering at him through the snow. “Tim! Tim, is it true?” Pennyroyal’s eyes were wide and bulging; his grip on Tom’s arm sharp as frostbite. “They’re saying that girl of yours has left! Flown off!”

Tom nodded, feeling ashamed.

“But without the Jenny Haniver…”

Tom shrugged. “Maybe I’ll have to come with you to America after all, Professor.”

He pushed past the explorer and ran on, leaving Pennyroyal to wander back towards his apartments muttering, “America! Ha ha! Of course! America!” In the Winter Palace, he found Freya waiting for him. She was perched on a chaise longue in the smallest of her receiving-rooms, a chamber no larger than a football pitch and lined with so many mirrors that there seemed to be a thousand Freyas sitting there, and a thousand Toms bursting in wet and dishevelled to drip melted snow on to her marble floor.

“Your Radiance,” he said, “we must turn back.”

“Turn back?” Freya had been expecting all sorts of things, but not this. Flushed with delight at the news of Hester’s leaving, she had imagined herself comforting Tom, reassuring him that it was all for the best, making him understand that he was far better off without his hideous girlfriend and that it was clearly the Ice Gods’ will that he remain here, in Anchorage, with her. She had put on her prettiest gown to help him understand, and she had left the top button undone in a way that revealed a tiny triangle of soft white flesh below the hollow of her throat. It made her feel shiveringly bold and grown-up. She had been expecting all sorts of things, but she had not expected this.

“How can we turn back?” she demanded, half-laughing, in the hope that he was making some sort of joke. “Why should we turn back?”

“But Hester…”

“We can’t catch up with an airship, Tom! And why would we want to? I mean, with Wolverinehampton out there behind us somewhere…” But he wasn’t even looking at her; his eyes were shiny and sliding with tears. She fumbled the top of her gown closed, feeling embarrassed and then quickly cross. “Why should I risk my whole city for the sake of a mad girl in an airship?”

“She’s not mad.”

“She acts mad.”

“She’s upset!”

“Well, I’m upset!” shouted Freya. “I thought you cared about me! Doesn’t what happened earlier mean anything? I thought you’d forgotten Hester! She’s nothing! She’s nothing but air-trash and I’m glad she’s dumped you! I want you to be my, my, my boyfriend! I hope you understand just what an honour that is!”

Tom stared at her and could think of nothing to say. He saw her suddenly as Hester must; a plump, spoilt, petulant girl who expected the world to arrange itself to suit her. He knew that she was right to refuse his request, that it would be madness to turn the city round, but somehow her rightness made her seem even more unreasonable. He mumbled something and turned away.

“Where are you going?” demanded Freya shrilly. “Who said you could go? I have not given you permission to leave my presence!”