Philip Reeve - Predator's gold

But Tom did not wait for permission. He ran from the room, the door crashing shut behind him, and left her there alone with all her reflections, which turned their heads this way and that in the trembling mirrors, looking blank-faced at each other as if to ask, What did we do wrong?

He ran through the long corridors of the Winter Palace with no idea where he was going, barely noticing the rooms he passed or the faint scratching and scrabbling noises which came sometimes from the ducts and ventilation shafts. Ever since he fell out of London, Hester had been beside him, looking after him, telling him what to do, loving him in that fierce, shy way of hers. Now he had driven her away. He wouldn’t even have known that she was gone if it hadn’t been for that boy…

For the first time since the Jenny Haniver took off, Tom thought of his strange visitor. Who had he been? Someone from the engine district, judging by the way he’d been dressed (Tom remembered layers and layers of dark clothes, a tunic smeared with oil and grease, black paint crackling off its brass buttons). And how had he known what Hester was about to do? Had she confided in him? Told him things she had not told Tom? He felt an odd jab of jealousy at the thought of Het sharing her secrets with someone else.

But what if the boy knew where she had been going? Tom had to find him; talk to him. He ran out of the palace to the nearest stairway and down to the engine district, hurrying through the thunder and fog of the Scabious Spheres to the engine master’s office.

Skewer and Gargle were waiting for Caul when he came scurrying back from the air-harbour, breathless and jumpy from running. They were ready inside the hatchway with guns and knives in case the Drys were on his tail, and they bundled him through and would not let him speak until they were quite sure no one had followed him.

“What were you thinking of?” asked Skewer angrily. “What did you think you were doing? You know it’s forbidden to leave the limpet unguarded. And as for talking to a Dry! Didn’t you learn nothing in the Burglarium?” He put on a strange, whining voice which Caul guessed was supposed to be an impression of him. “‘Tom! Tom! Quickly, Tom! She’s leaving you!’ You fool!”

Caul sat on the floor of the hold, back to a bale of stolen clothes, failure sluicing over him like meltwater.

“You’ve blown it, Caul,” said Skewer, with a sudden smile. “I mean, you’ve really blown it. I’m taking charge of this ship. Uncle will understand. When he hears what you’ve done, he’ll be sorry he didn’t put me in command right from the start. I’m sending a message-fish away, tonight, to let him know all about it. No more snooping for you, you Dry-lover. No more midnight expeditions. No more mooning over margravines — oh, don’t think I haven’t seen you going gooey-eyed each time her face comes on the screens.”

“But Skewer-” whined Gargle.

“Quiet!” said Skewer, cuffing him hard around the head, turning to kick Caul down as he started up to protect the smaller boy. He looked flushed and pleased with himself. “You can stay quiet too, Caul. From now on, we’ll run this limpet my way.”

Mr Scabious, whose home on the upper tier held too many unhappy memories, spent almost all his spare time in his office, a narrow hut squeezed into a gap between two tier supports at the heart of the engine district. It contained a desk, a filing cabinet, a bunk, a Primus stove, a small hand-basin, a calendar, an enamel mug and not much else. Scabious’s mourning robes hung from a hook on the back of the door, flapping like a black wing when Tom pushed it open. The man himself sat at his desk, a statue of melancholy. The furnace-flicker of the engine district sliced in between the slats of the blinds on the window, striping him with bars of light and shadow. Only his eyes moved, spiking the newcomer with a chilly stare.

“Mr Scabious,” panted Tom, “Hester’s gone! She’s taken the Jenny and gone!”

The engine master nodded, staring at the wall behind Tom’s head as if a film were being projected there which only he could see. “Then she is gone. Why come to me?”

Tom sat down heavily on the bunk. “There was a boy. I’ve not seen him before. A pale sort of fair-haired boy from the engine districts, a bit younger than me. He seemed to know all about Hester.”

Scabious moved for the first time, springing up and coming quickly towards Tom. There was a strange look on his face. “You’ve seen him too?”

Tom flinched, surprised by the engine master’s sudden show of passion. “I thought he might be able to tell me where she was going.”

“There is no one like the boy you describe aboard this city. No one living. ”

“But — it sounded like he’d talked to her. If you could just tell me where to find him…”

“You cannot find Axel. He will find you, when he wishes to. Even I have only seen him from a distance. What did he say to you? Did he mention me? Did he give you any message for his father?”

“His father? No.”

Scabious barely seemed to listen. He fumbled in a pocket of his overalls and pulled out a small silver book; a little photo frame. Tom knew a lot of people who carried these portable shrines, and as Scabious opened his he sneaked a look at the picture inside. He saw a heavy, thick-set young man, like a younger version of Scabious himself. “Oh,” he said, “that’s not the boy I saw. He was younger, and thin…”

That shook the engine master, but only for a moment. “Don’t be a fool, Tom!” he snapped. “The ghosts of the dead can take on any form they wish. My Axel was as slender as you once. It is only natural that he would appear as he was in those days, young and handsome and filled with hope.”

Tom didn’t believe in ghosts. At least, he didn’t think he did. No one comes back from the Sunless Country. That was what Hester always said, and he muttered it under his breath several times for reassurance as he walked away from Mr Scabious’s office and climbed the suddenly dark and shadowy stairways to the upper tier. The boy could not have been a ghost: Tom had felt him, smelled him, sensed the warmth of his body. He had left footprints as he led the way towards the hangar. The footprints would prove it.

But when he reached the air-harbour, the wind had risen, and powder snow was pouring over the surface of the drifts like smoke. The prints around the hangar were already so faint that it was impossible to say how many feet had made them, and whether the strange boy had been real, or a ghost, or only a fragment of a dream.

Hester was grateful for the wind. It hurried her away from Anchorage, but it was fickle and blustery, sometimes veering round into the north, sometimes gusting fiercely, sometimes dropping away to nothing. She had to concentrate to keep the Jenny Haniver on course, and that was good, because it left her no time to think about Tom, or the things she was planning to do. She knew that if she thought too hard about either she would end up losing her nerve, putting the airship about and flying back to Anchorage.

But sometimes, as she snatched catnaps at the controls, she could not help wondering what Tom was doing. Was he sorry she had left? Had he even noticed? Was Freya Rasmussen comforting him? “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. Soon she would make everything just as it had been before, and he would be hers again.

On the second day out she sighted Wolverinehampton. The suburb had turned south after failing to catch Anchorage, and its luck had turned with it, for it had found prey: a cluster of whaling towns driven off course by the storm. There were three of them, each much larger than Wolverinehampton, but the suburb had sped quickly from one to the next, biting away drive-wheels and skid-supports, and when Hester saw it it was turning back to devour them where they lay crippled. It looked to her as if it would be busy with its feast for several weeks, and she was glad that it would not be ranging west to menace Anchorage again and interfere with her own plans.