Mortal Engines

20. THE BLACK ISLAND

At dawn Shrike comes to the edge of the sea. The tide is turning and the deep wheel marks that lead down into the surf are already starting to blur. Eastward, smoke rises from settlements on the shores of the Black Island. The Stalker wrenches his dead face into a smile, feeling very pleased with Hester Shaw and the trail of destruction that she has left behind her.

The thought of Hester is all that dragged him through the marshes. On and on it has drawn him, through mud that sucked at his damaged leg and sloughs whose bitter waters sometimes closed over his head. But at least the tracks the suburb left were easy to follow. He follows them again now, stalking down the beach and into the waves like a swimmer bent on a morning dip. Salt water slaps at the lenses of his eyes and seeps stinging through the gashes in his armour. The sounds of the gulls and the wind fade, replaced by the dim hiss of the underneath of the sea. Air or water, it makes no difference to the Resurrected Men. Fish goggle at him and dart away into forests of kelp. Crabs sidle out of his path, rearing up and waving their pincers at him, as if they are worshipping a crab- god, armoured, invincible. He ploughs on, following the water-scent of oil and axle-grease that will lead him to Tunbridge Wheels.

* * *

A few miles from the inlet where they had come ashore, Chrysler Peavey paused at the top of a steep rise and waited for the others to catch up. They came slowly, first Tom and Hester, then Ames with his map, finally Maggs and Mungo, bent under the weight of their guns. Looking back they could see the steep rocky flanks of the island falling to the sea, and a cluster of boats gathered above the wreck of Tunbridge Wheels, where a raft with a crane on it had already been anchored. The islanders were wasting no time in looting the drowned suburb.

“Mossie scum,” growled Peavey.

Tom had barely spoken to the mayor since they first came struggling ashore. Now he was surprised to see tears gleaming in the little man’s eyes. He said, “I’m so sorry about your family, Mr Peavey. 1 tried to reach them, but…”

“Little twerps!” snorted Peavey. “I wasn’t sniffling over them. It’s my lovely suburb! Look at it! Damn Mossies…”

Just then, from somewhere to the south, they heard the faint clatter of gunfire.

Peavey’s face brightened. He turned to the others. “Hear that! Some of the lads must have got ashore! They’ll be more’n a match for them Mossies! We’ll link up with ’em! We’ll capture Airhaven yet, keep a few of its people alive to repair it, kill the rest and fly back to the mainland rich. Drop out of the sky on a few fat towns before word gets round that Airhaven’s gone pirate! Catch ourselves a city, maybe!”

He set off again, hauling himself up from boulder to boulder with the monkey riding on his hunched shoulders. The others followed behind. Maggs and Mungo seemed dazed by the loss of Tunbridge Wheels and not convinced by Peavey’s latest plan. They kept exchanging glances and muttering together when their mayor was out of earshot—but they were in strange country, and Tom didn’t think they had the nerve to move against Peavey, not yet. As for Mr Ames, he had never set foot on the bare earth before. “It’s horrible!” he grumbled. “So difficult to walk on… All this grass! There may be wild animals, or snakes… I can quite see why our ancestors decided to stop living on the ground!”

Tom knew exactly how he felt. To north and south of them the steep side of the Black Island stretched away, and above them the slope climbed almost vertically to dark crags which moaned with ghostly voices as the wind blew around them. Some of the higher pinnacles of rock had been sculpted into such wild shapes that from the beach they had looked like fortresses, and Peavey had led his party on a long detour to avoid them before he realized they were only stones.

“It’s lovely,” sighed Hester, limping along at Tom’s side. She was smiling to herself, which he had never seen her do, and whistling a little tune through her teeth.

“What are you so happy about?” he asked.

“We’re going to Airhaven, aren’t we?” she replied in a whisper. “It’s laired up ahead somewhere, and Peavey’s little gang will never take it, not with Mossies and the Airhaven people ranged against them. They’ll be killed, and we’ll find a ship to take us north to London. Anna Fang’s there, remember. She might help us again.”

“Oh, her!” said Tom angrily. “Didn’t you hear what Peavey said? She’s a League spy.”

“I thought so,” admitted Hester. “I mean, all those questions she kept asking us about London, and Valentine.”

“You should have told me!” he protested. “I might have revealed an important secret!”

“Why would I care?” asked Hester. “And since when have Apprentice Historians known any important secrets? Anyway, I thought you realized she was a spy.”

“She didn’t look like one.”

“Well, spies don’t, generally. You can’t expect them to wear a big sandwich board with ‘SPY’ on it, or a special spying hat.” She was in a strange, jokey mood, and Tom wondered if it was because these dismal steeps reminded her of her girlhood on that other island. Suddenly she touched his arm and said, “Poor Tom. You’re learning what Valentine taught me all those years ago; you can’t trust anybody.”

“Huh,” said Tom.

“Oh, I don’t mean you,” she added hurriedly. “I think I trust you, almost. And what you did for me back in Tunbridge Wheels—making Peavey let me out of the lock-ups like that… A lot of people wouldn’t have bothered. Not for somebody like me.”

Tom looked round at her, and saw more clearly than ever before the kind, shy Hester peeping from behind the grim mask. He smiled at her with such warmth that she blushed (at least, her strange face turned red in patches and her scar went purple) and Peavey looked back at them and hollered, “Come on, you two lovebirds! Stop whispering sweet nothings and march!”

* * *

Afternoon, the cloud clearing eastwards and sunlight dazzling down through the wave-tops, flickering on the upperworks of Tunbridge Wheels. Shrike moves through the suburb’s streets with his head swinging slowly from side to side. Bodies drift in the flooded rooms like cold teabags left too long in the pot. Small fish dart in and out of a pirate’s mouth. A girl’s hair coils on the current. Dark keels of salvage boats move overhead. He waits hidden in the shadows while three naked boys come diving down, flying past him with urgent motions of their arms and legs and leaving trails of silver bubbles. They kick back to the surface carrying guns, bottles, a leather belt.

Hester is not here. Shrike turns away from the sunken suburb, following the shadows of drifting oil-slicks over the silt. Wreckage is strewn along the sea floor, and floating bodies beckon him towards the roots of the Black Island.

It is evening by the time he walks out of the surf, trailing flags of seaweed, water draining from inside his battered armour. He shakes his head to clear his vision and stares about him at a beach of black sand beneath dark cliffs. It takes him most of another hour to find the life-raft, hidden in a tumble of house-sized boulders. He unsheathes his metal claws and tears the bottom out of it, cutting off her escape. Hester is his again now. When she is dead he will carry her gently through the drowned sunlight and the forests of kelp, back through the marshes and the long leagues of the Hunting Ground to Crome. He will take her into London in his arms like a father carrying his sleeping child.

He drops on all fours in the sand and starts sniffing for her scent.

* * *

Towards sundown, they finally reached the top of the slope, and found themselves looking down into the