Mortal Engines

“Stop!” he shouted, half-running, half-wading to catch her up. “Hester! Miss Shaw!”

“Leave me alone!” she snapped.

“But where are you going?”

“I’ve got to get back into London, haven’t I?’ she said. “Two years it took me to find it, trudging across the Out-Country on foot, jumping aboard little townlets in the hope it would be London that scoffed them. And when I finally get there and find Valentine, come down to strut round the yards just like the scavengers told me he would, what happens? Some idiot stops me from cutting his heart out like he deserves.” She stopped walking and turned to face Tom. “If you hadn’t shoved your oar in he’d be dead, and I’d have fallen down and died beside him and I’d be at peace by now!”

Tom stared at her, and before he could stop himself his eyes filled with stinging tears. He hated himself for looking like a fool in front of Hester Shaw, but he couldn’t help it; the shock of what had happened to him and the thought of being abandoned out here overwhelmed him, and the hot tears flooded down his face and cut white runnels through the mud on his cheeks.

Hester, who had been on the point of turning away, stopped and watched, as if she wasn’t sure what was happening to him. “You’re crying!” she said at last, quite gently, sounding surprised.

“Sorry,” he sniffed.

“I never cry. I can’t. I didn’t even cry when Valentine murdered my mum and dad.”

“What?” Tom’s voice was all wobbly from weeping. “Mr Valentine would never do something like that!

Katharine said he couldn’t even bring himself to shoot a wolf cub. You’re lying!”

“How come you’re here, then?” she asked, mocking him. “He shoved you out after me, didn’t he? Just because you’d seen me.”

“You’re lying!” said Tom again. But he remembered those big hands thrusting him forward; remembered falling, and the strange light that had shone in the archaeologist’s eyes.

“Well?” asked Hester.

“He pushed me!” murmured Tom, amazed.

Hester Shaw just shrugged, as if to say, See? See what he’s really like? Then she turned away and started walking again.

Tom hurried along at her side. “I’ll come with you! I’ve got to get back to London, too! I’ll help you!”

“You?” She gave a hissing laugh and spat on the mud at his feet. “I thought you were Valentine’s man. Now you want to help me kill him?”

Tom shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted. Part of him still clung to the hope that it was all a misunderstanding and Valentine was good and kind and brave. He certainly didn’t want to see him murdered and poor Katherine left without a father… But he had to catch up with London somehow, and he couldn’t do it alone. And anyway, he felt responsible for Hester Shaw. It was his fault that she had been wounded, after all. “I’ll help you walk,” he said. “You’re injured. You need me.”

“I don’t need anybody,” she said fiercely.

“We’ll go after London together,” Tom promised. “I’m a member of the Guild of Historians. They’ll listen to me. I’ll tell Mr Pomeroy. If Valentine really did the things you said then the law will deal with him!”

“The law!” she scoffed. “Valentine is the law in London. Isn’t he the Lord Mayor’s favourite? Isn’t he the Head Historian? No, he’ll kill me unless I kill him first. Kill you too, probably. Ssshinnng!” She mimed drawing a sword and driving it through Tom’s chest.

The sun was rising, lifting wreaths of steam from the wet mud. London was still moving, visibly smaller since the last time he looked. The city usually stopped for a few days when it had eaten, and some part of Tom’s brain that was not quite numb wondered idly, Where on earth is it going?

But just then the girl stumbled and fell, her bad leg crumpling under her. Tom scrambled to help her up. She didn’t thank him, but she didn’t push him away either. He pulled her arm around his shoulders and hauled her up, and they set off together along the mud ridge, following London’s tracks into the east.

5. THE LORD MAYOR

A hundred miles ahead the sunrise shone on Circle Park, the elegant loop of lawns and flower-beds that encircled Tier One. It gleamed in ornamental lakes and on pathways glistening with dew, and it glittered on the white metal spires of Clio House, Valentine’s villa, which stood among dark cedars at the park’s edge like some gigantic conch shell abandoned by a freak high tide.

In her bedroom on the top floor Katherine awoke and lay watching the sunbeams filter through the tortoise- shell shutters on her window. She knew she was unhappy, but at first she did not know why.

Then she remembered the previous evening; the attack in the Gut and how that poor, sweet, young apprentice had chased after the assassin and got himself killed. She had gone running after Father, but by the time she reached the waste-chute it was all over; a young Apprentice Engineer was stumbling away, his shocked face as white as his rubber coat, and beyond him she found Father, looking pale and angry, surrounded by policemen. She had never seen him look like that before, nor heard the harsh, unnatural voice in which he snapped at her to go straight home.

Part of her just wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, but she had to see him and make sure he was all right. She flung back the quilt and got up, pulling on the clothes from last night that lay all crumpled on the floor, still smelling of furnaces.

Outside her bedroom door a hallway sloped gently downward, round-roofed, curling about on itself like the inside of an ammonite. She hurried down it, pausing to pay her respects before the statue of Clio, goddess of History, who stood in a niche outside the door to the dining room. In other niches lay treasures that her father had brought back from his expeditions; potsherds, fragments of computer keyboards and the rusting metal skulls of Stalkers, those strange, half-mechanical soldiers from a forgotten war. Their cracked glass eyes stared balefully at Katherine as she hurried by.

Father was drinking coffee in the atrium, the big open space at the centre of the house. He was still in his dressing-gown, his long face serious as he paced up and down between the potted ferns. A glance at his eyes was enough to tell Katherine that he had not slept at all. “Father?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, Kate!” He came and hugged her tight. “What a night!”

“That poor boy,” Katherine whispered. “Poor Tom! I suppose they didn’t… find anything?”

Valentine shook his head. “The assassin dragged him with her when she jumped. They were both drowned in the mud of the Out-Country, or crushed beneath the tracks.”

“Oh,” whispered Katherine, and sat down on the edge of a table, not even noticing Dog when he came padding in to rest his great head on her knee. Poor Tom! she thought. He had been so sweet, so eager to please. She had really liked him. She had even thought of asking Father about bringing him up to work at Clio House so she and Dog could get to know him better. And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city’s wake.

“The Lord Mayor isn’t happy,” said Valentine, glancing at the clock. “An assassin loose in the Gut on London’s first day back in the Hunting Ground. He is coming down here in person to discuss it. Will you sit with me while I wait for him? You can have some of my breakfast if you like. There is coffee on the table—rolls -butter. I have no appetite at all.”

Katherine had no appetite either, but she glanced at the food, and noticed a battered leather pack lying on the far side of the table. It was the pack the girl assassin had dropped in the Gut last night, and its contents were spread out around it like exhibits in a strange museum: a metal water-bottle, a first-aid kit, some string, a few strips of dried meat that looked tougher than the tongues of old boots and a stained and crumpled sheet of paper with a photograph stapled to it. Katherine picked it up. It was an identity form, issued in a town called “Strole”, filthy and faded and coming apart along the creases. Before she could study the writing her eye was drawn to the photograph. She gasped. “Father! Her face!”

Valentine turned, saw her holding the paper and snatched it from her hand with an angry cry. “No, Kate! That is not for your eyes! It is not for anybody’s eyes…”