How easy it would be to slip through that gap! There would be a moment of falling, and then the wheel would roll over her, leaving only a red smear on the ice, quickly forgotten. Wouldn’t that be better than watching Tom drift away from her? Wouldn’t it be better to be dead than alone again?
She reached out for the flapping edge of the grille, but suddenly a hand grabbed her arm, and a voice was shouting in her ear, “Axel?”
Hester swung round, reaching for her knife. Soren Scabious stood behind her. His eyes, as she turned, seemed to be shining with hope and unshed tears; then he recognized her and his face settled back into its habitual look of deep unhappiness. “Miss Shaw,” he growled. “In the dark, I thought you were — ”
Hester backed away from him, hiding her face. She wondered how long he had been watching her. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “What do you want?”
Scabious, embarrassed, took refuge in anger. “I could ask you the same thing, aviatrix! Come to spy on my engine district, have you? I trust you had a good look.”
“I’m not interested in your engines,” Hester said.
“No?” Scabious reached out again, gripping her by the wrist. “I find that hard to believe. The Scabious Spheres have been perfected by my family over twenty generations. One of the most efficient engine systems in the world. I’m sure you’ll want to go and tell Arkangel or Ragnaroll all about the riches they’ll find if they devour us.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Hester spat. “I wouldn’t take predator’s gold!” A thought struck her suddenly, hard and cold like one of the ice-splinters drumming at the grille behind her. “Anyway, who’s Axel? Wasn’t he your son? The one Smew talked about? The dead one? Did you think I was his ghost or something?”
Scabious let go of her arm. His anger faded quickly, like a fire damped down. His eyes darted towards the drive-wheel, up towards the lights in the sky; looking anywhere but at Hester. “His spirit walks,” he muttered.
Hester let out a short, ugly laugh, then stopped. The old man was perfectly serious. He glanced quickly at her and away. His face, lit by that fluttering, uncertain light was suddenly gentle. “The Snowmads believe that the souls of the dead inhabit the Aurora, Miss Shaw. They say that on nights when it is at its brightest they come down to walk upon the High Ice.”
Hester said nothing, just hunched her shoulders, uneasy in the presence of his madness and sorrow. She said awkwardly, “Nobody returns from the Sunless Country, Mr Scabious.”
“But they do, Miss Shaw.” Scabious nodded earnestly. “Since our journey to America began there have been sightings. Movements. Things go missing from locked rooms. People hear footsteps and voices in parts of the district that have been closed up and abandoned since the plague. That’s why I come down here, whenever my work allows, and the Aurora is bright. I’ve glimpsed him twice now; a fair-haired lad, looking out at me from shadows, vanishing as soon as I see him. There are no fair-haired boys left alive in this city. It is Axel, I know it is.”
He stared a moment longer at the luminous sky, then turned and walked away. Hester watched him until his tall silhouette disappeared around the corner at the far end of the gallery. Watched, and wondered. Did Scabious really believe that this city could reach America? Did he even care? Or had he simply gone along with the margravine’s potty plans because he hoped to find his son’s ghost waiting for him on the High Ice?
She shivered. She had not realized until now how cold it was here on the city’s stern. Although Scabious was gone she still had the feeling of being watched. The hair at the nape of her neck began to prickle. She glanced behind her, and there in the mouth of an access passageway she saw — or thought she saw — the pale smudge of a face fade quickly into the dark, leaving only the after-image of a white-blond head.
No one returns from the Sunless Country; Hester knew that, but it did not stop every ghost story she’d ever heard from waking and stirring in her brain. She turned away and ran, ran as fast as she could through the suddenly threatening shadows back to busier streets.
Behind her, amongst the tangle of pipes and ducts that overhung the stern-gallery, something metallic scuttled and clattered and fell still.
12
Mr Scabious was both right and wrong about the ghosts. His city was haunted all right, but not by the spirits of the dead.
The haunting had begun almost a month before, and not in Anchorage but in Grimsby, a very strange and secret city indeed. It had begun with a small sound; a hollow click, like a fingernail flicked once against the taut skin of a toy balloon. Then a sigh of static, the crackle of a microphone being picked up, and the ear on Caul’s ceiling started talking to him.
“Up, boy. Wake. This is Uncle calling. Got a job for you, Caul, boy. Yes.”
Caul, surfacing through a flotsam of dreams, realized with a sudden shock that this was real. He rolled off his bunk and stood up groggily. His room was little bigger than a cupboard, and apart from the shelf-wide bunk and some spectacular damp-stains the only thing in it was the tangle of wires in the centre of the ceiling where a camera and a microphone huddled. The Eyes and Ears of Uncle, the boys called these fixtures. Nothing about the Mouth of Uncle. And yet it was talking to him, all the same.
“You awake, boy?”
“Yes, Uncle!” said Caul, trying not to let the words sound slurred. He had been working hard in the Burglarium yesterday, trying to catch out a gaggle of younger boys as they crept through the maze of corridors and stairways which Uncle had designed to train them in the arts of subtle, unseen thieving. He’d gone to bed dead tired, and must have slept for hours, but he felt as if it was only a few minutes since the lights went out. He jerked his head, trying to shake the thickness of sleep out of his thoughts. “I’m awake, Uncle!”
“Good.”
The camera stretched down towards Caul; a long, gleaming snake made up of metal segments, mesmerizing him with its one unblinking eye. He knew that in Uncle’s quarters, high in the old Town Hall, his face was coming into focus on a surveillance screen. On an impulse he grabbed the coverlet off his bed and used it to hide his bare body. “What do you want of me, Uncle?” he asked.
“I’ve got a city for you,” the voice replied. “Anchorage. A sweet little ice city, down on its luck, heading north. You’ll take the limpet Screw Worm and burgle it.”
Caul tried to think of something sensible to say, standing there dressed in a duvet in the unwavering gaze of the camera.
“Well, boy,” Uncle snapped. “Don’t you want the job? Don’t you feel you’re ready to command a limpet?”
“Oh, of course! Yes! Yes!” cried Caul eagerly. “It’s just — I thought the Screw Worm was Wrasse’s ship. Shouldn’t he be going, or one of the older boys?”
“Don’t question my orders, boy. Uncle Knows Best. It happens I’m sending Wrasse away south on another job, and that leaves us short-handed. Ordinarily I wouldn’t put a youngster in charge of a burgling trip, but I think you’re ready, and Anchorage is too pretty a prize to miss.”
“Yes, Uncle.” Caul had heard talk about this mysterious job down south, which more and more of the older boys and better limpets were being transferred to. The rumour was that Uncle was planning the most daring robbery of his long career, but nobody knew what it was. Not that it mattered to Caul. Not if Wrasse’s absence meant that he got to command his own limpet!
At fourteen, Caul had crewed on a dozen limpet missions, but he had been expecting to wait at least two more seasons before he was offered his own command. Limpet commanders were usually older boys, glamorous figures with homes of their own on the upper floors, a far cry from the little hutches Caul had always lived in, here in the damp storeys above the Burglarium where brine seeped in around the rusting rivets, and stressed metal filled the nights with its gloomy song; where whole rooms had been known to implode without warning, killing the boys inside. If he could just make a success of this mission, and bring home stuff that Uncle liked, he would be able to bid goodbye to these dingy quarters for ever!
