lashing… He turned and shaded his eyes and saw the western skyline fizz with lightning.
“Sprites!” one of the Londoners shouted. “They must have come straight through Electric Lane, the poor devils! They’ve been struck!”
On Harrowbarrow’s bridge the smoke stirred slowly, tying itself into gentle knots. Wren lay on her back on the floor and watched it. The dull red emergency lights flickered. Someone groaned. She began to hear other voices: cries and angry shouts coming from other parts of the suburb. No engine noise now to drown them out.
She tried to work out if she had been injured. She didn’t think she had. Someone had crashed into her, and she had fallen to the floor; perhaps she had been unconscious for a few seconds. She was shaking, and her head was full of memories of the things she had just seen—the sparks spewing from failing instruments and exploding control panels; the helmsman screaming as the metal wheel he was gripping became a mandala of blue light.
She supposed her plan had worked. She supposed she should feel pleased with herself.
Wolf Kobold stumbled to his feet. There was blood on his face, black in the red light. “Up!” he shouted hoarsely. “Everybody up! Get up! I want the emergency engines online at once! Hausdorfer, get down to the engine districts and bring me a damage report! Lorcas, pull us out of this damned lightning swamp… Zbigniew, organize scouting teams; get them out
“But the lightning—”
“Whatever it was, it’s gone; spent for the moment. We mustn’t let this delay give the Londoners time to escape.”
Zbigniew started shouting orders into the speaking tubes, while Lorcas dragged the dead helmsman’s body from the wheel and flung it to the floor. Wren started to edge toward the companion ladder amid the sounds of Kobold’s dazed men stirring, groans and frightened questions, curses. Someone asked in Anglish, “What in the name of the Thatcher has happened?”
“Her,” said Hausdorfer. He was on his feet, gripping the back of Kobold’s chair for support. He was pointing at Wren, his hands shaking almost as much as hers. “She led us here!”
Kobold looked at her. “No.”
“It was her, Wolf!” growled Hausdorfer, unbuttoning the holster on his belt. “Think with your head, not your heart. She knew this would happen! She hoped to fry us and protect her friends!”
“No,” said Wolf again, but Wren saw his face change as he struggled to keep on believing she was innocent, and failed.
She ran. A man standing near the top of the ladder reached out to grab her, but she kicked him hard between the legs and twisted past him and down through the floor of the bridge. The steel rungs still tingled with electricity under her hands, sending little numbing shocks kicking up her arms. She heard Wolf shouting, “Catch her!” and his men scrambling to obey, but they were too sluggish for her, and she was already climbing down into the smoke and shadows of the dismantling yards.
She jumped the last few feet, landed on something soft, peered through the smoke at it, and realized that it was a dead man, burned by the currents that had surged through the suburb’s deck plates. She felt sick for a moment, knowing that she was responsible.
“Wren!” shouted Wolf’s voice, somewhere above her.
“You don’t think you can escape, do you?”
She forgot her guilt and fled. If anyone was to blame, she thought as she pounded across the yards, it was Wolf Kobold for bringing his town here hunting in the first place. Ahead of her, stairs led up into the maze of Harrowbarrow’s residential streets. As she ran toward them, the metal beneath her feet began to judder, jerkily at first, then settling into a steady, pulsing rhythm.
“They’re already starting the backup engines, Wren!” called Wolf.
Ducking behind an abandoned town grinder, she peered through the gloom and saw him crossing the yards, calling out watchfully, like the seeker in a game of hide-and-seek. “Weren’t expecting that, were you? Thought you could destroy the ’Barrow by luring us into that lightning, but the ’Barrow’s stronger than you know, Wren. We’ll be moving again soon, and we’ll eat your precious London friends for supper. If you’re
A damaged power coupling close to him spurted sparks, and she saw the sword in his hand flash. He went out of sight behind a support strut, and she took her chance and ran, up the stairs and into the smoky, dingy streets.
They were not quite as dingy as before; big rents had been torn in Harrowbarrow’s hide, as if someone had gone to work on the armor with a colossal can-opener. Bars and planks of smoky sunlight stuck down through the holes, and the shade-loving Harrowbarrovians tried to avoid them as they hurried around making repairs. Squads of armed men ran past, but they were not looking for Wren. She kept to the shadows like everybody else and jogged toward the stern, looking for a way out. A few of the sally ports were opened, but they were all clogged with scavengers hurrying out into the debris field. Wren tried not to think what they would do when they reached Crouch End. At least the Londoners would be warned of their coming: the noise of those sprites must have been heard halfway to Batmunkh Gompa. But even if they had time to prepare, how could they stand up for themselves against Harrowbarrow’s ruthless scouts?
“Wren!” bellowed a voice behind her.
She turned onto a dingy, tubular street called Stack Seven Sluice. She was halfway down it when she heard the running feet coming up fast behind her. “Wren!” the voice was inhuman, distorted by echoes. She tried to run faster, but strong hands caught her, swung her around.
“Theo!”
“Are you hurt?” asked Theo.
Wren shook her head. She tried to speak, but she could only croak. She hugged Theo.
“I came in through a hatch down near the bows,” he said. “It came open when the lightning struck. I climbed in and started looking around, and I heard people hunting for you. I came aft and I saw you, and I shouted…”
“I heard. I thought you were Wolf Kobold. I thought you were far away by now, safe.”
“I couldn’t just
She hugged him tighter and said, “Theo, we can’t stay here. We’ve got to find a way off this place. It’s going to be moving again soon. It’s all been for nothing. I thought I could stop them, but all I’ve done is made them angry.”
Naga ran down the track to Crouch End while his makeshift air fleet launched itself into the skies above London again, the big shadows of the airships rushing across the huddled prisoners. He looked for Garamond and found him sitting miserably on the edge of a raised vegetable bed. “Get your people under cover,” he ordered. “There’s a harvester out in the wreckage there somewhere. They’ll probably have raiding parties closing in on us. Move everyone into that Womb place; we can defend that against them.”
Garamond looked up at him, dazed and scared and not quite understanding. As if to convince him, quick puffs of smoke burst from a dozen points in the wreckage, and something hummed over his head and clanged against Naga’s breastplate, causing the general to stagger backward a few paces before his armor compensated for the blow. Two of the Green Storm soldiers waiting nearby spun about and fell, flinging their limbs out so clownishly that several of the watching children laughed. The other soldiers began to run for cover, guns at the ready, shouting at panicking Londoners to get out of their way. Garamond started yelling, “Everybody into the Womb, please! Into the Womb, everyone! Quickly!”
Above the rust hills one of Naga’s airships burst suddenly into fans of smoke and belching scarlet flame. Another fired rockets down at some target on the ground and came to a shuddering halt as cannon fire from below ripped off its engine pods and rudders. Whatever the suburb was, it had clearly survived the electric trap it had blundered into. “Harrowbarrow,” the Londoners had said. Naga recognized the name vaguely; a shadowy place that even the Storm’s intelligence wing knew only from rumors. But Naga had come up against plenty of other harvesters
