Free Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve Page B

It’s no fault of mine she got set up over the whole Guild. I hate her. That’s what got me in trouble tonight. I was spying on her. Her and her Scriven-loving husband, and that scrawny brat of theirs. . .”
    “I thought you said you was at the Carnival of Knives?” the young man growled.
    “I was! An’ so was they!”
    All three of them looked sharply at him. The white-haired man said, “Wavey Godshawk was there?”
    Charley nodded. “She knows that dwarf showman. I heard them talk. He brought news for her from the north. Something about some power .”
    Both men looked at the priestess.
    “Which power?” she said. “Arkhangelsk?”
    “I dunno. I couldn’t hear much. Then I had to scarper.”
    Charley didn’t know why, but what he’d said had made his three new friends tense like spooked dogs. They kept glancing at each other, asking questions with their eyes that they didn’t want to voice in Charley’s presence. He felt pleased.
    “I can find out,” he said. “I’ll find out what she’s up to, if you want, and come and tell you.”
    The older man sniffed. “You know who we are, kid?”
    Charley nodded eagerly. “I saw that sign you painted. You’re the Underground, ain’t you?”
    The man nodded. “We’re the only ones in London with the guts to stand up to Quercus and stop him stealing our city away.”
    “Well, I can help,” said Charley earnestly. “You just have to let me know where I can find you again. . .”

8
PLANS
    o, Snow Leopard. You are Chief Engineer, and we have a city to move. We cannot afford to lose you.”
    Not many people dared say no to Wavey Godshawk, but Nikola Quercus, Lord Mayor of London, Land-Admiral of the Movement, was one of them. He was a mild-looking man, no taller than Dr Crumb, pale-complexioned, dressed in a simple grey tunic with none of the braid or jewellery that Movement warriors usually favoured. He did not look like a man who had conquered and looted half the cities of the Birkenmark, or fought off the Suomi horde at Hill of Skulls, or won himself an empire that stretched all the way north from the Anglish Sea into the Fuel Country. Yet he had done all of those things, and many more, and now he sat at the Crumbs’ breakfast table in the watery sunlight of a London summer, looking at the map of the north which Wavey had spread out there.
    “Where did you say this black pyramid lies?”
    “Just here, Lord Mayor. . .” The map had been rolled, and showed a tendency to curl up at the edges. Wavey walked around the table, weighting the corners down with three cups and a jam-pot. She leaned over her lord mayor’s shoulder and pointed to a spot among the busy contour lines of the old Scottish mountains. “The pyramid is not marked. Godshawk knew where it lay; I remember him pointing it out to me on his charts. Alas, those perished with him in the Skinners’ Riots.”
    “That is beyond the edges of the ice.”
    “Not quite. Not at present. Not in the summertime.”
    Wavey had been thinking all night about Borglum’s news, and she had come down to breakfast determined to set off for Skrevanastuut at once. None of the sensible, rational objections which Fever or Dr Crumb raised could stop her from summoning the Lord Mayor and explaining her scheme to him. Now they sat mutely watching while Quercus raised all the same arguments that they had tried.
    “It’s savage country north of London. The brigand-kings of Leeds and Lincoln have no love for Londoners.”
    Wavey chuckled. “I am not proposing to go alone . I hoped I could borrow one of your landships, and a few of your soldiers. We’ll take your excellent new roads north over the old sea, and avoid all the savages. We shall meet no brigand-kings when we reach Caledon; no one lives there at all.”
    “Only nightwights,” said Quercus darkly.
    “ Nightwights? ” Wavey laughed again. “Bogey men for nomad nursemaids to frighten little children with. Surely you do not still believe in