Free A Web of Air by Philip Reeve

which had grown thickly around its wheels and chassis. Cables glinted and twanged taut between each pair of rails as the counterweight started to climb and the house started to descend. A wide, low house with broad verandas, dusty windows, that complicated roof of spires and turrets, all built from wood gone grey with age and weather.
    It reached the bottom, clunking heavily into its resting place against the bottom set of buffers. For a moment there was silence. Then another sharp, mechanical noise and the gate swung squeakily open. Wary, Fever stepped through into the garden. The gate swung shut behind her, and she heard bolts grating as they slid back into their holes, shutting her in. She tried to ignore her feelings of unease and concentrate instead on how that had been done. Not with water-power, surely. There was old-tech at work here, and she looked at the waiting house with fresh respect.
    No one came out to greet her. The door stayed shut, and no face showed behind the dusty windows. Feeling nervous, yet telling herself not to be so irrational, Fever went along the mossy path between the trees and stepped on to the veranda that ran all round the house. It did not rock or give beneath her weight, as she had half expected. It felt as firm as any ordinary house. Beneath the veranda she could hear water gurgling and slopping into a drain as the ballast which had carried it down the cliffside emptied away.
    She knocked at the big front door. No one answered. Yet Fever had the feeling that she was being watched, and not just by the angels which perched on the roof.
    “Senhor Thursday?” she called.
    The wind stirred the trees. Angel claws scritch-scratched across the shingles.
    Fever was starting to grow impatient. Why would Arlo Thursday have brought his house down to street level and let her into his garden if he did not mean to talk with her? She walked round the house, following the sagging veranda. Across every window, pale, sun-faded blinds were drawn. At the back the veranda was broader and covered by a wooden canopy, in the shade of which a white-painted wicker table and two matching chairs had been set out. From the canopy hung baskets of dry earth and dead flowers, and between them, twirling in the faint breeze, winged white shapes.
    Fever reached up and touched one, stilling it. The size of a small gull, it had been made with great care from paper and thin ribs of balsa wood. Its wings were bat-like and there were four in all, two large ones mounted one above the other, two small ones front and rear. Between them, lying flat, a child’s doll had been mounted, its crude wooden hands outstretched as if to grip tiny control levers.
    Something hard and cold jabbed against the flesh beneath Fever’s right ear. She heard the creak and clack of a pistol being cocked, and a voice that said, “Turn around.”
    She turned, not even breathing, just stretching her hands out slowly on either side of her to show that she was not armed. The pistol’s muzzle wavered an inch from her face. A large-bore pistol, long in the barrel, with an old-fashioned wheel-lock mechanism in which a slow-match was clamped. The match dribbled a thin braid of blue smoke into the air. If the pistol’s owner chose to pull the firing lever the lit end of the match would be pressed into the tray of gunpowder in front of it, sparking an explosion which would drive a slug of lead through Fever’s face.
    The closeness of the gun reminded her queasily of the time in London when the Skinner had cornered her and Kit Solent had been forced to shoot him. It was difficult for her to look away from the weapon. But she controlled herself, and looked, and saw her captor.
    He was a young man, barefoot, and dressed shabbily in clothes which had once been white. His face was mostly hidden by his hair, which was dark, tousled and much too long. Fever could just see one greenish eye.
    “Who are you?” they both said at the same instant.
    “I’ve got the