Free Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve Page B

place, like toy money.
    The woman seemed to think so too. “Ah,” she said. “Twenty Quirkes. But notes like that can only be spent in London. Not much use to a poor wandering skyfarer like me. Don’t you have any gold? Or Old-Tech?”
    Tom shrugged and mumbled something. Out of the corner of his eye he saw some newcomers pushing their way between the tables. “Look, Uncle Wreyland!” he heard one of them shout. “Here they are! We’ve got ’em!”
    Tom looked round and saw Wreyland and a couple of his boys closing in, carrying heavy clubs. He grabbed Hester, who was leaning against the counter, barely conscious. One of the Speedwell men moved to cut off their escape, but the woman in the red coat barred his way and Tom heard her say, “These are my passengers. I was just arranging a fee.”
    “They’re our slaves!” shouted Wreyland, pushing past her. “Tom Nitsworthy and his friend. Found ’em in the Out-Country, fair and square. Finders keepers…”
    Tom hurried Hester across the metal deck, past stairways leading up to the quays where the airships moored. He could hear Wreyland’s men splitting up, shouting to each other as they searched, then a grunt and a crash as if one of them had fallen over.
Good,
he thought, but he knew that the others would soon find him.
    He dragged Hester up a short iron stairway to the quays. There were lights in some of the ships that hung at anchor there, and he had a vague idea about forcing his way aboard one of them and making them take him to London. But he had nothing that would serve as a weapon, and before he could look for one there were feet ringing on the ladder behind him and Wreyland’s voice saying, “Please try and be reasonable, Mr Nitsworthy! I don’t want to have to hurt you. Fred!” he added. “I’ve got the rotters cornered. Fred?”
    Tom felt the hope drain out of him. There was no escape now. He stood there meekly as Wreyland stepped forward into the light from the portholes of a nearby airship, hefting his club. Hester slumped against a dockside winch and moaned.
    “It’s only fair,” said Wreyland, as if he thought she was complaining. “I don’t like this slaving lark any more than you do, but times are hard, and we
did
catch you, there’s no denying it…”
    Suddenly, faster than Tom would have thought possible, Hester moved. She dragged a metal lever out of the winch and swung it at Wreyland. His club went whirling out of his hand and hit the deck with a glockenspiel sound, and the metal bar struck him a glancing blow on the side of his head. “Ow!” he wailed, crumpling to the floor. Hester lurched forward and raised the bar again, but before she could bring it down onthe old man’s skull Tom grabbed her arm. “Stop! You’ll kill him!”
    “So?” She swung towards him, snaggle teeth bared, looking like a demented monkey. “So?”
    “He’s right, my dear,” said a gentle voice. “There is no need to finish him.”
    Out of the shadows stepped the woman from the bar, her red coat swirling around her ankles as she walked towards them. “I think we should get aboard my ship before the rest of his people come looking for you.”
    “You said we didn’t have enough money,” Tom reminded her.
    “You don’t, Mr Nitsworthy,” said the aviatrix. “But I can hardly stand by and watch you taken away to be sold as slaves, can I? I was a slave myself once, and I wouldn’t recommend it.” She had taken off her glasses. Her eyes were dark and almond-shaped, and fine webs of laughter lines crinkled at their corners when she smiled. “Besides,” she added, “you intrigue me. Why is a Londoner wandering about in the Hunting Ground, getting into trouble?” She held out her hand to Tom, a long, brown hand with the thin machinery of bones and tendons clearly visible, sliding under papery skin.
    “How do we know you won’t betray us like Wreyland did?” he demanded.
    “You don’t, of course!” she laughed. “You will just have to