Free Mortal Engines me-1: Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve

large, and begins sniffing for her scent.

9. THE JENNY HANIVER
    A
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first it looked as if their luck might hold. They scrambled quickly across the dimly-lit walkway and down into the shadows under one of Speedwell’s wheel-arches. They could see the dark bulks of the other towns, with lights burning in their windows and a big bonfire on the top deck of one of them, a mining townlet on the far side of the cluster where a noisy party was in progress.
    They crept along the outside edge of Speedwell to a place where a gangplank stretched across to the market town which was parked next door. It was unguarded, but brightly lit, and as they reached the far end and stepped on to the deck of the market town a voice somewhere behind them shouted, “Hey!” and then, louder, “Hey! Hey! Uncle Wreyland! Them slaves is “scaping!”
    They ran, or rather, Tom ran, and dragged Hester along beside him, hearing her whimper in pain at every step. Up a stairway, along a catwalk, past a shrine to Peripatetia, goddess of wandering towns, and they were in a market square lined with big iron cages, in some of which thin, miserable slaves were waiting to be sold off. Tom forced himself to slow down and tried to look inconspicuous, listening all the time for sounds of pursuit. There were none. Maybe the Wreylands had given up the chase, or maybe they weren’t allowed to chase people on to other towns—Tom didn’t know what the rules were in a trading cluster.
    “Head for the bows,” said Hester, letting go his arm and pulling the collar of her coat up to hide her face. “If we’re lucky there’ll be an air-harbour at the bows.”
    They were lucky. At the front of the town’s top deck was a raised section where half a dozen small airships were tethered, their dark, gas-filled envelopes like sleeping whales. “Are we going to steal one?” Tom whispered.
    “Not unless you know how to fly an airship,” said Hester weakly. “There’s an airman’s cafe over there; we’ll have to try and book passage like normal people.”
    The cafe was just an ancient, rusting airship gondola that had been bolted to the deck. A few metal tables stood in front beneath a stripy awning. Hurricane lamps were burning there and an old aviator slumped snoring in a chair. The only other customer was a sinister-looking Oriental woman in a long, red leather coat who sat in the shadows near the bar. In spite of the dark she wore sunglasses, the tiny lenses black as the wing-cases of beetles. She turned to stare at Tom as he walked up to the counter.
    A small man with a huge, drooping moustache was polishing glasses. He glanced up without much interest when Tom said, “I’m looking for a ship.”
    “Where to?”
    “London,” said Tom. “Me and my friend have to get back to London, and we have to leave tonight.”
    “London, is it?” The man’s moustachios twitched like the tails of two squirrels which had been shoved up his nose and were starting to get a bit restless. “Only ships with a licence from the London Merchant’s Guild can dock there. We’ve got nuffink like that here. Stayns ain’t that sort of town.”
    “Perhaps I may be of help?” suggested a soft, foreign-sounding voice at Tom’s shoulder. The woman in the red coat had come silently to his side; a lean, handsome woman with badgery slashes of white in her short black hair. Reflections of the hurricane lamps danced in her sunglasses, and when she smiled Tom noticed that her teeth were stained red. “I haven’t a licence for London, but I am going to Airhaven. You could find a ship there that will take you the rest of the way. Have you some money?”
    Tom hadn’t thought about that part. He rummaged in his tunic and fished out two tatty banknotes with the face of Quirke on the front and Magnus Crome gazing sternly from the back. He had put them in his pocket the night he fell out of London, hoping to spend them at the catch-party in Kensington Gardens. Here, under the fizzing