“THEY WOULD NOT BELIEVE US,” said Grike. “THEY THINK WE ARE PAWNS OF THEIR ENEMIES. I MUST GO TO ERDENE TEZH AND SEARCH FOR HER MYSELF.”
“Is that your own idea?” asked Hester suspiciously. “Or is one of Oenone’s secret programs still running in that brain of yours?”
Grike turned to look at her. “I DO NOT KNOW. BUT DR. ZERO REBUILT ME FOR A PURPOSE. I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DESTROY THE STALKER FANG. I MUST SEEK HER OUT AND RE-ASSASSINATE HER.”
“Thought you couldn’t kill anybody.”
“STALKERS ARE NOT ALIVE, SO IT WILL NOT BE KILLING,” Grike said patiently. “EVEN IF IT WERE, IT WOULD HAVE TO BE DONE.” He waved one massive hand at the windows, at the mountain burning in the south. “IF SHE IS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE THIS DESTRUCTION, MILLIONS OF ONCE-BORN WILL PERISH.”
Tom swallowed and said nervously, “I can fly you to Erdene Tezh.”
“It’s not our business, Tom,” Hester warned him.
“It is,” Tom told her. “Because if you’re right, we’re the only people who really know who’s responsible for all this. What sort of world will be left for Wren if we let it keep happening? We have to do something.” He was about to explain the connection between ODIN and the Tin Book, but that would only make Hester think it was Wren’s fault, which wasn’t what he meant at all. “I have to do something,” he said weakly.
“All right,” said Hester. He was as lovely and infuriating as ever. She’d never been able to resist his stupid bravery. “All right. Let’s go to this Erdene Thingy place. It’s not as if I’ve got anything better to do. Only when we get there, you’re not going to do anything heroic; you’re not going to risk your life, or try and talk to the Stalker Fang. You’re going to stay safe in the airship and let Grike go and kill her. And this time he’d better do it properly.”
Chapter 45
Harvest
Wren, awakening, wondered for a moment where she was, remembered what had happened, felt afraid, and then decided that she did not care, because Theo was there with her, breathing softly, his face pressed into the curve of her neck, the heavy, comforting weight of his arm thrown across her.
They had gone west when they’d left Crouch End, because all the roads and paths Wren knew through the wreckage led west. They had walked for hours, listening out all the time for sounds of pursuit. They had seen the pulse of fire plunge into the mountains and stood in silence, hand in hand, watching the red glow gather in the sky behind Zhan Shan, throwing the summit of the giant volcano into silhouette. At last they had settled down to rest on the very westernmost edge of the debris field, where it petered out into a rash of smaller fields, scattered chunks of track and deck plate, towering wheels. They had taken shelter inside one of the wheels, in a cylindrical cave about twelve feet high where a crank must once have been attached. (Or a connecting rod, or a gubbins of some other kind; neither of them knew enough about the wheels of cities to say for certain.) It was, at least, dry, and not too cold, and they had cuddled together there with Wren’s pack as a pillow and fallen quickly asleep.
Now a halfhearted daylight filled the circle of the cave mouth. Wren woke Theo as gently as she could, and scrambled around him to the entrance. Peeking out, she saw the deserted margins of the wreck stretching away in hazy sunlight. She craned out farther. It was too misty to make out Zhan Shan, but she could see the tower of smoke that stood above it, wet-slate gray, and as tall as the sky. The ground seemed to shake faintly, and she thought she heard a distant rumbling.
“Well, it wasn’t a dream,” she said. “Why would the Storm turn the weapon on their own land?”
“It must be another civil war,” said Theo. He poured some water for them from the canteen Lavinia Childermass had given them. “Naga’s probably zapping his rivals.”
“Charming,” said Wren. “And these are the people whose mercy we’re going to be throwing ourselves on?”
“Either that or go back to Mr. Garamond.”
“Fair point. What’s for breakfast?”
“Gravel,” said Theo, opening a box that Lavinia Childermass had put inside Wren’s pack. “I think it started out as some kind of flapjack. It’s probably very nutritious…”
“Shhhh!”
The rumbling sound was growing louder. The ground was definitely shaking, vibrations flaking small scales of rust off the old wheel.
“The volcano?” said Wren.
Theo shook his head.
They scrambled down out of their shelter and stood on the wheel’s rim, staring westward. The rumblings came and went, gusting on the wind. A ridge bulged and shivered, its profile altering as they watched. A gleam of metal showed beneath the scrub, and a fist of exhaust smoke rose triumphantly into the air.
“Oh, Quirke!” said Wren.
“Harrowbarrow,” whispered Theo.
Wren nodded. She had almost forgotten the existence of Wolf Kobold. Her first thought was Thank Quirke we got out of the debris field before he arrived, but it was drowned out immediately by another thought coming close behind it: What about the others?
“We’ve got to warn them!” she said.
“Why?” asked Theo. “They’ll know soon enough. If it moves as fast as it did when I saw it tear through the line, they’ll hear the engines in London before long.”
“But they might not,” said Wren. “The lookouts are young; they’ve never heard town engines; they’ll think it’s the volcano, like we did…” She tried to tell herself that it served the Londoners right for accusing people and locking them in cages, but all she could think of were her friends: Angie and Saab, Clytie, Dr. Childermass. Even Mr. Garamond didn’t deserve to be eaten by Harrowbarrow. The waste of it appalled her; those years of thought and effort and hard work—
“We’ve got to delay it,” she said. “I’ll go aboard and divert them somehow. Even if it only buys an extra half hour, it might help. Don’t you see? New London has to move today; now, ready or not! Once it’s out of the fields, it should be able to outrun Harrowbarrow.”
“Oh, not on your own,” said Theo.
“Yes, because I can’t take you, because you’re the mossiest Mossie in the whole world and a terrible liar and Wolf Kobold doesn’t believe people like you even deserve to be alive. So you’re going to go and be safe somewhere.”
“Wren,” he protested.
She hugged him, tight, tight. It would be so easy to just keep out of Harrowbarrow’s way and pretend that none of this had anything to do with her, but it had; what would her father think of her if he knew she’d had a chance to save his city and she’d fluffed it? What would she think of herself? She kissed Theo. “Go,” she said. “Harrowbarrow sends scouts out ahead sometimes, on foot. If they catch you, they won’t ask questions. Please go.”
“How will I find you again?”
“I don’t know,” said Wren, pulling away from him. Harrowbarrow’s engines snarled. “I’ll think of something,” she promised. She couldn’t quite bring herself to let go of his hands. “Look, the gods went to all this trouble to bring us together; you don’t think they’d let a silly little enormously dangerous armored suburb come between us, do you?” She checked herself, because she was starting to babble. It had been the same on that air quay at Kom Ombo. She seemed to be able to say anything except the thing she wanted to say.
In the end, Theo said it instead. “I love you.”
“Gosh, really? Me too! You, I mean. I, I love you.” She started to move back toward him, then pulled herself away. There, she thought, I’ve told him; now I’ll have one less regret when I get down to the Sunless Country. She turned and started to stumble away through the brambles and the gobbets of rusting wreckage, northward into Harrowbarrow’s path. “Hide!” she shouted at him, seeing him standing there watching helplessly from the shadow of the abandoned wheel. “Go and hide!” She pressed on, half afraid and half hoping that he would insist on coming with her.