“You’re just jealous,” said Deeba. She was holding Curdle in one hand, gently rubbing it with her other. “’Cause it’s the one thing here more interested in me than you.”
“I am jealous,” said Zanna. “That is exactly it.”
They were tired and hungry and homesick, and Hemi’s sudden appearance had frightened them.
“It’ll be alright,” Zanna whispered.
“I wonder how Obaday and the conductor and that lot are doing,” Deeba said. “I hope they got away from the flies by now.”
“Oh,” said Zanna. “Yeah. I hope.” Deeba looked at her suspiciously.
“You hadn’t thought,” said Deeba. “You’re too busy thinking about what’s in that book.”
Zanna said nothing.
They crept on through the ivory loonlight, Deeba and Zanna miserable with exhaustion. After a long time climbing, Deeba realized that Curdle was shifting in her hands, sniffing, whiffling, and puffing with its opening.
“Zann,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Listen,” Deeba said. “Curdle’s being funny. Something’s…” The two girls stood still a moment, motioned the Slaterunners to stop, were silent.
Faintly, from behind them, they heard a pattering.
It came closer. Something was approaching, was only a few streets away, below them.
“It’s him again!” whispered Zanna.
“But…it’s too heavy…” Deeba said. “And there’s more than one…”
“Footsteps.” The two girls jumped as Inessa slid in between them and hunkered close to the roof, her ear to the slates. “Someone knows you’re here. They’re coming.”
“He must’ve been a spy,” said Zanna. “He’s sent them after us…”
“There was that weird bird, too,” Deeba said.
“Jonas, Alf,” Inessa said to two strong-looking Slaterunners. They squatted by Zanna and Deeba, offering their backs. “Hang on,” Inessa said.
“You must be joking,” Deeba said.
Inessa pointed.
Several streets away, dark shapes were bobbing above the gutters. Heads in strange masks jutted into the roofworld itself.
“Oh my God!” Zanna said. “They’re giants!”
“Quickly,” Inessa said. “The rest of the tribe’ll delay them, but we’re going now. Hang on.”
Zanna and Deeba felt the lurch of their carriers, the faint huffs as they cleared clay and slate, the long moments of soaring as they jumped over the gaps of streets.
“Help,” Deeba wheezed, her eyes clenched.
Behind them was a sound of shattering tiles and the phuts of blowpipes as the Slaterunners ambushed the intruders.
“Who are they?” Zanna said as Jonas roofran.
“Know who…you are…” Jonas said between breaths. “Must be…with the Smog.”
“Keep going,” said Inessa. “They’ve got up here.”
Zanna opened her eyes. Strange figures silhouetted against the sky, approaching steadily across the roofs.
“Deeba,” she said. “They’re coming after me.”
“There’s nothing for it,” Inessa said after a moment, sounding despairing. “We’re going to have to…descend.”
“No!” said Alf and Jonas.
“We’ve no choice!” Inessa said. “They’ll never expect it. It’s the only way we’ll lose them.
“Three generations,” she said wistfully. “Well…Anything for the Shwazzy. Follow me!”
She ran to the edge of the roof. She leapt, somersaulted, plunged towards the street below…
…and landed almost immediately. She stood up. Her head was only a little below them.
Jonas and Alf dropped off the roof. The pavement started just inches below the eaves. The roofs slanted directly up from the ground.
“Where are the houses?” said Deeba.
“What houses?” Inessa said.
Deeba and Zanna stood in the little alley, embedded with the bulbs of streetlamps, staring astonished at the roofslopes they had just left.
“I can’t believe it!” Deeba said. “Even if you fall off you’ll only scrape your knee.”
“You thought there were houses under the roofs?” Inessa said. “That would be madness! Just because we want to live free doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider safety…”
“The people following aren’t giants at all,” Zanna realized.
“On which topic…” Jonas said.
“Yes, now’s not the time,” Inessa said. She gestured, and she, the Slaterunners, Zanna, and Deeba dropped to their hands and knees and rolled into the tiny space below the eaves.
They waited, then froze when they heard bootsteps overhead.
There were hunters on the roof above them. It sounded as if they were milling from one corner to another, poking into shadows. None spoke.
Deeba held her hand over Curdle’s opening, so it could not whimper.
For a horrible moment one of the unseen figures was directly above them, so close the guttering shook by Zanna’s head. She and Deeba stared at each other, their eyes very wide. None of the Slaterunners, nor either of the girls, dared breathe.
At very long last, the searchers moved away. Zanna let out a trembling sigh. Silently, Inessa beckoned and crawled on.
What seemed like hours later, they reached the edge of the Roofdom.
Zanna and Deeba emerged from under the eaves. Before them, the streets sloped away, and the real walls of UnLondon rose, in bricks and wood and the mixed junk called moil.
“Not far now,” Inessa said. Alf and Jonas trod gingerly, and grumbled about how much they hated it down on the ground.
Behind them, the roofs sloped directly up from the pavement like slate tents. Zanna and Deeba rolled their eyes.
19. The Evasive Bridge
Rising from the night streets of UnLondon was the arc of the Pons Absconditus. It was a suspension bridge, with supporting up-down iron curves like two dorsal ridges. It should be spanning a river. It was not. Instead, it rose out of backstreets, from nowhere in particular, went over the roofs, and came down several streets away, in a different nowhere in particular.
There were few bulbs on in few windows. Occasionally, Deeba and Zanna saw four lights rush by through the UnLondon streets, two white lights at the front, two red at the back. The first time, they thought it was a car, but there was nothing there, only a glow like headlights. It was as if in the absence of automobiles, UnLondon had provided their pretty illuminations itself, to leave glowing trails in its night-streets.
The headlights veered past the obstacles that littered the abcity, some half-grown out of the tarmac, some lying ready to be used: old sofas; dishwashers; skips full of glass; chairs emerging from London, growing on their rusty legs like flowers with four stalks.
“Why’d they build the bridge here?” Deeba said.
“They didn’t,” Inessa said. “This is just somewhere people know they can find it. It’s like any bridge: it’s to connect somewhere to somewhere else. That’s what bridges are for.”
There was no one in the streets. The streetlamps shed a dim, dirty light. Below the bridge were a load of dustbins. The corrugated metal cylinders were about half Zanna’s height. They all had their round lids carefully on.
“Now,” said Inessa. “We need to get onto the bridge, to see the Propheseers.”
“It comes down over there,” Deeba said. “Behind those houses.”
But behind those houses, there was another row between them and the end of the bridge. Frowning, Zanna and Deeba turned another corner, and came to a sudden stop.
The bridge still came down close to them— but still just behind another brick row.
“What’s going on?” Zanna said. “We’re not getting any closer.”