Predator Cities x 4 and The Traction Codex

by Philip Reeve

  Caul looked down at the sleeping city nestled in the curve of the island’s southern shore. Then he turned his back on it, raised his lantern, and switched it on and off, three times. He’s gone mad, thought Wren, and then, No – he’s signalling to someone, just like the wicked headmaster in Milly Crisp and the Twelfth Tier Mystery!

  And sure enough, down among the empty, rocky bays of the north shore, another light flashed back an answer.

  Caul moved on, and Wren began to follow him again, dropping down the steep northern flank of the island, out of sight of the city. Maybe he and Miss Freya had got back together, and were too afraid of gossip to let anyone know? It was a romantic thought, and it made Wren smile to herself as she tracked Caul down the last precipitous stretch of sheep-track, through a stand of birch trees and out on to a beach between two headlands.

  Miss Freya was not waiting for him. But someone was. A man was standing at the water’s edge, watching as Caul went crunching towards him down the shingle. Even from a distance, in the faint light of the aurora, Wren could tell that he was someone she had never seen before.

  At first she could not believe it. There were no strangers in Vineland. The only people here were those who had come here aboard Anchorage, or been born here since, and Wren knew all of them. But the man on the shore was a stranger to her, and his voice when he spoke was a voice she had never heard.

  “Caul, my old shipmate! Good to see you again.”

  “Gargle,” said Caul, sounding uneasy, and not taking the hand which the stranger held out for him to shake.

  They said more, but Wren was too busy wondering about the newcomer to listen. Who could he be? How had he come here? What did he want?

  When the answer hit her, it was one she didn’t like. Lost Boys. That’s what they’d been called, the gang Caul had been part of, who had burgled Anchorage back in its ice-faring days with their strange, spidery machines. Caul had left them to come with Miss Freya and Mr Scabious. Or had he? Had he been secretly in contact with the Lost Boys all these years, waiting until the city was settled and prosperous before he called them in to rob it again?

  But the stranger on the beach wasn’t a boy. He was a grown man, with long dark hair. He wore high boots, like a pirate in a storybook, and a coat that came down to his knees. He flicked the skirts of the coat back and stuck his thumbs through his belt, and Wren saw a gun in a holster at his side.

  She knew that she was out of her depth. She wanted to run home and tell Mum and Dad of the danger. But the two men had wandered closer to her, and if she ran she would be seen. She wriggled deeper into the low gorse-bushes behind the beach, timing each movement to coincide with the rasp of the little waves breaking on the shingle.

  The man called Gargle was speaking, sounding as if he were making some kind of joke, but Caul suddenly cut him off. “What have you come here for, Gargle? I thought I’d seen the last of Lost Boys. It was a bit of a shock to find your message under my door. How long have you been creeping around Anchorage?”

  “Since yesterday,” said Gargle. “We just dropped by to say hello, and see how you were doing, friendly-like.”

  “Then why not show yourselves? Why not come and talk to me in daylight? Why leave messages and drag me out here in the middle of the night?”

  “Honest, Caul, I wanted to. I’d planned to land my limpet on the mooring beach, all open and above-board, but I sent a few crab-cams in first, of course, just to be sure. Good thing I did, ain’t it? What’s happened, Caul? I thought you were going to be a big man in this place! Look at you; oily overalls and raggedy hair and a week’s worth of beard. Is the Mad Tramp look big in Anchorage this season? I thought you were going to marry their margravine, that Freya What’s-her-name.”

  “Rasmussen,” said Caul unhappily. He turned away from the other man. “I thought so too. It didn’t work out, Gargle. It’s complicated. It’s not like you think it’s going to be when you just watch it through the crab-cameras. I never really fitted in here.”

  “I should have thought the Drys would welcome you with open arms,” said Gargle, sounding shocked. “After you brung them that map and everything.”

  Caul shrugged. “They were all kind enough. I just don’t fit. I don’t know how to talk to them, and talking’s important to the Drys. When Mr Scabious was alive it was all right. We worked together, and we didn’t need to talk, we had the work instead of words. But now he’s gone… What about you, anyway? And what about Uncle? How is Uncle?”

  “Like you care!”

  “I do. I think of him often. Is he–?”

  “The old man’s still there, Caul,” said Gargle.

  “Last time I spoke to you, you had plans to get rid of him, take over…”

  “And I have taken over,” said Gargle, with a grin that Wren saw as a white blur in the dark. “Uncle’s not as sharp as he was. He never really got over that business at Rogues’ Roost. So many of his best boys lost, and all his fault. It nearly did him in, that. He relies on me for nearly everything nowadays. The boys look up to me.”

  “I bet they do,” said Caul, and there was some meaning in his words that Wren couldn’t understand, as if they were picking up a conversation that they’d started long ago, before she was even born.

  “You said you need my help,” said Caul.

  “Just thought I’d ask,” said Gargle. “For old time’s sake.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “There’s no plan, exactly.” Gargle sounded hurt. “Caul, I didn’t come here on a burgling mission. I don’t want to rob your nice Dry friends. I’m just after one thing, one little thing, a particular small thing that no one will miss. I’ve looked with the crab-cams, I’ve sent my best burglar in, but we can’t see it. So I thought, ‘What we need is a man on the inside.’ And here you are. I told my crew, we can rely on Caul.”

  “Well, you were wrong,” said Caul. His voice was trembly. “I may not fit in here, but I’m not a Lost Boy either. Not any more. I’m not going to help you rob Freya. I want you gone. I won’t tell anyone you were here, but I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open. If I hear a crab-cam nosing about, or see that something’s gone missing, I’ll let the Drys know all about you. I’ll make sure they’re waiting for you next time you come sneaking into Anchorage.”

  He turned and strode up the beach, crashing through the gorse barely a foot from the place where Wren was hiding. She heard him fall and curse as he started up the hill, and then the sounds of his going growing fainter and fainter as he climbed. “Caul!” called Gargle, but not too loud, a sort of whispering cry, with hurt in it, and disappointment. “Caul!” Then he gave up and stood still and pensive, running a hand through his hair.

  Wren began to move, very carefully and quietly, getting ready for the moment when he would turn his back on her and she could creep away between the trees. But Gargle did not turn. Instead he raised his head and looked straight at her hiding place and said, “My eyes and ears are sharper than old Caul’s, my friend. You can come out now.”

  3

  THE LIMPET AUTOLYCUS

  Wren stood up and turned and started running all in the same lurching, panicked movement, but before she had taken three steps a second stranger came out of the dark to her left and seized hold of her, swinging her round, dumping her on the ground. “Caul!” she started to shout, but a cold hand went across her mouth. Her captor looked down at her – another pale face, half hidden by black swags of hair – and the man from the beach came running up. A torch came on, a thin, blue wash of light that made Wren blink.

  “Gently,” said the man called Gargle. “Gently now. It’s a woman. A young woman. I thought as much.” He held the torch away so that Wren could see him. She had expected someone Caul’s age, but Gargle was younger. He was smiling. “What’s your name, young woman?”

  “Wr-Wren,” Wren managed to stammer out. “Wr-Wren N-N-N-N-Natsworthy.” And when Gargle had managed to fillet out all those extra Ns his smile grew broader and warmer.
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  “Natsworthy? Not Tom Natsworthy’s child?”

  “You know Dad?” asked Wren. In her confusion, she wondered if her father had also been coming down for secret meetings with the Lost Boys in the coves of North Shore, but of course Gargle was talking about the old days, before she was born.

  “I remember him well,” said Gargle. “He was our guest for a bit aboard the Screw Worm. He’s a good man. Your mother would be his girl, the scar-faced one? What was she called…? Yes, Hester Shaw. I always thought that spoke well of Tom Natsworthy, that he could love someone like her. Appearances don’t matter to him. He looks deeper. That’s rare among the Drys.”

  “What are we going to do with her, Gar?” asked the stranger who had caught Wren, in an odd, soft voice. “Is she fishfood?”

  “Let’s bring her aboard,” said Gargle. “I’d like to get to know Tom Natsworthy’s daughter.”

  Wren, who had been calming down, grew panicky again. “I have to go home!” she squeaked, trying to edge away, but Gargle slipped his arm through hers.

  “Just come aboard a moment,” he said, smiling pleasantly. “I’d like to talk. Explain why I’m lurking in your lake like a thief. Well, I am a thief, of course, but I think you should hear my side of the story before you make your decision.”

  “What decision?” asked Wren.

  “The decision about whether or not you tell your parents and your friends what you’ve seen here tonight.”

  Wren thought she trusted him, but she wasn’t sure. She had never had to think about trusting people before. Confused by Gargle’s smile, she looked past him down the beach. The water between the headlands was shining blue. She thought at first that it was just the after-image of the torch on her eyes, but then the blue grew brighter, and brighter still, and she saw that it was a light, shining up through the water from below. Something huge broke the surface about thirty feet off shore.

  Behind Caul’s shack in the engine district, the limpet which had brought him to Anchorage lay rusting. It was called the Screw Worm, and Wren and her friends had often played hide-and-seek between its crook-kneed legs when they were children. She had always thought it a comical sort of thing, with its big flat feet and its windows at the front like boggly eyes. She had never imagined how smoothly a limpet would move, how sleek its curved hull would look, moonlight sliding off it with the water as it waded to the beach.

  This limpet was smaller than the Screw Worm, and its body was flatter, more like a tick than a spider. Wren thought it was painted with jagged camouflage patterns, but it was hard to be sure in the moonlight. Through the bulging windows she could see a small boy working the controls, his face distorted by the water draining down the glass. He brought the machine to a stop at the water’s edge and a ramp came down out of its belly with a shush of hydraulics and grated against the shingle there.

  “The limpet Autolycus,” said Gargle, gesturing for Wren to go aboard. “Pride of the Lost Boy fleet. Come aboard, please. Please. I promise we won’t submerge until we’ve put you ashore.”

  “What if more Drys come?” asked the other Lost Boy, who wasn’t a boy, Wren noticed, but a girl, pretty and sullen-looking. “What if Caul raises the alarm?”

  “Caul gave us his promise,” said Gargle. “That’s good enough for me.”

  The girl glared at Wren, not convinced. The short black jerkin that she wore hung open and there was a gun stuffed through her belt. I don’t have a choice, thought Wren. I’ll have to trust Gargle. And once she had decided that, it was an easy thing to walk up the ramp into the cold, blue belly of the limpet. After all, if Gargle wanted to murder her, he could have done it just as easily on the beach.

  She was taken aft into what she guessed was Gargle’s private cabin, where hangings hid the dull steel walls, and there were books and trinkets laid about. A joss-stick smouldered, masking the mildew-and-metal smell of the limpet with another smell which made Wren think of sophisticated people and far-off places. She sat down in a chair while Gargle settled himself on the bunk. The girl waited at the bulkhead door, still glaring. The little boy Wren had seen through the window stood behind her, watching Wren with wide, astonished eyes until Gargle said, “Back to your post, Fishcake.”

  “But…”

  “Now!”

  The boy scampered off. Gargle gave Wren a wry smile. “I’m sorry about that. Fishcake’s a newbie, ten years old and fresh from the Burglarium. He’s never seen a Dry before, except on the crab-cam screens. And you such a pretty one, too.”

  Wren blushed and looked down at the floor, where her boots were leaking muddy water over Gargle’s rich Stamboul rugs. The “Burglarium” was where the Lost Boys were trained, she remembered. They were kidnapped from the underdecks of raft-towns when they were too young to even know it, and taken down to the sunken city of Grimsby, and trained in all the arts of thieving. And “crab-cams” were the robot cameras they used to spy on their victims. Miss Freya had made her pupils do a whole project on the Lost Boys. At the time Wren had thought it a pointless thing to have to learn about.

  Gargle turned to the girl at the door. “Remora, our guest looks chilly. Fetch her some hot chocolate, won’t you?”

  “I didn’t know there were any Lost Girls,” said Wren, when the girl had gone.

  “A lot’s changed in Grimsby since Caul was last there,” Gargle replied. “Just between the two of us, Wren, I pretty much run the old place now. I managed to get rid of a lot of the rough, bullying boys who surrounded Uncle, and I sort of persuaded him to start bringing girls down as well as boys. It was doing us no good living without girls. They’re a civilizing influence.”

  Wren looked towards the door. She could see the girl called Remora clattering pans about in some sort of kitchen. She didn’t look to Wren like a civilizing influence. “So is she your wife?” she asked, and then, not wanting to seem too prim, “Or your girlfriend or something?”

  In the kitchen, Remora looked up sharply. Gargle said, “’Mora? No! The fact is, some of the girls have turned out to be better thieves than the boys. Remora’s one of the best burglars we’ve got. Just as young Fishcake is the best mechanic, for all his tender years. I wanted only the best with me on this mission, see, Wren. There’s something in Anchorage that I need very badly. I saw it all those years ago, when I was here with Caul aboard the Screw Worm, but I didn’t steal it then because I didn’t think it was of any use.”

  “What is it?” asked Wren.

  Gargle did not answer her at once, but waited, studying her face, as if he wanted to be quite sure that she could be trusted with what he was about to tell her. Wren liked that. He was not treating her as a child, the way most people still did. “A young woman” he’d called her, and that was how he was speaking to her.

  “I hate this,” he said at last, leaning towards her, looking intently into her eyes. “You have to believe me. I hate coming in secret like this. I would rather be open; steer the Autolycus into your harbour and say, ‘Here we are, your friends from Grimsby, come to ask your help.’ If Caul had prospered here, the way I hoped he would, that might have been possible. But as it is, who’d trust us? We’re Lost Boys. Burglars. They’d never believe that all we want from you is one book, one single book from your margravine’s library.”

  Remora came back into the cabin and handed Wren a tin mug, full of hot, delicious chocolate. “Thank you,” said Wren, glad of the distraction, because she didn’t want Gargle to see how shocked she was by what he had just said. Miss Freya’s library was one of Wren’s favourite places; a treasure-cave filled with thousands and thousands of wonderful old books. It had been on the upper floors of the Winter Palace once, but nobody lived on those floors now and Miss Freya had said it was a waste heating them just for the books’ sake, so the library had been moved downstairs…

  “That’s why you can’t find what you want!” she said suddenly. “The books have all been rearranged since you were last here!”

  Gargle nodded, smiling at her admiringly
. “Quite right,” he said. “It could take our crab-cams weeks to find the right one, and we don’t have weeks to waste. So I was wondering, Miss Natsworthy, if you’d help us?”

  Wren had just taken a slurp of chocolate. Anchorage’s supplies of chocolate had run out years ago, and she had forgotten how good it tasted, but when Gargle asked for her help she almost choked on it. “Me?” she spluttered. “I’m not a burglar…”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to become one,” said Gargle. “But your father’s a clever man. Friendly with the margravine, from what I remember. I bet you could find out from him where the book we want might be. Just find it, and tell me, and I’ll send Remora in to do the rest. It’s called the Tin Book.”

  Wren had been about to refuse, but the fact that she had never heard of the book he named made her hesitate. She’d been expecting him to ask about one of Anchorage’s treasures; the great, illuminated Acts of the Ice Gods, or Wormwold’s Historia Anchoragia. She said, “Who on earth would want a whole book about tin?”

  Gargle laughed, as if she’d made a joke that he liked. “It’s not about tin,” he said. “That’s what it’s made of. Sheets of metal.”

  Wren shook her head. She’d never seen anything like that. “Why do you want it?” she asked.

  “Because we’re burglars, and I’ve learned that it’s valuable,” said Gargle.

  “It must be! To come all this way…”

  “There are people who collect such things; old books and things. We can trade it for stuff we need.” Gargle hesitated, still watching her, and then said earnestly, “Please, Wren, just ask your father. Always nosing about in museums and libraries, he was, when I knew him. He might know where the Tin Book is.”

  Wren thought about it as she drank the rest of the chocolate. If he had been asking her for the illuminated Acts, or for some treasured classic, she would have said no at once. But a book made of metal, one that she’d never even heard of… It couldn’t be very important, could it? It would probably never be missed. And Gargle seemed to want it very badly.