“Couple of hitchhikers, boss—I mean, Your Worship. …” said one of his guards, a woman whose hair had been plaited and lacquered into two long, curving horns.
“Come aboard in the middle of the chase, Your Worship,” added another, the man who had overseen the newcomers’ capture. He showed Peavey the coat he was wearing; the fleece-lined aviator’s coat he had taken from Tom. “I got this off one of ’em…”
Peavey grunted. He seemed about to turn away, but Hester kept grinning her crooked grin at him and saying, “Peavey! It’s me!” until she lit a spark of recognition in his greedy black eyes.
“Bloody Hull!” he growled. “It’s the tin man’s kid!”
“You’re looking good, Peavey,” said Hester, and Tom noticed that she didn’t try to hide her face from the pirates, as if she knew that she mustn’t let them see any sign of weakness.
“Blimey!” said Peavey, looking her up and down. “Blimey! It really is you! The Stalker’s little helper, all growed up and uglier than ever! Where’s old Shrikey then?”
“Dead,” said Hester.
“Dead? What was it, metal fatigue?” He gave a great guffaw and the bodyguards all joined in obediently, until even the monkey on his shoulder started shrieking and rattling its chain. “Metal fatigue! Get it?”
“So how come you’re running Tunbridge Wheels?” asked Hester, while he was still wiping the tears from his eyes and chuckling. “The last I heard of this place it was a respectable suburb. It used to hunt up north, on the edges of the ice.”
Peavey chuckled, leaning against the bars. “Flashy, innit?” he said. “This place ate my old town a couple of years back. Come racing up one day and scoffed it straight down. They was soft, though: they hadn’t reckoned with me and my boys. We busted out of the gut and took over the whole place; set the mayor and the council to work stoking their own boilers, settled ourselves down in their comfy houses and their posh Town Hall. No more scavenging for me! I’m a proper mayor now. His Worship Chrysler Peavey at your service!”
Tom shuddered, imagining the dreadful things that must have happened here when Peavey’s roughs took over—but Hester just nodded as if she was impressed. “Congratulations,” she said. “It’s a good town. Fast, I mean. Well-built. You’re taking a risk, though. If your prey hadn’t stopped when it did, you’d’ve plunged straight into the heart of the Rustwater and sunk like a stone.”
Peavey waved the warning away. “Not Tunbridge Wheels, sweetheart. This suburb’s specialized. Mires and marshes don’t bother us. There’re fat towns hiding in these swamps, and fatter prey still where I’m planning to go next.”
Hester nodded. “So how about letting us out then?” she asked casually. “With all this prey to catch you could probably use a couple of good tough helpers up top.”
“Ha ha!” chortled Peavey. “Nice try, Hettie, but you’re out of luck. Prey’s been short these last couple of years. I need all the loot and grub I can find just to keep the lads happy, and they won’t be happy if I start bringing new faces aboard. ’Specially not faces as ’orrible as yours.” He bellowed with laughter again, looking round at his bodyguards to make sure they were joining in. The monkey ran up on to the top of his head and squatted there, chattering.
“But you need me, Peavey!” Hester told him, forgetting all about Tom in her desperation. “I’m not soft. I’m probably tougher than half of your best lads. I’ll fight for a place up top, if that’s what it takes…”
“Oh, I can use you, all right,” agreed Peavey. “But not up top. It’s in the engine rooms where I need help. Sorry, Hettie!” He turned away, and beckoned to the woman with the horns. “Chain ’em up, Maggs, and take ’em to the slave pits.”
Hester slumped down on the floor of the cage, despairing. Tom touched her shoulder, but she shrugged him irritably away. He looked past her, at Peavey stalking away across his blood-stained yards and the pirates advancing on the cage with guns and manacles. To his surprise, he felt more angry than afraid. After all that they had been through, they were going to become slaves after all! It wasn’t fairl Before he knew what he was doing he was on his feet and pounding at the greasy bars, and, in a strange, thin-sounding voice, he heard himself shouting, “NO!”
Peavey turned round. His eyebrows climbed his craggy forehead like mountaineering caterpillars.
“NO!” shouted Tom again. “You know her, and she asked you for help, and you ought to help her! You’re just a coward, eating up little towns that can’t escape, and murdering people, and sticking people in the slave pit because you’re too scared of your own men to help them!”
Maggs and the other guards all raised their guns and looked at Peavey expectantly, waiting for him to give the order to blow the impertinent prisoner to pieces. But he just stood and stared, and then came walking slowly back towards the cage.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Tom took a step backwards. When he tried to speak again, no words came out.
“You’re from London, ain’t yer?” asked Peavey. “I’d recognize that accent anywhere! And you’re not from the Nether Boroughs, neither. What Tier d’you come from?”
“T-two,” stammered Tom.
“Tier Two?” Peavey looked round at his companions. “You ’ear that? That’s almost High London, that is! This bloke’s a High London gentleman. What did you want to go slinging a gentleman like this in the lock-ups for, Maggs?”
“But you said…” Maggs protested.
“Never mind what I SAID,” screamed Peavey. “Get him OUT!”
The horned woman fumbled at the lock until the door slid open, and the other pirates grabbed Tom and dragged him out of the cage. Peavey pushed them aside and started dusting him down with a sort of rough gentleness, muttering, “That’s no way to treat a gentleman! Spanner, give him back his coat!”
“What?” cried the pirate wearing Tom’s coat. “No way!”
Peavey pulled out a gun and shot him dead. “I said, give the gentleman back his COAT!” he shouted at the startled-looking corpse, and the others hurried to pull the coat off and put it back on Tom. Peavey patted at the smouldering bullet hole on the breast. “Sorry about the blood,” he said earnestly. “These blokes, they’ve got no manners. Please allow me to apologize most ’umbly for the misunderstanding, and welcome you aboard my ’umble town. It’s an honour to ’ave a real gentleman aboard at last, sir. I do hope you’ll join me for afternoon tea in the Town Hall…”
Tom gaped at him. He had only just realized that he wasn’t going to be killed. Afternoon tea was the last thing he was expecting. But as the pirate mayor started to lead him away he remembered Hester, still cowering in the cage. “I can’t leave her down here!” he said.
“What, HettieT Peavey looked bewildered.
“We’re travelling together,” explained Tom. “She’s my friend…”
“There’s plenty of other girls in Tunbridge Wheels,” said Peavey. “Much better ones, with noses and everyfink. Why, my own lovely daughter would be very pleased to make your acquaintance…”
“I can’t leave Hester behind,” said Tom, as firmly as he dared, and the mayor simply bowed and gestured to his men to open the cage again.
At first Tom thought that Peavey was interested in the same thing as Miss Fang—information about where London was headed, and what had brought it out into the central Hunting Ground. But although the pirate mayor was full of questions about Tom’s life in the city, he didn’t seem to have much interest in its movements; he was just pleased to have what he called “a High London gent” aboard his town.
He gave Tom and Hester a guided tour of the Town Hall, and introduced them to his “councillors”, a rough-looking gang with names to match; Janny Maggs and Thick Mungo and Stadtsfesser Zeb, Pogo Nadgers and Zip Risky and the Traktiongrad Kid. Then it was time for afternoon tea in his private quarters, a room full of looted treasures high in the Town Hall where his rabble of whining, snot-nosed children kept getting under everybody’s feet. His eldest daughter Cortina brought tea in delicate porcelain cups, and cucumber sandwiches on a blast-glass tray. She was a dim, terrified girl with watery blue eyes, and when her father saw that she hadn’t cut the crusts off the sandwiches he knocked her backwards over the pouffe. “Thomas ’ere is from LONDON!” he shouted, hurling the sandwiches at her. “He expects fings POSH! And you should have done ’em in little TRIANGLES!”