To the north lay Tearwin Meet and the Engine of the World. The Engine was a weapon of last resort against the Roil, and was rumoured to be mad. David’s dealings with it had been limited to a single bright burst of consciousness focussed upon him at one of its Lodes, which he had compelled to destroy three iron ships flown by the Roil. He'd shattered them with ice. The Engine hadn’t been happy with his use of the Lode. After all, it was the Engine that had punished the Old Men for engaging it the last time. It was the Engine that had turned those who had constructed it, and unleashed its energies, into monsters.
But it was the Engine that Shale needed now. A few weeks, a month, that was all this world had left to it unless the Engine was engaged, and David, through mischance and Cadell's bite, was the only one able and willing to operate it: to set in motion its energies and drive the Roil from the world.
Certainly, there were many willing to stop him — the Old Men included, they hunted him, even now — Sheff was just the next one in line. The funny thing was, as David saw it, he really had no idea how he was meant to engage the Engine. Cadell did, and he wasn't talking.
“I don't think you understand just what I am,” David said.
“Troublesome,” Sheff said. “Soon to be dead.” He nodded his head once. “Gentlemen.”
The Vergers to the left and right rushed him at the same time. They were quick, their long knives dancing, but David was quicker.
Still, he didn’t quite know what he was doing. The first Verger’s knife brushed his arm, and blood blossomed, the second Verger’s blade slashed through his jacket, and scraped along a rib. That focussed him.
David kicked out, struck the first assailant just beneath the knee. Bone snapped. The Verger screamed, tumbled to the ground, and David spun, ducking beneath a knife, fists finding the second Verger’s belly and his throat. No scream for him, just a gasp and a swift fall.
“See,” David yelled. “See!” Though he didn’t know why he was yelling it, just that he was angry and hungry, and here, for the first time, he was fighting the knife men that had killed his father, and chased him from his home, and he was winning.
Something heavy struck him between his shoulders, knocked him stumbling forward onto his knees. Strong hard hands wrenched his arms back, until he felt as though they must tear from their joints, and he realized that he would have been better off paying attention to the other men around him.
“Three is always better than one,” a dry voice whispered in his ear.
Sheff grinned at him, his blade gleaming in the daylight.
A few streets away people chanted furiously. Something political and progressive, no doubt; the Hardacre folk liked their slogans.
Sheff cleared his throat, spat upon the ground. “A Verger always gets the job done.”
The blade pushed close against his throat. Sheff smiled.
Then his face wasn’t there any more. Blood and bone spattered over David. And, despite himself, David licked his lips a little. He sprang to his feet, swinging his head backwards, felt the crack of a nose breaking; the man behind him groaned and fell, releasing his hold on David’s arms. Blood rushed back into his hands, he closed them to fists.
Sheff swayed before him, a Verger's perfect balance keeping him there as his body negotiated its position with death. The knife clattered to the ground.
“Not this Verger,” David whispered in Sheff's ear. David pushed him in the chest, and the man toppled over. “Not Tope, not you.”
He crouched down, snatched up Sheff's knife. The Verger behind him scrambled to his feet, knife in hand, eyes blinking. David danced around his guard, and drove Sheff’s blade through the Verger’s heart — felt the Cuttle-driven flutter of its last beats. “Nor this one, either.”
He pulled the knife free, turned his head. “What about you two?”
The other Vergers were running, holding each other up, not even glancing back.
“Don’t gloat over the dead,” Margaret said behind him. He closed his eyes, waited for the bullet to come. He might have even wished it on a little. Margaret at least had the right to kill him. She didn’t fire, of course, and he turned and glared at her. Margaret, pale tall Margaret, greatcoat down to her ankles, rifle still smoking in her hand. As puzzling to him as the first time he had met her in Chapman. In fact, she’d shot something that time, too. Her eyes narrowed, she glared back at him.
“You were following me?” David said.
“Saved your life.”
“I was holding my own.”
Margaret shrugged, and slid her rifle back into its sheath. “I was bored.” She gave a rather wan smile. “Followed you by the rooftops. Almost ran into your friends.”
“We'll talk about this later,” David said, and Margaret gave him a look that suggested she most definitely wanted to. He gestured at the two fleeing Vergers, still stumbling towards the riots. In the press of all those bodies they’d never find them. “What do we do about them?”
“Nothing,” Margaret said. “They won’t be hunting you for a while. I think we’ve killed enough people today, don’t you?”
“They wanted me dead,” David said.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said, dropping Sheff’s knife by his body. Margaret surprised him by picking it up, and wiping it clean on Sheff's shirt. “Useful,” she said, almost as though he wasn’t there. Her eyes flicked up to him. “Do you mind if I keep it?”
“Not at all.”
Margaret slipped the knife into a ring at her belt and smiled a rather Sheffish grin. “Time we left,” she said. “Vergers or not, we'd be fools to linger.”
David looked at the rooftops. “That way?” he said, somewhat dubiously.
“Of course not,” Margaret said, already hurrying down the street, stepping neatly over rubbish. “I wouldn’t want you falling and cracking your skull — let's not do the work of your enemies.”
David looked at Sheff's hat, and stomped on it. “Try and kill Milde's get, eh?” he said to Sheff's corpse. “Gets you killed instead.”
“David,” Margaret said over her shoulder without a hint of indulgence. “Hurry.”
And he did.
The sound of the riot grew, faded away and grew again; such was the curling nature of Hardacre's streets. They led to trouble as often as they led away from it, but Margaret — efficient Margaret — knew her way even after a few weeks; another corner and the riot may as well have been a hundred miles away. She took them down a side street that ran almost directly to the Habitual Fool, the pub they had been staying in these past few weeks. Almost directly meant a meander, and another near-miss with the riot. In fact, one poor fellow ran at them with an iron bar, only to be neatly punched in the neck by Margaret. He teetered there, blinking, so Margaret kicked him in the stomach, looking all the while like she would rather do the same to David.
He stepped over the groaning man.
“I'm sick of being hunted! Talking of which, why were you following me?” David asked, his limbs shuddery; he suddenly and desperately needed some of that Carnival in his pocket, and food, plenty of food. His stomach rumbled.
“I needed to know.”
“Know what? That I visit the brothels of Goodlin Street, or that I’m still taking Carnival?”
“I know you haven’t been visiting brothels,” Margaret said.
David sighed, felt heat in his face. Carnival killed that part of him dead. Besides, his father's friend Medicine Paul had once sent him to a brothel. The experience had been somewhat painful, embarrassing, and terribly awkward; even then Carnival had been his greater craving.”Then what? What did you need to know that asking me wouldn't have answered?”
“I needed to know that you weren’t the one doing the killing. Those bodies they've been finding, the ones that started appearing a week after we arrived.”