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Fever like the sort of thing two Engineers should be discussing, so she said, “I hope that all is well in London?”
    “Oh aye,” agreed Dr Teal. “At least, it’s some months since I left, but everything was proceeding according to plan when I last looked. You’d scarce recognize the place, Miss Crumb. Everything south of Ludgate Hill has been cleared to make way for the new forges, the rolling sheds, the furnaces. Night and day the new factories roar and rumble, belching out their smoke. While I was waiting to take ship at Brighton harbour I could see the glow of London lighting up the sky from fifty miles away! And all the roads in that part of the world are crammed with land-hoys carting materials Londonward, and the sleepy south-coast ports like Brighton and Chunnel have come alive again with cargo ships. Quercus has had to construct steam-powered warships to keep the convoys safe from pirates. It will be some years yet before the city moves, but already he has transformed the world.”
    Fever said nothing. She did not like thinking about London’s transformation.
    “Your father is well,” Teal went on. “He is busy, as we all are. Doing good work. He speaks of you often. I wish I had known that I was going to run into you; I would have offered to carry a letter…”
    “And what of the other Engineers?”
    “All well. We are a Guild now, not just an Order; you can imagine how that pleases them.”
    “And my mother?” asked Fever.
    “Wavey? Oh, she’s well enough.” There was something odd about the way he said it, and she saw something knowing in his expression that she did not quite like, but didn’t understand. Confused, she looked away again. They were passing a barge called the Travelling Museatorium, decorated with gaudy paintings of freaks and monsters. She thought how tawdry Bargetown must look to Dr Teal, and how foolish he must think her, squandering her skills aboard a theatre. All the excuses she made to herself, her vision of herself as a scientific missionary spreading the light of reason among the fairground crowds, seemed foolish and threadbare now. She was no better really than an out-country technomancer, and she was sure that Dr Teal must despise her.
    “I expect you are wondering what brings me to Mayda-at-the-World’s-End?” he asked.
    She hadn’t been, but he told her anyway, while they walked together along the harbourside. “I am on a mission for the Guild. The new London will be a city much like this. Convex rather than concave, but a vertical city; a city of tiers. Quercus wants me to see how the Maydans manage it. In particular, he is intrigued by their moving houses. In the new London the different levels will be linked by elevators, and the Guild believes we may have much to learn from these funiculars. I must make some drawings. I’ll be sending regular reports back to London. If you have any message for Dr Crumb or Wavey Godshawk just let me have it. I’m staying with London’s representative here, a merchant called Hazell.”
    “Thank you,” said Fever. “Perhaps you could let them know that I am well.”
    “Only that? No word of when you might be coming home?”
    Fever shook her head.
    They reached the café that Dr Teal had spoken of and sat down at a table under a fluttering umbrella. He ordered coffee for himself. Fever said truthfully that she had only just finished breakfast. “I slept late…”
    “You must have been late to bed. The play, and then the party afterwards…”
    “I did not attend the party. I went for a walk on the cliffs and…”
    “You needed some time alone, I’m sure. It must be difficult to think, cooped up in a clattering barge with that bunch of actors?”
    “It is, sometimes,” agreed Fever, and felt as if she were betraying her friends. She had been about to tell Dr Teal of the white glider that had come to her on the night wind. But his coffee arrived, and watching him thank the waitress and add cream and sugar to his