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had withdrawn into their old hunting grounds further north. The clap of victory fireworks was added to the din of the construction work, and portraits of Raven appeared in shop windows and on huge banners which hung from the girders of the half-finished city, honouring his triumph.
    By early summer Wavey had a triumph of her own to celebrate. She had persuaded Fever to attend Quercus’s victory ball, which was to be held aboard the new city, in the echoing, metal cavern called the Great Under Tier. Realizing that it would be futile to suggest a gown, she dressed her daughter in a new white coat, longer and better tailored than her others, with mother-of-pearl buttons. In the light of paper lanterns suspended from the vaulting roof all the fashionable people of London danced and chattered, bright as birds. Musicians played on one of the bridges that spanned the enormous space, while drinks and dainties were served in the landship hangars, which opened off it on each side. Wavey took time out from the waltzes and hip-hops to point out eligible men among the crowds. “That dashing young officer is Bjorn Somersby, Fever. I do believe that he admires you! And look, there is good Captain Andringa, one of Quercus’s most promising young men. . .”
    Fever looked at the couples on the dancefloor, the way they held each other. She did not like being touched. The only person she wanted to hold her like that was Arlo Thursday, and she would never see him again.
    Wavey seemed to sense what she was thinking. Afterwards, when they were heading home up Cripplegate in their big, Stalker-drawn rickshaw, she said, “Fever, we really must find you a new boyfriend. I was never short of boyfriends at your age. Can it be that you are still moping about that boy in Mayda? That wretched Thursday boy?”
    Fever just rubbed a gloved finger over the steamed-up window. She thought of Arlo’s little ship, alone on the face of the ocean, sailing into the west. She had lied to save him from Wavey’s agent Dr Teal, who would have killed him to suppress the secret of his flying machine. She had lied, and Arlo had thought that she’d betrayed him. He had sailed away alone. She had stood on the end of the harbour wall, calling and calling his name, but he had not heard her, or had not cared.
    “He is not the only boy in the world,” insisted Wavey.
    “I expect you miss the children, Fever?” said her father, hoping to change the subject.
    Fever kept rubbing the window, making a square hole in the condensation. “Fern and Ruan are much better off without me,” she said. “I had a letter a few weeks ago. The Lyceum is travelling among the Italian city-states. Fern is becoming quite an experienced actress. Ruan talks of becoming apprenticed to a painter. And I had a parcel from Mayda containing something that I believe was once a piece of cake; wedding cake, from the wedding of Dymphna Persimmon and Jonathan Hazell. . .”
    “But what about Arlo Thursday?” Wavey pestered. “Is there any news of him? You still think about him. I can tell you do. Look, you’ve gone bright red!”
    Fever looked away angrily. (People who are prone to blushing do not need anyone to tell them when they do it.) She wondered if Wavey knew that she scanned the travellers’ tales in London’s newspapers each week in the hope that there might be word of a boy arriving on the shores of Nuevo Maya; a boy who talked to birds and knew the ancient mysteries of flight. She said, “It is unlikely that he survived on that wide ocean, in such a small boat, and with one arm injured before he even set out. . .”
    “Poor Fever,” Wavey said, laying her hand on Fever’s cheek. “It passes, you know. There will be other boys. But it’s no help, is it, my telling you that? Oh look !” she added, suddenly leaning across her to see out through the clear patch she had rubbed on the window. “Borglum is here!”
    The chair was crossing a region of waste ground where