Fever Crumb Part 6

He grabbed it like she'd told him. He clung to it, and scrabbled along it, gasping and choking and whimpering. Struggling toward the girl, he met her eyes. They were odd colors, which scared him, but the thought of drowning scared him more. Was her helping him just a trick? Was she going to let him get almost to dry land and then let him sink while she looked on, giggling? He felt a hot, furious anger at her for playing with him. Like a cat with a mouse!

But all the time he went on scrabbling his way toward her, and she didn't let go, and when he was close enough she reached out and her hot hands caught hold of his and dragged him to firmer ground. He lay there gasping.

Fever backed away from him, but she didn't think he would still want to hurt her, not now that she had helped him. She said, "Why are you doing this? Why did you chase me?"

Charley's ears were still clogged with moss and mud. He looked up at the girl and he saw her mouth was moving, but all he could hear was his own heart pounding and whoos.h.i.+ng. He thought how like a normal girl she was. Then she looked past him, scared, and he sat up so quick his ears popped and he could hear Bagman's voice shouting out his name.

Fever had forgotten the other man, the old one. She'd thought him too ill to follow her down the hill. But here he was, coming quick through the trees on the far side of the mud pool, long and black like an idea for a new punctuation mark. She started to move, and the brambles between the birch boles snagged her coat again.

And Bagman Creech was stooping to pick up the gun, then striding on across the moss like he was walking on water, his feet finding the hidden footholds under the surface without his even needing to look for them. His face was white and his pale eyes were the color of sunlight through fog. It was as if the sight of Fever had stripped twenty years off him and made him young and fit again. As he reached Charley's side of the moss he lifted the spring gun.

Fever saw it, and struggled harder, but it was rooty and brambly the way she was going, and she moved with nightmare slowness, her white coat catching on thorns and low branches.

Bagman grinned. He pushed his jaw forward, and the set of his long yellow teeth gave him the look of one of those dogs that, once it bites you, can't let go. He strode past Charley, and the skirts of his coat brushed Charley's face. The girl was trapped in the trees, struggling. She let out a moaning noise, and Charley wanted to shout out and tell Master Creech how she'd saved him from the mire, but he knew that wouldn't make any difference, 'cos she was still Scriven. She was looking at him with a white, woeful face as the Skinner moved sideways along the moss edge, seeking for a clean shot between the trees. And now something else was moving, away to the left, behind the mist.

Charley thought for a moment he must be wrong. It was just an old tree, surely, an old willow that had grown twisted, and the mist drifting past it made it look like it had moved. But then it stepped out of the mist, and it was a man, and he was holding a pocket pistol, aimed at Bagman Creech.

"Stop!" shouted Kit Solent.

Creech hesitated. In the silence, Kit made his way through the foliage until he was between Fever and the Skinner.

Bagman's long face twitched angrily. "Don't you go protecting her!" he warned. "Them as protects Scriven is worse than the Scriven themselves...."

"You don't understand a thing, old man," said Kit, his voice trembling slightly. "You don't know what she is. Put down your gun."

Creech scowled, ignoring him, and Fever saw his fingers whiten as he started to squeeze the trigger of his strange old weapon. "No!" shouted Kit again, warningly, and then, in a sort of angry grief, "No!"

There was a single sharp, high-pitched clap. Kit's pistol spewed sparks and smoke. Bagman Creech seemed to jump at the sound, and for a moment there was a look of absolute amazement on his face. His gun went off, punching its dart into the undergrowth ten feet away. He coughed quietly and fell over backward. The air was filled with tiny flakes of goose-down lining blasted out of his quilted coat. It looked like snow.

"Oh, Poskitt," Kit kept saying. "I didn't mean to -- I was aiming at his arm.... " He had lowered his pistol. His face was nearly as white as the old man's.

Charley scrambled across the mud, shouting, "Master Creech!"

Bagman's white face flopped toward him. There was pink froth in the old man's mouth and it spilled out down his chin when he spoke. "Go! You are the last of us! Save yourself, so you can finish this!"

His head dropped back. Charley hesitated only a moment. Just long enough to s.n.a.t.c.h Bagman's hat out of the mire where it had fallen. Then he was off, finding his way along the wall-top easy this time and running away between the trees.

Chapter 16 The long walk home.

For a while the birds, which had been scared into the sky by the gunshots, kept circling and calling, but gradually they settled again, and it grew very quiet. Fever crouched among the birches, picturing cubes and pyramids and cones and making herself recite their different properties. She had wrapped her arms tight round herself, and her breathing was quick and shallow and she was trying not to move.

Kit Solent dropped his pistol and stooped over the Skinner, feeling for a pulse amid the white stubble on his throat, as if there were a chance he might still be alive. Blood flowed steadily and sadly from him, looking almost purple as it curled into the green water.

"I think this is Creech," he said. He tried to laugh. "I think I've killed Bagman Creech...."

"Who?" said Fever.

"Old Skinner general from the riots. I thought he'd died years ago. Well, he's dead now all right. Oh, Poskitt...I've never shot anyone before. I carry the gun in case of thieves, but I never expected...Why didn't he listen to me? The stupid old fool! I told him to drop his gun, but he didn't listen! He was just going to go ahead and...The G.o.ds alone know what he was thinking!"

"What did he want with me?" asked Fever, edging closer to look at the dead man. It seemed to her that you did not need to be an imaginary deity to understand why Creech had acted as he did. It was simply that he thought Fever's death was more important than his own life, and he had thought he would be able to kill her before Kit killed him. What she still didn't understand was what it was that had made him hate her so.

"He said ... he said I wasn't human...."

"He was mad," said Kit firmly. With trembling hands he picked his pistol up and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Fever, I'm so sorry. It's my fault. I should never have brought you here. You're not ready...."

Fever looked up at him. "He said I was a Scriven. A half-breed Scriven...but there's no such thing, is there?"

"He was a mad old man. He didn't know what you are."

"But you do?"

Kit looked away, scanning the marsh for signs of movement. There was none. He left Fever alone and went to look for the Skinner's boy, but soon gave up. What could he do if he did find him? Shoot him, too? The kid hadn't looked much older than Ruan. He gave up and returned to where Fever waited. "He's run off. if he goes back to London and tells what happened here, you'll be in danger.... We both will.... People still look up to the Skinners in the cheap boroughs." He reached down and pulled her to her feet. "Fever, can you open the vault?"

The door code was as clear in Fever's mind as it had been before she met the Skinner. Her fingers knew the precise movements that they would have to make to type the right sequence on the ivory keys. But she was too scared and confused to trust Kit Solent anymore. What would happen if she did open the door for him? What would become of her when she was no more use to him?

"No," she said. "I don't know the code. I never did."

Kit stood staring at her. He was more than half sure that she was lying. When she said, "No," her voice dipped in the middle. When she said, "I don't know the code," a blush spread right across her face and her ears turned red. He wanted to drag her back inside the hill; force her back to the lock and make her open it....

But he was not that sort of man. Ruthlessness had never been his style. All his life he'd been kind; the sort of boy who came home b.l.o.o.d.y-nosed from school after standing up for smaller boys against the bullies. The sort of man who could never bring himself to smack his children when they misbehaved, or even to stay cross with them for long. He looked at Fever as she stood in front of him all trembly and mud stained, yet still trying to look poised and rational, and it was impossible to even imagine himself making her keep working at the lock. She needed help; she needed his protection; she needed, like any lost and frightened child, to be home.

And so did he. Killing Creech had shocked him. He felt sick of Nonesuch House and its secrets. They weren't worth a life, not even the life of a crazy old man. Let the Movement have them. He wanted to go home.

"Come on," he said, taking Fever's hand, and she numbly let him hold it and lead her uphill to the hidden entrance. "We'll get you back to G.o.dshawk's Head. You'll be safe there, if that boy makes trouble."

Kit shut the secret door behind them and they went downstairs to where their lanterns waited. Fever's had gone out, but she found a box of matches among his tools and relit it and stuffed the matches in her pocket as she followed him back into the tunnel. Kit did not even look at the vault door and the lock as they pa.s.sed it. Fever dimly understood how much he was giving up. Half of her, the still-rational half, wanted to turn back and find out if her hand still knew the dance it had longed to do on G.o.dshawk's keypad. But she was afraid. Something deep and strange had stirred inside her when she stood there before. She had been overwhelmed by something, and the most frightening thing about it was that she could not find any rational explanation; it had felt as if she were possessed by some malevolent spirit.

"I'm sorry," she managed to mumble, trailing Kit back along the tunnel.

"No, Fever," he said. "I'm sorry. I should never have brought you here."

They walked on in silence and thought of the Skinner's boy haring home across the marshes, somewhere above their heads.

"Why did you?" asked Fever. "Bring me here, I mean? Why did you think I could help?"

Kit stopped and looked at her again in the lantern light. "I don't know."

"But you must have had a reason for choosing me."

He turned and walked on, so fast that Fever had to run to keep up. They splashed through a flooded section of the tunnel, slos.h.i.+ng shadows and wet echoes ahead of them. After another fifty yards or so Kit stopped again, turned back to her, and seemed to come to some decision. "Fever, I haven't told you the truth. Not everything."

Fever waited while he looked at the floor, the tunnel walls, the lantern, anywhere but at her, working out in his head what he had to confess to her.

"It all began when I found that notebook of G.o.dshawk's at Rag Fair," he said. "I didn't know what those strange designs were for, and I still don't, but it got me interested in the old man. I'd heard a lot about G.o.dshawk the king, but nothing about G.o.dshawk the scientist. So I started asking questions, and after a while my questions led me to a girl named Katie Unthank. Her late father had been an archaeologist who'd worked sometimes with G.o.dshawk, and she had heard things from him. She had heard about the existence of the vault, the workshop where G.o.dshawk was supposed to have devised his most secret inventions. And she had heard about you."

" Me ?"

"Katie didn't know much. Only that the Order of Engineers was bringing up a child called Fever Crumb, and that you were important. There had been some kind of experiment when you were newborn. Unthank believed that some of G.o.dshawk's knowledge had been transferred into your brain."

"That's impossible," said Fever, Engineerishly.

"Maybe, but that's what Katie told me. Her father used to say, 'When that girl grows up, she'll be the key that unlocks G.o.dshawk's secrets.' He claimed that whatever G.o.dshawk had done to your brain, its effects wouldn't be apparent until you were an adult.

"It was Katie who told me the story of the old tunnel which was supposed to link Nonesuch with the Barbican. We spent months looking for it. We didn't find it, but while we were trying, we fell in love. After that we were so happy, and so busy with each other and the children, that we let ourselves forget G.o.dshawk and his secrets. Then, last year, I heard about that cave-in and guessed the tunnel's course. I thought Katie would have wanted me to explore it, and use whatever treasures I found in G.o.dshawk's vault to provide for Fern and Ruan. When I came up against his lock I remembered that strange tale she'd told me about the child who'd gone to live with the Engineers. I knew you wouldn't be old enough yet for G.o.dshawk's memories to have surfaced, but I thought that if I took you to Nonesuch House, and exposed you to the old man's favorite scents and tastes, it might jog something....

"I shouldn't have done it. I knew all along that it was unfair to use you like that. But lately, with this news from the north...I thought it was worth trying anything that would get me into that vault before the Movement arrived. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

"I don't believe it's possible," said Fever again, after they had walked on a few hundred yards in silence. "I don't believe G.o.dshawk could have put thoughts into my brain. That's just voodoo science, the kind of foolish story that the newspapers like to print, to make people think that the Ancients were capable of miracles...."

But she was trying to convince herself as well as Kit. Because the Ancients had been capable of miracles, or at least of science so advanced that it seemed miraculous, even to an Engineer. And did Kit's story not offer an explanation, at last, for the memories that had been gathering in her head like fog ever since she first went to Nonesuch House?

"I'm sorry, Fever," said Kit again, after another half mile.

"You should not have had to hear all this from me. I don't understand it and I can't explain it very well. You need to talk to Dr. Crumb."

"Why?"

"He must know something. It isn't usual for the Engineers to take in a baby girl. They must have known about you from the start."

"No!" said Fever. "Dr. Crumb found me. In a basket. And he thought it would be irrational to leave me. He told me so, and he wouldn't lie. He doesn't believe in telling lies But as she spoke she was touching the back of her head, tracing the silvery scar that had been there since the day she was found. Could she really believe all Dr. Crumb had told her? Was that not a little too much like blind faith? And even if she trusted him, could she trust Dr. Stayling and all the other members of the Order? Katie Solent's father, who had worked for G.o.dshawk, had been the same Master Unthank whom Dr. Crumb had gone to visit on the day he found Fever....

Had her discovery been carefully arranged? Perhaps Dr. Stayling and the other senior Engineers had taken her into the Head in the same spirit that they gave s.p.a.ce to white rats and fruit flies and cultures of bacteria on petri dishes -- merely as an experiment to be observed.

Chapter 17 storm coming.

It seemed a long, long way, that walk back through the tunnel. But they emerged at last into the antechamber behind the bookcase, and stood staring at each other for a moment, like conspirators, listening to the faint sound of the children's laughter from upstairs.

"That's strange," said Kit, looking relieved that he had something else to talk about besides the contents of Fever's brain. "They should be at school...."

The laughter grew louder as they emerged through the bookcase. They found Ruan in the hall, lumbering along on all fours, while Fern clung giggling to his back. "Ruan's a horse!" she shouted, when she saw them. "Fever, look, Ruan's a horse!"

"No, Ruan is a bipedal primate," said Fever helpfully, (she had still not got the hang of make-believe.) "Children," said their father, stooping to hug the little girl as she tumbled laughing off her brother's back, "why aren't you at school?"

"School's shut!" said Ruan, looking very happy about it. "Miss Wernicke's run away for fear of the nomads attacking."

"It's true, sir," announced Mistress Gloomstove, who appeared just then from the kitchen, dusting her hands on her ap.r.o.n. "We found a notice on Miss Wernicke's door this morning saying as how she's gone to stay with her sister in Slugg's Pottage on account of the nomad horde, sir, and school's closed indefinitely. She apologized for the inconvenience, as if that made it any better. Why, I'd give her inconvenience if I had her here. Have you ever tried dusting and tidying this place, sir, with these two young savages rampaging around and getting underfoot? I'm glad to see you home to deal with them, sir, I do say...."

Kit Solent gave the housekeeper his most charming smile. "I'm deeply sorry, Mistress G; you know that I'd not have left them with you if I'd had the least inkling that school was off. But I'm afraid I can't relieve you of them just yet. I have to take Fever back to G.o.dshawk's Head, you see. It will take only ten minutes...half an hour at most ..."

Mistress Gloomstove's face took on a cold, faraway look. "I don't know about that, sir. I'm employed to keep house, sir. If it's a nursemaid or a governess you're wanting ..."

"Naturally, I'll make it up to you," said Kit hastily, and hurried upstairs to his office.

Fern, Ruan, and Mistress Gloomstove all stood and looked at Fever.

"You're all muddy," said Fern at last.

"Yes. Yes I am," admitted Fever, looking down at herself. Her neat white coat was splashed and scribbled with dark sprays of Brick Marsh mud and greenish stains of moss and gra.s.s. For all she knew there was blood there, too. "I fell over," she said, rather lamely. "In some mud."

She was glad of the clatter of Kit's boots coming back down the stairs. He had Fever's cardboard suitcase under his arm, and he was rummaging in a leather purse. "Here," he said, handing a s.h.i.+ny coin to Mistress Gloomstove. "I hope that will be some small token of my thanks; sorry it can't be more, but I must save some for the chair fare. I shall be back as soon as I can. Don't open the door to anyone while I am gone."

He kissed the children, and suddenly Fever found herself making her quick good-byes and stepping outside after him into the sullen stormy light, and it occurred to her that she would probably never see the house or the children again. There was rain in the air. They didn't go toward Cripplegate but turned downhill instead, walking quickly through quiet and half-deserted streets and empty courts until they reached the edges of Limehouse, where Kit hailed a pa.s.sing chair. The chief bearer asked, "Where to, mate?" and Kit told him, "G.o.dshawk's Head."

Fever climbed inside, and Kit got in with her and shut the door. As the chair set off she heard a sound, and she thought that it was thunder, but it went on and on, coming from the lower end of the city; a s.h.i.+fting, snarling sound, which made her think of some vast and dangerous animal stirring in its sleep. All down the street the shopkeepers were putting up their shutters, and knots of working men stood talking, turning to stare as the chair went past.

The day was dark by the time Charley Shallow got back to London -- still not noon, but the sky gone black as a winter's evening, as if the clouds themselves were putting on mourning for old Bagman Creech.

He hadn't dared to go skirting back round Nonesuch Hill to find the coracle, but had run blindly through the marshes till he stumbled on a plankway, a path built by scavengers or hunters, which he followed till it brought him to the southern edge of the city. He was mud-caked, and leech-nibbled; dirty water spewed from his boot tops at every step. A wind tram was pa.s.sing and he leaped on board, ignoring the old-fas.h.i.+oned looks that the other pa.s.sengers gave him when they got a whiff of his marsh-steeped clothes. The tram was moving slowly, with the whole crew busy poling it along, and Charley thought that, with a bit of luck, he might get several stops nearer home before anyone bothered asking him to pay. When they did, he'd have to jump off quick, 'cos he was skint.

But when the conductor finally appeared in front of him, he changed his mind. He wasn't just the pot boy from the Mott and Hoople no more. He was Bagman Creech's 'prentice. And now Bagman was gone, that made Charley his heir, didn't it? You're the last of us, Bagman had said. The last of the Skinners. Charley pulled himself up stiff and straightened the old bowler hat on his head and said, "Sorry, mate, I've got no money. I'm on Skinners' business."

"Skinners?" said the conductor, checking his natural urge to throw this filthy, smelly urchin off his tram.

"Bagman Creech is dead," said Charley. "We was hunting a Scriven and she had a friend and he shot Bagman down. I've got to ... Here he hesitated, for he wasn't quite sure what he had to do. "I've got to sort it."

The conductor still looked uncertain, till one of Charley's fellow pa.s.sengers, a woman, said, "That boy's all right. I saw him with old Bagman up in town yesterday."

"Bagman's dead!" said someone else, pa.s.sing on what Charley had said to their neighbor. The news was spreading down the tram. Even the crew were looking at Charley now.

The conductor took an oyster sh.e.l.l from his satchel and looped its string over Charley's head. "Good luck, boy. Anything you need, you just ask."

Charley looked at him, and at the faces of the other pa.s.sengers. He wasn't used to this. To power. He wondered what Bagman would have told them. He said, "Just keep a look out, that's all. She was in the marshes, but she could be back in town by now. She looks like a girl and she dresses like one of them Engineers what live in that old head. She's got a human gent protecting her, an archaeologist name of Solent."

The track swung east toward the distant Terminus, and the sails flapped and then tautened, filling with a sudden breeze. The sky astern, over the marshes, was smeared with rain. Charley sat down again, and no one complained now about the smell of marsh that rose from him or the stain he'd leave upon the seat slats. He'd not been sure where he was going, but he knew now. Back to Bagman's house to clean himself up and find himself a new weapon. And then he'd finish the job. Find that Patchskin, and kill her.

Charley hadn't reckoned on the power of rumors, though. The story he'd told had a life of its own, and it moved faster than he could. At every stop the tram made, pa.s.sengers got off and told the news of Bagman Creech's death in pubs and street markets. Diggers told it to their wives, and their children overheard it and went shouting it through the shabby streets. Along 'Bankmentside and up Cripplegate and through all the rookeries of St Kylie the story spread and grew. Drinkers carried it from pub to pub. In the Crate of Codlings and the Rose Reviv'd, wild rumors got hammered into hard fact. There was a Patchskin loose. Maybe more than one. They were in league with the Movement, and hoping to seize power and have all London for their own again. Bagman Creech had found this out, and one of the 'Skins had killed him for it. And worst of all, the murderess had human help....