A Web of Air (26 page)

Fever snatched the lantern and ran to the hatch and down the stairs, looking desperately around their cluttered quarters. The belt of bullets which Arlo had taken from the Aranha’s gun shone faintly, abandoned under a table.
If only we hadn’t dismantled it,
Fever thought. The Aranha could have kept a whole fleet from landing. But regret would not bring it back, any more than it would bring back Weasel or undo his treachery. She snatched up the bullet-belt and studied the brass cartridges. On the base of each was a raised disc which she guessed must be some sort of percussion cap. A mechanism inside the Aranha’s gun would have struck that, causing the charge inside the cartridge to explode and force the bullet down the gun barrel. Ingenious, but useless, since the gun itself was several fathoms down in the old dock…

“What about the angels?” she asked, glancing round as Arlo came down the stairs. “Would they help us?”

He shook his head. “They’d be too scared. It’s not their fight anyway. They probably wouldn’t even understand… They don’t understand much that we do. That’s why Weasel thought it was all right to tell Thirza about us, I expect. I was wrong to be angry at him. Angels don’t think like us. They don’t understand…”

Fever went to him and kissed him. There seemed a strong chance that she might die soon, and she did not want to die without kissing him. She need not have worried about not knowing how; it turned out that her mouth had known all along. He tasted of the colour that you see when you lift your face to the summer sun and close your eyes.

“Fever…” he said, when she stopped.

It was very interesting, this falling in love. She understood now why people wrote so many plays and songs about it. But it was hard to concentrate properly knowing that those men were coming, and that one of them was the man who had tried to squash her with a house. She made herself step away from Arlo and went to the fireplace, stirring up the embers there with the poker, throwing on fresh wood. She said, “Boil up some water, quick.”

“Why?”

“And gather together some logs … stones from the wall … anything heavy.”

“You’re going to throw
stones
at them?”

“We’re going to
drop
stones
on
them. We’re a hundred feet higher than them. That’s a hundred feet of acceleration. Stored gravitational energy waiting to be unleashed.”

She checked the big vice attached to the old table that served them as a workbench. Fetched a hammer and a six-inch nail. When she looked from the eastern window she could no longer see the skiff, but she knew that was not a good thing; that meant it was close in now, hidden from her among the rocks and shadows of rocks just offshore. Maybe it was already off-loading its landing party along the overgrown quay.

Meanwhile, Arlo had set a big pot of water to heat over the fire, and was making a pile of the biggest logs on the platform outside, at the top of the access ladder. Fever prised one of the bullets free of the belt and clamped it tightly in the jaws of the vice, then dragged the table round until the bullet pointed at the doorway. She laid the hammer and the nail ready beside it, then fetched the heaviest things she could carry: bits of the old engine cowling, a big wrench, a loose stone from the wall.

She went outside to add them to Arlo’s pile at the top of the ladder, and was about to go back in and look for something else when she heard voices echoing among the crumbled walls below, and the hollow clonk as a boat banged against the stone jetty.

“They are at the quay!” said Arlo.

The men were making no attempt at stealth. Some of them carried flaming torches, and they talked to each other in loud voices as they came up the slope from the quays. Only five or six of them, so Fever guessed that they were not expecting much resistance. She felt a fluttering sensation in her stomach. She needed the toilet, but there wasn’t time now. Two of the men had detached themselves from the rest and came right to the ladder’s foot. One held a torch up. The other stood in the pool of light it cast so that Arlo and Fever could see his face.

It was Fat Jago.

He shaded his eyes against the torchlight, peering up. “Thursday? Your little feathered friend told me where to find you. Will you let me up? We need to talk.”

Arlo looked at Fever, and she could see that he was relieved by the fat man’s reasonable tone. It would be easy to believe in that tone; to let Belkin climb up and talk to them. But Fever remembered too well her last chat with him. It was irrational to trust him. They could not let the
Goshawk
fall into the hands of a man like that.

Before Arlo could reply she picked up a big stone and dropped it over the edge of the platform. It clanged off the handrail at the edge of the landing halfway down and Fat Jago skipped clumsily backwards as it shattered on the ground just in front of him.

“Thursday! Be reasonable!” he pleaded. “Even you must see that you can’t do this alone! The Oktopous Cartel will give you all you need: space, equipment, workers… They want to help you.”

“They’ll have to come up and get me first!” shouted Arlo, and he snatched a log and sent it hurtling down. Belkin strode to the foot of the ladder, motioning angrily for the rest of his men. They came very fast, with the torchlight splashing their running shadows on the cobbles and the weeds. Bald heads, bare arms, studded leather jerkins, wide belts with knives stuffed through them. They came barefoot, like sailors, making almost no sound.

Belkin called to them as they started swarming up the ladder, “Take them alive! I want the machine undamaged.”

Fever hefted one of the weightier bits of Edgar Saraband’s engine, took aim, and let it go. It struck sparks from the ladder as it dropped. A man looked up at the flash and she saw his eyes go wide in the instant before it crunched into his face. He fell soundlessly from the ladder, knocking down one of his mates, but the rest came on. She dropped another piece, and then she and Arlo started heaving logs and engine parts over the edge. The attackers were ready for them now and leant sideways off the ladder to avoid the missiles. A few glanced off shoulders and leather-armoured backs on their way to the ground, but the men came on, and were soon on the landing.

By then the pot of water on the fire was burbling happily to itself. Together, not speaking, Fever and Arlo ran to fetch it. In the short time that it took them to carry it to the ladder top one of the attackers had managed to get almost up to the entry platform. They upended the pot over him and he screamed and put his hands to his scalded face and went backwards off the ladder and down, hitting the ground with a sound like a stomped snail.

Was he dead? Fever didn’t know. Did she feel bad about that? She saw no rational reason why she should. It was his own fault. If the men would just go back to their ship and sail away; if they’d only stop trying to get up the ladder… But the three remaining men kept climbing and after a few moments more all the ammunition was exhausted. Arlo snatched up the empty pot and it rang like a gong on the bald head of one who had made it almost to the platform, but he kept on coming.

Fever shoved Arlo inside the tower and went in after him, shouting, “Get upstairs! Smash the machine!” She thrust him towards the staircase and scrambled over to the table, where her ultimate weapon waited.

Outside, the man heaved himself up on to the platform. It was Fat Jago himself, wearing a ridiculous jacket with so many pockets that he looked like a chest of drawers. He glowered in through the doorway. Dribbles of blood covered his face like a red lace veil, spilling from a cut the falling pot had made. He was breathing hard after his climb.

Fever picked up the nail and set it against the end of the bullet. Picked up the hammer and set it against the head of the nail. Looked up to make sure that the vice was pointing right at Fat Jago’s vast body as he stomped towards her.

She drew back the hammer and struck the nail against the bullet with one firm blow.

he battle until then had been carried on in silence, broken only by scuffling noises, a few gasps and grunts and that brief shriek as the scalded man fell. The sound of the bullet exploding was abrupt and startling, like an unexpected thunderclap. It filled the tower. It sent echoes slamming from the cliffs.

Arlo froze at the foot of the stairs. Fever stood with the hammer clutched tight in her hand. The grin dropped off Fat Jago’s face like a picture falling off a wall. His eyes went wide with surprise and he looked down at his own broad chest. Only the smoke moved, unfurling from the empty bullet casing.

Then Fat Jago looked up at Fever again, and his grin returned. Wherever the bullet had gone, it had missed him completely.

Fever flung the hammer at him instead, but she was rattled now and that missed too. Fat Jago lunged at her across the room, roaring, as if the sound of the shot had been a signal that everyone was allowed to start making noise now. “You interfering bloody Londoner!” he shouted. “Why couldn’t you keep your nose out of this?”

Fever saw something glint in the shadows under the table. It was the Aranha’s bullet-belt, and she snatched it up and swung it at the roaring face, but Fat Jago caught it and dragged it painfully from her fingers and slung it across the room. She turned to try and run but his hand was round her wrist, twisting her arm behind her; his thick forearm came across her throat from behind, cutting off her cry; she was slammed face first against the wall, his hot red breath on the back of her neck.

Behind him, two more men came through the doorway. Arlo was running towards Fever, but one of the newcomers booted his legs from under him and the other caught him as he fell, cuffing him viciously across the face when he tried to bite him.

“Right,” said Fat Jago. “It’s done. Where’s the flying machine?”

And the fire went suddenly mad. Something sprang up and started to roar and hammer there; a leaping fire-snake, a rattling series of explosions that bled together into one long juddering noise, while tools and boxes leapt from the shelves on the walls and the walls themselves started to come apart, scattering sprays of plaster and splintered wood like wedding-rice. There were shouts and curses from Fat Jago’s men. There was a shrill cry of pain and shock that sounded like Arlo’s. There were whines and buzzings; a sense that the air was filled with small and speeding things; hornets perhaps, to judge by the way the men jumped and danced and clutched at themselves. Fat Jago suddenly rammed Fever still harder against the wall, pressing his immense and shuddering weight against her. “What are you
doing?”
she shouted, panicked by his brute bulk and by the noise. Fat Jago answered with a grunt, and his weight kept growing, forcing her down the wall to the floor, where he sprawled himself heavily on top of her.

It was like being buried alive.

At least the noise had stopped. There was a dwindling shriek as a man stumbled backwards through the doorway and pitched over the handrail outside; a dull clang as his head hit a rung; a distant crunch. A voice far below shouting, “What’s that? Fat Jago? What’s happening up there?”

The sounds came vague and underwatery through Fever’s battered eardrums where she lay crushed beneath the landslide of flesh that was Fat Jago. What was he doing? Was he trying to suffocate her? She struggled for breath, sure that her ribcage would give way at any moment, her skull scrunch like an egg between his chest and the hard stone floor.

Then Arlo was shouting, “Fever! Fever!” and the weight on top of her shifted. She heaved upwards with her shoulders and elbows and Fat Jago rolled off her uncomplainingly, like an overturned sofa.

“The bullets!” Arlo was saying. “The bullets out of the Aranha – he threw them in the fire and they…”

Fat Jago lay on his side and stared peevishly at Fever. A dozen of the Aranha’s bullets had hit him in the back. He opened his mouth and a bubble of spit formed between his lips and burst with a faint popping noise:
pok.
That was the last sound he made.

Arlo was saying, “…he threw them and they landed in the fire and they went off…”

Fever made herself stop looking at Fat Jago and looked down at herself instead, to make sure that she had not been shot without noticing it. She hadn’t; Fat Jago’s body had shielded her completely. But when she looked at Arlo she saw that he was clutching a place near his right shoulder and that his shirtsleeve was dark and wet and dripping.

She made him sit down on the steps and take off his shirt. There was a hole in his upper arm, a flood of blood. She tore a strip from the shirt to bind it and told him to keep it lifted up. Arlo obeyed meekly. There was an empty look in his eyes which Fever found almost more worrying than the wound, but maybe she herself looked just as bad.

She went back out on to the platform, stopping on the way to help herself to a pistol that one of Fat Jago’s companions had dropped. Outside, men were still shouting. Two of those who had fallen from the ladder had picked themselves up, though the others still lay where they’d landed. Angels whirled through the darkness, settling near the bodies, nerving themselves to start searching the dead men’s pockets for snacks.