Fever Crumb (26 page)

After a few moments Quercus himself emerged from his mono, fastening his cloak, and Wavey Godshawk took Fever's hand and said, "Come, dear, let's step down."

The night air felt cool and fresh after the stuffiness of the mono cabin. Fever went down the ladder behind her mother, watching her gaze about at the city, wondering what she was feeling. Would any of those Londoners, looking on from their windows and the doorways of shops and houses, recognize Godshawk's daughter from all those years ago?

"What do you want?" bawled a big, rough voice, echoing off the house fronts. Fever looked up at the balcony above the Barbican's prow, and saw that it was not Gilpin Wheen who stood there but Ted Swiney. She stepped behind her mother, not wanting him to see her. But Swiney was not looking at her; his mean little eyes were fixed on Quercus.

Quercus looked up at him. "Do you have the authority to speak for London?" he called.

"Speak
for London?" Swiney swelled like a cockney toad, flushed with pride and hatred.
"Speak
for London? I
am
London!"

Quercus turned around slowly, taking in the watchers in the square. "This city," he said loudly, "is now a possession of the Movement. We have plans for it. Great plans, which you may share in. Offer no resistance, and you have nothing to fear."

"That's a load of blog!" shouted Ted Swiney, as the echoes faded. "I bet that's what the Dapplejacks said when
they
took over. We're Londoners, we are! We won't be ruled by some jumped-up gypsy like you!"

He looked triumphantly at his people. He'd expected his words to raise a cheer, but apart from a half-hearted "Yeah!" from Mutt

Gnarly, no one reacted at all. The truth was, most Londoners didn't much care who ruled them. The ones who had had their property burned or looted the day before were inclined to think that Quercus might be an improvement, and there were many important men who had, like Dr. Stayling, already been swayed by Movement agents. Meanwhile, the thugs and wastrels who had shoehorned Ted into the Barbican were too wary of the nomads' weaponry to show him much support.

Quercus came up the steps in front of the Barbican, past the giant beer keg that still waited there, lofted up on its trestles. He stood directly below Ted, and called loudly up at him. "Your army is scattered, and your city lies under my guns," he said. "I am not even asking you to surrender. It is over. I am Mayor of London now."

"Are you, now?" said Ted, through his small, square, tight-clamped teeth. He lacked most virtues, but he did have a fierce, stupid, cornered-rat kind of courage. Hadn't he battled gladiators and Godshawk's death-machines in Pickled Eel Circus? He was a fighter, and he wasn't going to give up the city he'd won to this pale little twig of a man. And wasn't that how they settled things, up in the nomad hunting grounds? You had to give them that, they didn't muck about with elections and speeches, if there was two nomads who both wanted power, they settled it like men.

"I'll fight you for it," he said. "You and me. Right here. With all London as our witness. Winner takes the city."

Quercus scratched his nose. "Hand to hand? Unarmed? No weapons?"

"A fair fight," said Ted proudly, grinning down at him, this little northerner he could snap with his bare hands.

The arquebus men fingered their firing levers. Several Movement chieftains came hurrying forward to warn Quercus that he need not accept Ted's challenge, but he waved them away. He seemed amused.

"You're on," he said.

***

Down in the square, Londoners and nomads alike were drawn toward the Barbican, magnetized by the prospect of the duel. But Wavey Godshawk took her daughter by the hand and started to pull her in the opposite direction. She was carrying a bulky canvas satchel over one shoulder, and a 'lectric lantern.

"Come now," she said. "We don't have time to watch this foolishness. The important thing is to make sure that Godshawk's vault is secured...."

"But what about Quercus?" asked Fever. She looked back at the Barbican steps where the Land Admiral was stripping off his cloak and armor and handing his sword belt to a second. "Aren't you worried about this fight?"

"Of course not. It will make no difference. The city is ours. It is just Quercus's silly pride that makes him want to indulge in this gesture. He's a fighting man and this was all too easy for him. He wants it to feel like a real victory."

"But that's irrational! He might be killed!" protested Fever.

Wavey shrugged. "It will make no difference. Another man can take his place and the Movement will still have London. You are not worried for him, are you?"

Fever felt her ears turn pink, and was glad that she was still wearing the hat. "I would not wish him to be killed," she said.

Wavey squeezed her hand. "He is only a common human, Fever. Their kind are two-a-penny, you know. We are the ones who matter, you and me and Godshawk's legacy. Come, let's go and see if it's still intact."

The edges of the square were filling fast with people as word of Swiney's challenge spread down Ludgate Hill. Wavey called out to some nearby Stalkers to come with her and clear a way for her. Lammergeier, Corvus, and Grike.

"Do we have to have
him
with us?" asked Fever, still uneasy in the presence of the new Stalker. Despite his armor and his towering height, she could not stop thinking of him as Kit Solent.

"It would hardly be wise to go wandering about this town without a bodyguard," said Wavey. "Quercus agreed that I could take Corvus and Lammergeier, but he cannot spare many of his experienced warriors, so Grike will come, too. Besides, who could be more appropriate?"

She shone the beam of her lantern ahead of them and the crowd parted nervously to let them through. The Londoners' eyes were all upon the Stalkers and not upon the woman and the girl who followed them. Fever watched Grike, trying to forget who he'd been the day before, trying to ignore her feelings of pity and disgust.

She did not see Charley Shallow standing in the crowd. She did not see his gaze slip from the Stalker's face to hers.

***

A storm had blown through the Solent house. At least, that's what it looked like: blasted the front door in and roared right through, overturning furniture and wrenching down curtains, smashing the scent lanterns and spilling perfumes across the floors, filling the wrecked rooms with drifts of clashing scent.

The Stalker Grike strode through it all quite unmoved, following Corvus and Lammergeier. His visor was up and his bloodless face was the face of Kit Solent, but as his electric eyes slid over portraits of his wife and her father, his children and his former self, he gave no sign of recognizing anything.
He has
no memories at all,
thought Fever.
And me, I've far too many
.

There was no sign of Fern or Ruan as they walked toward the hidden basement and the passageway. Fever thought of calling out their names, but stopped herself. She would not want them to meet their father in his new form, not unwarned. Anyway, it seemed unlikely that they would have remained in this place, with its broken windows and torn-off doors. Even though she worked for the Movement, Mistress Gloomstove surely wouldn't have left them alone to face the rioters, would she?

They stopped before the bookcase. Wavey shone her lantern beam over it, and Fever reached up and pressed the stud to open it. As it slid aside she half thought she heard another sound, behind her. She turned, but saw nothing there. The house was probably full of small meaningless noises as the wind whisked through it.

She didn't notice Charley Shallow dart behind the doorjamb. But he was there all right, and he had watched the bookcase open, and he had seen how it was done.

***

In Barbican Square Quercus and Swiney circled each other, crouched and wary. Spectators pressed in on all sides. There was a silence that was not quite silence; rather the sound of a thousand people trying not to make a sound. Sometimes a burning torch flapped and roared as the breeze caught it. The short stood on tiptoe to peek over the shoulders of taller Londoners. Movement warriors lowered their guns and stood watching. Mono pilots gazed from the open hatchways of their vehicles. Children were held aloft by their parents -- "It'll be educational, this. When you're grown you'll be able to say, I was there, on Ludgate Hill, the day Swiney did battle for the city
against...against...
what's this bloke's name again?'"

"Quercus!" shouted a warrior suddenly, and the others around him took up the chant, cheering on their leader. "Quercus! Quercus!"

For a moment it was only the invaders' voices that went echoing about the square. Then a Londoner called out, "Swiney!" The rest all looked at him with interest, waiting to see if the Movement or their Stalkers would punish him. When no harm came to him, others started to join in. "Swiney! Come on, Ted! Swiney for London!"

Quercus lunged forward, feinting to the right, then driving his left fist hard at Swiney's head. But Swiney was ready for him. Caught him by the forearm and slung him past, swung his leg up in a kick that missed, because Quercus was tougher than he looked and recovered faster than Swiney had expected. His bony fist smashed into Ted's face once, twice, blood squirting sudden and red from Ted's nose. Ted staggering backward, shaking his head as if he were shaking off the pain...

"He's tapped Ted's ketchup," they said in the crowd.

"He's hard all right."

"It's a good thing we put Ted in instead of old Gilpin Wheen. Gilpin Wheen wouldn't have lasted ten seconds against this geezer."

"Gilpin Wheen wouldn't have asked him for a fight in the first place, you great soft blogger."

And the shouts going on all the time, booming off the walls all round the square, while pigeons scattered into the sky, and the two men grappled and went rolling in each other's arms down the Barbican steps.

***

Inside the Barbican, everyone had forgotten Dr. Crumb. He came out onto a high balcony and peered down into the square with the sort of concentration he usually reserved for petri dishes and bits of alum paper.

Below him, Ted had gained the upper hand. But it was only for a moment. Quercus was as slippery as an elver, and the brisk blows he kept landing on Ted's ears and jaw were making the pub keeper slow and stupid. There was blood on both men's faces now, blood spotting the steps and the cobbles of the square, and Ted had spat out a couple of teeth that he could ill afford to lose. But he kept fighting. He was glad, in a way, that the northerner hadn't proved as fragile as he'd expected. This way all London could see the fight was fair, and when he won it they'd rise up and turf these nomads out and carry him shoulder high, the way the crowds at Pickled Eel used to when he laid out one of the Pa tension's champions.

But he knew that he was flagging. It was time to end this punch-up. Grabbing Quercus by his upper body, Swiney started maneuvering him toward the trestles that supported that giant barrel of Brimstone Best. A few men had climbed up onto the trestles as the fight began, and anyone who wasn't in the know would have thought they were just up there for a better view. But one of them was Mutt Gnarly and another was Brickie Chapstick, and Ted had given secret orders to them both.

***

Fever was walking through memories, following her mother and the Stalker Grike along the tunnel, with Corvus and Lammergeier marching behind her. It was so like the first time she'd walked there, with Kit Solent. And so like other times, when Godshawk had come this way, hurrying off to spend a few quiet hours in his workroom between meetings at the Barbican. The old man's memories were pouring into her mind, and the farther she went along that winding way the more frequently she caught herself believing that she
was
Godshawk, and that the woman who strode ahead of her was her daughter.

She remembered standing outside Nonesuch House, looking north to London. But instead of the real city she saw the future London that Godshawk had imagined. The Barbican was repaired. It had wheels and tracks again, as it had when it first brought the Scriven south, but it was ten times larger than it had been then. Even Fever's own memories of the Movement's traction fortress couldn't compete with it. In Godshawk's vision the whole of London had been stripped and cannibalized to build three tall tiers of houses, parks, and manufactories on its back, and the thunder from its giant engines drummed across the Brick Marsh, startling up wildfowl from the reed beds as the whole structure began dragging itself laboriously across the earth on banks of huge wheels....

"A moving city!" she said, stopping short. "I -- I mean
he --
he meant to move London.... The thing in the vault, it's an engine, isn't it?" She remembered the designs she had seen in the notebook at Kit Solent's place. She remembered drawing them now. Just doodles, they had been; the first inklings of an idea. "An external combustion engine, based on an Ancient device called a Stirling engine, but far more efficient ..."

Wavey had stopped walking, too. She stood with her lantern raised, her face turned back to look at Fever. "Godshawk believed that with a few dozen such engines he could move London. He had time to build only one before the Skinners murdered him."

Fever shook her head, clearing away the memories. "But why would anyone want a moving city?"

Wavey laughed. "Perhaps it takes a nomad to see the beauty of it. Godshawk only envisaged moving London once. He meant it to carry the Scriven to the shores of the Middle Sea where they would settle down again, far from angry Londoners and the spreading ice. Quercus has other plans. He means to make London the first true nomad city. He means it to keep on traveling the world, taking whatever it needs from other cities that haven't the means to get out of his path."