Scrivener's Moon (12 page)

“There are no such things as. . .” Fever started to say, but she knew Cluny was only being kind.

“I never really trusted our technomancer,” Cluny said confidingly. She looked shy for a moment, despite her savage looks. “I thought it was mostly just conjuring tricks, his medicine-magic. When I saw your wounds I thought you would die. We all did. But you lived. So Tharp must be all right at it, mustn’t he?”

Fever said nothing. She knew it was not that mad old man’s potions and witch-doctoring that had healed her. The secret machines with which her grandfather had injected her when she was just a baby had been at work inside her again, remaking damaged tissue and battling infection. It was Godshawk who had saved her life.

For a while after that, all her days were the same. She slept a lot. Servants brought meals for her, and helped her wash herself. Her own clothes had all been ruined, and she was given Arkhangelsk clothes instead: a brown linen dress, a stiff felt tunic embroidered with copper wire, soft deerskin slippers. Her reflection in the mirror looked shockingly thin. Shadows sat in the hollows under her cheekbones. The angry scars on her chest and back ached, seeping thin yellow tears. Each time she shut her eyes she saw Wavey hacked in half again. Each time she slept she dreamed of Arlo Thursday in his little cutter, lost on the hungry, grey-and-silver sea.

Sometimes Cluny Morvish came to see her, and those were the best times. She liked it when Cluny settled herself on the end of the bed and talked about her family, or her animals, or the boy she’d been a bit in love with, who had grown afraid of her now and gone off with Carn Kubin’s daughter. “Do you have a boy, back in London?” she asked, and Fever found herself telling her all about Arlo, whom she had never spoken of to anyone before.

This was how most people behaved, she thought; most girls, at least; talking; sharing feelings and small secrets with their friends. She had never really had a friend before; she’d never seen the point, till Cluny. She knew that if they had met a year before she would have loathed her, for she could tell what a spoiled, swaggering young noblewoman Cluny must have been. She couldn’t read, she believed in all sorts of garbled magic, and seemed to think the best thing you could do in life was to ride the shaggy horses of the Arkhangelsk at absurd speeds over rough country, hunting innocent deer or foxes. But that had all been stripped from her by these dreams, which she claimed came from her ancestors. They wrecked her sleep and left her nervous and shaky, and the mad old technomancer whose word was law here had forbidden her to hunt. Now she was like a little girl again, almost as lost as Fever, trying to relearn her life just when it should all have been clear to her. And she was beautiful, too – at least,
Godshawk
would have thought her beautiful.

“I wish I could send some message to Dr Crumb,” Fever said again, when she had finished talking about Arlo. “It is so sad to think of him in London, still waiting for Wavey and me to come home.”

“It is a war,” said Cluny. “Sad things happen.” But the next day when she came to Fever’s chamber she brought her father with her; a plump, bald, white-bearded man who seemed too shy and softly spoken to be a barbarian warlord. He welcomed Fever to his house and asked her if there was anything she needed, and Cluny told him that Fever had to send word to her father in London.

“Ah, now, ah, now,” said Carn Morvish, tugging at his whiskers. “Now that is difficult, Miss Crumb. We are massing our forces to make war on London. We cannot have you warning the Londoners of our plans.”

“They’ll find out about your plans anyway,” said Fever. “How secret can you keep an army of mobile castles? All I want to do is tell my father that I am still alive. And that my mother . . .
isn’t
.”

“That would do no harm, would it, Carn-Morvish-my-father?” asked Cluny.

The Carn was a kind man, and felt sorry for Fever’s father. If Cluny had been lost somewhere he would have wanted word of her. He said, “I shall send a scribe to write down your words, Miss Crumb. Several of our people can read, so don’t try to put in any clever codes or secret messages. A few trusted merchants still go south from Arkhangelsk to London. One of them will carry your letter.”

h, Dr Crumb. I’m sorry to call you from your work, but I have some bad news. You’d best sit down. But no, you’re a rational man, aren’t you; not much troubled by life’s little reversals. . .”

“Which reversals, Lord Mayor?”

They were in Quercus’s private chambers at the heart of the new city. A big clock ticking, paintings of the Movement’s glorious past on the walls, and on a central table a model of
its glorious future: the new London. The Lord Mayor wore bedroom slippers and a silken dressing gown. Dr Crumb was in his third-best lab-coat, hot and weary after another night’s work in the engine district. More than a month had passed since Wavey and Fever went away. The first full test of the city’s engines was planned for the following day, and there was still much to be done. He could not imagine why Quercus had summoned him from his work. Bad news? He assumed that there must be some new hitch in the supply chain: perhaps the copper that he needed had been delayed again.

But Quercus said, “A messenger has arrived from one of Raven’s garrisons in the Fuel Country. It is about Wavey and that girl of yours. It seems there has been an incident. Savages attacked their landship. It was destroyed with all hands.”

“Destroyed with all. . .” Dr Crumb stood blinking at him.

“They are both dead, Dr Crumb.”

“Oh. . .”

A woman who had been sitting in the shadows – one of Quercus’s senior wives – now rose silently and came to lay her hand upon the engineer’s arm. He looked at her in surprise. Quercus said, “It is all right, Mree. The good doctor is a rational man. He does not need comforting. It is a terrible thing. But accidents will happen, won’t they, Dr Crumb? I’m sure that as a rational man you must accept that accidents will happen.”

He watched Dr Crumb with interest. He had always found them curious, these London Engineers, with their faith in reason and experiment and their careful avoidance of feelings. He was glad of this chance to conduct a small experiment of his own. He noticed that Dr Crumb appeared to be trembling.

“You are certain, Lord Mayor? There can be no mistake?”

“It seems not. We don’t yet know who the attackers were. Raven is moving some of his forces west to deal with them. But there is no hope for Wavey and Fever. Both dead.”

“I see,” said Dr Crumb, very quietly.

“I had thought of keeping this information to myself until the tests were complete,” Quercus said. “I would not want your grief to put you off your work at such a vital time. But then I thought, Dr Crumb is a rational man; he will feel no grief at all, or, if he does, he will be able to suppress it.
Are
you able to suppress it, Dr Crumb?”

“Indeed, Lord Mayor,” said Dr Crumb, distracted for a moment by a memory of Fever as a tiny girl, playing with a pile of cogs under his desk at Godshawk’s Head.

“Excellent. Take the rest of the day off, Crumb, if you wish. And if there is anything I can do, anything you need. . . But of course, there isn’t, and you don’t. You are a rational man.”

“Yes, Lord Mayor,” said Dr Crumb. And, “With your permission, Lord Mayor, I shall return to my work. There is still much to be done.”

“Of course, Dr Crumb. Oh, and by the way, I should like you to take over your late wife’s post as Chief Engineer. She will be missed, of course, but her role was always a symbolic one; you and your fellow Engineers have always been the brains behind our work here, am I right?”

Charley Shallow was sitting on an empty crate in the Engine District, eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. He was supposed to be at work, but he found it easy enough these days to persuade the other apprentices to cover for him. If he had known that you could win people over so easily by knocking them down and poking knives in their faces, he would have started doing it years ago. But of course it hadn’t just been that; lately, since he’d started walking out with pretty Gwen Natsworthy, he’d become a kind of rebel hero to them – he smiled to himself, remembering the way their wide eyes had followed her when she came into the Engine District that morning to bring him these very sarnies. Lately they’d started coming to him to ask what the best places to buy cheap wine and tobacco were, and whether he could put in a good word for them with the bar girls at the Laughing Nomad. It was like they were kittens and he was a wily old stray, wise in the ways of the backstreets of Tent Town. . .

So he lounged on his upturned crate in the snick between two of London’s huge new engines and ate his sandwiches while they did his work for him, and doodled in his notebook until he was distracted by the sight of Dr Crumb coming back from his meeting with the Lord Mayor. He’d been feeling angry at Crumb for the past few weeks, still having had no answer to his kind offer of moving back in to Bishopsgate. He’d been trying not to think of him, reckoning his best hopes lay with Gwen and her friends. But something about the way that Dr Crumb was moving struck Charley as odd, and when he came close enough for Charley to get a look at his face and see the expression there, well, that was odder still. Dr Crumb usually looked pretty vague as he wandered among the engines, because he was always thinking about work rather than where he was going, but today he was shuffling along like a sleepwalker. Like he’d been emptied out, thought Charley, and there was nothing behind those eyes at all. . .

He stuffed the remainder of the sandwiches into his pocket, snapped shut the notebook and swaggered out into the man’s path, trying to look as if he was a hard-working young ’prentice, making his way from one job to the next. “Morning, Dr Crumb.”

“Ah,” said the Engineer, pausing and blinking at him in that irritating way he had. His face was just about the colour of the cheese in Charley’s sandwiches.

“Any word from Mistress Crumb and Miss Fever?” asked Charley brightly, for he had a pretty good idea what might have led his old master to look like that. He was right, too, he could tell at once, because Dr Crumb flinched at the sound of their names as if Charley had just slapped him.

“No, Charley,” he said softly. “There isn’t. I do not yet have all the data but. . . It appears they are
dead
. . .”

“Dead?” said Charley, like an echo. “Blimey, I’m sorry to hear that, Doctor Crumb.”

Dr Crumb said nothing at all.

“If there’s anything I can do,” said Charley earnestly, “any help you need, like. Sorting things out, and so forth. . .”

“Thank you, Charley,” Dr Crumb mumbled. “You are most thoughtful. I shall bear it in mind. . .”

Charley felt pleased. After all, with Fever gone, the Doc would need a new apprentice, wouldn’t he? No harm in reminding him that Charley Shallow was ready and willing. He’d make himself useful at this difficult time. He liked that phrase; it sounded sincere and serious, like something in a letter of condolence. “Anything at all, Doctor!” he said. “Anything I can do to help
at this difficult time
.”

He watched as the Engineer went on his way to the little tarpaper hut that served as his office. Another apprentice ran up to him with a question, but Dr Crumb did not even seem to notice him. The streets of the Engine District were always littered with straw, which spilled out of the crates in which new components were brought from the factories. The wind that gusted through the unfinished city blew the straw in clumps around Dr Crumb’s feet, and it looked for a moment to Charley as if he had been stuffed with straw all along, like a scarecrow, and now some vital seam had split and all the stuffing was spilling out of him and blowing away.

Half of Charley felt sorry, remembering the kindness that Dr Crumb had shown him once, and sad at seeing him so low. The other half felt a sort of awe at his own power that slowly turned into something rather like glee.
I did that
, he thought.
It was me told Stayling, and Stayling sent word north, and now Rufus Raven has murdered the Snow Leopard and her half-breed daughter
. . . The thought of Fever and her mother killed checked him for a moment.
Of course, I mustn’t blame myself,
he thought.
Raven would have got to hear that they were in his country anyway. I thought he’d just capture them, not kill ’em. Not both of ’em.
He wondered what Raven’s men had done to them, and wished he had been there to see it.
Course, it’s a terrible thing; a terrible thing
. . .

But he didn’t really think it was a terrible thing. Charley was starting to realize that he didn’t
feel
things as much as other people did. He’d found it with Gwen, these past few days. Part of him was thrilled that she was his girl, and he strolled around the Engine District with a new confidence when he’d been to see her, everything round him seeming brighter and more interesting. Then he’d look at her sometimes while they were kissing or whatever and realize that he wouldn’t mind all
that
much if he never saw her again. Oh, he’d
pretend
he did, but he knew there’d be other girls; he wouldn’t really
care
. He was starting to sense how that gave him an edge over people; because if you didn’t care about anything except yourself, then there were fewer ways they could have power over you.

All them old Engineers, training themselves up to be free of feelings, and look what one bit of bad news does to them
, he thought scornfully, watching Dr Crumb stumble into his office with the straw blowing round his feet.
He looks like he’s aged twenty years in one morning
. No, if you wanted to free yourself of feelings you didn’t want to be an Engineer. Growing up parentless on Ditch Street, though; that would really do the trick.

Dr Crumb called a sedan chair and went back to his house; to the silence of his house. It had been peculiarly quiet ever since Wavey and Fever went away, as if it were waiting for them to return. It would wait for ever now, and the silence seemed to have deepened, muffling the sounds of the city outside, muting his footsteps as he paced through the empty rooms. From the wall of his office his photographs of Wavey and Fever gazed at him, pale and silvery as ghosts. Upset by the feelings that they aroused, he thrust the stupid thought away, took down the pictures, turned them to the wall.

He had always known that Wavey would not stay with him for long. She needed excitement, and he was not an exciting man. Ever since her return he had felt as if he was flotsam and she was the sea, and known that she would one day abandon him on some strange shore. But not Fever. Not Fever, whom he had carried back to Godshawk’s Head that evening in her basket when she was so small and helpless. Even when she had run away with those theatre people he had always been sure that her rational nature would bring her back to London, and he had been proved right. But reason could not return her to him now; nothing could do that. Dimly, he began to understand why simple people sought consolation in fairy tales of gods and afterlives.

Well, there was no consolation there for him. He would find his consolation where he had found it years ago, after the Skinners’ Riots, when he had first thought Wavey dead. He would find it in rationality and hard, productive work. There was tomorrow’s test to think of, and it was sure to reveal a thousand faults and glitches which would need correction. . . He began gathering files and papers from the shelves behind his desk. He could not concentrate in this house, with its unsettling smells and memories. He would move the things he needed to the Engine District, and let the demolition gangs take this place; it was high time anyway that they made a start on Ludgate Hill.

He found a box and started filling it with papers, notebooks, card folders full of blueprints. He would need things from Wavey’s office too; her scrappy, eccentric plans and drawings. It would be a long job, sorting it all out. He would need help, but not from his fellow Engineers. He did not think he could face their condolences and knowing looks.

He thought of Charley Shallow. The boy showed promise as an Engineer, and he seemed eager to help. Certainly he could fetch and carry well enough. The only reason Dr Crumb had dismissed him was that he had upset Fever, and Fever was beyond upsetting now.
I shall send someone to fetch Charley Shallow here at once
, he decided.

There was much to be done: boxes of papers to be manhandled downstairs to the street door, a wagon to be arranged for transferring them across Tent Town to the new city. It fell to Charley to do all of it, for Dr Crumb seemed only half there, moving slowly, taking ages to hear anything that Charley asked him, as if time was solidifying around him. “It’s so
quiet
without them, Charley,” he complained. In the end it even fell to Charley to give the servants their final wages, and lock up the abandoned house. He did it angrily, twisting the key in the lock like a knife, as if he hoped to hurt the old place. He’d got to be Crumb’s assistant, at last, but he’d lost his chance of living at Bishopsgate; the old cloot was intent on moving into one of those little modern cells aboard new London, and Charley hadn’t enough hold over him yet to change his mind.