A Web of Air (6 page)

“Thank you,” said Fever. “Perhaps you could let them know that I am well.”

“Only that? No word of when you might be coming home?”

Fever shook her head.

They reached the café that Dr Teal had spoken of and sat down at a table under a fluttering umbrella. He ordered coffee for himself. Fever said truthfully that she had only just finished breakfast. “I slept late…”

“You must have been late to bed. The play, and then the party afterwards…”

“I did not attend the party. I went for a walk on the cliffs and…”

“You needed some time alone, I’m sure. It must be difficult to think, cooped up in a clattering barge with that bunch of actors?”

“It is, sometimes,” agreed Fever, and felt as if she were betraying her friends. She had been about to tell Dr Teal of the white glider that had come to her on the night wind. But his coffee arrived, and watching him thank the waitress and add cream and sugar to his cup (all most un-Engineer-like things to do) she changed her mind. He would think even less of her if she started babbling about moonlit walks and flying machines.

Instead she said, “Are there men of reason in Mayda? Scientists who might have some knowledge to share with the Order … I mean, the Guild?”

Dr Teal laughed softly. “Hardly. You know how it is in these southern cities. They worship some nature goddess who forbids them from using technology. The Downsizing casts a long shadow. Even now, all these millennia afterwards, superstitious people still reckon that the Ancients must have been punished for all the machines they built, and that anyone who tries to copy them will be punished too. When Maydans come across some scrap of old-tech they do not try to learn from it, like rational men. They hand it to the priests at the Temple of the Sea and it is flung into a sacred tide-pool to rust.”

“But what about the funiculars? How are they driven?”

“Och, simple weight-and-counterweight, water-powered, and built to a design which hasn’t changed in centuries. No, Miss Crumb, you’ll find no scientific minds in Mayda.” He sipped his coffee, arched an eyebrow. “Not unless you count Thursday.”

“Thursday?” said Fever. That was the word the angel had croaked at her in the moonlight on the cliff path. It had not occurred to her that it might be someone’s name.

“Arlo Thursday,” said Dr Teal. “He’s the grandson of Daniel Thursday, who was once the greatest shipbuilder in Mayda. Arlo’s the last of his line. Quite batty by all accounts.”

“Have you spoken to him?” asked Fever.

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Dr Teal said carelessly. “He’s a complete recluse. Lives all alone in his family’s old funicular up at Casas Elevado on the western wall. Sees no one, speaks to no one, just tinkers with his crazy contraptions.” He chuckled. “They say that he’s trying to
fly
…”

small brown boy went running out along the arm of one of the ramshackle wooden cranes which lined the harbour side and stepped off the end into empty air. Ruan paused in his work and shielded his eyes against the sun to watch as the boy went falling over and over until he vanished in a bright burst of spray between the moored boats. He surfaced quickly, sleek as a seal, laughing, waving at his friends on the dock. Already another boy was scaling the crane to take his turn…

Ruan watched for just a moment more, feeling a little wistful. He would have liked to be like those boys, carefree and fearless, playing games in the sunlight that was now tilting into Mayda crater. But he had work to do. Usually the afternoons were the time when the company performed comic sketches, or AP recited poetry, to bring a little extra money in and advertise the evening’s performance. But during these few days in Mayda there were to be no such matinees; instead, the
Lyceum’s
crew were busy sprucing up their sets and costumes, which always began to look a bit tattered at this end of the season.

So Ruan and Fergus were busy with paint and brushes, freshening up the shabby backcloths from
Niall Strong-Arm,
which had been spread out on the ground beside the barge. Up on stage, some of the actors were rehearsing an extra scene that AP had written, while Max slapped a fresh coat of silver paint on Apollo’s chariot. Ruan could see Fern watching from the wings. People on their way to visit the other barges kept stopping to watch too, but Fergus always waved them away, saying gruffly, “Come back later. Just a rehearsal. Come back at sundown. The show starts then.”

But not all the passers-by were watching the stage. Ruan kept finding that people were watching
him.
It made him feel proud and self-conscious and a little awkward, the way they pointed at his work and whispered to one another. They were admiring the way he’d used brisk dabs of white and black to give depth to the coat of arms he’d sketched in on the wall of the moon goddess’s palace. “Move on, move on,” growled Fergus. “The boy can’t work with you lot standing ’twixt him and the sun. Come back tonight and you can see it finished.” But the onlookers weren’t really in Ruan’s light, and he quite liked them watching. He was starting to suspect that Fergus was just envious. Nobody stopped to point at the cloths Fergus was working on; the clouds and mountains he had done looked gaudy and unreal, and Ruan knew that he could have done them better, even though he was only ten.

He finished the coat of arms and started work on the stones of the wall. A line of white along the upper edge of each and down one side, a line of grey-black along the bottom and up the other. A few cracks, black for the shadow, white for the lit edge. He added some moon-ivy growing up the wall, green leaves with black shadows, a white highlight on each. He didn’t know if there was really ivy on the moon, but it felt right to him, and when he paused and stood back he saw that the dull old wall had come alive; it looked as if each of those painted stones and leaves was real. It would be better, he thought, if Fergus had let him use blue or purple instead of black, but Fergus hadn’t liked that idea. Black was cheaper, and using other colours smacked of arty-fartiness. “You always use black for shadows, boy,” Fergus had said. “No one’ll notice anyway, not from out in the audience. They’ll be watching the actors, not your pretty painting.”

Ruan started work on the garden. It had hedges trimmed into the shapes of fish and griffins, and two stone nymphs. He amused himself by giving Fever’s face to each of them. He was just finishing when a shadow fell across the canvas and AP was standing over him.

“Ruan, is Fever back yet?”

Ruan shook his head.

AP sighed. “Well, I’m sure she and Dr Teal have much to talk about – but I need to talk to her myself before curtain-up.”

Ruan could not think of anything to say. He didn’t like the way that Fever had gone off so eagerly with that London man. As if some baldy Engineer meant more to her than Fern and him and all her friends. He wondered what they had been talking about all this time. Maybe Dr Teal would persuade her to start shaving her hair off again. That thought sparked others, more worrying: maybe he would want her to go back to London with him. Maybe he’d want to marry her, which would be a disaster, as Ruan had always imagined he would marry her himself as soon as he was old enough. He felt small and powerless and intensely jealous. But he could not explain that to AP.

AP peered at the backcloth and smiled. “Well, this is splendid, Ruan. Keep up the good work. And when Fever comes back, please tell her that I need to…”

“Fools! Blind fools! Spoiled children!” someone bellowed, and Master Persimmon stopped, astonished to find his own voice drowned out by one even more thunderous. The actors on the stage stopped too, all looking to see what the disturbance was.

An odd procession was winding its way between the parked barges, dressed in costumes as fanciful as anything that Alisoun Froy had ever run up. Flowing taffeta robes, stiff tabards, gold-embroidered copes, weird caps and headscarves, and all of it blue, or green, or blue-green. There were perhaps twenty people there, men, women and children, some banging drums and jingling rusty bells. They were led by a large elderly woman, and it was she who was doing the shouting, directing her words at all the barges and all the visitors who were milling around them. A few of the barge-folk shouted back at her, but she ignored them. When she saw the Persimmon Company watching her she wheeled and strode closer, pointing a sapphire-bejewelled forefinger at the
Lyceum.

“Sinners against the Sea! How dare you bring your trinkets and technologies to Mayda to bewitch the young and ensnare the foolish? Do you not know that this is the island of Our Mother Below? Do you not fear the wrath of She who once raised up the oceans to sweep away the cities of the Ancients and cleanse the world of their corruption? Then you shall be
made
to fear Her! The waves of Her Holy Sea will swallow down all your workings, and Her children the fish will devour you! Her sacred waters will wash away your sin-black carbon footprints…”

She was just about to make a footprint of her own, in the fresh paint on the edge of the cloth that Ruan had been working on, but Master Persimmon had recovered himself and he stepped into her path, holding up a hand to halt her. They confronted one another; the actor-manager in his dowdy rehearsal clothes, the priestess in her extraordinary vestments. She was a big woman, and the wide-shouldered blue robes hung right to the ground with her fierce, red face poking out of the top so that she looked as if she were tucked up in a bed which someone had tipped on end. On her head she wore a turquoise mitre shaped like the body of a squid, with the long tentacles draped down over her shoulders. Each sucker was a gold ring, and inside each was a little sunshiny silver mirror. All the other metal about her – the necklaces and pendants, the flying-fish brooch on her gown, the settings of her sapphire rings – was rusted old iron, corroded and blessed by the sea.

“I am Ambrose Persimmon, and I am at your service, ma’am,” said AP, bowing low.

“I am Orca Mo,” said the woman, “and I am not at yours. I serve only the Goddess.”

“Well, you and your goddess are very welcome here,” replied Master Persimmon, with that charming smile which had melted the hearts of so many matinee audiences. “My company and I have travelled widely, and we have nothing but respect for the gods and goddesses of all lands. Yours is the Sea Goddess, I presume?”

“There is no other!” roared Orca Mo. “All other so-called gods and goddesses are false; there is only the Sea, and the Goddess beneath it: the
Mãe Abaixo;
our Mother Below. All life came from Her, and the lands of the earth are dry only by Her grace. How dare you profane them with your machines? Your barges and your engines and your filthy elec-trickery?”

Technoclasts!
thought Ruan.
Machine-breakers!
Fever had told him about people like this; religious fanatics who believed that all machinery was evil and that the Downsizing had been the gods’ way of punishing the Ancients for polluting the world with their technology. He set down his paintbrush and waited to see how AP would deal with them.

“My dear lady,” said AP, “we are but simple actors. Our engines and machines are only there to aid us as we bring pleasure to the masses. Perhaps if you were to come and see our play for yourself you might feel more kindly disposed towards us. May I present you and your friends with some free tickets for tonight’s performance?”

The priestess turned her back on him so quickly that the tentacles of her squid-hat swung out around her head like the ribbons of a maypole. “Listen to him!” she shouted at her followers. “Listen to that honeyed voice, which tries to tempt us from the ways of our Mother Below! Are we tempted to come and watch his sin-lit mummery? Would we throw away the love of the Goddess to see him strut and mumble on a stage illumined by the wicked technologies of the old ones?”

“Mumble?” cried Persimmon indignantly, but the priestess ignored him, and her followers were all too busy shouting “No!” to hear. One little girl forgot to shout, being too busy staring at Fern, but when Fern waved at her and she waved back the girl’s mother noticed and whacked her sharply across the back of the head with a tambourine.

Orca Mo glared over her shoulder at AP, and at Mistress Persimmon, who had come down off the stage to stand beside him. “The Goddess does not want you here. If you try to perform, disaster will befall you. I warn you for your own good; bow to the will of the
Mãe Abaixo;
make sacrifice to her, and pray that she will wash clean your inky souls.”

Her followers all raised their flags and tambours, shouting “Hear her! Hear her!” And through the midst of them came Fever Crumb.

Despite the noise they were making she did not really notice them till she was among them. She was thinking, and if she had heard the rattle of the sea-worshipper’s tambourines at all, she had dismissed it as just another of the sounds of Bargetown. Now, looking up, she found strange hats and fervent eyes all round her.