Fever Crumb (6 page)

Kit Solent turned the handle and opened the door, and held it for Fever to go through, then followed her up a long wind of brick stairs with Fever's shadow, cast by the light of his lantern, laid up them like a carpet.

"Can you guess what lies behind that door that we have been trying to open, Fever?"

"No, Master Solent."

"It is a workroom. It is Godshawk's room, where he worked on his secret inventions. It was a secret itself, even during the rule of the Scriven."

"Godshawk ... said Fever, and for some reason she imagined a low, unwindowed room ribbed with stone buttresses, and brass lamps shaped like lilies hanging from the roof. "I did not know Godshawk was an inventor. I thought he was insane...."

"He was a Scriven. They were all insane, judged by our human standards. But they loved tinkering with the old machines, and making new ones. Your Order never approved. The Scriven were too playful, not scientific enough. Perhaps to them engineering was a sort of art. And Auric Godshawk was a very great artist indeed."

They came to the stairs' top, and another door. This one of metal, sealed with immense bolts. They were old and rust-stained but they had been recently oiled, and Fever slid them open and leaned against the door and was dazzled by daylight. She stepped out into long, wet grass. The door was set into the side of a low, squarish hill, and almost hidden by evergreen shrubs that someone must have planted all around it. Pushing her way out through their wet needles, Fever turned and shielded her eyes against the brightness of the day and looked about, trying to understand where she was. Up on the hill's top stood the stubs and shards of a ruined building. Around the base of the hill the sun shone wanly on the waters of the Brick Marsh, formed during the earth-storms of the previous century when the old river Thames had changed its course and spilled away southward, drowning London's southern boroughs in a wide wilderness of reed beds, wetlands, and lagoons.

Kit propped the door ajar and started to climb up the hill's side, and Fever followed.

"Godshawk built his home on this hill," said Solent. "It was called Nonesuch House. Long before the Scriven chose him as their leader, he had his villa here. Even then, when he had his royal apartments in the Barbican, this was always the place he loved the best."

The hill went up in grassy terraces, a green ziggurat. They passed fallen statues flocked with moss, and skirted strange, shallow pools. At the top stood what remained of Nonesuch House. Fire-scorched jagged crusts of wall, a mass of charred timber, and smashed rooftiles and tangled weeds filling the spaces between them. A blackbird clattering in a bramble bush. But Fever, as she looked in through the empty windows, saw Scriven nobles in evening robes and their women in gowns like vast, blowsy flowers, crowding the big rooms, spilling out onto the lawns to watch glowing paper lanterns loft into the air. She shut her eyes and forced the vision away. What was wrong with her today?

"It is very unfashionable now to say that the Scriven created anything of worth," said Kit Solent. He picked up a shard of floortile, looked at it, and let it fall. "And it's true that most of the things Godshawk tried to invent were crazy -- new colors, flying machines, devices for recording dreams. He spent most of his spare time tinkering with Stalkers' brains. He dissected the last of the Scriven's Stalker warriors in the course of his researches, which is one of the reasons they could not defend themselves when the riots began. But he worked on other things as well, and I believe that one of them still exists, buried in that vault down there beneath us."

Fever turned around, taking in the view and trying to ignore the strange feelings that the place aroused in her.
Feelings
mean nothing. Stop feeling and think....
A wash of sunlight silvered the far-off roofs of Ludgate Hill. "I am surprised that no one has found this place before," she said.

"The causeway which linked this hill to London has been cut," said Solent. 'The way across the lagoons is hazardous. The vault was a secret even in Godshawk's day. No one knows that it is here. And the door in the hillside was completely overgrown; I could never have found it from outside."

"So how did you learn of it?"

"Stories. Rumors."

"It seems irrational to buy a house and dig a tunnel simply because of stories...."

"But I found the vault, didn't I?" said Kit Solent triumphantly. "Now it is just a question of getting inside. Of course, I could announce my discovery -- I know people who would be happy to take the top off this hill and use brute force and gunpowder to get into Godshawk's inner sanctum. But I don't like such methods. I want to try a subtler approach. And I think you can help me, Fever Crumb."

***

Too shy to speak, Charley went silently after Bagman Creech through the busy Stragglemarket. He hung back, quiet and watchful, while the Skinner talked to some of the stallholders there, listening to their accounts of the strange-looking girl who had come their way that morning, and the sedan chair which some believed had smuggled her away.

"It was Bert @kinson's chair," said one man. "I'm surprised at him, aiding a dirty Patchskin like that."

"We have no proof that she was a Scriven," Bagman Creech reminded him. "That is for me to find out. And it was not the chairmen who aided her, but their passenger, the man who hired them." He glanced upward, judging the time by the way the sun hit the tops of the old warehouses above him. "I'll be taking a little refreshment at the Scary Monster. Pass word for this @kinson to come and find me there."

The Scary Monster and Supercreep was a big tavern halfway down Cripplegate. It was set back from the street, with tables arranged outside under a dim see-through canopy made from salvaged plastic. It wasn't the class of place where Charley thought he would be welcome, but Bagman Creech looked back at him and jerked his head to show that Charley should come with him. They sat down together at one of the tables and studied each other in the brownish light that came through the plastic roof.

"You look hungry, boy," said Bagman Creech. "Ted Swiney given you any breakfast today?"

Ted Swiney hadn't, but Charley wasn't going to admit it, in case word of his disloyalty got back to the publican. "I'm all right, Master Creech," he said.

A soft cough rumbled like far-off thunder down behind the Skinner's ribs. He blinked his pale eyes at Charley. "I remember being mostly hungry when I was a boy."

Charley, caught off-balance by the sudden notion that Bagman Creech had once been a boy, said, "That must have been a long time ago, Master Creech."

Bagman Creech started to laugh, and kept on laughing until the laugh turned into a long choking spasm. He retched like a cat with a furball and coughed up a big, blood-veined pearl of phlegm, which he spat onto the flagstones under the table. "It was that, Charley," he whispered hoarsely, wiping his eyes with his shirt cuffs. "It was a long, long time ago. And food was scarce for normal folks in them days, for the Scriven ruled this town, and took all the good things for themselves and their cronies. And that's why I was mostly hungry, then."

Meanwhile, the serving girls, looking like white hens in their crisp aprons and bonnets, had been gathering at the tavern door to gawp at their famous guest and whisper about who would take his order. ("
You
go, Gertie." "No,
you
go!") Now their mistress, the Scary Monster's fat landlady, shoved her way between them and hurried to Bagman's side to curtsey and twitter.

"Oh, Master Creech, this is an honor, how can we serve you, good Master Creech?"

"Well, Mistress," said Bagman Creech, "I'll take a mug of your porter, and a stack of pancakes for my young assistant here."

"Oh, yes, sir," fluttered the landlady, looking at Charley in a way no one had ever looked at him before, as if he meant something.

"And honey!" called Bagman Creech, as she hurried off. "Plenty of honey." He looked at Charley again, and smiled. His lean old face was so unused to smiling that Charley was afraid it might crack and drop off his bones like plaster off a wall. He had long teeth, scuffed and yellowed as the keys of a pub piano. "Pancakes was my favorite, as I recall," he said. "Honey pancakes 'specially."

"Thank you, Master Creech," said Charley, whose mouth was watering at just the thought of pancakes.

The old man shrugged. "I generally work alone," he said. "But...Well, Ted Swiney's a bad man, but there's truth in what he said. Maybe it is time I had a youngster to help me out. How old are you, Charley?"

"Eleven, Master Creech. Maybe twelve."

"Old enough, then. Got a mum and dad, have you?"

Charley shook his head. For as long as he could remember, he'd just hung around the Mott and Hoople, sleeping in the cellar or the yard out back, doing odd jobs for Ted Swiney, eating what scraps he could find. Probably his mother had been one of Ted's servant girls, but he didn't remember her. Who his dad was, only the gods of London knew.

Bagman Creech coughed thoughtfully. "And you wouldn't be too brokenhearted, I'm guessing, if you never had to go back to Ted Swiney's employ?"

"Oh, no, Master Creech!"

'"Cos I'm like you, Charley, all alone. And it seems to me that maybe it's time I started training up some young fellow to take over my job, when I'm too old to do it anymore. How would you like that, Charley? To sign on as my 'prentice?"

"What, and hunt Patchskins, Master Creech? I don't think I'd be brave enough."

"I didn't think I'd be brave enough, Charley, when I was your tender age. But the time comes when you just have to do what's needful."

He stopped, coughing a little and thumping his chest with a fist. The pancakes had arrived. A tower of them, golden brown and crispy at the edges, with honey in a pot to drizzle over them. Charley started rolling them up one by one and cramming them into his mouth.

"Killing a Scriven isn't like killing a human being," Bagman explained. "They aren't made like us and they don't think like us, and if you let them live and breed there might come a time when it'll be them hunting us, and our kind hiding in the dark. You have to remember that. It's difficult sometimes. Take this one we're after, if we corner her, she's going to look almost like an ordinary girl. You've got to be ready for that. She might look pretty. She might say, 'Please
don't harm me.'
She might say, '
Please
have mercy.'
And you got to be ready for that. You mustn't let pity creep in. You got to keep telling yourself, it ain't no different to killing rats."

He reached inside his coat with a quick, well-practiced movement and suddenly there was a weapon in his hand. A long, ugly thing like the skeleton of a gun, with a big, oil-shiny spring inside it and a ratchet to wind the spring back. More notches than Charley could count had been cut into its worn plastic handgrip.

"This is a spring gun," said Bagman solemnly, holding it so the light slithered over its shining surfaces. "Those Scriven wouldn't let anyone but themselves own firearms, and we couldn't have afforded firearms anyway, but some of us worked in machine shops, so in our off hours we made these, in secret like. A spring gun will chuck a dart hard enough and far enough to cut a Scriven down, and when they were down we'd flay their skins off. Not to stop their spirit coming back, the way the foolish people tell it, but more by way of a trophy, to show the rest of London that Scriven died as easy as the rest of us."

Charley wanted to hold the gun. He wanted to aim it at imaginary Scriven and imagine himself back in those glorious days, slaughtering Patchskins and making London safe for ordinary Londoners again. But just then he became aware of a man edging up to the table. A big man, with the broad shoulders and over-muscled arms of a sedan chair bearer. He was looking sheepishly at Bagman Creech, and turning his cap around and around in his hands.

"Master Creech?" he asked. "I'm Bert @kinson, taxi bearer. I 'eard you want a word."

Bagman Creech took a slurp of porter, and nodded as he gulped it down. "That's right, and thank you, Master @kinson. You know what this is about, I take it?"

The chairman twisted his cap in both fists, as if he were wringing it out. "They're saying that girl we took aboard down Stragglemarket was a Patchskin. I'd never have had 'er in my chair if I'd known."

"No one blames you, I'm sure, Bert," said the Skinner. "But what I'd like to know is, who was the fare you were carrying, the one who made you take the girl aboard?"

kinson looked deeply thoughtful for a moment, and Charley started to fear that he had forgotten. Chair bearers doped themselves with powerful drugs to give themselves the strength to carry their burdens around the city. They weren't famous for quick thinking, or even thinking at all. But @kinson's face brightened and he said, "Picked him up at the tram Terminus this morning. A gentleman, by the way 'e talked. 'E had two nippers with him, and 'e told us to follow the girl. Which was easy, on account of her big huge straw hat."

"And when you'd picked the girl up, where did he have you take her?"

"Why, to his home, sir. They all got out together. One of them old crumble-down Patchskin manses up on the 'eights. Ludgate 'ill Gardens, I think."

Creech nodded calmly. "Your help's highly 'predated, Master @kinson.
Highly
'predated."

Charley was halfway down his pancake pile, honey running off his chin. "What now, Master Creech?" he asked stickily, as the chair bearer went away. "Do we go and talk to this bloke?"

Bagman Creech looked at him, or maybe through him, thinking. "Not yet," he said. "We want to go careful, like, if this bald-headed finch is Scriven, and he's a-sheltering her, we don't want to put him on his guard. We'll ask around and work out who he is, and who she is, and what he wants with her. Hopefully it'll turn out poor old Lily Dismas was mistaken. But if not, we'll have to do what's needful." He drained his mug and stood up, already scanning the passersby as if one of them might have the answers that he needed. He picked up his stick and leaned on it while he waited for Charley to mop up the last of the honey. "Down these mean streets a man must go ... he said, and it sounded to Charley like the start of something, like a quotation or something, but he didn't say any more, just nodded and grunted, and set off walking.