Scrivener's Moon (9 page)

Lady Midnight had sensed the thing’s approach, perhaps by the small scritching sounds its feet made in the grass. She swept her sword at it, and it bent backwards with inhuman suppleness so that the blade swished through empty air. Lady Midnight hesitated, looking confused. No doubt she knew what she was facing; no doubt she and Wavey and Borglum had planned out every step. But Fever did not feel that she could watch any more. She turned and walked away from the fire, away from Three Dry Ships, into the quiet and the dusk. She climbed the hill behind the town and stood on its summit looking east across the marshes at dozens of distant points of fire which burned like red stars, far away behind the mist. The Ancients had dug oil wells out there, and the Movement had reopened some of them, and found others in places which must have been too difficult or too expensive for even the Ancients to reach when they lay deep under water.

Deep under water
. . . How strange it was to think that the sea had once covered all this land. At Fever’s feet, in bald patches between the grass, scatterings of tiny white seashells glowed in the twilight. She sat down and picked up a handful and let them trickle through her fingers, and thought about the seas of the south, and Arlo. If only she had gone with him. If only she had stayed with the
Lyceum
. Ever since Wavey reclaimed her she had felt like a doll or a pet. She had thought this journey to the north would change things, but she was as listless as ever. She wished something would happen to her.

It was a wish that she would come to regret.

r Crumb was a punctual man. If you wanted to bump into him it was not difficult. You just had to station yourself between Bishopsgate and the Engineerium when the six a.m. bells were ringing to summon the day shift to the factories and there he would be, hastening along with his case full of plans and papers on his way to start his morning’s work.

So that was where Charley Shallow stood, in the grey of a drizzling Monday morning, a few days after Fever and Wavey departed for the north. “Good morning, Dr Crumb!” he called, and tried to sound surprised to see him there.

“Oh . . . Shallow. . .” Dr Crumb blinked at him. He had always had a vague feeling that Charley might have been unhappy at the way he’d been dismissed when Fever returned home, but he was glad to see that the boy seemed friendly enough. Not only that, but he was carrying a large umbrella, and since Dr Crumb had left his at home as usual it was only rational that he agree to Charley’s suggestion that they walk together and share the shelter of it.

“You are quite sure I am not taking you out of your way?” he insisted, as they started down Ludgate Hill. “I am working aboard the new city this morning. . .”

“Oh, that’s all right, Dr Crumb,” said Charley. “I’m going there myself. Me and Coldharbour are helping Dr Steepleton with the new boarding ramps in the Gut.”

Dr Crumb sighed. “It is the
Great Under Tier
, Charley. I do wish people would call things by their proper designations, instead of all these silly nicknames. Say ‘G.U.T.’ if you must, but not ‘Gut’.”

“Sorry, Dr Crumb.”

“That is all right, Charley. I did not mean to snap. . .”

“I expect you’re under a lot of pressure,” said Charley kindly. “I mean, it must be a worry and all, with Mistress Crumb and young Miss Crumb going off with that circus. . .”

“They have not ‘
gone off with a circus
’, Charley; they are undertaking a scientific expedition. There is no rational cause for worry.”

“Still, you’re lonely without them, I expect?”

“A rational man need never be lonely, Charley. I have my work and my books and my own thoughts to keep me company.”

Liar
, thought Charley to himself. But all he said was, “That’s so true, ain’t it, Dr Crumb?”

The rain was passing. Splashes of sunlight lit the roofs of Tent Town. The flanks of the new city were wreathed in rainbows. Afraid that Dr Crumb would decide he no longer needed Charley’s umbrella and hurry on without him, Charley looked for a new peg to hang their conversation on. He was determined not to let the old blogger escape until he had steered it round to the subject that he really wanted to talk about.

“Rainbows!” he said. “I always wondered what they were. Bridges to fairyland, the girls at the Mott and Hoople used to tell me when I was a nipper, but I know now there must be a more scientific explanation. . .”

“Oh, there is indeed!” said Dr Crumb, and he was off, describing the way that water droplets split the sun’s rays like a prism, revealing all the colours of the visible spectrum. Charley put a look of deep interest on his face while he screamed with boredom inside.
This is the sort of smart-arse lecture Fever must have had to listen to the whole time, growing up with him
, he thought.
No wonder she turned into such a stuck-up little know-all icicle
. . .

“I expect you miss Miss Crumb?” he said, when the lecture ended. “Miss her as an assistant, I mean. It seems irrational somehow for a man as learned as you to have nobody to do the little chores for you while you turn your mind to more important stuff.”

“Oh, there is a maid who does the dusting, and so forth,” said Dr Crumb. He had been about to recommend a good book on optics, and was surprised that the discussion of rainbows had ended so abruptly.

“No, I mean a scientific assistant,” Charley explained. “Someone to draw up plans and keep papers in order and do small bits of research for you and stuff.” He had thought that Dr Crumb would have caught his drift by now, but he hadn’t, so Charley ploughed on. “You know, I wouldn’t mind moving back in with you if you wanted. Just till Mistress Crumb and Miss Crumb get home again, I mean. Not that I don’t
like
living in the Engineerium, but it’s hardly rational, is it, for my old room at Bishopsgate to be empty and a man of your learning labouring away without anyone to help him?”

Dr Crumb stopped and blinked at him again. They had come to the foot of Ludgate Hill and the place where their ways divided; Dr Crumb’s road curved away through Tent Town to the stairs which led up into the Engine District, Charley’s ran straight to the new city’s prow, where the huge outer doors of the Gut stood open like enormous jaws. “Well, Charley,” said the Engineer, “that is an interesting idea. Most interesting. I shall certainly consider it. Yes, indeed.”

Which wasn’t really the answer that Charley Shallow had been hoping for.
Still, better than nothing
, he thought, as Dr Crumb went scurrying away.
He’ll come round
. He had a feeling that he understood Gideon Crumb. A clever man, he was, but weak; he needed somebody to tell him what to do, and with Wavey gone, why shouldn’t that somebody be Charley Shallow?

It was all very well helping the Underground start their revolution, but he wasn’t at all sure they could deliver. While he was waiting he’d much rather live in his cosy little room at No.1 Bishopsgate than in the Engineerium.

He spent that day in the Gut, doing as little actual work as possible while Ronnie Coldharbour and old Dr Steepleton fussed about with tape measures and theodolites. Once London got moving the Gut would be a garage where land-barges and other vehicles could be housed. When the doors were opened ramps would extend so that they could drive in and out, and Steepleton said it was vital that the ramps and the hydraulic systems which would move them be positioned just so. All very interesting, no doubt, but Charley had his mind on other things. Two rival versions of his future hung in his mind, and each made for pleasant daydreams. In one he was Dr Crumb’s trusted assistant, living in the big guest bedroom at Bishopsgate, eating meals cooked for him by Wavey’s Parisian chef and a great favourite with the maidservants. In the other he was on the barricades, leading the uprising against Quercus, with Gwen Natsworthy fighting at his side. Well, maybe not actually
fighting,
maybe just waving a banner or something, urging the others on. . .

He couldn’t decide yet which of these futures he preferred, but either of them would be a step up.

When his shift ended he strolled round to the south side of Ludgate Hill. There was a digger’s pit there where a flaky archaeologist named Vimto Grebe had been busy since long before Charley was born, excavating the remains of some old temple. He claimed he’d found the legendary St Paul’s Cathedral, and he had written many letters to Quercus about it, inviting him to come and see the heap of filthy old stones and suggesting that the thing should be reconstructed on the new city’s topmost tier as a symbol of London’s continuity. Quercus had ignored them all, and so Master Grebe had become a friend of the Underground, and let them hold meetings sometimes in the big tarpaper sheds that protected his diggings.

There were more than a dozen of them there that night, including Dr Stayling, Gwen, and the priestess from the temple of St Kylie, whose name was Margaret Shamflower. They were all waiting to hear what Charley had to tell them, about what he’d learned among the Guild and in the Engine District.

Generally when he met the would-be rebels he told them what he thought they wanted to hear. That worked with most people, in his experience. It made them like you. But he didn’t want this lot just to like him; he wanted them to look up to him. So he had decided to try a new approach.

“It ain’t going to work,” he said. “That’s what I reckon. I been asking around, quiet like, trying to tell if any of the other Engineers might be on our side, or any of the skilled men working the high steel and that. And you know what? They’re all solid for Quercus. You can print as many leaflets as you like and paint your symbol on the walls till there’s no walls left to paint on, but you’re never going to turn people against the Lord Mayor and his plans. They don’t care about the London that’s gone, and when they think about the London that’s coming it’s Quercus’s London they see, not yours.”

Gwen could not have looked more shocked or indignant if he had pinched her, but Dr Stayling nodded amiably, and Mistress Shamflower said, “Thank you for your candour, Charley.”

“My what?”

“You have thought rationally about this,” said Dr Stayling. “And you have spoken the truth as you see it. But there is one factor that you do not know.”

“What’s that then?” asked Charley.

Gwen laughed. “Don’t look so clever now, does he?”

“As you know,” said Dr Stayling, “Quercus has only a small army here in London. Most of the Movement’s forces are in the north, under the command of Rufus Raven. And Rufus Raven feels as we do, Charley. A grand alliance is forming among the powers of the north. We do not need to be ready to start an uprising; we just need to be ready to help Raven when he comes south with his legions to free us from the madness of Quercus.”

That was a shock, all right. Charley thought about what it might mean. Civil war inside the Movement, most likely, and he didn’t like the sound of that. He would have to take care that he got himself on the right side.

He said, “So that was why you lot were so worried when I let on about Wavey going north?”

Dr Stayling nodded. “You did well, Charley. We sent word to Raven at once. His patrols will intercept her convoy.”

“And what will they do to her?” asked Charley. He felt, just for an instant, a little uneasy about what he’d set in motion. “Her and Fever. . . Will they be. . .?”

Dr Stayling looked at the floor. “They’ll be captured or. . . Well. . .”

Mistress Shamflower said, “May St Kylie have mercy on them both.”

“I didn’t think St Kylie cared for Dapplejacks,” said Charley.

“Please, Charley,” Dr Stayling warned. “This is a serious matter.”

“No, he’s right,” said Gwen, and Charley saw that she was looking at him and her face was kind of lit up, the same way that Milly Floater’s lit up when he said something that pleased her, only Gwen was so much prettier than Milly that it was quite a thing to have her look at him that way. “Charley’s right,” she said firmly. “That’s the attitude we need, if this is to be a revolution and not just a talking shop. We mustn’t care what happens to Wavey Godshawk and her like. They’re the ones what tore old London down, and designed this new monstrosity. We ought to be pleased if Raven takes her hostage, and pleased-er still if he cuts her speckled throat.
I’m
pleased. You know why? ’Cos it’s begun. And I pray that soon Raven will come south and kill Quercus and the rest of his shower and then London will belong to Londoners again. In fact, I don’t know why we don’t do for Quercus ourselves, so there isn’t even anyone to lead his army when Raven comes.”

Some people cheered her, others disagreed, and the evening wore itself out in long arguments about the best way to proceed and the rights and wrongs of murdering people, even people like Quercus. Charley didn’t join in, just sat half listening. He couldn’t stand all this talking and talking. But he liked the way Gwen Natsworthy’s rosy cheeks grew even rosier when she was arguing some point or other, and he liked the way her eyes shone, and how they sometimes seemed to seek him out, as if she wanted to make sure that he was watching. And later, when they were all leaving Grebe’s dig in ones and twos and heading homeward, she waited for him outside.

“Walk me home, then, Charley Shallow?” she said, with a look that seemed to be daring him to say no. And her hand was small and hot as it slipped into his.