Fever Crumb (21 page)

The Stalkers stared greenly at her. They lowered their hands, but did not sheath their claws. The one called Corvus said, " are you damaged ?"

Fever shook her head.

The second Stalker pointed toward the waiting mono. " you will come with us. the land admiral will question you."

The other Stalker lifted Kit Solent's body and carried it to the waiting mono as if it were a sack filled with something not very heavy. They strapped him into a seat, and motioned for Fever to get in beside him. She could not understand why they wanted him, but she was glad they were not leaving him out on the heath for crows to snack on. His head lolled against her as the mono set off. He smelled of blood and smoke and damp clothing, and Fever supposed that she must smell as bad. The odors seemed strong and out of place among the clean metal and leather smells of the mono cabin. But the Stalkers did not seem to notice.

***

Ruan had never liked Mistress Gloomstove. He was only . seven, but he'd always seen somehow what his father had failed to: that there was no real feeling behind the smiles and pats and pet names that she gave the children; that they were just a show she put on because she thought that was how plump housekeepers were supposed to treat children; that she didn't really care for Fern or Ruan at all.

In the middle of that noisy afternoon, when the mob came milling along the street, demanding justice and Kit Solent's blood, she proved him right. A housekeeper in a story would have stationed herself at the street door with a rolling pin, or perhaps a carpet beater, and told the rioters to clear off. Mistress Gloomstove simply said, "The master may think I'm your nursemaid but he don't pay me enough to be your bodyguard as well." And she bundled up a lot of Father's silverware in the best damask tablecloth and hurried out by the back door.

"But what are we to do?" asked Ruan, catching at her apron as she went.

"How would I know?" the housekeeper snapped back. "Wait for your father to come home and deal with these people. It seems he cares more for that baldy-headed Engineer girl than he does for either of you."

"That isn't true," Ruan told his sister, who stood close behind him, clutching tight to Noodle Poodle and looking ready to cry.

Ruan felt ready to cry himself, though he knew he mustn't. The air outside was full of strange, frightening noises: smashing glass and angry shouts. The sky had gone a funny color, and it was full of smoke and the smell of burning. Ruan closed his eyes and held Fern's hand tightly and prayed to Poskitt, Lud, and Mama Cellulite that his father would come home. But when he led his sister back through the house to see if the prayer had worked they found no trace of Daddy.

Outside, the growl of the crowd echoed off the Barbican walls, gruff as a fairy-tale troll. Ruan wiped his sleeve across his eyes and took Fern's hand again -- the little girl was saying, "But what do they want, Ruan? What do those people
want?
"

Ruan didn't answer her. He wasn't quite sure. All he knew was that he and Fern had to hide, before the growling troll outside came in and got them. The linen closet or the living room curtains sprang to mind -- they were both favorite hidey-holes when he and Fern were playing hide-and-seek with Daddy. Then he had a better idea.

He dragged Fern after him into the kitchen, where she watched him gather the provisions they would need. Some bread and jam, a big double handful of biscuits, half a fruitcake. He told her to wait there while he ran upstairs, but she came with him, following him like a shadow through the suddenly scary house. A brick punched through the landing window while he was busy gathering up his best toys, and some of Fern's, and their favorite red storybook. He bundled it all up, together with the food, in his bedspread (so Mistress Gloomstove had taught him something about making bundles, at least) and slung it over his shoulder. It was heavy, but not too heavy, and he liked the feeling of it bouncing against his back as he went quickly back downstairs, holding Fern's hand.

He knew the way to the secret basement well. He'd often spied on Daddy when he went through the bookcase, and he climbed its shelves and found the little hidden button that opened it quite easily. But once he and Fern were on the other side and the bookcase had slid shut behind them it occurred to him that if he had found it, then so might someone else.

There was a huge bang, still frightening despite being muffled by the bookcase. Ruan didn't know that it was the sound of the front door being kicked in, but he knew that it meant something bad, and he understood the next sound he heard: the voices of rowdy, drunken Londoners rushing into his house.

"Ruan?" said Fern. "Noodle Poodle's frightinged."

"Hush, Fern," he told her in a whisper. "We've got to be quiet. Like playing hide-and-seek. Quiet as mouses, all right?"

"Shhhh!" said Fern. They stood in silence, listening.

***

As the balloon carrying Fever away from him faded into the haze of smoke and rain above the north boroughs, Dr. Crumb parted from his fellow Engineers in an alley near Ox-Fart Circus where they had hidden from the crowds. Dr. Stayling was intending to strike through Clerkenwell to the Astrologer's Quarter, and the others were inclined to go with him, intrigued by what he had told them about the old-tech machine with which Madame Lakshmi kept in contact with the Movement. But Dr. Crumb had a mission of his own which could not wait; he left them there, and set off to fetch the Solent children.

Scurrying through the riot-torn city toward Ludgate Hill, he felt as if he were running through his own memories. The sky above the rooftops was smudged with inky thumbprints of smoke again, and dead bodies lay in the road, well-to-do Londoners who had been dragged from their chairs and kicked to death by the rioters. The terrible roar of the mob, which he remembered too well from the time of the Skinners' Riots, came rolling at him down this street and that, so that it was hard to know where the trouble was.

The truth was, he decided, there was trouble all over town.

The riot was confined to no single place; there were a dozen riots going on. Some of the crowds who passed him were yelling about vengeance for Bagman Creech and death to the Dapplejacks, while others were demanding that the New Council do more to protect them from the Movement. Most, as far as he could tell, were just taking advantage of the general lawlessness to loot and rob and burn and bellow, safe in the knowledge that the Trained Bands had gone north to man the Moatway and could not be called out to stop them.

His best hope, as he reached Ludgate Hill, was that the mobs would have been too busy filling their pockets with the contents of the nearby tech-shops to trouble themselves with Kit Solent's house. But as he drew nearer to it he heard shouting and the smashing of glass, and realized that they had got there ahead of him. Fearing for the safety of the Solent children, he pulled his hat down tight to hide his shaved head and ran toward the noise.

By the time he reached the house the rioters had swept through it and away, bound for the Barbican where there was better loot to be had. Kit Solent's door, kicked off its hinges, lay skewed on the hallway floor. Grains of glass crunched under Dr. Crumb's shoes as he crept cautiously inside. Someone had scrawled scriven luver on a wall. Things like dice skittered away from him at each step, and when he picked one up he found that it was a worn letter H from an Ancient keyboard -- Solent's irrational house had been partly floored with the things, it seemed.

He let it fall. The house was quiet. Upstairs, the light came pale and wintry through crazed windows. Dr. Crumb pushed open the door of one ransacked room after another, afraid of what he might find. "Children?" he called. (Kit Solent had told him their names, but in all the excitement he had forgotten them.) "Children?"

***

Below him, Ruan and Fern watched the ceiling, listening to the noises that he made as he prowled about the house. At first Ruan had felt glad when the terrible troll noises grew quieter. But in a way this new, quiet noise was worse. It made him think that someone sly and dangerous was creeping about looking for him and Fern, nosing into hiding places, maybe telling all the others to keep quiet so he could listen for the children's breathing. "Children!" they heard him call, but it was not a voice they knew. Not Daddy's voice.

Ruan tiptoed to the door on the far side of the basement and tried it. It was not locked. There was darkness on the other side, and he was scared of the dark, but he was more scared of whoever else was in the house, and at least there were lanterns lying about. He took a match solemnly out of the matchbox which he found on a shelf and carefully, carefully lit a lantern.

A padding of feet way up above the ceiling somewhere. A crash of something overturned.

He took Fern's hand. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere where only Daddy will be able to find us. Only him and Miss Crumb know about this place." He tied the ends of his bedspread bundle across his chest so that he had one hand for the lantern and the other for his sister.

"It's dark in there," said Fern.

"It's all right. That's what the lantern's for. And I'll take spare matches and spare candles in case it goes out." He stuffed them into his pockets as he spoke.

Fern looked dubiously at the tunnel entrance. "Noodle Poodle's a little bit frightinged of the dark," she said.

"Then make sure you cuddle him up nice and tight," said Ruan.

And he took her hand and picked up the lantern, and they went together into the tunnel.

***

"Children?" called Dr. Crumb, one last time, into the quietness of the empty house. He knew there would be no answer. The children must have fled or been taken. He sat down on the bottom step, tore off his hat, and held his head in his hands.

There was a dream that Dr. Crumb had often dreamed when Fever was a baby, although it had come to him less and less frequently since she learned to walk and talk. In the dream, he was already dead. He had died in his sleep, and through some calamitous coincidence, everyone else in the Head had died, too. Only baby Fever was left: She woke up crying, and there was nobody to hear her. She scrambled out of her plan-chest drawer and came and cried at Dr. Crumb's bedside and clutched at him and tried to wake him, but he could not wake; he was dead. And Fever didn't understand. How could she? She was only a baby.

What could she do? How would she find food? How would she find help? He used to wake up in a panic, wondering what would become of her, alone and confused in the wide world. He felt the same sort of panic now, imagining what might have befallen Kit Solent's children.

It took him some time to control himself, and stow his emotions away. When he was ready he walked out calmly into the street, meaning to find his way back across the city to where the other Engineers were waiting.

He was almost at the corner of Cripplegate when he realized that he had left the Solent house without his hat. It must still be lying where he had thrown it, in the wrecked hallway. He was just wondering if he should turn back for it when a rough voice shouted, "It's another one of 'em! Grab him, lads!"

Dr. Crumb started to run, but in his panic he ran the wrong way, straight into the hands of the rioters. They grabbed and pinioned him. They lifted him off the ground. They jostled him round a corner and into the midst of a small crowd, and when he looked about he found that he was surrounded by his fellow Engineers, all prisoners, too.

"Crumb!" said Griffin Whyre. "They caught us on our way out of Madame Lakshmi's tower. Perhaps we would have been less conspicuous if we had not all gone en masse. A most unreasonable woman, Crumb, but what equipment she possesses! 'Radio,' I believe the Ancients would have called it. if that is an example of the Movement's technology, Stayling is right to side with them...."

Dr. Crumb found that he was not remotely interested in Madame Lakshmi or her radio. He was more inclined to wonder why the Order had been seized, and why their grimy captors were shoving them uphill toward the Barbican. "What do they want with us?" he asked.

Whyre shrugged, but one of the roughs walking alongside overheard him and said, "You're needed at the Barbican, mate. Wormtimber's got himself squished, and the Mayor needs somebody who understands the old machines...."

"if Gilpin Wheen needs our help," protested Dr. Crumb, "he could simply have requested it, like a civilized man."

"Who said anyfink about Gilpin Wheen? He's finished. It's Ted Swiney who's running this city now."

***

Ted Swiney hadn't meant to get himself a city that day. Everything was happening faster than he'd planned, thanks to Bagman Creech and the Patchskin girl. But the mob that surrounded Godshawk's Head and went storming up Slaughtergate afterward to loot the fine houses on Ludgate Hill and seize the Barbican, well, they needed a leader to look to, didn't they? "Swiney!" they chanted, as they harried the frightened old councillors out of their homes. "Swiney!" they bellowed, ducking poor Gilpin Wheen in the horse trough outside the Barbican. "Swiney for Mayor!"

(A few tried yelling for Charley Shallow, him being Bagman Creech's heir and all, but Charley looked too young to be a mayor. Anyway, they didn't know his name, and yells of "Bagman's Boy, You Know, the Little Skinny One with the Hat" didn't sound half so good as "Swiney!" when they echoed back at you off the Barbican walls.)

So they shouted for Swiney, and when the doors of the Barbican finally gave way and they surged inside it was Swiney whom they carried shoulder high, and Swiney whom they set down upon the ornate plastic and chromium throne of the Lord Mayor of London.

Swiney took it in his stride. He had a few of his trusty lads with him -- Brickie Chapstick and Mutt Gnarly and that crowd from the Mott and Hoople. Prowling around the mayor's apartments, he examined silver ornaments and squinted uncomprehendingly at antique paintings. Someone had fetched up a crate of vintage Frankish wine from the mayoral cellars, and he had a swig of that, but it tasted foreign, so he sent a few lads down to his brewery for a keg of decent London beer. A few more were dispatched to find Engineers -- there was a lot of old-tech junk plonked on pedestals around the place, and he'd need somebody to tell him what it was worth. The rest of the lads he sent out to start quelling the riot. He'd been happy enough to see High London trashed while it belonged to old woofters like Wheen, but now that it was his, he wanted it to come through the night without being burned down. Mutt and Brickie and their mates knocked some heads together, and filled some others with dire visions of what happened to people who got on the wrong side of Ted.