A Web of Air (16 page)

Just before it parted from its counterweight two of them made the same leap Fever had. She heard them land with thumps and grunts and curses a little further along the roof.

A second before they landed she had felt as if she’d never move again; a second afterwards she was up and running, knowing that her only hope was to outpace them. The restaurant roof formed a strange landscape; steep hillocks tiled with green copper dragon’s-scales; flat plains of asphalt where the rain had pooled. She splashed through the puddles, hearing shouts and heavy footfalls behind her. Chimney stacks towered up around her. Ventilators with visored cowls like the helms of evil knights exhaled smells of cooking from the kitchens below. Twice she scared up roosting angels, flinching from the applause of their wings as they took off into the rain.

Then she was at the far side of the restaurant, and a neighbouring building was climbing past it, and she hesitated on a sagging corner of the roof and heard the Shadow Men come blundering across the tiles towards her and threw herself forward just as the first of them reached for her.

This time the distance was even greater and she almost missed; her hands caught hold of a guttering which tilted and nearly gave way, drenching her in dirty water. Dangling there, she looked back, and there were her two pursuers standing uselessly between the restaurant’s chimneys as it carried them down to Rua Cĩrculo.

Fever’s hands slipped on the wet lead of the guttering. She screamed, fell, landed with a jarring thump on the pierced metal landing of a fire-escape which switchbacked down the wall below her.

There she lay, listening to the sounds of music and laughter from inside, letting the building take her with it as it glided up the cliff. By the time it reached its railhead she had managed to stop herself trembling. She pulled herself upright, brushed the dirt from her clothes and went down the metal stairs to mingle with some raucous customers who were spilling out of the building’s exits into one of the labyrinths of little streets near the top of South Stair.

She turned downhill, feeling immensely tired and wanting nothing more than to be in her neat little bed in her neat little room at the hotel. But after she had gone a few yards she stopped. Vishniak would have left The Red Herring by now, unnoticed amid the confusion. And if Flynn had been right, he would be making for Casas Elevado. He might be there already.

She shivered, recalling the sound of his breathing, the shadow he’d thrown on the floor of Flynn’s bathroom.
Lothar Vishniak.
Even his
name
sounded scary. The locks on Arlo’s gate would not stop a man like that.

She went a few more steps, thinking that she must go and find Dr Teal. But Dr Teal was on the far side of Mayda; it might take her an hour to reach and rouse him. Maybe Fat Jago Belkin and his beautiful wife could help her … but she didn’t even know where their home was.

She looked about for someone she could ask for help, but these streets were rough and disreputable; she saw only drunk sailors shambling from bar to bar and irrationally dressed women calling down to them from balconies. In an alleyway a man was being kicked and beaten by a quartet of brawny thugs in straw hats and stripy coats who were singing,
“That’s for squealing on Louie, you double-crossing fink,”
in a catchy four-part harmony.

Realizing that no one would help her but herself, she turned back up the hill, running as fast as she could towards Casas Elevado.

asas Elevado was almost deserted in the dark, and what few passers-by there were, were hurrying along with their heads down against the strengthening rain. No one seemed to notice Fever as she ran to Arlo Thursday’s gate. No one even glanced up when the gate swung slackly open at her touch and she cried out.

She stood there in the shelter of the gateway, with the warm rain hissing on the road behind her and rattling on the wet leaves of the garden in front of her and the gate with its broken lock swinging wider, squeaking on its rusty hinges.

She was too late. Vishniak had beaten her here, or else he’d come here before he called in on Midas Flynn. She stepped through the gate and went a little way along the path between the trees. The house was right up at the top of the gardens, no lights in its windows. Among the bushes in the garden something rustled, scaring her, but at her answering movement it took sudden flight, white wings between the wet boughs, and she saw that it was just an angel.

She started to climb without really knowing why. For all she knew, Vishniak was up there, and she did not imagine him to be the type of man who liked being disturbed when he was working. But she had to know if Arlo Thursday was alive or dead. Alive seemed unlikely, given the broken gate and what had befallen Midas Flynn. But dead seemed impossible. All his ideas, all his knowledge, gone… Maybe, if she was quick and careful, she might be able to salvage something; his notes, or one of his models.

A long flight of concrete steps ran straight up the middle of the garden, between the tracks for the house and the tracks for its counterweight. Fever supposed they had been put there so that the tracks could be maintained, and maybe as a means of escape in case the house stuck halfway down. She went up them, breathless, her thighs aching with each step, looking up all the time at the house. Nothing moved there. No lights showed.

She reached the top of the stairs and stepped on to the veranda, walking round to the back of the house where she had first met Arlo. The air was full of the smell of crushed herbs: lavender, lemongrass. The models which had hung from the veranda roof were gone, but that might not mean anything; Arlo might have taken them in because of the rain. Fever tried the back door. It was unlocked. She opened it a crack, but dared not go in. She put her face to the kitchen window and peered hard. Things in there looked much as they had that afternoon. She tried to imagine that Arlo Thursday was asleep behind the drawn blinds in one of those other rooms, or ignoring her the way he had before. Not dead on the floor somewhere like Midas Flynn.

She knew that it was stupidly dangerous to go into the house. What if Vishniak was inside? What if he had seen her light as she climbed the stairs? What if he was waiting for her? She couldn’t prove that he was not. But she had no evidence that he was. She waited for a while and there was no sound from inside the house. “Senhor Thursday?” she called softly at last. “Arlo! It’s Fever Crumb!”

Echoes of her voice came flatly back at her off the wet cliffs at the top of the garden. That was all the answer she got.

She opened the door wider and stepped through. Went past the empty kitchen, padding along the hall with her breath held, her eyes adjusting to the dark. Rain rattled at the windows and a guttering somewhere dripped steadily. In the doorway of the former dining room the sawdust and wood-shavings made pale patterns on the floor. She pushed open the door. The room was empty. The flying machine was gone. Even the battered table was bare, cleared of tools and drawings as well as the Saraband engine. If it were not for the dust and the shavings Fever could have believed the machine had been nothing but a dream.

She moved on through the house, afraid of what she expected to find. But all she found were empty rooms. Most barely furnished, what furniture there was tiger-striped by the dim rainy light which pierced the blinds. In the bedroom something lay on the floor, but when she fumbled her torch out and switched it on it revealed only a heap of Arlo Thursday’s clothes.

She swung the torch beam on to the wall behind the bed. A painting hung there in a driftwood frame. It was the sort of painting that proud Maydan shipowners commissioned to mark the launching of a new vessel. Two young men in the clothes of half a century ago, standing on a quayside with an elegant ship behind them. The man on the right was black-haired, and his freckled face was so like Arlo’s that it seemed logical to assume that he was Arlo’s grandfather, the notorious Daniel Thursday. But the other…

Fever went closer, kicking aside the drift of abandoned clothes without noticing them as she stared at the double portrait. Staring at a confident-looking man with a long jaw, grey eyes set slightly wider apart than the eyes of
Homo sapiens,
a lion’s mane of dark-gold hair. Over his cheekbones, across his brow were clusters of dark markings, like messages scribbled in an unknown alphabet. The artist had captured something arrogant and playful in his smile.

She knew that smile, that face, that noble head. She ought to. She’d lived inside a statue of it for fourteen years.

She wished she still had hold of Godshawk’s memories. That way, she might have been able to understand what the Scriven super-brain and sometime king of London had been doing in Mayda fifty years ago, posing for his portrait with a Maydan shipwright. As it was, she could only make a guess, based on the tale she’d heard at supper the other night; the stranger from the north who had befriended Daniel Thursday.
What did you give him for the ship he built you, Grandfather? Was it
you
who taught him those Navier-Stokes equations? Helped him become Mayda’s finest shipwright?

Her eyes switched their focus, some instinct in her sensing movement long before her conscious brain. When Godshawk posed for that portrait all those years ago he had chosen to wear a dark, plum-coloured tunic. That dark portion of the picture with the glass over it made a passable mirror, and reflected in it, just above his breast pocket, she saw her own long face with its echoes of his, and the candlelight reflecting in her eyes and also in the eyes of someone else who was creeping into the room behind her.

She spun round, ready to run, but there was nowhere to run to. The man, who must have entered the house silently while she was searching it, barred the doorway. She thought at first that he was Vishniak, then that he must be one of Flynn’s men who had followed her up here, but he was a stranger: a big man wearing a sleeveless leather tunic. A tattooed octopus on his bicep seemed to flex its tentacles as he strode quickly towards her and put an arm around her neck. There was a knife in his other hand, which he lifted up for her to see. Light from her dropped torch rolled down its blade like liquid. “Come,” he said, and she went numbly without trying to argue, tripping over her own feet in her hurry to keep up while he walked her out of the house with his thick arm still locked round her throat.

There was another man on the veranda. Another sleeveless tunic, another octopus tattoo. Who were they? They didn’t speak, but marched back down the stairs with Fever between them. At the bottom, in the shadow of the trees, a third man waited, pacing to and fro with a lantern. When they drew near she saw with immense relief that he was Jago Belkin, and realized that these other two must be his servants. If she had had any gods she would have thanked them. She could not guess what had brought Fat Jago there, but she was glad to see his round, amiable face.

“Thursday’s cleared out,” said one of the men. “There was just the girl.”

Fat Jago looked at Fever. She thought he would tell the man to let her go but all he said was, “You know where he is?”

Fever shook her head. The man holding her said, “Don’t reckon she does, Fat Jago. She was calling his name like she was looking for him.”

Fat Jago sighed. He handed the lantern to one of the men. Rain had beaded on the red diamond of make-up on the top of his head. “You’re a difficult young woman, Miss Crumb,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you not to come here again? Didn’t I tell you it was dangerous? Yet you were here this afternoon and now you’re back again—”

“Arlo’s gone!” said Fever, trying to twist herself free of the man’s arm. “Vishniak’s here! He killed Midas Flynn! You’ve got to—”

Fat Jago slapped her suddenly across the face, so hard that her head jerked sideways and she bit her tongue. She was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She tasted blood, thought,
He’s not here to help at all. He’s here for something else.
She could guess what it was. Like Midas Flynn, the fat man was after Arlo’s
aëroplane
…

“So Flynn’s dead?” he said. “Well, Flynn was a loser. I didn’t care if
Flynn
was poking about. You’re different. Thursday
talked
to you. Don’t deny it. I’ve had my own people watching this place. Who are you working for? The Londoner, is it? Dr Teal? He set you to win Thursday’s trust, did he?”

“I’m not working for anyone,” said Fever. Her voice sounded tiny and trembly. She was very afraid that Fat Jago would hit her again. She said, “Please listen, there is a man called Vishniak. Midas Flynn said that he’s killing everyone who tries to fly, and then he killed Flynn too and I came here to warn Arlo!”

“Or to kill him yourself and steal his secrets,” said the fat man. “I’ve heard tales about this Vishniak. You know what I think? I don’t believe there’s any such person. Vishniak doesn’t exist. He’s nothing but a bogey man; a scare story. But you’re real enough, and so’s your boss, that Engineer.”