A Web of Air (12 page)

Fat Jago nodded understandingly. “I hear there is another member of your Guild in Mayda. No doubt you will be working with him?”

“Not exactly…” Condensation from the outside of the glass trickled coolly between Fever’s fingers. The drink was fruit juice, iced and spiced, and as she sipped it she felt a thrill of pleasure that these rich and kindly people should want her company.

“You must think us very primitive, to have turned out to watch such a silly display,” Fat Jago said, nodding towards the priests, who had stopped to pray again.

“It is the Blessing of the Summer Tides,” said his wife.

“Of course, we don’t believe it,” Fat Jago went on. “We know the tides would still rise and fall and the fish would still swim into Maydan nets without all this pretty flummery. But it is a ritual; a ceremony; a tradition that links us with our ancestors and our city’s past. I do hope you understand.”

“I have come to watch the procession every year since I was a little girl,” said Thirza, who looked as excited as a little girl still, her eyes shining and a laugh bubbling behind every word. “Do you see the statue on the litter there? That is the holy likeness of the
Mãe,
which is taken out of its tank at the Temple of the Sea for just this one day out of all the year. It was discovered in the long, long ago, washed up on the shore after a storm.”

“There are educated men who claim it’s not the
Mãe Abaixo
at all but a likeness of some other goddess who used to be worshipped in these parts,” said Fat Jago.

“Well, educated men do not know everything,” retorted Thirza, who seemed to take the old religion more seriously than her husband did. She shaded her eyes against the sunlight to watch as the procession reached the end of the lock-gates and stepped down on to the harbourside. Pretty young acolytes came hurrying through the crowd with fishing nets, into which people dropped fish-shaped Maydan coins. A dropped orange rolled in the dust underfoot until a small, tow-haired boy ran out of the crowd and picked it up.

“There was a time,” said Thirza Belkin, “when the
Mãe Abaixo
used to appear to people. She would rise up out of the depths to speak with shipwrecked sailors and drowning fishermen. She would save them and carry them to the shore, and She gave them revelations; messages that let us know how we could best please Her. I used to love those stories when I was little… I used to hope that I might see Her for myself one day. But it doesn’t happen nowadays. I wonder why?”

“Because people are less gullible than they used to be,” said Fat Jago. “I bet Orca Mo would love a good revelation. Look at her; she knows she’s turning into a mere party decoration! She’d love to announce some new appearance by the
Mãe Abaixo
to strengthen people’s faith and restore her own power. But she knows that hardly anybody would believe it.”

The priestess passed them, with all the tentacles of her squid hat trailing in the wind. She did look a little self-conscious, thought Fever. Perhaps Fat Jago was right. Perhaps even Orca Mo knew that her religion was losing its meaning.

“So what has kept you in Mayda?” Fat Jago asked, raising his voice above the jingle of tambourines as the statue on its litter passed them. “Would it be young Thursday, by any chance?”

Fever looked at him in surprise. How did he know that she had been planning to see Arlo Thursday?

Thirza laughed and touched Fever lightly on the wrist. “There is nothing that happens in Mayda that Jago doesn’t find out about. He’s incorrigibly nosey.”

“I’m a businessman,” her husband protested. “I keep my ear to the ground, that’s all. And from the way Miss Crumb asked after Thursday the other evening, I could tell he interested her.” He looked serious for a moment, leaning close to Fever. “Be careful, my dear. What I said about Arlo Thursday was quite true. He really is mad.”

“I did not think so,” said Fever. It unsettled her that Fat Jago knew her business, but she was not sure why. And why did she feel this sudden need to defend Arlo? “He is certainly eccentric, but he seemed perfectly rational to me.”

“You’ve actually spoken with him then?” Fat Jago’s forehead crinkled like a Roman blind as he raised both eyebrows. “I didn’t think he saw anyone nowadays.”

“Only his angels,” said Thirza softly, watching the statue go by. There was a sadness in her eyes, and Fever wondered if it was because of the Goddess or because of Arlo Thursday.

“Thirza used to have a thing for young Thursday,” said her husband, turning jocular again.

“Oh Jago!” laughed his wife. “Don’t be silly! He worked for a while at my father’s shipyard, that is all. We were friends…”

“Childhood sweethearts!”

“Not at all! Anyway, imagine if I’d married him; I would be called Thirza Thursday. Have you ever heard such a silly name, Fever?”

“If you’d married Thursday,” said her husband, “your silly name would be the least of your worries. It’s true that I may not be as young and good-looking as him. It’s true that I haven’t seen my toes for thirty years, and I don’t expect ever to see them again, but at least I can provide for you…”

“Of course you can,” said Thirza, reaching across Fever to take his hand.

“Nevertheless, Fever,” said Fat Jago, “I would ask you, as a friend, not to call on Arlo Thursday any more. Who knows what he gets up to, up in that old house? I would fear for your safety if you went there again.”

Fever felt herself bristle. What gave Fat Jago the right to tell her what she should do and who she should see? He claimed to be rational, but he was as blinded as the rest of Mayda by those foolish stories about the Thursday family. He clearly meant his warning kindly, though, so she thanked him as politely as she could. But still she wondered how he had known that she’d been calling on Arlo.

The procession had passed. The crowd of onlookers started to break up, some following the statue of the
Mãe Abaixo
back towards Her temple, others drifting away along the harbourside or across the lock-gates. The Belkins were keen that Fever should go and have lunch with them, but she said no. The afternoon was wearing on, and she had the long climb to Casas Elevado ahead of her. She agreed to visit them at their villa the next day, then set out across the lock-gates alone.

t the Thursday house the gate was still locked, and there were no angels waiting. Fever tugged at the rusty bell pull again without much hope and wondered what else she could do with the remainder of the afternoon. But to her surprise the gate swung open, and as she stepped through it she heard the house rumbling down to meet her.

“Miss Crumb,” said Arlo Thursday, opening the front door to her as the building came to rest against its buffers. “I thought you’d gone away.”

“The
Lyceum
has gone. I decided to stay.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” she said. “About flight.”

“That can be dangerous,” he said. He was looking past her, scanning the garden, as if wanting to make sure that no one else had slipped in with her. “Even thinking about flight can be dangerous.”

They stood there on the veranda watching each other. The wind blew in through the open front door and stirred the litter that lay on the floor of the hallway; angel feathers and delicate curls of wood that looked like bits of pasta and rustled like paper as they rolled across the floorboards.

“You shouldn’t have stayed,” Arlo Thursday said. Then he shrugged. “You’d better come in.”

He led her through the shady, cluttered house to its kitchen and started making coffee before she found the nerve to tell him that she really only drank boiled water. The smell from the coffee-pot filled the large, low-ceilinged room, and to Fever, whose Scriven senses lent every scent a colour, it smelled as golden as the sunlight which washed in through the dirty windows when Arlo raised the blinds.

“Once a week I bring the house down here and a delivery boy drops off the stuff I need and picks up payment,” he said. “I’ve got some money left out of what Edgar paid me for designing his flyer. Not much, but enough for bread and cheese and coffee. That’s all I need.”

Fever gave a sceptical sniff. Bread and cheese and coffee hardly constituted a balanced diet, and she could also think of several other things that Arlo Thursday needed, such as some soap, and a broom, and a feather duster. The faint blue odour of his unwashed body reached her clear across the kitchen, and mingled unattractively with the scent of days-old food mouldering on the plates piled up on the table. Books and papers were heaped up there too, and splashes of bird-lime crusted on shelves and chair-backs suggested that the angels were allowed indoors. The place offended Fever’s sense of order as well her sense of smell, but she did her best to ignore it and concentrate on the model flying machines which swayed above her, hanging on their barely visible threads from the kitchen ceiling.

He handed her a tin cup filled with coffee. She looked down at it and saw her reflection gawping up at her from its umber surface. It was definitely too late now to tell him that she didn’t approve of coffee, and she wondered what she was going to do with the stuff.

“I’ve got something to show you,” said Arlo Thursday. “Come on.”

They went back through the house, past an open doorway which gave Fever an unattractive glimpse of Arlo’s unmade bed and a bedroom strewn with cast-off clothes. He led her to another door, around which the floor was heaped with more of those curls of pale wood she’d noticed earlier. Sawdust lay thickly there, and mice had left wandering trails through the drifts, like the footprints of lost explorers in a desert, vanishing in the draught as Arlo swung the door open.

He stood back to let her go past him into a big, curtained space which she supposed had once been the old funicular’s dining room. There was rich paper on the walls, though it was old and peeling and the mice had nibbled it. There was an expensive-looking antique dining table which seemed to have been turned into a workbench, its surface completely hidden beneath heaps of tools and piles of papers. Fever barely noticed it. There was only one other thing in the room, but it occupied her whole attention.

It was a flying machine.

It was only half finished, the fine blond wooden bones of its wings and body not yet covered with paper, but already it had the grace which Fever had recognized in the models. There was a sense of imminence about it; of some flying thing at rest, readying itself to spring into the air. It looked caged, filling the room, the tips of those skeleton wings touching the walls.

She looked back at Arlo. He was watching her. She could see the machine mirrored in his eyes. “It is based on the designs I made for Edgar Saraband,” he said, “but I’ve made some improvements.”

She circled the machine, ducking under the broad wings, running her fingers over the smooth, planed struts. Again she noticed the shape of the wings in cross section; that rounded leading edge and the unmatching curves of the top and bottom surfaces. Still watching her, Arlo said suddenly, “There’s a bit of ancient maths, the Navier-Stokes equations…”

“They describe the movement of objects in water,” said Fever, startled, for she had never imagined that anyone outside the Engineers would know of the equations. They had been one of the Order’s treasures, unearthed in an old library.

“The equations work for air, too,” said Arlo. “For any fluid medium. My grandfather was a shipbuilder. He used them to work out the best shape for oars and keels and rudders. That’s what made me think of applying them to wings. Once you know how the air flows round a wing you can shape it to provide more lift…”

Fever looked at him out of his web of struts and cables. This strange young man had made a leap of reasoning worthy of an Engineer. She touched the propeller, mounted in the heart of the structure, pointing backwards. Still crude, waiting to be planed and sanded, but already roughly shaped and moving easily on its axle.

She said, “How is it to be powered?”

Arlo pointed at something among the debris on the table; a dark metal thing like a warrior’s helmet, hinged open to expose crude pistons. She went closer. It was an engine; a
Saraband MkI Aëro-Engine,
according to the brass plate on its side.

“Edgar sent that to me just before he died. He sent instructions on how it should be mounted; how it’s linked to the propeller. I’ll launch from a cliff top. The engine will thrust me forward while the wings provide lift.”

“A cliff top?” asked Fever. “How will you even get your machine out of the house?”

“In sections. It comes to pieces, and it is quite light. I have a place in mind where I can test it.”

“I could help you,” she said.

“It’s dangerous.”

“I don’t care.”

“You would if you understood. In his last letters to me, Edgar was frightened. And then he was killed. His machine crashed.”