Scrivener's Moon (27 page)

He waited until his companions had all gone hurrying into the gloom beneath the city, then turned and ran the other way, straining his eyes in the moonlight for those two fleeing figures.

They moved away from London, and the going grew easier, here where the earth had not been torn by the city’s weight. Crowds of men were busy down around the open jaws, smashing up wrecks and dragging salvage up the ramps, but here there was only the moonlight and the marsh grass blowing. They turned north, following causeways and winding marshmen’s paths.

After a mile or so they reached a patch of dryer ground; a low rise topped with thorn trees, where a burned-out northern landship stood with moonbeams poking through the shot-holes in its hull. Fever paused and looked back. There London lay, immense, rumbling, pricked with window-lights, the smoke of its chimneys smeared across the moon. She imagined how it would grow in the years that were to come; gorging itself on the wreckage of the towns and land-fleets it would conquer, eating on the move, putting up new buildings and new levels as it dragged itself across the earth, never stopping now; five tiers, six, seven. It would be difficult; it would be near impossible; there would be crises and disasters, but her poor, foolish father would make it work. She imagined the machines that the Engineers would soon devise to make the catching and dismantling of its prey easier. The doors of the Gut would be widened and strengthened until they were truly jaws, and they would yawn and snatch and crunch year after year, feeding a hunger that would never end. . .

And she would not be part of it.

She turned away, ready to move on, but as she reached for Cluny’s hand a voice called out, “Well! Won’t your dad be disappointed when I tell him about all this set-to? He thought you was
so
rational.”

Charley Shallow had come up the side of the rise, hidden by that wrecked landship and all the lacy shadows of the trees. He came towards her like a ghost in his white coat, raising the moon-shiny pistol, pulling back its hammer with a creak and a click. Fever backed away from Cluny, and watched the way the gun’s mouth followed her. She was surprised that he was there, but not particularly surprised that he was pointing a gun at her again. She had never really believed that he had changed. She scanned the moonlit marsh behind him, trying to see if he’d brought others with him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re all alone. I got separated from the others somehow. That’s what I’ll tell your dad, miss, when I get back to London. That’s what I’ll tell them all. How you attacked me; you and your blind barbarian girlfriend. What else could I do but shoot? Not that old Crumb will care too much. He never wanted you back. You weren’t
supposed
to come back, don’t you see? Quercus half suspected Raven was planning something, so he let you and your mum go north just to see what happened. Why send human beings into danger when you can send a couple of Dapplejacks? You were his canary down a coalmine. You were the finger he held up to test which way the wind was blowing.”

He’d not really thought of that before, but as he said it he realized that there was probably some truth in it. It hurt Fever, anyway, and he enjoyed hurting her, here in the last seconds of her life. “It was a relief to Dr Crumb when you were gone,” he said. “‘It’s so
quiet
without them, Charley,’ that’s what he said to me. He doesn’t need you any more. Not now he’s got me. He’ll be
glad
you’re dead again.”

“Fever, who is he?” asked Cluny.

“This is Charley Shallow,” said Fever. “The one I told you about. The one who was going to help us.”

“He does not
sound
very helpful. . .”

“What tipped you off?” asked Charley, still watching Fever. “How did you work out I’d set you up?”

“Just a feeling,” Fever said.

“Funny,” he said. “I didn’t think your lot went in for them.” He went closer to her. Not too close, for you could never trust a Scriven, but he did not want to miss, because the pistol was an old-fashioned one and he had only one shot. He glanced at Cluny as he passed her, but her wide, unseeing eyes told him she was no threat. “Don’t worry for yourself, Miss Morvish,” he told her. “I’ll not hurt
you
. There’s an executioner in London waiting to do that, and I’ll make sure you get back there to keep your appointment with him.”

But Cluny could hear him even if she couldn’t see. His words told her where he was, and as soon as he was past she threw herself at him from behind, snatching at the gun. They crashed down together; the pistol dropped; Fever lunged for it. Charley grabbed her ankles and she fell hard and struggled away from him, running her hands through the grass where she thought the gun had fallen. Charley tried to crawl after her, but Cluny had her hands around his throat and her whole weight on top of him. None of them shouted or spoke; there was no sound except their breathing; the scuffles of their movements, a few strangled grunts from Charley. Fever’s hand closed on something in the grass, but it was just a rotten branch. She saw metal glint in the moonlight and went scrabbling for it. Charley kneed Cluny hard in the belly, flung her off him and jumped up panting. Reaching into his coat he pulled out the Skinner’s knife and turned, looking for Fever. He found her standing a few feet away, pointing his own pistol at him.

They both remembered the last time they had faced each other like this, across that pool in Godshawk’s ragged garden. Back then, Charley had hesitated; now, Fever did not. Before he could lunge at her with the knife she carefully pulled the trigger.

It was the final shot of the Battle of Three Dry Ships, and as the clap of it rolled away across the marshes Charley gave a little whimper of surprise and disappointment. He dropped his blade and put a hand up to his head and stumbled away, knees buckling, folding into the grass. Smouldering scraps of wadding settled round him where he lay, glowed there for a moment like little orange eyes, and went out.

“Fever?” shouted Cluny, not knowing who’d shot who. “Fever?”

“I’m here,” Fever said.

“Is he dead?”

“I think so,” said Fever.

Charley lay on his side in the grass. She could see the blood spreading across his face like a black hand. Then one of his feet shifted, a little secret movement. Was he only stunned? Or just playing dead, like a child pretending to be asleep? She dropped the empty gun and stooped to pluck his knife out of a tussock, thinking that she should go and finish him, but not wanting to. She felt no guilt about shooting him: that had been rational; he had been a threat. He posed no danger now. She looked at the knife in her hand and read the Skinners’ motto branded on its haft.

“Was that why you wanted to trap me, Charley Shallow?” she called out. “Still that same old hatred, after all these years?”

Charley didn’t answer. Maybe he
was
dead. She decided that she didn’t care. She turned and threw the knife as far as she could, and heard the splash as it fell into a mere.

Charley heard it too. He let out a shivery breath into the wet grass. For a moment he’d been sure she was going to come and stick him with Bagman’s knife. Even without it, he didn’t fancy the idea of fighting her any more, not her and that nomad wildcat together. Blood was running thickly down the side of his face from where the pistol-ball had clipped his forehead. He did not think the wound was bad, but it was starting to hurt, and coloured shards of light danced behind his closed eyes. For a moment he felt angry at what Fever Crumb had done to him, full of pity for himself and ashamed at the thought of creeping back to London covered in blood and having to admit that he had failed. But his mind kept working, despite the pain, sly and busy as a fox. He quickly saw a better way.

I tried to stop them, Dr Crumb, but Miss Crumb shot me
. . . That’s what he’d say.
I didn’t want to hurt her. I asked her to come quietly but she snatched the pistol from me
. . .

No, Charley Shallow was no failure. He was a brave lad who had only tried to do his duty. He was a wounded hero, and the scar on his brow would be his badge of honour. No one could doubt his loyalty to the new London now he had spilled his blood for it. Maybe the only thing he could have done for himself that was better than shooting Fever Crumb was letting
her
shoot
him. Turn again, Charley
, he thought, and opened one careful eye to watch as Fever walked away from him to where the blind girl knelt.
Turn again Charley; Lord Mayor of London
.

Fever helped Cluny to her feet and they stood there for a moment, holding each other, Cluny still trembling a little.

Fever forgot Charley Shallow. She kissed Cluny’s brow, her cheek. “My mammoth-girl,” she said, and might have kissed her mouth, except that Cluny drew back in surprise.

“Is this you, Fever?” she asked. “You are not thinking that you’re Godshawk again?”

“Oh, I’m me,” said Fever. “I think I’m more me than I have ever been.”

Cluny did not seem quite certain what she felt about that. She paused, smiled shyly, frowned, and then said, “When that gun went off – I saw the flash.”

“You’re sure?” asked Fever. She took Cluny’s head between her hands, pushing the hair out of her eyes, tilting her face so the moonlight fell upon it. “Can you see anything else?”

“There is a light,” said Cluny. “A white light. Is it someone coming?”

Fever laughed. She forgot Charley Shallow. She stuffed the gun into her belt, guessing that even an empty gun might be useful on the road north. “It is the moon,” she said, taking Cluny’s hand again. “It is only the Scrivener’s Moon.”

hat winter was bad. By the time spring crept among the hills there were few men of the People left. That was how Midge came to be made chief. He had never wanted to be anything more than a hunter, but now he was the strongest in the tribe, so it was right that he should lead. He was the only one who had returned from the god-place; he wore a star-shaped scar on his shoulder where one of the mammoth-men’s fire-tubes had spat at him, and he carried with him the White Lady’s gift, the cup with red signs on it. He had told the People his story, over and again, all through the cold months; how she had come down from the god-place to speak strange words to him and give him the cup. Although she and her companions had fought so fiercely against the People, she had tried to stop the mammoth-men from killing them, and she had saved Midge’s life. The shamans said she had been a powerful spirit; a goddess maybe; if Midge had her favour it was right that he be chief.

In the month of Long Light old lame Jek came back one day from a hunting trip with the news that strangers had come to the valley under the Oakwall; mammoth-folk with tents and herds and things the People had no name for. That was bad, because Oakwall was only a half-day’s walk from the caves where the People lived. If the mammoth-folk settled at Oakwall, even for just one summer, then they might find the People, and come hunting them with lights and fire-tubes. Midge thought hard about it. He prayed with his hands wrapped around the White Lady’s cup. Then he gathered his few hunters, and they set off for Oakwall to see the strangers for themselves.

They travelled by night and laid up under a rock when the sun came. As the day faded they crept out on to the crags above the valley. The sky was golden, but the sun was old and low and far-off in the west and it no longer hurt Midge’s eyes. He heard voices close by. Motioning to his hunters to stay hidden, he wriggled forward on his belly until the valley opened below him like a green bowl, the lake in its bottom still holding the light of the sky, the Oakwall beyond it rearing up in shadow, a high, fissured cliff all cloaked and whispering with twisty trees. There were caves in that cliff where another tribe had lived once. They had died of a sickness long ago and the People did not go there for fear of ghosts.

The newcomers seemed unafraid of ghosts. Tents and big square things Midge did not know a word for were scattered all along the lake shore, and herds of animals were grazing there. Midge started to count the mammoth-folk he could see, but they were too many. Women, children, boys, but not many men. They must have had a bad winter too, he thought, in whatever land they’d come from.

Nearby, water went roaring down between the crags in a channel it had carved for itself through the rock. There a few of the mammoth-folk had gathered, all busy about something in the stream. Theirs were the voices he had heard. They had chosen a strange place to fish. Midge slid through the bracken like an adder to a place where he could look down on the strangers and see what they were doing.

Well, he could see, but he couldn’t understand. Two boys were waist-deep in the water, just where it flowed fastest through the steepest and narrowest part of the channel. They were wedging in place there a thing made of metal, a kind of wheel, which started to turn as the water hit it, flicking sharp shards of sunset light into Midge’s eyes. The wheel’s fat axle stretched across the stream to rest on either bank, and things like ropes or snakes led out of it into a humming wooden box. Two young women waited by the box. One was crouched down, fumbling with the ropey-snaky things, and the other, the dark-haired one, was trying to help, but Midge could tell by the way she moved that something was wrong with her eyes. He thought how rich these mammoth-folk must be to have let her live. Then, as he studied her face, it began to seem to him that she was the one who had been at the god-place the previous summer. One of those boys in the stream, the fair one, he had been there too. And the other young woman, the one who was laughing at something which the half-sighted one had just said. . .

He must have flinched when he recognized her, because she stopped laughing and looked up at him, and even from that distance he knew her odd-coloured eyes and her face which was so almost-like the faces of the People. It was his White Lady – looking whiter than ever now, for her hair was tied back off her strange face, and instead of the brown clothes of the mammoth-men’s women she wore a coat of white that fluttered in the wind, so bright it hurt Midge’s eyes.

She jumped the stream and stood on the near bank, looking up at where Midge lay. He didn’t think that she could see him, but she knew that he was there. The boys had scrambled out of the stream, groping for the weapons which lay beside their strewn clothes, but she made a gesture and they did not pick the weapons up. The other young woman called out to her, “Be careful!” but she did not look back.

“Hello!” she called. “Don’t be afraid. My name is Fever. I think we’ve met before.”

Midge trembled, and let go his spear, and stood up so that she could see him. There was no point trying to hide from a goddess. He called to the others and saw them from the corners of his eyes as they stood up too, laying down their spears.

Fever Crumb’s eyes swept over them and then returned to Midge; those big, serious eyes of hers, one grey, one brown. She smoothed her coat, and touched the amulet around her neck. Smiling, she came towards him through the bracken, holding out her hands.