A Web of Air

by Philip Reeve

  Was he dead? Fever didn’t know. Did she feel bad about that? She saw no rational reason why she should. It was his own fault. If the men would just go back to their ship and sail away; if they’d only stop trying to get up the ladder… But the three remaining men kept climbing and after a few moments more all the ammunition was exhausted. Arlo snatched up the empty pot and it rang like a gong on the bald head of one who had made it almost to the platform, but he kept on coming.

  Fever shoved Arlo inside the tower and went in after him, shouting, “Get upstairs! Smash the machine!” She thrust him towards the staircase and scrambled over to the table, where her ultimate weapon waited.

  Outside, the man heaved himself up on to the platform. It was Fat Jago himself, wearing a ridiculous jacket with so many pockets that he looked like a chest of drawers. He glowered in through the doorway. Dribbles of blood covered his face like a red lace veil, spilling from a cut the falling pot had made. He was breathing hard after his climb.

  Fever picked up the nail and set it against the end of the bullet. Picked up the hammer and set it against the head of the nail. Looked up to make sure that the vice was pointing right at Fat Jago’s vast body as he stomped towards her.

  She drew back the hammer and struck the nail against the bullet with one firm blow.

  26

  NIGHT VISITORS

  he battle until then had been carried on in silence, broken only by scuffling noises, a few gasps and grunts and that brief shriek as the scalded man fell. The sound of the bullet exploding was abrupt and startling, like an unexpected thunderclap. It filled the tower. It sent echoes slamming from the cliffs.

  Arlo froze at the foot of the stairs. Fever stood with the hammer clutched tight in her hand. The grin dropped off Fat Jago’s face like a picture falling off a wall. His eyes went wide with surprise and he looked down at his own broad chest. Only the smoke moved, unfurling from the empty bullet casing.

  Then Fat Jago looked up at Fever again, and his grin returned. Wherever the bullet had gone, it had missed him completely.

  Fever flung the hammer at him instead, but she was rattled now and that missed too. Fat Jago lunged at her across the room, roaring, as if the sound of the shot had been a signal that everyone was allowed to start making noise now. “You interfering bloody Londoner!” he shouted. “Why couldn’t you keep your nose out of this?”

  Fever saw something glint in the shadows under the table. It was the Aranha’s bullet-belt, and she snatched it up and swung it at the roaring face, but Fat Jago caught it and dragged it painfully from her fingers and slung it across the room. She turned to try and run but his hand was round her wrist, twisting her arm behind her; his thick forearm came across her throat from behind, cutting off her cry; she was slammed face first against the wall, his hot red breath on the back of her neck.

  Behind him, two more men came through the doorway. Arlo was running towards Fever, but one of the newcomers booted his legs from under him and the other caught him as he fell, cuffing him viciously across the face when he tried to bite him.

  “Right,” said Fat Jago. “It’s done. Where’s the flying machine?”

  And the fire went suddenly mad. Something sprang up and started to roar and hammer there; a leaping fire-snake, a rattling series of explosions that bled together into one long juddering noise, while tools and boxes leapt from the shelves on the walls and the walls themselves started to come apart, scattering sprays of plaster and splintered wood like wedding-rice. There were shouts and curses from Fat Jago’s men. There was a shrill cry of pain and shock that sounded like Arlo’s. There were whines and buzzings; a sense that the air was filled with small and speeding things; hornets perhaps, to judge by the way the men jumped and danced and clutched at themselves. Fat Jago suddenly rammed Fever still harder against the wall, pressing his immense and shuddering weight against her. “What are you doing?” she shouted, panicked by his brute bulk and by the noise. Fat Jago answered with a grunt, and his weight kept growing, forcing her down the wall to the floor, where he sprawled himself heavily on top of her.

  It was like being buried alive.

  At least the noise had stopped. There was a dwindling shriek as a man stumbled backwards through the doorway and pitched over the handrail outside; a dull clang as his head hit a rung; a distant crunch. A voice far below shouting, “What’s that? Fat Jago? What’s happening up there?”

  The sounds came vague and underwatery through Fever’s battered eardrums where she lay crushed beneath the landslide of flesh that was Fat Jago. What was he doing? Was he trying to suffocate her? She struggled for breath, sure that her ribcage would give way at any moment, her skull scrunch like an egg between his chest and the hard stone floor.

  Then Arlo was shouting, “Fever! Fever!” and the weight on top of her shifted. She heaved upwards with her shoulders and elbows and Fat Jago rolled off her uncomplainingly, like an overturned sofa.

  “The bullets!” Arlo was saying. “The bullets out of the Aranha – he threw them in the fire and they…”

  Fat Jago lay on his side and stared peevishly at Fever. A dozen of the Aranha’s bullets had hit him in the back. He opened his mouth and a bubble of spit formed between his lips and burst with a faint popping noise: pok. That was the last sound he made.

  Arlo was saying, “…he threw them and they landed in the fire and they went off…”

  Fever made herself stop looking at Fat Jago and looked down at herself instead, to make sure that she had not been shot without noticing it. She hadn’t; Fat Jago’s body had shielded her completely. But when she looked at Arlo she saw that he was clutching a place near his right shoulder and that his shirtsleeve was dark and wet and dripping.

  She made him sit down on the steps and take off his shirt. There was a hole in his upper arm, a flood of blood. She tore a strip from the shirt to bind it and told him to keep it lifted up. Arlo obeyed meekly. There was an empty look in his eyes which Fever found almost more worrying than the wound, but maybe she herself looked just as bad.

  She went back out on to the platform, stopping on the way to help herself to a pistol that one of Fat Jago’s companions had dropped. Outside, men were still shouting. Two of those who had fallen from the ladder had picked themselves up, though the others still lay where they’d landed. Angels whirled through the darkness, settling near the bodies, nerving themselves to start searching the dead men’s pockets for snacks.

  Fever didn’t like to stand exposed on the platform for too long in case someone took a shot at her. So she ducked back inside and shouted, “Fat Jago is dead! That’s what will happen to you too if you try coming up here again! You’ll never get the Goshawk! Go away!”

  She thought the men below might reply, but they didn’t. When she peeked out again they were leaving, limping back towards their boat.

  “They’re going,” she said. She felt absurdly pleased. She almost laughed.

  “They’re just taking a break,” said Arlo in a flat voice. “We surprised them that time, but there could be dozens more men aboard that galley. Fat Jago may be dead, but they know there’s something valuable up here, and they’ll keep trying till they get it.”

  He was shivering. She went to him, trying not to panic when she saw how much blood had soaked through the bandages, trying not to remember Kit Solent; trying not to believe that Arlo might die. His face was pale, which made his freckles stand out even more clearly. She held him and pressed her face into the scratchy cloud of his hair and put her mouth against his ear and promised him, “It will be all right. I’ll keep you safe. You can trust me.”

  “I don’t think I’ll come to this island again,” he said. “Bad things always happen here.”

  “What about the Goshawk?” she whispered. “What about me? I’m not a bad thing, am I?”

  “No, you’re not. You’re the best thing.”

  They sat like that a while, not speaking. Outside, the wind was rising, breathing gently in the gorse and the small trees. Through t
he eastern windows they began to see a faint pinkening in the sky. And from below, startling them both, came a voice.

  “Fever! Master Thursday!”

  Fever threw herself through the doorway, pointing her stolen gun down the ladder. How could she have been so stupid as to leave it unwatched? They were already halfway up the ladder, just two of them this time; two threatening charcoal-smudges of shadow in the gathering light; two pale faces gawping up at her from the rusty landing. She was wondering which one to shoot first when a light flicked on and she recognized the bloodless glow of an electric lantern.

  “Fever, it’s me!” said Dr Teal. “Hazell’s here too. We’ve come to rescue you!”

  “Dr Teal?” She lowered the pistol, trying to understand. “How did you get past Belkin’s men?”

  “Oh, it was not so hard. Hazell said we were sure to be smashed on the reefs or seen by the lookouts on the Desolation Row, but the Guild of Engineers always finds a way! We went round that long island east of here so they couldn’t see us. Heard gunfire on the way, and feared the worst. But we weren’t going to give up after coming so far, so we landed Hazell’s boat on the southern shore and hiked over the island. No sign of anybody. They must all be on that galley. Is Thursday here? The machine…?”

  “Who’s there?” Arlo was asking worriedly.

  Fever looked back into the room and said, “It’s all right. They’re friends; they’re here to help.” Wondering as she said it whether they really could, whether whatever boat had brought them here could possibly outrun Fat Jago’s galley.

  They were climbing the rungs now, not in silence like the barefoot Oktopous men but with a reassuring pong pong pong of boots on rusty ironwork. Dr Teal clambered on to the platform. He had a pistol in his hand, and he kept it ready as he came inside the tower, Fever backing in ahead of him. He stared hard at Fat Jago and the other dead man. Fever wished she’d thought to cover them up. The place looked like the Lyceum stage in the last act of a tragedy, except that the blood was not scarlet but dark and sticky-looking like spilled treacle, and nobody was about to jump up and take a curtain call.

  “You’ve already had visitors, I see,” said Dr Teal.

  Behind him, Jonathan Hazell pulled himself clumsily up on to the platform. “Merciful gods!” he exclaimed. “What has happened? A massacre!”

  “Arlo is injured,” said Fever.

  “Hazell, perhaps you should wait below,” snapped Dr Teal.

  “Not likely! Down there in the dark, with those villains likely to swarm ashore at any instant? Miss Crumb, you are not hurt? Heavens, is that Fat Jago?”

  Fever was looking at Dr Teal’s pistol. She had seen it somewhere before, though she wasn’t sure where. In a dream? In one of Godshawk’s memory-fragments? Northern workmanship: blue steel and blond wood, the long barrel decorated with a snarling wolf’s head.

  “This is Thursday, I presume?” he said, looking at Arlo.

  “Yes…” she started to say, but he was already pushing past her, raising the gun as he walked towards Arlo. His face was changing. He was becoming someone else, the way the actors at the Lyceum did when they stepped out on stage. Becoming someone cold and graceful and absolutely without pity.

  “Teal?” said Jonathan Hazell.

  Fever was still holding the gun she’d picked up earlier. She turned it in her hand as she stepped after Dr Teal, gripping it by its barrel. Dr Teal glanced back, distracted by her movement, and she swung it as hard as she could. The butt of her gun hit him on the temple with a heavy, hollow-sounding thud.

  In the plays she’d seen, a blow like that would always knock a man out cold, but the plays had been wrong about that, as they had about so many other things. Teal just said, “Gah!” and doubled over, raising both hands to his head. But for a moment his pistol was pointing at the ceiling instead of Arlo, and Fever took her chance and snatched it from him.

  “Fever!” Arlo shouted.

  “He’s Vishniak!” she said.

  “Really, Miss Crumb!” exclaimed Jonathan Hazell. “This is Dr Teal: Dr Avery Teal, of the Guild of Engineers…”

  “No…” Fever took a step backwards as the Engineer staggered and straightened up, glaring at her. She dropped her stolen gun, which she could not even be sure was loaded, and pointed his own pistol at him. It was heavy, and she had to hold it with both hands to keep it pointing at his chest and stop it drooping towards the floor. “No,” she said again. “This is the man who killed Midas Flynn. This is Vishniak! I recognize the gun!”

  “He killed Flynn?” said Arlo, trying to understand.

  “You were there?” asked Teal at the same moment. “Great gods – the bathroom – I knew I heard someone in there!”

  “Teal, is this true?” demanded Jonathan Hazell.

  “His name’s Vishniak!” insisted Fever.

  “Lothar Vishniak is a role I sometimes play,” said Dr Teal. “A mask I put on as part of my work.” He took his hand away from his injured head and studied it quizzically, as if expecting blood. Then his dark eyes looked at Fever again, and she could tell that he was gauging the distance between them, making ready to jump at her and try to reclaim his gun.

  “And are you really an Engineer?” asked Hazell, sounding indignant. “Or is that just another role you sometimes play?”

  “Of course he isn’t!” said Fever.

  “Oh, but I am,” said Dr Teal, or Vishniak, or whatever he was called. He sighed and raised his hands, accepting that he would have to explain himself. “The duties of the Guild have evolved somewhat since you left London, Fever. I work for a new branch: the Suppression Office. It is a secret branch, answerable only to Quercus and the Chief Engineer.”

  “What is a Suppression Office?” asked Jonathan Hazell. “What is it that you suppress?”

  “Ideas, Hazell. Dangerous ideas.” He stepped sideways, and Fever moved with him, keeping herself between him and Arlo, keeping the heavy gun pointed at him.

  “There are certain technologies,” he said, “which must not be allowed to develop. When London is mobile it will become the most powerful city in the world. Nothing will be able to stand before it. But if we allow our rivals to develop air power, for instance, that would change. Even the new London would be vulnerable to attack from the sky. We must make certain that the secret of flight remains lost. So the Suppression Office publishes research proving that flight is impossible, and suggesting that anyone who believes it might be is a crank. And whenever we hear of some inventor experimenting with it, an agent is despatched to see to it that the inventor dies, and that his discoveries die with him.”

  “That’s … really, really irrational!” said Fever.

  “I didn’t bring you here to murder this boy!” said Jonathan Hazell.

  “Yes you did, Hazell,” replied Dr Teal. “You just didn’t know that was why you were bringing me here.” He looked at Fever. “You know how ideas spread, Fever. They’re like germs. The dangerous ones must be stamped out at their source before they can infect too many minds. I was sent to Thelona to eliminate Edgar Saraband, and eliminate him I did. I befriended him and sabotaged that engine of his. He bragged that his flying machine was all his own work, but I found some letters from young Thursday in his workshop, and I learned that he had sent a crate to Mayda shortly before his unfortunate accident. So I came here to find Arlo. It was just by chance that I found you too.”

  “And you used me to spy on Arlo,” realized Fever. “People kept asking me who I was working for, and I said nobody. But I was working for you all along.”

  “I am not a monster,” said Dr Teal. “Everyone told me that Thursday was just a harmless eccentric. I did not want to kill him unless I was certain that he was building a workable machine. I planned to break into that funicular of his, but when I learned that you were in Mayda I realized I could use you as my agent. I followed you out on to the cliffs that first night, and let you see the prototype glider I’d brought with me from Saraband’s workshop. That whetted your i
nterest, didn’t it? The next day when I mentioned Thursday to you, I was sure you’d take the bait and go to see him, and that he’d let you in, since you’re such a pretty girl. But you’re also an Engineer, which made me feel confident that you would let me know if you found out anything worth knowing…”

  Fever recalled how proud she’d felt to have discovered Arlo and his work; how eagerly she’d gone to tell Dr Teal about it. She said, “It was me who told you about Midas Flynn, and that same night you went and killed him…”

  “I’d have got Thursday too, but when I called at his house earlier that evening he had already fled. It wasn’t the first time Flynn had come nosing round one of my targets. He had to be removed from the game. I had no idea at that time that the Oktopous Cartel were involved too. Imagine the danger we’d all be in if they got access to flying troop carriers and bomb platforms…”

  “But I didn’t build the Goshawk to attack things!” said Arlo, who had been listening silently. “Fever, I just wanted to fly.”

  Fever turned to look at him, hoping he understood that she had planned none of this, knew nothing about any of it.

  “Fever,” said Dr Teal, “I have nothing personally against this young man. But even if he only used this machine to take pleasure flights over Mayda, other people would see it, and be inspired to build machines of their own, and evolution would set in, as it always does with a new technology, and before long we would be facing aerial gunships and all sorts of trouble. Don’t you see? For London’s sake, he must be…”

  “Removed from the game?” said Fever.

  Dr Teal smiled a thin smile. “Quite. Now, give me back my gun and let me do my job. Are you an Engineer, or aren’t you?”

  Fever thought about that for a second. Then she used her toe to shove the pistol which she had discarded earlier to Arlo, who picked it up and pointed it at Teal. She passed the Engineer’s pistol to Jonathan Hazell and went to fetch a length of spare cord from one of Arlo’s toolboxes. She dragged Dr Teal’s hands behind him and tied them securely using good, rational, Engineer’s knots.