Fever Crumb

by Philip Reeve

  There, across the lawn, was the dear old summer house, its roof fallen in now, its walls thick-grown with ivy.... She walked toward it, and remembered walking toward it one warm evening, with music spilling from the house behind her and ahead of her in the night, a soft laugh, a sigh...

  She stopped short, clutching her head, wincing at the pain that hammered there. When she opened her eyes again a boat had drawn up at the foot of the hill, and a man and a boy were climbing the overgrown lawns. For a moment, confused, Fever thought they were guests arriving late for the party. She started downhill to greet them, then realized her mistake. She would never have invited such a shabby pair to one of her parties....

  It was the old man from Summertown and his ragged boy.

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  "Master Creech!" the boy shouted, looking up and seeing her standing there.

  The old man came straight for her, and his pale eyes were shining, fixed upon her face. He stopped ten feet from her, facing her across one of the ponds. "What are you?" he asked again, in a hoarse voice. " Who are you?"

  "I'm not sure," said Fever.

  The boy came panting up the hill behind him, and stopped, and they stood side by side, staring at Fever.

  "Lily Dismas was right," said the old man, more to himself than the boy. "Whatever she is, she ain't proper human."

  Something hot touched Fever's lips. She tasted redness, put up a hand to her mouth, and took it away smeared with blood. Her nose was bleeding again. "Sorry," she mumbled, reaching for her handkerchief. When she looked at the old man again he had taken out a spindly gun and he was pointing it at her.

  "This ain't personal," he said. "It's my reckoning that you must be some kind of Scriven half-breed, so I'm doing what's needful for the good of London and the human race...."

  But the cough which had been building up inside Bagman Creech's chest while he was speaking burst out of him as he pulled the spring gun's trigger. He doubled over, blue-faced, hacking. The bolt whirred past Fever's cheek like a May bug and the sound seemed to jar something loose in her. She turned and started running.

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  ***

  15 H unting F ever

  Master Creech!" shouted Charley, as the girl spun about and set off into the mist. The old man was folded over, choking. He held one hand out, waggling the gun at Charley. "Get her, lad!" he managed to gasp, before another fit of coughing started.

  Charley snatched the gun and hared after the girl. She was a white blob in the mist, turning a corner of the ruined house. He ran after her, and saw her bounding away from him down the steep terraces of the hillside, her arms outstretched for balance. As he started down his feet went from under him on the wet grass and he fell and slid, but he kept hold of Bagman's gun.

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  Halfway down the hill Fever stopped, lost, looking for the door. Mist hung in the bushes. The door was nowhere. Maybe she had come down the wrong side of the hill. "Help!" she shouted. But

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  she doubted Kit could hear her. The boy was already scrambling down behind her, crashing through wet branches.

  She ran on, plunging into the thick growth of scrub and alders that broke along the hill's foot like green surf.

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  And Charley followed her. He was Bagman's boy, and he wasn't going to lose sight of her. In among those trees the mist was thick and the light was dim, but the girl's white coat still showed, bobbing ahead of him. He was faster than her. He got closer, and saw that she was crossing a patch of green moss beyond some tall reeds up ahead. She glanced back at him, and she looked young and pretty and human. He wasn't sure he had it in him to shoot her with the spring gun, even if she was what Bagman had said she was. But he couldn't let the old man down.

  He looked behind him, but there was no sign of the Skinner. He plunged through the reeds. The girl was on the far side of the moss, where birches in their ragged silver wrappers stood in the mist like wands. Following her, he slithered down a short, steep stair of tree roots and plunged into cold mud. That was why the girl had taken her time crossing; she had picked her way along the top of an old drowned wall that Charley in his hurry hadn't even seen. The moss he had stepped out onto was just a green rug laid over a pit brimful of watery stuff like cold, black soup.

  It didn't suck him down like quicksand in a story; he simply sank, his mouth and nostrils filling with mud as he went under.

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  His hands alone stayed above the surface, clutching the precious gun. He thought of Bagman, nose-deep in the lagoons, hiding under his hat.

  And Fever, on the far bank, unsnagging her coat skirts from the brambles there and readying herself to run, stopped short, startled by his choked-off scream. Crossing the moss she had fully hoped that the boy would miss his footing and plunge in. It had been a stratagem, and she'd been proud of it: He had a gun, but she had reason. Now, as she listened to him blurt and founder, she could think only of the chill black water forcing its way into his lungs.

  She turned. A hand rose from the water, holding aloft the dripping gun, which glimmered green and silver in the light that came through the leaves above. Somehow the boy got his head above the surface. She thought for a moment that he was going to point the gun at her, but he was sinking again, and he turned and threw the weapon onto the bank behind him as he went down. "Help!" he gasped.

  What harm could he do her, unarmed and half drowned? He was a pasty little thing, younger even than her. She grabbed up a fallen branch and held it out toward him.

  "Take this!" she shouted.

  Charley went under again, drinking more mud. When he came up the girl was still holding the branch out.

  He grabbed it like she'd told him. He clung to it, and scrabbled along it, gasping and choking and whimpering. Struggling

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  toward the girl, he met her eyes. They were odd colors, which scared him, but the thought of drowning scared him more. Was her helping him just a trick? Was she going to let him get almost to dry land and then let him sink while she looked on, giggling? He felt a hot, furious anger at her for playing with him. Like a cat with a mouse!

  But all the time he went on scrabbling his way toward her, and she didn't let go, and when he was close enough she reached out and her hot hands caught hold of his and dragged him to firmer ground. He lay there gasping.

  Fever backed away from him, but she didn't think he would still want to hurt her, not now that she had helped him. She said, "Why are you doing this? Why did you chase me?"

  Charley's ears were still clogged with moss and mud. He looked up at the girl and he saw her mouth was moving, but all he could hear was his own heart pounding and whooshing. He thought how like a normal girl she was. Then she looked past him, scared, and he sat up so quick his ears popped and he could hear Bagman's voice shouting out his name.

  Fever had forgotten the other man, the old one. She'd thought him too ill to follow her down the hill. But here he was, coming quick through the trees on the far side of the mud pool, long and black like an idea for a new punctuation mark. She started to move, and the brambles between the birch boles snagged her coat again.

  And Bagman Creech was stooping to pick up the gun, then

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  striding on across the moss like he was walking on water, his feet finding the hidden footholds under the surface without his even needing to look for them. His face was white and his pale eyes were the color of sunlight through fog. It was as if the sight of Fever had stripped twenty years off him and made him young and fit again. As he reached Charley's side of the moss he lifted the spring gun.

  Fever saw it, and struggled harder, but it was rooty and brambly the way she was going, and she moved with nightmare slowness, her white coat catching on thorns and low branches.

  Bagman grinned. He pushed his jaw forward, and the set of his long yellow teeth gave him the look of one of those dogs that, once it bites you, can't let go. He strode past Charley, and the skirts of his coat brushed Charley's face.
The girl was trapped in the trees, struggling. She let out a moaning noise, and Charley wanted to shout out and tell Master Creech how she'd saved him from the mire, but he knew that wouldn't make any difference, 'cos she was still Scriven. She was looking at him with a white, woeful face as the Skinner moved sideways along the moss edge, seeking for a clean shot between the trees. And now something else was moving, away to the left, behind the mist.

  Charley thought for a moment he must be wrong. It was just an old tree, surely, an old willow that had grown twisted, and the mist drifting past it made it look like it had moved. But then it stepped out of the mist, and it was a man, and he was holding a pocket pistol, aimed at Bagman Creech.

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  "Stop!" shouted Kit Solent.

  Creech hesitated. In the silence, Kit made his way through the foliage until he was between Fever and the Skinner.

  Bagman's long face twitched angrily. "Don't you go protecting her!" he warned. "Them as protects Scriven is worse than the Scriven themselves...."

  "You don't understand a thing, old man," said Kit, his voice trembling slightly. "You don't know what she is. Put down your gun."

  Creech scowled, ignoring him, and Fever saw his fingers whiten as he started to squeeze the trigger of his strange old weapon. "No!" shouted Kit again, warningly, and then, in a sort of angry grief, "No!"

  There was a single sharp, high-pitched clap. Kit's pistol spewed sparks and smoke. Bagman Creech seemed to jump at the sound, and for a moment there was a look of absolute amazement on his face. His gun went off, punching its dart into the undergrowth ten feet away. He coughed quietly and fell over backward. The air was filled with tiny flakes of goose-down lining blasted out of his quilted coat. It looked like snow.

  "Oh, Poskitt," Kit kept saying. "I didn't mean to -- I was aiming at his arm.... " He had lowered his pistol. His face was nearly as white as the old man's.

  Charley scrambled across the mud, shouting, "Master Creech!"

  Bagman's white face flopped toward him. There was pink froth in the old man's mouth and it spilled out down his chin when he

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  spoke. "Go! You are the last of us! Save yourself, so you can finish this!"

  His head dropped back. Charley hesitated only a moment. Just long enough to snatch Bagman's hat out of the mire where it had fallen. Then he was off, finding his way along the wall-top easy this time and running away between the trees.

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  ***

  16 T he long walk home

  For a while the birds, which had been scared into the sky by the gunshots, kept circling and calling, but gradually they settled again, and it grew very quiet. Fever crouched among the birches, picturing cubes and pyramids and cones and making herself recite their different properties. She had wrapped her arms tight round herself, and her breathing was quick and shallow and she was trying not to move.

  Kit Solent dropped his pistol and stooped over the Skinner, feeling for a pulse amid the white stubble on his throat, as if there were a chance he might still be alive. Blood flowed steadily and sadly from him, looking almost purple as it curled into the green water.

  "I think this is Creech," he said. He tried to laugh. "I think I've killed Bagman Creech...."

  "Who?" said Fever.

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  "Old Skinner general from the riots. I thought he'd died years ago. Well, he's dead now all right. Oh, Poskitt...I've never shot anyone before. I carry the gun in case of thieves, but I never expected...Why didn't he listen to me? The stupid old fool! I told him to drop his gun, but he didn't listen! He was just going to go ahead and...The gods alone know what he was thinking!"

  "What did he want with me?" asked Fever, edging closer to look at the dead man. It seemed to her that you did not need to be an imaginary deity to understand why Creech had acted as he did. It was simply that he thought Fever's death was more important than his own life, and he had thought he would be able to kill her before Kit killed him. What she still didn't understand was what it was that had made him hate her so.

  "He said ... he said I wasn't human...."

  "He was mad," said Kit firmly. With trembling hands he picked his pistol up and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Fever, I'm so sorry. It's my fault. I should never have brought you here. You're not ready...."

  Fever looked up at him. "He said I was a Scriven. A half-breed Scriven...but there's no such thing, is there?"

  "He was a mad old man. He didn't know what you are."

  "But you do?"

  Kit looked away, scanning the marsh for signs of movement. There was none. He left Fever alone and went to look for the Skinner's boy, but soon gave up. What could he do if he did find

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  him? Shoot him, too? The kid hadn't looked much older than Ruan. He gave up and returned to where Fever waited. "He's run off. if he goes back to London and tells what happened here, you'll be in danger.... We both will.... People still look up to the Skinners in the cheap boroughs." He reached down and pulled her to her feet. "Fever, can you open the vault?"

  The door code was as clear in Fever's mind as it had been before she met the Skinner. Her fingers knew the precise movements that they would have to make to type the right sequence on the ivory keys. But she was too scared and confused to trust Kit Solent anymore. What would happen if she did open the door for him? What would become of her when she was no more use to him?

  "No," she said. "I don't know the code. I never did."

  Kit stood staring at her. He was more than half sure that she was lying. When she said, "No," her voice dipped in the middle. When she said, "I don't know the code," a blush spread right across her face and her ears turned red. He wanted to drag her back inside the hill; force her back to the lock and make her open it....

  But he was not that sort of man. Ruthlessness had never been his style. All his life he'd been kind; the sort of boy who came home bloody-nosed from school after standing up for smaller boys against the bullies. The sort of man who could never bring himself to smack his children when they misbehaved, or even to stay cross with them for long. He looked at Fever as she stood in

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  front of him all trembly and mud stained, yet still trying to look poised and rational, and it was impossible to even imagine himself making her keep working at the lock. She needed help; she needed his protection; she needed, like any lost and frightened child, to be home.

  And so did he. Killing Creech had shocked him. He felt sick of Nonesuch House and its secrets. They weren't worth a life, not even the life of a crazy old man. Let the Movement have them. He wanted to go home.

  "Come on," he said, taking Fever's hand, and she numbly let him hold it and lead her uphill to the hidden entrance. "We'll get you back to Godshawk's Head. You'll be safe there, if that boy makes trouble."

  Kit shut the secret door behind them and they went downstairs to where their lanterns waited. Fever's had gone out, but she found a box of matches among his tools and relit it and stuffed the matches in her pocket as she followed him back into the tunnel. Kit did not even look at the vault door and the lock as they passed it. Fever dimly understood how much he was giving up. Half of her, the still-rational half, wanted to turn back and find out if her hand still knew the dance it had longed to do on Godshawk's keypad. But she was afraid. Something deep and strange had stirred inside her when she stood there before. She had been overwhelmed by something, and the most frightening thing about it was that she could not find any rational

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  explanation; it had felt as if she were possessed by some malevolent spirit.

  "I'm sorry," she managed to mumble, trailing Kit back along the tunnel.

  "No, Fever," he said. "I'm sorry. I should never have brought you here."

  They walked on in silence and thought of the Skinner's boy haring home across the marshes, somewhere above their heads.

  "Why did you?" asked Fever. "Bring me here, I mean? Why did you think I could help?"

  Kit stopped and looked
at her again in the lantern light. "I don't know."

  "But you must have had a reason for choosing me."

  He turned and walked on, so fast that Fever had to run to keep up. They splashed through a flooded section of the tunnel, sloshing shadows and wet echoes ahead of them. After another fifty yards or so Kit stopped again, turned back to her, and seemed to come to some decision. "Fever, I haven't told you the truth. Not everything."

  Fever waited while he looked at the floor, the tunnel walls, the lantern, anywhere but at her, working out in his head what he had to confess to her.

  "It all began when I found that notebook of Godshawk's at Rag Fair," he said. "I didn't know what those strange designs were for, and I still don't, but it got me interested in the old

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  man. I'd heard a lot about Godshawk the king, but nothing about Godshawk the scientist. So I started asking questions, and after a while my questions led me to a girl named Katie Unthank. Her late father had been an archaeologist who'd worked sometimes with Godshawk, and she had heard things from him. She had heard about the existence of the vault, the workshop where Godshawk was supposed to have devised his most secret inventions. And she had heard about you."

  " Me ?"

  "Katie didn't know much. Only that the Order of Engineers was bringing up a child called Fever Crumb, and that you were important. There had been some kind of experiment when you were newborn. Unthank believed that some of Godshawk's knowledge had been transferred into your brain."