Fever Crumb

by Philip Reeve

  The truth was, he decided, there was trouble all over town.

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  The riot was confined to no single place; there were a dozen riots going on. Some of the crowds who passed him were yelling about vengeance for Bagman Creech and death to the Dapplejacks, while others were demanding that the New Council do more to protect them from the Movement. Most, as far as he could tell, were just taking advantage of the general lawlessness to loot and rob and burn and bellow, safe in the knowledge that the Trained Bands had gone north to man the Moatway and could not be called out to stop them.

  His best hope, as he reached Ludgate Hill, was that the mobs would have been too busy filling their pockets with the contents of the nearby tech-shops to trouble themselves with Kit Solent's house. But as he drew nearer to it he heard shouting and the smashing of glass, and realized that they had got there ahead of him. Fearing for the safety of the Solent children, he pulled his hat down tight to hide his shaved head and ran toward the noise.

  By the time he reached the house the rioters had swept through it and away, bound for the Barbican where there was better loot to be had. Kit Solent's door, kicked off its hinges, lay skewed on the hallway floor. Grains of glass crunched under Dr. Crumb's shoes as he crept cautiously inside. Someone had scrawled scriven luver on a wall. Things like dice skittered away from him at each step, and when he picked one up he found that it was a worn letter H from an Ancient keyboard -- Solent's irrational house had been partly floored with the things, it seemed.

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  He let it fall. The house was quiet. Upstairs, the light came pale and wintry through crazed windows. Dr. Crumb pushed open the door of one ransacked room after another, afraid of what he might find. "Children?" he called. (Kit Solent had told him their names, but in all the excitement he had forgotten them.) "Children?"

  ***

  Below him, Ruan and Fern watched the ceiling, listening to the noises that he made as he prowled about the house. At first Ruan had felt glad when the terrible troll noises grew quieter. But in a way this new, quiet noise was worse. It made him think that someone sly and dangerous was creeping about looking for him and Fern, nosing into hiding places, maybe telling all the others to keep quiet so he could listen for the children's breathing. "Children!" they heard him call, but it was not a voice they knew. Not Daddy's voice.

  Ruan tiptoed to the door on the far side of the basement and tried it. It was not locked. There was darkness on the other side, and he was scared of the dark, but he was more scared of whoever else was in the house, and at least there were lanterns lying about. He took a match solemnly out of the matchbox which he found on a shelf and carefully, carefully lit a lantern.

  A padding of feet way up above the ceiling somewhere. A crash of something overturned.

  He took Fern's hand. "Come on."

  "Where are we going?"

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  "Somewhere where only Daddy will be able to find us. Only him and Miss Crumb know about this place." He tied the ends of his bedspread bundle across his chest so that he had one hand for the lantern and the other for his sister.

  "It's dark in there," said Fern.

  "It's all right. That's what the lantern's for. And I'll take spare matches and spare candles in case it goes out." He stuffed them into his pockets as he spoke.

  Fern looked dubiously at the tunnel entrance. "Noodle Poodle's a little bit frightinged of the dark," she said.

  "Then make sure you cuddle him up nice and tight," said Ruan.

  And he took her hand and picked up the lantern, and they went together into the tunnel.

  ***

  "Children?" called Dr. Crumb, one last time, into the quietness of the empty house. He knew there would be no answer. The children must have fled or been taken. He sat down on the bottom step, tore off his hat, and held his head in his hands.

  There was a dream that Dr. Crumb had often dreamed when Fever was a baby, although it had come to him less and less frequently since she learned to walk and talk. In the dream, he was already dead. He had died in his sleep, and through some calamitous coincidence, everyone else in the Head had died, too. Only baby Fever was left: She woke up crying, and there was nobody to hear her. She scrambled out of her plan-chest drawer and came

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  and cried at Dr. Crumb's bedside and clutched at him and tried to wake him, but he could not wake; he was dead. And Fever didn't understand. How could she? She was only a baby.

  What could she do? How would she find food? How would she find help? He used to wake up in a panic, wondering what would become of her, alone and confused in the wide world. He felt the same sort of panic now, imagining what might have befallen Kit Solent's children.

  It took him some time to control himself, and stow his emotions away. When he was ready he walked out calmly into the street, meaning to find his way back across the city to where the other Engineers were waiting.

  He was almost at the corner of Cripplegate when he realized that he had left the Solent house without his hat. It must still be lying where he had thrown it, in the wrecked hallway. He was just wondering if he should turn back for it when a rough voice shouted, "It's another one of 'em! Grab him, lads!"

  Dr. Crumb started to run, but in his panic he ran the wrong way, straight into the hands of the rioters. They grabbed and pinioned him. They lifted him off the ground. They jostled him round a corner and into the midst of a small crowd, and when he looked about he found that he was surrounded by his fellow Engineers, all prisoners, too.

  "Crumb!" said Griffin Whyre. "They caught us on our way out of Madame Lakshmi's tower. Perhaps we would have been less conspicuous if we had not all gone en masse. A most

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  unreasonable woman, Crumb, but what equipment she possesses! 'Radio,' I believe the Ancients would have called it. if that is an example of the Movement's technology, Stayling is right to side with them...."

  Dr. Crumb found that he was not remotely interested in Madame Lakshmi or her radio. He was more inclined to wonder why the Order had been seized, and why their grimy captors were shoving them uphill toward the Barbican. "What do they want with us?" he asked.

  Whyre shrugged, but one of the roughs walking alongside overheard him and said, "You're needed at the Barbican, mate. Wormtimber's got himself squished, and the Mayor needs somebody who understands the old machines...."

  "if Gilpin Wheen needs our help," protested Dr. Crumb, "he could simply have requested it, like a civilized man."

  "Who said anyfink about Gilpin Wheen? He's finished. It's Ted Swiney who's running this city now."

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  ***

  28 Under New Management

  Ted Swiney hadn't meant to get himself a city that day. Everything was happening faster than he'd planned, thanks to Bagman Creech and the Patchskin girl. But the mob that surrounded Godshawk's Head and went storming up Slaughtergate afterward to loot the fine houses on Ludgate Hill and seize the Barbican, well, they needed a leader to look to, didn't they? "Swiney!" they chanted, as they harried the frightened old councillors out of their homes. "Swiney!" they bellowed, ducking poor Gilpin Wheen in the horse trough outside the Barbican. "Swiney for Mayor!"

  (A few tried yelling for Charley Shallow, him being Bagman Creech's heir and all, but Charley looked too young to be a mayor. Anyway, they didn't know his name, and yells of "Bagman's Boy, You Know, the Little Skinny One with the Hat" didn't sound half so good as "Swiney!" when they echoed back at you off the Barbican walls.)

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  So they shouted for Swiney, and when the doors of the Barbican finally gave way and they surged inside it was Swiney whom they carried shoulder high, and Swiney whom they set down upon the ornate plastic and chromium throne of the Lord Mayor of London.

  Swiney took it in his stride. He had a few of his trusty lads with him -- Brickie Chapstick and Mutt Gnarly and that crowd from the Mott and Hoople. Prowling around the mayor's apartments, he examined silver ornaments and squinted uncomprehendingly a
t antique paintings. Someone had fetched up a crate of vintage Frankish wine from the mayoral cellars, and he had a swig of that, but it tasted foreign, so he sent a few lads down to his brewery for a keg of decent London beer. A few more were dispatched to find Engineers -- there was a lot of old-tech junk plonked on pedestals around the place, and he'd need somebody to tell him what it was worth. The rest of the lads he sent out to start quelling the riot. He'd been happy enough to see High London trashed while it belonged to old woofters like Wheen, but now that it was his, he wanted it to come through the night without being burned down. Mutt and Brickie and their mates knocked some heads together, and filled some others with dire visions of what happened to people who got on the wrong side of Ted.

  Slowly, like a big, bad-tempered animal settling back to sleep, the brief disturbances wound down. It had been a little riot by London standards, with barely a hundred people killed, and only

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  a half dozen buildings burning, somewhere down Cripplegate, but in its aftermath a carnival feeling filled the city. Happy looters gathered in the big square in front of the Barbican, clad in other people's hats and stolen ball gowns and tattered curtains ripped from the mansions of former councillors. The rain had stopped. In the smoky, slanting sunlight of late afternoon they waited for their new Lord Mayor to make his first proclamation.

  Ted Swiney swaggered out onto the mayoral balcony, high above the throng. He'd buttoned his shirt up, and tied his mean little bow tie tight around his neck, which made his face redder than ever. "Swiney!" hollered the crowd.

  Ted looked down at their upturned faces, smeared all across the square below him like the pattern on a carpet. A dim, rare doubt swam into his mind. How did you run a place like London? He had already sent the former councillors off to douse the fires, so he couldn't ask them. But then his usual confidence returned. He might not know how to run a city, but he knew how to run a pub all right. How different could it be?

  He turned and said something to Mutt and Brickie, then looked at the crowd again and raised his fists for quiet. "Right," he bellowed. "First off, this gaff's under new management. You --" (and here he turned to poor, wet Gilpin Wheen, whom Brickie had just hauled out onto the balcony) "-- you're barred! Get out of my town, and don't come back!"

  He waited till Wheen had scurried off and the mob's delight had quieted down a bit. "Right," he said, straightening his tie.

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  Dealing with the old man had given him time to think about his own policies. What would his administration stand for? "Here's some new rules for you," he said. "From now on, no toffs, no misshapes, no foreigners, no spitting. Karaoke every Tuesday night, here at the Barbican. And live sports! Let's get Pickled Eel Circus rebuilt and have some proper fights again!"

  A fond memory wafted back to him of the days when he had been the hero of Pickled Eel, using his fists and his wits to bludgeon flat all comers. He ought to get a mural done of himself, he thought, forty feet high in his fighting togs, all up the side of the Barbican. But he wouldn't announce that yet. What he needed was something that would please the crowd.

  "And first off," he hollered, "since we've all had a busy day, I 'spect we could all use a beer."

  Throughout his speech the crowd had heard a rumbling, low and hollow, growing louder. Now, down Cattermole Street and around the prow of the Barbican there came trundling an enormous barrel, rolled up the cobbled hill from Swiney's brewery in St Kylie by Mutt Gnarly and a regiment of eager, boozy helpers. The crowd parted to let them maneuver the huge keg to a spot below Ted's balcony, where they heaved and strained and manhandled it, and finally managed to lift it up on two timber trestles. More men appeared, pulling a dray heaped high with mugs and tankards. Mutt used a lump hammer to drive a tap into the barrel, and drew off a pint of foaming amber beer, which he raised toward Ted while the rest of the crowd cheered.

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  "Brimstone Best!" yelled Swiney, above the din. "A barrel of my finest, big enough for all. Usually I stick a rusty horseshoe in each keg to give it a bit of bite, but this one's so big I had to use an anvil! So get stuck in. The first pint's free and after that it's half price till dawn. It's happy hour!"

  And so it was. It was the happiest hour of Ted Swiney's entire reign. He leaned on the balcony and watched his followers get drunk, and the same half-contented, half-contemptuous look came over his face that he wore when he was standing behind his own bar. "Stupid cloots," he muttered to himself. "Booze and circuses, that'll keep 'em quiet." This mayoring lark was going to be a doddle.

  But then, above the gusts of raucous singing that wafted from the square, he heard a new sound, softer and yet more menacing than the shouts of the drunken 'prentices fighting and spewing in the streets below.

  A rumble and a roar it was, like beer kegs trundling into some vast cellar far away. Ted had never heard that sound before, but he knew it meant trouble. "What's that?" he asked Brickie Chapstick, but Brickie, too full of Brimstone Best, just said, "You're my best mate, you are," and fell over on the carpet.

  Ted went and found a window and looked out of it. Northward, where the dim line of the Moatway stretched across the hazy heath, big lazy clouds of smoke were starting to sprawl across the land, and pulses of light kept flapping and flickering inside them, red and gold and white.

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  Even the revellers in the square had noticed it by then. "Shurrup," they told one another. "No, wha'sh'at, shurrup, listen ..."

  The sound came only dimly to them even then. Crackling volleys of musketry, the whoop of unlikely old-energy weapons, and the deep, steady, kettledrum boom of nomad cannon.

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  ***

  29 The Traction Castle

  The mono was an inefficient, fuel-hungry mode of transport, but it was fast. Fever looked out of the windows as it went rolling past the wrecked balloon and curved toward the breach that the Movement had made in the Moatway. As it climbed the steep bank she saw Stalkers at work there, pulling down the shattered palisades and heaping up the bodies of dead London soldiers. One of the Movement's armored land barges was perched amid the ruins of a fort on the crest of the embankment, and she pressed her face close to the glass as the mono rolled past it, trying to peer between its armor plates to see which sort of engine it used, and whether it had wheels or tracks. Hatches on its hull were open and men in steel helmets and shining chain-mail vests were sitting on its upperworks.

  Before she could make out much more, the mono was careering down the steep northern face of the Moatway, crossing the nettle-filled dike in front of it by means of a makeshift timber

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  bridge. She could see other, smaller vehicles on the land ahead, and behind them something so high, and dirty, and pale that she thought it might be the snout of a glacier. Could the ice really have come so far south?

  And then she looked again at the thing, and slowly it rearranged itself in her mind until she understood what it was.

  It was a traction fortress, the great capital vehicle of the Movement, armored in timber and metal, painted in dirty, whitish dazzle-patterns which must have served as camouflage while it was lumbering across the Ice Wastes. Watchtowers and gun emplacements encrusted its hull, their hard edges softened by swags of camouflage netting. Huge, studded, barrel-shaped wheels showed dimly through the mist that hung about its skirts, the mist which was not mist at all but vapor from its hundreds of chimneys and exhaust stacks.

  "It must be a hundred feet tall!" breathed Fever, peering up at its high prow, where a carved wooden dragon's head reared up, irrational, brutal, and stained red by the evening sun.

  The Stalkers, of course, did not reply.

  In the fortress's flank an armored gate stood open, and the mono rolled through it, up a ramp and into a hangar where a dozen others like it stood waiting or were being refueled by crews of mechanics. Many of the machines had names, like Rolling Thunder or The Wheel Thing , but before Fever had time to take in any more details Lammergeier a
nd Corvus were ordering her out of their mono. They marshalled her through a bulkhead door

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  and up a spiral staircase, through more doors, along a passageway. The wooden walls, and the low wooden ceilings, were all carved with serpentine patterns and the stylized forms of the gods and heroes of the old north. Fever and the Stalkers crossed a chamber where a huge cannon and its crew stood ready at an open gun port, and passed into another, more richly decorated, where evening light came through a score of slit-shaped windows to stripe the hanging tapestries and polished deck.

  A man who had been sitting in a big chair there rose as she entered. There were others in the room with him -- armored warriors with swords and guns hanging from their thick belts, women in fur-trimmed robes -- but Fever knew at once that the man in the chair was the important one, and she paid no attention to the rest.

  " the balloon has been secured ," said the Stalker Lammergeier. "one of its occupants is dead, but this girl continues to function."

  The man walked all round Fever with his hands folded behind his back, looking at her as if she were an exhibit.

  "I am the Land Admiral Nikola Quercus," he said. He had the faintest trace of an accent. His eyes were narrow, slanted, and stone gray. He wore a shabby, tall-collared tunic, breeches, and boots. He didn't look like a warrior. He looked like a scholar. A mild young man, not big or tall, with fair hair cropped short and brushed forward around his high forehead.