A Web of Air Page 5

  The priestess turned her back on him so quickly that the tentacles of her squid-hat swung out around her head like the ribbons of a maypole. “Listen to him!” she shouted at her followers. “Listen to that honeyed voice, which tries to tempt us from the ways of our Mother Below! Are we tempted to come and watch his sin-lit mummery? Would we throw away the love of the Goddess to see him strut and mumble on a stage illumined by the wicked technologies of the old ones?”

  “Mumble?” cried Persimmon indignantly, but the priestess ignored him, and her followers were all too busy shouting “No!” to hear. One little girl forgot to shout, being too busy staring at Fern, but when Fern waved at her and she waved back the girl’s mother noticed and whacked her sharply across the back of the head with a tambourine.

  Orca Mo glared over her shoulder at AP, and at Mistress Persimmon, who had come down off the stage to stand beside him. “The Goddess does not want you here. If you try to perform, disaster will befall you. I warn you for your own good; bow to the will of the Mãe Abaixo; make sacrifice to her, and pray that she will wash clean your inky souls.”

  Her followers all raised their flags and tambours, shouting “Hear her! Hear her!” And through the midst of them came Fever Crumb.

  Despite the noise they were making she did not really notice them till she was among them. She was thinking, and if she had heard the rattle of the sea-worshipper’s tambourines at all, she had dismissed it as just another of the sounds of Bargetown. Now, looking up, she found strange hats and fervent eyes all round her.

  “You, child!” shouted Orca Mo, pointing at her. “Do you too ride aboard this chariot of sin? Will you not pray with us and let the Mother Below into your heart?”

  Fever blinked at the priestess’s perspiring face and flaky finery. Religious people disgusted her, and they seemed even more disgusting today, when she was fresh from talking about rational things with a rational man.

  The priestess beamed, taking Fever’s silence for sympathy. She had always found that the young were the easiest to convert; their minds were so open. She laid one plump hand on Fever’s shoulder and said, “Kneel down. Pay your respects to the Goddess.”

  Fever flinched backwards, but found the faithful hemming her in behind. She felt herself blushing with anger and embarrassment. “All right,” she said. “I’ll kneel down and worship your goddess if you’ll kneel down and worship my giant hen.”

  Orca Mo was startled. For a moment she did not understand that Fever was making fun of her. “What giant hen?” she asked.

  “This one here.” Fever gestured to the empty space beside her.

  The priestess’s face darkened. “There is no hen here…”

  “Of course not,” said Fever. “I made her up. She’s imaginary. So she’s worthy of exactly as much respect as your goddess.”

  She slid nimbly between two of the indignant sea-worshippers and walked quickly towards the Lyceum, ignoring the shouts behind her, the rattling tambourines. Fergus and Ruan had overheard everything and they were both grinning. Cosmo Lightely was saying, “An invisible hen, ha ha ha!” to the actors up on stage, who hadn’t heard it for themselves. Fever felt rather pleased with herself. She would never have had the nerve to confront unreason in such a way two years ago. She wished Dr Teal had been there to see her stand up for her disbelief.

  But Master Persimmon looked concerned as he came to greet her. The priestess and her fishy flock appeared to given up on the Lyceum’s crew as irredeemable and were rattling away along the harbourside in search of fresh sinners to harangue, but he watched them worriedly as they went. “Really, Fever, that was not quite polite.”

  “Nor was she,” said Fever.

  “Even so, we have to respect other people’s beliefs…”

  “No, we don’t. Not if the things they believe in are stupid.”

  “I simply mean…”

  Not for the first time Master Persimmon found himself feeling slightly helpless in the face of Fever’s stubbornness. Not that he did not respect her for it. The more gods the better as far as he was concerned, but he knew that Fever was convinced that there were none at all, and he rather admired the way she stood up for herself. An invisible hen, indeed! He started to put a fatherly arm around her, then recalled that she disliked being touched and scratched his ear instead. “We are visitors in Mayda,” he reminded her. “And that was not diplomatic. But let’s not worry; that insufferable woman has already caused us enough delay. Now about the lighting in this new scene…”

  6

  THE SHIPWRIGHT’S CURSE

  r Teal had given Fever much to think about. Not just the news he had brought from London, but his talk of the inventor Thursday, whom Fever felt sure must be responsible for the glider she had found. All the way from the quay where they had parted she had been turning over in her mind the things he’d said, wondering if she should have told him after all about the glider. Was it possible that here, in this irrational and superstitious city, someone had solved the mysteries of flight?

  But the irrationality and superstition of Orca Mo had distracted her, and afterwards there was no time to think about anything but her work. Lamps had to be rearranged, bulbs checked, batteries charged, AP’s new scene rehearsed and lit. Then a quick meal, and by the time the washing-up was done the sun was already dipping towards lost America and it was time for the performers to change into their stage clothes and for Fever to scramble down into her den beneath the stage. Sometimes, as the audience gathered outside, she found herself thinking of the glider, which lay like a fallen dream under the hammock in her cabin, but she pushed the thoughts away. She had work to do.

  After the visit from Orca Mo, AP was afraid that the sea-worshippers might stage a protest. He had warned Max and Fergus to be on the lookout for troublemakers among the crowd and he had written himself an extra speech, in which Niall Strong-Arm described how, on his journey to the moon, he had looked down on Mayda:

  “Finest of cities, fair and fortress-strong,

  Set in that stony bowl whose noble walls

  Her all-wise goddess raised from out the main

  As sea-girt haven to the Maydan race…”

  A little flattery like that never went amiss, and there was warm applause when he spoke the lines. But Orca Mo and her followers were not there to hear them, and if the rest of the audience knew how Persimmon’s technomancer had insulted the priestess, they did not let it spoil their enjoyment of the play. Maydans loved a spectacle, and word of the electric theatre had spread. They sighed at the love scenes between Strong-Arm and Selene; they gasped at the moon-monster (a terrifying leather serpent which reared up and hissed when Max Froy worked a bellows offstage), and they adored Fern, for they were fond of children. When Selene’s littlest handmaiden said “Yes, my lady!” they all clapped, which made her blush, which made them laugh and clap again until, at Dymphna’s prompting, she had to say the line once more. When the story was ended and the cast came on to take their curtain call, the applause rolled against the stage like surf.

  Beneath their feet, Fever lay back in her hot, stuffy lair and closed her eyes and let the image of the glider form again in her mind.

  The company dined that night at a taverna called the Curious Squid, not far away along the harbourside. They had been invited there by a wealthy Maydan who had seen the play the night before and enjoyed it so much that he wanted to meet them all. Senhor Belkin was his name. “But just call me Fat Jago!” he said cheerfully, patting his enormous stomach. “Everyone else does. I grew up a little barefoot bony urchin on the harbour-side. I always thought fatness was a sign of success.”

  “Ooh, you must be ever so successful!” said Fern, gawping up at the splendid acreage of Fat Jago’s embroidered waistcoat. He looked like a well-dressed planet.

  There were other Maydans at the table too; Fat Jago’s beautiful wife, and another merchant, Senhor Barçelo. They all wore sea-blue somewhere about their persons, and Senhora Belkin had a rusty brooch in the shape
of a flying fish on the shoulder of her dress. But they were no friends of Orca Mo and her crazy followers. “It is time that we Maydans shook off our mistrust of the old technologies,” said Fat Jago. “Orca Mo’s brand of sea-worship is only for the ignorant. Most of us in Mayda nowadays believe we can be faithful to the Mother Below without turning our backs on all the pleasures and conveniences that the modern world has to offer. We are delighted you are here. We thoroughly enjoyed your performance, didn’t we, Thirza, my dove?”

  “Oh yes,” agreed his wife, smiling shyly, lifting her sea-green eyes for a moment to look round at all the company. She was very beautiful, with milky skin and thick, curly, dark-red hair. When Fever looked at her she felt a splinter of Godshawk stir deep down in her mind. Her grandfather had always had an eye for good-looking women. And good-looking men, too, come to that…

  “Are you staying long, Persimmon?” asked Senhor Barçelo, becoming businesslike over the starters.

  “Just a few days, alas. Then we go south to the fiesta at Meriam. But it will only be for a week or so, and we shall call here again on the way back north.”

  “Then we shall come and see you again when you do,” said Fat Jago, glancing at his wife, “and we’ll bring all our friends, won’t we, Thirza, my sweet?”

  “I remember the last time you visited Mayda,” said Senhor Barçelo. “Mistress Persimmon’s performance as St Kylie is with me still…”

  “Oh, but I was only a girl then…!” cried Laura Persimmon. “Of course, in those days, we acted by candlelight; we did not have Fever Crumb to electrify us.”

  “Hear hear!” said Fat Jago, raising his glass of blood-red Maydan wine. “To the brilliant Fever Crumb, and the light which she has brought us! I hope that you will allow Fat Jago Belkin to be your guide, Miss Crumb, to the many wonders of Mayda. I have long admired of the achievements of London’s Engineers, but until now I have never met one for myself.”

  Fever thanked him, feeling embarrassed. He really was immensely fat, and although he had shaved his head in a rational manner he had spoiled the effect by painting a red diamond on the top of it. His clothes glittered with gold thread and there were jewels on his fingers and in his ear lobes. He did not seem like the sort of person who would even have heard of the Order of Engineers, let alone admired them. But he was still smiling at her, and she felt that she had to say something, so she asked, “Have you heard of a man named Arlo Thursday?”

  Senhora Belkin gave a little gasp. Her husband looked at Fever so warily that she added, “A colleague of mine spoke of him. He sounded interesting…”

  Senhor Barçelo snorted. “That’s good. Yes, interesting. That’s a good word. The whole family was interesting. Though demented might be a better one.”

  It was a little shocking to hear him speak so savagely. He had seemed so kindly, and had talked very nicely to the children, congratulating Fern on her performance and Ruan on his painting. He saw the surprise on their faces now and said, “You must understand, my dears, that the Thursday family has a strange reputation. People say they are – what is your word? Witches…”

  “Witches?” asked Lillibet, from further down the table. The talk there was fading out as everyone turned to hear what the Maydans were telling Fever.

  Fat Jago laughed. “Perhaps not actual witches. But nevertheless there has always been something strange there.” He looked round at his fellow diners, his round red face filling with pleasure at the chance to entertain these entertainers. Nudging his wife he said, “You know the story, don’t you, Thirza, my dear?”

  Thirza Belkin had scarcely spoken until then. She had just sat there eating and drinking neatly, smiling pleasantly at other people’s jokes, as if she were a mannequin on which her husband could display these diamond necklaces and earrings, this gold-embroidered gown. “Arlo’s grandfather was Daniel Thursday,” she said. “He was a builder of fishing boats. But one day a stranger came to Mayda, a foreigner of some kind, a man named Açora. He wanted a ship built.”

  “The Mother alone knows why he went to Dan Thursday instead of consulting one of the big shipyards, like Milliades’s or Blaizey’s…” muttered Fat Jago, topping up everybody’s glasses.

  “That was just the beginning,” said his wife. “Daniel Thursday and the stranger became firm friends. After the stranger left, Daniel went on building ships. And they were better than anyone else’s. Better than Blaizey’s, or Milliades’s, or anyone’s. They went like the wind. They cut through the sea like knives.”

  Senhor Barçelo said, “Some people claimed that this stranger was the Devil himself, and that Dan Thursday had sold his soul in exchange for success.”

  “Thursday grew rich, and old, and his son took over the business,” Senhora Belkin went on. “And it was more successful than ever. The other shipbuilders were jealous. They sent spies to try and pry into the Thursdays’ secrets, and even assassins to kill them, but none ever returned. It was said that the Thursdays had a familiar, a tame demon which killed anyone who threatened them. It was seen sometimes in the alleys off the harbourside, or creeping around their shipyard out in the Ragged Isles. It was called the Aranha, and it took the form of a giant spider, or sometimes a grasshopper, and it ticked: tick, tick, tick, like a pocket watch.”

  “But that’s all nonsense,” said Fat Jago, waving away her words. “Have you tasted the drink in those harbourside grog-shops? Enough to make anyone see monsters! You must excuse my wife; she’s a shipwright’s daughter herself, and still sets store by these old superstitions…”

  “And then the Goddess grew angry at the House of Thursday, just as everyone had said she would,” Senhora Belkin went on, slapping her husband playfully on the wrist to punish him for interrupting her story. “One night she stirred the sea into a monstrous wave. It rushed over the Ragged Isles, smashing the Thursdays’ house and their shipyards, splintering the ships in their basins, washing away all the sheds and workshops, tearing down the mansion which Daniel Thursday had built on the shore there and sucking the wreckage into the sea, along with him and all his family…”

  “All except his grandson, this boy Arlo,” her husband said. “All the rest of the family were swept away; all their servants and their workers too. Arlo was the only survivor. No wonder it turned him mad!”

  “Not mad,” said his wife. “It’s just… He lived alone out there on Thursday Island for a whole winter before they found him.”

  “Imagine that!” said Senhor Barçelo. “Months and months alone on that bleak rock with only the angels and the ghosts for company. Poor thing! It is little wonder that when he was finally rescued and brought back to the city he was … odd, to say the least. A recluse. He became an apprentice to Senhora Belkin’s father, old Augusto Blaizey, but as soon as he reached manhood he gave up shipbuilding and went to live all alone in the Thursday’s old funicular on Casas Elevado. He makes little birds.”

  “Birds?” asked Laura Persimmon, thinking she had misheard him.

  “Paper birds.” Senhor Barçelo spread his hands out about twelve inches apart to show how big the things had been. “It was as if, when the Goddess took his family, Arlo turned his back on the sea and started dreaming of the sky instead. The white angels are forever flapping around that house of his. And these toy birds he makes used to be forever soaring over the city, though I haven’t seen one for a while now. People used to say that he was planning to make one big enough that he could fly away on it.”

  “Nonsense,” said Fat Jago. “Ridiculous.”

  “Well, the Ancients had flying machines…” said Fever.

  “Fairy tales!” protested Fat Jago. “Like your play; Niall Strong-Arm flying to the moon. A pretty story, but it never really happened. Surely a scientific young woman like yourself pays no heed to those old legends?”

  His wife agreed. “Only the Mãe Abaixo can make flying things, Senhorita Crumb,” she said earnestly, fingering her brooch. “It is not for us mortals. You must have heard the old saying: If the Goddess
had meant us to fly, she would have given us wings. It is small wonder that ill-luck pursued Arlo Thursday…”

  “Why would your sea goddess care what goes on in the air?” asked Fever.

  “She is not just the Goddess of the Sea,” said Senhor Barçelo helpfully. “Her symbol is the winged fish that swims both in the sea and the sky. Her home is the sea, and She has lived there since all things were water, but the whole world is Hers. It is She who raised up the dry lands and lit the stars and made birds and beasts and people.”

  “But—” Fever started to say.

  “Fascinating story!” said AP hurriedly. He didn’t want Fever to offend these friendly Maydans with her outrageous ideas, the same way she had Orca Mo. “It would make a good play. The Shipwright’s Curse! A pact with the Devil … murders … secrets … a storm scene … I would play Daniel Thursday as a tragic hero, of course, with Mistress P as his long-suffering wife, trying to turn him back from the path of evil which he has chosen… Dymph, Fern and Lillibet could all be mermaids…”

  “What about me, AP?” called Cosmo Lightely from the far end of the table.

  “Why Cosmo,” said Mistress Persimmon, raising her glass to him, “you would play the Devil, of course.”

  “And I’ll be the demon spider!” shouted Max Froy. “Tick, tick tick!”

  Everyone laughed, and the talk veered back to plays. Fern tugged at Fever’s coat-cuff and said, “Fever, is there really a demon?” and Fever told her firmly that there were no such things, except in stories and in the imaginations of stupid people. But she was barely listening. Her eyes had been drawn upwards to the lamplit windows of the funiculars on the southern heights. She kept remembering the words the angel had croaked at her that first night on the cliffs, Thursday, Thursday try-to-fly and the glider that had come to her on the night wind. It had been a signal, a sign; she felt certain of that. Fat Jago wasn’t the only Maydan who had heard that an Engineer lived aboard the Lyceum. Clearly Arlo Thursday had heard it too, and he had followed her, and sent the glider to her to see if she could understand it. He wanted her to go to him. Perhaps he needed her help.