Scrivener's Moon (10 page)

he
Knuckle Sandwich
and the
Heart of Glass
had continued their northing, from Three Dry Ships to Wamethyst, from Wamethyst to Ravensburn. There the road divided. The main spur ran on northward, but Wavey and Borglum turned north-west along a lesser road, following the line of the old coast which lay off to their left with mist growing on its lonely hills like mould on old loaves. Each time they stopped, the fighters sparred, and even if they were far from settlements or oil wells people still appeared out of the wet countryside to watch, and sling coppers into the hat that Lucy carried round. But Fever stayed in her cabin, reading Wintervale and trying to ignore the noises from outside. She did not want to see Borglum’s paper boy again.

Then one morning, in the grey borderlands between sleep and wakefulness, she dreamed of Skrevanastuut. A squat, flat-topped pyramid, it crouched on a plain of windswept heather and bare stones, striped with drifts of snow. She thought that she could see the ruins of other buildings around it, but they were so low and eroded that they might have been nothing but reefs of bedrock. So might the tower itself, wind-worn and weathered as it was, except that its geometry seemed too precise. Beyond it in the near distance lay mountains of snow and cold black rock. Above it, the stars were out, but the sky was not dark: it flickered with banners of feathered light, green and gold and rose, the colours reflecting faintly from the tower’s walls.

Fever woke. She had slept late, and the landship was already moving. She lay a moment thinking back over her dream, wondering,
What is that thing made of? Slate? Obsidian?
No: she could remember the feel of those walls under her fingers and they had been none of those things. . .

With a soggy sense of dread she started to realize that the dream had been too vivid to be simply a dream.

Wavey Godshawk, dressed in her fur-trimmed nightgown, was just sitting down to breakfast when Fever stormed into her cabin. “Oh, Fever,” she said, looking up from her kippers and kedgeree. “I do hope you’ll try some of this. . .”

But Fever had not come for breakfast. “I saw it,” she said. “I touched the tower, and it felt like . . . like
pottery
, like
china
, but it was so hard it wouldn’t break, and it had no door, so the journey had all been for nothing. I dreamed it all! Except it wasn’t a dream, was it? I’ve had dreams like that before, about the laboratory under Nonesuch Hill. They aren’t dreams at all. They’re memories;
his
memories.”

She slumped down on a bench, feeling shivery and sorry for herself, wondering if it were all about to start again, that rising fog of Godshawk’s memories which had once threatened to blot out her own personality entirely. Her hand went to the back of her head, feeling under her hair for the scar where he had inserted his machine. “That’s why I’ve come with you on this stupid journey,” she said sullenly. “I thought I was here because I wanted to be, but it’s that machine of his, still at work inside me, making me want to go to places where he went.”

“Oh, Fever,” said her mother, hurt, “I thought that we were having
fun
. . .” She stood up and came around the table to take her daughter’s hands in hers. “And the fact that Godshawk’s memories are still in there. . .” She looked deep into Fever’s eyes, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the Stalker device which had spread its spiderwebs through her daughter’s brain. “Fever, I think it’s
wonderful
. Don’t you realize how
lucky
you are? Most of us, the closest we can get to your grandfather’s genius is by reading his books, and most of those are lost. Even I have only memories of the things he told me, and they are such old and fading memories now that I cannot really trust them. But you, oh, you have his own thoughts in you, like books you can take down whenever you wish from the library of your mind. . .”

Fever broke away from her and ran out of the cabin, along the wobbling passageways of the barge to a place where iron rungs went up the wall like the stitches on a cartoon scar. She climbed out through a roof-hatch on to the open upper deck behind the main gun turret. Wavey didn’t understand a thing. Godshawk’s memories weren’t like a book that she could take down when she needed to. They were like an illness; a frightening seizure that came on her unawares while she was sleepy or distracted and made her doubt whether any of her thoughts were really hers. And what if they started to come at other times? What if the machine in her head had recovered from the blast of Charley Shallow’s magnetic gun?

She climbed the rope ladder which led to a crow’s nest halfway up the landship’s flag-mast. There she sat down in the lee of a swivel-mounted carronade and rested, her chin on her knees. The vibrations of the barge engines and the shudder of its wheels over the rough ground came up through her body and rattled her teeth. What was she doing here? Why hadn’t she listened to her father? It was ridiculous to come travelling in the north-country. She felt as if she had kidnapped herself.

A snarl of sound drifted across the flatlands, and she glanced ahead and saw a squadron of the Movement’s monowheels emerge from the morning mist, bowling down the road like dropped tin plates, engines moaning, fumes spurting from their exhaust flutes. The
Heart of Glass
and Borglum’s barge started to pull aside to let them past, for the road was narrow here, much of it running on causeways across damp saltings.

Instead of speeding by the ’wheels slowed and stopped, some blocking the way ahead, some rolling past the convoy to take up positions across the road behind. Men jumped down from their cabins, and Fever saw the flash of sunlight on gun barrels. Wondering what the matter could be, she climbed quickly back down through the barge to the main hatch, where her mother and the
Heart of Glass’
s commander were already climbing out to welcome the newcomers.

A tall young officer strode over from the idling monos and saluted. “Chief Engineer, I have been sent to escort to you to Marshal Raven at Hill 60.”

Wavey smiled indulgently. She was annoyed at having her journey interrupted for no good reason, but she was always prepared to indulge handsome young men. She said, “That is kind of dear Marshal Raven, I’m sure, but I do not have time to visit Hill 60! I am bound for Caledon, on a private matter. Move your vehicles out of the way.”

“My orders are that you are to be brought to Hill 60, you and your daughter. It is for your own good. This area is unsafe for travellers.”

“Unsafe?” Wavey sounded astonished. “I thought the Marshal had established peace and sent all enemies of the Movement packing?”

Borglum joined them, jumping down from the forward hatch of the
Knuckle Sandwich
and waddling angrily up to where the captain stood. “What’s this, then?” he demanded. “Rufus Raven owns this road now, does he? Honest travellers can’t go about their business in peace? She’s travelling with us, this lady and her girl, and she hasn’t time for detours, and hobnobbing with Rufus Raven.”

Instead of answering, the young officer struck him hard across the face, the sound echoing flatly off the flanks of the barges. Borglum stumbled backwards and sat down, one hand going to his bloody nose, the other reaching for something in his boot. The soldiers from the monowheels raised their guns.

“I must insist that you come with us,” said the officer.

“Captain, are you
arresting
us?’ asked Wavey.

The captain bowed. “Marshal Raven wishes to speak with you,” was all that he would say.

o the
Heart of Glass
went on its way without Borglum’s carnival, the monowheels rolling ahead and behind. Wavey, angry at the treatment of her friends, sulked in her cabin, playing something red and spicy on her scent-lantern. But Fever felt too uneasy to remain below. She braved the cold and stood watching on the upper deck, which was now manned by silent, serious men from the monowheels.

They joined a broad troop road again, striking north-east between the bogs and lakes which filled the centre of that empty seabed. They passed the gaunt, ghostly stumps of Ancient oil rigs, and stranded hulks converted into houses, whose owners stopped digging in the salt pans and stood watching as the landship and its escorts thundered past. The further north and east they went, the more the land was dotted with the Movement’s vehicle parks and fuel-dumps. They stopped the night at one: Wavey silent and furious at supper, a ring of sentries around the landship. Before dawn they were moving again, and late in the afternoon of that day they came in sight of the wide, wedge-shaped hill where Rufus Raven had held out for so long against the Arkhangelsk. Dozens of Movement landships and a few small mobile forts slumbered among the gorse bushes on its lower slopes. Further up there were big brown tents, thickets of standards, and a surprising number of tethered mammoths. On the summit, red and sullen-looking, squatted Raven’s famous traction castle, Jotungard.

As the
Heart of Glass
drew near to the encampments a group of mammoths passed, and one of them shied a little at the noise from the monowheels. The girl who rode it pressed her heels hard against its neck to steady it and looked at Fever as the barge went by, making a wry shape with her eyebrows. Fever supposed she was commenting on the accidents of birth which had brought them both to this place, one riding on a mammoth and the other on a motorized gun-emplacement. An attractive girl, but savage-looking, with masses of rust-coloured hair, and a rusty clutter of ancient circuitry and clockworks hanging round her neck. She was not a girl of the Movement, Fever thought, watching her with a strange feeling she could not quite name, and feeling sorry when she passed out of sight. She had looked more like the drawings of the Arkhangelsk in Wintervale’s book. Perhaps her presence here in Raven’s camp had something to do with the new peace. But somehow the mood of the place did not
feel
like peace; more like the calm before a dreadful storm.

Fever tried to remember what she knew about Raven. She had seen him once, on one of his brief visits to London, but only from a distance; she had not spoken with him. A big man, strong but kindly; that was the idea she had of him. He liked the old ways, so the Movement had been surprised when he threw in his lot with the great modernizer Quercus, but he had been a staunch ally to him down the years; loyal as a hound. Not the sort of man who would arrest the Chief Engineer and her daughter. Wavey was right; this was all a mistake. . .

The
Heart of Glass
was herded into an open area between a pair of small traction forts. Soon a soldier came to tell Fever that she and her mother were to wait upon the Marshal. She went below, and found Wavey in her cabin, busy changing into a gorgeous new fur-trimmed robe of white silicon-silk embroidered with swallows and dragons.

“Fever,” she said, “you can help me with the ruff. It fastens at the back, do you see?” She held her white hair aside while Fever fumbled with the catch, securing the ruff of stiff red lace around her mother’s throat. Wavey’s mood had not improved. “It is an outrage,” she said. “First to drag us here like captives, and then to demand that we go aboard his stinking castle, when he should be coming here to beg
our
forgiveness and welcome us as honoured guests. Oh, Quercus shall hear of this! By the time I’m finished with him, Rufus Raven will be lucky if he can get a job sweeping up the dung of his drabble-tailed mammoths. . .”

“Wavey,” said Fever, “it will be all right, won’t it?”
What an irrational thing to ask
, she thought. How could Wavey know? But she was growing scared, and needed reassurance.

Wavey smiled and stroked her cheek. “You are not used to these north-country barbarians and their ways. They win a little power, and it goes straight to their silly heads and they start ordering everyone around and making a nuisance of themselves. We shall soon sort Rufus Raven out, and be on our way again.”

It was late, and the long northern day was fast fading, the sky above the hill purpling like a bruise as Fever and her mother climbed out of the barge to join the escort of troopers waiting in the mud beside it. The young officer from the monowheel squadron had been replaced by another, just as polite, just as firm. They followed him along boarded walkways between landship-parks and mammoth-lines, through the drifting smoke from cooking fires, until they reached the rocky, battle-scarred hilltop and stood at last beside the clawed wheels of Jotungard.

Now that she was close to it Fever could see that it was smaller than the traction castle which had brought Quercus to London, but its armour was heavier, and it had even more guns mounted on its upperworks and poking out from ports on its sloping sides. Stalkers stood guard outside its huge main hatchway, clanking mechanically to attention as Wavey and Fever approached. They had been painted red to match the castle and each carried a massive, broad-bladed sword, cut from the armour of some defeated enemy fort. Stalkers had blades of their own, of course, so it was pointless to give them swords, but the sentries of Jotungard had carried such weapons since long before the Movement had any Stalkers, and Raven had kept up the tradition. That was the sort of man he was.

Fever glanced at the names on the Stalkers’ face-shields as she passed them. Neither of them was Shrike. She was glad. She hoped that particular Stalker had been destroyed on the battlefields last year, before the fighting stopped.

Their escort pounded on the main hatch and it heaved open with a squawk of hinges. Just before she followed Wavey inside, Fever looked up and saw, high above her in the evening sky, the scarlet banner of the Marshal in the North rippling from the castle’s topmost turret like a ribbon of blood.

Inside there was gloom, and oil-flames burning in cressets. Warriors welcomed the newcomers and guided them up the long companionways of the castle’s central drum to the heart-chamber. There they found tapestries on the walls; flames roaring in a big stove; the timbers curving overhead like the ribs of a wooden whale. There they found the Marshal waiting.

Other Movement lords whom Fever had met dressed in all sorts of finery; in feathered hats and fancy uniforms they had designed for themselves. Not Raven. He was even plainer in his clothes than Quercus: an old black tunic, scuffed boots and shiny breeches, his short hair finger-combed, a holstered pistol hanging from his broad belt where normal nomad lords would wear a sword. Scars snaked like snail-trails over the worn crag of his face, mementoes of countless fights against the Arkhangelsk, the Suomi, and the Rus.

“Snow Leopard!” he said, when Wavey was shown into his presence. “Welcome to the Raven’s Nest. . .” He had a rough way of speaking. He’d started out as a common mechanic, and he still loved to tinker with his castle’s engines in his spare time. The grooves of his big hands were engrained with oil.

Wavey ignored his smile, lifting her chin in that way she had, Scrivenish, unable to conceal her contempt for normal men and for this man in particular. “What is the meaning of these insults, Marshal? I was stopped upon the road, my friends insulted, my daughter and myself dragged here like captives. . .”

“You are not captives, Snow Lepoard,” said the Marshal. “You are my honoured guests.” His eyes found Fever and narrowed, watching her as intently as he might watch a wing of enemy armour advance across a battlefield. “Your daughter too. I heard a rumour that the Snow Leopard had a cub. She was brought up in London?”

“I am not here to chat about Fever’s upbringing,” snapped Wavey. “I am bound for the hills of Caledon on private business. Your louts have dragged me leagues out of my way. I insist that you let me continue my journey.”

“Impossible,” said Raven. He glanced at his servants, waiting in the corners of the cabin, and clapped his hands. “Wine! Food! Snow Leopard, please, be seated. You too, leopard-cub.”

That meant Fever. She sat down carefully on a padded settle, wondering what was happening. Something had changed in her mother’s face. The Scriven arrogance had drained away, to be replaced by . . . well, if it was not fear, it was something akin to it.

“It seems to me,” said Wavey softly, “that there has been a misunderstanding. I came to the north honestly enough, on a private matter. If I have intruded. . . Raven, if you are doing something here that you do not want Quercus to know about, then forgive me. That is no concern of mine.”

“What do you mean?” asked Raven.

Wavey looked demurely at the deck. “There are an awful lot of mammoths outside. Far more than I recall the Movement ever using in the past.”

“I have made alliances with some other groups.”

The servants, who had scattered through various curtained doorways when Raven clapped his hands, came back quietly, bringing cups of warm spiced wine and plates of pastries. Fever took a cup, although she did not normally drink wine. She liked the spiced smell of it, the warmth of the cup in her hands. Sipping it, she watched the Marshal watch them, and saw the troubled look on his face. The little pastry he picked up looked too small in his big fingers. His duties as a host seemed to make him nervous. She wondered where his wife was. If Wavey was really his guest, why had he not called Mistress Raven to welcome her?

“But what is the purpose of these alliances?” wondered Wavey, in a voice that seemed to say,
I am just a poor silly woman, I know nothing of warfare and the ways of men
. “I thought the Arkhangelsk were defeated?”

“That fight is finished,” agreed Raven. He drank his wine quickly, set the cup down on a tray that a servant held out for him, and looked hard at Wavey. “What do you think of it, I wonder? What do you really think of this city that Quercus is building?”

Wavey started to chuckle; a soft bubbling sound, low and irresistible. “So that is it! You are making a grab for power! You are gathering an army of your own here, and you mean to set yourself up as Land Admiral over the Movement in Quercus’s place. . .”

“That’s not how it is. . .”

“And you think that by capturing me. . .”

“You don’t understand!”

“Really, Marshal! I’m surprised at you! You were always the most trusted of Quercus’s people. So plain and unimaginative. . .”

“It is not power that I want,” said Raven. “It is just. . . It’s this new city. It’s
wrong
. It is the beginning of something terrible. I can’t explain it. . .” He stood up again. His boots squeaked as he started to pace to and fro in front of Wavey’s seat. “We are the Movement. We should travel as we have always travelled, free and fast. Going where we will in our campavans and track-houses. Not crammed aboard one single giant machine. The new city will alter everything. It will drain our nomad spirit. It will weaken us. The idea is not even
human
, is it? It is some crazy Scriven notion that
you
sowed in Quercus’s mind, Snow Leopard. . .”

Wavey laughed, and Raven stopped, looking angry. He was not used to being laughed at. She said, “Where are you getting this stuff? ‘Drain our nomad spirit’? That’s not you talking! Who has been filling your head with such trash, Raven?”

“There is a new prophet in the north,” he replied. “A lass named Morvish. She has seen it all. Her ancestors have shown her what it will lead to, this new city. She is in the camp now, as it happens, with some of her own people; she has been far abroad, carrying her message to the Suomi and the Samoyed, and she is resting here on her way back to her own people. I shall call for her if you like. . .”

“A prophet?” Wavey giggled. “Oh, Raven, really! There is always some new hedge-prophet springing up in the north. Why would I want to listen to such a person?”

“Because she’ll explain it better than I can,” Raven said. “I’m a simple man, Snow Leopard, I can’t twist words around the way you smart folk do. Maybe if you talk to Cluny Morvish she’ll make you see that this isn’t treachery I’m planning. I’m trying to save the Movement, not take it for my own. . .”

He stumbled over his words, and blushed. Fever, who blushed so easily herself, felt sorry for him, but Wavey just laughed even more. “Even
you
can hear you’re talking nonsense, Rufus. You have gone bright red! Pretty is she, this Morvish slut? She certainly seems to have turned
your
head. . .”

Raven glared at her, started to say something, then turned to the men who stood by the door. “Take her. Take both of them.”

The men had been prepared for this. Before Fever understood what was happening one of them had seized her, wrenching one arm behind her back, and was shoving her ahead of him to the door, through which his friend was already pushing Wavey. “This is intolerable!” Wavey shouted. “When Quercus hears of how you’re treating us. . .”