A Web of Air

by Philip Reeve

  “I should be the one,” she said, as they drew near the tower. “I should pilot it. It is only rational. I am lighter than you. ‘Light as a bird’, that’s what you called me. And if I crash and am killed, you would be able to build another machine.”

  “No!” he said, rounding on her almost angrily. “It must be me! I want to fly, Fever.” Then, more kindly, “Besides, if something does go wrong, like it did for poor Edgar…” He reached out and quickly brushed her cheek with his rough carpenter’s fingers. “I’d rather be dead than have that on my conscience.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Fever, taken off guard by that touch. She felt giddy, sensing the edge of the cliff behind her, the long drop into the surf. But Arlo only smiled at her, and turned, and walked along the path away from her. Angels hung above him in the evening air on their big wings, almost motionless, and it was easy to imagine him up there, soaring among them, as if the sky was where he had always belonged.

  22

  JONATHAN HAZELL INVESTIGATES

  or the first few days Jonathan Hazell thought that matters had improved. Something had taken the wind out of Dr Teal’s sails, wiped the smile off his face, and generally made him far easier to live with. He was still treating the house on Rua Penhasco like a hotel, letting himself in and out at all hours, but he was no longer quite so boisterous about it. He no longer sat himself down at the parpsichord to tootle out Aberdonian marches at 3 a.m., or rearranged the statues on the household shrine into amusing dioramas. He didn’t shout, “Morning, Hazell!” every day in that big, booming voice of his when Jonathan Hazell came creeping downstairs after another rough night in the guest-room bed. Didn’t scatter his drawings of the wretched funiculars all over the house, and get ink in the rugs. Indeed, he seemed to be out most of the time, and when he was at home he scarcely spoke.

  But after the first few days, his guest’s gloom started to oppress Jonathan Hazell almost as much as his cheerfulness had. What was troubling the fellow? he wondered. He sensed that, as London’s envoy at the World’s End, it was his duty to find out. He would not want Teal sending a bad report about him back to this new mayor, Quercus.

  The Engineer looked at him darkly when he asked what was wrong, over breakfast one morning. Looked at him darkly and then shook his head. “It’s a bad business, Master Hazell.”

  “Well, may I be of any assistance?”

  “I doubt it.” Teal poked half-heartedly at a kipper, then glanced up again. “You remember I had you send a courier to London the morning after my arrival?”

  Jonathan Hazell remembered it well. It had cost him a small fortune, and Dr Teal showed no sign of paying him back.

  “The message he was carrying concerned that girl Fever Crumb,” Dr Teal continued. “She is very important to some very important people in London. Important enough that I felt sure it would do me no end of good if I could only persuade her to return home with me when I go. But she has vanished.”

  “Vanished? I thought that theatre of hers had cleared off to Meriam or somewhere…”

  “Do you think I don’t know that, Hazell? She remained behind, and she has vanished. The hotel where she was staying has no knowledge of her. When I went to the home of … of a man I thought she might have called on I found it empty, no sign of either of them. She has fled, or been kidnapped. I will have to confess to these important Londoners that having found Miss Crumb, I have lost her again, perhaps for good.”

  “Dr Teal!” said Jonathan Hazell, pushing away his own kipper half-eaten. “This is terrible!”

  The Engineer nodded grimly. “Indeed it is. My career may never recover from this blow.”

  Jonathan Hazell frowned. He remembered Fever Crumb standing in sunlight on his doorstep. He was afraid that he had been rather rude to her. She had struck him as a sensible young person. Sensible and very charming. Who cared a fig for Dr Teal’s career when the poor girl was missing?

  “We must find her!” he said, thumping the table so hard that he startled himself and made all the cutlery jiggle.

  “Eh?” Teal looked up at him, surprised. “Well, what do you think I’ve been trying to do, these past days? I’ve been walking around and around this unreasonable city of yours like a fly in a toilet-bowl, looking for her high and low.”

  “But you haven’t found her…” Jonathan Hazell was starting to feel strangely excited. He had thought for a long time that he needed a new hobby. He had been considering building a model of Mayda out of matchsticks, but might not a spot of investigation be just as diverting? He had always enjoyed a good puzzle.

  He said, “You should have told me as soon as Miss Crumb went missing. I am London’s envoy, remember, and I have a great deal of local knowledge at my, ah, fingertips. I have contacts, and things. If anyone has heard of Miss Crumb’s whereabouts, I shall learn of it. I shall start at once, this morning, at the exchange. Where was she last seen, Dr Teal? What was the name of this gentleman you think she may have called on?”

  Dr Teal looked doubtfully at him. He was used to working alone. He could think of no more unlikely partner than this meek little mole-like man. And yet the situation was desperate, and Hazell’s suggestion was not irrational.

  “His name is Arlo Thursday.”

  “Thursday! But there was some sort of disturbance at his funicular a few nights ago! I heard it said at the exchange that the Oktopous Cartel was involved! If they have kidnapped poor Miss Crumb…!”

  Dr Teal just looked glumly at him.

  Jonathan Hazell finished his cup of tea and set it down on the saucer. He stood up. “I shall look into this, Dr Teal! I shall look into this at once!”

  And look into it he had. The trail led him from the rumour-mills of the exchange, through harbourside coffee-shops and low-end chandleries, up into the slums of Muro d’Oeste where the refugees from Zagwa lived. It was as he had guessed. People who had been wary of talking to a bumptious stranger like Teal were quite prepared to share what they knew with Jonathan Hazell, a familiar merchant who was known for his honesty and tact. None of them had actually seen Fever Crumb, it was true, but he learned much that was interesting. He started to enjoy himself. Who would have thought that he would make such a good detective?

  On the same evening that Fever found the angels’ map, he met with Dr Teal in a funicular bar on the Rua Cĩrculo to report his findings.

  “Honestly, Hazell,” grumbled the Engineer, as Jonathan Hazell sidled up to him in a shadowy corner, “why can’t we discuss this at home? We are not spies.”

  Jonathan Hazell looked quickly over his shoulder to make sure that no one was listening. What he was about to say could have been said just as easily at home, it was true. But he didn’t get much chance to arrange clandestine meetings in bars as a general rule, and he wasn’t about to let this one slip through his fingers.

  “I have made progress, Dr Teal!”

  “What’s that? Speak up!”

  “In my investigation. Firstly, the chandlers tell me that young Arlo Thursday has been placing orders for certain materials in recent months. Wood, tools, glue and great quantities of paper have been delivered to his funicular.”

  “And what do you deduce from this?” asked Dr Teal wearily.

  “Why, Dr Teal, I deduce that Thursday has been building something. He is Daniel Thursday’s grandson after all. Perhaps he has finally given up on the kites and toy birds which won him such a strange reputation, and started making something of more practical use. A new kind of ship, perhaps. It may be that your Miss Crumb, with her background as an Engineer, was helping him. And it may be that the Oktopous Cartel got wind of this and tried to steal it from him.”

  He paused. He was pleased to see that Dr Teal was attentive now, leaning forward slightly, his eyes watchful and oddly lightless. “Most convincing, Hazell. Do go on…”

  “Well,” said Jonathan Hazell carefully, trying not to get ahead of himself, “at first, what with those two thugs who were found at Thursday’s funicular, I was afraid
the Oktopous might have succeeded. If they had captured Thursday and his new ship who knows what might have become of Miss Crumb? She could have been murdered, or sold as a slave to some cruel Zagwan princeling! But I do not now believe that is the case.”

  “Why not?” asked Teal.

  “Because when I started asking after her I was frequently told that other men had been asking the same questions a few days previously. It did not matter whether I asked at the exchange or at some grubby chandlery, the story was the same; someone had been there before me. And when I dug a little deeper, I found that these other men were employees of Fat Jago. And when I dug deeper still, I was told that it is Fat Jago who handles all the Oktopous’s business here!”

  “And who is Fat Jago?”

  “Ssshh!” Jonathan Hazell looked about again. A man like Fat Jago could have spies anywhere. “Fat Jago Belkin!” he whispered. “Only the most important businessman in Mayda! Only the richest man west of Thelona! He has a huge villa on the southern coast, and a charming wife. It is a great shock!”

  Dr Teal refused to be shocked. “And what makes you think that Fever isn’t locked up in this charming villa, a prisoner of Belkin and his huge wife?”

  “No, the villa is huge; the wife is charming. And the fact that Belkin has been asking after Miss Crumb tells that he does not know where she is, do you see?”

  “It tells us that he did not know. But if he has stopped asking, perhaps he has found her. And if he doesn’t have her, where is she? We’re no further on than we were when you first stuck your oar in.”

  “Ah!” said Jonathan Hazell. “That brings me to the second strand of my investigation. I have learned something about Arlo Thursday’s house. Local fishermen, who know all the ins and outs of Mayda’s shores, tell me that there is a hidden cove on the south-western side of the island. When Daniel Thursday lived in that funicular, he used to keep a boat there. I believe there must be a path leading through the crater wall from Thursday’s garden down to this cove. That must be the way that Thursday escaped after he gunned down those two Oktopoid gentlemen. Doubtless he took Miss Crumb with him. They have escaped by sea. If only we knew where they were making for…”

  “What about the Ragged Isles?” asked Dr Teal. “Didn’t Thursday’s family have shipyards there? Could he be holed up there?”

  “Oh no,” said the merchant. “Those shipyards were swept away by the great wave. The Ragged Isles are dead, bare places now. Cursed, the locals say. It’s far more likely that Miss Crumb and the boy would seek shelter in Meriam or Nowhere. We should send at once to those cities and see if there have been any sightings of them!”

  Dr Teal said, “This is excellent work, Hazell. I could not have done better myself. Tell me, in your delvings, did you hear any mention of a man named Lothar Vishniak?”

  Jonathan Hazell looked blank. “I can’t say I did. Who is he?”

  The Engineer shook his head. “No one. Just a name that I heard mentioned once. I merely wondered… But if you have not heard anything of him, perhaps we may reassure ourselves that he is not in Mayda.”

  23

  TEST FLIGHT

  rlo had always planned to call his new machine the Thirza. Through all the months of planning and hard work it had never once occurred to him that it should not be dedicated to her. It was as beautiful, as delicate, as precious as his Thirza, and he liked to imagine how she would look when the news reached her; not only had a miraculous device alighted on the lawns behind the Quadrado Del Mar, it was named after her. Fat Jago Belkin might have given her pearls and diamonds and fine dresses and a house the size of a small town, but Arlo would make her a present of all tomorrow’s skies.

  But when he woke on the morning of the first flight he knew that was not the right name after all. The picture of Thirza Blaizey that he had carried in his mind all these years had begun to fade, like a painting hung on a sunny wall. She was still there, but she seemed less real. Maybe she had never been real. How many actual words had he ever exchanged with her? A few hundred? Maybe not that many.

  He rolled over in his bunk and looked across the big, bare room to where Fever Crumb lay sleeping. She always went to sleep flat on her back, which she claimed was healthier, and as far as he knew she always woke up in the same position, still with her hair tied back in that tight bun, which must be as hard as a pebble under the nape of her neck. Arlo grinned. When they had first come to the island he had sometimes thought how much he would rather have had Thirza Belkin there with him instead of this bony, stubborn, cold-natured Londoner, but now that the machine was finished he could see that Thirza would never have been able to help him as Fever had. He could not imagine debating lift-to-weight ratios and angles of attack with Thirza, nor could he see Thirza planing a propeller blade for six hours straight, or wearing without complaint the same grubby clothes day after day, and washing only in the sea. Slightly surprised at himself, he decided that Thirza did not deserve to have her name on his machine.

  He rose quietly, and went up on to the roof, and by the time Fever awoke and joined him there he had already painted the new name he had chosen on the machine’s nose. She frowned when she read it.

  Goshawk

  “It is irrational to give a name to a machine,” was all she said.

  Eastward, behind Mayda, the sun was coming up, but in the west the sky was still dusky, the ocean almost colourless. A cool breeze from the west, salt-smelling, hummed through the Goshawk’s rigging. Together, using mallets and hammers and their bare hands, they demolished the parapet on the tower’s windward side. Then Arlo pulled on his goggles and tied back his long hair and clambered into the harness that was slung beneath the trembling paper wings. His hands grasped the levers which operated the wing-flaps and rudder.

  “Wish me luck,” he said, as Fever went round to the back to start the engine.

  “Good luck,” she said obediently, although she did not believe in luck, only in engineering and the laws of physics. She reached up and gripped the edges of the propeller they had made, and found that her hands were shaking, which annoyed her. Surely Arlo was the one who should be afraid, but she did not see him trembling; he just lay there in the harness as if he were a part of the machine, as if he were a new fledged angel spreading its wings on some shelf of the sea cliffs…

  She swung the propeller as hard as she could. The clumsy engine came to life at last with a hard, throaty roar that shivered all the struts and cables. She reached up and gripped the edges of the propeller they had made and swung it as hard as she could and it whirled into a blurred disc, scattering shadows over the wings and the tower roof. Then she put both hands on the bar which Arlo had mounted below the tail and used all her weight to shove the machine forward, into the wind.

  It went off the edge of the roof, seemed to hesitate for a moment, dipped its wings and plummeted. “No!” she screamed, the scream lost in the angry shout of the engine, which echoed from the cliffs and the tower wall as the Goshawk plunged downward. She ran to the roof’s edge with that dreadful feeling of watching something fall and being helpless to save it. But the machine saved itself. Before it hit the rocks its nose lifted; the engine roared and whinnied as it scrambled up the sky and Fever was kneeling on the roof watching it fly away above the beaches, wiping the silly tears from her face and feeling glad that there was no one there to see her.

  Alone in the sky, Arlo eased on the rudder lever and felt the Goshawk respond, veering to the right. He drew back on the wing controls and tried to make her climb. I’m flying, he thought, wondering how he could nail this moment into his memory. He wanted to keep all of it, everything, every last shadow in each ripple of sand on the low-tide beach below him. The noise of the engine battered at him, its echoes reflecting off the cliff faces. The curious angels whirled all round him, circling the machine, an honour guard welcoming him into the realms of the air. He saw Weasel among them, crossing and recrossing the machine’s path; heard his cry above the engine roar: “A-a-a-ar-lo!” />
  But he was too heavy. He could feel it each time he tried to go higher. A sluggishness. The grumpy tug of gravity. That big engine mounted above him was upsetting the delicate balance of the wings and spoiling all his careful mathematics. It was a struggle to keep the Goshawk’s nose up. Engine fumes blew in his face, smearing his goggles, stinking of castor oil.

  He had planned to circle the island and land on the long flat strand beside the quay, but he was barely halfway round and already he had dropped almost to sea level. Rocks rushed by just beneath him, exposed by the low tide, spine-breaking rocks with skirts of bladderwrack and black barnacled backs as friendly as cheese-graters. He saw sand ahead; a long stretch of wet sand under wet black cliffs, and he steered for it as best he could, already feeling a little sad that the sky did not want him after all.

  The harness punched him in the breastbone, knocked all the air out of his lungs. Flung divots of sand stung his face, clogged his mouth as he gasped for breath. The machine bounced and took flight again, rushing along a few feet above its own shadow. A ripped-off wheel bounded along beside it for a way, drawing a line across the beach. He saw a rainbow hanging in the fan of spray that it threw up behind it from the wet sand. Then there was another thump, sand between his teeth, salt water, his hip banging painfully against a strut, the crunch of snapped wood, paper tearing, a line of rocks sliding towards him sideways…

  It took her an unbelievably long time to reach the place where he had fallen. She scrambled over breakwaters and barriers of wet rock; clattered across deep drifts of pebbles, pulled off her shoes and pelted barefoot along the shining sand. The flying machine stood on its nose, surrounded by inquisitive angels. Spilled fuel slid in rainbow-coloured ribbons down the little streams and runnels of the beach towards the sea. Arlo was still dangling in the harness, caught there, upside down. He was laughing, and as she struggled to unstrap him she thought he must be delirious. Perhaps too much blood had run to his head in all the time he’d hung there waiting. But she helped him down and set him upright and slapped his face a couple of times and he went on laughing. He was just happy.