Part 12 (2/2)

Quercus nodded. ”His soul is in the High Halls, then.”

Fever thought she should tell him that there were no such things as souls, then decided that she had better not.

”He will be treated with honor,” Quercus promised.

”He's dead.”

”Nevertheless, we have certain rites and rituals with which we honor the bodies of the courageous dead, here in the Movement.”

Fever bit her lip and supposed she should feel grateful. Funeral rites were silly religious nonsense, and it seemed pitiable that a man like Quercus should believe in G.o.ds and souls and rituals. But Kit Solent had not been an Engineer. She remembered the candles under Katie's portrait in his drawing room, and thought that perhaps it would have comforted him to know that the Movement would treat his remains with ceremony.

Quercus nodded, dismissing the matter. He held out his arm to Fever. ”Come. I must take you to meet the Snow Leopard.”

”Who?”

”My chief technomancer. We call her the Snow Leopard. You know her perhaps by a different name, as Wavey G.o.dshawk.”

”My mother?” said Fever, suddenly hesitant, afraid. ”But that's ...”

She stopped herself. She had been about to say, ”That's impossible.” But it was not impossible. When Dr. Crumb told her his story she had recognized that there must be a chance Wavey had survived. She had accepted that she might have a mother, somewhere in the world. She just had not expected to have the question resolved so soon. It was one thing to have a theoretical mother, quite another to be asked to meet her.

Quercus's smile grew broader as he watched the expressions flit across her face. ”Come. She waits for you.”

How long had it been traveling, that fortress of the Movement? Even the Movement had forgotten. Back when they were first driven from their homeland by ice and enemies, it had been the ox-drawn wagon of their chieftain. It had grown as they moved on, acquiring first steam and then petrol engines from the cities that they conquered, putting on turrets and funnels, gun decks and cabins, spires and jaws and sally ports. It was too big now to be powered only by its primitive engines, and its under-decks were filled with ma.s.sive treadmills, worked by regiments of slaves.

But still the Movement recalled how, long ago, they had lived in Arctic oak forests during some brief, lost era of warmth, and wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ds and spirits of the trees. They had brought one tree with them on their journeyings -- age-old, long dead -- to remind them of their origins. It stood in a chamber of its own, near the castle's stern, a place which seemed quiet even when the engines were pounding and the big guns boomed. Centuries had pa.s.sed since it last bore leaves or acorns, but the stumps of its branches were decorated with thousands of little sc.r.a.ps of colored rag, the funeral ribbons of everyone who had died during the Movement's wanderings.

Beneath the oak that evening sat a woman. She wore one of the simple gowns that Movement women favored, a gray gown that left her throat bare and displayed a curious sepia birthmark beneath her ear and another in the hollow above her collarbone, like a puddle of spilled ink. Nervously her long hands rose to tuck her hair behind her ears. Then she changed her mind and untucked it again. Her hair was gray-white, the color of wood ash. There were faint crows' feet at the corners of her eyes. In every other way she looked just as she had on the day that Gideon Crumb rescued her from the crowd in St Kylie. Years lay lightly on the Scriven.

One of the big oak doors at the chamber's end opened. The girl came in, and Nikola Quercus came in behind her and softly shut the door again.

”Fever Crumb,” he said.

Fever and her mother looked at each other.

”Fever,” said Wavey G.o.dshawk, after a little while.

She had thought of Fever often during the years since she fled London, but she had always pictured her as a little girl, like the little girl she had once been herself. She had not prepared herself to meet this spindly teenager with her shaven head and her strange, familiar face.

”My child,” she said, after a little longer.

”You have grown up!” she said, wondering.

”What have you done to your hair ?” she asked.

Chapter 30 The Snow Leopard.

My mother, thought Fever numbly. She went toward her, but did not take the slender hands that Wavey G.o.dshawk stretched out to her. My mother. She could smell her perfume, a subtle, blue-gray scent that matched her dress. And what a strange face she had! It wasn't just those few small speckles. The cheekbones were too high, the eyes too large, the jaw too long, the wide mouth filled with far too many teeth (though very straight, thanks to the brace she'd worn when Dr. Crumb had met her). It was easy to see why people had believed that the Scriven were a new species. It was easy to see why the Scriven had believed it themselves. She isn't human, Fever kept thinking. And she is my mother....

”You could have sent word,” she said. ”Dr. Crumb doesn't even know that you are still alive!”

”I thought it better not to,” said Wavey G.o.dshawk. ”What good could it have done? I could not return to London alone. I had to wait until Quercus was ready. Sit, my dear; sit ...

She patted the bench and Fever sat down beside her. She reached out and touched Fever's face, smoothing a thumb over her lips, brus.h.i.+ng a s.m.u.t from her forehead. Fever flinched away from her touch, feeling an irrational anger build inside her. What right did this stranger have to prod and stroke her, as if she were a pet or a doll?

Wavey G.o.dshawk sensed her feelings. ”Oh, Fever,” she said, sitting back and folding her hands in her lap, smiling. ”Oh, but you must think me a terrible mother! To abandon you. To abandon your father before he even knew that he was a father.... But I had to abandon him. G.o.dshawk was furious when he found out I was in love with Gideon. He sent Gideon away, and he told me that if I tried to contact him he would be killed. He sent me away, too, said he couldn't stand the sight of me, and packed me off to live at the Barbican.

”Then, when he learned that I was going to have a baby, he softened. I think that he had long been wanting me to have a child who would continue the House of G.o.dshawk. He had spent years finding a good husband for me, and when Odo Bolventor rejected me perhaps he was glad that Gideon Crumb had been there to provide him with an heir. But still he would not let me contact Gideon.”

Fever could picture her as she had looked in those days. The way she had worn her hair, the clothes she'd favored. She had no memories of Wavey from her own babyhood, of course, but there were other memories, scores of them, from earlier times. Wavey as a little girl, and as a young woman. Wavey in her white coat, her hair tied back, careful and serious and the best laboratory a.s.sistant a man could ask for. Wavey fastening those thick leather wristbands, frowning as she tightened the screws of the helmet around Fever's head...

No , not my head! Not my wrists! These aren't my memories....

Wavey kept on smiling at her, and reached out impulsively to touch her hand. ”You were never comfortable in my womb, Fever, dear. There was some mismatch between your human and your Scriven halves. How you struggled and squiggled! Elbows and heels jabbed me. I was feverish always. You arrived early, one spring night in my apartment at the Barbican, long before you were looked for. A small little purple monkey you looked, barely longer than my hand, and the Scrivener hadn't made even one single mark upon you. n.o.body dreamed that you would live. But G.o.dshawk took you away with him to his laboratories at Nonesuch House, and although I was too weak to go and see you there, he sent word to me by a servant every day.

”Every day I woke up fearing that they would tell me you were dead, but every day they said, 'She's still alive. She's still alive. Your father is doing all he can. Medical machines not seen since Ancient days...'

”And then, in early summer, when the blossom was still on the trees, he brought you home to me. You were in your little basket. Your eyes had changed -- two different colors. He said it was a side effect of the surgery he had performed, and I did not complain. I was just so happy to see you. And so grateful to G.o.dshawk for having saved you.

”But we had so little time together, Fever! There were riots in the city, and the mercenaries whom G.o.dshawk had hired to protect us betrayed us and joined with the rioters instead.

”You and I were still living at the Barbican, and so were other Scriven, friends of G.o.dshawk, sheltering from the riots. One morning he had us all gather in the bas.e.m.e.nt and showed us the secret pa.s.sage to Nonesuch House. We begged him to come with us, but he refused. He said he would stay and seal up the tunnel entrance, then organize a last stand against the Skinners. They can't kill me,' he said, as we set off along the tunnel. 'Just keep that baby safe, daughter!'

”That night, from the windows of Nonesuch House, we heard their horrid cheering drifting across the marshes, as if the whole of London was celebrating, and we knew that G.o.dshawk was dead.

”We stayed there, hidden, for nearly two weeks. At first we felt sure that some Scriven n.o.blemen would have survived the riots, that they'd retake London and come to rescue us. But slowly we realized we were alone.

”There was not much to eat. The others squabbled. Some said I should not keep you, Fever, that it was wrong to let a half-human hybrid eat food real Scriven needed. When they were not arguing and blaming one another and inventing hopeless schemes to win the city back, the men went out and cut the causeway to make sure no looters reached us, though there was enough loot on Ludgate Hill to keep the commons busy for a long time.

”At the end of the second week the Skinners came for us. My companions shot at them from the gardens and thought they'd killed them all -- how they jeered and laughed, flinging stones at the bodies afloat in the lagoon! But one had survived, and that night he came to the house.

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