Who would decorate a Stalker like that? Charley wondered. How could this ramshackle circus even own a Stalker? Surely only powerful warlords and their technomancers were able to control those weird old war machines, and even they were starting to run short of them as stocks of mechanical brains wore out. Maybe this was one of those crazy ones you heard about that went rogue and struck out on their own?
It started to dawn on him that being a spectator at the Carnival of Knives might not be altogether safe. . .
The dwarfish ringmaster ran up the monster’s armoured trunk like a squirrel up a tree and perched grinning on its head, holding on to those tusks to steady himself as the thing started to lumber around the edge of the arena. “I’m Borglum,” he announced. “A travelling man. My legs are short, but long leagues lie behind me. All over the wild northlands this circus of mine has rolled, and everywhere we go there we find war. Little wars and big, my friends, old wars and new. Those nomad empires are forever a-squabbling, sending forth their landships and their valiant soldier-boys. And people ask, ‘Why? How is it that these wars keep happening?’ Like wars are freaks of nature that fall all unbidden on poor human beans.”
The audience shifted, fidgeting, wondering when Borglum would come to the point. The freaks of nature they wanted to hear about were the grisly crew lined up behind him; a hairy giant and an armoured dwarf, a bone-white snowmad sword-boy, that night-black, blindfolded amazon. The points they were interested in were on the racks of swords and nameless spiky things which his mutant roadies were setting up at each end of the ring like vicious fences.
But Borglum knew the value of a good build-up. “Well, my dearies,” he went on, “I’ve looked hard at war. Looked at it from outside, mind, since I don’t quite make the height requirement for any army I’ve yet met. And I can tell you why war keeps on thriving. It’s because men love it so. They do! Deep in the darklymost ventricles of all their secret hearts, blade, bone and bloodshed is what thrills ’em best. The Ancients understood. The showmen who ran their coliseums and their multiplexes knew how even the peaceablest man does long to see a little carnage now and then. So here it is, O my ladies and my gentlemen of London Town. The Amazing Borglum has prepared you a little taste of War that you can savour from the safety of your seats. . .”
The silence of the crowd had thickened. The awning flapped heavily. Moth-wings pinged and ticked against the lantern-panes.
“Without further ado,” cried Borglum, “we give you: The Carnival of Knives!”
6
THE CARNIVAL OF KNIVES
hey’d practised long and hard, those mis-formed fighters Borglum had gathered to his carnival. They never did each other lasting harm, but that was not how it looked as they went at one another with cutlasses and clubs, bare hands and bladed flails. They fought one against one to begin with, and interspersed their duels with other tricks: tumbling through flaming hoops, juggling with knives. Then more fights, in larger groups, each melee choreographed like a brutal dance to the music of dinged armour and clashing blades. They knew just where to place a shallow, harmless cut to draw the most blood, and in the spiny racks of blades and maces at each end of the arena they knew where to find theatrical weapons with foldaway blades that could be used to simulate a mortal blow. The entrails which splattered the canvas floor had been bought that afternoon from a butcher’s shop, and the fallen fighters who were dragged off groaning down paths of what appeared to be their own gore would all make miraculous recoveries before the next night’s show. But the audience didn’t know that. They saw only the blood and the glinting metal; fights with nets, with fists, with flaming torches; knives buried in bellies; clubs slammed against heads, strangling chains pulled taut on straining throats.
Fever, who knew a thing or two about theatre, guessed quickly that the blood was fake, and kept leaning across Wavey to tell her father so. Dr Crumb was appalled by the spectacle, and still more appalled by the people around him, who whooped and cheered at every blow. “Kill him!” they yelled, men and women, rich and poor, as if they were all eager to live up to Borglum’s low opinion of their appetites. “Gouge his eyes out!” they hollered, making trumpets of their hands to help the fighters hear them. “Rip her head off!” “Spill his lights!”
Wavey laughed and clapped and shouted with the rest of them.
Charley Shallow watched her. Milly was agreeably thrilled and clung to him in just the way that he had hoped, but he ignored her, for he had noticed something far more interesting. At the last lull in the action, when the dwarf Borglum came riding round the arena on his tame Stalker, introducing the next pair of fighters, he had spotted Wavey in the crowd, and their eyes had met. She had given the faintest little smile, and just for an instant the showman had lost the thread of what he was saying. It had been only a tiny hesitation, and it was only because he was watching Wavey instead of the show that Charley had noticed it at all. Now he was trying to think what it might mean. What possible connection could there be between the Chief Engineer and this disreputable out-country dwarf?
After a long time, when most of the fighters had fallen, a young albino snowmad was left battling against the Stalker. Everyone was rooting for him. Fever almost joined the chant herself, but remembered just in time that she was an Engineer and immune to the crowd’s gusts of emotion. Still, she could not help but admire the young man. There was real skill in the way he parried the Stalker’s blows with that cleaver-like snowmad sword. But surely, she thought, as she watched him twirl through the lamplight, it was irrational for him to wear his white hair so long?
She was right. The Stalker grabbed him by his flying ponytail and yanked back his head, bearing his throat to one of its rusty blades. The watching Londoners all gasped together. Fever felt herself gasp too, afraid for the boy even though the fight was fake. For an instant she thought that he really was about to die; that maybe Borglum’s carnival must end with real blood before the audience could go home satisfied. She felt disgusted, and underneath the disgust was an undertow of something worse: a dark excitement.
Then Blind Lady Midnight – who had been swiped aside by the Stalker earlier in the fight and flung across the ring with such violence that half the crowd thought she was dead and the rest had forgotten her – recovered suddenly and came to the boy’s rescue. She was immensely tall and strong but earlier, when Borglum introduced her, she had torn off her blindfold to show everyone her spooky white eyes, without iris or pupil. The audience gasped again as she crossed the arena in a series of handsprings and vaulted up to sit astride the Stalker’s huge head.
“Lady Midnight is not really blind,” said Wavey. “Those misshape eyes of hers see heat instead of light.”
“She can perceive the infrared end of the spectrum?” asked Dr Crumb, intrigued despite himself.
“Hush!” laughed his wife. “It is much more dramatic if people think she has no sight at all.”
The Stalker had let go of the snowmad and was flailing its claws at Lady Midnight, but its shoulders were so massive that it couldn’t reach her. While it was trying, she drew a bodkin and drove it through the green eye-slit, which spewed a satisfying cloud of sparks and vapour and went dark. The snowmad boy, meanwhile, picked up his sword, found a chink in the Stalker’s armour and drove it in, letting out more sparks, more smoke, and a spew of ichor. The Stalker groaned like rusty brakes and toppled backwards, Lady Midnight jumping clear as it crashed to the canvas. She reached out to the snowmad boy, who took her hand, and together they made their bow while the boneyard music started up again. The show was over.
“What a horrible spectacle!” complained Dr Crumb.
“But so exciting!” said Wavey. She shifted uncomfortably, and Fever knew that she was in pain. Her pelvis had been broken by the rogue Stalker Shrike years before, and although the injury had healed well, a night of dancing and an hour on Borglum’s hard bleachers was enough to set it hurting again. Of course Wavey would never mention it; she hated anyone to think that she was
weak. She kept her smile and said, “It reminded me of the old days, the fights Godshawk staged at Pickled Eel Circus. Except that no one is ever really killed in Borglum’s shows. Well, barely ever. . . Come, we’ll wait until the crowd is gone, and then I shall take you to meet him; you shall meet them all.”
Neither Fever nor Dr Crumb was keen to meet the dwarf showman or his frightening friends, but they knew that it was futile to argue with Wavey, so they waited meekly, yawning from time to time, while the rest of the audience filed out.
On the far side of the arena, among the crowd around the exit, Charley Shallow waited too, and watched. He had this vague idea forming that there was something shady about Wavey and that dwarf, and that if he could learn the secret of it, well, he might use it to his own advantage.
Milly pulled at his hand. “You’ll walk me home, Charley, won’t you? Ooh, I should be scared to walk home all alone, after seeing all that. . .”
Charley barely heard her. “You run along then,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”
“But Charley!”
“I said ’op it,” he said, his voice sliding down to the Bagmanish growl which the other apprentices had all learned to fear. “I got business.”
She said something bitter which he did not catch and flounced off. Charley kept his eyes on Wavey and the Crumbs and moved himself sideways, behind the back rows of benches, into a tight and shadowed space where he could watch unseen.
Borglum was watching too, while the last of his audience drained out of the arena, their chatter fading. Then, while the girl with the lobster-claws went round snuffing the lanterns one by one he crossed the stained canvas to the bench where Wavey sat, flanked by the white coats of her family.
“Jasper,” she said, with a smile in her voice. She knelt down, and they embraced, the dwarf’s big head resting for a moment on her shoulder. “Duchess!” he said, and stepped back, still holding Wavey, his eyes darting over her face, as if he were taking stock of all the ways in which she’d changed since last they met. Only then did he spare a glance for Dr Crumb and Fever.
“My husband and daughter,” said Wavey.
Borglum beamed. “Dr Crumb. It’s good to meet you, sir. And little Fever. . . Not so little now! The Duchess used to talk about you often. ’Course, she wasn’t even sure you were alive back then. Now look at you. Grown up, and pretty as your mother.”
He held out his hand.
“You have upset them with your display,” said Wavey.
“Then I’m sorry to hear it,” Borglum said. He did look sorry, too, just for a moment. Then he turned to Wavey again, as if he could not stop looking at her for long.
“So what brings you to London?” she asked slyly.
“How do you know it’s not just business?” asked Borglum. “All these workers Quercus has dragged here, hanging around bored and in need of entertainment. I’m on a humani-bloomin’-tarian mission to bring some excitement to their lives.” He chuckled. “Anyway, ’tis but a fleety visit. We’ll pass a fortnight here, then we’re for the north again. I was planning to come and find you in the morning. I thought you’d be too posh now to come and watch the carny. I got some news from the north I thought would interest you. About the tower up there. But come; come aboard the barge, my dearie-os. I’ll tell it to you all in comfort. . .”
“It is very late,” said Dr Crumb uncertainly. “Perhaps we should go home, and save this news for tomorrow. . .” But it was no use, for the dwarf had reached up to take Wavey’s arm and they were walking together towards the side exit, which hung half-open, revealing the hatchway of the Knuckle Sandwich waiting just outside. Fever gave her father an encouraging smile. She was tired too, but she was curious to find out who these strange friends of her mother were, and how she knew them. She was relieved when her father shrugged, and shook his head, and started following Wavey out of the tent.
Charley Shallow watched them go from his hiding place in the shadows between the back row of the seats and the tent wall. It was a good hiding place, but he was too far away from Wavey and the dwarf to catch what they were talking about. “News for you. . .” Borglum had said, hadn’t he? “. . .about the power up there. . .” Something like that. As they all started to leave he squirmed quietly sideways, hoping to get closer, but his foot came down on a loose plank beneath the seats which croaked like a bullfrog. Borglum, standing at the exit to hold the tent-flap open for his guests, looked round. There was a slinking sound and a flash of quicksilver reflections as he drew his dagger.
“Is someone there?” asked Dr Crumb, who was still jittery after the night’s display of violence.
“Prob’ly just some low-life come sneakin’ round to try an’ steal our fuel or catch a peek at Lady Midnight in her undiewear,” said Borglum. “Quatch! Stick!” he shouted. “Get out here!”
Charley heard the footsteps thudding down the gangplanks as the misshapes came scrambling out of the barge. He didn’t see them, though, since he was busy struggling his way out through the tent’s side by then; wrenching apart the ties that held two panels closed and forcing himself out through the gap he’d made.
Tent Town seemed quiet. He set off running, drawn by the faint sound of fiddle music and a raucous laugh from one of the canvas pubs. But behind him he could hear those ’shapes yelling to one another as they came out through the Carnival’s hungry mouth.
“There he goes!”
“Get him!”
Charley regretted running. If he’d just walked away casually the ’shapes might have taken him for a passer-by. He could have called out to them and said, “I seen the man you want; big fellow; he went that way!” But ideas like that always came to Charley just too late, and so he ran, and the misshapes ran after him. Along an alleyway between two rows of tents he went, leaping guy-lines like a hurdler. The pub he’d been aiming for loomed up ahead, but when he got close he saw it was a Movement place, with a northern name outside the door and northern songs spilling out. He couldn’t be sure how the folks in there would take it if a London boy came asking them to save him from angry ’shapes. They might help, but then again, they might stand back and watch the misshapes murdering him like a free show.
So he swerved around the pub, stumbled over a drunk in the shadows behind it and ran on, flagging now, wondering if any of the empty-looking tents around him would make a hiding place. But when he looked back he could see the misshapes behind him; big hairy Quatch and that snowmad boy, and if he could see them then they could see him and they’d follow him into any tent he chose like ferrets down a rabbit-hole.
On his left now something dark rose, like a sea-cliff rearing up out of a surf of tent-tops. It was the old temple of St Kylie. Till lately it had stood huddled round with houses at the heart of a busy web of streets, but the salvage gangs had taken all the houses now and left it lone and lorn. For the moment, fear of St Kylie had made them spare the temple, and Charley offered up a heartfelt prayer of thanks to her as he scampered round a corner, up the steps and into the shadows of the portico.
He could hear the voices of the misshapes coming closer, but they weren’t in sight yet, so he nipped through into the temple precinct; a space as big as their arena, open to the sky, where a statue of St Kylie towered behind a broad stone altar. He ran behind her, hoping the misshapes might be too superstitious to search there. Above him dozens of broken kites rustled and whispered on strings stretched between the temple’s eaves. The gods and goddesses of London seldom saw eye to eye on anything, but this past year they had all united to forbid their worshippers from making anything that flew, and most of the city’s temples now sported these swags of torn kites, like ugly bunting. On the wall behind the statue something glistened: a red circle with a blue line slashed through its centre. Charley had been seeing that symbol on walls all over London lately, or at least, in all the bits of London where walls still stood. It was the mark of the London Underground, and this particular one was still wet. He reached out quickly and touched it and his
fingers came away smeared with fresh paint.
Voices echoed under the portico. He turned, hearing the crunch of the misshapes’ boots as they came down the steps into the precinct and started towards the altar. So they weren’t superstitious after all. Charley started to realize what a poor bolt-hole he had chosen. He pulled out Bagman’s old knife and unfolded the blade, and the feel of the rough handle in his hand gave him some comfort, although he knew he wouldn’t be able to win a knife-fight with those ’shapes. If one of them came round one side of the statue and one round the other he’d be caught between them with nowhere to run. . .
All of a sudden a hand came from behind him and went over his mouth, while another seized him by his knife-arm and dragged him backwards. He didn’t even have time to struggle; it all happened too quickly. It turned out there was a little secret doorway in the base of the wall, and someone pulled him through it and shut it tight behind him, so that when Borglum’s misshapes came around St Kylie’s skirts they saw no sign of him at all.
“I told you he wouldn’t come in here, Quatch!” said the young snowmad. “It’s a dead end, isn’t it? Only an idiot would hide in here.”
“Well, I heard something,” said his hairy friend, and sniffed the air suspiciously, but any trace of Charley’s scent was buried under the fresh-paint smell of that sign on the wall. He shrugged, and the two of them turned away and went to continue their hunt among the maze of tents.