A Web of Air Read Free Page A

have a wench from London who arranges their ’lectric lamps and stage-effects and such, and there’s never a performance goes by without this lad of hers comes scavenging for some piece of ’tech or other. It’s not as if Laura Persimmon ain’t radiant enough without old-fangled lights shining on her.”
    “She knows the secrets of electricity then, this Londoner?” the traveller asked. “What is her name?”
    Squinter, still nosing in those drawers, scratched his head and said, “She’s called Fever Biscuit. No, Fever Crumble…”
    “Fever Crumb,” said Ruan firmly, and the traveller turned and stared down at him with a look that was difficult to fathom.
    “Aha!” said Master Squinter triumphantly, holding up a scrap of cardboard around which a few inches of wire was wound. Ruan snatched it from him with a mumbled thank you and was gone, vanishing back into the crowd before Squinter could finish shouting, “What about payment?”
    “Ask AP after the show!” Ruan yelled over his shoulder. Squinter shouted something else, but by then Ruan was halfway down the gangplank, visible only as a ripple of disturbance moving away through the crowds. “’Scuse me – scoozey – scoozey-mwa…”
    The Lyceum ’s stage-front reared up dark against a sky stitched all over with stars as bright as moth holes in an awning. The curtains billowed and filled in the soft breeze as if they were breathing. The crowd quieted, sensing that things were about to begin. They all knew the story of the play, for it was based on the old legend of the astro-knight Niall Strong-Arm, who flew to the moon in Apollo’s fiery chariot and won the love of the moon-goddess. What they were wondering was, how would the Persimmon company fit a fiery chariot and the moon’s white gardens on to that tiny speck of stage?
    Well, not at all, thought Ruan. Not unless he was quick. He flung himself up the steps at the backstage entrance and fell through the hatch into the bustle and commotion within. The air was thick with the smells of greasepaint and armpits, the tiny, stuffy corridors a maze of shadows and confusion, lit by bobbing lanterns. Alisoun Froy was kneeling at the shrine, saying a pre-show prayer to the goddess Rada, who was supposed to watch over all theatre people. As Ruan dodged past her, Mad King Elvis of America loomed out of the darkness ahead of him with his rhinestone armour all a-glitter and his vast black wig grazing the passage walls on either side. “Oh, this is just too beastly, darling!” he complained. “It’s a disaster! This would never have happened if we had stuck to using oil-lamps and reflectors! Why did AP ever agree to let the girl electrify us?”
    Ruan squeezed past him without answering. Cosmo Lightely always found something to panic about before curtain-up. He passed Dymphna and Lillibet too, who were complaining in whispers that their careers would be ruined, and then Fern, who was to play one of the ladies-in-waiting in Scene Two and was busy practising her single line – “Yes, my lady. Yes, my lady. Yes, my lady!” – in different voices with her toy dog Noodle Poodle for an audience. He scrambled down a companion ladder and ran aft past the wood-stacks and through the engine-room where the big boilers slept in silence and the batteries hummed. Then along a tight passageway and into the cramped burrow beneath the stage where Fever Crumb was waiting for him.
    And where Fever was, everything felt calm, even when it was a minute past curtain and not a footlight or a spotlight or a backstage glim lit anywhere in the Lyceum and you could hear the crowd outside starting to make that mumbling, sullen sound that comes off disappointed crowds and the heavy footsteps of Master Persimmon crossing and recrossing the stage above your head as he paced about waiting to begin his first soliloquy.
    Fever came to meet him, lighting the way with the pocket torch she’d made for herself. She took the wire and smiled a