“Blaise, go!” Sunni screamed, and he managed to pull their boat around. He rowed furiously towards the house they’d arrived in, with Soranzo at their backs.
“This time you will do as I command!” he bellowed. “Or you will not see Lorimer Bell again.”
“Keep going, Blaise!” Sunni couldn’t bear to look at the man’s face, masklike in the moonlight, so she concentrated on the houses, hunting for the wig on the post. When she spied it in the distance, she whispered, “We’re almost there. Pull in hard when I say.”
After passing six more houses, she said, “Now!”
His arms quaking, Blaise rowed up and collided with the narrow dock, grabbing hold of one of the wooden posts. “Get out! Hold the rope for me!”
Sunni clambered out and yanked the rope around a post, holding fast while Blaise hoisted himself from the rowing boat.
Soranzo ploughed his boat straight into theirs and let out a long laugh.
Sunni was caught for a moment in his ice-cold gaze. With a shudder she grabbed her wig, bolted inside and up the stairs, candle in hand, not stopping till she and Blaise were back in the small bedroom, doubled over and gulping for air.
As the projection’s light bathed them, she could still hear Soranzo’s laughter, but it was far away.
“We’re okay,” she gasped. “I think he’s still outside.”
“What if we made a mistake?” Blaise lifted his head. “Maybe we should’ve stayed and fought him to get Mr B back!”
To Sunni’s surprise he went to pull her out of the light and back into the shadowland, but it was too late. His body dematerialised into a web of dancing sparks.
Blaise was still muttering when they were back in the Mariner’s Chamber. “We fell for it… he got us to come back.”
The overhead light came on in an instant and Munro bustled over to them. “What happened? You were barely gone for five minutes.”
Sunni uncurled her hand and Lorimer’s keys fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Are you all right?” Munro put a hand to his forehead. “Oh, this wasn’t a good idea…”
“Just a tough landing,” Blaise mumbled. “But I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and got to his feet, slapping dirt off Munro’s borrowed shirt. Then he pulled Sunni up and angrily swiped the keys from the floor. “We were chased out of Amsterdam on purpose.”
“Amsterdam this time?” Munro screwed up his face. “Who chased you?”
“You know about Soranzo?” Blaise asked, collapsing into a folding chair.
“Yes,” said the spirit photographer, his eyebrows raised. “They say he and his spies chased Corvo all over the world trying to steal his three paintings.”
Blaise fiddled with the keys in his lap. “That creep’s inside this projection – and he’s the real thing, straight from the year 1583.”
“But he must have died hundreds of years ago!” Munro exclaimed.
“No, he’s still alive in there,” said Blaise.
“And looking for the lost paintings…” Munro’s eyes were wide.
“Soranzo’s holding Mr Bell hostage,” said Sunni forlornly, adjusting her white wig over her hair.
“He gave us Mr B’s keys as proof,” Blaise added.
Munro’s face twisted in sudden anger. “Why on earth did Lorimer go in there? He had no right to use my property, especially after giving me a lecture on responsibility.”
“I don’t know,” said Blaise. “But he did and it’s screwed everything up.”
“Was Corvo’s clone there?”
“Yeah, but he was pretty out of it,” Blaise said. “And there’s another big problem.”
“Just one?” Munro snorted.
“Soranzo gave us an ultimatum,” he answered. “He said he won’t give Mr Bell back unless…”
Sunni hung her head. “Unless we aim Corvo’s third slide onto that painting.”
“Why would he want to do that? It doesn’t make sense.”
“We think he wants to get inside the painting and he believes the projection will magically connect them somehow. Maybe nothing would happen… but I don’t know.” Sunni’s face sagged, making her look all the more like a melancholy ghost girl. “But he’ll do anything to get those lost paintings.”
Munro’s jaw dropped. “Are you saying they’re hidden inside The Mariner’s Return?”
“I-I don’t know,” said Sunni.
“We don’t know anything!” Blaise shot her a warning look. “Except that Soranzo’s a nutcase and if he thinks we’re going to follow his orders, he’s dreaming.”
A cool breeze circulated around Sunni’s shoulders, lifting her wig hair at the ends.
“We’re not beaming the Amsterdam slide onto The Mariner’s Return. No way.” He stood up and handed Lorimer’s keys to Munro. “But we have to go back in and try to find Mr Bell.”
Munro was incredulous. “You’re in way over your heads.”
“Look, we won’t do anything stupid,” Blaise said firmly. “We’ll just figure out where he is and come back for help.”
“I don’t like it,” said Munro.
“We don’t either, but we can’t leave Mr Bell in there!”
“All you’re doing is searching – nothing else!” said Munro. “Don’t tangle with this man Soranzo.”
Blaise nodded. “No worries. You ready, Sunni?”
“Yes,” said Sunni, though she wasn’t sure she was. She heard jaunty music coming from the Great Hall as the band did their sound check and wished she could go there instead, but there was no way out of this. They couldn’t just leave their teacher.
“Can you fire up the Oculus please, Munro?” Blaise put his phone, house keys and sketchbook on the bench. “I’m leaving these here for safekeeping.”
As Sunni laid her valuables next to his, invisible hands began yanking and pulling at Rhona’s cardigan until Sunni said through gritted teeth, “I knew you’d turn up.” Before she could do anything to resist, the cardigan was peeled back over Sunni’s shoulders and pulled hard backwards.
“No, not this!” She bent her arms and hunched herself tightly. “I need to get out of here, now!”
“All right. Just a moment,” Munro mumbled.
The breeze grew frigid and whipped round the Mariner’s Chamber, sending the Oculus’s newly lit flame into a wild dance. Munro called out soothing words to Lady Ishbel, trying to protect the magic lantern.
A harsh whisper came past Sunni’s ear, babbling words she could not make out. She cannot hurt me, she cannot hurt me, Sunni thought and began to hum.
“You’d better catch your cat or she’ll end up in the projection with us,” said Blaise, eyeing Lexie’s form sneaking closer to Sunni.
“Come here, old girl. Wouldn’t want to lose my business partner, would I?” Munro scooped Lexie up and hurried towards the light switch. “What if you don’t have Lorimer Bell with you when you return?”
“Bring us back no matter what,” Sunni said.
“Right,” said Munro with a grim smile. “Good luck.”
The chamber went dark and the Oculus sparked into life, sending out its dancing beam and projecting the third slide on the wall again. Sunni wondered what would happen if she touched Blaise’s hand, and inched hers towards him, but in that moment the transformation began and she was whisked onto her own trajectory, ravelling and unravelling.
“Look at that, my lovely,” Munro said to Lexie, as he watched Sunni and Blaise materialise on the wall. “What do you make of it?” The cat squirmed in his arms and gave him a look. “All right, I think the projection is high enough off the ground for you to walk about.”
She sniffed around in the dark corners of the Mariner’s Chamber and finally hopped onto the bench for a nap.
Munro never took his eyes from the small bedroom projected on the wall, even when Sunni and Blaise left it one at a time. When they had vanished into the shadowlands of Amsterdam, he picked his way over to The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia and moved the rope barri
er away from it.
“Sorry, kids, change of plan. I’m with Soranzo on this one. A magical bridge into Corvo’s painting? That’s worth a try.” He placed his gloved hands on the Oculus’s sides and slowly shifted it clockwise until the projection lined up exactly with the painting.
“Perfect,” he said, pulling off his warm gauntlets and letting them cool down.
The projection lit up Fausto Corvo’s vivid painting in the dark. The dark, candle-lit colours of the Amsterdam bedroom mixed with The Mariner’s Return’s bright blue sky, castle and busy medieval city.
“Now,” said Munro, his eyes bright. “Let’s see what happens next.”
Chapter 14
Sunni and Blaise tiptoed down the dim staircase in the Amsterdam house. Blaise carried the candlestick high in the air, looking all around in case Soranzo should leap from the shadows.
“You think we can get past Corvo’s clone without waking him up?” Sunni whispered.
“It seems like it’s voice-activated,” answered Blaise. “Let’s keep quiet and see what happens.”
Corvo’s double was in the same position as before, standing still and blank-faced by the door.
They tiptoed past and opened the door to the canal, full moon and tall houses opposite. Sunni closed it as quietly as possible but the double’s voice began droning on the other side.
Sunni shook her head. “He’s off again.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Blaise said as he fiddled with the boat’s rope. “I think we should go our own way this time. It’s Soranzo we need to watch out for.”
“Where do you think he is?” Sunni studied the crooked houses from top to bottom, shuddering to think that their enemy might be watching them from one of the black windows.
“Who knows?”
“He might even be watching us now.” Sunni looked down into the inky water and its jagged silver reflection of the moon.
“He’d better not be.” Blaise jumped down into the rowing boat and held out his hand to her.
She’d seen Blaise in everything from his school uniform to jeans to an eighteenth-century masquerade costume, but she’d never seen him look like he did in his borrowed gear. There was something steely about him that made her feel slightly breathless. Sunni couldn’t help snatching glances at him, his belt buckle glinting in the moonlight.
“I’ll row and you look out for Soranzo this time,” she said, setting her wig onto the post and holding up her ghostly gown as he helped her manoeuvre down onto the middle seat. Blaise slid the ropes off and she moved them out into the canal just as Corvo’s clone opened the door and climbed down into his own rowing boat.
“The clone just got into his boat,” she said.
“Does he look like he’s in a hurry?” Blaise glanced over his shoulder. “Like he’s after us?”
“Not really.”
“I wish we could see what happens to him. Man, why did Mr B have to interfere?”
“The sooner we find him, the sooner we can ask,” she said.
As they followed the snaking canal, Blaise kept a keen eye on their surroundings from roofs to waterline.
“Hold on.” He pulled himself higher against the boat’s hull, alert. “Something’s weird.”
She slowed her rowing and looked around.
“The houses,” he said. “They’re changing.” He pointed up at the roofs. Some houses seemed to have sunk partway into the water and others had grown higher, uneven like tombstones on a hill. Dark water sloshed against the ones they’d just passed. A couple were sliding down inch by inch and sending ripples back that made the boat totter slightly.
Over the now uneven line of roofs, Sunni noticed a patch of midnight-blue sky had gone pale. A robin’s-egg blue was bleeding into it, bringing wisps of white cloud. It was beautiful, as if someone had opened a window in the sky.
“Blaise, look!”
A light grey mist bloomed in another area, obscuring the stars. And in a distant part of the night sky, the sun rose in a splash of pink and gold, like it was peeping through a celestial porthole. It was as if dawn, day, dusk and night were all happening simultaneously above them.
She felt a pinch of fear. “How can the sun be coming up and going down at once? How can there be a sun at all?”
“Something’s wrong.” Blaise tensed into a hunch, trying to look everywhere at once.
Like some sort of slow-moving airship, a chunk of brown earth and green vegetation broke through the night sky and hung there above them, motionless. Even from below, Sunni could see hills, trees and boulders sprouting from it. Another appeared where a house had been, and another stuck out from a roof, lit by sun from somewhere else.
Suddenly a new shape emerged one bit at a time, pale grey against the sky. By the time it had fully materialised, blocking out the stars, she had already recognised it.
Sunni ran her hand over her face, smearing off some of her pale make-up. “That looks just like the castle from the top layer of The Mariner’s Return… Something’s pushing it through!”
“No way.” Blaise’s voice shook with anger. “It’s got to be Munro. He must have projected the slide onto the painting when I told him not to!”
“That would explain why the sky’s all jumbled up.”
“Yeah, the Oculus’s projection is penetrating the painting! Everything’s merging.” Blaise’s voice echoed against the towering houses. “I can’t believe Munro’s stabbed us in the back. We’ve got to stop him. Turn the boat around.”
She stopped rowing. “What, go back?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah!” she said. “Find Mr B. That’s the plan.”
“It’ll be chaos when all the under-paintings in Arcadia merge with this place. We’ve got to stop Munro, Sunni!”
“Let’s find Mr B and get out,” she said, trying to keep calm. “Soranzo’s got what he wants now, so he’ll have to let him go anyway.”
“Sunni, this city will be filled with predators any minute. And Soranzo will be able to walk straight into Arcadia. We can’t let that happen.”
“What are we going to do, tie Munro up so he can’t mess with the Oculus?” she scoffed. “Then who’s going to watch the flame?”
“I don’t know… we’ll get James and Iona. Come on, there’s no time!”
“Fine.” Sunni gripped the oars so tightly her knuckles were white. “I hope you’re right.” She turned the boat and rowed as if her arms were pistons, past sinking and rising houses, sections of the canal that were black as pitch and others that were lit by shafts of sunlight. She steered around eddies that bubbled up from nowhere, aiming for flat water, and repeated to herself, row, row, row.
“Good, Sunni, keep going!” Blaise urged.
But as she made the next curving turn, Blaise gasped at what lay ahead and she glanced over her shoulder. An island was growing up and out of the front walls and windows of the houses before them. Its trees tickled the windows and great red, blue and yellow tropical birds darted out, squawking. The force of the emerging land pushed waves at the rowing boat and propelled them backwards.
“Get around it!” Blaise shouted.
“I’m trying!”
Sunni carefully worked the oars and managed to steer them through the only strait of water available. One oar scraped a wall and Blaise had to push the hull away from the rough bricks as they bumped into houses. The water was so high against some buildings that they could look into the third-floor windows of one sunken house and onto the roof tiles of another.
The boat burst through into clear water and Sunni gulped at the air, though never let up rowing at her fierce pace.
“I can see your wig on the post. We’re almost back where we started,” Blaise said. “You want me to take over?”
“Leave it!” she retorted, glancing over her shoulder again. Feeble light from a distant sunrise lit up a rectangle of water, warming it to a muddy brown. Sunni could see a disturbance below the surface, causing ripples and small splashes.<
br />
“What is that?” she gasped.
“I don’t know. Just go around it.”
Sunni rowed like a demon, determined to get past. Just as she was about to skim over the area, something black broke the water, rising like a wide shiny hill across the width of the canal and blending in with the houses on both sides.
“Oh, man!” Blaise exclaimed. “Sunni, stop!”
The rowing boat skidded up onto the ebony form and toppled to one side, knocking Blaise from his seat and sending the oars flying. Sunni tumbled out and rolled down into the water. She found something hard and narrow just below the surface and grabbed it with both hands.
Blaise eased himself from the rowing boat, clinging spread-eagled to the wide dark hill, and the craft slid down into the murk, quickly bobbing away.
“Sunni?” he called in a low voice. “You okay?”
“Sort of. I’m just below you now.” She clung tight with both hands as her body floated. She shimmied sideways and felt her way along the submerged object until she came to the place where it joined the hilly surface Blaise clung to. He had managed to edge his body upwards and find a more level place to rest.
“Try to get up here,” he said. At the sound of splashing behind them, he added urgently, “Find a toehold and climb.”
Sunni tried to hoist herself up but fell back. “It’s slippery! There’s nothing to grab onto.” She kicked at the object she clung to, looking for a place for her feet to catch hold so she could hoist herself up. Whatever this thing was, it went down far below the surface. Suddenly it jerked upwards, dragging Sunni with it as it breached the water. A massive spiny fin curled above her, waving and dripping. It was attached to a monstrous sea snake.
“Are you still here, lady spirit?” Munro called into the dark of the Mariner’s Chamber. “Why won’t you reveal yourself again?” After a silent moment he shrugged and spoke to his dozing cat. “Rest while you can, my love. If I’m right, we are going to be busy tonight. The lady may not wish to show herself to us but others will.”
The Shadow Lantern Page 11
