A raven appeared above them, making a soft noise to catch their attention.
“Look,” Sunni said and called up to it. “Have you come from Arcadia too?”
“Bound to be. There were loads there,” Blaise said, watching the bird. “I bet it’s pretty confused.”
“I’ll set it straight,” she said harshly. “Raven, Soranzo’s on your master’s doorstep. He hijacked the Oculus and he’s after Corvo and his three magical paintings. Angus Bellini got off the island your master banished him to and now he’s helping Soranzo. And if we don’t get our teacher back and stop the Oculus soon, Corvo’s magic will be so messed up, we may never be able to leave here. Blaise and I have already used up most of our nine lives, so this is it!”
To their surprise, the raven made a hard turn into the next street. It doubled back and stared at them, then continued gliding overhead, chattering at them.
“I think it wants us to follow,” she said.
“Yeah, it seemed to listen to what you said, Sunni.”
She swept her hand towards the bird hovering above.
“But who knows where it’ll take us?” she protested. “Maybe nowhere near Mr B!”
“I have a strange feeling about this raven,” said Blaise. “Are you here to help us?”
The bird let out a resounding screech.
“Is that supposed to convince me?” Sunni asked. “Ravens screech a lot.”
“Hang on. Corvo’s ravens in Arcadia were really intelligent and did tasks for him. If this bird knows something, I think we should go with it.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Mandy grumbled as she climbed the spiral staircase. She kept giving the ninja dirty looks, as if he were worse than something she’d trodden on in the gutter. “If my dad finds out, I’m in deep trouble.”
“I’m not out to get you into trouble,” he muttered. “I wish you didn’t have to get involved at all.”
“Me too,” she sniffed.
He switched his torch on at the top of the steps. “Better not to tell anyone about this. All right?”
“Is that a threat? From the person who’s been spying on my friend?” Mandy stopped, turned on her heel and started back downstairs. “You need me, by the way, not the other way round.”
The ninja slapped his hand to his head. “Now you’re twisting my words! All I want from you is five minutes to help your friend. Then you go back to your party and forget I was even here.” When she didn’t respond, he threw up his arms in disbelief and sank against the wall.
Mandy glanced over her shoulder, frowning. With a resigned air, she resumed climbing the stairs and walked, high heels clicking on stone, to where he stood, head hanging. Arms folded across her chest, she asked, “Are we doing this or what?”
A few moments passed before he raised his masked face. “Yeah.”
Her mouth set in a red line, Mandy followed him, arms still crossed as if she were off to do something unpleasant for someone equally unpleasant.
When they reached the Mariner’s Chamber, he handed Mandy the torch, shoved Munro’s sign away and got down on his knees to peer under the door. Something had changed inside the room. It was almost dark, except for the most minuscule glow quite far inside, and it sounded as though a gale was blowing.
He brought his fist down on the floor and let out a short, hard grunt of desperation.
“What?” Mandy asked, alert now.
“Thing’s have gone bad in there,” the ninja said, glaring at her through his eye slit. He got up and wiped his hands on his black front. “We need someone to unlock this door.”
“Get the security guys.”
“No! We have to take care of this ourselves. And fast.”
“I’m no lock-picker,” said Mandy.
“You’ve got special powers,” said the ninja. “Can’t you get a spirit to help?”
“How do you even know that?” she demanded.
“People in this town gossip a lot. It was all over the place today,” he muttered. “All I had to do was listen.”
Mandy narrowed her eyes. “Wait till I find out which of them has been blabbing.”
“Can you get the door open or not?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t just turn it on like that!” she said, handing him the torch. “I have to be calm and positive and inviting.”
He clutched his head and stalked away. “On you go. Me and my bad vibes will be waiting over here.”
The ninja fidgeted until Mandy called him back.
“This is not ideal,” she complained. “But I’ll do my best.” Standing close to the door, she closed her purple-shadowed eyes and circled her mottled zombie arms before her. She reached out and touched the wood with both hands. “Hellooo. Is the spirit of Nell here? Hello, Nell!”
“No?” She cocked her head slightly as if she were listening hard. “Okay then. Is the spirit of Lady Ishbel here? Calling Lady Ishbel. I and another need your help!”
The ninja moved a few centimetres closer as Mandy’s eyebrows went up and down. “I know it’s a lot to ask and I don’t deserve it, especially after last night at my birthday party. But you are the only one who can help, Lady Ishbel. Please come to me.”
Suddenly she let out a surprised yelp and hopped back without letting go of the door. “Oh, I can feel you coming through!”
Ahhhh. The breeze curled around them, ruffling Mandy’s teased-out zombie hair, and circulating over the ninja.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I just knew it! Now what we need help with is this door, Lady Ishbel. It’s locked, you see, and we need to get inside because something’s wrong. You know that, don’t you?”
A babble of whispers rode on the current of air and Mandy’s eyes opened wide. “You have a problem too?” She listened to the whispers. “You want to go home but you’re trapped here. Where’s your home – Arcadia? Oh, inside the painting in this room! Well, if you open the door we can take a look.”
The air whooshed into the keyhole, pushing mechanisms and levers to new positions until it clicked.
“I can hear it!” Mandy exclaimed. “Well done!”
Ahhhhh. With a resounding clunk, the handle shifted and the wooden door was yanked open by invisible hands. Mandy nearly fell backwards but the ninja caught her and righted her before leaping into the Mariner’s Chamber.
He felt wild energies whipping round the dark chamber but forced his way through. Mandy, all flying ruffles and hair, dived in behind him, open-mouthed, and heaved the door shut, calling out, “Thank you, Lady Ishbel, we’ll just keep it closed for now, shall we?”
By the light of his torch, the ninja saw Munro on the floor, staring up through his clockwork glasses, the long leather coat spread open like a triangle. His stovepipe hat had rolled away into the shadows and a camera lay in pieces beside him.
The ninja crouched down and held him by the lapel, his ear close to the photographer’s moving mouth.
“Gentlemen,” Munro jabbered. “Spirits, please, you must return…”
The ninja released him and moved to the Oculus. The magic lantern’s table shook and the low flame trembled, but it grew steadily stronger, enough to beam its painted glass slide onto Corvo’s painting. The ninja couldn’t take his eyes off what was happening on the wall.
Mandy skittered round Munro, calling, “Lady Ishbel, are you all right? I can barely sense you in here!” After a moment, she nodded and said, “Now I get you loud and clear. I know it’s Halloween but I feel that there are loads of other spirits in here too!” She wrinkled her forehead as she listened. “You want to know what’s wrong with the painting? Just a minute.”
She grabbed the ninja’s shoulder and shook it.
“Okay, mister, we got you in and now I want answers,” Mandy hissed into his ear. “What’s going on here?”
“You should just go. Better if you stay out of this.” He answered without moving his head. “Thanks for getting me in.”
“You’re having a laugh,” s
he said, her anger making her zombie complexion even more violet. “You expect me to just slouch off after seeing this? And you owe Lady Ishbel after she helped us!”
“I’ll handle it,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You’ll handle this? I’ve never felt as many bad spirits in one place!” She turned full circle, sweeping her arms round the chamber. “You’ve got no clue.”
Before he could open his mouth, something black darted out from under the bench and leaped into Mandy’s arms, clinging on for dear life.
“Ouch!” Wincing, she peeled one of Lexie’s paws off her shoulder and the other off her arm, leaving red punctures and scratches. “That hurts.” She cradled the cat and her face softened. “I’m not leaving. Now tell me where Sunni is before I throttle you.”
“I think she’s in there.” The ninja pointed towards the projection on The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia. “And I have no idea how to get her out.”
With a grunt of exasperation he grabbed his mask and yanked it off.
Chapter 19
The raven led Sunni and Blaise across tumbledown lanes, newly emerged fields, islands floating a few feet up in the air and sun-drenched sandbars that had washed in over cobblestones.
“I’m so busy trying not to fall over, I can’t tell where we are,” said Sunni.
Blaise panted, “I know what your next question is. How far are we from the bedroom we arrived in? Not sure, but it’s definitely the other side of town. And will we know how to get there? We’d just better!”
“If we can body-swerve sea snakes, octopus tentacles and pig-snatching birds,” said Sunni, hoisting up her now ripped gown as she clambered over another obstacle.
“They were probably Angus’s pigs,” he said, wincing. “Remember Corvo gave him some for his desert island?”
“Yeah.”
The raven chattered to itself, swooping and circling, as it guided them to the city’s edge. An opening in the row of houses led to a long quay where many wooden ships were moored. The sea rolled in black waves under the night sky streaked with the distinctive robin’s-egg blue that Blaise recognised from The Mariner’s Return to Arcadia. The moored vessels were strange and brightly lit hybrids – part ship, part house, part forest – dotted with people from the same painting.
And the ships were moving. One by one an invisible hand cut them loose from their ropes and the kaleidoscopic vessels began shifting out towards a patch of mist hovering over the sea, not very far out.
The raven fixed its gaze on Sunni and Blaise. With tremendous flapping and a guttural clacking sound, it forbade them to go anywhere but to the right and onto a ship whose mooring was still intact.
“It wants us to drift out into the sea like the others,” Sunni said, horrified. “No way.”
“I know,” Blaise muttered, starting to question his own judgement. This raven might be confused after all, tainted by the mixed-up magic in this world. “There is something in the mist, though. The ships are clustering around it but I can’t make out what it is.”
“Ugh,” Sunni said. “It’s that fog from Arcadia. You could hide an elephant in it.”
Blaise watched the mist grow and diminish, pulsing in and out around something tall and dark. One by one the ships floated to it and stopped. As they slid in together, they created a crazy patchwork of medieval houses and pieces of winding streets – an ethereal floating village.
“You’re right,” said Blaise, astounded by the beauty of this strange flotilla surrounded by smoky mist. “They’re circling the wagons.”
“What?”
“It’s an expression from frontier times in America,” Blaise said, putting up one arm to ward off the irate raven, which still urged them towards the ship. “The settlers used to travel across the land in wagon train convoys and if they got threatened, they drove them into a circle formation to defend themselves better.”
“There’s no one here,” she said. “So who’s moving those ships?”
“And what are they protecting?”
Sunni shook her fist at the squawking raven. “You aren’t helping us with this decision, raven! Anything could be out there! How do we know it’s safe?”
The bird glared at her and without any further sound flew out towards the cluster of ships, vanishing into the dark.
“Now what?” She pushed back a damp hank of hair.
Blaise looked down at the torn sleeves of Munro’s fancy shirt. He wondered what was going on in the Mariner’s Chamber and silently prayed that the untrustworthy spirit photographer could keep the flame lit long enough for them to get Lorimer and leave.
Sunni interrupted his prayer. “Listen!”
The distant sound of men’s voices hummed from somewhere behind them, echoing up from the canal paths and lanes.
“People are coming,” she said.
“We could hide in one of these houses and watch them, see what they do next,” he suggested.
“Okay.”
They began moving rapidly towards the nearest houses but the raven stormed in from the sea and dropped something flat and white in front of Sunni. Bemused, she picked it up. Blaise watched her face drop with a mix of surprise and wistfulness as she rubbed the piece of parchment paper between her thumb and forefinger.
She turned it so he could see. It was a simple, yet astonishing, sketch of a girl’s face with a looping signature below it. The face was Sunni’s and yet it was not. Clearly she had not posed for it so it must have been done from memory. The artist had made her look older, with the solemn expression of a marble statue. And the signature made Blaise’s blood rise.
“It’s from Marin,” Sunni said. “The raven brought this from one of those ships.”
Corvo’s eldest apprentice was the last person Blaise wanted Sunni to cross paths with again, especially since the guy seemed to have a pretty good recall of what she looked like. What was that all about?
“Yeah, well, he must have been pulled in from Arcadia too,” said Blaise sourly. “Unless he’s a clone.”
“A clone wouldn’t be able to draw me from memory,” she said.
“No,” he admitted.
“You’re annoyed.”
“I’m not. Can we go now?” It was no good losing his cool over something like this when there were life and death issues at hand. But a little part of him still didn’t like Marin, who was older, handsomer, had an Italian accent, was a better artist than Blaise and, most importantly, Sunni had fancied him when they were in Arcadia.
The raven herded them towards a ship whose hull was hardly visible, as it had been so superimposed with elements from Arcadia. There was no need for a ramp. A winding piece of a lane had merged with the dock.
It was as Blaise ushered Sunni ahead of him that he saw distant torchlights back on shore. He scurried on board and hid, his heart thumping. The raven flew down to the dock and pulled the ropes from the moorings with its beak. As if the vessel had no anchor, it began sailing purposefully out to sea, leaving two more ships to follow. The raven flew to the next ship and prepared to free it.
Blaise watched a phalanx of sailors march through the gap between the Amsterdam houses, torches and pikes in hand. Soranzo was at the front. A rangy and heavily bearded Angus walked a step or two behind. Blaise’s lip twisted at the sight of this man who’d caused him, Sunni and Dean so much trouble inside The Mariner’s Return last winter. And now he was back helping Soranzo find Corvo.
Sunni was at his side, still clutching her portrait. “Is that Angus?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Makes a good werewolf.”
“Why is he risking seeing Fausto Corvo again?” she asked. “Corvo will just find some other punishment for him.”
“I thought the same thing,” said Blaise. “But Corvo’s magic’s all over the place now. I mean, look around us. Stuff from Arcadia’s under-layers is all mashed up with this ship.” He hesitated before adding, “And where is Corvo with this happening right under his nose?”
“If we find
Marin, maybe he’ll be able to tell us.”
“He’d better,” Blaise muttered. They climbed up the partial lane, passing half a barrow of loaves and the right side of the baker selling them.
“I remember seeing some of these faces when we were transported inside The Mariner’s Return,” said Sunni. “It seems so long ago.”
“I was pretty excited the first time I saw them,” he said, pausing to look at a finely dressed lady.
“Dean wasn’t.”
Blaise laughed for what seemed like the first time in ages. “Dean. What a guy. I think he’s the smartest of us, staying out of all this after he left the painting last winter.”
The ship gently glided into the mist, taking its place in the circle with the others. Tendrils of fog curled around the crooked windows of the medieval walls that had grown out of the hull.
They picked their way to the ship’s bow, where a fountain now stood on cobbles, and peered out at the water. It was hard to see what the mist was hiding, other than something dark and vertical in the distance.
Looking ghostly in the thick fog, their neighbouring ships bobbed up and down. The sea lapped at the hulls, making hollow thudding sounds below. The raven had not shown itself again.
Sunni went quiet. Blaise saw she was studying her portrait and he left her to it. He hung on to a lattice of ropes, staring into the mist for something, anything, to show up. When it came it was the person he least wanted to see.
Corvo’s apprentice, Marin, materialised from the mist on the next ship, like a spider climbing in the rigging. When the two vessels bumped, Blaise watched him in profile, sweeping his arm in front of him and touching his fingertips together, mouthing words at the same time. With each movement, the two ships were woven together, moving up and down as one. When his magic was done, the young man let his arms rest.
Moments later he descended the ropes and jumped in front of them, gesturing wildly in Blaise’s face. “What is this evil you have brought now? It is ruining my master’s work!”
At first Blaise was speechless. But he wasn’t going to let Marin get to him.
The Shadow Lantern Page 15
