by John Booth
As the first coach went past them they saw its door open. Someone hung half out of it with a pistol in their hand. A loud crack and flash followed as the weapon discharged. It didn’t slow the coach behind in the slightest. At least two people on the coach behind fired back from its roof.
The two coaches thundered past and vanished into the night.
Arnold turned to Daisy and gave her a long hug.
“What was that for?” she asked suspiciously.
“If we had been on the road when they reached us we would all be dead,” Arnold said quietly.
“That wasn’t why I stopped us here,” Daisy explained, somewhat embarrassed by Arnold’s display of affection.
“Then why?” Cam asked.
“In my vision, the woman in the front coach threw a girl out of the coach just before she took aim with her pistol. The girl always dies, so I brought along the bales of hay to try and save her.”
“That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” Cam said as she turned up the wick of the lantern so they could see again.
“Shall we go and look?” Arnold suggested.
“Why not?” Cam replied, and she strode off towards the bales of hay, swinging the lantern in front of her.
16. On the Trail
Tricky woke feeling warm and comfortable. He didn’t really want to wake up, but he needed to know he was safe. The last thing he remembered was sinking into a ditch with Ebb, the two of them too cold and exhausted to carry on. Even with his eyes closed, he knew it was still the middle of the night. The absence of any light told him that. The freezing air on his face told him he was somewhere outside.
His Farseer talent, so different from the normal, stretched out like tendrils from his body, providing snatches of exquisite and confusing detail about the objects around him. Ebb pressed up against his back, snoring quietly. He hardly needed any talent to detect his friend. However, the talent reassured Tricky it was Ebb and that his friend was unharmed.
They lay on rough wooden boards next to a number of small bags, which seemed to be packages of food and clothes. It took Tricky a few moments to deduce from the shape of the things under the boards that he and Ebb were lying on the bed of a cart. There was a horse nearby. It was eating grass and Tricky could hear its soft snorts of pleasure. What his talent told him that he could not have deduced by listening was that the horse was fastened between the shafts of the cart as if poised to be on the move.
Tricky’s talent stretched only a few yards and he could not detect anyone other than Ebb in that range. Someone must have found the two of them, wrapped them in blankets and left them. That struck Tricky as most unusual.
Before he decided to open his eyes, he heard a voice calling to him. It seemed to be coming from far away and it took him a few seconds to realize that the voice was Alice. She was projecting a message into his mind and she must be at the limits of her range to sound so faint.
“Tricky, I ‘ope you can ‘ear this. Tom, Laura and me were caught by Lord Smee. ‘Ee sold Tom and me to a ‘airy man with a Scottish accent called Sir M, though that’s for-sure a made up name. Laura was bought by a foreign lady for three and a half million quid. I didn’t think there was that much money in the whole world.”
“Tom ‘inted I should send you a message. We are in a coach ‘eading away from the way we come back to the ‘ouse. Sir M and ‘is bruisers are in ‘ere with us. The foreign lady took Jane with ‘er, to fool the other bidders into following. She told Smee she’d kill Jane when she’d finished. It don’t bother me none, but you shoulda’ seen Tom’s face. Proper put out about it ‘e was.”
“Laura’s coming north with us. Sir M told us we was going to Scotland with ‘im, to somewhere ‘e called the ‘igh lands. Said we ‘ad to be good or ‘e’d punish us proper. Says we are going to meet a train. I’ve never been on a proper train and I’d be looking forwards to it, if me hands weren’t tied tight behind me back.”
“Anyways, I don’t know what you could do, even if you was ‘earing this. But it’s been fun to send so I might do it again, even if you can’t ‘ear it like. Wish us luck.”
Tricky listened quietly for a long time, hoping Alice would send something more. However, he waited in vain. Either she was out of range or had other things on her mind.
Up the road a few tens of yards, Cam held her lantern over the prostrate body of a girl. She lay sprawled face down on the hay with her tied hands outstretched in front of her. She wore an expensive looking black cloak with fur-lined hood. If she proved to be dead, Cam determined to take the cloak and hood for her own.
“Is it Laura?” Arnold asked anxiously as Cam turned the girl over and revealed a face none of them had seen before.
“Is she alive?” Daisy asked. It was a strange question, as she must have been able to see the girl’s frosty breath from where she stood. Jane groaned and Arnold and Cam helped her stand up.
“Thank you kindly, sir, ma’am,” Jane said breathlessly. “I appears to have fallen out of my coach.”
“Pushed out, you mean,” Daisy said firmly. Her visions had been quite explicit on the matter.
“I cannot believe her ladyship would wish to do me harm,” Jane said respectfully. She could tell from her rescuers accents that they were from the middle or upper classes and therefore were her betters. “She must have known I would land safe on these bales of hay. Right convenient they were.”
Daisy was incensed, having gone to so much trouble to save her.
“I’m a Precog, you moronic girl. You were thrown to your certain death, but I managed to prevent it,” Daisy bristled with anger at the girl’s stupidity. To be thrown to your death without even knowing it, seemed to Daisy, was to be foolish beyond belief.
“I thank you kindly, ma’am,” Jane said instinctively and looked down at the ground so as not to cause further offence. She had been beaten simply for daring to look such people in the eye. It was a lesson she learnt young.
“Didn’t your hands being tied give you a clue that the woman did not have friendly intent?” Cam asked in disbelief.
“It was a subte… subterfun… a kind of lie, begging your pardon, Miss. We started out all right and then a coach came after us with people shooting guns and all. I’ve never been so frightened in my life.”
“They meant to kill you, Jane,” Tricky said from behind them. The others turned to find the small boy only a few feet away. He had found one of the spare coats in the cart and put it on. It was much too big for him. His arms were lost within it and the coat’s bottom edge trailed along the ground, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
Jane turned on the boy. He was someone she could be superior to and she needed that at that moment in time.
“And how would you know, little Tricky? Lord Smee will have your bottom dripping with blood for running from the house like that. You see if he doesn’t.”
Tricky smirked, not at all put out by the girl’s venom.
“Alice told me all about it. She sent me a message into my ‘ead and said as ‘ow Tom was all upset when ‘e heard them plotting your death. Can’t think why me-self.”
“Tom? You know where Tom is?” Arnold asked urgently, “And Laura, what of her?”
“You’re friends of Tom and Laura?” Tricky asked in surprise.
“This is Cam, Daisy, and I’m Arnold,” Arnold replied. “We were together with Tom and Laura only a few days ago. We have been sent to find and rescue them.”
Tricky shook his head.
“Don’t sound very likely to me.”
“Daisy is a Precog, which is how we managed to save you and your little friend. And this one too, though I beginning to wonder why she bothered with her,” Cam explained.
“Ebb’s a Precog too, but ‘ees a strange one. ‘Ee can only see five seconds ahead, but ‘ee sees it all the time like.”
Daisy had been watching Jane. As soon as Tom’s name was mentioned the young woman went white and sat down on a bale of hay. Daisy saw tears stream do
wn the girl’s face and she went to sit by her. The others noticed when Daisy put an arm around the silently sobbing girl.
“They meant to do me in,” Jane cried. “The house is my only home. What shall I do?”
“Where is this house?” Daisy asked.
“Up the road a ways, a couple of miles, or perhaps a little more.”
“Do they have a reason to want you dead?”
“Not that they know,” Daisy sobbed. “I told Master Tom things I shouldn’t have, because he was kind to me. But they can’t know that, can they?”
“This woman you were with. Who was she?” Cam asked.
“She’s a foreigner. Bought Laura for three and ‘alf million quid, she did,” Tricky told them. He was particularly pleased with the looks of astonishment that news brought. “Alice told us,” he added, so they would know he wasn’t making it up.
Jane nodded, glad that Tricky knew who she meant.
“She said she was taking me to her home. Said I’d be dealt with there…” As the deadly alternate meaning of that phrase came to her, Jane began to wail.
“Oh, do shut up,” Cam said irritably, bringing down glares from Arnold and Daisy. Unexpectedly, her harsh language worked and Jane stopped wailing and resumed sobbing, holding tight to Daisy.
“They’re goin’ to Scotland,” Tricky mentioned, mainly to be the centre of attention again. “Alice says they are goin’ to ‘igh Lands in Scotland by steam train, so you can find them there.”
“The Highlands of Scotland,” Arnold said in a whisper. “That’s an enormous area. But if this girl Alice can communicate with you, we have a chance.”
“She can talk to anyone, but only over a short distance,” Tricky admitted. “I expect she’s well out of range now.”
The group became silent as the three friends considered the impossibility of finding Tom and Laura in what amounted to a whole other country.
“We can drop Jane off when we pass the house,” Daisy said as she stood up. “I think the reason this woman was going to kill Jane was that she would have found out where she lives. So provided she promises to tell the people in the house nothing of us, beyond that we gave her a lift, we shall be fine.”
“I won’t say a word,” Jane said anxiously. “Not even about young Tricky here, even if he did cause us servants a good beating or two from Mr. Smith, what with all his antics.”
“What about Tom and Laura?” Cam asked.
“We know they are going to catch a train to Scotland. We can do that too,” Arnold said cheerfully. “After all, we have tracked them all the way here with nothing to go on. What’s a little matter of searching a country after that?”
“What about me and Ebb?” Tricky asked anxiously.
“Come with us to find Tom and Laura…and your friend Alice too,” Arnold suggested. Daisy grinned with delight at having Arnold tell Cam what she had already decided.
“Me mam and dad will be worried about us, Ebb’s family too,” Tricky said mournfully.
“We’ll send them a letter. We work for MM3 and this work is on Her Majesty’s business,” Cam offered. “I am sure you would enjoy an adventure in Scotland and until we can get the authorities to deal with this Lord Smee person, you will be much safer with us.”
Tricky looked at Cam dubiously. “Tom said as how we could set a magistrate on Smee, why can’t we do that?”
“If Laura was safe, we could,” Cam admitted. “But if we try that now, the bad people like that foreign woman would know we were onto them and Laura would vanish to Hungary faster than you can say Jack Robinson. We have to keep it quiet for now, so they don’t hear even a whisper of us.”
“What about me?” Jane asked, frightened by the talk of magistrates.
Cam waved her concerns away.
“Don’t worry, Jane. We will make sure that the authorities know you are working for Her Majesty. You are going to work for us by keeping quiet, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Miss,” Jane said quickly. “Even if Mr. Smith, he’s our butler, Miss, even if he beats me black and blue I won’t say a word about you, I promise.”
“Then it’s settled,” Daisy said brightly. She was feeling particularly pleased with how accurate her visions were proving. “Will you two get the bales of hay back onto the wagon? My back is killing me.”
Arnold and Cam groaned in disgust before grabbing hold of the nearest bale and lifting it together. Jane lifted another bale without too much trouble and followed them back to the cart.
When they got back to the cart, they found Ebb was awake and they had to explain everything again.
It was starting to get light when they drove passed the gates of Lord Smee’s house and dropped off Jane. The boys hunkered down in the cart where they could not be seen. They followed the road north, which Cam had determined would lead them to a railway station if they followed it for long enough.
17. Engine
The sky was starting to lighten with dawn when the coach carrying Tom, Laura, and Alice pulled to a halt. Tom looked out of the window and saw they had stopped at a railway station bearing the name Colney Hatch written in big letters over the arch of its entrance.
The captives were hustled out of the coach and made to stand in a line in front of Lord McBride.
“Not a peep from out of your mind, young lassie,” Lord McBride warned Alice, “If you want to keep the hide on your back, that is. None here will believe you, mind. I am a highly respected man and you are nothing.”
Lord McBride looked about him with quiet satisfaction. There was a massive, streamlined locomotive connected to five coaches waiting on a spur line at the far end of the station.
“I’ve arranged for our young Spellbinder to inspect yon infernal device. It’s a military secret masquerading as an ordinary engine. They’re testing it on the London to Edinburgh line before taking it overseas.”
Lord McBride turned to Laura and his expression turned hard, “Jimmy here has orders to cut the lad’s hamstrings if you so much as blink without permission.”
“I’m sure I cannot imagine why you think that showing me a steam engine will serve any purpose,” Laura told the man, her voice exuding contempt.
“You pay close attention, lassie,” Lord McBride replied. “There’s magical constructions in yon device I want you to see and understand. Do ye ken?”
Laura nodded reluctantly.
They walked into the station without bothering with such minor matters as showing tickets. The Stationmaster was expecting the party and he bowed so low as Lord McBride by that he risked scraping his nose on the flagstones.
Four young lads wearing porters’ caps ran to the coach and stripped it of its many travelling cases. Lord McBride was not accustomed to travelling light. The cases were transferred to the second of a pair of coaches at the front of the train. Each of these coaches were painted in colors not connected with the railway and carried a family crest. Tom suspected that Sir M must be more than a knight of the realm.
Tom heard several of the porters use the phrase ‘my lord’ in McBride’s direction. Tom wondered who the man was. So many here seemed to know it that he knew he was bound to find out. Not that knowing his name would do Tom any good, but he was curious about it. Anything they found out about their captor might help them to escape.
Tom and Laura followed Lord McBride to the front of the train and the massive steam locomotive that pulled it. That steam was the force that turned the wheels was beyond doubt. It hissed from safety valves and water dripped from the joints of the pistons. Tom knew enough about the operation of such machines to recognize that it used the double stroke method pioneered by George Stevenson, but then all modern trains did.
What was strange about this particular locomotive was that though there was plenty of steam issuing from around it, there was no smoke coming from the funnel. Nor was there a tender behind the engine carrying fuel. Most trains ran on coal or coke, which was plentiful and cheap. A small number ran on wood, but those trains were onl
y on the most remote branch lines where wood was cheaper.
The driver of the train touched his forelock and bowed his head as they approached.
“Welcome to the Pride of the Empire, Lord McBride,” he said. Tom smiled at being given the information he wanted, though the name meant nothing to him. If Lord McBride was unhappy at his name being used, he gave no sign of it.
There was only room for the driver, Lord McBride, Tom, and Laura in the cab. The guards remained behind on the platform. Engine cabs were normally open to the elements, but this one was sealed. It was essentially a small metal hut. Glass shielded the cab windows, which were slid down an inch or two to let in air.
It was cool inside the cab with no obvious fire to stoke. There were, however, an array of large wheels, dials and massive levers.
“What powers this thing?” Tom asked.
“Ay, what indeed?” Lord McBride intoned his voice carrying a touch of awe. He turned to the driver. “Can you explain the engine to the bonnie lassie? She’s a Grade 1 Spellbinder and will be joining the project to produce these monsters.”
The driver looked flustered and it took him a few moments to find his voice.
“The science involved is beyond my understanding, my Lord. As far as explaining how it works, I can only do my best. The engine is powered by a rare metal extracted using magic. The metal is encased in thin copper tubes.”
The driver paused for thought and breath.
“The copper tubes are always warm, my Lord, whatever the weather. When they are moved close to each other they get very hot. I don’t know why. We have levers and wheels that move tubes inbetween other tubes to vary the heat they produce. The tubes are inside an oil filled chamber and the oil takes their heat. Then there is a heat exchanger that heats the water, which generates the steam.”
“Can we see inside the chamber?” Tom asked. He was always impressed by large machinery.
