Wanderlust

by Adam Millard

  Wanderlust

  Adam Millard

  Published by Steamworks Ink

  An imprint of

  Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

  Novi, Michigan 48374

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Martin Hanford

  Edited by CLS Editing

  Text Copyright © 2015 Adam Millard

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Steamworks Ink an imprint of

  Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

  Novi, Michigan 48374

  “The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.”

  - Jimmy Breslin

  “Imagination is the true magic carpet.”

  - Norman Vincent Peale

  1

  Fly my little pretties. Fly!

  Abigale Egars watched her scorpion scouts rush toward Harriett Haversham’s Jewellers—a small, though well-stocked, store in Central London. The trio of scuttling arachnids separated as they trickled over the cobbled road, chirruping to one another, lest their formation be rendered ineffectual. The archaic sensors implanted in the scorpions’ segmented tails fed directly back to Abigale, who remained in the shadows, where she was sufficiently concealed and much less likely to find herself on the receiving end of a truncheon.

  Abigale pulled the monovision eyeglass down over her right eye, and through a hazy green light, she saw what the scorpions were seeing. It wasn’t a perfect image, but large shapes were easy enough to distinguish, and the scorpions had proved themselves effective time and time again, especially on high jeopardy heists like the one she was on. Once the automaton arachnids were in place, Abigale would be able to move forward, safe in the knowledge that she would be fed a constant stream—warning her of any Inquisitors or passing bluebottles.

  In a perfect V, the scorpions slowed, approaching the shop frontage with a vigilance not usually seen in clockwork devices. In that moment, Abigale felt something like pride; not in the little beasties, but in her boss—their constructor—Octavius Knight. He’d built something sentient that actually worked, something that wasn’t going to erupt in a sudden fireball or malfunction at the most vital of times. She still hadn’t forgiven him for the miscalculation that had been the bronze toads.

  Abigale stretched her legs, making sure every part of her remained obscured by the gloom. From the alleyway directly across from the shop, she had a perfect observation point, one that offered her enough of the street to make an informed decision on when to move. The unpleasant smell of jellied eels lingered in the air, but she was used to such disagreeable aromas. She had to be, living in the middle of London.

  The scorpions, upon reaching the jewellers’ façade, had positioned themselves at perfect equidistant intervals, where they waited patiently, and for once, silently.

  Through the eyeglass, Abigale could discern the entire street. The emerald glow highlighted shapes in what would otherwise have been perfect darkness, and she was pleased to espy that nothing seemed to move in either direction.

  “Well done,” she whispered to no one in particular. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard one of the scorpions chitter in elated response. Abigale had set herself a three-minute limit for the caper. She checked the pocket watch attached to her corset, took a deep breath, and slipped like a feline from the shadows.

  There had been a time, many years before, when Abigale would have been thrilled by the moment—an instant of calm before the storm. Her heart still rushed, but not the way it once had. She had become accustomed to the sudden surge of adrenalin, and it no longer stimulated her, at least not as potently.

  A job.

  That’s all it was. Another job, and another poor and frustrated business owner, come morning.

  The problem, Abigale thought as she lithely scampered across the street, is that I am too damn good at it. The danger that she had felt in her first two years was now removed. Her expertise had eradicated the very thing that had made the whole debacle enjoyable: The small, almost unfeasible, prospect that she might be caught.

  Leaping across the cobbles, Abigale pushed herself up against a wall. The scorpion to her right, chirruping like a frustrated cicada, had sensed movement somewhere in the darkness, though Abigale could see nothing untoward. Still, she waited. The automatons were seldom wrong—unless they were toads, in which case they were liable to explode without warning.

  Abigale watched as the tail of the suspicious scorpion came over, teasing the air with its non-existent sting. Just then, a cat emerged from the very alleyway Abigale had been waiting in a moment earlier. It was a scrawny thing, most probably a stray. As it mewled sadly to itself and limped off along the street to Lord-knows-where, the scorpion to her right settled, and then chittered again, as if to say, “What? It was moving, wasn’t it? How was I to know it was a wounded tabby?”

  Abigale sighed, shook her head, and went to work on the locks. Harriett Haversham must have been relatively successful because it took Abigale almost ten seconds to work her way through the duo of intricate security devices and slip in through the front door, far longer than she had anticipated or accounted for. She gently closed the door behind her and turned to face the room.

  Glass display cabinets, containing everything from quartz brooches to diamond rings filled the room. Abigale was sure Haversham would have placed the more expensive items in the safe out back, securing them away from prying hands and eyes, but she’d done no such thing. It was all there for the taking.

  Sliding the brown satchel off her shoulder, Abigale went to work on a tray of silver pendants. She was selective—she had to be—and only took the ones that she knew Octavius already had a buyer for. She quickly made her way onto the gold and pearl jewellery, dropping it into the satchel with a clink, and doing her very best not to get carried away.

  Outside, the injured cat had returned and was batting one of the mechanical scorpions around as if it were a dying mouse. Abigale shook her head and continued to load up on gems. If she lost one of her clockwork beasties to a lame pussy, it wasn’t the end of the world. Octavius would be annoyed with her, but he could simply construct more.

  Besides, who in their right mind tinkers with a clockwork scorpion and fails to arm its stinger? It was, Abigale thought, a ridiculous oversight. At least dip the thing in ether and give it a fighting chance.

  It took less than a minute to fill her satchel; the minute locks for each cabinet were nothing more than an annoying hindrance. Since she’d gone there with what amounted to an extensive list—Octavius Knight had friends with exquisite taste—she’d only had to break into four cabinets.

  She checked her pocket watch. Two minutes and thirty seconds.

  She straightened and even yawned. It wasn’t complacency, just lack of sleep. The middle-of-the-night capers were taking their toll on her. She much preferred the mid-afternoon slip-ins. At least she got to bed at a decent hour with those.

  Through her eyeglass, she saw that the cat had grown tired of the clockwork scorpion, though not before knocking it onto its side. The image of the street was askance as it fed to Abigale, and she watched the scorpion panic, not accustomed to being uncere
moniously forced onto its edge. Abigale made a mental note to let Octavius know how the contraption had struggled to revert to its feet. Maybe he could attach an extra appendage, something to flip the foolish thing back over, should it ever find itself in such a ridiculous position again.

  Abigale slipped her arm through the satchel and took a step toward the door.

  “Now just you wait a minute, Missy.”

  The voice came so suddenly that Abigale’s heart leapt up into her mouth, dropped back down and wedged somewhere in her throat. She didn’t turn, though, to the direction from which the voice had emanated. She already knew there was a gun trained on her. A person doesn’t stop a thief in the middle of the night unless they’re stupid or armed.

  Harriett Haversham was far from stupid.

  “Don’t move a muscle, you ken? I don’t want to be hurting you, but I will if you give me no choice.”

  The voice was tremulous, but controlled. Abigale guessed, from its coarseness, that old Harriett was no stranger to the joys of pipe smoking. Many of the older folk in London found something they enjoyed and let it slowly kill them, and Haversham was obviously no different.

  Outside, one of the clockwork scorpions whirred and chirped.

  It’s a bit late for that now, you idi—

  “Now, I want you to slowly remove the satchel from your shoulder and place it on the floor next to your feet. Like I said, I’m not one for violence, but I will shoot you if you try anything stupid.”

  If she was lying, Abigale didn’t pick up on it. She really would shoot. The night had just gone from one of absolute simplicity to a complete fiasco. The toppled scorpion out front had no idea how lucky it was.

  “Okay,” Abigale said. “I’m going to start to move. I don’t expect a bloody great hole to appear in me.” She didn’t know what gun Harriett Haversham was wielding, but from experience, Abigale knew it made very little difference. A bullet was a bullet, and they usually left a mark when they hit their target, regardless of calibre.

  “Slowly does it,” Harriett croaked. “I don’t know who you people think you are, keep trying to steal from ‘onest working folk such as m’self. Well, you picked the wrong jeweller tonight, m’lovey, and make no mistake about it.”

  Abigale sighed, slipping the satchel from her shoulder. She suddenly felt as if she was the one being wronged, that some bandit was trying to relieve her of her valuables. It wasn’t a nice feeling, but Abigale tried not to dwell on it for too long.

  “How many more of you are there?”

  “‘Scuse me?” Abigale was stalling, trying to figure out a way to escape with the jewels, her life, and without having to kill poor Harriett Haversham.

  “You didn’t come here alone,” Harriett said. “Who else is there?”

  Perplexed, Abigale began to turn. A click from behind told her it was probably not the best move she could make. She halted. “It’s just me. I work alone.”

  In fact, the mere thought of having an accomplice annoyed her. She’d never even entertained the idea, despite Octavius’s constant jibes about her being—with the exception of him—friendless. Bringing in an associate thief was like telling her she had to break into Fort Knox with the aid of three elephants and a rather excited Yorkshire terrier. No, she worked alone, and that was that. Besides, she wasn’t willing to share her cut with a third party. Her agreement with Octavius was just about acceptable as it was.

  “You mean to tell me you thought you could break in here unescorted?” Harriett laughed. It was a very wet sound, as if it might turn into a choke without notice. “But you’re just a girl.” She laughed again.

  Abigale sensed her opportunity.

  And took it.

  Lightning-quick, she dropped to one knee. Flipping over backwards, Abigale heard the immense blast of whatever cannon Harriett Haversham had brought to the party. She really hadn’t been lying about shooting. Abigale felt her hair ruffle as the round flew past, shattering one of the glass cabinets across the room. She landed into a roll as the splinters from the exploded cabinet began to cascade into a thousand jagged shards that some poor soul would have to sweep up later on.

  Abigale fell still, satisfied that she was suitably concealed by darkness. She could hear the woman cursing nervously as she tried to load another round. From the sound of it, she was having a right game. Abigale almost felt sorry for her.

  “You made me shoot my own shop!” Harriett screeched. She sounded positively mortified, as if she would have much preferred to have a dead girl lying there, instead of the mound of glass she was faced with. “I can’t…my shop!”

  Abigale sucked in air, though, in that moment, there didn’t seem to be much of it. She had to get out. If she didn’t, either she or the proprietor would die. Although Abigale didn’t have a gun, she was not the one at a disadvantage. Years of training and perfecting her skills had made her formidable. Faced with what was, essentially, a geriatric brandishing a hand cannon, there would be only one winner.

  The door seemed so distant, but Abigale already knew what she was going to do—what she had to do. She launched herself from the safety of the shadows, hit the door with an almighty thud, and just about managed to turn the doorknob as her momentum carried her forwards. She landed behind a cabinet displaying various tiaras, and a second later, it exploded. Glass rained down on her, peppering her head and neck with jagged fragments.

  “Goddammit, girl, keep still when I’m trying to shoot you!” Harriett was not having the best of nights.

  Abigale heard her fumbling with the gun once again. Whatever it was, it only took one round at a time. Good job, really…

  The door to the shop creaked open, and then there came the skittering, and the tinkling of glass being pushed aside by so many clockwork legs.

  Harriett Haversham screamed. It was a sound that would haunt Abigale’s dreams for quite some time. Then there was another blast, and a chirrup that suggested one of the mechanical scorpions would need the expertise of a jolly good tinkerer if it were ever going to function again.

  “Get off me! What kind of sorcery is this?”

  The scorpions were gifting Abigale the opportunity she so desperately needed, and by the sounds of it, making poor old Harriett Haversham’s life an absolute nightmare.

  Clambering to her feet, using the leg of the devastated display cabinet to steady herself, Abigale flew toward the door, snatching the satchel up from where it nestled beneath a sea of broken glass. Over her shoulder, she screamed, “I’m sorry for the damage.”

  She disappeared into the night, with the jewels but without her clockwork scorpions, and she realised how wretchedly close she had come to being decimated. How close she had come to being shot by an angry old lady whose livelihood had been threatened.

  I need a change of employer, she thought as the shadows enveloped her once again. Either that or a pay rise.

  2

  “You mean to tell me that you left three of my scorpions at the scene of the crime? And least one of them may, or may not, have been shot to smithereens by some irate jeweller wearing only her nightie?”

  Abigale considered Octavius’s question for a moment. “Pretty much,” she said. “Though I don’t remember what Harriett was wearing. Could have been a nightie, could have been a robe.” For all Abigale knew, Harriett Haversham had been firing at her whilst wearing nothing more than the wig on her head and the dentures in her mouth.

  Abigale shuddered.

  “Well, that’s just great.” Octavius put down his screwdriver and the copper bat looking contraption he was working on and looked fixedly at Abigale.

  Abigale thought, All that is missing was the folded arms and…there they are, right on cue…

  “Please tell me it was worth it,” he said. His machinist goggles prevented Abigale from seeing how truly angry he was with her.

  She dropped the satchel onto the table where he sat. “Worth me nearly getting shot?” she asked. “I wouldn’t say that, but I think you’ll be happ
y.” She gestured to the satchel, something close enough to a smile curling the corners of her lips.

  Octavius studied the bag without picking it up. His salt-and-pepper beard twitched as he chewed over his next words. “Eighteen articles?”

  Abigale nodded. She’d counted them twice. If nothing else, she was professional. “Your buyers should be very happy.” Though, if they were anything like Octavius Knight, they would regard the costly objects with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a grunt that, yes, they would do very nicely, thankee very much.

  After a few seconds of silence, the tinkerer climbed to his feet. For an old guy, he didn’t creak too much. He was like a cherished antique, one that was regularly varnished and oiled. Abigale had never seen her boss ill, not even afflicted with as much as a cold. If she didn’t know better, she would have believed him in league with the guy below. What was a soul worth in this day and age?

  “I suppose that can be classified as a good night’s work,” he said, making his way across the room, as he had done on so many occasions before. He removed a painting from the wall—a horrible thing depicting a hunter and a lion; the spear in the hunter’s hand penetrating the beast’s lower jaw—and opened the safe that was hidden there.

  Abigale looked away. She didn’t need to know the combination. In fact, the safe was one that she had faced on many occasions. She knew she could crack it in just a few minutes if she so desired.

  A thief didn’t shit on their own doorstep, though, and Abigale would never steal from the man that had taken her in, trained her, and given her the contraptions she’d needed to become so successful.

  The best in the world, some people said. Based on the night’s evidence, that was debatable. She’d almost died, and worse, she’d almost lost the jewels. That was more inconceivable than dying. There was no shame in being killed, but there was a certain embarrassment with being caught red-handed, especially when so many across the world were seemingly paying attention to her every move.