Wanderlust

by Adam Millard

  “Ah, you must be the unfortunate banker,” Alcorn said, reaching for his notepad. “And what a lucky man you must be considering yourself to be at this moment.”

  “Not really,” he said, limping across to where Alcorn stood.

  The two guards sensed they were no longer required, and didn’t want to befall the same set of questions their associates had already been submitted to, so they quickly dispersed.

  “Oh, come, come,” Alcorn said. “You took a dart to the leg, but it could have been so much worse. Three inches up and to the left and you would have been neutered.”

  The expression upon the banker’s face faltered. “I want the girl behind bars,” he said as if it was a new concept to Alcorn, something that he hadn’t tried on numerous occasions before. “She’s a maniac. I was just talking to her and…” It must have been too much for him, and he trailed off.

  “Did she say anything to you that might be of use?” Alcorn said. He already knew what the answer would be, but it didn’t hurt to ask. One day, she would slip up, give away some vital piece of information. No matter how good a criminal is, it’s only a matter of time before they start to get complacent.

  “I was telling her about coins,” the banker said. “If I’d known she was packing poisonous darts, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  Alcorn scribbled the word coins down on his notepad, for no other reason than it looked much better than an empty page. “You were right beside her when she removed the vase from its cabinet,” Alcorn said. “Did she show any interest in the vase, perhaps fill you in on its rich history, anything that would explain why she risked life and limb to remove it from its rightful place and then smash it into myriad pieces like some worthless china teacup?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “One minute I was talking about Chinese currency, the next I was being slapped around the face by two burly guards.” He didn’t mention the brief exchange between himself and the girl with regards to a little companionship. It would only draw more questions.

  “So she shot you, you went down, she ran with the vase, and that was when she came up against Thorneye?” Alcorn turned his attention back to the inspector, only to find he wasn’t there any longer, and neither was his wife. “Did anyone see where the little one went?” he said, but he mainly directed it toward Gangly Joe, who had already provided him with a nugget of information that might help.

  None of them saw Thorneye vanish, and none of them saw Cynthia Thorneye leave either, which was a much larger trick if you took into account her considerable girth and the fact she liked to wear only the finest carpets.

  Great, Alcorn thought. I knew he knew something, and I let him slip out. I really must practise this catching people and keeping them malarkey.

  *

  “Ah, thank God!” Octavius said, rushing across the room to the door Abigale had just come through. “I take it that all went to plan?”

  Abigale removed the satchel from her shoulder and collapsed into Octavius’s favourite armchair. “I wouldn’t say it was perfect,” she said, “but it was…interesting.”

  Just then, Mouse jumped up onto Abigale’s lap, already purring. Abigale leaned forwards and nuzzled his fluffy, little face. The baby speak was a little weird, though, and she managed to curb herself before Octavius had her removed from his workshop.

  “I’ve been listening to the aftermath on the wireless,” Octavius said, lighting his pipe and exhaling two columns of blue smoke from his extraordinarily large and hairy nostrils. “The reporter said that you shot an innocent bystander?” He smiled. All he cared about was whether Big Daddy was as successful as he hoped.

  Abigale nodded, still stroking Mouse. “Yeah, took him down in a matter of seconds. Can you believe he tried to hire me for some light relief?”

  The thought of it turned Octavius’s stomach. “You should have shot him in the face, my dear girl,” he said. He walked over to a tin kettle and placed it upon the stove. “I should imagine you’re thirsty. I don’t suppose you managed to find time to stop at the wonderful tearoom they have there.”

  Abigale almost burst into a fit of giggles. “No, I was in quite a rush,” she said, “but I’ll be sure to bear your recommendation in mind, should I ever return to the scene of the crime.” Which she wouldn’t.

  Ever. Shame really. It was a most delightful building.

  When Octavius had finished preparing the tea, Abigale ushered Mouse from her lap and reached for the satchel. She was intrigued as to what it was she had been carrying all that time. For all she knew, it was some terrible weapon designed to detonate and take as many people with it as it did. However, from what Mordecai Pick had told her, it was worse than that.

  She felt its cold, hard surface as her fingers brushed past it. For a few seconds, she toyed with the idea of leaving it precisely where it was. It seemed to be fine in there, and the less she knew about it, the better.

  The curious part of her, however, wouldn’t allow it, and she pulled the object from the satchel and pushed herself up from the armchair.

  “So this is what they wanted me to get,” she said as she turned it over and over in her hand. It was gold in colour, but nowhere near weighty enough to be wholly composed of the precious metal. She considered it could be some kind of special steel.

  Octavius ambled across the room, placed a teapot upon his desk before turning to examine the small L-shaped object.“It’s not what I expected,” he said.

  His face was so close to Abigale’s hand that she could feel his warm breath.

  “Does it do anything? Has it ticked, or tocked, or lit up luridly?”

  Abigale shook her head. “Not that I know of. It does not look as if it’s made of more than one part. I couldn’t imagine there being any clockwork inside.”

  Octavius sighed. “Well, I guess that renders me obsolete for the time being.” He sounded almost disappointed as if he’d been hoping to make himself useful. “Are you going to deliver it to Mordecai Pick straight away?”

  If that had been an option, then she might have. Mordecai had made sure she was blindfolded and led from The Guild’s headquarters, and she’d not been able to recognise any of the surrounding buildings the view from his office window had afforded. It could be anywhere.

  “I’m sure he’ll come asking for it once I have all three pieces.” Whether he would honour his part of the deal and remove the deadly device from her head was another matter entirely. She’d considered negotiating with him, promising the triptych’s delivery only once the mechanism was out and destroyed, but she knew what type of an organisation The Guild was. They would have no misgivings about killing her first, then hunting down the pieces. She was doing them a huge favour just by putting all three fragments together. If they knew the triptych was in London, it wouldn’t take them long to track it down, not with their contacts.

  Octavius plucked the small oddity from Abigale’s palm and said, “In that case, you’d better leave this here with me. There’s no point in taking it halfway around the world with you, and by keeping the pieces apart, you’re much less likely to become an easy target. No one will risk taking you out, not if you have an incomplete set.”

  “My God, you’re right,” Abigale said, suddenly shocked. “I didn’t think about that. Put it in your safe. Or better yet, bury it somewhere even I don’t know about. That way, I won’t be able to tell anyone where it is, no matter how hard they torture me.”

  Octavius shuddered. “There will be no talk of torture in this workshop,” he said. “But I will make sure it is safely hidden until you return. Now that you know what you’re looking for, these next two capers should be a doddle, hm?”

  “Am I all packed, ready to go?” she asked.

  Mouse had jumped up onto Octavius’s desk and was making short work of the sugar lumps piled up in a bowl there. Abigale picked him up and gently stroked him. Even with the promise of untold adventures, she found it incredibly difficult to leave her cat behind. At least Octavius was old enough and
ugly enough to look after himself.

  “You will be leaving on time. I have been tinkering all day long, and you are now the proud owner of a rope-gun. I’m pretty sure you will figure out how to use it before you set sail for the heavens. I know how much you enjoy dangling from high places, so I thought it would come in handy, but that doesn’t mean you are to start throwing yourself off the Kremlin roof. I can’t abide silliness, and I—”

  “Thank you,” Abigale said. Two simple words, that’s all, but it was the manner in which they were delivered that made all the difference.

  Octavius’s features softened, and for a moment he looked as if he might cry. “Yes, well,” he said, coughing away any solemnity that might have been betraying him. “I want you back here in a few days’ time, and we can put all this nonsense behind us.”

  If being abducted, implanted with a killer device, and forced to steal from three renowned museums across the world was “nonsense”, Abigale hated to think what the tinkerer considered a real problem.

  “You need to get some rest,” he said. “Take the weight off, drink some tea. I’ve got a little more work to do tonight, but it shouldn’t keep you awake. You need to be up bright and early for your midday departure.”

  Poseidon’s Gale. Her first ride on an airship and there was every possibility it would be her last. She settled back into Octavius’s armchair with Mouse curled up on her lap. Before she had a chance to drink any tea, she was dreaming of faraway places, of European landmarks and political intrigue. She slept well as Octavius went quietly back to work, stopping every now and then to watch his prodigy dream.

  11

  Inspector Joe Thorneye nervously made his way into the dark, dingy chamber. Candles flickered around the room, casting nightmarish shadows upon walls that were terrifying enough already. A huge salt star had been drawn in the middle of the floor, and inside the star was a series of small circles. Candles surrounded the strange motif, flickering in a breeze that didn’t seem to exist. Thorneye shuddered. He’d known it was going to be difficult, but at that moment he felt the sudden urge to just turn and run for his life. A voice prevented him from doing so.

  “Ah, Inspector. What brings you to our neck of the woods?” She came out from the shadows, a large snake draped across her shoulders. Thorneye didn’t know where to look, since the snake was all she appeared to be wearing. He focused on one of the flickering candles, but he could still see her naked form upon the wall, a provocative silhouette dancing in the orange glow surrounding it. It was more frightening than the actual thing.

  “I’ve…well, I think I’ve got some important news.” His voice cracked, and he reproached himself for sounding so weak and feeble, but there was nothing he could have done about it. Blithe was the most powerful sorceress in London. She could crush him with the most subtle of blinks. He wasn’t being feeble at all, simply sensible.

  “You think, or you have?” Blithe said. Either she was hissing or the huge snake curling around her breasts didn’t like Thorneye.

  He kept his gaze fixed upon the candlelight as Blithe’s shadow seemed to separate, and two of them appeared, each as beautiful as the other. She knew what she was doing, and so did Thorneye.

  “I have, I think,” he said, knowing the sorceress was only seconds from turning him into something with twice as many legs..

  Blithe slipped through the air behind him, but Thorneye didn’t hear her, such was her craftiness. He didn’t think her feet were even touching the floor.

  “Go on,” she said. “I’m having one of my impatient days.”

  Thorneye gulped. His throat felt as if it was being raked at from the inside, hundreds of miniature talons clawing their way to freedom. “I think I saw a piece of The Configuration today.”

  Blithe audibly gasped. She was somewhere behind him, but the duel shadows she cast upon the wall fell still. “How sure are you?” she said.

  There was venom in that voice of hers. It suggested he’d better by very sure or be ready to face the consequences. He was neither, but he wasn’t ready to die just yet.

  “I’m certain,” he said, his voice aquiver. “I didn’t get a chance to have a close look, but it was golden, and oddly shaped. It was definitely the correct size and…” That was as far as he got before he felt Blithe’s hand wrap around his throat. At least he hoped it was Blithe’s hand. Snakes and Thorneye had never gotten along.

  “Where?” she said, her razorblade fingernails teasing his throat.

  “At the…at the museum,” Thorneye whispered. He kept his head faced forward, knowing that any sudden movements would result in his neck opening wide, like the gaping maws of Blithe’s adder. “Victoria and Albert Museum. It was in a vase all along, can you believe that?”

  Blithe could believe it. Many of the pieces had been located in ancient antiquities. Nine of the pieces were already in her possession, but without the other three, they were useless. For centuries, her kind had sought the missing pieces, and she and Dorian had been getting close. She’d felt them calling to her—the final three pieces, thrumming from their hiding places. By the end of the year, they would have them all, a dozen pieces, and once they had all twelve, she would be unstoppable.

  Immortal.

  She was pleased to learn that a piece had revealed itself ahead of schedule, and the pissant informant-cum-detective knew exactly where it was.

  “And yet, I don’t believe you brought it with you,” Blithe said. If the Inspector was possessed of a piece of The Configuration, she would have felt it, would have heard it, calling to her.

  Thorneye began to mumble. Something about a vase, something about his wife, and how he hadn’t even wanted to be there. Blithe had no time for his excuses, so she tightened her grip on Thorneye’s throat, cutting him off suddenly.

  “The next words to pass your lips had better be good,” she said, dragging one jagged fingernail along his carotid, “or I will be forced to kill you, and I really don’t want to have to do that. You have your uses.” She eased up a little, just enough for Thorneye to talk coherently.

  He seemed unable to for a few moments, and then finally he said: “A girl.” He dry swallowed. “A girl took it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a girl took it’?” The snake began to coil around Thorneye’s chest. It was colder than ice, even through his waistcoat.

  “She seemed to know it was there,” he said. “I didn’t know what she had until it was too late.”

  Blithe forced power along her arms into her fingertips. The inspector’s throat audibly sizzled as it began to burn. He whimpered, but no scream would come.

  “What girl?”

  Thorneye coughed and spluttered. Sweat streamed down his face. He looked as if he was about to suffer a fatal coronary, but Blithe wasn’t ready to ease off him, not just yet. He had valuable information, intelligence that she badly needed.

  “We know her,” Thorneye said, trying to ignore the smell of smoke drifting up to his nostrils and the constricting snake around his torso. “Oh, please, Sorceress, we know who she is.” There was certain desperation in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. Thorneye sensed his days were numbered. There was a chance Blithe would kill him right there where he stood, even though he’d come to her with news of the missing piece. It was as much his prerogative not to have said anything, to have simply overlooked the object and keep it to himself. Blithe had to give him some credit—he was loyal.

  She released his throat, and he dropped to his knees, feeling around his neck for the damage, hissing through gritted teeth at the charred texture he found there.

  “Who is she?” Blithe said, slowly uncoiling her snake from Thorneye’s chest. “And why is she in possession of something that we’ve been searched centuries for?

  Inspector Thorneye waited for the snake to be wholly removed, then relaxed a little. “Her name is Abigale,” he said. “Abigale Egars.”

  “Why does that name ring a bell?” Blithe said.

  “She’s
quite well known in the thieving community,” said Thorneye. “If it’s not stuck down, she will take it, at least that’s what they say. The Met has been chasing her for the last few years, but she’s always one step ahead. She’s a nightmare for us, and no matter how many of us are put on the case, she always gets away.”

  “And she has a piece of The Configuration,” Blithe said. “Even though she has no idea what it does?”

  “Sorceress, I came to you as soon as I could.” He climbed to his feet, still running his fingers over his wounded throat. “Please, you have to understand that there was nothing I could do…”

  “Yes, of course,” Blithe sneered. “You’re just the police. How are you expected to deal with one little thief? How silly of me.”

  Thorneye could see the rage boiling over inside her again. If he wasn’t careful, he would not have the opportunity to rectify his gaffe.

  Blithe took a deep breath and walked around to face him head-on. “You’ve never been able to catch her before,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “That’s because you’re useless mortals, and she’s obviously well-trained, unlike your lot.” She snorted. “With magic we can find her. There is nothing that brass-wolf of Dorian’s can’t sniff out. It’s what they’re trained to do, and Kai is the best.”

  Thorneye blinked sweat from his eyes, which were painfully stinging. “So you will be able to track her?” You get a piece of The Configuration, and I get to arrest Abigale Egars?” It sounded too good to be true, but he was willing to roll with it.

  Just then, Blithe clapped her hands together twice and hard. Hard enough to startle Thorneye, who hadn’t been anticipating it. There was a thunderous rumble, and a door at the side of the chamber flew open, slamming against the chamber wall.

  Inspector Thorneye had met Dorian Clowes once or twice before, and there was no love lost between them. It had all stemmed from a joke Thorneye had made about Dorian being a girl’s name. Not a great thing to tell a necromancer, especially one as volatile as the man standing before him.