by Adam Millard
Dorian’s brass-wolf, Kai, sat at his feet, sniffing the air and growling in Thorneye’s general direction. It was a slavering beast of a creature, and Thorneye had often wondered what the thing’s armour was for. He, for one, would not step up to battle the thing if their paths should cross in a dark alley. Its teeth were razor-sharp, and his eyes flashed with the fires of hell if you looked into them for long enough…which Thorneye tried not to.
“Dorian, we have word on our missing pieces of The Configuration.” Blithe was cool and collected as she told the necromancer the news.
He grunted in return, proving that magic alone did not make a person happy.
“I want you to take Inspector Thorneye and track down the stupid girl who has recently acquired one. I’m sure she won’t put up much of a fight, but the Metropolitan Police Force have, thus far, been unable to apprehend this larcenous jezebel.”
Dorian grunted again before shooting Thorneye a look that would kill most mortals.
“I, erm, I didn’t say I was…willing to get, erm, involved,” Thorneye said. He had taken the information to Blithe so that it was out of his hands, not pressed further into them.
“You’re a snivelling weasel, do you know that?” Blithe’s naked form seemed to harden. For a moment, she had the countenance of a much larger woman, one that could take Thorneye apart with harsh words and intent stares. “You will go with Dorian, and you will collect that piece. Or you will remain here, and I will torture you to within an inch of your life for the next twenty years, or until I grow bored.”
Options, options, Thorneye thought. “I guess I’m going with Dorian.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Blithe scowled. “Now, I trust that you have something belonging to her in evidence?”
The Inspector thought about it for a moment. “We’ve got a few items collected from crime scenes,” he said. “Mainly broken contraptions she used during the thefts.”
“That will do nicely,” Blithe said. She slipped the snake off her shoulder and passed it to Dorian, who glanced nervously at it for a moment before it transformed into a large, rusty weapon. A chainsword.
Dorian sheathed it and grunted.
“You will need something that she has made contact with for Kai to be able to track her. Once he’s connected, though, you might want to stay out of his way, isn’t that right, Dorian?”
I’ll bet he grunts, Thorneye thought, and a moment later was proved right.
“Now, get out of my sight,” Blithe said. “And if you show up unannounced again, I will have you flayed, framed, and hung upon that wall there.” She pointed to a bare section of the chamber wall, a place that could have done with a little something or other.
Thorneye didn’t want to be that little something or other. He followed Dorian out of the chamber, making sure there were at least six steps between him and the mangy brass-wolf.
Blithe slammed the door and began to laugh heartily to herself. It was a sound that would give Inspector Thorneye nightmares for the rest of his life, however long that should be.
12
Abigale couldn’t believe that she’d slept right through, but when Octavius woke her with freshly brewed tea and a bowl of porridge, it was already light outside. She could hear the city coming to life, the people commuting to their workplaces, and the hansom cabs going about their business.
“Goddammit, how far did I run yesterday?” Abigale said, wincing as she stood from the armchair she had fallen asleep in. Mouse was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t unusual. He liked to do his own thing in the mornings.
“Sore?” Octavius asked, handing her that morning’s newspaper.
The illustration on the front page was of her, but Abigale laughed. “I don’t really look like that, do I?” she said. “I mean, my cheeks aren’t that…podgy.”
“It looks nothing like you,” Octavius said, lighting his pipe. “Which is a good thing. If they are going to keep employing these inept artists, why not make the most of it?” He smiled, patted her affectionately on the shoulder, and fell into the newly vacated armchair with a heavy thwump.
“You look tired,” Abigale said. “Don’t tell me you were at it all night long.”
“My dear, it has been so long since I was at it, but if you are referring to my tinkering, then yes, I did work late, or early, if you want to look at it that way.”
Abigale shook her head. “You’re going to kill yourself, Octavius Knight, and it will be all my fault.” She smiled, but her words were a little too close to the truth and it quickly dissipated. “Promise me you will sleep once I’m gone.”
The tinkerer’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you joshing with me? I shan’t sleep until you return safely, and even then, it will be with one eye open to make sure no one’s followed you.” He closed his eyes and ran a gnarly hand through his beard. “By the way, there are three small objects on the desk. They might look like silver charms, but I grant you that they are not.”
Abigale walked on stiff legs toward the desk. Sitting there were, as the tinkerer said, three small objects. “They look like something one of your automatons would do if they could poop.” She reached in to pick one up but then decided to make sure it was safe first. “I’m not going to burst into flames am I? Or suddenly find myself irresistible to rats.” Stranger things had happened.
“No, no. You will be perfectly safe.”
Abigale picked them up.
“They react to body temperature…. Oh, I see you’ve picked them up. Well, a word of advice. Do not put them down again. You will have triggered them, and they are very sensitive.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘don’t put them down again’? What am I supposed to do? Walk around with them clenched in my fist?”
“Octavius sighed. “There is a chain there on the desk. They will not detonate if you wear them around your wrist, but when you do take them off, do so one at a time. I’m not sure how destructive they are going to be, and I don’t want you starting a war with Russia, or France for that matter, though mainly Russia.”
Abigale fed the charms onto the chain and fixed the clasp around her wrist. “So now I have a gun that can knock people out and three miniature bombs that could be powerful enough to start a war. Whatever happened to ‘no one gets hurt.’ and ‘Stealing is a victimless crime.’?”
“Well, this is different,” Octavius said. Only one of his eyes was open now, and it was firmly fixed upon Abigale. “You’ve never come up against wizards before. I’m not saying a few exploding trinkets are going to make a difference, but it’s better to have them and not need them—”
“Than it is to need them and not have them,” Abigale finished.
“So you do pay attention,” he said. “That’s…well, surprising.”
Abigale turned to the large grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Its pendulum had been stationary for as long as she could remember, but it still ticked, and if you were really lucky it would chime once every couple of hours, but only when the mood took it. “Octavius,” she said, suddenly anxious. “It’s almost ten.”
“And you paid attention in clock reading class, too,” he smiled. “Fascinating.”
“That means I only have two hours until Poseidon’s Gale launches.” She paced this way and that, not knowing which would get her wherever she wanted to go the quickest. “I’ve got to get ready. I have to get over to Kensington Airfield in two hours. Lord knows how long it’s going to take to summon a hansom—”
“Already done,” Octavius said. “He’s been waiting outside since eight this morning, and will wait for as long as it takes for you to get some breakfast into you.”
Abigale relaxed. “You’ve thought of everything,” she said. Of course, he had. That’s what he did. He was the brains, she was the muscle, and so it should always be, forever and ever, amen.
“Not everything,” he said. “I forgot how much you hated porridge. It’s all I’ve got.”
Abigale laughed. Was it right for a gir
l with a poisonous time bomb in her head and three mini-bombs around her wrist to be laughing so merrily? Probably not, but Abigale Egars had never considered herself to be packing a full deck.
She ate breakfast, and although it was porridge, she really rather enjoyed it. After two cups of tea and a trip to the privy, she was ready to go, standing at the entrance to Octavius’s workshop with the satchel over her shoulder and Big Daddy concealed beneath her russet military coat.
Octavius clutched Mouse, who looked genuinely shocked that he was being left in the hands of a madman. “I wish I could go with you,” he said, the pipe rattling around in the corner of his mouth. “Just doesn’t feel right, you going off like this.”
Abigale sniffed. “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” she said. “Any longer than that, you have my permission to hunt Mordecai Pick down and brutally slay him.” She grinned, but Octavius’s expression insinuated that he’d already considered it. “Stay out of trouble, old man. Everything’s going to be fine, once I get this damned device out of my nut.” The emerald bowler—she’d grown tired of the brown one—perched upon her head and covered the scar, but she could still feel it there. Not in the least because it was itchy as hell.
“You take care,” Octavius said.
Leaning in, he embraced her. Abigale reciprocated, and the tinkerer’s beard was almost as itchy as the scar on her head.
“You know me,” she said. “I didn’t get to be this good without taking care of myself.” They broke out of the hug and Abigale patted Mouse on his little, furry head. “And you be good for the old man. He can’t chase you around like I can.”
Octavius snorted. “I’m old, not an invalid,” he said, though his voice was frivolous. “Now go, before I change my mind.”
“Actually, changing your mind would mean they set the poison off, and—”
“Goodbye, Abigale,” he said, and slowly eased the door shut.
*
“What do you mean one of the scorpions is missing?” Alcorn wiggled his finger around inside his ear. His face screwed up as he did. “Right, you can say that again now. The piece of wax causing all the confusion has been removed.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Detective,” Inquisitor Gurd said. “You heard me perfectly well the first time.”
Yes, but I still don’t believe you. “Why would anyone have taken a piece of evidence?” Unless they wanted to rebuild one of the arachnid devices, it made no sense.
“The only people I know with access to that evidence were you, Detective Hatterfield, and Inspector Thorneye, and I—”
“Thorneye,” Alcorn said.
Lazarus Gurd made a face that intimated he didn’t like being interrupted, not when he was in the middle of an accusation, but then he looked perplexed.
“What?”
“Thorneye. He was there yesterday, at the museum. I knew there was something strange about the way he acted then, but now this…” He trailed off, tried to put two and two together and came up with seventy-three. What could Thorneye possibly want with one of the clockwork scorpions? They were no good to man nor beast, not in their current state, and Thorneye didn’t strike him as the type of man to enjoy tinkering. He was more of a drinking and whinging kind of man. An arsehole, if Alcorn remembered correctly.
“Are you saying that Inspector Thorneye removed a piece of important evidence from its cabinet and has taken it on some merry trip to Lord knows where?”
“I’m saying that it wasn’t me, and Hatterfield is as honest a detective as any I’ve ever worked with.”
Detective Hatterfield was one of the good guys. He’d once handed in a suitcase of stolen money he’d found in his own back yard. If that didn’t say commitment, what did? Alcorn shook his head.
“No, this is something to do with Thorneye. If you had seen him yesterday, the way he acted when I was getting answers from the witnesses, you’d have thought he was in on the whole caper.” That wasn’t possible, was it? That officious wife of his wouldn’t allow him to get involved in anything as exciting as criminality.
“I don’t understand,” Gurd said, turning his back on Alcorn long enough for Alcorn to notice the expanding bald patch on his superior’s pate. It was heart-warming.
“Neither do I,” Alcorn said. “Not yet. However, if Thorneye is involved in this somehow, and I’m almost certain that he is, I’m going to expose him for the treacherous rat he is.” He turned and made his way across the room. It was nice having a lead for a change, and Thorneye would be easier to find than that thieving bint, Abigale Egars.
“Alcorn,” Gurd said, still facing the myriad papers pinned upon his wall.
“Yes, Sir?”
“If you find that son of a harlot, and he is involved, you have my express permission to strike him several times before arresting him.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Alcorn said, leaving Gurd’s office with a smile wide enough to catch a dragonfly. It will be my pleasure.
13
The nerves began to hit Abigale like a ten-ton hammer as soon as she left Octavius’s lair. While she rode the hansom cab over to Kensington, anxiety stabbed at her like so many pins. For the first time in her life, she was utterly alone, a lost girl with a thousand things on her mind, a thousand-and-one if you wanted to get technical. Though the device wasn’t ticking, it might as well have been. The wound was itchy and annoying, but buried beneath her hat, she was unable to scratch it. It was best not to touch it, anyway. For all she knew, a slight change in wind direction could trigger it. The best thing to do was forget it was there and hope for the best.
She went to pay the hansom driver, but he simply smiled and shook his head. “Your old man already took care of it,” he said. Abigale tried not to look directly at the driver’s multi-coloured teeth. She was about to offer the man a little extra for the gentle and potentially life-extending drive over, but he’d already whipped his horses and was on his way, waving casually as he went.
Abigale turned to face the street she’d been delivered to.
Sunshine beat down upon the London cobbles. Market traders bellowed at the tops of their voices, flogging cheap fruits and vegetables or freshly baked breads. Abigale wasn’t hungry, but she bought an apple from one of the vendors and dropped it into her satchel for later. She’d never travelled by dirigible before, and she wasn’t entirely sure if they catered to their passengers, or if they did, how expensive it would be.
The moneybag was at the bottom of her satchel, but she didn’t want to break into it, not straight away. She would need money to get from Saint Petersburg to Paris, and that wasn’t going to be cheap. Of course, she had to survive Saint Petersburg first.
“Excuse me?” Abigale said, slowly approaching a stall that seemed to specialise in textiles. The proprietor, a silver-haired woman with a large and unsightly wart upon her cheek, stopped folding material and glowered toward Abigale as if she’d said something offensive.
Abigale, for a moment, forgot what she was going to say. The woman’s penetrating glare had stopped her in her tracks. “Erm, I…” Pull yourself together, girl. “The airfield?” She practically blurted it out. “Yes, you wouldn’t be able to point me in the direction of the airfield, would you?”
Perhaps that was just her face; maybe the wind had changed and left her like that permanently, because without any change to her expression whatsoever,——the textile lady said, “You’re right next to it, lovey.” She jabbed a rheumy old finger in the air. “If you go and stand over there you’ll see the blooming thing.”
Abigale smiled, wished the barmy old dear a pleasant day, and went over to where that ghastly finger had pointed.
She turned, scouring the skyline above the market tents, and at first, she saw nothing. She took a single step back, and one step was all it took.
There, beyond the market and behind a tall, wire fence, was a huge dome. She recognised it as the front of a dirigible, even though she’d only ever seen them from afar, usually hundreds of metres up in t
he sky. It was slightly surreal being level with one. Its sheer immensity rendered her mute, and she couldn’t even see the whole thing, yet.
With her heart racing and a childlike excitement coursing through her, Abigale made her way past the market, seeking a way onto the airfield, to where Poseidon’s Gale sat waiting.
*
Alcorn didn’t know where to start, but he figured the best place was Thorneye’s apartment on Hertford Street. From across the road, he stood watch, using the archway of another building’s porch for cover. From there, he could see all four storeys of the building, but he kept his attention fixed upon on the front door. As much of an idiot as Thorneye was, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come out the window, not even if he was being chased by a pack of wild boar.
What are you up to, Joe? Why did you take the busted scorpion? Why is it that I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you? They were all good questions, and they kept running through Alcorn’s head, tormenting him. He was missing something simple, one part of a puzzle that would ultimately explain everything, but what was it?
He watched the building for ten minutes before deciding he was wasting his time. Marching across the street, no longer in surveillance mode, he walked right up to the large, black door and grabbed the lion’s head doorknocker in his clammy hand. Whack, whack, whack! If that wasn’t enough to wake the neighbours, Alcorn didn’t know what was. He took a step back from the door and glanced up to where Thorneye lived with his wife on the second floor..
“Come on,” he urged. He hadn’t considered what he might say when someone answered. The trip to their home was a little heavy-handed, even by his own reckless standards. However, there were certain things that he just didn’t pussyfoot around. This, Alcorn thought, is one of those things.
After knocking once more, Alcorn was all but ready to leave when Cynthia Thorneye appeared in the crack of the door. She was grotesque, wearing nothing more than a flowery gown and a grimace that suggested he’d caught her in the middle of something strenuous. He hoped it wasn’t something strenuous for two participants.
