Skycircus

by Peter Bunzl

  The whole scheme was going to be nearly impossible to pull off. But if they failed, then Madame would go through with her dastardly plot for Lily in the show tomorrow. Lily shivered at the thought of it.

  Finally, the hour had come. They’d gone over everything multiple times and there could be no more stalling. It was a quarter to twelve, and time to put the plan into action.

  Luca and Deedee pulled the pins from the door hinges and undid the bolts on the outside, then they removed the hatch.

  Lily picked up Malkin ready to post him through again.

  “Try to be careful with me,” he warned. “I was nearly squashed to death last time!”

  “Just make yourself thin,” she instructed as she carried him towards the hole – though it wasn’t as if he could breathe in to do that. “We’ll need a quiet signal for you to use on the other side, if you see or hear anyone coming. One that we’ll recognize from this end of the corridor.”

  “How about my soft pining noise?” Malkin suggested.

  “That’ll do.”

  “And while I’m risking cog and limb for you,” he asked, “just what exactly are you going to be doing?”

  “I told you,” Lily said. “Weren’t you listening? Picking the lock on the outside of this door. Then the other five.” She posted him through the door and waited while he landed on the other side softly and slunk off into the shadows.

  She pulled the lock picks from her pocket, selected what she guessed was the right pick and, furrowing her brow in concentration, put her hand out through the gap.

  As she got to work on the first lock, she felt a small tingle in her chest. A tingle that could be only one thing: hope.

  Even with her lock picks, rather than the hairpin she’d tried before, Lily found the first lock a tricky proposition. The dim throbbing electric bulbs in the corridor gave off barely sufficient light to see the outside of the cell door, but they were bright enough that if someone was to walk down the passage, they would spot her. She was glad Malkin was on lookout, but she would have to be quick if she didn’t want to be caught, and the mechanism already felt like it was jamming.

  She needed a second pick. She pulled her hand back through the hatch to select one, and tried to visualize the lock’s interior in her mind as she jiggled them both into place.

  Slowly, steadily, she rotated the two picks sideways. A knot formed in her chest. It was a tricky task and if she failed, they would never get out.

  She heard a rattling far off, and she wasn’t sure if it was just the night creaks of the ship, or the Lunk returning. But there was no turning back. She had to keep going. She tried to ignore the noises and carry on with her work.

  Eventually, the lock’s cylinders turned with a low grinding noise. Soon they’d reached the halfway point – past forty-five degrees – and Lily knew all she had to do was…let go.

  With a click, everything dropped into place. The lock was open. Silently, she blessed Tolly and his birthday present and Robert for recovering it for her.

  She held her breath and pushed on the door.

  It swung open with a horribly loud creak, reminiscent of the Lunk’s limbs. The noise echoed down the passage, sending shivers up Lily’s spine and making her heartbeat quicken.

  Had anyone heard? She waited for one pulse-pounding minute for Malkin to give a signal from the far end of the corridor.

  Nothing stirred.

  No one was coming. A wave of relief washed over her. They’d opened the first door and got away with it. Only five more to go.

  The others crowded in behind her as she stepped through the doorway.

  She was just about to beckon them out, when she heard Malkin’s pine. He was dashing back down the corridor with his brush up and his nose pointing towards the stairwell.

  “Someone’s coming!” he called out quietly.

  Lily pushed everyone back inside and replaced the hatch, throwing the bolts across to hold it in place.

  Malkin squeezed through the barred gate, and dashed past her into the cell. “Quick!” he said quietly. “Shut that door!”

  Lily did as he commanded and the five of them stood behind it, clustered together in the dark. A sliver of light leaked through the thin gap in the hatch. Lily leaned against it to keep it shut, and the four children kept very still and listened.

  CREAK-THUD! CREAK-THUD! CREAK-THUD!

  Footsteps trod the hall. It was the Lunk, making his late-night rounds.

  He tramped the passageway twice, before they heard the clang of the door to the stairwell at the far end.

  Lily’s back was wet with sweat. Her red evening dress clung to her beneath her coat. She let out a deep hysterical laugh which she hadn’t even realized she was holding in.

  Then she put Malkin down and cautiously opened the door.

  The pair of them stepped outside.

  “Go and check again if he’s coming back,” she told her friend and he skittered up the corridor.

  Lily turned to the others. “Do you still want to come with me?”

  They nodded.

  “It was a close call,” Luca said quietly.

  “But we still want to risk it,” Deedee whispered.

  Angelique said nothing.

  Lily felt a wash of relief. The four of them stepped out the door again.

  Lily’s Cogheart pounded loudly in her chest as they tiptoed the few steps to the iron gate that stretched across the corridor. Malkin returned from his scouting, flicking his brush from side to side impatiently.

  Lily bent down. Her hands slicked with sweat as she fiddled with the padlock on the gate, almost dropping the lock pick through the bars…

  “Hurry,” Malkin muttered, giving Lily an encouraging nudge through the bars with his nose. “You’re taking too long.”

  “Then stop your chatter,” Lily whispered back.

  “Move out the way,” Luca said softly. “I’ll do this.”

  Lily stepped aside and he snipped through the padlock with his claws. “It’s quicker this way since we’re not coming back.”

  The lock on Room Nine was the same as the one on their cell door.

  Lily chose the two picks that she’d used before and jiggled them about in the keyhole. This lock was easier than the first and she was through it in a matter of minutes. With relief, she realized that she had become a better lock picker now that she’d had some practice and could use the right tools.

  She pushed open the door. “Wait here,” she hissed softly to the others. And to Malkin she said. “Head off and stand guard.”

  Malkin grumbled under his breath just a little at being bossed around, but nevertheless positioned himself further off down the corridor. Luca, Deedee and Angelique huddled together in the next doorway along.

  Quietly, Lily pushed open the door to Room Nine and stuck her head inside. She’d expected Robert and the Buttons to be ready to leave and waiting in the centre of the room, but they weren’t. Instead there were four sleeping bodies in bunks wrapped in blankets.

  Perhaps they’d all drifted off while waiting? She peered closer into each berth, and suddenly felt dizzy with fear. A fully grown roustabout was lying in each, breathing loudly, one even snoring. Lily exited the room as quickly as she could and shut the door noiselessly behind her.

  “What’s the matter?” Deedee asked when she saw her face.

  “Robert’s not in there, and neither are the Buttons. I don’t understand what can have gone wrong!”

  “Maybe someone got wind of your plan and moved them to another cell?” Luca said quietly.

  Malkin’s fur bristled. “Maybe this is a trap?” he suggested.

  “It can’t be,” Lily said. “They would’ve stopped us already.”

  She took Robert’s note out of her pocket, flipping it from side to side and peering at it in the throbbing yellow electric light. She felt slightly queasy.

  “Wait a second,” she said. “I read his reply up the wrong way.”

  “Of course,” Malkin
said. “He’s in Room Six!”

  The five of them edged along the corridor to Room Six, stopping in an alcove just outside and waiting to see if anyone was coming before Lily tried to pick this lock.

  At once they heard footsteps, and in a panic Lily pushed the others back into the shadows, and squeezed herself into the doorway beside them.

  Everyone held their breath.

  The footsteps did not stop but they didn’t seem to get any closer either.

  “I think they’re coming from the floor above,” Deedee whispered, and Lily realized she was right.

  As soon as there was silence again, she started in on the lock. Malkin took up his lookout position a few feet away once more and Angelique and Deedee kept watch too. Luca offered to help with the lock again but Lily shook her head. It was too fiddly for his claws. Besides, she found she was getting quicker, especially with these picks. In a matter of seconds, the door swung open.

  And there inside was Robert, dressed in his work clothes and ready to go. Silva and Dimitri were waiting with him. Behind them in their bunks, Bruno and Gilda Buttons were sat up watching too. Their eyes almost popped when they saw Lily and the hybrids crowded into the doorway.

  Robert pulled Lily into a hug. She could feel the waves of relief wash off him.

  “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “Trouble with numbers,” Lily explained. “Nine turned out to be six.”

  “What?” he asked. Then: “Never mind. What’s the plan?”

  “We have to get going,” Lily said. “Find the comms room and telegraph Papa, then steal back Mama’s notebook from Madame’s office and pick the lock on the exit door. Finally Angelique’s going to fly us over the fence and out.”

  “We’ll have to sneak through the Big Top on the way and get the rest of my things. I hid them on the costume rail, and we can’t leave here without my ma’s Moonlocket,” Robert said. “Let’s hope that’s in Madame’s office too.”

  Lily nodded. “All right then.”

  “The comms room is on the top floor,” Gilda Buttons advised. “And Madame’s office is opposite it, on the other side of the stairwell. Best of luck.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Lily asked the Buttons and Dimitri.

  They took one look at the hybrids and shook their heads. “We can’t,” Bruno Buttons said quietly. “We have to see out the season. We’ve no money to go anywhere else.”

  “And I need to stay with my parents,” Silva said.

  Dimitri nodded. “Circus is family. We can’t leave them.”

  Lily wondered if that was the only reason, or if they had some residual mistrust of the hybrids that meant they didn’t want to go with them.

  “We’ll telegraph the police,” Robert said. “Bring them here to sort out this mess. At least then Madame and Slimwood will be taken away and held to rights and you might get paid.” He looked back at Silva and Dimitri. “Well, thank you for everything. I hope we’ll meet again.”

  With that, he stepped into the corridor to join Lily and Malkin, and the other three, and they hurried quickly along to the dimly lit stairwell.

  The six of them climbed the stairs in a long line, taking care to keep to the edge of the walls to stop the steps from creaking. Deedee and Luca followed Robert at the front, Angelique behind them grasping the bannisters in one hand and her stick in the other. Her wings were folded against her back, twitching irregularly. Lily and Malkin brought up the rear. Lily’s heart was pounding so loud she could barely think. They reached the top-floor corridor and she heard a horrible scuffling coming from somewhere ahead in the dark. Everyone froze. A shiver ran down Lily’s spine. She gulped back a wave of panic, and stood stock-still, waiting…

  Finally, the noise died down to silence.

  “What was that?” Lily hissed.

  “Probably mice,” Deedee said.

  Lily hoped she was right because Madame’s and Slimwood’s quarters were up here and the last thing she wanted was to be discovered by them. The punishment Robert had endured just for hiding in the Big Top had been bad enough – heaven knew what would happen to them if Slimwood and Madame caught them trying to break out. Though whatever it was, Lily couldn’t imagine it would be worse than the terrible-sounding machine Madame had prepared for her in the show.

  They passed a doorway and Luca tapped her shoulder.

  “This is the comms room,” he whispered.

  Lily nodded; her mouth was dry and her throat ached. She wished she could have a drink of water, but there wasn’t time. “Lock number five,” she said to herself, putting a pick into the keyhole.

  “Let’s hope it’s as easy as the oth—” Malkin said.

  But he didn’t even have time to finish the sentence, because she’d got it open.

  Robert whistled softly in approval. “You’re getting good at this, Lily,” he whispered.

  Malkin shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “There’s still the main door to go, and so far it almost seems as if it’s been too easy.”

  “Don’t say that,” Lily whispered. “We’re nearly out. Malkin, you’re on watch again.” She turned to the others. “The rest of you’d better come in with me. You can help Robert get the telegraph machine working: we need to get a message to Papa and the French police about this place.”

  The five of them stepped through the door into the comms and navigation room. Lily turned on a desk lamp rather that the main light.

  On the wall was a large map of Great Britain and Northern Europe with a string of X marks in prominent sites on the map.

  “That’s all the places we’ve ever been to,” Luca said, staring at it.

  In the centre of the room was a swivel chair with a blanket folded on it and a wooden desk that was strewn with telegraph tape and message pads, and beside those was a headset and the brass telegraph key on its wooden base. Above them, fixed to the wall, was a shiny-looking machine – a transmitter and receiver box, with a brass plate screwed to its front that was imprinted with the words:

  On the floor beneath this, a large battery and a tangle of wires were wedged between two filing cabinets full of manuals. A set of instructions laying out the Morse code letter cypher was pinned to a noticeboard on the wall above.

  “Crikey!” said Deedee, her eyes darting over this complex collection of equipment.

  “Are you sure you can get this working?” Angelique asked.

  “If anyone can, Robert can,” Lily said. She smiled at him.

  Robert didn’t seem as certain. He connected up the battery to the positive and negative plates on the transmitter and pointed the others around the room, getting them to turn on brass switches and dials for the transmitter and receiver, while he checked their settings.

  Lily could see that his hands were shaking. She hoped he knew what he was doing.

  The battery began to give off an electrical hum as current passed through it.

  Luca took the blanket off the back of the chair and threw it over the thing to muffle the sound.

  “I may not be a trained telegraph operator,” Robert said quietly, as he sat down at the telegraph desk and put the headphones on, “but I read a book about it once.”

  “Hopefully that will suffice,” Lily said. “If you can’t get an answer from a book, goodness knows what the world’s coming too,” she added.

  “We shall see,” Robert said. He was about to brush aside a stack of paper on the table when something made him stop. He picked one up and turned it over. “Oh no!” he exclaimed.

  “What’s the matter?” Lily asked. It was a ticket for the circus, just like the one she had received with her book, only with a slight difference.

  Etched on its front in silver and gold was an image of a girl in a crackling coffin-shaped box. She looked like she was around fourteen years old. From one end of the box an enormous yellow cone of light spilled up onto a screen, where there was a complex engraving of cams and cogs and springs, making up the image of a clockwork h
eart. Around all this, a set of curlicued words was arranged:

  “Miss Cora Valentine must be you,” Deedee whispered in shock.

  “And there’s more.” Robert handed Lily a telegram dated yesterday. She read it.

  Lily’s head spun as she finished the telegram.

  “SMD is Droz’s initials,” Luca said. “That X-ray device must be intended to reveal your Cogheart.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” Deedee said.

  Lily didn’t either. X-ray machines were a dangerous new technology, barely perfected. Papa had told her that one dose of radiation from some of the early machines that had gone wrong had been strong enough to kill someone. She folded the telegram and put it in her pocket.

  Robert flicked a switch on the transmission box and reached out with one hand for the metal transmission key, then began tapping out a telegraph code with it.

  The key emitted a low intermittent beep and Lily, who was good with codes, knew almost immediately what the first three letters he had tapped in were: SOS.

  Robert tapped a long sequence of dots and dashes into the transmitter with the telegraph key.

  SOS. POSITION 48.86 N and 2.25 E. FIVE KIDNAPPED CHILDREN INCLUDING ROBERT TOWNSEND AND LILY HARTMAN REQUIRE IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE. HELD PRISONER IN SLIMWOOD’S SKYCIRCUS, MOORED IN BOIS DE BOULOGNE, PARIS. INFORM PROF. HARTMAN OF BRACKENBRIDGE, ENGLAND. COME QUICK. WANTED CRIMINALS ABOARD. WE ARE IN DANGER.

  He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake in the transmission. He’d set the machine to broadcast on all frequencies.

  When he’d finished sending the message, he, Lily and the other hybrids waited for a reply.

  Angelique stood leaning on her stick, with her ear pressed to the door, listening for a warning from outside from Malkin in case anyone was coming.

  A good few minutes passed, but nothing came through the machine.

  Robert couldn’t understand why. He’d used the open broadcast frequency designated for emergencies – the message should’ve been read by now.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he muttered.

  “Maybe you didn’t set the transmitter right?” Luca suggested.