The Extraordinaires 2

by Michael Pryor

  About the Book

  London in 1909 has shifted from dangerous to deadly.

  Kingsley Ward and Evadne Stephens are the Extraordinaires and they should be the toast of the town – but their juggling and escapology act is failing, and Kingsley is to blame. His wolfish side is breaking free, ruining performances and endangering those around him. The secret to controlling this wildness lies in his mysterious past. Was he really raised by wolves? Who were his parents? What happened to them?

  The discovery of Kingsley’s father’s journal promises answers, but when it is stolen the Extraordinaires uncover ancient magic, a malign conspiracy, and a macabre plot to enslave all humanity. What begins as a quest to restore Kingsley’s past becomes an adventure that pits the Extraordinaires against forces that could shatter the minds and souls of millions.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  ALSO BY MICHAEL PRYOR

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  For Meredith Gill

  The waters lapped, the night-wind blew,

  Full-armed the Fear was born and grew,

  And we were flying ere we knew

  From panic in the night.

  —Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Rout of the White Hussars’

  ONE

  The giant steel jaws on either side of Kingsley Ward were quivering. Being suspended upside down as he was, it was difficult to judge the trap’s eagerness to close on him, so he ignored the metal monstrosity and focused his attention on wrenching himself free from the straitjacket. At the back of his mind, he was ticking off the seconds, keeping track of the three minutes he had before the Jaws of Death snapped shut.

  Through strenuous flexing of his shoulders, he’d managed to heave his right arm – the one in the continuous restraining sleeve – up and over his left. If he could stretch the leather and canvas enough to push his head through the gap he’d made, he was halfway there. The problem was, however, that his writhings had sent him swinging, pendulum-like, bringing him uncomfortably close to the metal teeth on either side.

  The mantrap was finely machined, a giant saw-toothed clamshell driven by a spring coiled tightly enough to work ten clocks the size of Big Ben. He’d seen it demonstrated and the crash of the jaws when they shut had made his ears ache.

  Kingsley was sweating, and glad of it. The slickness helped him drag his arm up and over his forehead. Immediately both arms were looser. He attacked the buckles on the sleeve with his teeth, tearing at them in a way his wild self approved of. His shoulders ached and his lips hurt, but he soon had the sleeves undone. This let him claw for the fastenings at his back. His fingers slipped, and he cursed, but he soon had the buckles open. After a combination of further teeth work, twisting and wriggling, he was free of the jacket and reaching for the belt that was cinched tightly around his feet.

  When he yanked the belt free, he dropped, flipping so he landed on all fours. Immediately, he sprang from the platform just ahead of a monstrous crash behind him. The sound echoed around the exposed rafters of the workshop, sending the chains and ropes swaying.

  Success! Kingsley stood, panting, muscles aquiver with exertion and more than a little relief. He glanced over his shoulder at the Jaws of Death, which he imagined looked disappointed, frustrated at not fulfilling their existential purpose, viz. slicing him in two.

  Once he’d gathered his breath he struck a pose that he hoped was both debonair and devil-may-care. ‘How was that?’

  Evadne Stephens was ensconced amid a mountain of papers at a long table near the window. A large diary detailing their performances sat on top of a metal box. She held a document in one hand while the other juggled three or four small brass cubes without her apparent attention. If not for that subtle movement, she might have been a statue – especially given her marble-white skin.

  She lifted her head from her reading and pushed back her glasses on her admirable nose. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and she caught the brass cubes in her palm, ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’

  Kingsley threw his arms wide in indignation that began as mock but soon decided that it deserved to be genuine. ‘But I escaped from the Suspended Straitjacket! I defied the Jaws of Death!’

  ‘You did?’ She went back to her document. ‘That’s splendid, Kingsley. Well done.’

  ‘Of course, it was made more difficult by having to fight off the tiger while I was upside down.’

  ‘Mmm. I imagine it would.’

  ‘And the spitting cobra didn’t make things any easier, either.’

  ‘I loathe spitters.’ Evadne put her document on the pile in front of her. ‘You’re testing to see if I’m paying attention, correct?’

  ‘I’d never dream of testing you. I was giving you an opportunity to show how well you were listening, that’s all.’

  She sighed. ‘While I would infinitely prefer supervising your practice and making sure the machinery works perfectly, I admit I was giving time to a problem and a mystery.’

  ‘You do look distracted.’

  She held up a letter. ‘It’s from the current Mrs Oldham. She’s resigning.’ She refolded the letter with one hand. ‘That’s the third Mrs Oldham since we rebuilt the school.’

  Kingsley understood Evadne’s pique. As part of her desire to help lost children, she had used her considerable fortune to set up Mrs Oldham’s School for Girls, a boarding school for orphans and other unfortunates. When it was burned down by agents of the ancient, evil trio known as the Immortals, and all the children were abducted, it had roused a superhuman fury in Evadne. Singlehandedly, she rescued the girls and destroyed the lair of the Immortals. Some months after that, with liberal application of money and the goodwill she’d accumulated in the Demimonde, she was able to reopen the school with a new Mrs Oldham in charge – the headmistress needing to take on the name in order to maintain the brass plaque at the front of the school, according to Evadne. However, being in charge of forty or so children from circumstances that could charitably be described as “difficult’ was not the easiest of positions.

  ‘You need another Mrs Oldham; I assume that’s the problem.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And the mystery?’

  Evadne gestured at the metal box on the table. It was the size of a large family Bible. ‘I’ve had many deliveries lately but this one, it appears, was never meant to be here.’ She waved this away. ‘Never mind.’ She gave him the sort of appraisal he had seen her direct at temperamental machinery. ‘The Jaw
s of Death operated smoothly?’

  ‘As in nearly bisecting Kingsley Ward? I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘I’m glad my design meets your approval.’

  ‘And I’m glad I didn’t take any more than the three minutes you set on the timer. Beastly, those jaws.’

  ‘Timer?’ Evadne stood and sauntered towards him with her accustomed grace. She’d unaccountably thrown herself into what she called a military phase, and was wearing a blue linen sailor suit that reached to her ankles and a jaunty nautical cap. Her hair was braided so it hung down the middle of her back. Kingsley found the combination of the winsome and the martial both charming and deeply unsettling. ‘I discarded the timer notion,’ she continued. ‘When I gave the plans to my Demimonde foundrymen, I made a few revisions to your notes. The jaws won’t close until you step off the platform.’

  ‘Really? I thought I’d gauged it perfectly. I’m crushed.’

  ‘No, you’re not, and that’s the whole point of my emendations.’

  Kingsley tried to step off the tiny stage. ‘My tails are caught.’

  Evadne balanced herself with a hand on his shoulder and peered behind him. ‘So it would seem.’ She tugged. ‘There.’

  Kingsley dusted off his lapels while Evadne crouched and adjusted a lever on the side of the machine. It had been delivered in the middle of the night by a gang of navvies who wore their furtiveness as others would wear cloth caps. The metal jaws gleamed, looking deadly enough for the most bloodthirsty audience – at the Alhambra, say. The entire mechanism was encased in an elaborate grid of ebony and silver for the appropriate blending of drama and menace. It overtopped his tallness by a good two feet. Kingsley thought it was magnificent. ‘I think we now have a fine centrepiece for the Extraordinaires,’ he said.

  Evadne straightened and wiped her hands together. ‘If we could only get a booking, we’d find out.’

  TWO

  ‘Don’t worry, you two, this new act will be a stunning success, I’m sure of it.’

  A small bespectacled man stood in the doorway. He brandished a paper bag and, even at that distance, Kingsley could smell that it was packed with fresh currant buns.

  ‘I’m glad you’re back, Mr Kipling,’ Evadne said. ‘But these Hindi texts we’ve been puzzling over can wait until after Kingsley and I have sorted out a few things.’

  ‘I see,’ the famous author said. He touched his moustache with a finger and looked from Evadne to Kingsley. ‘It appears that I’ve walked in on a contretemps.’

  ‘Only a mild disagreement,’ Evadne said. ‘Kingsley here is still a babe in the theatre world and doesn’t understand that we’re officially what’s known as “between engagements”.’

  Rudyard Kipling, the writer whom Kingsley had come to count as a friend and a confidant, looked at them both and Kingsley had the distinct impression that he’d summed up the awkwardness of the situation in an instant. Kipling placed the paper bag on the table. ‘I think I’ll make the tea it would seem we all need. Later, we can get back to sorting through your correspondence, Evadne.’

  ‘There goes a discreet man,’ Kingsley said as the author disappeared into the small kitchen. He used both hands to push back his hair, snagged on a curl and disentangled his fingers. A haircut, soon, he told himself. ‘Back to my point: it seems that we’re doing a lot of betweening and not much engaging, lately.’

  ‘And pish to you,’ Evadne murmured, but her head was down again, the brass cubes were looping and she was giving a fine impression of having dismissed him.

  Bridling, Kingsley turned away – even though he knew that the patchiness of their bookings over the last six months had been his fault and she was restraining herself from pointing this out.

  The Extraordinaires – their magic and juggling duo – initially had some success. Perhaps it had been due to the exhilaration that came from saving the world, and possibly saving it twice, but their skills had blended beautifully in those early performances. Despite constant uneasiness about possible vengeance from the sorcerers they’d defeated – the Immortals – a well-received week at the Theatre Royal in Bath had resulted in their climbing above the bottom of the bill for a fortnight at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham and as 1909 began, their star was on the rise.

  Kingsley first began to struggle during their time at the Peterborough Hippodrome a week later. Not with the mechanics of his escapes – he continued to sweat over them, practising maniacally between performances – but with the re-emergence of his wild side.

  After his adventure the previous May, in which he’d smuggled himself into the headquarters of the Immortals, he’d thought he’d reconciled his inner wildness with the rational, civilised Kingsley. He’d acknowledged this wild side as part of himself, and had accepted that it provided him with a useful way to see the world. He’d thought that his inner struggle was over.

  At Peterborough, he’d discovered otherwise. If it hadn’t been for Evadne’s magnificent juggling, the performance would have been an utter disaster. As he struggled within a metal chest that was swinging across the stage, Kingsley’s wild side panicked. He had barely mastered it.

  After that, he had to admit that he was growing more wild, not less. Sometimes he found himself at his window at night, listening for the call of the pack and trembling at the sounds that came to him through the darkness. His sense of smell was even better than ever, too, and he experienced an awareness of his surroundings that made him feel as if he’d spent much of his life half-blind. He could smell fear in people. But these benefits came at a cost as his wild side continued to strive for dominance.

  More subtle than the nagging desire to howl was the longing that came to him at unexpected times, a craving for a world less civilised, a world of tractless wilderness far from the touch of humanity. It would take him unawares – while rehearsing, while trying to sleep – and would overwhelm him with an unbearable sense of loss for something he’d never had. Each time, he had to catch himself lest he fling everything aside, abandon civilisation and set off to roam the untouched lands for good.

  He grew even more worried when he found himself studying steamship schedules in the newspaper and considering how long it would take to get to the north of Canada, or to India, or even far-away Australia.

  Kingsley had soon learned how difficult it was to arrest downhill motion. The Regent Theatre, Salford. The Nottingham Empire. The Buxton Opera House. Her Majesty’s, in Aberdeen. By this time, it was only Evadne’s supreme skill and otherworldly appearance that kept audiences at all satisfied. Gradually, though, their stage partnership began to show the strain.

  After an embarrassing performance at the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton (the irony of which didn’t escape him) Kingsley had called a halt. Time was needed, he declared, to refine their act, to develop new material. The dressing-room was where he made this announcement – with the angry stage manager outside and Evadne arranging a blanket around his trembling shoulders, then agreeing without an argument.

  Kingsley was convinced the Jaws of Death was the beginning of their return to the stage. Escaping from such an elaborate and dangerous device was sure to win an audience – and it would be a step towards saving himself.

  In those painful moments when he was candid with himself, Kingsley admitted that he was at various times on the verge of slipping away, being torn apart or breaking down, and sometimes all three at once. All these hurt, but more painful was the knowledge that he may not be as robust in temperament as he had thought – or as he wished he were.

  What he wanted, above all else, was to unify himself, to bring his wildness and his civilised self together. He wanted to be sound. Once he achieved this, he was sure his showmanship would return but, in all honesty, he knew that this wasn’t his major consideration.

  He didn’t like disappointing those whose esteem he valued and he was determined not to let it happen any longer.

  He cleared his throat, turned and presented himself to Evadne. ‘I confess that I
’ve been a little distracted lately.’

  Evadne looked up, but kept a finger on the document she was reading. ‘In your line of work, that’s unfortunate. Possibly lethally unfortunate.’

  ‘I apologise. It’s my wildness again.’

  She put the document on the table and laced her hands. ‘I know.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Please. The snarling, the growling, the way you look at cats? It was hard not to notice.’ She was trying to look stern, Kingsley could tell. ‘Do you have any explanations?’

  Kingsley shook his head. ‘I fear that any explanations are hidden in my past.’

  Evadne quickly stood. ‘And that’s what I’ve been waiting for. Mr Kipling! I think he’s ready!’

  Kipling re-entered the workshop carrying a tray complete with cups, saucers and teapot in a jaunty tea-cosy that Evadne admitted she’d knitted years ago in a fit of unaccountable domesticity. He was smiling broadly. ‘My boy. I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Hear what? And I’m ready for what? For tea?’

  ‘That you’re ready to confront your past,’ Evadne said. Kipling put the tray on the table next to the bag of buns. ‘In preparation for this moment,’ Evadne continued, ‘I’ve been investigating your history with a view to restoring it to you and making you a whole, integrated and content young man. With help from Mr Kipling, of course.’

  ‘Since you were raised by a wolf pack in India,’ Kipling said as he poured the tea, ‘and I, as it happens, have some knowledge of such things.’

  Kipling had heard rumours of Kingsley’s origins. Fascinated by the parallels with Mowgli, the hero of The Jungle Book, he had sought out Kingsley and introduced himself, thereby beginning a friendship that began awkwardly but had become staunch.

  Evadne plucked a document from a pile. ‘Exempli gratia: we’ve just had a shipment from Madras, with some more information about the military career of your father, Major Greville Sanderson. Letters, some personal recollections, and this.’

  She held out a photograph. Kingsley took it and sat, all the strength leaving his legs. While he battled tears, he gazed at a tall man in military uniform, a man whose eyes were distant, but whose mouth – under a rakish moustache – was on the verge of smiling. Kingsley turned it over: Major Greville Sanderson, attached to Madras Light Cavalry. ‘You’ve been investigating my past?’