The Extraordinaires 2

by Michael Pryor

  ‘Pay attention,’ Gompers ordered. ‘Look at each photograph as I present it.’

  Leetha did, for she wanted to have a reputation for obedience. She wanted all of the big people to look at her and think that she would do what she was told, that she was trustworthy and would not make trouble. The more they trusted her, the better chance she had of finding a way to escape.

  Leetha stared at the dogs. She glanced at Gompers, who was watching her as a hunter watches prey. Leetha quickly looked back at the dogs. She bit her lip and nodded.

  ‘Did you get that?’ Gompers said to the female.

  ‘Yes, sir. Lip biting and nodding.’

  ‘Good.’ Gompers put the dogs away. ‘Number Two.’ Gompers held up another photograph, a ship like the one that took Leetha and her people away from their home. She shuddered.

  ‘Noted, sir,’ the female said. ‘Trembling.’

  ‘Number Three.’

  A big person beating another big person with a stick. Leetha gasped. She trembled at the grey pain in the face of the beaten one and the grey rage in the face of his attacker. Her people were peaceful, hiding rather than fighting, running away rather than attacking. Small children sometimes hit and hurt, but they knew no better. The big people were violent. She had learned that, but she had never grown used to it.

  The face in the photograph was an adult with the rage of a child. She sat back and hugged herself, arms crossed over her body.

  ‘Noted, sir.’

  ‘Number Four.’

  Gompers presented photograph after photograph to Leetha. She was good and willing. She looked at the images, never turned away.

  The test stopped when Leetha was shown a photograph of her home.

  Gompers was growing weary, drooping. Leetha was feeling sorry for him. She could never tell how old the big people were, but Gompers had years on him, had seen many winters. He should be home with his family who would take care of him.

  He croaked, ‘One hundred and fifty-five.’

  She looked at the photograph. Suddenly her voice was not a part of her. It cried out, all on its own, a wordless sound like that of a bird, wounded and lost.

  The grey image was that of the rocks near the river, near her home. The large rock, shaped like a nose, next to the two small ones and the four trees that leaned just so. There could be nothing else like it in the world.

  She reached out slowly. She took the image from the hands of Gompers. She brought it close, but only realised she was weeping when the tears fell onto the shiny, grey image. It was her home, washed free of colour and scent and life, but it was her home. Unable to stop herself, she whispered: ‘Where did you get this?’

  Gompers did not answer. He peered at her with hard, flat eyes.

  She wept. Far, far away, she heard the voice of the female. ‘Noted, sir.’

  ‘And pay attention,’ Gompers said. ‘Wild though these people may be, they have traces of civilised responses. I want each response recorded, tabulated and cross-matched by the time I get back from the north. I will find if they are human or not.’

  FIVE

  Evadne’s underground refuge was beneath the immense Olympic Stadium at the White City. Construction was a boon to the Demimonde as, with a measure of cunning, it could mask subterranean building of many sorts. While Evadne’s retreat was an impressive defensive redoubt, constructed with battleship-like walls and an impenetrable triple door system, Kingsley was glad she hadn’t stinted on the creature comforts.

  ‘That’s better.’ He propped his walking stick against an armchair, dropped into it and stretched, pushing his hands up over his head. He was tired, and hurting from the wrenching straitjacket escape on top of the assault from the Spawn. He knew he’d soon be sporting a splendid set of bruises.

  Evadne finished bolting the last of the three successive heavy steel doors. ‘Don’t relax too much,’ she said. ‘We have a journal to find.’

  Kingsley took one look at her face. And that’s your excuse for going up against the Immortals again.

  As well as being a virtuoso juggler and an astonishing weaponsmith, Evadne Stephens was an implacable foe of those like the Immortals; those who hurt children. Kingsley had seen her lose her customary poise and fly into a fury when given the opportunity to attack the Immortals, the age-old sorcerers whose continued existence depended on a supply of children.

  As a matter of simple humanity, Kingsley was on her side, but he also knew he’d never match her level of fervour in her crusade. In a moment of anguish, she had divulged that she thought herself responsible for the loss of her younger sister, Flora, who had been taken by child stealers while in Evadne’s care. She’d never been seen again.

  Kingsley remembered how greatly satisfied Evadne had been after she believed she’d destroyed the monsters. Her habitual restlessness had been subdued, and for weeks afterwards she was relaxed. She’d instigated long picnics where they did nothing at all but look at clouds. When she learned that he enjoyed music she insisted on taking him to concerts where he learned to love Elgar and to laugh at Gilbert and Sullivan.

  ‘The Immortals,’ he said, as Evadne took up the green velvet armchair on the other side of the parlour, the one directly underneath what Kingsley had decided was a particularly fine Millais.

  ‘The Immortals have your journal,’ Evadne responded. She’d tucked her feet up under her and was resting her chin on her fist. ‘You know that every day since I managed to demolish their lair under Greenwich, I’ve been expecting to hear of them.’

  ‘I thought I was the only one who expected them to turn up at any minute.’

  ‘Now, that can’t have helped your equanimity.’

  ‘Now that you mention it – no, it hasn’t helped.’

  ‘None of my usual informants have heard a whisper. They would have let me know.’

  ‘I see. So where do we start?’

  ‘I’ll send out my myrmidons to see if they can find anything.’ She brushed at the armrest of the chair, eyes on an invisible spot. ‘But you’re not convinced, are you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You’re thinking that I’m being over-zealous in my hatred of the Immortals. You’re still wondering if Mrs Winter might have stolen the journal.’

  Kingsley blinked. She’s done it again. Just as I think I have Evadne Stephens all sorted out, she whirls around and confronts me unexpectedly. ‘I’m worried about my foster father. I don’t want anything to happen to him. She’s had some sort of run-in with the Immortals in the past. Who’s to say they didn’t turn her into an agent of some sort?’

  ‘Kingsley, would you say that Dr Ward generally knows what he’s doing?’

  ‘I suppose so. Generally.’

  ‘Then can you accept that he wouldn’t be with Mrs Winter if she were an agent of the Immortals?’

  What if she is and he simply doesn’t realise it? ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And since we have no idea where they are, let’s assume – with our fingers crossed – that they’re safe and well.’

  ‘All that magic she did has me worried. Conjuring up a guardian spirit like that?’ He shivered.

  ‘Not a guardian spirit, a lar,’ Evadne said. She’d plucked four thumbnail-sized white balls from her belt and began cascading them from hand to hand.

  ‘I’ve never heard of lars.’

  ‘Lares is the plural. Latin.’

  ‘Lares then. Jupiter, Juno, Venus, I’m familiar with. Vulcan, Apollo, Neptune. Lar? A stuck-up fellow, was he, the god of de dahs?’

  ‘Lares were the guardians and protectors of locations. Worksites, meeting places, things like that. They were little gods, but within their circumscribed realm, they were powerful enough.’

  ‘As we saw. And it was Mrs Winter who controlled it.’

  ‘I’m not sure if control is the right word. I’d prefer summoned, or something like that.’

  ‘A nice distinction.’

  ‘It could be important. Control suggests a level of
authority. She was too respectful for that, too cautious.’ Evadne tucked the juggling balls back behind her belt. ‘I know that the Demimonde is the realm of the outlandish, but having a god appear in one’s workshop is dumbfounding.’

  ‘Oh, good, I’m glad you say that. I thought I was the only one who was utterly nonplussed. A god? A real god walloping a horde of Spawn and banishing them? All organised by a woman who’s going to be my mother, sooner or later? It sounds like a fairy tale.’

  ‘Believe me, Kingsley, I share your astonishment. And I take it that you were almost equally stunned by your foster father’s announcement?’

  ‘About getting married to a woman I’d never heard of before? Imagine you were told that the King was really a giant lizard in disguise and he was about to marry a crocodile. That’s about how surprised I was.’

  ‘I thought so, which explains your being at sixes and sevens.’

  ‘I decline to think I was thirteen,’ Kingsley said.

  ‘And that, Kingsley, I’ll allow to pass.’ She pointed. ‘You brought your walking stick.’

  ‘I’ve been practising.’ Kingsley took it crosswise, in both hands. ‘This may look like a simple walking stick, but in the hands of a master it can be deadly.’

  Evadne looked at him slantendicular. ‘It’s not a sword stick,’ she said, ‘so you must be going to learn single stick or canne de combat.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m favouring a more recent variation, following the work of the Swiss professor of arms Monsieur Vigny. It’s called “bartitsu”. The magazine claimed it’s possible to sever a man’s jugular vein through the collar of his overcoat with an ordinary Malacca cane.’

  ‘I see. And how do we get him into his overcoat if he’s not wearing one?’

  ‘That, my dear Evadne, is one of the mysteries of the art that I suspect will be revealed if I ever find the next edition of the magazine.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I’m glad that my weaponry for our visit to Morton’s is a little more substantial.’

  ‘The shipping agent?’ He tapped himself on the forehead with the head of the cane. ‘Of course. If we don’t know where the journal has gone, we should find out where it came from.’

  ‘Exactly. While we’re waiting for my myrmidons to learn what they can, let’s investigate the origins of this mysterious delivery.’

  ‘Especially since this is a mystery that the Immortals might well be interested in too.’

  She smiled slowly. ‘That, my dear Kingsley, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.’

  SIX

  Leetha remembered being brought to this place in the city, the lair of the sorcerers and the home of their machines.

  All her life, Leetha had spied on the big people who lived on her island. Their ways fascinated her; how they differed from her people’s and how they were alike. The big people who took them from their home, however, were nothing like those who shared the island with her kin.

  They came to the caves at dawn, when Leetha was still asleep. They were bigger than the islanders. They wore strange heavy clothes all over their bodies. Some had hair on their faces, so that Leetha wondered if they were demons, especially when one of them used a metal rod to make a noise like thunder.

  Some of her people ran and escaped. Most were too afraid. Some were too curious and peered from bushes, wondering what these intruders wanted and where they were from. They were captured in nets.

  Leetha and thirty of her kin were put in chains. They were marched through the jungle, which was silent except for the wailing of those left behind in the caves.

  They were taken to the sea and then the nightmare truly began. They were herded onto a boat, then rowed to the biggest thing Leetha had ever seen, all made of iron, spewing smoke as it floated outside the reef.

  Leetha and her kin were locked in the belly of this ship for a month, trapped in the stink and the heat and the misery. When the boat finished its journey, they were locked in boxes. When the boxes were opened, they were in a large place made of metal and the hard stone called concrete. The only light came from a globe far above, just like the one in the hold of the ship, faint and sickly. The man she came to know as Gompers was there, hands behind his back, face like a slab of stone. ‘That’s all of them?’ he asked the guards.

  ‘Thirty-one,’ the chief guard said. He had a tattoo of a fish on his left arm and had done the most of all the sailors to teach Leetha and her kin the language. He liked the sea because it gave him time away from home, but Leetha never found out why that was good.

  ‘And their leader?’

  The chief guard pointed at Leetha.

  Gompers grunted. ‘Bring her with me.’

  The chief guard unlocked Leetha from the others, then made sure her shackles were secure. He took the length of chain attached to the metal collar around her neck and, not unkindly, led her after Gompers.

  The room was big, with many windows full of the glass the big people loved so much. High overhead, the ceiling was painted with pictures. Even seized by terror as she was, her curiosity was not still. Leetha wanted to know who the people were in the pictures and why they were dressed like that.

  Ahead of her, Gompers turned and beckoned impatiently. The guard brought her close. When Gompers pushed her forward to confront the three figures on the platform at the front of the room, Leetha’s insides became a cold hollow full of fear.

  They sat on a three-seated gold throne, propped up by cushions. At first – but for only a moment – she thought they were children. Then she saw their eyes and she understood that these were only the bodies of children. They held the souls of creatures much older and much less innocent. They were monsters, sitting on gold thrones and looking at her as if she were a worm.

  She clutched her hands and began to wail. Gompers took a step and cuffed her behind the ear.

  ‘This is what you wanted?’ one of the horrors asked Gompers. It was a female, dressed in bright silk robes. She looked about six years old and everything about her was wrong.

  ‘It is. From the island of Flores in the Dutch East Indies. I can learn much from these creatures.’

  Another of the horrors spoke. This one was dressed in furs. His hands were bandaged. Red seeped through, but he ignored it. ‘We’ve had other sub-humans for study in the past. Neanderthals.’

  ‘Are they sub-human?’ Gompers asked. ‘That is the question. What makes them so? What makes them different from us?’

  ‘We tried to find out the same from the Neanderthals,’ the female said. ‘A waste.’

  ‘What you can learn from these creatures isn’t important,’ Gompers said. ‘You have found them for me and for my investigations as part of our bargain.’

  The third of the horrors was eating berries from a bowl. He looked up at Gompers’s words. ‘Be careful, Gompers. We are not accustomed to such insolence.’

  Gompers snorted. ‘You need me for your plan. I need you for what you can provide me with – creatures like these and the resources to experiment on them.’

  ‘We have many plans,’ the female snapped. ‘We could abandon yours in an instant.’

  ‘You wish to rule the world,’ Gompers said. ‘Your other plans might achieve this, but only mine promises to achieve it soon. No-one else can blend wireless telegraphy with your magic and your supply of phlogiston to create a mindless army to do your bidding. No-one.’

  The fur-wearer laughed. Leetha wanted to clap her hands over her ears, so awful was the laughter, but the manacles would not let her. ‘Three months it has been, Gompers, since you first came to us. Only three months! We are moving faster than we have for years. I like it! You shall give us an army and soon this country shall be ours!’

  ‘Which will be just a beginning,’ Gompers said. ‘Continue to support my endeavours and the world shall be in your hands.’

  ‘Hah!’ The female thumped the arm of the throne with a tiny fist. ‘It is worth enduring your impertinence for this!’

  The white-robed one,
in a gesture that shocked Leetha in its childishness, put both hands on his cheeks and rested his head in them. ‘When the world was younger, we were rulers. When we demanded sacrifices so we could continue to rule, our subjects rebelled. We fled, but we never forgot. The world today is full of the descendants of those who wronged us. They shall pay the price.’

  Gompers tapped Leetha on the shoulder. ‘Pay attention. These are the Immortals. Jia, Forkbeard and Augustus.’ The female, the fur-wearer and the berry-eater. ‘If you fail to cooperate you will not only lose your life, but your soul will be forfeit to them in ways that will have it screaming for eternity.’

  At that, Jia, Forkbeard and Augustus smiled awful smiles. ‘Our souls are everlasting,’ Augustus said. ‘When we wear out one body, we move to another. Thus, we have learned much about souls and how to manipulate them. We would put yours in a jar and keep it in an oven, just as a beginning.’

  Leetha whimpered, but still her curiosity scurried about wondering who these Immortals were and where they came from. They were magical, of that she had no doubt, but what was the range of their powers? They were mad, too, she was sure of that. Ruling the world? Whatever for?

  ‘They must be close to the wild,’ Augustus said. ‘Look at her. So primitive.’

  ‘Human and wild. We can learn from them,’ Forkbeard said. ‘For another plan, Gompers, nothing to concern you.’

  Jia pointed at Leetha. Leetha quailed. ‘I hope we can learn more than we could learn from the wild boy and the ghost-skinned girl. Ward and Stephens. They nearly destroyed us, Gompers, can you believe that?’

  Leetha was keen to hear more of this. These horrors had enemies?

  Gompers, however, shrugged. ‘As you wanted, the Spawn are looking for those two. We shall have them soon.’

  ‘Good,’ Jia said. ‘The wild boy still might be useful to our plans. In him, civilisation and the wild are united. I am sure it is something in his brain. Augustus here says it is due to his upbringing.’

  ‘Raised by wolves,’ Augustus said. ‘How would that change a person? Not for the better, I should think.’