The Extraordinaires 2

by Michael Pryor

  When she stepped outside, she almost cried. She stood in the grey light and shivered. She looked up to see a sky that disapproved, clouds unlike those of her home, clouds that were not moving at all. The narrow alley was bridged by walkways, high overhead. Ropes and chains hung from them like vines.

  A young voice spoke from behind the crates stacked against the brick wall opposite. ‘Blimey, you’re small.’

  ‘I am small,’ she replied in the language she had learned. ‘But I have gold if you want to earn it.’

  ‘Gold?’ A boy, still young but already approaching her height, straightened from the rubbish he had been picking through. He pushed back a cap, soiled and ragged, and stood with his hands on his hips. ‘I’ll bet you don’t have gold.’ He screwed up his face. ‘You’re funny looking as well as small.’

  Leetha took the gold strip from her pocket and held it in front of his face. His eyes narrowed. He swallowed. ‘If you take this and run,’ she said, ‘you will have something, but you will miss out on much, much more.’

  ‘More?’ He did not take his gaze from the gold. His whole body quivered with greed. ‘What do I have to do for it?’

  ‘I want you to find two people and bring them to me. Here.’

  He chewed on this, frowning. ‘You got anyone in mind?’

  Leetha smiled. ‘A wild boy and his ghostly friend.’

  NINE

  Fog lingered about the river like layabouts looking for a job – not with any real intent, mostly through having nothing better to do. Kingsley could make out the lights of Limehouse without any trouble, and several large steamers were waiting to berth. His gaze lingered on them, and he realised he was trying to read the port of origin on the bow, hoping to find them from exotic realms, far, far away.

  He wrenched his gaze away. I am not stowing away, he told himself. He thrust a hand into a pocket and came out with a pair of coins. He concentrated on palming them, moving them from the tips of his fingers to the back of his hand until the desire to run away to the wilderness faded away.

  During the short walk to the warehouse, Kingsley was afraid Morton would cut and run at any moment. The shipping agent jumped at any noise, be it a bell from the river, a snatch of song from a house nearby, or any one of a hundred sounds of the streets at night.

  This was not a man with an easy conscience, Kingsley decided, and he was also unlikely to be a man without enemies. He acted as if he expected to be set upon at any time, but whether it was from divulging too much information or simply his normal state, Kingsley had no way of telling. All he could do was walk close alongside him, with Evadne just behind prodding him with her sheathed sabre whenever he looked like stopping.

  Morton produced a key and the doors of the warehouse opened noisily. This excited no interest from anyone inside or nearby, so Kingsley assumed such sounds were commonplace. While the warehouse looked shabby, Morton was able to turn on electric lights to illuminate the place, so some effort had been put into making the place modern and efficient. The efforts simply didn’t extend to paint.

  Without hesitation, Morton led them through the towering rows of crates and boxes to the rear of the warehouse. He stopped at a concrete wall running right across the breadth of the building. This wall was newer than the rest of the warehouse, and a heavy steel door was set into it. Three keys were needed to unlock it. ‘This is for my most valuable shipments,’ Morton explained over his shoulder. ‘One hundred per cent secure.’

  The electric lights here illuminated more concrete walls. With the concrete floor and ceiling, this was a box within the warehouse. ‘You see?’ Morton said. He rapped on a wall with his fist. ‘Nothing can get in here.’

  ‘Not unless you let them,’ Kingsley said darkly. ‘Soames’s goods?’

  ‘There’s just the one shipment waiting.’

  ‘Mr Soames won’t be collecting it,’ Evadne said.

  ‘He is indisposed?’

  ‘Very.’

  The crate was a waist-high cube. Morton handed Kingsley a pry bar. ‘I suppose you want to see what’s inside.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Kingsley removed his jacket. He looked for a place to hang it; Evadne stepped up and draped it over her arm. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work. Five minutes later, Evadne and he were peering at a dodecahedron.

  Kingsley recognised it immediately. After their experience with the Immortals and their obsession with Platonic solids, he had made a point to research these regular polyhedrons. The five Platonic solids had been known since ancient times, and were the subject of study, inspection and even worship. Each of the five Platonic solids – the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron and the icosahedron – were convex shapes with faces entirely made up of regular triangles, squares or pentagons. Plato’s followers considered the solids to be mystical objects, full of power and majesty – and magic.

  The dodecahedron was similar to the other Platonic solids that Kingsley had seen in the Hall of the Immortals under Greenwich. It was a yard or so across and looked as if it were made of dull metal. If it were the same as its relations, however, Kingsley knew it was capable of hovering in the air unsupported, and that was only the beginning of its powers.

  Evadne straightened after leaning over and peering inside the crate. ‘I think the Immortals would pay a pretty penny for this.’

  A yelp from behind made them whirl. Morton was staring at them, eyes wide. ‘The Immortals? What is this about the Immortals?’

  Kingsley tapped the pry bar in his other hand. ‘I would have thought that you, as a middleman, would have thought about the possibility that your client, Mr Soames, was a middleman himself.’

  ‘Yes, but the Immortals?’ Morton looked at the door, as if he were wondering exactly how far he could run in a short space of time. ‘I don’t want anything to do with them.’

  ‘I see,’ Evadne said. ‘You only want to do business with the nicer sort of Demimonder, is it?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You understand that will limit your clientele quite substantially?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And so far, I’ve been unable to detect any such scruples in you at all.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘And if you can utter anything more than monosyllables, we can discuss what we’re going to do next.’

  ‘Next?’

  ‘Yes. You’re going to help us.’

  Morton considered this while a dozen different expressions flitted across his face. ‘And why would I do this rather than simply go about my business? Unclaimed goods, you understand, are forfeit to the carrier.’

  ‘You could do that. Of course, it would bring the wrath of the Immortals down upon you. In fact, simply having this object in your possession for so long without passing it on is likely to bring down the wrath of the Immortals very, very soon.’

  ‘They’re very wrathy,’ Kingsley said. ‘Wrathful,’ he corrected when he saw Evadne’s pained expression.

  ‘Or,’ Evadne continued, ‘we could take this object off your hands. If you help us in this matter, I’m sure you won’t go unrewarded.’

  ‘Unrewarded? By you, young lady?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She said it with such aplomb that a retort visibly died on Morton’s lips.

  ‘She’s very, very wealthy,’ Kingsley put in.

  Morton looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon but had found a lump of sugar inside. ‘Exactly how well rewarded?’

  This was where Kingsley saw the value of the bribe over the threat, at least where Morton was concerned. Evadne mentioned a sum that made Kingsley gape and Morton grow enthusiastic to help. Despite the late hour, he rustled up the manpower to shift the re-crated dodecahedron, and found an empty warehouse nearby in which to store it. Kingsley was impressed by the way the surliness of the dockers disappeared thanks to Morton’s liberal distribution of sovereigns.

  Evadne noticed Kingsley’s staring. ‘It’s ever the way,’ she said softly. ‘Tho
se who are bribed feel that bribing is a way of life.’

  ‘It’s pernicious.’

  ‘Of course, and a harmless honorarium sometimes opens the door to malfeasance. But who, among the poor, can resist a bribe? Money is money.’

  ‘I would never take a bribe.’

  ‘You speak as someone who has never been poor,’ Evadne said gently.

  The shifting concluded; the men were paid and vanished. Morton stood in front of the second warehouse and eyed it suspiciously. ‘And now?’

  Evadne handed him a large sheaf of banknotes. He counted them, and tipped his hat.

  ‘A pleasure doing business with you,’ he said, ‘but forgive me if I hope never to see you again.’

  Morton hurried off into the night.

  Kingsley rubbed his hands together. ‘Please excuse my obtuseness, but what exactly is the plan?’

  Evadne walked to the door of the warehouse. She prised up the switches for the electric lights, but the darkness was immediately alleviated by the electric light she always carried, an elegant silvered device the shape of a pen. ‘We have something that the Immortals want. They have something that we want.’

  ‘You’re going to bargain with them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust them for an instant. I was thinking, rather, that we now had a perfect lure.’

  ‘I have it. When the Spawn come for it, we can then track them back to their lair.’ Kingsley straightened. Amid the rope and tar, the lingering scent of Morton’s pipe tobacco and the hint of orange blossom that Evadne was wearing was something else, something new. ‘Unless they find us first,’ he said. Evadne was about to query this, but he held up a hand. ‘Hush. I hear something.’

  Evadne snapped off her electric light. Kingsley took her by the hand and together they slipped into the shadows of the warehouse. They found a position behind crates that, according to the stamped marks, had come from Burma and Ceylon.

  Kingsley took out the Angry Hammer. Evadne already had her Swingeing Blow.

  A figure appeared in the large, open doorway. Against the light cast by a gas streetlamp, it was a silhouette, devoid of features, and Kingsley’s heart thumped in his chest.

  Two more figures joined the first, and another two slipped into the warehouse proper. The last of these turned and caught the light so that Kingsley’s wolfish sight, in that tiny split second, saw a normal human dressed in shabby black clothes, scarf and a woollen cap pulled low on the brow. He relaxed somewhat, but it was almost disappointing to think that he’d wasted such alertness on an ordinary gang of thieves.

  He caught Evadne’s attention, but before he could whisper to her a voice cried out from nearby: ‘They’re here!’

  Kingsley whirled and bounded towards the shadows whence the voice had come. A wiry stranger saw him coming and ducked just enough to avoid the worst of Kingsley’s charge. They grappled, Kingsley striving to clamp a hand over his mouth, but the stranger was fast, wrenching his head to one side and crying out again: ‘Over here!’

  They rolled against a crate and Kingsley managed a short jab to the jaw of his assailant, then he flipped him over on his stomach, pinning him to the wooden floor.

  Evadne came out of the darkness and flicked on her electric light. ‘She’s not Spawn.’

  ‘I know she’s not,’ Kingsley said, then he eased up on the knee he was pressing on the stranger’s back. ‘She?’

  His prisoner twisted like a snake. She was out of his grasp and on her feet in an instant. She snapped a kick at him. He was quick enough to escape the worst of the blow but it still glanced off his cheekbone and made his head ring. He reached for her. ‘Now, look here.’

  She spun away but Evadne interposed a hip, following it with an elbow swing and an artfully angled leg. The stranger tripped and Evadne had her lantern and sabre on her as she landed on her back.

  Four electric beams darted out. Evadne, Kingsley and their prisoner were caught in a web of illumination. Immediately, Evadne tumbled backwards beyond the reach of the lights, and before they could capture her again the air was ripped apart in a whirlwind of electric discharge. The entire front half of the warehouse was swallowed in a bubble of garish purple-white light. Four tall figures in coats and cloth caps – two on either side of the entrance – were caught as it crackled around them, their lanterns feeble amid the electrical harshness. Two held pistols, one a rifle, and all of them had expressions of wide-eyed shock.

  Then the roof fell in.

  Kingsley sat with his back to the lamp post. With eyes reddened from the dust thrown up by the collapse, he eyed the half-ruined warehouse. ‘That was the Swingeing Blow?’ he asked Evadne, who was sitting on the cobblestones nearby. ‘Does it come with a warning: Do Not Use in Confined Spaces?’

  Evadne pursed her lips. ‘It might need some adjustment,’ she conceded.

  All five of the strangers had escaped the collapse, thanks to the roof undertaking a slow and groaning descent rather than a precipitous one. The worst injury looked to be some damaged egos among the men, as the young woman Kingsley had thrown was admonishing them with gusto. For some lapse of thievery tactics, he assumed.

  ‘We should be leaving,’ he suggested to Evadne.

  ‘Not until we make sure the dodecahedron is safe.’

  Kingsley nodded, then was startled to see the young woman approaching them. She stood, hands on hips, then coughed before jabbing a finger at them. ‘You two are in strife,’ she croaked. ‘Assaulting an officer of the Crown like that.’

  ‘Oh my.’ Evadne put a hand to her mouth. ‘Have we just assaulted a police officer?’

  ‘Police? Hardly. I work for the Agency for Demimonde Affairs.’

  ‘The Agency?’ Evadne repeated. ‘What’s the Agency doing here?’

  Kingsley remembered his foster father speaking about the Agency. It was one of a thousand things about the Demimonde he’d wanted to pursue with Evadne, but he’d simply not had the time.

  ‘I’m the one asking questions,’ the officer said sharply. She was younger than Kingsley had thought at first, probably not much older than he was. She wore a long black coat over men’s trousers and Kingsley decided that these plain clothes officers wore very plain clothes indeed. Coppery-red curls hung from under the brim of a battered bowler. She had freckles and an impishness that Kingsley would have found decidedly attractive if she weren’t so angry. She looked around at her four colleagues, who had sidled up and were still looking sheepish. They were well-groomed and fit-looking, young and with the sort of confidence that went with expensive schools and family backgrounds that could be measured in centuries. ‘Now, you’re interfering with an investigation and should be well and truly locked up but we don’t have time for that, so hop it.’

  ‘Wait,’ Evadne said. Her pistol had vanished. ‘How do we know you’re truly from the Agency?’

  The officer had turned her attention away from them and was peering towards the entrance to the warehouse. ‘Eh? Oh.’ She reached inside her coat without looking and thrust a card at Kingsley – again, without looking.

  ‘Christabel Hughes,’ he read in the light of Evadne’s electric illuminator. The photograph looked like the officer in front of them, he decided. More or less. ‘You’re sixteen years old,’ he blurted.

  ‘Seventeen next week,’ she said, and snatched the card from him. ‘And before you ask: yes, it’s a little young for this kind of business but I’m perfectly capable of carrying out my Agency duties.’

  ‘Kingsley didn’t have any trouble dealing with you,’ Evadne pointed out.

  Kingsley couldn’t help noticing how the young officer shot him a glance when Evadne said his name. Then she looked again at Evadne, appraisingly.

  ‘But who’s in charge now?’ she said. ‘It’s not who strikes the first blow who is always the winner. Plan for eventualities and the details take care of themselves.’

  ‘Really?’ Evadne said. ‘That’s what I always say.’

  ‘I see.’ The young officer frowned. �
��I know you. And you.’

  Kingsley couldn’t help himself: he bowed. ‘The Extraordinaires, at your service.’

  ‘Extraordinaires? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘We are the Extraordinaires; juggling and magic together on the stage.’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ The young officer’s eyes widened. She pointed at Evadne. ‘You were the one that smashed the Immortals under Greenwich last year.’

  Evadne tilted her head a little. ‘Perhaps.’

  The young officer eyed Kingsley. ‘And you must be the one that the Immortals are mad keen to find.’

  Kingsley didn’t forget his manners. ‘Kingsley Ward. How do you do?’

  One of the young officer’s colleagues trotted over and murmured in her ear. She grimaced. ‘Well, that’s that, then.’

  ‘What’s what?’ Kingsley asked, intrigued by the way the older men deferred to this young woman.

  ‘You’ve messed things up good and proper tonight. The whole docks area is alert thanks to your indiscreet display with that weapon.’ She pursed her lips. ‘What was it, by the way?’

  ‘Something I’ve been working on,’ Evadne said.

  ‘And something she’ll continue working on,’ Kingsley added.

  The young officer looked torn between curiosity and duty, with duty eventually winning out. She grimaced again. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to hand it over, and any other weapons you have on your person.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Kingsley said.

  ‘Interfering with an Agency operation is a serious offence. You’re under arrest.’

  TEN

  Leetha’s curiosity was buzzing, set alight by the prospect of rescue. Every aspect of their surroundings had become even more interesting. She pondered the large pipes that brought water into the factory and imagined making a flood that would work to their advantage. She paid new attention to the pipes that brought the foul air the guards called gas. The big people were afraid of this and were always careful to keep flames away. Leetha thought such a thing could be useful.

  Her curiosity also led her to discover the moving cage.