“What is the family motto?”
“Look before you leap,” said Ned wearily.
“And I’m glad you did, son, the guard-spikes would have been sore as hell, and your mum’s fed up with having to mend your clothes.”
“It’s not great for me, either, Dad,” said Ned. “She’s rubbish with a sewing machine.”
“Good session, though,” said Ned’s dad. “You’re improving all the time. You really slowed me down with that smoke.”
“Not enough.”
“No,” said his dad. “But you’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.”
Ned thought of the nights stretching ahead of him, nights of training, of climbing and jumping and falling, when everyone else was watching TV.
“Great,” he mumbled.
Training
raining might have been over but there was still the matter of a small wager. “Dad?” said Ned to the darkness.
“Yes, son?”
“Our bet; last one home has to eat seconds, right?”
“Right – so?”
“You’re still on this side of the wall, aren’t you?”
If his dad had spoken, Ned would have sensed the alarm in his voice. Actually eating Olivia Armstrong’s cooking was a fate that neither of them relished, but “seconds” were out of the question. The guard-spikes at the top of their garden wall turned to mist and were carried harmlessly away by the wind.
Ned’s dad nearly always won their bouts of training. But then his dad set the rules. Even so, there were some things Terrence Armstrong couldn’t control – Ned was younger and faster, and over the wall whilst his dad was still scrambling to find a foothold.
He landed on the other side as quietly as a cat. But even as he righted himself, he sensed that something was wrong, just before the shadow beside him moved. “How?” he mouthed, as a foot connected with his chest and he flew, arms flailing, into the family’s plastic wheelie bins.
“What is the family motto?” asked a grinning Olivia Armstrong.
“How about, ‘Social Services are going to take your son away for his own protection’,” said Ned grumpily.
“I love you too, dear,” replied his mother, before kissing him on the cheek. “And I heard every word about the sewing and the wager.”
Ned and his dad entered their home like two naughty schoolboys. It was their family’s inner sanctum and a picture postcard of pre-Christmas excitement. Presents sat lovingly wrapped under the tree, home-made decorations covered the walls and if there was hanging space, there was mistletoe. His mum even had a constant supply of Christmas carols murmuring from the radio in the kitchen. It was a cosy contrast to the bachelor lives the two Armstrong men had lived before Ned’s mum had been returned to them. Olivia Armstrong had worked tirelessly to make up for lost time and lost Christmases. Twelve years’ worth.
Ned had always wanted a “normal” life, and though they were all trying, there was one rather unavoidable issue. The Armstrongs, despite outward appearances, were not even remotely normal.
And therein lay the problem. Ned had exactly what he’d always wanted right in front of him, but, as wonderful as it was, deep down inside he knew it was a lie. Ned had seen the magic of another world and, once seen, it could never be forgotten. The more they pushed him to blend in with his old world, to go unseen, to go unnoticed – the more he realised that he couldn’t.
“You know he made me fall off a roof?” said Ned, who’d taken his throbbing back to the comfort of their sofa.
“I was going to cushion the fall, son, would have done too if you hadn’t fallen quite so well. The gutter was inspired by the way – got your mum’s training to thank for that.”
“You’ve got to be prepared for anything, dear,” cooed Olivia from the kitchen.
As always in regard to training, his mum and dad were a united front.
“And you need to work on your smoke screens,” warned Terrence as he set the table for dinner. “Very effective, but too much power—”
“—brings attention, I know, I know, but what’s the point in learning how to evade danger if all we do is hide away from it?”
Olivia pretended not to hear and busied herself with preparing their supper, whilst humming to an awful version of “White Christmas” on the radio.
“Don’t you miss it, Dad, the Hidden, the Circus – our friends?”
“Course I do, Ned, but not nearly as much as I missed or worried about your mum. Or you, whilst we’re on the subject, after you crossed the Veil. I will never let us be apart again, Ned, not now, not ever.”
“But Barbarossa’s dead, Dad, all that’s behind us.”
His dad shook his head. “Do you know what they call you behind the Veil? ‘The hero of Annapurna.’ Everyone knows what you did, what you’re capable of, but you’re still just a boy, my boy – and there are plenty of creatures on the other side as bad as he was and with as much to gain by getting their hands on you.” His dad paused. “Nowhere is as safe as you think, Ned, not for people like us.”
“Oh, Dad, really? We used to live in the dullest suburb in England, and now we live next door to it. Nothing happens here.”
“Which is precisely why our powers need to stay a secret. If jossers found out about us, we’d have to move, and quickly. Besides which, ‘nothing’ much was happening before Mo and his cronies came looking for me in Grittlesby. Trouble could just as easily come looking for us here.”
“Then teach me how to fight, really fight, not hide.”
His dad’s face darkened. The truth was that Ned could do any number of the training exercises asked of him, with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. Ned knew it and so did his dad. What he was really asking was for permission to work outside the limitations of the Engineer’s Manual.
“You know I can’t do that, son.”
“I’d be careful, Dad.”
“It’s not about that. What you did at St Clotilde’s, that level of power, it’s simply never been done. Not by a single Engineer before you. We have no idea of the dangers.”
“What if it has, though? The missing pages from the Manual, maybe that’s what they’re about? You could help me, we could work it out together.”
His dad’s expression looked somewhere between anger and concern, before finally settling on kind.
“The pages are gone and there’s no way of knowing what was on them. Ned, any Engineer could have made a smoke screen without choking themselves half to death and you’re better than all of the ones that came before you, better than me. Remember last week, when you got angry? The power grid for half the suburb went out and not for the first time. We’ve gone through three blown microwaves in less than a month and every time you do homework, car alarms start sounding off all over Clucton. I can’t do that, son, none of it.”
“Then help me control it, Dad, please?”
And this was where the conversation always wound up.
“Your powers have changed since Annapurna, since you connected to the Source, that much we know. But there’s something else, something troubling you that you’re not telling us. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what it is.”
For a glimmer of a moment, Ned looked into his father’s kindly eyes and prepared himself to say something. About what happened at night, when he let himself fall asleep.
About the voice.
But this time – like all the others – he found that he couldn’t do it. Because if he talked about it now … it would live outside his dreams and nightmares. It would become … real.
“Tomorrow, Dad, I’ll tell you both. I promise.” And a part of him believed that he actually might.
Suddenly there was a shriek from the kitchen, followed by an unusually panicked Olivia Armstrong, flapping her arms.
“Oh dear Lord, it’s ruined!” she gasped. “And the Johnstons will be here any minute! Will you two stop dribbling on about ‘Amplification’ and set the table. Terry, I need a spatula, and fa
st!”
Sometimes, Ned found it hard to believe this was the same woman who, mere months ago, had fought off countless gor-balin assassins, to protect her “wards” at the battle of St Clotilde’s. Ned’s mum could happily face off against a mountain troll if the mood took her, but the mystery of weighed ingredients and a timed oven were not a warrior’s domain.
As the aroma of burnt “something” hit their noses, the kitchen radio blared.
“The third kidnapping from the capital in less than a week—”
Terrence’s face whitened and his eyes flitted to Olivia for a moment, before he started rifling through a kitchen drawer for implements. But Ned had seen it.
All his dad’s talk of dark forces that might be interested in Ned. All the training he was making him do. There was something he was worried about – something specific – and it had to do with the kidnappings on the news.
“TheeRe yoU arRe.”
ater that night, when the Johnstons had gone and the last of his mum’s burnt offerings had been cleared away, Ned went to bed. It was his least favourite part to any day. Not because he wanted to stay up, but because of what happened when he didn’t.
Sleep.
For weeks now he had been plagued by the same horrifying nightmare. The hot metal walls. The sense of being trapped, and then the walls blowing open and …
Just thinking about it made him shudder.
But it was not the nightmare itself or the part Ned’s ring always played in it that he could not tell his parents about. It was the voice that lay waiting whenever it began. A voice both familiar and ancient – like a call of trumpets over the grinding of rock.
“TheeRe yoU arRe,” said the voice, when Ned finally succumbed to his exhaustion.
Deeply asleep and trapped in his dream, Ned shuddered.
Downstairs, the TV blew its fuse. A light bulb in the kitchen popped. And all down the street, car alarms began to wail.
Holiday
hen Ned woke up, the awful dream and the voice that lurked in its shadow hung over him like a great dark blanket. He was used to the feeling by now and had worked out a series of tricks to get away from its greedy clutches. But today was different: by the time he’d brushed his teeth and made his way downstairs, help was already on offer in the guise of two lovebirds and a Christmassy jingle on the radio. Terry and Olivia Armstrong were dancing very slowly together under a sprig of mistletoe in their kitchen.
“Err, guys, do you have to do that? It’s going to put me off my toast.”
Terry Armstrong continued without flinching. It was his mum who answered.
“Ned, your father and I have waited twelve years to celebrate Christmas together and this is only our second. No amount of teenage grumpiness is going to stop us dancing, cooing, hugging or anything else for the rest of our days.”
And as Ned smiled in blissful defeat, his dad finally spoke without taking his chin from the top of his mum’s shoulder.
“You know what they say, son? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
“Don’t be daft!” wailed Ned.
But his dad’s ring finger crackled wildly and Ned found himself being pushed by its invisible power to the arms of his mum and dad.
Ned’s hair was ruffled, his cheeks pinched and what followed was the most clumsy six-legged waltz the small suburb of Clucton had ever seen, except of course that they couldn’t actually see it. In that moment Ned forgot that he was fourteen years old, and a teenager who from time to time tried to let the rest of the world think he might be cool – because he wasn’t, but mostly because, just like his parents, he’d waited and hoped and dreamed for twelve long years that he could celebrate Christmas with his mum and dad. Now that he actually could, a six-legged waltz in the family kitchen felt like just the right thing to do.
***
Hours later, Carrion Slight sat in his Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce and tended to his bag of tricks, a bag containing two special items. This job had been awkward even for a thief with his unique set of skills. His targets had covered their tracks well and their scent had eluded him for an unusually long time.
“I really don’t get the point of children. They always smell rather off to me, especially the boys. Still, a contract is a contract and my nose never lies, does it, Mange?” said Carrion.
There was no answer.
“It reminds me of that job in Prague, her perfume was so sickly sweet – yet another aroma I wish I could forget. I don’t expect you’ve ever been to Prague, have you?” continued Carrion.
From the outside of the car it looked very much as though he was talking to himself.
“Nothing smells worse than bad perfume – nothing, that is, except for boys. Her necklace, on the other hand: so shiny, and such perfectly cut diamonds.” For a moment Carrion shut his eyes, lost now in the shimmer of “jobs” gone by. “It broke my greedy heart to sell it.” Still no answer. Carrion started to fume. “You’re never actually going to talk, are you, Mange? What I wouldn’t do for some intelligent conversation. Instead I have a bargeist; a demon-hearted, Darkling mutt with only one impulse.”
Carrion unwrapped a full leg of lamb and threw it into the back of his car. The invisible creature behind him snarled loudly, before opening its gullet wide. The car shook just once and the lamb was gone.
“Ungrateful hound.”
Yesterday Carrion had pretended to be a health inspector from the school board; today he’d be a door-to-door salesman. One way or another he always found a way in. His little box took care of the rest and if that didn’t work, he always had Mange.
“Come, we’ve work to do. Do not make yourself known unless they resist. You’re not allowed to kill these ones; though, to be fair, they said nothing about the causing of pain.”
Sliding from the car, Carrion opened its rear door and the invisible creature stepped on to the pavement, with its heavy padded feet. A grinning Carrion approached the house and rang the doorbell. He did so love his job.
Olivia Armstrong opened the door, her expression one of mild irritation at being disturbed by a cold-caller.
“Good morning, madam,” said Carrion. “Is the family at home; I do hope so? I’m selling trinkets, music boxes to be precise, and this one is almost free.”
Blinking Mice
ed sat in a half-broken deck chair in Mr Johnston’s shed. It was the perfect place to hang out and, as George’s dad never did any actual gardening, it was always free of grown-up ears. Term had ended and his two pals, George Johnston and Archie Hinks, were in high spirits. Ever since his time at the circus Ned had developed a problem with calling his friend “George” – it just reminded him too much of the lovable ape he’d left behind – and had forced him to go by “Gummy” on account of his large teeth, though he’d never, obviously, told him the real reason for the nickname. Either way, both his friends loved teasing Ned about his parents and “Gummy Johnston” was busy describing his evening at Ned’s house and the frightening mess that was Olivia’s cooking.
“You should have seen it, Arch! Unrecognisable!” exclaimed Gummy, clutching at his throat. “Oh and the smell, like rotting pigeon in old vinegar.”
“A Waddlesworth special?” asked Archie.
“A Waddlesworth super-special, if you ask me,” grinned back his friend.
“She is bad, isn’t she?” Ned said in agreement.
At this point, the walls of Mr Johnston’s garden shed rattled with their combined laughter.
Yet another layer of lies that had become Ned’s life. No one on this side of the Veil knew about Ned’s powers, let alone what his real name was, not even his two best friends. But that was what he really loved about Gummy and Arch. He could be the “Waddlesworth” Ned with them, the old one he had been before the Hidden had come knocking. There were moments, when the three of them were together, when the laughter flowed freely enough, that he let himself forget about Amplification and training. And sometimes, if he really tried, Ned even forgot about the voice.
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Whiskers, Ned’s pet mouse, remained perfectly still on his favourite seed bag, knowing full well that Gummy and Arch wouldn’t be nearly as chirpy if they’d seen what Ned’s mum could really do with a carving knife, or sword for that matter.
“All right, Whiskers?” asked Gummy.
But Ned’s mouse remained completely motionless, because unbeknown to Gummy, Whiskers was not really a mouse. At least not a real one.
“Ned?” asked George.
“Yep?”
“You do know Whiskers is a bit weird, right?”
“Yes. Actually, he’s about as weird a mouse as it gets, but he’s my weird mouse and I wouldn’t have him any other way,” replied Ned rather proudly, at which point Whiskers deigned to give him an acknowledging twitch of the nose.
“Talking of weird, did George tell you about the bloke who turned up at our school?” asked Arch.
“No.”
“Well,” started Arch. “So this is even weirder than your mouse and your mum’s cooking. This inspector from the school board comes into class, says he’s there to do a spot inspection, looking for nits. And he has this nose, all long and pointy.”
“Nits?”
“Nits,” agreed Gummy, with a knowing nod.
“Yeah,” said Arch. “Nits on the last day of school, and he said he only needed two candidates, me and Gummy.”
Ned’s ears pricked up, closely followed by the ears of his pet rodent. There were several things that his two pals had in common. They were Ned’s only close friends outside the Circus of Marvels, and they had both lived on the same street as Ned, until the Waddlesworths (or Armstrongs – depending on which side of the Veil you lived) had decided to move to the neighbouring suburb.
“Only you two, out of the whole class?”
“Yup. He kept asking questions about how long we’d lived on our street; he had a really oily voice, sort of creepy. He said there was a very rare type of nit he was trying to track down and that he thought it had come from Oak Tree Lane.”
The Gold Thief Page 2
