The Gold Thief

by Justin Fisher

  The campsite was eerily quiet until …

  … tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

  In the darkness Ned saw its glowering red eyes pulling up from a muddy crater and the Guardian went back to its work.

  For the very first time, Ned saw the infallible Ringmaster at a complete loss. The Guardian was to all intents and purposes completely impervious to damage of any kind and, if anything, Bertha had only helped the machine in its goal of dismantling his circus.

  “Blood and thunder!” snarled Benissimo.

  Ned held up his hand with the ring and focused. He closed his eyes, imagining the circuitry in the machine’s brain, trying to feel it, as he had the security camera at the British Museum.

  He frowned. It was all … foggy. He couldn’t get a grip on anything. He tried to sense the atoms of the Guardian’s inner workings, to take them apart, but they were slippery, he couldn’t find any purchase. Dimly, he had the sense of cables, below the thing’s faceplate, that if he could just …

  … “Argh.” He stopped, clutching his head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I tried,” said Ned. “With the ring. But I can’t … feel it properly.”

  “Lead casing,” said the Tinker. “It’ll be blocking the ring’s power.”

  “Ideas, Tinks, when you’re blasted well ready?’ urged Benissimo.

  “Well, sir, other than removing its faceplate and unplugging its brain I can’t really think of anything. But then I can’t see it offering you a screwdriver.”

  Just then Ned thought of something. Unplugging its brain. The cable he’d sensed, just where the chin met the neck. Maybe the Tinker’s idea wasn’t so stupid after all.

  Then, Ned did the unthinkable and actually asked for his slovenly familiar.

  “Gorrn, I need you.”

  There was no reply.

  “If it so pleases your vast shadowy-ness to do so, of course,” said Ned, though not for the first time through gritted teeth.

  “Arr.”

  “Ned, whatever you’re thinking, you can stop – right now!” snapped Benissimo. “I need you in one piece and so do your parents!”

  “What’s the training for, Bene? What’s the point if you won’t let me use what I’ve learnt? I can do this.”

  Benissimo smiled. It was the kind a father might use when their child did something unexpected and wonderful, and all at the same time.

  “What can we do to help?”

  “Whiskers, old boy?”

  “Squeak?”

  “See that thing over there, the Guardian?”

  The machine was gearing up for an assault on yet another trailer as three of the Tortellini brothers fought back at it with flame-tipped spears.

  Whiskers responded with an immediate oil leak and covered up his eyes.

  “Whiskers! Stay focused, we need you. Gorrn is very kindly going to shadow you – aren’t you, Gorrn?”

  “Arr.”

  “And I’ll be working with everyone else to keep it busy. But we need you to climb up its casing and get behind its faceplate. When you’re there, you’re going to need to disconnect the wires that feed into its brain, OK?”

  There was some violent head-shaking and a furious display of eye-blinking Morse code.

  “Y O U – M U S T – B E – M A D.”

  Followed by:

  “I – D O N’ T – W O R K – F O R – Y O U – A N Y – M O R E.”

  “Whiskers! We don’t have time for lip. If you don’t do it, I’m going to have Tinks here turn you into a corkscrew.”

  The mouse didn’t budge.

  “I’m not kidding, Whiskers.”

  There was a display of agitated squeaking till Ned’s pet mouse finally did as he was told and disappeared into the blackness that was Gorrn.

  “Now go,” said Ned.

  … Tick, Tick, Tick

  t Ned’s instruction the Circus moved as one, surrounding the Guardian with the clamour of pots, pans, trumpets and gongs. In short, anything that might confuse the automaton and let Ned’s familiar and mouse get close.

  Ned approached gingerly. The Guardian flashed its eyes at him and a drum beat to one side. It turned its head, only to have a gong be struck at the other. The machine lashed at the air in mechanical frustration.

  “That’s it, keep it up,” said Ned calmly, before closing his eyes and focusing on his ring. The debris of multiple vans and trucks lay scattered all around them. Ned could have turned them to any number of things, but “Telling” was all that was needed. As one they rose into the air, each one connected to Ned’s mind and ring, like a band of puppets on strings. As indestructible as the Guardian was, it was old and its programming not designed for so many targets, nor, as the Tinker had reassured him, for anything as small as Whiskers.

  The Guardian stopped, its eyes flickering with cold intent.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Ned willed the tyre of a one-time ice-cream van to fly at the monster’s head.

  Clang.

  The Guardian lashed out angrily, letting fly with one of its arms and slicing the tyre to rubber ribbons.

  “More noise!” yelled Benissimo from one side and the troupe responded. A horn blasted to its left and the Guardian turned. No sooner had it located the source than Alice trumpeted behind it; again it turned and was struck by a flying exhaust pipe – this time it connected with its head.

  “ARGDZT!” it roared in rusted fury.

  “It’s working, Ned, it’s actually working,” said Benissimo proudly, as Ned launched another projectile. This time the Guardian let it fly and a gearbox connected with its chest in an angry scrape of metal against metal. But the Guardian was unflustered. It had located its next target.

  It paced towards Ned in purposeful steps, picking up speed as it went. As the Tinker had explained when Ned outlined his plan, tickers had been far more rudimentary machines at the time the Guardian had been built. In those days there were simple directives from which such machines never deviated.

  It had obviously been given clear instructions to destroy the campsite piece by meticulous piece. Machines built for killing know of only one way to deal with their problems, and Ned was in its way.

  The angel-faced Guardian stomped closer, but to Benissimo’s evident horror Ned held his ground.

  “Ned, MOVE!” he pleaded.

  “No! Not until Whiskers gives us the signal!”

  Closer and closer the walking freight train lumbered, till Ned struck at it again. One projectile after another, in a twisting storm of flying debris. But the Guardian barely acknowledged his attacks and Ned was growing tired.

  “Come on, Whiskers, where are you?!”

  He could only watch as an enraged George ran at the beast, a beating gong in his hand.

  “Come on, you devil! Come at me!” he yelled. But the Guardian merely swung out a lazy fist and George was thrown through the air, landing in a heap nearby.

  Slowly, he stood, shaking his head. “I’m all right,” he mumbled.

  Others saw what he’d been trying to do and closed in on every side. This time the Guardian swung and two broken-ribbed leopard skins from the dancing troupe fell to the ground.

  Fire runes were hurled, muskets shot and Benissimo cracked his whip, but the Guardian only quickened its step till it was paces away from Ned.

  “Whiskers,” Ned whispered, piling up a wall of debris in front of him, his mind and ring working as one to slow the creature down.

  But the monstrosity fired its arm forward like a hammer, smashing at the barrier in an explosion of wood and metal, till its hand found its way to Ned’s throat.

  “Squeak!” called Whiskers, and Ned could have sworn he saw the blinking of two tiny eyes at the base of the monster’s neck.

  “NOW!” he gurgled as the machine-monster’s fingers tightened their grip, cutting off his supply of air.

  Drip, Drip, Drip

  ll as one, the Circus of Marvels banged their drums and blew their trumpets, b
ut none more so than dear George.

  Ned followed suit and his eyes closed, one last act of “Telling” – only this time he would not hold back; he did it with “Feeling”, the feeling of a boy that wanted to live.

  What looked like a storm of broken metal spun as one. Every element carefully and masterfully controlled by the nerve endings in Ned’s mind and body. His orchestra of choreographed airborne assassins suddenly flew at the Guardian.

  Strike after strike, metal against metal, till Ned thought he might black out from the concentration, from letting hell break loose whilst keeping it from spilling over to his comrades in arms.

  “Focus on the goal,” he murmured.

  The Guardian’s grip stopped tightening, the attack on its senses finally too much.

  Then, there was an audible clink as somewhere behind its faceplate Whiskers pulled the plug.

  Ned landed on the ground with a flop, gasping for air in an attempt to fill his lungs. There was a final whirring of gears and the Guardian froze, its limbs locked in its final directive: “destroy”.

  In a single bound the ape was by his ward’s side, his fur bristling, chest heaving and heart ready to break.

  “No! Ned Armstrong, you are not going to die on me!” and the well-meaning gorilla pulled Ned towards him in a violent clinch.

  “Ow, no, George, I’m not,” groaned Ned. “At least I won’t if you let me breathe.”

  His friend’s eyes filled with a relieved spray of tears and George yelled out for Lucy.

  “Medic!”

  As the chaos cleared, Benissimo paced towards them and offered Ned his hand.

  “She went to visit the sin-eater at nightfall. She’s in his trailer, I think. That diversion was smart thinking, pup. Your dad would have been proud.”

  Something disturbing appeared in Ned’s head. A thought he’d rather not have had.

  “What did you just say?”

  “Your diversion, boy, it was—”

  “No, about Lucy …”

  Ned was already up on his feet before the Ringmaster could respond.

  “That thing wasn’t trying to hurt any of us, it was just keeping us here – at this end of the encampment. Lucy’s with Jonny and his trailer is … hell, the Guardian, the Guardian was the diversion!”

  Eighteen months of training under his mother’s watchful gaze coursed through Ned as he tore across the campsite, vaulting over debris and troupe members alike, and all the while the memory of finding a home devoid of parents filled his every thought.

  “No, not Lucy, please not Lucy!”

  But when he got to Jonny’s trailer he suddenly stopped. The door to the magician’s caravan hung ominously open. If what the Tinker had told them was true, then only the Central Intelligence would have the power to meddle with a Guardian and, if so, Carrion the thief was most probably nearby.

  There were no sounds coming from within and Ned walked up the steps at the caravan’s rear slowly, his heart pounding in his chest.

  The first thing he saw under the gas lamps was Jonny Magik in his chair, and beside him a sleeping Lucy.

  They looked peaceful, almost serene, lost in some dream a million miles away from the destruction outside. Surely they couldn’t have slept through it all? He was about to shake Jonny’s shoulder when he heard it.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  His foot slipped on something wet.

  Looking down, Ned saw a pool of fresh blood at the foot of the magician’s chair. The pool was growing.

  Next to it was another, not of blood but of the thief’s mercurial liquid.

  ***

  A short while later a successful Carrion Slight delivered a blood-stained leather-bound book – the Book of Aatol, which he had taken from Jonny Magik’s skin.

  The butcher was happy with Carrion’s work. He now had almost everything that he wanted.

  Almost everything, however, to a man like Barbarossa was not the same as “everything”.

  There were two more missions for his greedy thief, and his greedy thief was ready.

  Healing

  he traitor who didn’t know it was a traitor, had been the perfect distraction, right up to its robotic last.

  Carrion’s music box had once again worked its charm, and neither Lucy nor Jonny Magik had been aware of his presence when he’d walked up the trailer’s steps.

  What transpired next was altogether shocking. The thief had been as cunning as he was cowardly. He had made an incision in the sin-eater’s skin and literally cut out the Book of Aatol. No sooner had Lucy come to her senses than she’d called for Abigail’s help and the interior of Jonny Magik’s caravan had been turned into a makeshift infirmary.

  “Oh, bless my soul, to think I was so rude about him,” began an out-of-breath Abigail.

  “Being sorry won’t save him now, Abi. Fetch me hot water and towels and be quick.”

  Lucy covered over the sin-eater’s wound and placed her healing hands on his head.

  “What can I do?” asked Ned.

  “He’s in worse shape than poor Bertram was, but with enough peace and quiet I can help him. I just need to focus. Wait outside, please.” Tears were running down her cheeks.

  Ned sat on the steps of the sin-eater’s caravan. All around him was the stench of burning fuel and the comings and goings of a confused and battered troupe.

  The thief now had the Book of Aatol, and with it Barbarossa’s final building block to the launching of his weapon.

  Ned would have registered the scene in front of him, how Benissimo had barked them into shape, or thought of the poor sin-eater now fighting for his life behind him. But Ned’s head and heart were on other things. If Bertram was right, then the Central Intelligence had built an army of tickers no doubt as strong or stronger than the one they’d just faced, and somewhere amongst them were his mum and dad.

  Ned knew now, as sure as he’d ever known anything, that the only way to free them was to do so himself. If he did not succeed, Barbarossa would raise the Darkening King and no army, no power on Earth would be strong enough to beat him. Ned had no idea how long he sat there, or how tirelessly Lucy worked her gifts, only that by the time she finally emerged the sun was rising and her face was as white as a sheet.

  “How is he?” he asked, preparing himself for the worst.

  “He’s stable. His body, the cells, they’re healing. But it’s like his spirit is damaged somehow and not because of Carrion. The book’s gone but what Jonny read in its pages is still there, the darkness of it, and I can’t fix that, I can’t take it away.”

  At that moment, Benissimo came hurrying over. “Is he stable?” he asked. “Ready to travel?”

  Lucy sighed. “Barely. He needs rest.”

  “There’s no time for rest, Lucy, not for any of us,” said Benissimo. “We need to go, and right now. Barba has the book, and there’s no telling how much time we have left. We’ll take the Gabriella and head for St Albertsburg immediately. With the fuel stores gone and most of the vehicles damaged, the others will have to wait here.”

  An hour later, Ned boarded the Gabriella for the race to St Albertsburg, along with Benissimo, George, Lucy and Jonny, who was given a cabin to recover in.

  They flew swiftly. Thanks to Carrion, travel by mirror was now too dangerous, and every second of their journey was precious.

  Their course took them over Europe, past the cliffs of Penzance and beyond the Isles of Scilly to the Celtic Sea. They flew into the setting sun, and under the stars, and on through a blood-red dawn.

  Ned’s mind was a boiling mess of nerves when he joined Lucy on the freezing deck of the Gabriella for their descent into St Albertsburg. They were flying through deep grey frosted clouds and in the distance the first tremors of thunder played out on a blustery sea.

  Lucy stood at the prow of the airship, her eyes fixed dead ahead. On her shoulder sat Ned’s grey and white mouse. Whatever she’d said about caring less, Ned knew that between Bertram and her fight to save Jonny Magik
, the Medic would need a friend.

  “Hey, you … you do know he’s mine, right?” he started.

  “Hi, Ned, I don’t think Whiskers sees it like that.”

  The mouse turned away from him in a clear “No, I’m blinking well not,” and Lucy remained facing forward, eyes locked on the bleakness ahead. She wasn’t being cold exactly, but there was something in the way that she spoke that sounded noticeably strained.

  “You all right?”

  She took a moment to answer.

  “What are we, Ned?”

  “Err, the last time I looked we were a couple of teenagers. Out of our depth and weird as ever but, you know, us?”

  “I meant to each other. We’re friends, right?”

  “Of course we are, Lucy. What’s got into you?”

  “A good friend would be strong for you now, would tell you that everything’s going to be all right. But I’m scared, Ned, more scared than when we were in the mountain. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life, of what might happen to Jonny, of the Darkening King, of me and my powers, of you and yours. Of everything!”

  She turned to him, revealing a face wet with tears. Ned had never seen her like this. Teething trouble or not, of the two of them, brave, honest Lucy had nearly always remained calm, had looked her fate dead in the eye and tackled it with open arms.

  “I’m a Farseer now, Ned,” she continued. “I can read the future just like Madame Oublier and Kitty before me. But our future … it’s, it’s like it’s not there. Your mum and the convent were all I had and I owe her my life. I’d do anything to get her back – anything. But what if we try this, we try and get you to them, to the weapon, and it doesn’t work? Whiskers’ head ended up backwards! Your head can’t be fixed with a screwdriver and I can’t—”

  “What, Lucy? What?”

  A pause.

  “I can’t risk losing you.”

  Ned had been so busy trying to find a way to reach his mum and dad that he’d barely stopped to think how dangerous their plan actually was.

  Besides the small matter of escape, teleportation was riddled with dangers of its own and Lucy was right. If she or Ned made even the slightest error, there’d be no screwdriver or anything else that could put him back together.