“Wh-what are you?” he stammered.
“I’m old, Mr Fox, and I’m angry!”
A kick of his boot, and Mr Fox lay unconscious. Beside them, the encampment erupted with violence. As Benissimo watched, suits grey and pinstriped, along with his beloved troupe, turned on one another with wild abandon.
Back in George’s trailer, Ned had been up and moving at the first blow of the pinstripe’s whistle.
“Gorrn?”
“Arr?”
“Stay close, please.”
“Arr.”
And Ned ran, his liquid shadow pouring over the ground beside him. Past Abigail and Rocky, who were back to back, a dozen differently suited men on either side of them. Past Alice as she wailed, feathered wings beating against the pinstripes’ chains; past the Guffstavson brothers who had lashed out at a row of taser-wielding grey-suits with a raging current of their own.
Everywhere Ned looked, men, women and creatures were fighting and falling. In one corner of the encampment, Finn had thrown aside his trenchcoat and taken to the skies, his great black and brown wings swooping down on a group of opposing suits that had now turned on each other. Ned could see why: Left and Right, Finn’s two great lions, had been cornered by a bank of taser-tipped batons, their ears pinned back and their paws swiping desperately at the grey-suits’ blue-tipped currents.
Ned found Benissimo sprawled on the ground. Standing beside him were two large grey-suits, holding the batons they had subdued him with.
“Unt,” warned his shadow.
The men came at Ned slowly, batons sweeping in arcs of electric blue.
“Ned Waddlesworth, you need to come with us – it’s for your own good.”
Ned stood his ground.
“The name’s Armstrong,” he said, “and those sticks don’t look like they’re for my good. I’m going to give you three seconds. If you don’t drop your weapons, I’m going to set my shadow on you. He’s lazy and obstinate, but he’s mine and I sort of like him. You won’t, though, not even sort of.”
Ned could see from the concentration on the two men’s faces, that their training had not prepared them for the problem in hand.
“Erm, look, we don’t want to hurt you, lad, but you’re in danger, see?”
“One.”
The larger of the two turned to the other.
“Mr Cat?”
“Two,” said Ned.
“He’s just a kid, Mr Dog. Go easy on him.”
“Three.”
Gorrn pulled himself up from the ground as a great oozing wall. The two men’s brows furrowed – they definitely needed more training. As they lunged forward with their batons, they found that where the air was darkest, it also had teeth.
“Argh!”
Ned did not need to look behind him to see the terror on their faces as they ran away.
“Bene!” he yelled, jumping to the Ringmaster’s side.
But nobody was home. Benissimo’s eyes were closed. Ned felt his chest – he was breathing, at least, but unconscious.
“No, no, no!”
In the darkening mire of night and lamplight everyone fought everyone else, with no clear winner in sight.
Then, behind Ned, footsteps.
Followed by a voice.
“What’s the matter, Ned? Run out of friends?”
And Ned suddenly realised what had really brought down the Ringmaster. A small wind-up box with a pearl lid and tiny golden feet.
“Carrion?”
“In the flesh. And you, young whelp, well, I’d recognise your smell anywhere.” Carrion’s nose twitched to reinforce the point. “Do you know, of all the plans I’ve ever come up with, this has to be the finest, and here we are: ‘the final curtain’. Quite the performance, isn’t it?” He paused. “I do hope it’s not too upsetting, I hear you have quite the temper.”
Carrion
he thief walked up to Ned, like a passer-by on an evening stroll. He was in his element, surrounded by violence, all of his own making, yet somehow entirely removed from it. He ambled calmly around Ned, close enough to touch, whilst Ned remained rooted to the spot. Revulsion, ugly and bright, had somehow taken a hold of his limbs, and Ned found himself unable to move.
“I think this is the part where your friends lay down their lives gallantly so that you might make your escape and return to save the day,” said Carrion. “Only you’re not going to save the day, are you, Ned? You’re going to run away and hide, because that’s what the Waddlesworths – or rather, Armstrongs – do, isn’t it? Hide away from the Hidden.”
Ned could feel every nerve ending in his body crying out for vengeance. This was the man who’d taken everything he cared about and plunged it into chaos. Both at home, and now here at the doorstep of his troupe and friends.
“You don’t scare me, Carrion. I knew you’d come back.”
Carrion stopped directly in front of him.
“Aren’t you going to put up a bit of a fight? I’d like to see a little of that famous temper.” His hand slipped into his pocket and he pulled out the instrument of Ned’s woes, the very same instrument that had bested his mum and dad. The music box.
But Ned wasn’t about to give up. He closed his eyes. He pushed his mind into the box’s inner workings. His powers might well be growing beyond him, but they still had their benefits.
He listened to the metal, heard the shape of its cogs and gears, Felt in his mind’s eye how they all came together. It was always so much harder when it was something made by man. Especially a machine like this one, one that had magic laced in its metal. But Ned knew what to do – “focus on the goal”. His eyes flicked open and his Amplification Engine thrummed. There was a crackle of light around Carrion’s hand and –
T-chink.
One of the music box’s gears had lost its teeth.
Ned smiled. “I’ve broken your toy, Carrion. You’re going to have to think of something else.”
The snatcher tilted his head to one side, then rocked it back in laughter.
“Touché! Bravo, Ned, bravo.” He smiled at his contraption and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Gorrn?” seethed Ned.
His familiar began to form, pulling itself together at the foot of its master.
“Oh, pets now, is it?” said Carrion coolly. “You’ve already met mine, haven’t you? Mange?”
There was a slow padding of heavy feet somewhere behind Ned’s back. The beast he’d run from at home had returned; only this time there’d be no running. Ned would stand his ground until he knew where Barbarossa was keeping his mum and dad.
“Gorrn, keep it busy, would you?”
Behind him he heard Gorrn lunge, and the bargeist snarl.
Still Carrion smiled.
“You’re not going to win, Carrion,” Ned said.
“I rather think I have, ducky. Unless you figure out where we’re keeping Daddy, and that would take courage. You’d need to be a hero for that, and you aren’t a hero, are you, Ned, not really?”
His words were meant to sting and they did. A furious anger came over Ned and his ring finger began to burn.
“ShowW HiiMm,” urged the voice.
The air around them was sucked together noisily in an implosion of Seeing. A wall of daggers and blades formed between Ned and Carrion, pulling themselves into shape with the crackle and splinter of fusing atoms. The power needed to turn air to metal was beyond any of the Engineers Ned had read about, but they hadn’t had his rage. At least not the ones who had avoided “turning”.
“YeSs.”
The blades lengthened violently, thirsty for Ned to let them fly, and he wanted to, wanted to see the smile cut from Carrion’s face. His hand trembled, his body swayed.
“No!” he gasped.
And his weapons held, pointing at Carrion but unmoving and still. It was in that moment of quiet that something dawned on Ned, something brilliant and bright. Focus on the goal.
If all he needed was to get to his father, his
means were right before him.
“You came to capture me, right?”
Something in Carrion’s bearing changed and he didn’t answer.
Behind Ned there was an angry snarl that turned ever so slowly to a low yelp. Mange had stopped his attack and Gorrn had gained the upper hand. Ned blinked and his wall of floating weaponry dropped to the ground.
“Fine, you’ve won.” Ned held out his arms. “Here, you can tie my hands up, whatever, I’ll come quietly.”
Carrion’s nostrils flared. The smile slid from his face and he licked at his lips nervously.
“Oh no, I think not …” he said. “Not like this …”
There was shouting: not far from where they both stood, more pinstripes clashed with the bewildered men in grey.
“Oh, darn it, we’re out of time,” said the thief, regaining just a sliver of his oily smugness.
“No, we’re not, they’re fighting amongst themselves; they don’t even know we’re—”
Carrion’s arm moved in a blur, throwing a handful of powder into Ned’s face. Ned’s mouth, nose and ears burned. He wanted to gag, to claw his skin, but more than anything to tear at his eyes. The thief’s cowardly image faded away in a wash of itching pain. Ned stood choking, suddenly helpless and suddenly blind.
“Wha-what have you done to me?” he gasped.
“The effects will wear off shortly. It’s been a blast, Ned, but I really must be going.”
“Wait! Where is he – tell me where he is?”
“Squeak,” came the call of Ned’s wayward mouse, and with it the firm knowledge that Carrion had gone.
He’d been so stupid. Any number of contraptions he’d learnt to make could have held Carrion. Why bluff, why give him the opportunity? But, most nagging of all, why hadn’t Carrion wanted to take him? He kicked at the air angrily. All that power at his fingertips and he’d offered him his hands. His dad would never have made the same mistake, he’d have measured the situation carefully, weighed up the best course of action. But Ned wasn’t his father, and now his chance had gone.
“Whiskers? Did Lucy send you – is she OK?”
There was a short squeak that could in truth have been either a yes or a no.
As Ned’s eyes cleared, he saw Benissimo join him, the effects of both the music box and itching powder beginning to wane.
“Pup?”
“Yes, Bene, I’m here.”
“Was that him, the thief?”
“Yup, that was him.”
“Oily little thing, isn’t he? Now, do me a favour – take your shadow and your mouse, grab Lucy, and get out of here.”
“Leave?”
“I would leave you, pup, in a heartbeat. What you ‘want’ and what you ‘must’, are not always the same. You’re the only one that can stop this madness. Use Lucy’s vision, find the machine and break it!”
“But what about the plan? What about the diversion?”
“If I can get out of this mess, I’ll come to you, Ned, but with or without me you have to try. If the pinstripes, or whoever these grey lunatics are, actually capture you, Barba wins.” At which, he put his hands to his mouth and called for his Irish tracker. “Finn – Plan B, PLAN B! DO IT!”
A moment later there was a terrified scream from a suit in grey. In a last-ditch attempt to buy Ned some time, Benissimo’s Plan B had Finn unlocking the Darklings’ cages.
Ned watched in utter dismay as a wall of biting, tearing, hoofed and clawed darkness flooded the encampment.
“But …” he said.
“MOVE!”
And with that Benissimo charged headlong into a wall of clashing bodies.
They fell to the ground like bowling-pins and the Ringmaster got to work. The fight he’d been hoping to find in his troupe was there all right; it was wearing a crooked top hat and a red military jacket.
“Gorrn, I’m going to need your shadow,” said Ned. “We need to get to Lucy.”
“Arr.”
George the Mighty
sing one of the BBB’s vans to get away had been inspired.
That was the thing about a double raid in the middle of the night. The ensuing chaos had made it surprisingly easy to get to George’s trailer and find his friends, then to creep away, even with a wounded gorilla in tow, and Jonny still very much weakened.
Behind them, the battle continued to rage and the fleeing party now found itself with no place to go and only a dark and empty road on which to get there.
But it was not to remain either dark or empty for long.
Ned pressed his face to the cold clear glass of the passenger-side window, willing the van to move faster. In a last rally of his strength Jonny Magik had come to and now worked the car like a train driver sailing a boat. He knew about cars and in his many years he’d been in several. Actually driving one, however, seemed entirely alien to him.
“Jonny, are you sure you can do this?!” squealed Lucy from the back seat.
The van swerved, narrowly missing a signpost for Little Diddlington. “Can you drive, child?” the sin-eater wheezed at her.
“Of course I can’t, I grew up in a convent and I’m fourteen!”
“Then we’re on an even footing, coz I got no idea.”
This was bad. What was very much worse was the condition of the driver. Sweat was pouring down his face, the inks on his skin now seemingly everywhere.
“Jonny, what’s wrong?” said Ned.
“You know what’s wrong, Ned. He’s hurt himself, trying to save us,” said Lucy.
The magician grimaced. “The voice in the pages, the voice in your heads, I’ve been trying to keep it at bay, day and night. But it’s so strong, so … limitless.”
Ned looked over at him. On his skin, terrible black shapes writhed, as if Carrion’s excision had somehow let them loose.
“Are you … going to be OK?” asked Ned.
“No,” said Jonny. “No, I don’t think I am, Ned.”
At which point their unmarked grey van hit a lump in the road and took to the air.
CRUNCH!
“Slow down!” shouted Lucy.
From the back came the rumbling of a barely recovered George.
“IGNORE HER, CONJUROR, WE’VE GOT COMPANY! STEP ON IT!”
Ned looked out of the window and to his utter horror saw two sets of headlights less than half a mile behind them. The men in grey, it seemed, wanted their van back and were travelling in force to get it.
Jonny Magik hammered on the accelerator and, as they sped round the next bend, Ned saw that the vehicles in pursuit were in fact being chased themselves. Above them a set of leathery wings beat through the air.
“Oh my …”
“Screee!”
It was a wyvern – one of the Darklings released by Bene in his desperate Plan B. And while the Ringmaster couldn’t possibly have predicted this, it was helping. For now, anyway.
The wyvern plunged downwards, apparently enraged by the vans, its fire-spitting phlegm engulfing the lead pursuit vehicle in flames – it spun into the undergrowth, crashing into a tree. But the other van ploughed on. The wyvern chased it, attacking over and over, but the driver would not be swayed, and every time the wyvern’s fire flew, he swerved out of the way.
Gorrn gave a fearful “Unt” from somewhere at Ned’s feet and the Debussy Mark Twelve that was Whiskers hopped from Lucy’s lap on to Ned’s. Ned had lost the help of the Hidden and its Twelve, and he had no idea who the men in grey chasing them were, but even with the troupe and its airships behind him, at least Ned still had his mouse.
“Hello, boy, we friends again?”
Whiskers’s eyes beamed him an “A L M O S T”.
And just as he blinked it, their van slowed to a crawl, before stopping completely by the edge of a large wood. Whatever Jonny Magik had left in him was now almost spent.
“Jonny?! Jonny, are you OK?” shrilled Lucy.
“Must be somethin’ I ate,” he managed before his eyes drooped shut.
&nbs
p; There was a small click in the rear of their van and the mountain that was George stepped gingerly on to the tarmac.
“I would say we have about two minutes before that vehicle, or the wyvern, or both, are on us. Time for you to move on, old bean.”
Ned opened his door and went to his friend.
“George? What are you saying?”
The great ape filled the road with his bulk. Even as his eyes furrowed at the approaching van and creature, he managed to find Ned a smile.
“I’m saying that the conjuror is almost out of ink, but wounded or not, I can still pack a wallop. You’re what matters now. If you and Lucy are aiming to do what I think you are, well, you had best get to it.”
In the distance, but closing, the wyvern unleashed yet another ball of flames. Even uninjured, George would have struggled without the rest of the troupe – but like this? Benissimo, the entire circus, and now Ned’s beloved ape – why were they all so good to him? So willing to lay down their lives?
“I won’t let you do this, George!”
The towering gorilla bent down so that their two heads were eye to eye.
“Ned, why do you want to save your mum and dad?”
“They’re my family and I’d do anything for them, George, anything!”
“And what do you think I’m doing now?”
Ned held back a tear, wrapping his arms round the gorilla’s thumbless arm.
“Anything,” he whispered.
“If I don’t see him again,” said George, “tell the conjuror I’m sorry. Turns out he’s rather a good egg after all.”
The last of the Circus of Marvels’ great headliners, George the Mighty, took centre stage on the frosted tarmac.
Ned watched as the ape’s gentlemanly demeanour slid away like a silken shroud, beneath it only the simmering animal rage of an alpha protecting its pack. Shaking away his pain, he beat his great fists on the ground, he flexed his healing muscles, and paced back and forth like a bull making ready to charge.
The Gold Thief Page 24
