He hadn’t touched a thing—no stone, no metal, not one thing. Even if he had, weren’t sparks supposed to show him real events? Gwen had never said anything about artwork coming to life. “Yeah,” he said, hardly able to get the word out for the dryness in his throat. He swallowed hard. “I’m coming.”
Jack followed Gwen around to the east side of the pedestal, where she directed him to a doorway that led to the interior of the Monument. He balked. “I thought you said this wasn’t our destination.”
“Patience, Jack,” she replied, and pushed him through.
A spiral staircase wound its way up within the shell of the column, all the way to the top. Jack imagined Hooke’s pendulum hanging down through the middle. Then he heard a light cough. A young woman stood in the doorway of a small office to the right of the entrance, next to a sign that said ADMISSION: £5. She raised her eyebrows, waiting expectantly. Jack bent close to Gwen’s ear. “I don’t have any money.”
The clerk slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew the platinum card, holding it up for the girl to see. Immediately she stepped aside, staring straight ahead as if she no longer saw them. Gwen nudged Jack into the office.
“We’re not going up the stairs?” Jack watched the office girl as he passed. She continued to pretend he wasn’t there, like she had suddenly become one of those perfectly rigid soldiers that guard Buckingham Palace.
“Not up,” said Gwen, lifting a loose rug with her toe to reveal a trapdoor. “Down.”
Chapter 24
GWEN SWITCHED ON her penlight as the two descended a short staircase into a perfectly round chamber, as wide as the great column above. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you that Wren and Hooke built this place as a laboratory,” she said, shining the light along the walls. Shelves carved into the stone still held the dusty remnants of experiments from another age—a set of bronze weights, a wooden microscope, a few decaying creatures encased in yellowed jars.
The clerk walked across the room, directing her beam at a floor carved with equations and celestial patterns. She patted a brass telescope fixed to the ceiling at the center of the chamber. “They put a lens in the fireball at the very top, turning the whole column into one big telescope. Even the stairs have an ulterior purpose. Each step is exactly six inches tall, making the staircase a huge ruler. Hooke used it to measure atmospheric pressure at specific altitudes.” Upon reaching the opposite wall, she pushed open a low iron door that creaked noisily on its hinges. “No time for the grand tour, though. I told you this wasn’t our destination.”
An endless line of weak fluorescents illuminated the tunnel beyond the door, providing just enough cold blue light to see by. “This tunnel is one of several that date back to the late 1600s,” said Gwen, setting off at her usual pace. “The Royal Society—Wren and Hooke’s people—used them to travel between various observation points throughout London. Some of their experiments required speed, and they couldn’t be bothered to fight their way through the riffraff at the center of the city. Now the tunnels serve as utility lines. This one will take us straight to All Hallows Barking.”
Jack waited for further explanation. “Which is . . .”
“The church where Pepys stood to watch the fire, of course.” Gwen nodded skyward, up into the fluorescents. “Up in the bell tower.”
The two fell silent, leaving Jack to listen to the textured hum of the lights and the white echo of their footfalls. “Gwen,” he said once he had built up the courage, “do trackers ever . . .” He faltered, searching for a better way to ask. He couldn’t find one. Finally, he let out a short breath and asked, “Do they ever go crazy? From sparking, or maybe from seeing too much?”
She laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He laughed as well, trying to play it off. “Right. Dumb question.”
After another long silence, the clerk bobbled her head. “I mean, sure, a few trackers have been a little eccentric—what you might call socially awkward. And, yes, one or two have gone absolutely bonkers.” She made quotation marks with her fingers as she said the words. “But no more than you’d expect.”
Jack slowly turned his head to glare down at her. But he forgot his frustration when he picked up a light buzzing sound mixing in with the hum of the lights. His eyes narrowed. “We’re being followed . . . again.”
He reversed course, swatting the air with the flat of his hand and missing the Clockmaker’s beetle by nanometers. It retaliated with a dive, but this time Jack held his ground. He had grown tired of these pests. He swatted again, and connected.
The impact of the metal stung Jack’s hand, but the bug tumbled back a good six feet through the air. It hovered there, near the fluorescents, crackling with electricity. Jack took a step forward.
“Stop!” The voice of the Clockmaker emanated from the metal bug, stopping Jack in his tracks. “Oh, Lucky Jack,” taunted the Frenchman. “You are wasting time again. My little friends are happy to play, but I must warn you, their gears produce enough voltage to bring down a grown man.” The voice turned threatening. “As the girl’s uncle knows all too well.”
“Call off your beetle,” warned Jack. “I’ll find your Ember, but not with your bugs hovering over me the whole way.”
The Clockmaker laughed. “I am afraid you have no choice. I must be sure of your progress. The presence of my little friends is—how would you Americans say it? Bien sûr. A necessary evil.”
“No it isn’t.” Gwen spoke quietly, talking to the floor. Her eyes slowly rose to the beetle and her hands absently tugged at her scarf, loosening the coils around her shoulders. “It isn’t necessary at all, is it? Not unless you actually have nothing to trade.”
The beetle banked and slid to her side of the tunnel, crackling ominously. “Quiet, girl. No one was talking to you.”
Gwen shifted her gaze to Jack, still unraveling her scarf. “He’s only following us so he can swoop in and snatch away the Ember at the end of the hunt. And he wouldn’t need to do that if he really had your father, would he?” She put a hand on Jack’s arm. “I’m sorry, Jack, but that’s the way I see it.”
Jack kept his eyes on the clockwork bug, holding back his tears. He didn’t want to believe what Gwen was telling him. He couldn’t. Barely an hour before, Jack had gotten his dad back, at least the idea of him. He wasn’t letting go again without a fight. “Please,” he begged the Clockmaker. “Show me proof he’s alive and I’ll let your bugs tag along.”
“You do not make demands,” growled the Clockmaker. “My beetles will watch you whether you like it or not.”
Gwen had the scarf completely off, wringing it in her hands. “I don’t think so.” Without warning, she lashed out, snapping the scarf like a whip. The beetle took the full impact and smacked into the light above, falling to the ground amid a shower of sparks. Blue and purple arcs danced around its body until it exploded in a ball of flame.
“Well, that was easier than expected,” breathed the clerk, lowering her winter-wear weapon.
Jack couldn’t believe it. “How did you . . . ?”
“Tibetan yak’s wool.” She gave the scarf two quick stretches and threw it around her neck. “Strong as they come. A gift from Uncle Percy. He—”
“You should not have done that.” The Clockmaker’s voice returned—in stereo. Two more beetles emerged from behind the rusty pipes on either side of the tunnel and hopped into the air, converging on Gwen. “I cannot promise you will survive this, ma petite fille. My little friends, they get so . . . excited. And, to be quite honest, I only need the tracker.”
A blue bolt of electricity shot out from each clockwork beetle, converging with a snap right in front of Gwen’s nose. She let out a cry and staggered back.
“No!” Jack rushed at the bugs, but another bolt shot out from the nearest one, catching him full in the chest. He fell, convulsing, fingers curling into rigid claws he could not control.
By the time Jack’s vision cleared, Gwen was in a fight for her life,
scarf alternately curling above her head and lashing out, beetles swarming around her. She would not last much longer. Then Jack noticed a big, red monkey wrench lying on the floor, partially concealed by the pipes that ran along the base of the wall.
The first beetle never saw him coming. He smashed it out of the air so hard it flew twenty feet down the tunnel, exploding where it landed. The second bug was not so easy. It backed away, dodging both wrench and scarf, darting in to shoot a bolt at Jack whenever it got the chance. Jack took a swing and it zapped the wrench. He yelped, dropping the weapon to the floor.
“Focus, Jack!” Gwen shouted through labored breaths. “Remember who you are. Use your senses.”
Use your senses, thought Jack. Easier said than done. The beetle pressed its advantage, moving in to strike again, and Jack jerked his head back, barely avoiding a blue flash. Everything slowed. Gwen’s scarf rippled. A foot-long wave traveled down the fabric toward an inevitable snap. The beetle’s antennae twitched. Its wings shifted, iridescent streaks aligning to a new plane. Jack heard the bronze, tonal beat of its micro-thin wings changing pitch and frequency. It’s going up, he thought. An instant later, the bug did exactly that. It’s going left. An instant later, the bug did that, too. Jack knew exactly where the beetle was going before it ever moved.
He dove for the wrench, rolled as he picked it up, and came up swinging, knowing from the sound alone that the beetle had followed him. The wrench clipped the bug and smashed into one of the rusty pipes. Vapor gushed from the hole, filling the tunnel with the yellow-green smell of rotten eggs.
“Jack, no!” cried Gwen, but he had already committed to the next attack. Limping on a wing and a half, the beetle stood no chance. Jack hit it square, knocking the blue-green bug straight across the tunnel, where it hit another pipe with a heavy pong and crashed to the floor, six silver legs curling tight to its abdomen.
The first purple flash arced around the beetle’s body.
Gwen pulled at Jack’s arm.
“Run, Jack! Run!”
Chapter 25
JACK HAD NEVER heard the birth of fire before, not so much of it, so fast like this. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He knew the moment the cloud of gas found the sparking beetle, the exact moment of ignition, even though it happened behind him. In his mind he saw a tiny white flash, then the emergence of an impossible, blue-gold blossom. A rippling formation of crystals flashed out from the center in a million curving points—every one of them reaching out to kill him.
Gwen reached the exit a few steps ahead, shouldering the iron door so hard it flew open and bounced off the wall. She pivoted left, out of sight for a fraction of a second before Jack’s momentum carried him through after her, out onto the narrow brickwork bank of an underground canal. He thought he would fly headlong into the rushing water, but Gwen yanked him sideways, pressing him back against the wall.
The fire hit an instant later, at the moment the swinging door hit home. The blast blew it clean off its hinges with a brain-shattering boom. Flames shot out across the water to scorch the bricks on the other side. Then it was over, leaving a cloud of black smoke, the quiet gurgle of the iron door as it sank below the water’s surface, and the lingering pain in Jack’s head. “What is this place,” he mumbled, blinking to make his eyes focus again.
“Sewer,” said Gwen, as if any girl would be so content to make such a proclamation.
Sewer? Jack reached for his nose. A sewer could very well be a tracker’s kryptonite, but he smelled nothing worse than the burned bricks and the gray musty scent he associated with caves. “Really?” he said, lowering his hand again. “It doesn’t smell like a sewer.”
“It’s pre-Victorian. These days, lines like this one keep the city from flooding, rather than carry waste. London has a massive underground river system, both natural and manmade. In fact, the Ministry Express used to take advantage of it.” Gwen pushed off the wall and touched her head. “Oh dear. I’ve lost my earmuffs, haven’t I?” She leaned to the side, looking past Jack and taking in the blackened remains of the tunnel entrance. “I must say, that was exhilarating.”
“Exhilarating?” Jack marveled at her capacity for understatement. “We almost died, Gwen. We need help.”
She threw her scarf over her shoulders, curling it around her neck as she walked upstream, leaving him behind again. “Help is near, Jack,” she called over her shoulder. “Off we go. There’s a ladder up here that takes us right into Barking Tower. I’m certain we’ll find the clues we need to—”
“That’s not what I meant by ‘help,’ and you know it.”
Gwen cringed at the sharpness of his voice. She slowly turned around. “Um . . . of course it was.”
“Don’t do that.” He walked toward her, pointing. “You always do that. You always pretend you don’t understand, answer the wrong question. I’m sick of it.”
“Jack, you—”
He cut her off. She couldn’t talk her way out of this one. “Since I met you, I’ve chased a mini-drone, used secret doors and hidden passages, and ridden a high-tech maglev train that predates the automobile. You have this all-mighty ministry, with trackers and quartermasters, wardens and”—he thrust both hands at Gwen—“clerks. Why, Gwen? Why aren’t we going to tracker headquarters? Why aren’t we going to this Keep of yours for help? We’re just kids.”
“We don’t have to be just kids, you know.” She tugged at the ends of her scarf, avoiding his eyes. “We can do this on our own, find the Ember and finish what your father and my uncle started. You’re learning so fast, and I know everything a quartermaster—”
Jack lost it. “But you’re not a quartermaster!” The outburst made Gwen shudder, but she still wouldn’t look at him. He sighed. “I don’t want to finish any hunt or mission. I don’t need to prove that I’m more than a kid. I am a kid. I want to be a kid. And I want my dad back, whether you believe he’s still out there or not. From what I’ve seen, the Ministry of Trackers can help me find him. Why haven’t we gone to them? Why, Gwen?”
“Jack, if you’d only—”
“Why!”
She cringed, dropping the ends of the scarf and balling up her fists. “We can’t, all right?” She finally looked up at him, blue eyes on the edge of tears. “You . . . can’t . . . actually. That’s the rule. That’s Section Thirteen.”
Jack threw his hands up in exasperation. “All right. I get it.
The ministry is a big secret. I’m not read-in or whatever. I caused a Section Thirteen as soon as I entered the Chamber. But I think we’re kind of past that now, don’t you? So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Gwen let out a quick, nervous laugh. “You don’t know anything, really. You don’t even know your real name.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Gwen. My name is John Buckles the Third. I knew that long before I met you. I just don’t like it, that’s all. It sounds nerdy.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? You’re not John Buckles the Third, or the fourth or even the fifth.” Gwen gave him the saddest freckle bounce he had yet seen. “You’re the thirteenth, Jack—the thirteenth Buckles. You didn’t cause the Section Thirteen. You are the Section Thirteen.”
Chapter 26
“THE BUCKLES FAMILY has been with the Ministry of Trackers far longer than two generations.” Gwen sat on the edge of the bank, boots dangling over the water. “They were there when the ministry was founded, Jack—twelve generations ago.”
He paced the bricks behind her, arms folded. “Okay. I get it. I’m John Buckles the Thirteenth. My whole life is a lie. So, things are worse now than they were before and you still haven’t explained why we can’t go to tracker headquarters for help.”
“Perhaps you’d like to dial down the hostility and let me finish.” The clerk gave him a stern look that reminded him unnervingly of Mrs. Hudson.
Jack stopped pacing and let his arms fall to his sides. “Sorry.”
“That’s better.” Gwen looked out over the water, lightly swinging her feet. “As I was about to say, the Ministry of Trackers learned early on that there are forces in this world we do not fully understand. People might call these forces magic or luck”—she glanced up at him—“or bad luck . . . but only because they have no other explanation.”
“Bad luck,” said Jack, taking a seat beside her. “Like the number thirteen. You’re telling me we can’t go to the ministry because they’re superstitious?”
“They’re cautious. And that’s a very big distinction.” She leaned back on her hands. “Why do you think it’s considered bad luck to walk under a ladder or break a mirror?”
“You’d make the guy on the ladder fall or cut yourself on the broken glass.”
Gwen gave him a definitive nod. “And your bad day snowballs from there. Add that to a heartfelt belief that your soul is trapped in the mirror or the ladder represents the gallows, and suddenly you’re experiencing a curse. That’s not entirely superstition, Jack. There are the natural forces of the breaking glass and the falling ladder, and there are also the natural forces of emotion and psychology at work. The number thirteen isn’t any different.”
“I don’t see the number thirteen breaking any bones.”
“Really? The order to capture and torture the Knights Templar went out on a Friday the Thirteenth. There are thirteen steps in an English gallows.” Gwen raised both eyebrows. “Whether or not thirteen was unlucky to start with, a real and unpredictable force had grown up around it by the time the Ministry of Trackers was founded. And the ministry fathers knew that such a force could never be combined with tracker skills.”
“So they banned a whole generation.”
She shrugged, making the scarf bunch up around her ears. “Modern hotels and airlines use the same logic—no thirteenth floor, no thirteenth row. In 1726, the ministry created Section Thirteen. No tracker of the thirteenth generation would ever be trained, or even learn of the existence of the ministry. Your generation was split up, sent away to the four corners of the earth, where you could do no harm.”
The Lost Property Office Page 9
