by Tom Becker
The Sepia Rooms were located within a small, unassuming terraced house at the end of the street. No sign marked their presence – there wasn’t even a number on the door. Heavy shutters guarded the windows. As Jonathan watched, a well-dressed man marched briskly up to the entrance, glanced quickly left and right, and then dived through the front door.
“Well, I guess that means they’re open.”
Carnegie gave him a grim look.
“The Sepia Rooms never close. The people in there don’t really care what time it is.” He straightened his hat. “Wait here. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“Wait! You’re not going in there without us!”
“Watch me. Look, boy, I’ve taken you to some fairly unpleasant places in Darkside, but I’m not going to be responsible for you going in there. You can wait for me outside. That’s dangerous enough as it is.”
To Jonathan’s surprise, it was Raquella who answered.
“No,” she said softly. “We’re going with you. Don’t you see, Carnegie? My life, and Jonathan’s friend’s life, depend upon finding this stone. You’re the only one who can walk away. Wherever you go, we have to go too.”
Carnegie rubbed his cheek uneasily. “I’m not happy about this.”
“Neither am I,” Raquella said gravely. “But this is how it has to be. Are you ready?”
The maidservant wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders and crossed the street. At the front door of the Sepia Rooms she paused for a second, head bowed, before turning the handle and entering the building. Carnegie and Jonathan hastened after her, and found themselves at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The door closed behind them with a resounding thump, like the lid of a sarcophagus. Raquella started to walk up the steps.
“Wait,” the wereman said suddenly. “The air upstairs is going to make you feel strange. Cover your mouth with your sleeve, and try not to breathe too deeply. We leave when I say, and we don’t stay a minute longer than we have to, OK?”
Jonathan and Raquella nodded seriously, and covered their mouths. The wereman sighed.
“Come on, then. Let’s get this over and done with. I’ll go first this time, though, miss.”
The room upstairs was a hymn to lethargy. In the dim candlelight, men lay motionless on threadbare sofas, their eyes closed, their arms hanging limply down to the ground. There were well-to-do young men in dinner jackets, middle-aged tradesmen, vagrants in rags, united in the utter stillness. Ornate oriental screens depicted red and green dragons writhing and snapping at one another, and chasing their own tails. The air was thick with a sickly sweet odour. Even through the sleeve of his jacket, the pungent aroma made Jonathan’s head swim.
He slowly skirted around the slumped form of a masked member of The Cain Club and moved deeper in the room, suddenly conscious of the effort it was taking to put one foot in front of the other. Already he was feeling light-headed, and the certainty of the floor and walls in the room seemed to be ebbing away. He peered cautiously at the faces around him, noting the same dreamy expression on every one. Carnegie and Raquella fanned out to widen the search, treading gingerly through the silent human wheatfield.
On a sofa in the corner of the room lay a thickset man in a deep reverie, his face obscured by a fleshy arm. Although the man shared Correlli’s physique, Jonathan couldn’t be sure it was the fire-eater. He picked his way over to the sofa and lifted the man’s bulky arm as gently as possible. Instantly, he recognized the wiry hair and swarthy features. In the few months since he had last since him, Correlli had gone visibly downhill. His skin was pockmarked and etched with deep lines, and his breath smelt of stale alcohol.
Jonathan was just about to call over to Carnegie when the fire-eater’s eyes snapped open and he lunged at Jonathan, arms outstretched.
10
Jonathan cried out and fell backwards on to the floor, landing awkwardly on a prone body. Correlli was on him in a flash, a pair of shovel-like hands fastening around his throat. As Jonathan struggled for breath, he heard Raquella scream from the other side of the room, and then a bestial roar. Black spots clustered in the corner of his vision, and he felt the strength begin to fade from his limbs. Then there was another roar, closer this time, and a blur of fur and claws crashed into Correlli, sending the pair of them flying across the room.
Jonathan rolled to one side in a coughing fit, his lungs desperately hunting for air. Too late, he remembered Carnegie’s warning not to breathe too deeply inside the Sepia Rooms. Giant splashes of colour exploded in front of his eyes, and the room began to twist and spin around him until he felt like he was lying on the ceiling. He didn’t know whether to cry or burst out laughing.
Something was shaking his arm.
“Jonathan, COME ON!” a female voice shouted. “Look!”
He staggered to his feet, trying to take in his surroundings. To his left, there was the snarling tangle of limbs that was Carnegie and Correlli. They were rolling across the floor, ignoring the slurred moans of the patrons as their drugged dreams were disturbed. Though the fire-eater was a formidable fighter, the atmosphere had dulled his reflexes, and he was facing a savage beast that thrived on combat. Already there was a deep cut running along Correlli’s right arm.
“No!” Raquella cried, tugging at Jonathan’s sleeve. “Over there!”
He looked round, blinking in surprise. A door had appeared in one of the screens, and a large Chinese man was bearing down upon them, his sleeves rolled up with threatening intent. A tattoo of a black dragon ran up his neck and over the top of his shaven scalp. He came to a halt in front of them, and loudly cracked his knuckles.
“These are my rooms. You are not welcome here,” he said in a low voice. “You will leave now.”
Before Jonathan could reply, he felt himself being hoisted up into the air by his shirt. The world didn’t move with him, and his stomach lurched violently.
“Put him down!” Raquella screamed.
She aimed a sharp kick at his assailant’s kneecap, but the man barely flinched. He casually tossed Jonathan to one side, sending him sprawling over one of the sofas, before turning his attention back to the maidservant.
“That was a very bad idea,” the Chinese man said. “It nearly hurt.”
Jonathan desperately wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep, until the pain and the dizziness and the nausea receded, but a voice in his head shouted at him to get up. He staggered to his feet and hurled himself at the man’s back, but it was like running headlong into a brick wall. Jonathan simply bounced off him, the air whooshing from his lungs for the second time in a minute. As he tried to clear the cobwebs from his head, he looked up to see the man looming over him, his fingers curled up in a fist.
Jonathan closed his eyes, and waited for the darkness to fall. Instead, there was a loud crashing noise, and the thud of a large weight hitting the floor. He opened one eye cautiously. Raquella was standing over the body of the Chinese man, the remains of a shattered vase in one hand. Catching the look of shock on Jonathan’s face, she shrugged.
“You looked like you could use some help. It was all that came to hand.”
“Cheers,” Jonathan said, rubbing his face groggily. “I had it under control, though.”
A roar made them both whirl round. The beast had won its battle with Correlli, and the mercenary was lying unconscious on the floor, a nasty bruise on his temple. The beast raised a claw into the air, and prepared to strike.
“Carnegie, no!” cried Jonathan.
The beast stopped. A pair of blank, pitiless eyes sized the boy up.
“We need him, remember? If you kill him, we’ll never get the Stone back!”
He was aware that, inside the beast’s head, the remaining spark of Elias Carnegie’s consciousness knew he was right. But the two opposing forces in the wereman’s soul were constantly shifting and wrestling for control, and it was never certain
which would hold sway. The beast flung Correlli to one side and swatted at the air, as if it was under attack from a swarm of bees. To Jonathan’s horror, it then began to attack itself, gouging at its face, tearing its fur, jaws snapping at thin air. Raquella made as if to go towards him, but Jonathan put an arm across her path.
“We’ve got to do something!” she pleaded. “He’ll kill himself.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” he replied darkly.
Finally, the beast gave an almighty shudder, and its arms fell to its side. The powerful shoulders drooped, the fur retreated, and it was Carnegie crouching on the floor, panting heavily, his face bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.
“That,” he rumbled, “was close.”
“Are you OK?”
“Just dandy, boy. Now grab him and let’s get out of this hellhole.”
They dragged Correlli by his feet out of the Sepia Rooms, down the stairs and into the bright sunshine outside. The fresh air hit Jonathan like a sledgehammer. Letting go of the fire-eater, he leant over the wall and was violently sick. As he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, he became aware of Carnegie standing over him.
“I did tell you to wait outside,” the wereman said, a trace of amusement in his voice. He prodded the prone form of Correlli with his toe. “At least we got what we came for.”
“Great,” Jonathan said bitterly. “He’s not much use like this, is he?”
Carnegie frowned.
“Better wake him up then, hadn’t we?”
Correlli woke up precisely two seconds after Carnegie hurled him from the pier at Devil’s Wharf. Having hauled the prone fire-eater all the way from the Sepia Rooms, the wereman was in no mood to be gentle. Correlli’s shocked yell was followed by a tremendous splash as the burly mercenary hit the waters below. Jonathan watched him sink beneath the surface with concern.
“You don’t think he’s going to drown, do you?”
“It’s a possibility,” Carnegie replied. “But Correlli’s a survivor. He should be able to cope with an afternoon dip.”
“Unless he can’t swim,” Raquella said.
The wereman chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted.
Jonathan peered over the edge of the wharf, searching for a glimpse of Correlli beneath the murky waters. He was still suffering from the after-effects of the Sepia Rooms, and the churning and foaming of the waves stirred his stomach again. Worryingly, there was no sign of the mercenary.
Raquella glared at Carnegie, who cleared his throat with embarrassment.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going in after him.”
There was another loud splash as Correlli exploded above the surface, frantically paddling to keep himself afloat as he took in a lungful of air.
“Told you he’d be fine,” the wereman said defiantly.
He removed a lifebelt from its casing on the side of the wharf and cast it down on a rope towards Correlli. The fire-eater’s survival instincts kicking in, he front-crawled through the choppy waves and slipped through the belt. Up on the wharf, Carnegie tied the rope around his waist and adopted a braced stance.
“Stand back,” he said, through gritted teeth.
Then, hand-over-hand, he began hauling the mercenary out of the water and up through the air. When Correlli reached the edge of the wharf, Jonathan and Raquella helped to drag his sopping, flailing form on to the decking, where he lay panting, hair plastered to his forehead. Eventually he looked up and flashed the wereman a murderous glance.
“I’m . . . going to . . . kill you for this,” he said haltingly.
“I need to talk to you,” Carnegie replied, his coat flapping in the breeze. “I wanted to make sure I had your full attention.”
“What on Darkside could you possibly want to talk to me about?”
“We need to get our hands on something. We heard you were the man to talk to.”
Correlli laughed bitterly. “What would I know? Ever since the boy defeated me I’ve been a laughing stock. Even pickpockets don’t respect me any more. After so many years, so many crimes – a laughing stock.”
Raquella kneeled down next to the mercenary. “We’re offering you the chance to change that. If you can help us, no one will ever laugh at you again.”
Correlli’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly do you have in mind?”
“The crime of the century,” she whispered, with a mischievous grin. “A crime that will be talked about for years to come. A crime that will make the Baskerville Emerald look like child’s play.”
“That’s quite a claim,” the mercenary said wistfully. “The Baskerville Emerald was the perfect robbery.”
“We know you planned it,” said Jonathan. “That’s why we’re here. We want you to come out of retirement and reform the Troupe.”
Correlli waved him away with a hand. “The Troupe is history. If that’s why you came to see me, you’ve wasted your time. I’ll never work with them again.”
“But you don’t understand,” Jonathan said desperately. “You have to help. My friend’s life is at stake!”
“Really,” he snapped. “And why should I care one penny for your friend? I only wish it was your life at stake.”
“Shall I throw him back in the water?” asked Carnegie.
He reached out to grab Correlli, who hastily held up both his hands.
“Wait a moment. This crime of the century. What’s the target?”
Raquella cupped her hand and whispered into his ear. Correlli’s look of astonishment was slowly succeeded by a broad grin.
“Really?” he said, with a chuckle. “Why didn’t you say so?”
11
From a vantage point high up on a roof, London’s skyline had a geography all of its own. In the surrounding Victorian terraced streets, the landscape of sharply inclined roofs was punctuated by television aerials and squat chimney stacks. Further afield, tower blocks and skyscrapers competed for dominance of the air. In the distance, a heat haze had settled like sweat over the domed forehead of St Paul’s Cathedral, and shimmered over the glass façade of the building Londoners called the Gherkin.
Jonathan Starling shielded his eyes from the glare and looked out anxiously over the skyline. “Are you sure they’ll come?” he asked.
Correlli chewed on a piece of gum. “Yeah, they’ll come. Whether they’ll say yes or not is another matter.”
Since agreeing to help them out, the fire-eater had regained some of his old menacing purpose. Immediately he had sent messengers out to his old Troupe members, arranging to meet them later that day. It had also been his idea to split up.
“It’s the best way,” he had argued as they hurried back from Devil’s Wharf. “If Xavier’s mansion is as heavily guarded as you say it is, we’re going to need all the time we can get to check the place out. It makes sense if Jonathan and I head to Lightside, while you and the girl sort things out here. We can save nearly a day if we split up.”
“Not so sure that’s a good idea,” Carnegie said warily.
Correlli stopped in his tracks, ignoring the jostling of the people around him.
“You asked for my help,” he said finally. “I’ve said I’m in. But if you want to do this, you’re going to have to trust me. OK?”
But, although they had reluctantly agreed to his plan, Jonathan couldn’t pretend that he did trust the fire-eater. It was difficult to feel comfortable around someone who had recently tried to kill him. Over time he had become used to Carnegie’s moods – he knew when to take a step back, or retire to another room. But Correlli kept himself to himself. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. A suspicious voice in the back of Jonathan’s mind wondered whether all of this was just a complicated ruse to get him alone and pay him back.
Given all of that, it wasn’t surprising that they travelled back to Lightsi
de in silence. Jonathan was becoming increasingly used to the sensation of crossing and, although his pulse quickened and his head throbbed, the feeling of sickness he had experienced in the past was absent. He was surprised to see that Correlli also seemed largely unaffected by the journey. Noting his quizzical look, the fire-eater shrugged.
“There’s more than one half-Darksider in London, Jonathan.”
And that, he hadn’t been expecting at all. Biting back a barrage of questions, Jonathan allowed himself to be led through the streets to a terraced house in East London that the Troupe had used as a safe house in the past. It was dark and cool inside, with a stale odour that suggested it had lain empty for years. In the kitchen, Jonathan picked up a coffee mug filled with sprouting mould from the sideboard.
“Very homely.”
The fire-eater gave him a warning glance. “We’re meeting the twins up on the roof. Come on.”
On the first-floor landing there was a skylight built into the ceiling. Correlli jumped up and slammed it open with a loud crash, before athletically flipping himself up through the gap and out on to the roof.
“There’s a ladder in one of the bedrooms,” he called down. “You might want to use that.”
“Er, yeah. Cheers.”
In a rather more laboured fashion, Jonathan clambered back into the sunshine, relieved to have escaped the musty gloom of the interior. The fire-eater had his back to him, and was scanning the horizon. Jonathan sat down on the edge of the roof, flicking tiny stones on to the street below.
“So how did you meet these guys?” he asked.
Correlli didn’t turn round. “None of your business.”
“Sorry,” Jonathan replied sulkily. “I just thought it might be useful to know who the Troupe actually are. Seeing as we’re going to be working together and all.”
The fire-eater sighed, came over and sat down beside Jonathan. When he spoke, it was in a deep baritone.
“It started,” he began, “with a bank job that went wrong. The heat was on, and I had to lie low for a while. I got off the Grand and went to Spinoza’s Fairground on the edge of town – there’s always work for fire-eaters at fairgrounds. My first day there, I watched the trapeze act: the twins, Fray and Nettle. When I saw those girls fly through the air, the first thing I thought was that it was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. The second thing I thought was that they would make supreme burglars. And I was right, too – if there’s a building they can’t climb and find a way into, then I haven’t seen it. Anyway, it suddenly hit me – I could put a crack team of thieves together right there in the circus, using the special skills of the different performers. The twins didn’t take much persuading, and after that it was fairly simple.”
