The Custodian of Marvels

by Rod Duncan

  “What does it do?” asked Tinker.

  Lara handed it to Jeremiah, who shrugged and passed it to Yan.

  The next crate contained more flasks, these nearly spherical in shape. The filaments within were curled rather than straight. Yan was trying to unscrew the metal cap from one. It came away suddenly with a pop and a crunch of breaking glass. He sucked air over his teeth. There was a drop of blood on his hand.

  “I’ve broken it,” he said.

  “But what do they do?” asked Lara, taking down yet another crate.

  “Stop!” said Fabulo. “We must move on.”

  “I don’t see why,” grumbled Yan, who was sucking his finger. “We have the time. And a treasury, you said. Marvels beyond count.”

  “Treasure there is. But the greatest of it all will be further in.”

  Scowling his defiance, Yan opened three more boxes. I tried to peer inside, but Fabulo slammed the lids closed.

  “We go!”

  Yan looked ready to make trouble. But Jeremiah said, “The dwarf is right.” Then he started back between the shelves and everyone followed.

  I don’t know what Fabulo thought about the help he was getting from a man who usually argued, but I knew his real reason. The locks themselves were Jeremiah’s treasure. Or, rather, the opening of them. For only by cracking locks he’d never been shown could he find the peace he desired.

  Back in the corridor, I searched for and found another of the small levers on the wall. Not asking Fabulo’s permission, I pulled it down. Light flooded in from the niches in the ceiling. So bright was the corridor that our lamps hardly seemed lit.

  “All this time we thought they put unseemly science out of use,” said Fabulo. “Now we see they hoard the best things for themselves.”

  “How can light be unseemly?” asked Lara.

  “They think it too good for us!” said Yan.

  Jeremiah had been standing still as a gatepost since the lights came on, staring towards a door that blocked the end of the passage ahead. Abruptly he lurched towards it, striding so fast that I was obliged to run to keep up.

  The door’s surface was made of riveted metal. He placed his hand on it. I watched as he leaned his weight against it, shifting his head left and right as he did so, as if searching for tiny movements.

  He went down on his knees and was putting his eye to a keyhole as the others caught up. Then he shifted lower and peered in through a second keyhole. I watched as he unwrapped the leather bundle and selected a probe with a tiny round mirror attached to the end. He had to turn it to the vertical to get it inside the lock, but once there it had freedom to rotate. He dipped into a pocket and pulled out an optical device, which fitted like a monocle over one eye, yet projected like a camera lens.

  Fabulo consulted his brass watch and seemed about to speak. I put a finger to my lips and gestured for all to back away. The locksmith now shifted his mirror and lenses to the other keyhole. Fabulo turned the watch towards me. Only twenty minutes remained before the soldiers could return to their place outside the door. Farthing also – if it had been him, and if he had seen us. He would surely bring an army of agents to track us down.

  But there was another question in my mind. When I’d been interrogated, had John Farthing been watching through the half silvered mirror? Something had stopped the interrogator from beating me to unconsciousness. His arm had been drawn back ready to strike. Then he’d looked towards the mirror and walked out as if called away. If it was Farthing who’d stopped the beating, if he couldn’t bear to see a fist smashing at my face, then how would he react to the prospect of a noose being placed around my neck? If he simply turned around and pretended to have seen nothing, the authorities would never find out.

  I might almost have convinced myself that, when the time elapsed, there would be no agents following us inside. But my judgement had been twisted by longing.

  “Here and here,” said Jeremiah, scratching two crosses on the metal door, one near each keyhole.

  “What?”

  “Place your machine back twenty yards. Then aim its light where I marked.”

  Fabulo was already on the move, carrying the machine back. Jeremiah nodded and he laid it on the floor. “Now, Lizzy,” he said. “Time to earn your share.”

  Lara had been carrying the two demijohns. These she placed next to the machine, while Tinker laid down a bottle of water. Everyone was looking at me.

  I stepped to the machine and knelt, trying to remember the sequence of actions. There were two reservoirs. These I unscrewed, almost filling each with water. Then I decanted a few drops from the demijohns so that each reservoir took a different liquid.

  With each step, my memory crystallized and I became more confident. There was a small lever, almost hidden within the maze of glassware. I depressed it and the two reservoirs drained, filling a central tube. The final step was to turn a handle on the side. A faint whirring issued from the machine and a beam of light, pencil thin, hung in the air before my face.

  “There,” I said.

  “I see nothing,” said Jeremiah.

  So I twisted the mirror mounted into the machine, angling the light lower, sending it lancing along the corridor to paint a single spot on the door near where he’d marked a cross.

  They all saw it then, and crowded in closer.

  “This is just to find our aim,” I said.

  “Then move it left three inches.”

  It took me several minutes to find the spot exactly, for the slightest touch would make the spot of light jump. When Jeremiah pronounced himself satisfied, I let the liquid drain and refilled the flasks, but this time with a far greater concentration of the reagents.

  “Everyone stand clear,” I said.

  With one hand braced on the machine to stop it shifting, I began to turn the handle. I had only turned it three times when there was a sharp report from the door, like the firing of a pistol.

  I’d seen nothing, but knew that all the energy of the reagents had been consumed in a span so short that no eye could have detected it.

  Jeremiah approached the lock and reached out a finger with the caution of one stealing cheese from a mousetrap. “She’s done it,” he said.

  The second cross took just as long to hit. Again I turned the handle. Again we heard that sharp crack. Then Jeremiah inserted a torsion bar into each keyhole and twisted them. Fabulo pushed and the door that had barred our way swung open.

  “We’re in!”

  Lara, Yan and Tinker all grinned with their excitement. But Jeremiah frowned, running his hand over the edge of the door. Fabulo consulted the watch. He was also frowning. I met his eye. He made the smallest nod and I knew our time had gone.

  Lara and Tinker carried the machine and its flasks of liquid through the doorway. As we followed, Fabulo asked Jeremiah, “Can you lock it behind us?”

  “I could,” the locksmith replied. “But why would I want to?”

  Before Fabulo could answer, a low boom reverberated in the throat of the corridor. I felt it through my feet as much as my ears. We all looked back in the direction of the entrance.

  “What was that?” asked Lara.

  A second boom followed, louder than the first.

  “I think they’re trying to break down the door,” said Fabulo. “Now, can we lock this one please? In some way that they won’t open it from the other side.”

  CHAPTER 27

  11.15pm

  Misdirect the eye to create illusion. Misdirect expectation to create amazement. Illusion without surprise is nothing.

  The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

  I counted ten seconds before another boom reverberated from the walls. The outer door had been made of iron, banded and studded for strength, but if they had a battering ram it wouldn’t stand for long.

  I searched for and found another small lever on the wall. Pulling it caused white light to shine down at us from the ceiling. This time none of us ducked. How quickly the miraculous had become commonplace
.

  Instead of a corridor ahead, the light revealed a flight of stairs spiralling down.

  Having unscrewed a small panel in the edge of the door, Jeremiah was poking around inside the lock mechanism. He inserted a pair of narrow nosed pliers and snipped twice. Each time, I heard the twang of a wire being cut.

  “That’ll do it,” he said, pushing the door closed and turning the torsion bar in the keyholes. “I’ve disconnected the drum of the locks. No key will open it from that side.”

  “Quick then,” said Fabulo. “Down the stairs.”

  But Jeremiah planted his feet. “You knew we were being followed,” he said.

  “I did not.”

  “You asked me if I could lock the door. That was before you heard…”

  The door rattled with another distant impact.

  “It was a precaution,” said Fabulo.

  “Saying that don’t cut it, Mr Dwarf. You knew!”

  “I feared.”

  “Yet chose not to tell?”

  “If I told you half the fears I carry, you’d lie down and weep!”

  “If there was a risk, I’d the right to know. We all had!”

  “Well, you know it now!”

  Another tremor reverberated around us. Both men looked back towards the door. Jeremiah drew in breath, as if to speak.

  “Argue later,” I said, cutting in.

  “Lizzy’s right,” said Lara. “We’ve no time.”

  Jeremiah’s shoulders dropped, though his face remained grim.

  The stairs wound clockwise as we descended. I counted three and a half turns before we reached a new corridor. By my reckoning it would lead us back along the same line we’d been walking, but several fathoms deeper in the earth.

  Lara found the control for the lights and flicked them on. Ten paces ahead another metal door barred our way.

  “I’m going to pick this one,” said Jeremiah.

  “Will that be quicker than the machine?” asked Fabulo.

  The locksmith wouldn’t answer.

  “Then the machine it is!”

  “I’m going to pick it!”

  Without waiting for approval he got down on his knees, unrolled his bundle of tools and set to work. Fabulo began to pace, clenching and unclenching his fists. I sat on the lowest step and listened. The boom of the outermost door being rammed had grown quieter as we descended. I had to focus to detect it. But there it was. It had been ten seconds between impacts when it started. Now it was eight.

  Tinker came and sat on the step. “Will it all work out?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to make the lie sound true.

  “Good,” he said, and I felt the warmth of him as he rested his slight body against me.

  “Sometimes things happen though,” I said, after a pause. “Things we don’t expect.”

  “I know that,” he said, and sighed.

  I was about to say more, but Fabulo exclaimed, “You’re no closer to cracking it!”

  “It’ll be done when it’s done,” growled Jeremiah.

  “We could have been through already with the machine!”

  “I must have a chance to pick one of them. That’s my price for helping you!”

  “So you’re giving away your share?”

  “There will be no share! The deeper we go, the more trapped we are!”

  Lara had been sitting on the floor all this time, with her back resting against the white painted bricks. I saw her body stiffen. Then she jumped up and cried, “Hush, all of you!”

  Everybody listened. It was so quiet that I could hear the ticking of Fabulo’s brass watch. I counted under my breath until I could be sure. “They’ve stopped,” I said.

  Lara tilted her head. “Have they given up?”

  But Fabulo had grabbed the machine and was hefting it towards me. “They’ve broken through,” he said. “That’s why they’ve stopped. There’s no more time for picking!”

  Practice made me quicker about my work. I set it up on the third step, giving a level aim at the spot Jeremiah marked. Then I fuelled it with the concentrated reagents and turned the handle. With a loud crack, a pencil thin hole appeared in the metal. Jeremiah poked a hook through it and extracted a loop of fine wire. With one firm pull the latch clicked and the lock was undone.

  Fabulo punched the air with his stubby fist. The locksmith scowled.

  Then a new noise began – a machine noise, high pitched, teeth jarring and unbearably loud. It screamed down at us from the corridor above. We all covered our ears against the pain of it.

  Jeremiah hauled back the door and we dived through into a new stretch of corridor. Lights blinked on, though I didn’t see who’d pulled the lever. Yan started to heave the door closed.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “We must know what we’re facing.”

  Fingers wedged in my ears, I slipped back out. But, as I began to climb the spiral stairs, the sound cut to nothing. In the silence that followed, it felt as if I could still hear the mechanical scream inside my head.

  I rounded the final bend, fearing I might see the door already breached, but it stood. On first sight I thought it just as we’d left it. I stepped closer. There was a vertical line next to the lock. Another step and I saw it was not a line, but a cut of several inches in length. I pulled the lever on the wall, turning off the ceiling lights. The crack shone in the new darkness. Light was seeping through it from the other side of the door.

  I was reaching out to touch it, when the light dimmed. A toothed blade poked through, like the circular saw of a wood mill.

  Then the blade began to turn, screeching against the metal, accelerating, its cry becoming higher and louder. Some hand on the other side must have hefted it forwards. The blade bit into the door and the banshee scream began again. Sparks of hot metal showered out towards me.

  I jumped back, then ran.

  The door at the base of the stairs was ajar. Fabulo beckoned me through. They slammed it behind me.

  “Locked,” said Jeremiah.

  “It won’t hold long,” I said, still shouting though the scream was muffled now. “They’ve some devilish machine. It’s biting through the metal.”

  So we gathered up our things and hauled them as fast as we could along the length of the passage, ignoring doors to left and right. Though the volume dropped as we increased our distance, it remained frightful and unearthly.

  Each time it stopped, I found myself dreading it starting again. And dreading it not starting, also. For that would mean the lock had been cut from the door and they would be after us down the spiral stairs.

  Lara flipped a wall lever, illuminating the next stretch of passageway, revealing another door in our way. Jeremiah set off towards it in a loping run. Fabulo followed, but he was already wheezing and panting and couldn’t keep up.

  “Wait!” shouted Yan. “Stop!”

  They did.

  He beat a hand against his wide chest. Distress racked his face. “Is there even a plan?”

  “We keep going,” said Fabulo.

  “Is that it? You think the tunnels go on forever?”

  “I know what I’m doing! We go deeper.”

  “That’s no plan at all!”

  “You have something better?” asked Lara.

  “I do,” said Yan, nodding vigorously, his forked beard waving beneath his chin. “We break into one of these side rooms. We find something to fight with. Must be guns here somewhere. Then we face them.”

  “You want to kill them?” shouted Fabulo.

  “If we must!”

  “How many? They’ll bring an army. You going to kill them all? No. There’s only one way out of here. We go on. We get to the Custodian and take him hostage. Then we can bargain our way free.”

  Yan stared at him. “So you did have a plan? You should have told us.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Fabulo. “I’ve only just thought it up.”

  The cutting machine went quiet as Jeremiah inspected the lock of the next door. After
half a minute, we were all listening for it to start up again. After a minute of silence, I knew they must have broken through. Then the metallic screaming began again, closer and louder.

  This time Jeremiah did not try to argue for picking. It took me little time to set up the machine and punch a hole where he indicated. Through this he poked his tools. So loud was the cutting machine, I didn’t hear the click of the lock as it opened.

  Once more we gathered up our things and hurried through, putting another door between us and our pursuers. I found the lever for the lights and flicked it on, revealing a short stretch of passage and another flight of spiral stairs leading deeper into the earth. It was identical to the previous set. Indeed, it could have been the same place, but for a smell of cooked meat.

  Tinker raised his nose and sniffed the air. He moved his head from side to side. Then he scampered off, down the stairs. I followed around the spiral, lagging behind.

  “Slow down,” I called.

  But he was away from me, his feet quicker on the stones. I tried to go faster, but slipped and had to steady myself with a hand on the wall. As I took a breath to recover from my near disaster, I heard a sound from below, a scrape of fabric on stone as if the boy had fallen, but no cry followed.

  I leapt down the stairs, rounding the final turn to see a man pinning Tinker to the wall, holding a knife to his neck.

  He was more bull than man – broad shouldered and carrying so much muscle that his arms were as thick as thighs. He was dressed in black from hat to shoes, but not in the way of a hired thug. The tailoring was fine, the silk of his top hat shining in the light from the ceiling niches. As was the blade of his knife.

  Lara was next around the stairs. She cried out, whereupon the others came charging down. They pulled up short next to me.

  “Give up or I cut his throat,” said the bull man.

  “Hurt him and we kill you,” growled Fabulo.

  The metal cutter had been quiet for the last few seconds. Now it started up again.

  The bull man nodded. “We’ll see who can wait longest,” he said.

  Yan unbuttoned his jacket and opened it wide, displaying a line of knives, each snug in its own pocket. He drew out three, and held them up, gripping the blades together between finger and thumb.