The Storm Tower Thief

by Anne Cameron

  “Catcher Sparks actually said that D-Dankhart invented it to kill people?” she whispered, stumbling over her uncle’s name.

  “Yeah, she said it was one of his most dangerous creations.”

  There had been very little opportunity to discuss exactly what had happened the previous evening. Germ, who was still sharing Angus’s room, had invited a whole bunch of his own friends in to discuss the outrageous rumors flying around that Principal Dark-Angel had set the ice diamond storm off herself, to stamp out the epidemic of snow boot boils. And Angus had been forced to turn things over quietly in his own brain until it felt as if it were about to explode.

  “Listen, does your mum know anything about the ice diamond storms?” he asked quietly, leaning closer to Indigo across the table.

  “I’m sorry, Angus. I don’t know anything about my uncle’s inventions.”

  “So your mum’s never told you about his experiments with the weather?”

  Indigo shook her head solemnly. “Never. She doesn’t even like reading the forecast in the newspaper. I know he’s got nothing to do with our family anymore, but I think she still feels guilty. And now he’s planting ice diamond storms as well.” Indigo stopped, suddenly looking very watery eyed and upset.

  “Oh, er.” Angus fiddled uneasily with his breakfast, not quite sure what to do. “Is everything all right?” he eventually asked. “I mean, it’s not just the ice diamond storms, is it?”

  “I’m fine.” Indigo sniffed. “Honestly.” She shot a nervous glance at her bag and quickly changed the subject before Angus could quiz her any further. “Didn’t Catcher Sparks explain why the storms are so dangerous?”

  “She didn’t tell us anything useful.” Angus sighed, leaning back in his chair again. “It might help if we actually knew what ice diamond storms were, for a start.”

  Angus and Indigo both turned automatically to look at the chair where Dougal usually sat. Dougal was always the most likely person in any room to know about anything secret or dangerous. Dougal, however, had not been seen since late last night. Angus had woken up early to find his friend’s camp bed already empty. There had been no sign of him in the queue for the bathroom or the kitchens.

  “You don’t think he’s in trouble, do you?” Indigo asked anxiously. “He’s never missed breakfast before. What if he’s gone back to the research department on his own, to find out more about the ice diamond storms?”

  The same worrying thought had already occurred to Angus. But surely Dougal wouldn’t have risked it? Not after the dire warning issued by Catcher Sparks. Not without at least one of them tagging along for moral support!

  “There’s only one way to find out.” Angus dropped the last forkful of sausage onto his plate and stood up, determined to find his friend. “Come on, let’s head up to the research department and see what’s going on. Maybe Dougal’s already waiting for us in the Octagon.”

  But when they reached the marbled hall a few minutes later, there was no sign of Dougal. An assortment of lightning cubs had already gathered, hoping to hear any snippet of new information or catch a glimpse of something interesting. The door to the research department, however, was firmly shut. It was also being guarded by a stern-looking Catcher Sparks.

  Determined to find out if Dougal had somehow slipped back inside, Angus pushed his way past Georgina Fox, Juliana Jessop, and Edmund Croxley.

  “Er . . . excuse me, miss.”

  Catcher Sparks glared down at him. “No one is allowed inside the research department until it’s been fully decontaminated, McFangus,” she said abruptly. “Considering the lucky escape that you and Dewsnap had last night, I would suggest that a day spent in the library catching up on your homework would be a good use of your time.”

  There were dark circles under her eyes. It was obvious that she’d been up all night and was in an extremely prickly mood. Still, Angus had to be sure.

  “But, miss.” He tried again. “Nobody’s seen Dougal this morning, and me and Indigo were wondering if he might have gone back into the research depart—”

  “I can assure you that no lightning cub, including Dewsnap, has been anywhere near this department,” the catcher snapped, looking even fiercer. “You will be informed when your normal duties can be resumed. Now, you will kindly move out of the way. We are trying to rescue what is left of some extremely old and precious research papers before they are lost forever, and you are blocking the entrance.”

  Angus and Indigo hopped swiftly to one side as a whole team of lightning catchers, including Jeremius and Gudgeon, came charging through the Octagon carrying various bits of strange equipment.

  “That’s the last of the defrosting devices from storage, Amelia.” Jeremius pulled Catcher Sparks to the side as the other lightning catchers maneuvered the equipment awkwardly through the door, gouging several chunks of wood out of the frame. Angus and Indigo hovered, trying not to look as if they were eavesdropping.

  “And the de-icers are still having little effect?” Catcher Sparks asked, lowering her voice.

  “The structure of the ice diamond storms is completely different from anything we’ve ever seen before,” Jeremius said, “even at the Canadian Exploratorium.”

  “Only Dankhart would bother inventing ice that doesn’t melt,” Gudgeon said, shaking his head.

  “And we still don’t understand why he’s doing this?” Catcher Sparks hissed. “I mean, first the icicle storms and now this! What can he possibly hope to gain?”

  “Chaos and panic right at the very heart of Perilous,” Jeremius said simply. “And so far, he’s succeeding. We knew he was planning some sort of trouble, but if we can’t even keep our own lightning catchers safe, if he decides to attack the Lightnarium or the kitchens next time . . .”

  “Next time?” Catcher Sparks repeated, sounding alarmed.

  “You can bet your snow boot boils he hasn’t finished with us yet,” Gudgeon growled. “Principal Dark-Angel’s calling in anyone who can help. Aurora Tweed and Geoffrey Whitworth are coming in from Alaska. They’re both experts in unusual ice forms.”

  Angus was listening so intently to their whispered conversation that he almost jumped out of his skin when he suddenly felt a sharp tugging on his sleeve. He turned around to find Indigo pointing at the entrance to the research department, which was now standing completely unguarded.

  “It might be our only chance to see what’s going on for ourselves,” she whispered, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the door.

  Catcher Sparks, Jeremius, and Gudgeon were still deep in conversation. Nobody in the Octagon appeared to be watching them. Angus followed Indigo as she slipped quickly through the door and disappeared into the maze of dusty books beyond.

  “If we get caught, Catcher Sparks will have me vaporized,” Angus hissed as they crept closer to the hidden door at the far end of the chamber. But before they could get anywhere near it—

  “Get back!” Indigo warned suddenly, dragging Angus deep into the shadows. The inner door to the department was flung open from the inside, and a team of lightning catchers raced past.

  “And I want a path cleared through the middle of that Octagon!” a senior-sounding lightning catcher shouted after them as they disappeared into the dust and gloom. “We’ve got several storm victims heading straight for the sanatorium.”

  “Victims?” Angus whispered, turning to Indigo. “You don’t think—I mean, Dougal?”

  But Indigo shook her head and pointed to the strange procession that was now heading through the maze of crumbling records. Three unfortunate casualties of the ice diamond storm were being rushed toward the door. It took Angus several seconds to realize that they were being carried out in their own armchairs. And it was obvious that they had been overcome by the sinister storm before they could even make a run for it.

  The first victim had clearly been in the middle of a humongous sneeze when the storm had struck—it was now suspended in midair beside him, a terrible icy blob. Angus couldn’t help
staring as they ferried him past. The second had been caught in a state of obvious panic, with his hair literally standing on end, his eyebrows frozen into stiff peaks of alarm. And the third . . .

  “Oh!” Indigo gasped as they both recognized Catcher Grimble at the same moment. Angus was extremely relieved to see that the ancient lightning catcher was still breathing, that his chest was rising and falling gently. His eyelids, on the other hand, were frozen shut; his fingers were caked in frosted icicles and horrible crystal fronds. Even the blanket he was sitting under looked white, giving the impression that he’d been transformed overnight into a snowman with knobbly knees.

  “These three were up in the Howling Gallery, close to where the storm erupted,” one of the chair carriers explained to the senior lightning catcher as they staggered past. “It was impossible to reach them until we’d defrosted the spiral stairs. If they hadn’t been asleep under blankets at the time, they would have been totally frozen.”

  “Get them straight up to the sanatorium,” the senior lightning catcher told them. “Doctor Fleagal wants to chip off the worst of the icicles before he tries to thaw them out.”

  Angus and Indigo made their way quickly back into the Octagon as soon as the coast was clear, ducking past Catcher Sparks before she caught them. Neither Angus nor Indigo spoke until a familiar figure came into view up ahead, and Angus was extremely pleased to see Dougal standing at the top of the spiral stairs that led down to their quarters.

  “Where have you been?” Indigo raced up to Dougal with a relieved expression on her face.

  “I— What’s up with you? Why are you both looking all worried?” Dougal frowned. “I’ve only been in the library. I went to find a—”

  “Well, you could have left us a note!” Indigo whispered, cutting him off midsentence. “We were worried sick, we thought you’d . . .”

  “Thought I’d what?”

  “Oh, never mind!” Indigo shook her head. “I’ll see you two in the Pigsty.” She disappeared down the spiral stairs and out of sight.

  “What’s up with her?” Dougal asked, looking mystified.

  “When we couldn’t find you this morning, we both thought you’d gone back to the research department on your own,” Angus said, feeling immensely glad to find his friend in one piece and not covered in icicles. He quickly described exactly what they’d just seen, including Catcher Grimble frozen solid in his own armchair.

  Dougal turned paler and paler as they as they made their way along the curved corridor and slipped quietly through Angus’s bedroom into the Pigsty. A cheerful fire was glowing in the grate, making everything look extremely warm and cozy.

  “That sounds exactly like the stuff I’ve found in this book,” Dougal said, sitting in one of the armchairs by the fire and wriggling an enormous volume out of his bag. “Like I was trying to tell you before Indigo had a meltdown, I went to the library first thing to find a book my dad told me about once. I’d forgotten all about it until I woke up really early this morning and suddenly remembered it. It took a while to find it, though,” Dougal added, flicking through the mildew-spotted pages, each of which had clearly been stamped with the words DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY. FOR LIGHTNING CATCHER USE ONLY.

  “It was buried behind all these books on glaciers, and then I had to sneak it out past Miss Vulpine. I swear she knew what I was up to, but then she got cornered by Catcher Howler, and I made a run for it. I went straight to the kitchens to find you and Indigo, but everyone had gone.”

  A sudden grating noise came from above. Neither Angus nor Dougal was surprised to see Indigo descending a ladder from her room. She sat down quietly on a cushion next to Angus, her face now composed, waiting to hear what Dougal had to say.

  “Anyway, according to this book, Dankhart toyed with the idea of ice diamond storms years ago, although they were actually invented by one of his monsoon mongrels, some guy called Adrik Swarfe.”

  “Swarfe?” Angus said. “Haven’t we heard that somewhere before?”

  “All storm globes contain an assortment of Swarfe weather crystals,” Dougal said simply. “Swarfe’s first experiments with the ice diamond storms ended in disaster inside Castle Dankhart. An experimental batch got free and killed several of the other monsoon mongrels. But he must have been refining the idea, and now they’re being sent over to Perilous to terrorize the lightning catchers!”

  “But how do the storms work?” Indigo asked, frowning.

  “It says in this book that a cluster of diamond-shaped spores are contained within an outer shell,” Dougal said.

  “Spores?” Angus asked.

  “Yeah, once the spores have been released from the shell, they quickly rise and form into a raging ice diamond storm. The spores then drift through the air, freezing the atmosphere around them to such a low temperature that anything they touch—any surface made of wood, stone, steel, water, skin, or bone—gets instantly frozen.

  “If you accidentally breathe the spores in, they can freeze your lungs from the inside; they can ‘congeal the blood in your veins while your heart is still beating. Just touching a single spore can result in frostbite and uncontrollable shivers, not to mention violent teeth chattering and frost shock,’” Dougal said, reading directly from the book.

  “Frost shock?” Indigo asked.

  “Yeah, it can make the victims so cold that even if it doesn’t kill them, it takes ages for blood vessels and vital organs to recover their full function. It can take weeks for a patient to even regain consciousness.”

  Angus shuddered, the cold still lingering in his bones. A picture of Catcher Grimble flashed before his eyes. Was this what Dankhart had been planning all along, to fill the Exploratorium with deadly storms of diamond-shaped spores and kill as many lightning catchers as possible? Angus swallowed a mouthful of bile, feeling sick at the thought. Indigo sat silently beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. But Dougal hadn’t finished yet.

  “There’s more,” he said, sounding troubled. “I didn’t have time to read this bit earlier, but someone’s scribbled a footnote at the bottom of the page. It says that to set the ice diamond storms off, to release the spores, you’ve got to stamp down hard on an outer shell.” He gulped. “And the only trace the shell leaves behind is gritty bits of crystal. Just like the ones we found—”

  “—all over my bedroom floor,” Angus finished.

  “That’s not all,” Dougal added, before Angus could digest this disturbing information. “According to this, ice diamond storms are extremely volatile before they’ve been set off. Once the spores have been released, nothing can stop them, but until that moment the slightest temperature change or the smallest vibration in the air can cause the storm to fail. And if it fails, the storm produces nothing but a load of sticky snow and frost instead.”

  Indigo gasped. Angus felt a dull thunk inside his brain as everything suddenly fell into place, making perfect sense.

  “But that means—”

  “The ice diamond storm in the research department wasn’t Dankhart’s first attempt,” Dougal said, looking deeply shocked. “He’s already tried to set off two storms before now.”

  Angus swallowed hard. “And both of them were in my bedroom.”

  One storm in his room might be a case of bad luck, but two in just a few weeks? That was no coincidence. It seemed that Indigo had been right all along. This had nothing to do with the Vellum twins. Dankhart had made two attempts to finish Angus off with deadly ice diamond storms.

  Angus spent the rest of the day with his brain in an odd state of numbness, which quickly spread to his hands and feet, causing him to trip over his own snow boots more than once. A tense atmosphere had descended upon Perilous. Lightning catchers dashed from the entrance hall to the Octagon and back again, carrying various defrosting devices, buckets, and giant ice scrapers. Principal Dark-Angel was spotted in serious-looking discussions all over the Exploratorium, with Gudgeon, Jeremius, Catcher Sparks, and an endless string of cold-weather experts fr
om Alaska and Greenland.

  No more news emerged from the research department, however, and after a very subdued dinner, Angus, Indigo, and Dougal finally retreated to the Pigsty, taking full advantage of the fact that Germ was staying late in the sanatorium. It was now more urgent than ever to retrieve the message from Angus’s mum and dad.

  “I mean, what if they know something about the ice diamond storms?” Angus said, clearing a space on the floor so they could spread out. “What if they were trying to warn us before it happened? We’ve got to get that message!” he added, staring desperately at Dougal. Dougal had come up with all the best suggestions so far; he was brilliant at cracking impossible codes and solving tricky puzzles. “There’s got to be something else we can try!”

  “Okay, okay! Just let me think!” Dougal sat on the floor, legs crossed. He took the qube from his bag and pushed his glasses as far up his nose as they would go.

  “Indigo, jot down the names of every lightning catcher at this Exploratorium and anyone else you can remember from Greenland, Iceland, and Canada,” he ordered, a look of great determination on his face. “Angus, make a list of every invention your uncle Max has ever made. I’ll try some key words from the McFangus Fog Guide. And if none of that works, we’ll take the qube straight up to the experimental division,” he added, high spots of color now rising in his cheeks, “and shove it through the hailstone cracker.”

  Indigo curled up in her favorite armchair and began scribbling furiously. Angus made a hurried list of every invention he’d ever seen, or almost been killed by, at the Windmill, including a massive pair of knitted wind socks that had deliberately tripped him as he headed down the stairs. He was just wondering if his Christmas carol-singing slippers should be added to the list when—

  “I don’t believe it!”

  Dougal was suddenly on his feet, a startled look on his face.