Curse of the Midions

by Brad Strickland

  Maybe the clues he needed were inside the book—but if the book wouldn’t allow itself to be read . . .

  But he was a Midion, and even old Siyamon had said he had the art. How could he use it, though? How did the evil Midion sorcerers learn the magic they had? He didn’t know and couldn’t even guess.

  Jarvey forced himself to listen to the debate in the cellar. Betsy was again urging caution to the boy who’d asked for use of the Den.

  “Stop your worryin’. We ain’t never been nipped yet,” the boy Betsy had called Ben said with an air of confidence. “No fear of that. And any time you want to come back, we’ll find another snug. Thanks, Bets.”

  Betsy nodded, though she still looked doubtful. “Well, then. We’ll move out come good dark tonight. That’s it, then, but I want you all to take one last look at the new boy. Jarvey, up here.”

  Hands helped boost him, and Jarvey scrambled up onto the machine to stand beside Betsy. He tugged at the gray shirt, far too big for him, and felt acutely aware of sixty or more eyes staring at him.

  “Last time, now, so get a good look,” Betsy said. “Look at the face, not the togs. Be ready to tell the rest of the folk what he looks like, and send along word to them he’s protected, right? Another thing, if anybody hears of anybody calling themselves Americans in Lunnon, you get word to me, quick. Same if anybody gets word of Lord Zoroaster. This could be our chance at last.”

  “Chance to do what?” one older boy demanded.

  Betsy’s green eyes flashed. “Chance to get rid of the Toffs and the tippers. Chance to be free. Chance to pull down old Nibs from his seat on the bent backs of our people.”

  “Chance to be free,” a solemn-looking girl of fourteen or fifteen said.

  “Chance to be free,” Betsy agreed.

  Jarvey saw the kids in the room nod to each other, heard them murmur. It wasn’t a cheer, it wasn’t a surge of enthusiasm, but it felt deep and powerful.

  And Betsy seemed satisfied. “All right,” she said in a hard, level voice. “You know what we risk. You know what we have to gain. Scatter, now, and spread the word.”

  Like a magic trick—or like the workings of a spell of art, Jarvey supposed—the thirty kids flowed away, rustling out of the basement, fading into the shadows.

  Betsy gave Jarvey a crooked grin. “And you,” she said, “I hope you’re a quick learner.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Life on the Run

  At first Jarvey tried to keep count of the days that followed, but somewhere around three weeks, he stopped tracking them. One day was just like the day before, with the only changes being the number of close calls. Every single day brought too many of them.

  The new Den was in yet another narrow brick-walled alley. Both entrances to this one had been bricked up ages ago, so now it was a long, cramped room, roofed over because the eaves of the buildings on either side met overhead. From the street you’d never guess the space existed, because the brickwork that sealed it had the same crumbling, sooty appearance of the buildings to either side. Getting in and out took some trouble. You had to duck down into a storm drain—there were two of these, front door and back door, as Betsy called them—and then creep along hunched over for a hundred feet or so until you could pop up through an open drain in the center of the alley. Once a heavy barred iron grate had covered it, but the Free Folk had moved that aside.

  “Biggest danger’s that someone’ll notice us slipping into the drain and follow us in one day,” Betsy told everyone. “So we can’t treat this like the old Den. Two have to stay inside at all times, and if a stranger pops his head up, they take care of him.”

  Jarvey had not asked what “taking care of him” might mean. He didn’t even want to know. He began to have a strange feeling as days passed: that his old life, his real life, was just a half-forgotten dream, and that he had awakened from it into this nightmare world of no electricity, no comforts, and no family. The walled-off alley proved a bleak shelter, cold and dark, and incredibly, Jarvey thought back to the basement of the abandoned factory with a kind of regret. It had running water and light, anyway.

  The other kids were patient enough with him, and even cheerful in their strange way. Charley Dobbins, when he returned from the first Den, turned out to be a good teacher, and he personally took charge of Jarvey’s street education. They ventured out every day, and every day Jarvey saw more signs that this was not his own world. Even on clear days, no sun shone in the sky—there was just a sort of blurred brassy circle of light and warmth, many times larger than the sun he remembered. No moon pierced the gloom at night, and even the stars were strange.

  Under the metallic glare of daylight, the two of them sauntered through alleys and down back ways, armed with little squares of pasteboard that Betsy provided. These were work cards, which told the world that Jarvey and Charley were kitchen boys on the evening shift in one of the cookeries. “These’ll do for anybody but a tipper,” Charley had warned, raising his hand to swipe the hair out of his eyes. “Never show a tipper your ticket, or you’ll get nipped sure’s anything. But if anybody else gives you any bother, just flash it and tell’em you’re off work right now and runnin’ some errands for Master Cook, right?”

  As long as they didn’t go out after curfew, the two boys could wander around the crowded streets with something like invisibility. The beaten-down people creeping to or from work seemed too exhausted even to give them a glance, and the Toffs pointedly ignored them. Jarvey soon got the hang of recognizing the Toffs, the well-dressed men and women whose carriages rumbled over the cobblestones, drawn by horses that looked healthier than most of the people. Now and again, Charley would grandly rush to open a door for a rich-looking man and woman, sweeping his cap away from his tangled hair and crooning, “Remember the porter, governor!” And sometimes, not very often, the man would drop a small coin into his cap without looking directly at the dirty, grinning Charley. With a wink, Charley said, “Never go for a man alone, or worse a woman alone, mate. Couples are the ticket. A man wants to show off a bit before his lady, see? A woman alone, she’d scream for a tipper, and a gent alone would clout you with his walkin’ stick. But couples, they’re easy pickings.”

  The two boys could wander into a storehouse where wagons of vegetables or pastries waited to be unloaded, with Charley bawling, “Robertson? Got a message for a Robertson! Robertson, are you here?”

  And sometimes a Robertson would call out, “Hey, over here!” It always turned out to be the wrong one, though. Charley would ask, “Are you Artemus Fairweather Robertson, then?” No, he was Bob Robertson, or George Robertson, or some other Robertson. While Charley created the diversion, Jarvey would snatch something, a couple of apples, even a head of cabbage, while no one was looking. A cabbage was dinner. Potatoes were a celebration. A sweet roll was heaven.

  Nights chilled them in the walled-off alley, because their fire had to be very small. Gradually the kids of Betsy’s gang accumulated blankets, old cast-off rags, even bolts of cloth stolen from under the Toffs’ noses, to create a kind of unruly nest where they could all burrow for warmth.

  But Betsy was a hard, demanding leader. At night, when Jarvey felt ready to drop, she would have him tell her about his day, criticize his decisions and his movements, and demand that he think of some way to use the book.

  “I can’t,” he told her one evening weeks after they had made their move. “Look.” He pulled the book from its hiding place and handed it to her. “Open it,” he told her.

  She jerked her hands off the book as if it had suddenly caught fire. “You crazy, Jarvey? This thing could send me to—”

  “Try,” Jarvey said wearily. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  Betsy was nothing if not brave. She glared at him, the firelight gleaming in her green eyes, and then said, “Right, then.” She took one deep breath, grasped the book, and then drew in a sharp gasp of surprise. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “You can’t open it,” Jarvey told her. “I can�
�t either.”

  “It’s like a solid block,” Betsy said, running her finger over the edges of the book’s pages. “Like it’s glued shut. Reckon it takes art to open?”

  “It must take something,” Jarvey said. “But I don’t know what it is. And I can’t think of any way of finding out, except one.” He shivered. He didn’t want Betsy to ask the question that he knew she would ask.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the Midion Grimoire,” he said in a low, unwilling voice. “And you said one person here knows how to use it.”

  “Nibs,” Betsy said with a worried nod. “But he’s a terror, he is. You can’t walk up and ask old Nibs how to use the thing.”

  “There’s Lord Zoroaster.”

  Betsy shook her head. “He’s melted into air, it seems. Nibs ain’t found him, and none o’ the Free Folk have heard a whisper about him. Nor of any Americans. Sorry, Jarvey. I could’ve sworn we’d turn up Lord Z or your parents by this time.”

  “Then there’s only Bywater House,” Jarvey said.

  Betsy leaned forward, hugging her knees. “Tall order, Jarvey. Things here, well, I don’t think they’re like they were back where you come from. You keep talking about things that seem like art to me, tell-a-visions and movie and whatnot. Well, old Midion does use the art of magic. He’s likely to have guard spells up around his mansion to keep out the likes of you and me, and if not that, he’s got ranks of guards.”

  “I’ll have to take the risk,” Jarvey said. “Look, I was in Bywater House once, and I got out without Tantalus turning me into a frog.”

  Betsy frowned and shook her head. “Nobody in their right mind would try what you’re suggesting. It could be like walkin’ into a death trap.” In a thoughtful tone, she added, “’Course, he ain’t always in the house. When the Council’s not meeting, sometimes Nibs goes up the river to his country house. He likes . . . hunting.”

  “Maybe we could have a chance if we could get into Bywater House while he’s away,” Jarvey said slowly.

  “I’ll think on it some,” Betsy said. She handed the heavy book back to Jarvey. “Meantime, you keep this safe.”

  “I will.”

  For some days everything rested there. But then it happened.

  The blow fell early one morning, down by the wharves. Betsy, Charley, Jarvey, and half a dozen others of the gang idled by the docks where boats delivered cattle and sheep from somewhere upriver. Everything stank of manure and sweat, but Jarvey had learned to ignore the stench. Like the others, he concentrated on their target, a round-bowed green boat loaded down with huge barrels overflowing with speckled yellow pears and shining red apples.

  Charley was in charge of the raiding party, and at a nod from him, Puddler and Plum and two others jumped with him onto the boat. Instantly one of the men on the dock, a big thick-necked fellow, roared a curse and raised a threatening fist.

  “Get off there! Get off there!” Betsy bellowed, running up after Charley. “Oh, sir, my brother’s not right in the head, please don’t hit him!” She clung to the man’s arm, and real tears ran down her face.

  “Get off my boat!” the man yelled, shaking his free fist. “Here, let go of me!”

  “Somebody help!” Betsy shouted, dangling from the big man’s arm like a doll. “You lot, get him! Don’t hurt him, he’s not in his right mind!”

  Jarvey and two other of the boys jumped to the deck, and Puddler joined them in tugging at Charley. “Come on, come on,” Puddler urged with a wink at Jarvey. “We know you love pears, but these ain’t yours to eat.”

  The boys’ shirts, belted at the waist, already bulged suspiciously with fruit, but Charley grabbed two pears and stuck one more into his gaping mouth. “Gd!” he said in a fruit-muffled voice.“’S gd!”

  “Drop them!” the man yelled as the others pretended to hustle Charley back onto the dock. Jarvey saw that the boat owner wasn’t going to get any help from the other boatmen, who were pointing and laughing and clearly enjoying the show.

  Betsy pleaded, “Sir, let him keep them! I—I’ll run home and fetch you the money. Pray, sir, my mother is very ill, and poor Adelbert isn’t in his right mind, and—”

  The man finally shook her off and glared after the retreating group of boys, already at the mouth of an alley. “Oh, get along with you,” he thundered. “But if any of you gang show your noses around here again, I’ll break ’em for you, understand?”

  Murmuring thanks, Betsy ran after the boys—and as soon as she joined them in the alley, she broke into laughter. “Charley, you should be on a stage, and no mistake,” she chortled. “You can act a fool better than anybody I know.”

  Jarvey laughed for the first time in what felt like weeks.

  “Stop your mouth with that,” Charley crowed back, tossing Betsy a yellow pear. “Got enough for a right feast here, haven’t we, boys?”

  “Half a bushel!” Puddler shot back, hefting the apples and pears he had stuffed down inside his baggy shirt.

  And then they emerged from the alley and saw the tippers, four of them, brandishing their staves and grinning. “Got ’em,” one of the big men said softly, tapping his staff in his left hand. “Round’em up and we’ll have ’em before the magistrate.”

  Betsy hit Jarvey hard on the back. “Scatter!”

  Apples and pears rolled underfoot. The gang flew headlong down the alley, with the tippers in hot pursuit. Their hobnailed boots rang on the cobbles, and Jarvey ran harder than he had ever run before.

  They burst out onto the wharves, Puddler diving to the right, Betsy and Charley to the left. Jarvey felt a hand swipe down his back, just missing him. Without thinking, he made a jump for the deck of the fruit ship. The owner howled in rage.

  Whirling, Jarvey grabbed a couple of apples. The tipper behind him was tangled with the boatman. Jarvey’s heart sank as he saw one of the black-clad tippers grab Betsy and lift her, kicking and shrieking, into the air. The tipper shoved the boatman away and started to take the long step onto the boat deck.

  Jarvey wound up and pitched, a fast apple to the face. The fruit smacked into the tipper’s scarlet forehead, and with a bellow, he missed his step, tumbling from the dock into the water. Jarvey kicked back and threw the second apple at the tipper carrying Betsy, but he was too far away and the missile fell short. Another tipper was blowing furiously on a whistle, and from down the wharves more of them showed up, coming at a steady trot. One of them pointed toward Jarvey.

  There was no way to escape—tippers closed in from left and right.

  Maybe there was one way: Jarvey leaped to the far side of the boat. The river was wide here, fifty yards across, and it looked deep. Jarvey threw himself off the deck, lowered his head, and felt the cold shock of water as he dived in.

  He plunged deep below the surface, holding his breath desperately. Using a kind of breaststroke, Jarvey followed the current, vaguely aware of the looming shadows of boats off to his right and overhead. Bars of green-tinged daylight streaked through the water.

  His lungs burned, but Jarvey forced himself to stay under. Another stroke, another, and another. He had gone incredibly far, farther than he should have been able to swim underwater, but he had to breathe.

  Instead, he blew bubbles and made himself swim under a boat, into the dark water under the pilings of a dock. At last he let himself come up, and the moment his head broke the surface, he gulped in a lungful of blessed air.

  Then he dived again and made his way still farther downstream. When he dared to come up a second time, he couldn’t hear any commotion. For a moment, Jarvey clung to the rough wood of a piling. Then, with infinite caution, he pulled himself up so he could peer over the edge of the wharf.

  This dock lay empty, and so was the next one, but then the boats began. Far down the line, he saw a crowd of tippers. One was stomping around and streaming water—the one who had fallen in the river, Jarvey decided. The others bent over, holding on to their captives. He couldn’t tell how many of the gang they h
ad caught. Two other tippers stood on the deck of the fruit boat and leaned far over as they repeatedly plunged long hooked poles down in the water.

  Fishing for me, he thought. They think I drowned back there.

  He began to shiver. For five or ten minutes he watched, and then the black-clad tippers turned away. A mob of them dragged at least two or three of the gang into the alley. Three or four others stood around talking to the boatmen.

  They weren’t looking his way. Jarvey slipped across the wharves. The buildings here were all warehouses. The handiest one sported a rusty old ladder leading up the wall to its flat roof. Jarvey didn’t even hesitate. He closed his hands on the rough rungs and pulled himself up. He felt a desperate strength in his arms, and something, some power, seemed to creep over his skin like a million busy ants. Steam curled from his sodden clothing. By the time he reached the roof, his clothes felt bone-dry. Wild art, he supposed. It couldn’t be the Grimoire, hidden back in the Den, but simple magic like this wouldn’t help him save the gang.

  The warehouses had been built so close together that getting from one roof to the next was at most a short jump, and usually just a long step. Crouching, hurrying, Jarvey set off in the direction of the alley. He couldn’t let the tippers take away his only friends.

  At least not without a fight.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hot Pursuit

  On the flat roof of another warehouse, Jarvey lay on his stomach and peered down at the cobblestoned street. Brassy yellow daylight lay over everything, casting weak, fuzzy shadows. Below, on the far side of the street, a few well-dressed Toffs ate at outdoor tables, laughing and chatting. No traffic moved in the street—none except a boxy green carriage, drawn by two midnight-black horses. As it slowly rumbled past, Jarvey could see the rear of the carriage, enclosed in iron bars, like a cage, and three pairs of hands gripping the bars. Shadows hid everything else inside the cage.

  A driver wearing the black leather uniform of a tipper hunched like a disgruntled vulture in the driver’s seat, one beefy red hand clutching the reins, the other a whip. Behind him, on a seat up on the roof of the carriage, two more black-clad tippers sat, their heads swiveling constantly as they scanned the alleys and street. Once the wagon had rolled past, Jarvey stood up and looked uncertainly ahead. He had two more flat roofs, and then he faced a wide space that he couldn’t hope to jump across.