The Kidnap Plot (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  KABOO-OOM!!!

  A hot wind whipped around Charlie’s ears. Burning wood rained down through the hole through which they’d entered and fell on stacks of lumber that filled the room.

  “It ain’t over yet!” Bob hollered.

  Again they ran.

  The building caught fire around them. It was a sawmill, with giant jagged-toothed circular-saw blades and chain belts heavy with lumber. As Charlie rushed out the front door and into the street, the wall sconces behind him exploded into jets of flame. Gas, he thought.

  He ran faster.

  A bucket brigade of men in shirtsleeves threw water on Cavendish Hats. Other men ran down the street, banging on the door of every building whose lights were out. Bells ringing at the end of the road announced the arrival of a fire wagon. Some of the fire bobbies, men in black rubber capes and steel helmets, spilled from the wagon, unrolled the stiffening hoses, and pointed them at the burning buildings.

  Charlie and his friends ran right through the crowd of shouting firemen, who charged in the opposite direction with axes and ladders over their shoulders. They ran down the street, turned a corner, and kept running until Grim pulled them all into the shadows under the elevated train tracks of a Sky Trestle station, where Charlie’s friends puffed and sweated and Ollie muttered things Charlie couldn’t quite hear.

  When he had finally caught his breath, Grim Grumblesson spoke. “Charlie Pondicherry,” he rumbled, “you are a very special boy.”

  “I thought you’d see it my way,” Bob said to the troll. He laughed and clapped his right hand on Charlie’s shoulder. Bob’s left arm hung at his side.

  Charlie looked around at his friends. They were singed, battered, and out of breath, but they were alive. “Thanks.” He smiled.

  “I think we ought to tell ’im,” Bob said.

  “No,” Henry Clockswain objected. “There’s nothing to tell, Charlie.”

  “What?” Charlie asked. “Is it something about Bap…about my father? Did we find another clue?”

  “It’s nothing about your dad,” Bob said to Charlie, and then he turned to Grim. “Look, wouldn’t you want to know, if it was you?”

  “I dunno,” Ollie said. “If he wants to keep a secret, let him.”

  “Your secret’s already out, my boy,” Gnat told Ollie.

  “I ain’t French.”

  Charlie looked around at his friends. There was a secret that everyone else knew.

  “I’m not keeping a secret,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Grim rumbled thoughtfully.

  Henry Clockswain folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not going to tell Raj Pondicherry’s son anything that Raj Pondicherry didn’t want to tell him himself.”

  “Thing is, Charlie,” Grim Grumblesson said, ignoring the kobold, “you’re a very special boy.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said again.

  “Get to the point,” Ollie muttered.

  “You’re so special, I don’t think there is another boy like you.” Grim furrowed his heavy brow. “You’re strong. Excellent balance and coordination. You can hold your breath a long time.”

  Charlie nodded. “True,” he agreed. He tried to keep his expression modest, but he couldn’t help poking his chest out a little bit.

  “Thing is,” Grim continued, “I think you could hold your breath forever, if you wanted to.”

  Charlie shook his head. “What?” All his friends watched him closely.

  “I think you could hold your breath forever,” Grim explained, “because your father…made you that way.”

  “That’s not right,” Charlie objected. “A person isn’t made.” This was as bad as the nonsense the Sinister Man had said to him. It was the same nonsense, in fact; the Sinister Man had called him a thing and said he had a maker.

  “I didn’t say you weren’t a person,” Grim said quietly. He dug into a pocket and handed Charlie back his bap’s hat with a look of apology; the brim of the hat had a hole punched through it. Charlie put the John Bull on and pulled its brim low over his eyes.

  “You have a mother, Charlie?” Ollie asked.

  “You ’ave a birthday?”

  “Do you need to eat and sleep?” Gnat stood on a low brick wall, resting her wings.

  Charlie shook his head. It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Raj Pondicherry was his bap, his father; he had always said he was Charlie’s father, and he had always treated Charlie as his son.

  It just couldn’t be true.

  Overhead, brakes squeaked as a train puffed slowly into the station. Charlie looked up at the train to avoid meeting his friends’ eyes. The station was lit by gas flames flickering inside pole-mounted glass bulbs, and Charlie could see the train clearly enough. Through the slats of the Sky Trestle he watched the brass piston arms connecting each wheel to the next pump, in and out in a hiss of vapor.

  The sight of the piston arms and the steam looked strangely familiar to Charlie. They reminded him of something, and he tried to think of what it could be.

  “Look at yourself in the mirror, Charlie,” Bob said gently. Charlie only half heard his friend.

  “The hulder!” Charlie snapped, realizing what was niggling at his thoughts. “The hulder who smokes scentless tobacco!”

  “Charlie…,” Ollie said. “Don’t go ducking the issue.”

  “Yeah, mate,” Bob agreed. “Everybody thinks you’re a good lad, whether or not you’re the real thing. I mean, the natural thing.”

  “No, listen! One of the hulders who kidnapped my father let off fumes, remember? Smoke that I couldn’t smell.”

  Grim frowned. “You saw him smoking a pipe.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I thought he was smoking a pipe, because he let off smoke. All I actually saw was the smoke. And he was at Cavendish Hats tonight. And I saw the smoke again, but I didn’t see any pipe. Did you see one?”

  Grim frowned deeper and shook his head. “It was dark, and then everything was on fire and covered with rats. Also, lots of people were hitting me at the time.”

  “What are you talking about, Charlie?” Gnat asked.

  Charlie pointed up at the train, even though the pistons weren’t in sight anymore. “What if the smoke wasn’t from a pipe at all?”

  Grim smacked himself between the horns with the palm of one hand. “You mean, what if it was steam from a mechanical arm?”

  “Yes,” Charlie agreed. “Exactly. Or leg, or something. Is that possible? Can people have mechanical parts?”

  “That’s the ’ole discussion we were just ’aving, Charlie,” Bob murmured.

  “It isn’t a leg; it’s an arm!” Grim thundered. “No wonder it hurt so hard when he punched me!” He shook his big head, then squatted down to get face-to-face with Charlie. “Remember I told you there aren’t many hulders in London?”

  Charlie nodded. “That’s why you want to become a human solicitor. To get more business.”

  Grim shrugged. “Well, there’s a troll in London with a mechanical arm. Rough troll, a criminal. A notorious troll. I don’t know him personally, but I know how we can find him.”

  “ ’Ow’s that, then?” Bob asked. “London’s a big place.”

  “Easy.” Grim looked annoyed. “He drinks milk.”

  Grim paid for them all, trading shillings with a slot-mouthed automaton for copper train tokens. Charlie stared at the bell-shaped token vendor while Grim worked with it. Its face was a slot to take coins below a vertical brass plate with distances and prices stamped on it. There were buttons to the side of the plate by which Grim chose the distance he wanted to travel, and an arm on the side he pulled when he’d inserted enough money. The vendor whirred softly as it digested the coins, each stamped with the profile of Queen Victoria, and clicked as it spat into a tray farther down tokens marked with the face of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

  How could Charlie’s friends think this token vendor was a closer relative to him than his bap? Charlie felt g
ray and empty, and he leaned against the wall for support.

  But he was closer to finding his father, he was sure of it. The Cavendish Hats clue had led to the warehouse and back to the one-armed troll who had kidnapped his bap. He couldn’t see it all yet, but a picture was coming together.

  But was Raj Pondicherry his bap, after all?

  Charlie couldn’t believe he was just a thing. He wouldn’t believe it.

  He didn’t know what to believe.

  “I’m glad the train is still running this late.” Charlie said it mostly to distract himself.

  “Course it is.” Ollie puffed up his chest. “This is London. The Sky Trestle don’t stop for a little darkness.”

  Once they had their tokens, the red-brick-and-brass station was quiet. Here, too, the light came from gas sconces set into the walls six feet off the ground. Brass pipes crawled around the room at the floor level, probably circulating hot water so the station would be comfortable even in winter. Charlie was just noticing that the same pipes also seemed to operate the latch that opened windows to cool the station when their train arrived.

  “Let’s have a look at your arm, then,” Ollie said to Bob as they climbed up the short ladder and found seats on the wooden benches of the train.

  Thud!

  “Ow.” Grim rubbed his head where he’d banged it on the top of the train’s door. The other passengers in the car all tried not to stare at the troll.

  No one noticed Charlie.

  “Nah.” Bob refused, and he pulled away when Ollie reached for his shoulder. “It ain’t nothing.” But his arm hung limp at his side, and the aeronaut poked a finger tenderly around his own biceps.

  Grim sank onto a bench with his eyes shut. “Tell me when we get there,” he rumbled.

  Charlie looked out the window as they rode back to Whitechapel. The Sky Trestle rested on the tops of buildings or rode on columns just above them. Arriving at and leaving stations, the train rolled slowly. In between, it hurtled like a comet. Charlie pressed his face to the cold glass of the window and forgot about everything until Gnat pulled him away because they had reached their destination.

  The station’s steps dropped down in front of a length of stone castle wall, right where a broad street narrowed to crawl between two ancient stone towers and under a portcullis. “This is Aldgate,” Grim told him. The troll was visibly relieved to be standing on solid ground, and his eyes were open. He pulled Charlie close to his side and pointed up the road. “Whitechapel High Street. We’re almost back to my place.”

  The city streets were dark and wet. Charlie didn’t see any hulders or pixies on the short walk to Grim’s rooms. He did see a dwarf wagon, big-wheeled and gold-painted. It rested in the mouth of an alley, and two dwarfs sat beside it, tending a small fire in a ring of uprooted cobblestones. A large cat with tasseled ears curled around the fire opposite them, and all three of them watched a bird being roasted on a spit over the flame. The dwarfs’ gold earrings and green silk scarves shimmered in the firelight, and Charlie shuddered, remembering the dwarfs of the Iron Cog who had covered up his bap’s kidnapping.

  Tumblewain Close was mostly dark, with a puddle of yellow light around Grim Grumblesson’s door, thrown from a lamp high in the wall above. “Going to draw some water for a bath.” Grim turned the key in the lock. “Anyone else want to wash up?”

  No one answered, so Grim plodded up the stairs alone. The chimney sweeps collapsed on soft chairs in the office and instantly fell asleep, Ollie with his bowler hat over his eyes and Bob after buckling the chin straps of his bomber. Charlie hung his bap’s hat on a hook in the hallway wall.

  Henry Clockswain stopped by the door, twisting his toes in the ground. “My, er, garret’s around the corner,” he said. He held up the button he’d accidentally twisted from his own jacket and smiled apologetically. “I’ll fix this, and I’ll be right back.” The kobold slipped out into the yellow lamplight.

  Charlie stood in the doorway, holding it open and watching Henry Clockswain disappear down the close. He badly wanted to run out into the darkness and…do something. He shoved his hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his bap’s pipe. The feel of the rounded bowl in his hand instantly brought memories of his bap puffing smoke in the reception room with clients, or over a bubbling pot of chicken curry in the workshop.

  “I’d give you a penny for your thoughts,” he heard Gnat say, “only I don’t carry pennies on my person. I find them too large to be convenient.”

  Charlie kept his hand on the pipe. “I don’t know what my thoughts are. Only…I feel like I should be with my father. Or home. Or something.”

  “It’s been a long night, Charlie, and we’re doing all we can,” the pixie said. “Now come inside.”

  Slowly, Charlie obeyed.

  Natalie de Minimis perched at a high stool beside Grim’s desk and made faces while she arched her back. The stool was just the right height to give the pixie access to the desktop, and it sat next to a stack of papers with minuscule writing on them.

  Charlie sat down, still secretly holding the pipe. “I’m sorry about Seamus,” he said. “And Elisabel. And your mother. That’s a very hard way to end your tithe.”

  “Aye, ’tis. And I’m sorry about your father.”

  “I don’t see how I can ever find him. London is so big.”

  Natalie de Minimis rested a tiny hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “You’re not alone.”

  Charlie nodded, then tried to change the subject. “I thought you were very brave at Cavendish Hats,” he offered. “I mean, the way you did all that fighting! And then you saved Grim.”

  “Nay, ’twas you who saved the big fellow.” The pixie shrugged. “Well, perhaps we all did it together.”

  “Maybe. I was thinking that tonight you’ve performed one of your three great feats.”

  Gnat laughed. Her laughter sounded delighted, but also tired. “Oh, were you? The Battle of Cavendish Hats, was it, and its great hero Natalie de Minimis?” She threw her hair back and struck a pose, one hand pointed at the sky as if she were a military statue, holding a sword.

  Charlie nodded.

  “Well, I thank you. Sadly, I think it’ll not be up to the expectations of the good folk of Underthames, and that’s who I need to satisfy. Three great feats’ll be like”—she searched for examples—“three mighty beasts slain, or three magical items recovered, or three lost princes rescued.”

  “That sounds exciting,” Charlie said. “It also sounds hard.”

  “Aye,” Gnat agreed. She winked. “But I’ve got a year to do it, and I’m my mother’s daughter.”

  “What about the rats?” Charlie asked. “Elisabel and that big rat with all the scars, Scabies, they were plotting. Can’t you just…I don’t know…tell people about it?”

  Gnat nodded slowly. “I could. But I’d not be believed by most people, because Elisabel is the baroness, and she’s saved Underthames from the rats, or at least they believe she has. And you would come with me and be another witness, and so would Grim and the lads. And you’d not be believed either, because you’re uplanders. You’re not pixies.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I don’t understand. You can’t tell a…a fairy judge, or something?”

  “There is no judge in Underthames,” Natalie de Minimis said. “There is only the baroness.”

  “So you have to become the baroness.” It was a strange way of thinking, but Charlie was coming to understand. “And to do that, you have to challenge Elisabel. And to do that, you have to perform three great feats.”

  “Aye,” the pixie said. “I’ve got my people as well as my love to save. So I’ve got to slay three dragons.” She looked Charlie up and down and nodded at the hallway and the stairs. “You might consider Grim’s offer of a bath, you know. You’ve been in the sewers, and you’re a bit of a sight.”

  “What about you?” Charlie asked. “Your clothes got dirty, too.”

  Gnat looked down at her red dress, which was quite bedraggl
ed. “Aye,” she agreed. “But I think I may wear this a little while yet.”

  A bath sounded good to Charlie, so he climbed the stairs. He finally let go of his bap’s pipe as he knocked on the only shut door in the upstairs hallway.

  “Come in!” Grim roared.

  Compared to the wooden tub and spigot of hot water in the corner of the workroom of Pondicherry’s Clockwork Invention & Repair, the bathroom was luxurious. There were two tall windows with thick white curtains, and green carpet covered the entire floor. There was an enormous flush toilet in one corner and a sink with hot and cold faucets in another. In the center of the floor rested a big brass tub full of soapy water.

  In the tub sat Grim: big, paunchy, and muscular, with a skirt of soap bubbles around his waist. His hair was white and sudsy, and he was scrubbing away at his scalp with all ten fingers. He was humming something, but the tune didn’t sound cheerful. It sounded fast and nervous.

  The troll’s body was covered with cuts and bruises. To Charlie’s astonishment, the wounds were healing so fast he could actually see them close and disappear.

  “You can have the tub next, if you like,” Grim offered.

  Charlie nodded and went to the sink. Over the basin hung a large mirror, and he inspected himself. He was filthy. His fingernails were black. His hair was matted and thick with chunks of something he hoped was mud. His clothing was caked almost black.

  And his skin was bronze.

  He had always thought of himself as having his father’s complexion, but now he saw that wasn’t true. His bap was brown-skinned, like a chestnut. Charlie’s complexion was metallic in color, coppery red. It could be human skin, he thought, but it might be something else. He prodded his own face. He didn’t feel like metal, not quite, but now that he was thinking about it, the flesh of his face didn’t feel like normal human flesh either.

  Was the Sinister Man right about him? Was he just another thing, just a device like the Articulated Gyroscopes?

  “The creams,” Charlie murmured to himself. “Bap was hiding what I look like from other people.” His voice hardened. “But I’m not a thing.”