My hands spring to my to cheeks to quiet the sting. I wince, under the familiar stench of his sour curdled breath.
“This is brilliant, really.” He touches the eyes on the mask, his hand jerking back when the lids flutter shut. “It really is the perfect untraceable disguise. That is, if you don’t mind wearing the face of the dead.” He tosses the mask aside. It hits the floor with a soggy thud, too far away for me to retrieve it. “I knew you’d return,” he hisses at me. ”No good having the machine if you don’t know how it works, is it? And you—” he turns on Urlick. “Who might you really be?”
He rips the mask from Urlick’s face, then stumbles backward, aghast. “Unbelievable. Winston’s son’s come home to roost.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The prodigal son of Professor Goddard shows up at last. I knew you had to be out there somewhere—”
“How do you know who I am?” Urlick stumbles to his feet, stunned.
“I’ve always known, I just didn’t know you were still alive, not for sure.
Though I had my suspicions. I suppose it would have behooved me to have tried to find my property sooner.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’re mine. You’ve been mine since birth.”
“What?”
“Your father. He signed you over to me. You’re a registered specimen.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a document. “It’s all right here. You’re property of the Academy. Missing property, presumed dead. A little charade your father obviously tried to play. I had Radcliffe dig it out of the archives on a hunch when I heard we had a mysterious intruder...who looked an awful lot like your father.”
Urlick lurches, snatching the document from Smrt’s hand.
“Go ahead. Read it.”
Registered specimen 29663.
Male: 8 pounds, 13 and one half ounces.
Distinguishable markings: Port Wine-stains on face and neck, pink eyes, albino-like pigmented skin.
Category: Severe Deformity affecting mental stability. Prognosis: Extermination.
Donated by Sir Winston Goddard Babbit. February 27th in the year of our Ruler, Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Two.
Urlick looks up. Shocked. Breathless. His hands tremble.
As do mine.
“That is the day of your birth, isn’t it?” Smrt rolls his hands.
“It’s not true! It can’t be true!” The muscles at the sides of Urlick’s jaw clench. “My father signed me over to the nursemaid, not you!” Urlick spits.
“The nursemaid?” Smrt’s eyes jump in their sockets. “I was told you were lost to the Vapours in transport.” His brows rise. “I guess that confirms we’ve both been lied to, haven’t we?”
“If it’s true, then why did my father accept me when I was returned to him? Why didn’t he just turn me over to you?”
“Good question.” Smrt circles Urlick, eyeing him like a racehorse at market. “He was in clear violation of the law. Perhaps he had plans of his own for you. Can’t blame him really, seeing you now.” He reaches out, stroking Urlick’s cheek. “You are a very special one, aren’t you? Pink eyes, white skin, dark hair...mostly…” He flips the one stray lock of white hair away from Urlick’s eyes, and grabs him by the chin. “You truly are a freak of nature. The lab will be so thrilled.”
Urlick jerks his chin away. “You’re a liar! You just made that paper up!”
“How could I, when I didn’t know, until moments ago, that you even still existed? Besides, who could deny those tattered edges?”
Urlick looks down at the card in his hands, then back up.
"My, my, my," Smrt tsks, sizing up Urlick's face. "You really are the spitting image of your mother under all that nastiness, aren’t you? She was a good-looking woman, your mother. ’Course, you’d have no way of knowing that.”
Urlick’s fists ball at his sides. I reach over, taking one of his fists in my hand.
“What’s this?” Smrt notices. “How charming! The pink-eyed monster has a love interest. Though I can’t say my daughter will be impressed. Radcliffe!” He snaps his fingers and the second voice from the hallway appears, producing a struggling Flossie from behind his back. He holds her tightly by the arm.
“I believe you’ve met my daughter?” Smrt grins, rolling an Insectatron around in his palm. “A.K.A. my messenger.”
“I knew it,” I breathe.
“Seems the arrival of your so-called ‘cousin’ here”—he flips a look at me—“tweaked my little Flossie’s jealousy antennae enough to contact her dear old dad. After a brief exchange of information”—he holds up the Ladybird—“I realized what a fool I’d been, believing her story about her needy little student in the woods.” He glares at Urlick. “Lucky for me, her love for you pales in comparison to her desire to gain her estranged father’s approval. Always the way, isn’t it?”
Urlick glares at Flossie across the room. “How could you do this? I trusted you!”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen!” Flossie shrieks, struggling against her captor. “You have to believe me, Urlick! I only brought you to his attention to try to protect you. I had no idea who you were! I didn’t know any of this before today!” She sobs. “I thought you were unwittingly abetting a dangerous fugitive! I was only trying to save you! I didn’t want to see you go to jail!”
“Liar.”
“Oh, come now, Urlick, you mustn’t blame the girl.” Smrt laughs. “Fool that she is, she’s been keeping your secret for years. Fearful that I’d disapprove of the looks of her love interest, she had me believing the ‘special student’ in her charge out in the Follies suffered from a hole in the heart. She lied for you. Never gave me a description. Never even told me your address. If she had, I’d have found you years ago. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the memory plate match to your deceased father at the gates, I might never have put this all together. But I have.”
Urlick swallows.
“I win. You lose.” Smrt turns and snaps his fingers. “Radcliffe. Call the guards. Let them know we have a specimen that needs locking up—”
“NO!” Flossie screams.
“You can’t do this.” Urlick lurches forward. “You’ll never get away with it.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to stop me. This is not the Follies. There are laws in this part of the Commonwealth. In Brethren, a man is due his property, and those who take it from him go to jail. Not only are you legally my specimen, I have it on good word”—he flashes a smile at Flossie—“but you have something else that belongs to me. A certain machine...hidden in your basement.”
He turns toward the door. “Radcliffe!”
“Wait! If you knew we were coming, why didn’t you just arrest us the second we got through the gates?” Urlick stalls. I can see by the look in his eyes he’s cooking up some kind of plan.
“Come now, what fun would that have been?” Smrt smiles. “Besides, I needed to give you enough time to make the discovery.” He eyes the journals on the floor. Bending, he scoops one up. “You have no idea how many times I’ve gone over this room in search of these.” He stares at me coldly. “I should have known to employ your skills sooner—”
“I never would have employed them for you.”
“You’d have done whatever I told you!”
He closes in on me. Anger burns in his eyes. “The moment your mother passed away, you became a ward of the Commonwealth, property of the Ruler, to do with as he sees fit.”
“What are you talking about?”
He leans. “Things have changed in your brief little stint away from Brethren. Let me catch you up. The Ruler of Brethren is dead and I’ve taken his place.”
“How is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible in a world where you can write your own laws. And where the Ruler leaves no male successor.”
I swallow as Smrt grins.
“As law would dictate, upon his tragic and unexpected death, in lieu of an heir, all the Rule
r’s powers transferred to me.”
“Who arranged that?”
“Who do you think?” Smrt reaches for his palsy puffer, inhales, and slowly lets it seep out through his teeth.
“How convenient,” mumbles Urlick.
“Seems the Ruler contracted some form of toxic disease,” Smrt goes on. “Despite all his efforts to keep Brethreners safe. Poor man, passing as quickly he did, and in such an agonizingly horrible way. He died the same way poor Mrs. Benson did.” He looks at me. “You remember Mrs. Benson, don’t you? I believe you were given the first picto-ray of the coins in her purse, at the carnival?” He stares.
Those eyes. Smrt’s dead lark eyes. It was he. The carnie. The one peddling the prototype of the Illuminator at the carnival that day. My Illuminator.
Not his.
“Oh, how the Ruler loved to get drunk and take photographs of himself with his little miracle machine. More than a hundred picto-rays were found taken of his lungs alone, I’m told. Not to mention all those he took of his brain.”
I suck in a nervous breath, thinking back to the words of my father’s letter. “You killed them,” I whisper. “You killed the Ruler, didn’t you? You set it all up to take his place. You killed them all. Mrs. Benson, my father, too—”
“I never killed your father, he killed himself!”
Out the corner of my eye I see Urlick reaching for something. A flicker of light passes over the mirrored glass. I turn just in time to see him crack a beaker over the sideboard. Shards of glass rain to the floor.
Urlick wheels around, the jagged remains of the beaker in his hand. “Don’t move!” he shouts, swinging it up under Smrt’s chin. He swipes the journal from Smrt’s hand and lofts it to me across the room. “Run!” he shouts, “and don’t look back!”
“But—”
“I’m right behind you,” he reads my mind.
I catch it and scoop two more up off the floor before bursting out the door, knocking Radcliffe to his arse along the way.
I race up the corridor and into the next, taking refuge behind Aphrodite to catch my breath, hoping Urlick will think to find me there. Before he can, I hear boots and I’m off again, racing up the stairs to the second floor.
“There!” A voice jolts me to a stop, and I race the opposite way up the hall, rounding a corner, journals clutched to my chest. Someone’s breath falls hard at my back.
Fingers thread through mine, then fall away, and I nearly scream at the touch of them. “This way,” someone shouts. It’s Urlick. He’s caught up. He reaches out. “Give me your hand.”
I do, and he whirls around another corner.
“After them!” Smrt’s voice charges up the back stairs. His henchmen leap them two at a time.
I turn my head. Guards charge from all directions. “They’re everywhere!” I shout.
Urlick slows, locking our fingers, and flings me around another corner. “Don’t stop!” He pushes me ahead of him. “Keep running! No matter what happens, just keep running and don’t look back!”
I surge forward, twisting up two more corridors, wondering if he’s following. At the last turn I’m relieved to hear him drop from the banister behind me, shoes landing hard in the hall. “I may have bought us some time,” he says, racing up beside me. “At least I hope I have.”
He grabs my hand and we race down the next corridor, sliding to a stop at its end.
“What now?” I gasp, staring at the window. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“Like this.” Urlick pops the latch, and the towering garrison windows swing open, revealing a small balcony overlooking a monstrous tree.
“What are you doing?” I cry, as Urlick grabs me by the arm and stuffs me through, leaving me to teeter on the ledge.
“See that drainpipe there?” He points. “I want you to swing your leg over it and shinny down.”
“You want me to what?”
“Listen to me—” He grabs my chin.
“But—”
“No ‘buts.’ You’re going down.”
“But Urlick—” I gaze at the ground. My stomach lurches up.
“I’ll meet you at the quarry where we left the cycle. Do you remember how to get there?”
“No.” I shake my head.
“Call your magic bird.” He grins at me. “I’m sure she’ll help you find the way. Now go!” He pushes.
“Wait!” I cling to him. “What about the windows?”
“I’ll lock them behind you.”
“And Smrt?”
“He’ll never suspect a thing.”
“What about you? How will you get away?”
“Don’t worry about me.” He twists. Combat boots thunder up the hallway. “I’ll find a way. Now go!”
Voices fill the corridor. Urlick’s head jerks around.
“Oh, and Eyelet—” he pulls me back in. His lips graze the side of my cheek as he speaks. “If I’m not there in thirty minutes, leave without me.”
“Never,” I say.
Urlick grins.
I disappear through the window, swing my leg out over the drainpipe, and shinny down, my feet meeting hard with the grass.
A symphony of shouts pour through the cracks in the stone wall. Gunshots ring out, jerking my head back to the window.
Oh, Urlick. Please be safe.
Thirty eight
Urlick
I lock the window behind Eyelet, race up the corridor, and slip between the pillars into the next hall. Smrt’s guards converge on the landing, blocking the stairs completely. Blast it! There’s no other way out.
I lean, seeing another set of guards closing in from the opposite end, and yet another charge filling in the opening in the hall below. I’m surrounded. Literally surrounded. Nowhere to go but up.
I tip my chin, searching the ceiling for possibilities. A chandelier. I grin.
Wasting no time, I sink my feet into the carved leaves at the base of the pillar I’m hiding behind and shinny up it, reaching for the wrought-iron curls of the massive chandelier hanging overhead. My arms looped through the curls, I unlock my legs from the pillar and swing out over the heads of my pursuers, crystals droplets tinkling.
“There he is!” a guard shouts as I sail past. I drop from the fixture into the ballroom below, scramble to my feet, and run.
Smrt’s henchmen follow close behind.
I round the corner to the lower set of stairs, leaping over the shocked head of a rogue guard, ride the banister, and spring arch-backed from the bottom.
“Stop him!” the guard shouts, turning and galloping down the stairs.
I bolt through the lobby out into the great hall and then up a dark corridor—where the barrels of two armed and ready steamrifles confront me. Guards peer over their ends.
“Don’t move.” One of the guards cocks his gun. “Or your little girlfriend will never see you again.”
My shoes stagger to a halt.
I stand there a moment gasping for breath, my eyes searching for a way out. In a flash of glass I see an opening. Like lightning, I double back, skipping over bullets, and launch myself through a doorway, skittering headlong through the back of a kitchen, toppling rack after rack of pots and pans in my wake. Cooks, scullery maids and servants scatter, wearing looks of horror on their faces. A barrage of screams erupts.
I crash through a set of swing doors at the back of the room, gallop through the ballroom, up a slim corridor, and throw open the doors to a pantry, where a small boy startles and gasps. The stockpot of steaming water in his hands falls to the floor, metal pot yowling as it conks the stone. Scalding water slops forward, lapping the toes of my shoes. The boy’s chin wags. He screws up his face, prepared to bawl.
“No,” I wave my hands. “Don’t, please, I beg you.”
But he wails anyway, letting out an ear-puncturing screech. I dive at him, throw my hand over his mouth, and drag him with me backward into the cupboard, slamming the door behind us.
“If you promise not to scre
am again, I promise I won’t hurt you.” The whites of the boy’s eyes bulge in the dark pantry. “Do we have a deal?”
The boy snivels and nods.
“You’re sure? You promise you won’t scream, if I lift my hand from your mouth?”
The boy nods again.
Slowly I lift my hand, expecting an eruption, pleased when one doesn’t come. “Do you know what this is?” I say, reaching, pulling a gadget from my pack.
The boy gasps. He looks at me, confused, worried, serious. “A peeler,” he says. His voice quivers. His eyes plead with me not to stab him with it, and I realize I may have just made things worse.
“It’s not just any old peeler,” I whisper quickly. “It’s a magical one.” I click a mechanism on its side and it coughs up a blade. The silver glints in the din of the closet. The boy smiles, elated.
He reaches for it and I pull it back. “Ah ah ah…” I say. “First you have to help me get out of here. Deal?”
He smiles.
“You see, I’m playing a little game of hide-and-seek with the guards, and so far I’m winning. You don’t want me to lose, do you?”
The boy shakes his head.
“Good, ’cause I don’t want to lose either. But I’m going to lose if they find me in here. I need to find another way out. Do you know another way for me to escape without using the door?”
The boy frowns.
“Come now, surely a curious little boy like you knows some secret passageway. Another door, maybe? A hole in the wall?”
The boy bursts into a smile. He scrambles to the backside of the closet, revealing a dumbwaiter inside the wall, behind a cupboard door.
“Well done!” I ruffle his hair as I climb in. “Now,” I whisper, the sound of boots approaching. “I want you to count to ten, then open the door very slowly. Do you hear me?”
The boy nods.
“You can count to three, can’t you?”
He nods again.
“Good, here you are.” I drop the peeler into his hand and his eyes light up. Boots scuffle outside the door.
“Now don’t forget,” I lower my voice, “a full count of ten then, step out with your hands raised. That’s very important. Don’t forget that bit. The guards don’t like it if you don’t play by the rules.”
Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) Page 23
