by Kim Newman
‘It doesn’t matter what you do,’ said Amy. ‘We’ve already won.’
Quell pushed Headers away, with a knee in the back. The wire uncoiled with a slicing snick, leaving a nasty red weal… and cutting through skin. Drops of blood welled.
The taste in Amy’s mouth was overpowering, like a swallow of raw curry powder or boiling water.
She saw red… as…
Quell made her way up through the basement window like a coalman, with Nightcap in the makeshift sack slung over her shoulder.
Amy could have stopped them, but was distracted.
She saw the smear on Haldane’s neck and fingers.
Her teeth were sharp. Headers’ pulses quickened.
‘Thomsett, what’s wrong with you?’ croaked the Head Girl. ‘Your eyes are awful.’
Amy raised her hands and reached out for Haldane.
But with her mentacles, she unsnapped the cloak fastening and shucked it, spreading her true-coloured wings.
Kentish Glory, not Death’s-head.
The taste and the craze went away.
But everything was dark. Then she saw again – in gloom. Quell had left a lantern behind.
The cloak fell onto the train set with a slither, a giant bat knocked out of the sky by ground guns.
She even fancied the thing gave out a rat screech at being separated from her.
Had it been impaled on the weathervane of the doll’s house?
No, the material wasn’t pierced.
‘That’s better,’ she said, suddenly feeling the cold, grateful she could feel anything.
What had the cloak done to her?
‘I’m still marking you down, Thomsett. What were you thinking? Who’s side are you on?’
Amy’s shoulders itched, and she felt a rash on her neck and cheeks, as if the cloak collar were lined with a thousand tiny mosquito probosces that had stuck into her skin and suckled on her blood.
The cloak lay black-side down, showing its lining.
While wrapped around Amy, the silk had healed. The mould was gone except for a few small spots and the once-mottled lining was rich scarlet. Even the wolfshead clasp was shining gold.
Amy wished the cloak had been torn.
She also wished it had flattened the doll’s house.
Villa DeVille was unoccupied, but the Count – and, she thought, other tenants not on anyone’s books – left evil things behind.
Devlin sat up, rubbing her more-or-less normal head.
So Nightcap didn’t send people to Bedfordshire for long. The Draycott’s girls she’d clapped out might be awake too – and liable to be annoyed and dangerous.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Amy said. ‘Hang as many stains on me as you want. I sent Larry ahead. She’s got three tobies.’
Devlin saw the pieces of the broken prize on the train table. Experimentally, she put them together. If she stretched her fingers to press certain spots, the toby looked whole.
‘And that jug either counts as a point or can’t be claimed by any other team,’ said Amy.
Headers was doubtful. Her red weal made an ugly necklet.
‘We’ve won,’ said Amy. ‘Drearcliff Spirit!’
XIV: The Last Leg
THE FOG WAS finally thinning. Pre-dawn light stained half the sky, outlining the Palace of Westminster. The government lived in a gothic fortress like the castle home Count DeVille abandoned for addresses in Purfleet and Piccadilly. Close to sunrise, the Houses of Parliament had a purple tinge. Amy had a flash of terror. Did chalk lines on the flagstones lead to the basements Guy Fawkes filled with gunpowder barrels? What broken things lay forgotten down there? Promises or puppets?
The clock faces were illuminated. She could tell the time.
Ten minutes to six.
Close to the Finish.
She was bone-weary, uncomfortably damp and horribly sure she’d never cough the taste of London out of her mouth. Her cloak-scratched neck itched angrily. Yet she was exhilarated.
Soon, Big Ben would toll the hour in celebration.
The Great Game was won. Hurrah for Drearcliff Grange! Victory at dawn!
Her party – Haldane, Devlin and Knowles, with Dyall trailing at a safe distance – managed a last spurt of pep, speeding up to a trot along Great George Street.
She had a twinge about Bok. Should they have made the effort to collect their fallen teammate? The poor girl was presumably huddled in a Fitzrovian alley, nursing a knackered knee. Amy could have led an expedition to retrieve her. Larry must already be home free with the tobies safe, so Amy didn’t actually need to be in at the kill… but she didn’t want to miss the Finish. A measure of crowing was merited, to pay Draycott’s back for a year of hog-grunting. She hoped Quell was there to have her nose rubbed in it a bit. Also, she wanted to see Sausage’s face as her ‘gels’ came through for the school.
When they were back at Drearcliff Grange, hailed as heroines of the term, she’d make it up to Bok. If medals were awarded for wounds sustained in the line of duty, Bok should be honoured. She wasn’t the only casualty. Knowles was discombobulated. Devlin was out of shape. Even Haldane had a red weal around her throat. Headers would have to wear a scarf unless she planned to infract herself for Impertinent Scarification.
Leaving Villa DeVille, Amy had checked on the Amphibaeopteryx. Floating to the treetop and listening at the gondola, she was relieved to hear the soft sounds of sleeping children not murdering each other. Well past Lights Out for the Brain-Boxes. From her vantage point, she scanned the garden for Draycott’s stragglers. Purdie was out of her box and Fire gone from the stairs. Either scarpered or in hiding. Like Clever Dick’s prodigies, Draycott’s were handicapped by lack of discipline. Let off the leash, they were as likely to bolt for the hills as play the Game.
That didn’t make sense to Amy.
Indeed, things about the whole night troubled her.
‘You’re not still playing that Gormless Game?’ Quell had exclaimed. ‘Deuced dogs, but your clock’ll be red at the Finish. Not ’alf it won’t.’
Amy supposed the Draycott’s Captain was trying to throw her off.
She also remembered Sterlyng’s I-know-summat-you-don’t expression.
‘Don’t mind me, Miss Glory. I’m out of play. You just keep going as you are. School Spirit rah rah rah! We’ll get you back next year.’
Loose threads, all around – harder to follow than chalk lines.
Another game was being played inside the Great Game. An Invisible Game. She was on the field without knowing the rules, the sides and how to win or lose. Just that the result would be a Significant Notch – White or Black.
Walking from Piccadilly to Parliament, she’d gone over the events of the night several times. She scoured her fresh memories the way Miss Borrodale advised regarding a room that might be booby-trapped. Amy tested every moment, as if it were deceptive… awaiting explosive realisation.
No, she couldn’t see it.
‘You’re floating again,’ said Stretch.
Amy had to concentrate to keep her feet on the ground and not zoom ahead of the pack. As Captain, Headers should take the lead. She’d said little since her rescue from the wire noose. She hadn’t mentioned a single thing they would find about her for hours.
Amy suspected Haldane was mentally drafting her report, with an annotated list of infractions and suggested punishments. Lucretia Lamarcroft’s brother Casimir had written a book that made politicians, newspapers and bigwigs apoplectic. In Caught Between the Kaiser and the Cuckoos, he said the only realistic way of fighting a war was to ignore idiots whose orders would get their men killed. Then – after a battle was won by improvisation, daring and sheer bloody-mindedness – the ‘cuckoos’ had to be convinced their shining inspiration rather than their mutton-headed tactics had saved the day.
It was touch-and-go with Haldane. She wasn’t happy with the team’s showing, even if they had won. At least Headers couldn’t send girls who knew the whole story on suicide missions to
stop their mouths. Cuckoos had tried that wheeze on Casimir Lamarcroft several times. He’d come back with medals, which he wore every time he had to share a platform with armchair Alexanders who’d got no closer to the front than the officers’ club in Aldershot. Amy had cut a picture of Casimir out of The Illustrated London News and stuck it up by her cot, along with pictures of her father, Dr Shade and the Aviatrix. He was an Old Humblebumbler, proving some good could come out of the place.
Amy wasn’t sure about her own conduct. She’d earned any infractions Haldane stuck in her timetable book. She’d made too many mistakes. Putting on that cloak, for one – though she’d an inkling it helped for a while, even as it whispered in her mind and scratched her neck. With the bat-thing settled on her shoulders, she’d seen better in the dark. That was odd, since bats were famously poor-sighted and got about by echolocation. More worryingly, she’d not always conducted herself according to School Spirit. She’d left Bok to be captured or worse. That would tell against her if the secret lesson of the Game turned out to be to value living comrades over tokens like toby jugs.
It was boldness of a sort to bite Stephen Swift’s hand, but using teeth in a scrap went against the Code of Break. A paladin should be better than a Wrong ’Un, even in desperate struggle. Amy hadn’t been wearing the cloak while fighting Miss Steps, so couldn’t blame its wicked influence.
‘Where was that crooked man who whipped his crooked dog?’ sing-songed Knowles. ‘He stole a crooked ha’penny, left on a crooked log… misled a crooked girl, who gorged on crooked cream… and they all drowned together in a little crooked stream.’
Miss Memory had been babbling for hours.
Devlin saw her cellmate didn’t go astray. She had a grip on Knowles’ shoulder, and her arm stretched like a dog lead. One wrist – a knobbly, muscular stick – showed nine inches of skin between sleeve and hand.
Amy fixed her attention on the Clock Tower. They were nearly in its shadow.
Rumour had it that Dr Shade maintained an autogiro hangar behind the clockface. Was he inside the mechanism, spying on the Finish?
The Splendid Six sponsored the Brain-Boxes, but Dr Shade seemed above the Great Game. A lone wolf among paladins. Romantic, but not Drearcliff Spirit. Was the man behind the black surgeon’s mask lonely? He had those loved ones to protect, but Amy didn’t imagine a Mrs Shade waiting at home with shadow children, serving up bacon and eggs when the Doctor flapped home after a long night’s battle with Spring-Heel’d Jackanapes. If he had close family, they were most likely dead, murdered long ago. His grim demeanour suggested he took evil personally. He’d not drop a girl from the team for justifiable biting of a sherat like Miss Steps. His cloak was as black as any on the DeVille wardrobe rail.
‘Hulloo, Drearcliff!’ came a cheery shout. ‘Wait for us.’
It was Frecks.
The party stopped in their tracks – except Knowles, who skipped on for a few paces, extending Devlin’s arm. Stretch brought Miss Memory to heel.
Wading through fog, coming from the direction of Westminster Abbey, was a familiar trio. Frecks wore a deerstalker hat two sizes too big for her, sloshed over her silver coif. Kali had acquired an old-fashioned policeman’s helmet and truncheon. Light Fingers clutched a Gladstone bag.
‘We have wild tales to tell thee, miladies bold,’ announced Frecks. ‘Of mystery and mayhem in a mansion flat of murder… of writing on the wall and bloodstains on the carpet… clues all over the shop… and a merciless, cunning coven of Draycott’s dozies who got the walloping they deserved.’
A ripe shiner nearly closed her left eye.
Amy couldn’t conceal her concern.
‘Thou shouldst see the other fellah,’ she said, making fists and smiling. ‘A perfect fright, by the name of Deidre “the Strangler” Simons. Beneficiary of a sock to the choppers. She’ll have a gap in her grin unless they fit her with porcelain fangs. That’ll learn her to try it on with the Moth Club. A like fate befell her fellow horror-hens Rebecca Kensington, known as “Kensington Gore”, and Alicia “Vandal” Vickers.’
Kali drew her thumb across her throat and stuck her tongue out.
‘A punch-up for the ages,’ Frecks said. ‘Shame you missed it.’
‘Frecks’ll give you blow-by-blow,’ said Kali, ‘till you think you was there. Boot to the brisket… bop on the button… elbow in the ear. Rat-tat-tat. It was a murderalisin’, ma’am. Them eggs reckon they’re hard-boiled, but we cracked shells till the yolks ran. They can serve it up, but they sure can’t swallow it down.’
Amy’s friends had enjoyed fighting more than she had. If she’d ‘murderalised’ Miss Steps, she didn’t want to talk about it yet. Frecks and Kali were elated by their showing in battle, and eager to share gory details. Amy didn’t know if she should be ashamed or not.
Was it possible a paladin should have a want of feeling?
A Lionheart was not the same as a kind heart.
Light Fingers wasn’t bragging. She preferred to get fights over quickly and shut up about them, for fear of being tagged a fluke and a cheat. She opened the bag and produced a bright red toby.
‘It was in the study,’ said Light Fingers. ‘And it’s scarlet.’
‘Along with five others,’ said Frecks, ‘superficially identical, of shoddy plaster manufacture. Balanced precariously on a loose shelf, so that if one was removed, the others would fall and be smashed. In theory, a girl had to pick right first time… only—’
Light Fingers motioned with her hands so fast they seemed to vanish.
‘Only one among us was quick enough to catch six falling jugs before they came a calamitous cropper,’ said Frecks. ‘After Large Dark Prominent’s clean sweep, close examination through a magnifying glass weeded out the true toby from the ha’penny imposters.’
‘There’s a watermark,’ said Light Fingers, pointing it out.
A little top hat on a coffin. The sign of the Undertaking.
‘The spares came in handy as missiles, for the purpose of pelting the competition,’ said Frecks. ‘And panicking ’em simultaneous. The felonious fillies misperceived and were frit by potential points a-breaking on their berets.’
Light Fingers was less pleased than Frecks with the night’s work.
‘We should have seen the watermark,’ she said. ‘Afterwards, it was obvious. We were supposed to solve the mystery.’
‘All’s well that ends with us up and Draycott’s down,’ said Frecks.
‘It’s not cheating to use Abilities,’ Amy told Light Fingers.
‘I know,’ she said, bristling. ‘I didn’t say it was. Only – we should have seen the clue.’
‘Always looking for a cloud,’ said Frecks. ‘Must be jolly being you.’
Light Fingers managed a smile. Of sorts.
‘Where’s your haul?’ Frecks asked Amy. ‘The Sausage buzzed to say you’d swept the board. Good show and well done that girl.’
Haldane had charge of the broken jug from Villa DeVille. She took out the handle, which had a jagged piece attached. A blank eye stared out from the china.
Frecks whistled. ‘That must count for something – providing you have the rest of it, of course.’
‘We do,’ said Amy. ‘And Larry’s got the other three. I sent her ahead.’
‘Young Laurence? On her own?’
‘She’s being taken care of. I… ah… recruited someone.’
‘Good oh, that’s the spirit. Boldness…’
‘And mistrust,’ said Light Fingers.
‘We can trust this fellow. I saved him from a battering. He’d barged in to help Larry. His name’s Alfred Hampton.’
‘Capital,’ said Frecks. ‘Old English King’s name… and the house of a newer Welsh one. The cake-burner of Wessex and the much-married Tudor. If this fellow’s middle names are O’Brian and McStuart, he’ll be Britain in miniature.’
Seeing Frecks bright as a new penny made Amy realise how tired she was.
Her friend had been in the wars, but
all her bruises were on the outside. She just refused to bother about them. Her blessed chainmail probably helped. She’d fought the good fight – without biting – and hadn’t left a girl behind.
‘What happened to your neck?’ asked Light Fingers.
Amy realised she was scratching herself.
‘Nothing fatal,’ she said.
‘Where’s Bok?’ asked Light Fingers.
‘Safe, I hope. She got hurt and couldn’t walk. Some tyke from Draycott’s hobbled her.’
‘I trust she got hobbled back double for her pains,’ said Frecks.
Amy remembered what happened to the Glove.
‘More than double,’ she said.
‘Good show, Amy,’ said Frecks. ‘That was Larry, not me.’
‘Good show, young Larry, then. She’ll win her wings in no time, that one.’
What Laurence had done to Poll Sparks would take some explaining.
Luckily, there was much more news to share. Frecks and Light Fingers – who always knew which questions to ask – didn’t press her on the matter of Larry’s pocket. Amy wasn’t sure it was her place to tell that story.
The clock hands were nearly a vertical bar.
Six o’clock and all’s… well?
‘Come on, Drearcliff,’ said Frecks. ‘One last push…’
XV: At the Finish
AS SOON AS the girls stepped into Parliament Square, Miss Gossage buzzed in all their heads at once – with excitement, not an actual message. Amy felt the buzz in her temples and teeth.
Rattletrap was parked in front of the House of Commons, along with Draycott’s Black Mariah, Miss Vernon’s blue Bentley (and the cerebellum-grey caravan hitched to it), various roadsters driven (recklessly) by the show-offs of Humble College, and three hearses from the Undertaking. Miss Gossage and Miss Vernon sat on the pavement in out-of-season deck-chairs, wrapped in blankets and scarves.
The gruesome attendant from the House of Reform – a stout, hawk-eyed matron with a bludgeon on her belt – stood with several Undertakers. The funereal fellows sported top hats and dark glasses. Chief referee of the Great Game was Mr Jay, a scissor-legged sage with grey side-whiskers and saucer-sized black spectacles. Amy didn’t like to imagine his eyes. Knowles said the special glasses meant agents of the Undertaking could see through clothes and skin to the skeleton beneath – then had to make out she’d made it up when Haldane refused to step out of the charabanc in full view of Mr Jay and Co.
