Circus of Marvels

by Justin Fisher

  Beside them, Cannonball tensed before firing himself across the courtyard. The charge downed three of the Tortellinis and several nuns, and he was closing in on a fleeing Ned and George when a large Russian fist swung out to greet him.

  “Niet niet, little tank,” boomed Rocky.

  CRACK!

  The fist connected and Rocky’s forearm broke. In seconds Ned and George were speeding through the convent’s corridors searching for his mum, behind them the fury of ricocheting bullets.

  “Don’t worry about them, old chap, Couteau and Slim have an old score to settle and a dwarven berserker is no match for a vengeful mountain troll.”

  But one floor up, Ned looked down at the courtyard to see a broken-armed Rocky and a group of nuns shielding three of their wards, cornered by a muddy wave of gor-balins, and Slim poised to shoot with a freshly loaded revolver. It was pointed at the Ringmaster, who was too lost in his own battle with another gor-balin to notice.

  Even as Ned screamed his warning, there was a loud BANG.

  He watched in horror as Benissimo fell to the floor. He lay unmoving. To Ned’s amazement, Monsieur Couteau and Rocky fought on as if nothing had happened. Only a moment later, Ned could see why. Though the bullet had made a large hole in his military jacket, right where his heart should be, Benissimo’s eyes suddenly opened. He gasped for air, before quickly hopping back to his feet and continuing the fight. Of all the things Ned had imagined the Ringmaster to be, this was the eeriest. He wasn’t a monster or one of the fair-folk – he was something else entirely.

  “Quickly Ned, we have to find them before the gobs!”

  George was up ahead, filling the stone corridors with his fast moving bulk. Ned chased after him, his mind suddenly screaming with worry. If they were too late, his mum or Lucy could already be dead. Up the final flight of stairs, they came to another group of heavily armed nuns.

  “You’ll not pass us by!” yelled one of the women. “Come along Sisters, send them back to hell!”

  And with that, a seemingly meek and bespectacled Sister, in her sensible shoes and perfectly turned-out habit, prepared to lead the charge.

  “Wait! Wait, we’re not with them. We’re looking for someone. Olivia, Olivia Armstrong? Do you know her? Is she here?” pleaded Ned.

  The Sister froze.

  “It can’t be … oh dear lord, you must be Ned. Be quick child, the Mother Superior needs you.”

  Mother’s Day

  Upon the convent’s flat roof, they saw a group of huddled children from both sides of the Veil. One was partly elven and taller than the others, another was a full-blown satyr, and two more had the pearlescent skin and fire-red eyes of the duarliis, an uncommon variant of sand-nymph even behind the Veil. The rest were entirely human-looking, but they were all wielding daggers. Rather than seeming afraid, they were steely-faced, guarding the bell tower’s entrance and whoever was inside. In front of the children, stood the protective figure of their Mother Superior.

  She had raven-black hair, a beautiful face and even managed to make her robes look glamorous. She didn’t really seem to fit in her convent surroundings, and she most certainly didn’t fit back in Grittlesby. The thought of her at home on the sofa, eating a microwave chicken korma and watching This One’s Easy, made about as much sense as a bottle of crisps. The Mother Superior – Olivia Armstrong – was definitely above average. Ned felt his nerves stiffen. He could be skewered on the end of a gor-balin sword at any minute but the only thing worrying him now was talking to a nun.

  She was in the process of dispatching a gor-balin who had climbed up the convent’s walls, when she saw them approaching.

  “George?” she asked softly.

  “Yes, Livvy, in the flesh.”

  Seeing his chance, the gnarly-faced-gor-balin lunged at her back. The Mother Superior remained rooted to the spot, her wrist however did not. With the slightest of flicks it twisted behind her and the blade sliced the Darkling’s nose. The agonised creature grabbed at the wound before falling back over the edge of the roof screaming. With her assailant taken care of, Ned’s mum continued staring. At Ned. Her lower lip started to tremble, and her eyes glistened with the welling of tears. Then she did the most unexpected thing, she started to straighten out her hair.

  “I, I wasn’t expecting you …”

  It turned out that Ned’s mother was just as nervous as Ned.

  “M-Mum?”

  Her sword dropped with a clang. “… Is it really you?”

  Ned couldn’t speak as his mum pulled him into a long-awaited hug.

  For a moment, he was oblivious to the screams coming up from the stairwell. One of the gor-balins had made it past the Sisters’ blockade, only to be hammered by George’s fist.

  “Do you mind? They are trying to have a reunion!” he snarled.

  But the gor-balin at his feet was completely unconscious.

  “Oh Ned, let me look at you,” Olivia said, her face now clammy with tears. “You’re everything I hoped you’d be.”

  She could not have said anything kinder.

  “I … I, um …”

  “What about your dad – where is he?”

  “Well … um.”

  Behind them, there was a loud clash of ape against steel.

  “Ned, dear, I need to protect the children. We’ll talk when this is over.”

  “Um … I …”

  Ned had lived without a mother for twelve years. Finally reunited, he’d managed to say “Mum”, “I”, “well” and “um”. It had been the best talk he’d ever had, ever. He watched like a spectator in his own dream as his mum spun away, effortlessly disarming a gor-balin with another flick of her wrist. His new-found mother was beautiful, brave and wonderfully weird. Ned didn’t want to be normal any more. Being the Engineer son of Terrence and Olivia Armstrong would do just fine.

  But his daydream was cruelly interrupted by an unpleasant stench and a shock of white make-up. The Sisters’ blockade below had now completely fallen and Ned and his companions were joined on the rooftop by Eanie, Meanie and Mo with a full squad of murderous mud-gobs.

  “Get behind us, old chap, this might get a tad ugly,” bellowed George, loping in front of him and the other wards. He beat his great chest with his fists angrily as Ned backed behind him and his mum.

  When Mo saw Ned he stared at him like a man who’d spotted a long-lost friend, either that or a favourite dish he hadn’t eaten for some time.

  “Ooh, Jossy boy yum yum. Mo supa hoppy!”

  Looking at the gathering before him, Ned realised that they were now vastly outnumbered, both above and below. Down in the courtyard, Benissimo and his men were fighting as a wall of steel and snapping whip. But even they would fall to Barbarossa’s numbers at this rate – the flow of gor-balins into the convent still seemed unending.

  In front of Ned, George and his mum did their best to hold back the clowns’ forces, George’s fists swinging wildly, the Mother Superior’s sword lashing with deadly precision. But clowns rarely take the most dangerous route to their targets, and as Meanie led another push towards the belltower, Mo seized the moment and found a gap that landed him squarely beside Ned.

  “Jossy boy smush, bones makie cricka crack.”

  Ned tried to think of something. But panic does a strange thing to the mind. His brain whirred, his ring crackled and the air around him hissed, but nothing came. All he could do was look on in horror as the clown’s club was raised, sack at the ready, to carry him away once he was rendered unconscious. One of the other children yelled a warning.

  “Ned!” screamed his mum.

  She turned quickly, launching a flurry of blows at the clown’s stomach. But it was the wrong tool for the wrong job. Mo’s ‘gift’, though simple, was highly effective. He had an impenetrable belly. And with her back turned, Ned’s mother had no way of seeing the threat behind her. Ned had read about Hidden-made gas muskets in one of George’s books. Almost completely silent, they were only used by assassins or cowa
rds. Eanie the clown was both. There was a low hiss and Olivia Armstrong arched her back. She looked at Ned, smiled sweetly and fell to the floor. Blood trickled down the side of her mouth and her eyes flickered with pain.

  “Ned darling, Lucy … must save Lucy.” She raised her hand to stroke his face, before slipping into unconsciousness.

  Ned felt all the light and laughter being sucked out of him. Barbarossa’s hand had struck too great a blow. Somewhere deep in his soul, something snapped. Something that the clowns and gor-balins at St Clotilde’s would regret having broken.

  “NOOOOOOOOO!”

  His cry was not entirely human, more like that of a wounded animal. Ned’s mind raced with rage and with hatred. A hatred so dark and unrelenting that it burned inside his belly. He wanted to smash everything, to break the world in half, to tear every stone from the convent’s rooftops and bring them down on the clowns’ heads. Darkness enveloped him and the darkness had a voice.

  “Yesssssss.”

  His insides vibrated with Feeling and the Amplification-Engine did as it was told. It started with the little things at first. As the humming at his finger grew, screws in the walls nearby unscrewed, mortar came undone and slate tiles lifted. The Engineer in Ned was trying to unmake the convent and what he’d seen, piece by meticulous piece, till his anger became too strong and a shockwave poured from his head and hand in a great crackling blast of pain. Seeing, Telling … and FEELING.

  Concrete turned to liquid, bricks burned, wood froze. With the deafening rumble of shearing and breaking, a wave of moving stone that had once been the convent’s roof flew at the clowns and their gor-balin soldiers, turning itself as it did so to bubbling metal and daggers of ice. Below them, windows shattered and concrete tore. Slim’s revolvers burned in his hands and the still slumbering Cannonball was covered in a heap of broken flagstones and twisting metal. The very fabric of the convent was becoming undone, a mess of bending, bursting atoms and unrelenting rage. There was no order to the chaos, no blueprint or plan. Ned’s anger moved like a living thing, picking out its targets while leaving Ned’s allies and the residents of St Clotilde’s unharmed.

  In minutes, the battle had been won, and all it had taken was a broken-hearted boy to do the winning. He lay in a curled ball on the remains of the convent’s rooftop.

  “Ned, dear boy, it’s me, it’s George, are you OK? Ned? Ned!”

  But Ned was somewhere else. His hand and heart were alive with pain. His vision was blurred, his ears were ringing and his belly was a boiling mess of knots.

  “The Medic,” he slurred eventually. Ned pushed himself back up, refusing his gorilla friend’s help, and did as his mother had asked. He went in search of Lucy.

  As he staggered towards them, the stunned children of St Clotilde’s parted in silence. He fell through the bell tower’s door and dragged himself up the narrow stairs. When he reached the top, his legs locked as the cold metal of a dagger connected with his throat, its pin-sharp tip pushing into his skin. The fingers on the blade handle smelt of soap and one of them was wearing a ring. A ring very much like his own.

  “Who are you?” asked a girl’s voice.

  “I’m Ned. I’m … the Engineer.”

  The dagger at his throat was lowered. Ned’s usurper, the girl who’d lived half his childhood, had a short bob of blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and a proud, pretty face. She looked exactly as she had in his dream. On a chain round her neck she wore a second ring – the one her mother must have once worn. And suddenly she was hard to dislike.

  Whatever she was feeling, Lucy Beaumont was obviously fiercely brave. Her only show of sorrow was a single hot tear rolling down her cheek.

  “You took your time,” she said, pausing to look him up and down. “I thought you’d be bigger.”

  Farewell

  His body felt brittle and empty, and his hand hurt. In a daze, Ned’s memories of what had happened after he found Lucy were vague. He didn’t see how her gift had saved his mum. How she’d laid her hands on the Mother Superior’s brow, how the flow of blood had miraculously stopped, or how her heartbeat had begun to pulse with regularity once more. Lucy Beaumont was a healer. Ned’s power could rearrange atoms, change one thing to another, bring parts together. Lucy’s gift let her breathe life into dying cells. Gifted as Lucy was, it would be a day or two till Ned’s mum was able to travel and the extent of her injury had left her in shock – she had not uttered a word or so much as moved an eyelid since her collapse on the roof. But Sister Agnes – the convent’s second in command – had promised to send her on as soon as she was able.

  In truth, Ned had been staggered by his explosion. He’d given himself completely to rage and in doing so had unleashed a terror so uncontrollable and pure that he wished he could tear the Amplification-Engine from his finger, undo its power and go back to being an average boy, with an average life. But it was the voice in the darkness that had really frightened him. “Yesssssss …” It had felt familiar, though he wasn’t sure where from. It was something evil and it had spoken to him directly.

  “She’s not really a nun, you know. They made her the Mother Superior because she was our bravest. I don’t think half the women here are really nuns.”

  Ned came out of his daze and looked at his now resting mother.

  “What’s she like?”

  Lucy thought for a moment.

  “She’s like a lot of things … but mostly she’s like you. She’s, well, good inside.”

  They barely knew each other but he also knew the same thing of her.

  “I know why you’ve been separated,” Lucy went on. “I know it’s my fault … but you should know how much she loves you, how much she wanted to be with you.”

  “I do, I mean I did. When I saw her on the roof.”

  “She’ll be a great Mum to you when this is over, you’ll see,” smiled Lucy.

  Ned looked at the girl beside him more closely. Every trace of jealousy had been burned out of him when he’d been reunited with his mother. He’d been so stupid. All it had taken was one loving look from Olivia Armstrong to know it.

  In the tiny glimpse they’d had of each other’s minds during the bonding, there’d been some sort of connection, a connection that was still there. It was too subtle to put into words, but Ned felt an overwhelming need to protect her. It was as though anything that could harm her would somehow harm him too.

  The Sisters of St Clotilde had always known that Lucy was not theirs to keep, that her gift would one day be needed beyond their walls. A huddled group of women and children waved and cried as the airship took off. As for Lucy, her entire knowledge of the outside world had come from the stories of residents at St Clotilde’s and the books she’d read in their library. In a single day, she had been torn from her safe cocoon and thrust into a struggle for a world she’d never really seen. As they rose into the clouds, she quietly shut the door of her cabin behind her. From outside, Ned heard a single sob; the kind of sob that brave girls do not like others to hear.

  On his way back up to the airship top deck, Ned caught sight of Benissimo looking at him. It was a strange pensive look and the Ringmaster hurried away as soon as he realised Ned had seen him. Ned knew what it meant – Benissimo was as appalled by his explosion as he was. He kept remembering what the Ringmaster had said about some of the Engineers before him, how their use of the ring had driven them to corruption, or madness … or both.

  Ned shuddered as he sat alone on deck, trying to gather his thoughts. The Engineer’s Manual warned that excessive use of his abilities and the ring’s could be draining but he had not been prepared for the complete exhaustion and confusion he now felt in his mind. The others were tending to their injuries, particularly Monsieur Couteau, who’d received his first bullet wound in over a decade. It was not the same circus as Ned had joined just a week ago, and today he was not the same boy. He had found his mum and a moment later been forced to leave her behind. Nothing in the world had ever felt more alien or more
wrong.

  A great black shape creaked along the deck’s wooden boards towards him, armed only with a book and a bunch of his yellow favourites.

  “Company?” rumbled George gently.

  “I’m surprised you still want to talk to me, after what happened on the roof.”

  “Quite a show stopper, wasn’t it?” grinned the ape toothily.

  Using the Amplification-Engine with any kind of precision took an iron will. Ned now realised why there were so many detailed Engineer’s blueprints and plans in his Manual. It wasn’t just to help Ned learn, but to protect those around them. Even the slightest deviation could be disastrous, clearly. He had Felt too much and his Feelings were more dangerous than he could have ever imagined.

  “It’s really shaken me, George. I … I didn’t have any control over it. I could have killed us, all of us.”

  “But you didn’t, did you? The Engine can only amplify your thoughts, Ned. Your mind is the controlling factor, not the ring, and yours is as pure as any I know. What happened up there will go down in Veil history. You’ve been through the Manual as many times as I have. Not one Engineer has ever unleashed that kind of power, not even your father. You’re unique, old chap.”

  Ned wasn’t so sure. He wanted to tell George about the voice, how it had called to him when he’d been filled with rage, but he was too frightened of what George might think, or what it might mean if it happened again.

  So instead Ned forced a small smile. “Thanks.”

  “’Nana?” said George, offering him the bunch.

  “No thanks, I don’t think my stomach’s ready for food … We’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t we?”

  “Well, I won’t lie, we have taken a bit of a drumming. Benissimo is utterly furious; the spy must have tipped off Barba before we’d even left the circus and Miz will no doubt be on the warpath when we get back. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns over Bene’s bunk next!” George ruffled Ned’s hair with his huge fingers and smiled. “It’s not all bad though, old chap. Your dear mother will be right as rain in no time and we may not look too pretty, but we have the girl now, and the boss has got us out of far hotter water than this.”