“Please ask your creature to stand down, Ned. I really am trying to be nice. Your ticker has been taken to our R and D department to check that he’s functioning properly.”
Ned’s dad formed a compact ball of ice by drawing in the air molecules around the room with an audible fwup. It was about the size of a walnut and Ned had seen the man blow holes through steel doors with far less. A second later and the ice had turned to hardened glass.
“Do you know, he said this might happen,” said Mr Fox with an air of resigned certainty.
“Who said? Who’s been helping you?” seethed Ned’s dad, the newly formed glass ball now hovering between them both with clear intent. “Was it one of the Shar’s men? Or Atticus and his tin-skins?”
“It was I,” said a voice, as Mr Fox’s informant appeared from behind him and walked slowly into the room.
There was a swagger to the way he walked, and a jolliness to the twitch of his moustache. He was wearing his signature striped trousers, a worn military jacket with broken braiding and tassels, and a severely beaten top hat. Aside from some deep shadows under his eyes, a clear sign that he’d had little sleep, he was the same wax-moustached Ringmaster as ever.
“Bene?” was all Ned could manage.
“Hello, pup,” said Benissimo with a smile.
Which promptly fell away when he saw the look on the face of Olivia Armstrong, who then proceeded to pummel the man’s arm. Ned and his father watched in awe, Terry’s ball of glass having landed on the floor with a clunk as his wife administered Mr Fox’s informant with swift and painful justice.
“Months, we looked, all of us!”
Whack!
“And all that time you were here with these men, these revolting men in grey?!”
Whack!
“Livvy, if you could just let me explain!” said Benissimo, who did little more than raise his arms in a useless and rather timid defence.
“Explain why you abandoned us?! Explain this!”
Whack!
“Madam, the man can heal, but he still feels pain – please refrain from hitting him,” tried Mr Fox.
Olivia Armstrong, nun and agent, stopped. Her eyes turned to Mr Fox.
“How did you do it?” she shouted. “How did you turn the greatest leader of all time into an informant?”
What was quite clear was that Ned’s mum had absolutely no interest in Mr Fox’s answer, nor for that matter did Ned’s dad, or the enlarging shadow that was Gorrn as he inflated to fill the rear of the room. The Armstrongs were about to blow when Benissimo decided to tell them what, exactly, was what.
“Livvy, you’ve got this all wrong. Mr Fox works for me.”
The Butcher and the Hammer
arbarossa sat at his stone table, glaring out of the window. In front of him lay the great sweeping carpet that was the Siberian taiga. Down below in his fortress’s iron belly the Darkening King stirred. The butcher could feel him, in the pores of his skin and the pit of his stomach. The Darkening King had a hunger that knew no bounds, a wish to devour, to rule, to reign. In that they were very much alike.
He looked down at the roasted pork that Sar-adin had so carefully prepared. It was, as always, just the way he liked it, its skin glazed to a perfect crackle, boiling fat oozing from its sides, and on a different day, in a different mood, he would have devoured it all till his chest was awash with grease and dripping. But Barbarossa had a different hunger and it would not be fed through his gut. Atticus Fife sat beside him drinking from a goblet of fine red wine. For some strange reason the man did not show fear in his company – if anything, he seemed to consider himself an equal.
Barbarossa supposed he had been a little vague about the arrangements between them. Perhaps Atticus believed himself to be important to him? A partner, even? He had been the second-in-command to the great Madame Oublier after all – the Circus of Marvels’ Prime, their one-time leader. Not that he’d done her any good. In fact, the tin-skin had betrayed her and the poison that had ended her life could not have done so without him. Well, Barba wouldn’t let the same happen to him. The man clearly needed some chivvying up, which was just as well, as Barbarossa was in the mood for a little “chivvying”.
“Walk with me, Atticus.”
Barbarossa led him away from the great hall down a set of spiral steps. Behind them Sar-adin followed quietly. The Central Intelligence had done exactly as ordered. He had built them a fortress that could not be taken. But something still troubled the butcher, even now. Until the Darkening King returned to his full power, they could, conceivably, still be undone no matter how many tin soldiers he had, or fanged and wicked creatures fought for him. Barbarossa did not like “odds”. So close to his prize, only certainties would do.
“The fair-folk will come, Atticus, and they will try to stop us.”
“What remains of them, yes.”
“And what does remain of them?”
“The pinstripes who still answer to me have heard word of a growing force in St Albertsburg.”
Barbarossa grimaced but continued leading the way.
“A growing force … Do you know how a force grows, Atticus?”
“We have banned all flights between the Veil, Barba, and my men are—”
Barba raised a hand and the tin-skin quietened.
“A force grows when there is hope. It is your job to remove that hope, Atticus.”
Barbarossa stopped by a heavy steel door and Sar-adin pulled out a set of keys.
“I am treading a fine line as it is, Barba. My men are beginning to suspect.”
Sar-adin opened the door to reveal a dimly lit cell. There were no windows, only a withered figure chained to the wall.
“This, Atticus, is Sur-jan. Once he swore to fight for me, yet only this morning he met with the Armstrongs. You promised me that you would take away the fair-folk’s hope and yet it grows.”
Atticus’s face dropped. The Demon looked to be in terrible pain. As cruel and as heartless as their kind was, he felt for it, knowing that whatever Barbarossa had done to the beast to reduce it so must have been unspeakable.
“Do you see hope in my captive’s eyes, Atticus?”
“I-I …”
“You will feed them lies upon lies. You will confuse and befuddle them, till they cannot tell friend from foe, till they cower in their beds calling for their mothers. You will feed them and feed them, till all their hope, strength and vigour is swallowed whole.”
“I will redouble my efforts.”
“No, Atticus, you will push them till you have nothing left to push with.”
And with that, Sar-adin shoved the tin-skin into the cell and locked the door.
“Barba?! Barbarossa, what is the meaning of this?”
“By the time they reach my forest, their spirits will already be broken. You will do the breaking, Atticus. You gave me your oath that you would. Your cellmate gave me such an oath once. A night with him should do plenty to remind you of what is at stake.”
Barbarossa turned his back and retraced his steps, even as Atticus pounded on the door.
“Tell me, Sar-adin, how much longer?” growled Barbarossa.
“He grows stronger.”
“But when will he rise, Sar-adin – WHEN?”
“Weeks.”
“And the boy, his parents? I fear while they walk free that the fair-folk will continue to have hope.”
“Sur-jan did not tell them about the stone.”
“Then we are still safe. Find them, Sar-adin. Use the clowns and whatever else you deem necessary. The Armstrongs must not stand in our way again.”
“Yes, master.”
The butcher slowed.
“And, Sar-adin – when you end them, make them suffer.”
The Nest
enissimo and Mr Fox led Ned and his family through the labyrinth that was the BBB’s headquarters. Now somewhat over the initial shock of seeing their old comrade-in-arms, they followed with a keen eye on their surroundings, Gorrn cling
ing to Ned’s shadow in silence.
“I still don’t get it, Bene. How on earth have Mr Fox and the BBB wound up working for you?” asked Ned’s dad.
“The BBB was set up decades ago. In many ways their purpose was not so different to the Twelve’s or its circus. Our role was to protect the Hidden – theirs was to protect the jossers. The BBB knew about us fair-folk, though very little, and what you don’t know is always frightening. They have been investigating us for years, trying to find out more. I simply set them straight – told them who the bad guys were and what sort of danger they posed to all living creatures, on both sides of the Veil.”
“And then what?” asked Ned.
“Well, I think their brains rather melted – they went berserk. Had it not been for our red-headed friend here, they would have had me shot.”
Mr Fox smiled.
“Not that shooting him would have worked. But you see, Mr Bear, my boss, well … he doesn’t like surprises. I do think he mellowed after that first heart attack, though,” Benissimo continued. “It turns out what you do know can be far more frightening than what you don’t. But in any case, it’s worked out rather well. Seeing as I became their topmost informant on all things to do with our kind, they have put me in charge.”
Mr Fox promptly stopped smiling.
“A temporary measure, till we sort things out.”
“But a measure nonetheless, Foxy.”
An unmarked door slid open as they approached.
“Which, as you can see, has its benefits. This, my friends, is ‘the Nest’.”
Ned and family walked through the door and out on to a balcony, one of more than a dozen that circled several floors all looking down over a large indoor training ground. Far below, hundreds of grey-tracksuited men were being barked at by a severe-looking Frenchman and a rotund, slightly ageing Italian who had great curling horns protruding from his head.
“Special Forces, don’t give me no-a rubbish. You couldn’t climb your-a way out of a can!”
Several deflated-looking operatives were struggling their way up an admittedly treacherous wall that the ancient half-satyr was playfully skipping across. To one side the Frenchman was demonstrating the easiest way to neutralise a nightmonger. The terrifying creature was a blur of blade-like fingers, but was soon made quite harmless when the instructor launched two weighted nets from a gas-powered machine that looked very much as though it had been designed on this side of the Veil.
“Couteau and Grandpa Tortellini!” exclaimed Ned with the first truly genuine smile he’d given in months.
“The greys are coming along nicely under their tutelage and Tinks has been having a whale of a time mixing our tech with theirs – fascinating results.”
“Tinks?!” grinned Ned. “Where is he?”
“Looking after your mouse, I should think. About half of the old troupe has joined us. The rest are still MIA, I’m afraid.”
“MIA?”
“Missing in action, Ned. You know as well as I do how bad things are out there.”
A horrible thought struck Ned: What about Lucy and George? If they were here, Lucy would have sensed him by now and George would have been hot on her heels, knocking down any number of walls or grey-suits to see his old ward. He didn’t need to ask – Benissimo spotted the look on his face immediately.
“George and Lucy are with the Viceroy. They’ve been delivering one of the old troupe, and I can’t tell you more than that, I’m afraid. Don’t worry – word’s been sent and I should think they’ll have threatened the nearest pilot by now and demanded passage back to the Nest.”
“Delivering one of the troupe? Who?”
“All I can tell you is that he’s a vital part of the plan – as are you, of course, Ned. And we have been trying to bring you in for a while now, as we have new intel that you need to hear. I needn’t mince my words, especially not with you three. The Darkening King is growing stronger by the day. George, Lucy, all of us are scrambling to work with our allies, and telling friend from foe has never been harder. Come on, let’s go to see the boffin – he’ll explain our situation in more detail.”
***
The boffin, known to Benissimo’s old troupe as “Tinks”, had been given a new laboratory to work in and it was to there that Benissimo and Mr Fox led the Armstrongs now. As Ned and his dad entered, they both went a little misty-eyed at what they saw. Ned and his father, both being Engineers – who had the power (when it was working, that is) to bend and manipulate atoms – had a different relationship with all things mechanical than most other people. Their powers hinged on understanding the structure of things, how they came together and worked, so that they could reimagine them into another form. And within these brightly lit walls were the most advanced examples of what modern-day science and technology had to offer, fused together with just a pinch or two of the Hidden’s own magic.
The lab was big enough to house an entire circus troupe along with its cars and lorries. It was also teeming with smartly dressed scientists in matching grey lab coats. They were all building and testing equipment, and all of the equipment was designed, from the ground up, to fight Darklings.
Traps, snares, laser-guided harpoons, listening devices, scanning equipment … and data. Lots and lots of data, pouring out of printers, to be pointed at and argued over incessantly by teams of bespectacled analysts. They weren’t all jossers, either. A good number of them were waist-height minutians, just like the Tinker, and no doubt, Ned guessed, refugees from the ill-fated city of Gearnish, now under the control of Barbarossa’s ghastly machine-mind, the Central Intelligence.
Ned gawped in wonder at a man clicking a device on his belt that made him turn invisible and visible again, with varying results. At one point his head disappeared while the rest of him stayed visible; at another he appeared to be floating off the ground with no legs. His dad, meanwhile, was mesmerised by an aged minutian who was talking to a flea. He wore a large trumpet-ended device on his ear, while the flea responded by hopping up and down on a minuscule sensor at its feet.
Everything had the touch of the Tinker to it, but the Tinker himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” asked Ned’s mum, who, unlike her two “boys”, found the gadgets on display extraordinarily dull.
A contained explosion in a room off to the far corner was to be her clue. The closer they got, the less josser and more “Tinker” their surroundings became – reams of paper and blueprints stuck to the walls, shelves weighed down to breaking point, and a trail of spinning, whirring and bubbling devices on every single surface. Through a door they came to a great sprawling mess and at its centre was the genius who had made it.
“Well, bless my toolbox, if it isn’t the Armstrongs!”
Tinks
e had the same unkempt whiskers, the same old lab coat heaving with screwdrivers, and he was the same old Tinker, though as far as Ned could tell he was in unusually high spirits, despite the burning something he was putting out on his desk.
“Hello, Tinks. Nice little set-up,” started Ned’s dad.
“Oh, indeed, Mr Armstrong, indeed. You never told me the jossers had such fantastic tech!”
“They’re a clever bunch, once you get used to them,” grinned Ned’s dad.
A now teary-eyed Tinker proceeded to shake Ned’s hand heartily and then gave his mum a rather elegant bow.
“The Armstrongs together – and here in our little home from home! You wait till the others hear about this. On second thoughts, I think I’ll tell them.”
Mr Fox patiently raised his eyes to the ceiling as the Tinker spoke into a watch on his wrist.
“Channel Alpha-niner, this is the big boff, over!” The little scientist was beaming now, though Ned sensed it had more to do with his watch than their arrival. “This thing is brilliant – so much quicker than a wind-modulator!”
“Big boff, over, this is the Beard. Can you please stop using this channel, Tinks. It’s for mission-only comms and Scragg
s is fed up with being asked to bring you biscuits – OVER.”
Ned’s ears pricked excitedly. “The Beard” had to be Abigail, surely – the wonderful bearded lady of the old Circus of Marvels troupe. And if she was there, then her lump of a troll husband, Rocky, couldn’t be far away. How he’d missed them!
“This is a channel-wide announcement, over. That means you too, Tusky. The Arm—”
Before he could get to “strongs”, Benissimo clamped a hand over his mouth and brought down the full weight of a moustachioed twitch.
“Later, Tinks! They need to be brought up to speed.”
“Ah, right you are, boss.” Undeterred, the little man broke into another enthusiastic grin. “We’ll be wanting to fire up ‘Big Brother’ then.”
“Yes, gnome. Now get on with it.”
“‘Blinking Incredible Gateway’, or ‘BIG’ brother (named it myself, as it happens), was devised to replace the Twelve’s ticker network that Barba stole.” Tinks was relishing the chance to show off to Ned and his dad, and pressed a button on his desk. A large monitor came down from the ceiling. “Live satellite feeds courtesy of Mr Fox here, and more than a hundred Farseers keep round-the-clock surveillance on just about everything. They’re neurologically, metaphysically and outright magically connected, through a network that spans the globe. We use ‘satter-light’ and the ‘interweb’ – josser tech, you know – to send and receive the data. It really is clever stuff. In some ways it’s an even better system, though I do miss the—”
“Hell’s teeth, Tinks! Just show them Russia, would you?”
A second later and they were greeted by a satellite image of Siberia in Russia, which was when Mr Fox took over.
“Our eyes in the sky monitor everything, and had been doing so for a good while before the Tinker’s ‘Hidden’ enhancements. We immediately noticed a sharp spike in activity around the same time your tickers went missing. Though of course back then we didn’t know what it was. The truth is …” At this Mr Fox paused, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to admit. “Well, the truth is, back then we didn’t really know anything.”
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