“To know why this is so personal, I need to tell you about my brother and I, how we came to be what we are.”
“Bene, I know. I know it’s the Darkening King that cursed you. Barba already told me.”
The Ringmaster raised a hand and Ned stopped.
After a long pause, he finally spoke. “I have always known that the curse came from a Demon, but it wasn’t until Jonny Magik told us about the Darkening King that I suspected. You see, my brother and I are old, Ned … very, very old.”
Ned gulped. “How old?”
“I was born in Venice. The year was 1572.”
“1572!”
Benissimo frowned. “Ned, this is hard enough. At that time the doge ruled the city, but behind him were its wealthy merchants. My father was one of them. The world was in his hands – he had a great estate, ships that sailed across the Mediterranean trade routes carrying silks and glass and coffers filled with gold. But it wasn’t enough.”
Benissimo rubbed at his scalp, as though trying to massage out the words.
“A strange thing happens when a man feels success – he wants to bask in its splendour, to revel in it. My father wanted to do so forever, to count his coins till the end of time. A woman came into his life who told him of a way he could. My father thought she was a wise gypsy. I knew even then she was a witch, and no Farseer like Kitty or Lucy but one embroiled in the dark arts. She told him that life eternal could be granted if he were to make a sacrifice, but only if it were great enough to break his heart.”
“You?” gasped Ned.
“Please, pup! She told him that to live forever he would have to take the life of the thing he loved most … my mother.”
Ned felt the bitter taste of horror in his mouth, but managed this time to hold his tongue.
“He spent weeks labouring over his decision, torn between love and his lust for power and immortality. I found out his intentions and was rushing to stop him, but my brother intervened and we fell to blows. I still carry the scar and he the wounded leg. Barba loved our mother, but like my father thought that power was more important; that, however dear, the price was worth paying. They could not have foreseen how wrong they were – when he took my mother’s life the gift of immortality was granted, but not to my father. The witch had tricked him and the curse of eternal life fell to us instead.”
Ned had never heard anything more ghastly in his life and if it had been any other man he would have reached across and hugged him.
“Bene, I’m so sorry.”
“You still need to know why it’s personal, pup. For a Demon to cross the Veil and walk on the other side takes an act of true wickedness, true evil. It took me time to see what Barba already knew. To make the Darkening King cross would take, and has taken, a dozen lifetimes. The Demon who told me about the Heart Stone told me many things, things that only their kind could possibly know. That witch didn’t understand what she’d set in motion, but somehow the Darkening King had guided her hand and tongue from within its prison in the earth’s core. Barba has walked the world spreading war and murder for hundreds of years – and for hundreds more, I have fought him. Those battles, those lives lost, have fed the beast, enough to enable him to cross over when At-lan fired.”
“Bene, are you saying it was all part of his plan?!”
“One of many, no doubt, but our lifeblood is his own. I know that now. After our battle in Annapurna, I thought my brother was dead, I thought the curse was lifted, but now I understand. It can never be lifted, and as long as we live, so will he.”
Benissimo’s moustache was trembling now and he looked to the floor.
“The Darkening King is my responsibility, just as my brother is. The three of us are linked, our lives and fates intertwined. So in answer to your question: yes, it’s personal, and yes, it’s all I care about – ending our cursed lives so that yours and the rest of the world’s may go on.”
Headquarters
y the time Mr Fox’s wing of Chinooks had returned to base, it was long after sunrise on the British coastline, near the cliffs of Dover. It was only when the helicopters touched down and their blades stopped that Ned understood where the BBB’s base actually was. As he stepped on to the tarmac, he was met by Mr Fox, closely followed by Whiskers and Gorrn. Benissimo went over to debrief George and Lucy and what it was – exactly – that they should all be telling Terry and Olivia Armstrong.
Suddenly the whole compound, with its warehouses and lorries, started to tremble. Every inch of tarmac, every lamp post and every brick slowly and noisily lowered.
“What’s going on?” breathed Ned.
Mr Fox looked worn out from the journey, but still managed to smile. “We may not have a Veil, Ned, but we do have a few surprises of our own. You are standing on the single largest ‘lift’ ever made.”
Ned watched in wonder as the entire compound lowered into the earth, foot by foot, floor by floor, of the BBB’s hidden base. Each concrete level was at least fifty yards high and housed different machines, from jump jets to tanks, jeeps and transports, and each and every floor cut deep under and into the British countryside.
“It’s amazing, but don’t people ask questions – you know, about the sinking?”
“We’re in a military zone, Ned – regular people don’t get to see it. Our ‘lift’ is for satellite surveillance. Seen from space it looks as though we haven’t budged an inch.”
“Clever.”
“I’m glad you think so,” said Mr Fox, who began to whistle as the giant lift sank further into the ground. It was a strange sort of a tune, not really a tune of any particular sort, but both soothing and jaunty nonetheless.
“Mr Fox?”
Mr Fox stopped.
“Why are you whistling?”
“Whistling calms my nerves.”
The hairs on Ned’s arm rose. “And why are you nervous, Mr Fox?”
“It’s Fox, Ned, just Fox. And I’m nervous because I know what’s going to be waiting for us on the other side of those doors.”
Which was when their giant lift came to the thirteenth and last floor of the base, the one that housed the Hidden.
They were greeted by the sight of his mum shaking her head very slowly from side to side while sucking the air in through her teeth. Her arms were folded and her foot tapping on the ground. He’d only seen her take that pose once before and the ensuing outburst had been truly terrifying. Ned’s dad, on the other hand, did not look like his dad at all. Terry Armstrong was a kind man, too kind even at times. But Ned had seen him flatten Barbarossa with a single blast from his ring and it had been in order to protect his son. His eyes were wild and his face red, and there was no doubt he was gearing up for some flattening.
The worst part, though, the part that made his predicament quite clear, was Lucy Beaumont. His friend had caught up with him and looked at Ned with such sincere sympathy that he felt that moment might very well be his last.
“Ned?” said Mr Fox.
“Yes, Fox?”
“You were very brave back there, in the forest – this shouldn’t be too bad in comparison.”
“Thanks. You were very brave too.”
“Not sure I would have been at your age, Ned, not up against those … those creatures.”
“Course you would.”
“Well, I’ll never know now, will I?”
As they waited for an onslaught of a different kind, Ned realised that the man was a true enigma, not only to Ned and Benissimo, but also to himself.
Mr Bear
r Fox’s room was completely bare. Operatives of the BBB had no knick-knacks or family photos with which to decorate their rooms. There was only the work. After a shower, Mr Fox had laid curled up in a ball for more than two hours. He had not slept. Of all the memories he had to have kept from “before”, why this one? Why one that filled him with so much fear?
His laptop was dinging and had been for more than ten minutes. He sat up, shook his head and pressed the green button to
“accept”.
“Fox?!”
The man in the window of his screen was a ruddy-cheeked man, with a bulbous nose, huge greying eyebrows and hair that was as wild as it was thick. In the time that Mr Fox had known Mr Bear, he had never seen him in any state other than unrelenting anger. It was as if he was quite incapable of any other emotion.
“Bear, I’m sorry, I was in the shower. You’ve read my report?”
“Of course I’ve read your blasted report – that’s why I want to talk to you! A dragon, for pity’s sake?! And f-f—”
“Fairies, sir?”
“Yes, blasted fairies!”
“Well, it is a lead, sir. If Benissimo can get his hands on this stone, we may yet have a way of stopping this thing.”
Mr Bear calmed. “You’ve done well, Fox. Keep at it and report everything you see. If you miss anything, Mr Spider will, I’m sure, fill in the gaps.”
Mr Fox did not like being reminded of the ever-watchful Mr Spider, but he let it go. There were more important matters to discuss.
“Bear?”
“What?”
“This stone, sir … if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we finish things the old-fashioned way.”
Mr Fox said nothing.
“Do you have a problem, Fox?”
“No, sir. It’s just … so extreme.”
“There are always casualties, Fox, always.”
Mr Fox looked away from the screen and began to hum, very softly.
***
Ned, Lucy and George sat in the corridor outside the briefing room on a grey plastic bench.
The corridor was like all the corridors in the BBB’s base. Grey for the most part, immaculately clean to the point of being sterile and with the kind of peaceful lighting and orderly layout you might expect from a futuristic base hidden hundreds of feet underground. Doors here opened and closed with airtight silence, and the walls were thick and well insulated – but not, it seemed, quite thick enough to completely mask out sound. There was little in the world more formidable than an angered Armstrong parent, except perhaps for two. Olivia’s furious outburst when they had discovered that Benissimo was working with the BBB now felt like a mere warm-up.
“Oww! That hurts! Terrence, can you please ask your wife to calm down?”
“Calm down?! I’ll show you calm, you snake!” roared Ned’s dad.
Crash!
Something on the other side of the wall broke.
“Do you think we should do something?” laughed Lucy.
“Honestly, dear girl, I should think if I go in there now it’ll be like throwing petrol on a lit match,” said George.
Crunch!
“That sounded like filing cabinets,” grinned back Lucy.
Smash!
“Glass; that was definitely glass.”
Ned felt dreadful. He was still reeling after what Benissimo had told him. The poor man quite literally carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lucy and George and the others knew of his curse, of course, but they had no idea of the extent of it; that it came from the Darkening King himself, the very creature they were all so desperate to defeat.
“Terry, we’ve been friends a long time … If you’d just let me explain!” pleaded Benissimo.
“Wow, he sounds genuinely frightened!” said the ape. “Benissimo, fearless leader of the Circus of Marvels, ageless, unkillable and—”
“Olivia Armstrong, I’d like to remind you that besides being a deft hand with a blade, you are also—”
“You kidnapped MY SON!”
“He came of his own accord!”
CRUNCH!
The briefing room went eerily quiet. Suddenly panicked that his parents might actually have gone too far, Ned stood up and went for the door handle.
“Don’t worry – they’re not actually going to kill him, Ned,” said a smiling Lucy. “They know they can’t anyway, and he’s not really frightened. I think they’re just going through the motions because they sort of should.”
“Are you sure?” asked George, who was still loving every minute of it.
“I’m a Farseer, remember? If it was really going to end in tears, I’d know by now.”
Ned sat back down again and looked at his friends. “It’s good to see you both. It’s been rough out there these past few months.”
“I know, it’s been rough on all of us. It’s like the rules have changed and no one knows what the new rules are,” said Lucy.
“I think, and not for the first time, that our illustrious leader is making them up as he goes.”
“At least someone’s trying, George,” snapped Ned.
“I’m only teasing, old bean. I love Bene as much as any of us.”
Lucy sighed, all the good humour gone from her voice for a moment. “I know he’s doing his best, but he’s so alone, in every possible way. He’s lost Kitty, Madame Oublier and half the troupe – and he’s too afraid of failing to let anyone else near.”
If only they knew, thought Ned, and as much as he felt a true friend would tell them Benissimo’s secret, he also knew that if he really cared for the man, he couldn’t and wouldn’t.
“At least he’s got us,” was all he managed.
“LIAR!” shouted Ned’s dad through the wall.
“I think he’s going to need a bit more than ‘us’,” smirked George. “Your dear old mum and dad are going to give him the walloping of a lifetime.”
But Ned wasn’t smiling. Aside from Benissimo and his parents, what was really troubling him was what the dragon had told him. Despite his fluke on the mountain, he had tried his ring continuously on their return journey and as before it had remained completely dormant. Ned simply wasn’t the boy that Tiamat thought he was – not any more.
“Lucy, George, please keep it to yourselves but I’m—”
“Worried about your powers, about the ring,” cut in Lucy.
“Yes! Ever since At-lan, since we sparked the weapon—”
“You haven’t been able to use it, at least not until just now. It starts but drops the connection and you have no idea if or when it will work again.”
Ned’s eyes crossed. In the past Lucy had finished his sentences as though she was reading his mind. This was different: Lucy actually was reading his mind.
“Lucy, I—”
“I know, I know, we’re friends and I shouldn’t be using my gifts on you, Ned, but in a few seconds this wall is going to break and we really don’t have a lot of time.”
“What? Lucy, I—”
“I know, you’re a bit annoyed with me right now, and you’re right. I can help you, Ned, and no, I haven’t heard the voice either.”
Ned gave up talking and simply gawped like a startled goldfish.
“It’s all right, Ned,” said Lucy with a smile. “I’ve got you, and so has this big lump of fur.” George grinned. “Oh, and by the way, DUCK!”
Lucy pulled Ned to the floor suddenly, when – BOOM! – the wall right by their bench broke apart before turning to shards of ruptured steelwork, its plastic and plasterboard vaporised to dust. Ned’s dad had let his ring run wild.
The lighting in the now silent corridor flickered on and off erratically and there was a faint smell of burnt wiring coming from the newly made gash. Through the hole and its fizzing atoms, Ned heard his mum.
“Terrence, dear, I think we’ve made our point. Now, what’s all this about a Heart Stone, you old goat?”
A Brief Debrief
ed sat between George and Lucy, across the table from his parents. They had made it quite clear that they wanted to have “words” with him, and Ned in kind had made it quite clear that he did not. Whatever they thought of his disappearing act would have to wait. It was time to move on to the subject of Tiamat’s Heart Stone, and the small issue of how to get their hands on it.
A defiant-looking Benissimo sat by the Tinker and Mr Fox. He had survived the Armstrongs’ assault with his usual bravado and looked at Ned as the room
droned on with something approaching a grin, before giving him a wink. The unfortunate Ringmaster had already been wrongly accused of Madame Oublier’s murder, forced to live in confined secrecy for months and, as Ned now understood, he also carried the full weight of the world on his shoulders. But Benissimo wasn’t beaten, and Ned suspected that if the day ever came that he was, the Ringmaster would just wink at it and crack on regardless.
“How do you know the dragon can be trusted?” asked Ned’s mum.
Benissimo paused. “We don’t, but our informant was very clear in stating that Tiamat knew something that we could use against the Darkening King, which seems to tie in with the dragon’s story.”
“The informant who’s a Demon and who you have never met.”
Benissimo was doing his best to remain calm, though Ned sensed from the way his whip was currently curling on the table that it would not last.
“Yes, Livvy, that Demon.”
“And it does also tie in with what the Demon in Mavis’s tea room said, to find the ‘old one’,” said Ned, coming to Benissimo’s aid.
“So if both dragon and Demons are telling the truth, and if we do manage to prise this thing away from the Fey, my son is supposed to use it how exactly?”
“I don’t know,” said Benissimo, who was now grinding his teeth so hard that Ned could hear them.
“And if we do figure out what he’s supposed to do, how does Ned get near enough to actually do it? With his powers as they are, teleporting in there is absolutely out of the question.”
Ned’s eyes rolled. His current state really didn’t need any more highlighting and it sounded like she was purposefully trying to shoot down Benissimo’s plans before they’d even been made.
“We have a growing army in St Albertsburg led by the Viceroy, and those willing to fight alongside us are flocking there as we speak. The Viceroy’s word still holds weight amongst fair-folk the world over and his fleet is being rebuilt in earnest. Besides the men Mr Fox here has promised us, there are pockets all over the Hidden that will answer our call.”
“Ahem,” started the Tinker quietly, “I have something that might help. It strikes me that one of our biggest hurdles is the swarm of ticker sentries now inhabiting the taiga, along with the army of Guardian-class machines Barbarossa has placed in the fortress.”
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