Their great ape protector beat at his chest wildly, his nostrils snorting with rage, biceps bulging and back arched. To anyone else, the sight of the enraged beast would have turned them as white as sheets. But the Guardians weren’t anyone, and they had no skin to do the turning.
George was too angry to see how outnumbered he was, too lost in protective fury. As the Guardians moved closer, George pounced. In the scream of fist on metal, two of the Guardians were knocked sideways, only to regain their balance and strike back at the ape.
“GO, BOY! TAKE LUCY AND GET OUT OF HERE,” roared George.
But Ned couldn’t leave him. Two of the Guardians now held his great protector’s arms, and a third struck at his chest. George kicked hard and the Guardian was knocked back, but only for a moment, then it was on him again. Red eyes blazing, its arm shot out and clutched George’s throat violently. George kicked and roared as more of the metal monstrosities pinned down his arms and legs.
The clowns were regaining themselves too – bruised and battered as they were, their clubs were ready to swing.
“Ned!” gasped Lucy. “What do we do?”
Lucy’s control over her gifts had clearly grown, but against the Guardians and their metal minds she had no power.
And something in Ned’s mind snapped, just as it had in the taiga. Something close to anger, but more focused and controlled. And at the same moment, his ring fired, without him trying to make it, almost as though it was acting on its own. A blur of physical pain shot from his ring up his arm, to his head and back down again.
The room filled with static as every hair on each of the bodies there stood on end. What came next was a blast of finely focused energy, an unravelling of sorts. In less time than it took to breathe a lungful of air, the Guardians, every last one of them, came apart. The welding of bolts were undone, screws unwound themselves, and piece by meticulous piece the Guardians stopped being machines or robots, and became a sum of disbanded, floating parts. Countless components hung in the air – the separate glass lenses of their eyes, the housing to their skulls, the ribs of their chests, the wiring, the cogs, the pistons and fuel chambers – then all clattered to the floor in heaps.
The clowns, like their butcher master, did not like the “odds”, and were out through the hole that George had punched in the wall before Ned could refocus his eyes.
The first thing he saw when he did was that, to his relief, Whiskers had miraculously remained untouched by Ned’s disassembly.
The second thing he saw was that Great-uncle Faisal had not.
Dearly Departed
he whirring of twin-bladed helicopters in the skies above them came as a welcome surprise. It was a small wonder that the authorities of Amsterdam had let such intimidating machines hug the canopy of its rooftops and canals. It was raining hard now and through the downpour, Ned watched the Chinooks come in to land as he peered through the great hole in the wall made by George. Ned had visions of his parents stepping out on to the street, smiles in their eyes with tales of the Fey, Heart Stone in hand and ready to take their son home. Even if home for now meant a concrete bunker somewhere along the British coast.
While they waited for it to land, the Tinker carefully picked up his great-uncle’s separate parts and placed them in a large plastic container.
“Tinks, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Master Ned,” said the Tinker. “It wasn’t your fault. If you hadn’t done what you did … well, I’m quite sure it would have been the end of us – all of us, that is.”
Despite his kind words, the heaviness of his brow told a very different story.
“If you wouldn’t mind, Master Ned, do you think I might borrow Whiskers?”
Ned’s dog-mouse, wonder that he was, was looking rather sad, head down on Lucy’s shoulder.
“I guess so, Tinks, but what for?”
“Oh, just a hunch. You’ll get him back soon enough.”
As two Chinooks came in to land, it wasn’t his parents that Ned saw but an ashen-faced Mr Fox. Into one of the choppers went Tinks and Whiskers, and the escorted remains of Great-uncle Faisal. Mr Fox ushered Ned, Lucy and George to the second.
To Ned’s dismay, he noticed that Mr Fox was humming.
Ned didn’t like it when Mr Fox hummed. The BBB’s operative smiled at him, far too sweetly for Ned’s liking. Something was very wrong.
“Mr Fox, what’s going on?”
“Why don’t we talk on the chopper, eh?”
Best-made Plans
arbarossa stared at the crystal in front of him. An invention of the Central Intelligence, it had a distinct advantage over air-modulators in being able not only to transfer messages but pictures as well. The jossers had many such things on their phones and gadgets, but phones and gadgets could be hacked – his crystal could not. The spidery torso of the Central Intelligence filled the frame and its soulless eyes loomed closer.
“Faisal – tsk-brrdzt – lives!” it howled.
“You never told me of this Faisal before.”
“He should be long – brrt-ching – dead.”
“My clowns assure me that he is quite dead now.”
“He is not – crdtz – flesh, but ones and zeros.”
“He is a pile of parts, nothing more.”
The crystal seemed to shudder as the Central Intelligence jerked its head left and right, spidery and crablike, with gushes of oil bubbling at its maw.
“Grddzt – ones and zeros DO NOT DIE!” raged the machine.
Even as they spoke, Barbarossa could feel the Darkening King beneath him. His words came more frequently now. And only the Darkening King’s words mattered any more.
The butcher turned away from the crystal and looked through his window over the canopy of the taiga, down towards his fleet.
“Faisal, the Armstrongs and my brother – none of them matter. Not to you and I. You want a soul, do you not? And I the world. Stay the course and when the Darkness rises we shall both have what we want.”
The image in the crystal quietened.
“Tsk – yes.”
“My brother is raising an army. Do you know what a general is without soldiers, without pawns to send into battle?”
Hot steam blew from the Central Intelligence’s head, its many-pistoned mind clattering for the answer.
Barbarossa turned and stared deep into the crystal.
“Nothing. Prepare your metal men and we will rout his army before they stand.”
The Fey
aptured?!” seethed Ned over the din of the Chinook’s blades.
“It would appear so,” said Mr Fox apologetically.
Lucy squeezed Ned’s hand. Opposite them a recovered George filled the entire width of their transport. Lost at sea yet again, without his parents, there could be no better anchor than George or Lucy. George would have reached out to pat him on the back but was currently gorging on bananas to settle his nerves.
“But why? I thought the Fey were neutral?”
“As did your parents, Ned.”
“The Fey do what suits them, old bean,” rumbled George, “with no rhyme or reason, at least none that I’ve ever fathomed, by book or face to face. The Heart Stone is no doubt more important to them than we understood.”
“I’d say it’s pretty important to all of us right now,” said Lucy. “And Olivia and Terry – Benissimo too? – have they been harmed? Are they OK?”
“As you can imagine, they put up quite a fight. We were messaged some hours ago by a Lemnus Gemfeather. Lemnus claims that they are being well treated, though being held in the Seelie Court. He is also quite certain that the aim is not to harm them but to detain them.”
George nearly choked on one of his bananas. “Lemnus?! I’d take anything that bounder has to say with a pinch or two of salt.”
Ned’s mind went back to a lifetime ago, to Switzerland, and a certain Fey named Theron Wormroot. The greedy creature had very nearly drugged Lucy and had intended to do the same to the
entire troupe while they slept.
“I don’t suppose he’s any relation to Theron?”
“No relation and far better or worse than that bounder, depending on his mood. There was a time when ‘the Twelve’ were ‘the Thirteen’. Long before even Madame Oublier’s time, if my books read true. Lemnus led the Invisible Circus, as they called themselves, each and every one of them Fey by birth and powerful with it. Their role was to try and police the more magical realms of our Hidden. Well, their exploits are things of legend, both for the good and harm they wound up causing. After nearly six years of running riot, they were forcibly booted from the Thirteen and sent back to their own kind.”
Mr Fox nodded and one of the agents at the front of the helicopter’s interior produced a map.
“Thank you, Mr Gull, as you were. Dublin – home of the Seelie Court,” said Mr Fox, holding the map out flat for the others to see, “the hub of the Fey and the seat of their rule. According to this Lemnus character, their realm is under the city. Here in the centre, not far from where Benissimo told me he was going, is where Lemnus proposes to meet us tomorrow morning.”
Ned had only dealt with the Fey once, and once had been enough.
“In the morning? Wouldn’t we be better off going in at night?”
“George?” said Mr Fox, and the ape cleared his throat.
“Not necessarily, old chum. You see, day and night, time itself, works differently in their realm. The greater question is whether Lemnus can be trusted. I should think Lucy will be better able to answer that when we get there.”
“Oh yes, it’ll only take a minute or so,” said Lucy, “once I get a proper look at him.”
She answered so confidently, so truly, that it threw Ned. He turned away to look out of the window to the sea below, dark and brooding by night as it was, and it suddenly dawned on him: in the time they’d had apart, Lucy had grown stronger, more in control of her powers than ever, and him? Well, Ned was unable to control his at all. It wasn’t jealousy exactly that he felt – more that the balance had shifted, and especially now Ned longed to be who he was back then, to be as useful as he once was.
“You all right, Ned?” asked Lucy, as always a step ahead of him and where his head was going.
He smiled and it was a smile that said, “not even a bit”, which he knew only Lucy would pick up on. He needed to talk to his friend and desperately.
“In any case,” continued Mr Fox, “once inside, we’ll have a guide to take us to the Heart Stone and then on to your parents and Benissimo.”
There was something about the way that Mr Fox said it that annoyed Ned. For one thing, the order was wrong – his parents and the Ringmaster needed freeing first – and for another, he sounded so matter-of-fact, so sure that Ned would agree.
“You know, people always tell me what I can and can’t do,” said Ned. “Who I should help and why. But they never ask me – they never actually ask me what I want. And what I want is to get the old goat and my mum and dad out of there. Then we can talk about the Hear—”
“Ned, this is an infiltration mission. Our chances of obtaining the Heart Stone will be far higher with fewer numbers.”
This time Ned’s temper boiled over. “You’re as bad as Bene! The mission always comes first, doesn’t it? You don’t care about Mum and Dad, about people – you just want your stone, don’t you?!”
Lucy stared open-mouthed. Even George, who was never at a loss for words, said nothing, and Ned and his two anchors waited to see what the fox-haired josser would say.
Mr Fox didn’t say a word, not at first. All that training, all that control started to visibly drain, till his whole face began to twitch.
“Mr Gull?”
“Sir?”
“Join Mr Hawk and Mr Sparrow in the cockpit, would you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The map in Mr Fox’s hand trembled and as soon as the agent left them, he threw it to the floor.
“You don’t know anything about me!” he shouted.
To Ned’s amazement, the cool-headed operative’s voice was shaking.
“Well, according to you, you don’t know anything about you either!” spat Ned.
Mr Fox sat back and composed himself as much as he could.
“You’re wrong about me, Ned. Being an operative, being an agent, none of us has memories – that’s to say, almost none of us. Before this madness, I had a life and there was someone in it. I don’t know her name, only that we were together and then we weren’t. She was taken from me. I will never forget her face for as long as I live, or the face of the creature that took her – a Darkling.”
The words poured from his lips like poison and the agent rolled up his sleeve to reveal a livid red scar, long and wide, that ran all the way up his forearm. It had clearly been made by tooth or claw.
“I didn’t know what it was, not then. But now I do. I joined the BBB for two reasons, Ned. Firstly, to stop that happening to anyone else – anyone. And secondly, because they told me that I’d forget her, forget the pain. I didn’t and I can’t, but I will never stop fighting the Darkness – fighting to save others the pain of losing someone they love.”
Ned could see from the tear in Lucy’s eye that Mr Fox must be telling the truth.
“I will do everything I can to save your mum and dad, Ned – to save Benissimo. I’ll do everything I can to save all of us.”
The Liffey
he River Liffey flowed right through the centre of Dublin. Red-brick and brightly painted buildings lined its edges, and so did the undercover operatives placed there by Mr Fox. Beyond the river was a city teeming with busy Dubliners marching to work. Ned might have enjoyed taking it in – the cobblestones, the old parts, the new – but today, like every day stretching back for months, he was a ghost of sorts. Buildings, places of interest, whole cities had lost their meaning in the wake of the Darkening King. They were now just facades hiding older truths – tinpot men with living souls, or here and now, somewhere beneath their feet, a Seelie Court that held both Benissimo and his parents.
To an untrained eye, it might have been hard to spot, but Ned could see plain-clothed BBB operatives everywhere. In the coffee shops, begging on the streets, reading papers, or simply ambling down the road by the Liffey, Mr Fox’s agents watched and waited. Not long ago they had been looking for Ned. Now they were trying to help him, or at least keep him safe enough for long enough to carry out his mission.
George had bellowed at having to go on to the Nest and neither Ned nor Lucy relished the idea of their mission without him. But Mr Fox’s contact had been clear: he would only see the Engineer and the Medic.
“While you’re in there, keep your wits about you, old bean, and if you can’t keep yours – hang on to Lucy’s.”
Lucy had had to prise the gorilla’s fingers from Ned’s back and they were quite sure that they heard a stifled sob as the Chinook’s blades spun for the next leg of its flight. Mr Fox led the way while his seemingly mute number two, Mr Badger, covered their rear. Ned made sure he was a good distance away from either of them so that he could talk to Lucy in private.
“Do you think George is all right, Lucy?”
“I don’t think anyone’s all right, Ned. You’ve been gone a long time and I know it’s been bad for you, but George and I – we’ve seen the other side. The Hidden are divided and terrified and no one knows who to trust or what they should do. We all know what’s coming and I think protecting us, in George’s own sweet way, is the best thing he can think of to make sense of it all. We’re his family, Ned – you, me and the troupe.”
“Dear old George.”
“Don’t worry, he’s as strong as he is soft,” said Lucy. “It’s you I’m worried about.”
Ned sighed. “It was close back there, like, really close. I tried to fire it and—”
“And it fizzled. Till you saw the Guardian grab George’s throat.”
“Lucy?”
“Yes?”
“Stop doi
ng that.”
“Stop doing what?”
“Stop reading my mind and finishing my sentences. It’s really annoying.”
“Sorry.”
Lucy blushed very slightly, though there was a mischievous sparkle in her eye that suggested she only “might” stop.
“We could have all been killed. What if the Fey put up a fight? How am I supposed to help get us all out of there if my ring won’t even listen to me?”
“You’ve got me and Mr Fox too, remember. He might be just a josser, but he’s good at what he does and I trust him. If this Lemnus character is true to his word, we’ll get your parents and Benissimo and the Heart Stone out before anyone notices.”
Ned’s heart sank even further. “And what if we are successful … If I can’t rely on my powers then how am I supposed to even use this Heart Stone when we get it?”
Lucy’s face soured. Ned hated it when it did that, because even though he wasn’t a mind reader, he knew enough to know that it usually meant an outburst was coming. Lucy bit her lip and checked that Mr Fox wasn’t listening.
“You really are the most self-centred boy I have ever met.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, Ned!” And at this point, her proud, pretty blue eyes seemed to blaze. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“You’re not supposed to do anything – we are.”
“But Tiamat …”
Lucy was in no mood for “buts”.
“You met an old dragon, a really really powerful old dragon, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything, does it? Sure, he knows about the Heart Stone – it was his, after all. But he didn’t know you were having trouble, did he?”
“No,” said Ned a little sheepishly.
“Well, I did, before I even saw you, Ned. We’re linked and that link can’t be broken. You and I are in this together because of our gifts, because of our rings, and our rings will end this together. Just as soon as you work out how to use yours again.”
Untitled Novel 3 Page 12
