The Mystery of Emerald Flame (Verity Fitzroy and the Ministry Seven Book 2)

by Pip Ballantine

  Chapter Sixteen

  An Unfortunate Doctor

  Alexander found himself rolling at top speed after Verity Fitzroy. Why, he couldn't quite work out immediately, but it seemed the right thing when someone yelled out fire like that. Not that he had any hose or water on board.

  Just the word conjured up flashes of memory he hadn’t been aware he had. Green light, pain and screaming.

  As he rolled at his top speed screams began to fill the air. For a moment they mixed with recollections of his own death. It almost seemed like he was racing towards himself, caught up in a moment of trying to stop his own demise.

  He accelerated out of the tunnel at such velocity that he was airborne for a brief moment. Unfortunately, no one was around to see this impressive feat. Everyone was far too busy running about in total panic. Fire did that to a person. No matter if you were as intellectual and calm as Alexander thought of himself as, the moment fire came into play all that went out the window.

  Turks, the majority of the workforce on this dig, were either darting about, or talking in animated groups at the edge of the tents. Alexander was much better on the dead languages, but he had enough of a grasp of living ones to understand that something had happened at the laboratory, but that no one wanted to go too close to look. Ingilizce, he picked up that too.

  He wondered if it was Julia's somewhat aloof mother. To a Turk he didn't think there would be much difference between an English or Scottish person. He experienced a twinge of worry that it might be. He might not care for children very much, but he knew the exquisite pain of losing a mother at a young age. He wouldn't ever wish that on anyone.

  "Monkey Wrench!" There was Liam, his cheeks creased with a smile, racing out from among the tents. Alexander realised too late he'd turned in the direction of the name. It was now most assuredly his. Still it was good to see the little blighter unharmed—though he wouldn’t tell him that.

  The urchin darted over to the automaton before he even had a chance to tell him off. The name he feared he was really stuck with. The delay cost him sight of Verity, but Julia and Emma, along with the dreadful German man emerged from the tunnel.

  Henrich drew the children close together, as if they were baby ducks and he their father. Alexander didn't like that particular image.

  “So fire it is then,” the German repeated as if the children were too stupid to have caught the glimpse of smoke wafting over the tents. There was probably an odour to go along with it, even if Alexander couldn’t detect it.

  A little heat began to build in his boiler. “I’m going to go and find Verity,” he declared, “you wait here.”

  Henrich looked at him askance, but the automaton didn’t care. Emma reached out for him as he rolled away, but using his best professorial voice, he repeated. “I said, wait here.”

  For once she actually listened to him. Today was obviously a day for him to do strange things, because he rolled off into the fray with not even a thought as what he planned to do. Although he existed now within the body of an automaton, he was not entirely au fait with its workings. Engineering hadn’t been his field after all, and his entrance into this new form of existence hurried and without his consent.

  He’d mastered the trick of transforming from rolling wheel to legged form relatively quickly, but some of the rest of the functions remained a mystery. The heat in his core built, and he wondered if it was more than a function of his outrage at the German.

  No, he was fairly certain that something else was happening. What he couldn’t say, and that was almost more frightening than the Turks running backwards and forwards, threatening to trip over him, or treat him like a football.

  He did have a vague idea of the layout of the camp, or at least where their sleeping quarters and the tent of Una McTighe were, but from the bustle and general flow away from the east of the camp, it didn’t seem like that was where the fire was happening.

  Tilting his frame in the direction from which most of the Turkish workers were running, he expanded his senses as best as he had learned. Sound and vision were his best assets, but he had no smell to go on. Luckily that hadn’t come into play yet.

  Breaking free of the main body of tents, he finally caught a glimpse of Verity in hot pursuit of the Italian. Ahead of them was an A-frame construction, which looked a little like a swing, but with a large sieve device at the end rather than a seat. He guessed it must be for separating small items from the dust within the city. Archaeologists were after all scientists like himself. They worked in a logical fashion.

  One however would never work in any fashion again. A body lay sprawled on the dirt in front of the sieving device, and it burned with an intense green flame which was dreadfully familiar to him. The fire still burned two feet high, even though most of the fuel, the body was nearly consumed. Alexander might not be able to smell the burning flesh, but he could certainly see it. Verity stopped up short, but didn’t devolve into any hysterics. Street children must be made of sterner stuff than the kind of students Alexander had schooled in his time. A horse crashed and fallen in his traces outside the university had brought on fainting spells from nearly half his class—let alone this.

  By contrast Verity, stood stock still, her face set in a mask which reflected the flickering green flame. The Marcello chap ran up to two women standing a few feet from the body, pulling them back. One was Una McTighe, with her hand clasped to her mouth, while the other was a woman they hadn’t been introduced to yet. She had an arm around Una, and turned her face away. “Don’t look, you shouldn’t look.” The lilting in her voice was definitely Welsh.

  Potts worked with two Welsh scientists at the Institute, and had grown rather fond of their musical accent. So much nicer sounding than the Scots, he found. Odd how that cropped up in this moment of utter horror.

  The Marcello fellow glanced at the body, but immediately went to the women. So, very typical of the Italian male, but Potts attention was drawn to the victim. It wasn’t any kind of morbid fascination, but rather something deeper; as if his brass shell was being drawn magnetically over to it. Since touching down in Cappadocia, he’d been experiencing a lot of strangeness related to this automaton prison of his. Even to himself he couldn’t quite admit that he didn’t know what it was about.

  The victim lay sprawled out next to the shaking device, and through the flames it was hard at first to tell even which sex it was. His glass eyes darted from detail to detail, marking them in down in a methodical, scientific manner. Bobbling his head to the right he observed a large water trough for the animals of the camp. Undoubtedly the person had been trying to make it there but been consumed before making it. Not that the Emerald Flame would be doused by water, but maybe they didn’t know that, or perhaps when a person was on fire, logical thinking was impossible.

  A flash of green and a memory of pain dashed through his brain, and Alexander was glad it didn’t linger.

  One thing was for certain, he was very glad at that moment to have no sense of smell. The body in front of them had to be making all those with one rather ill. It was still burning in fact. The spikes of fire tall and intense. Alexander realised with a start that he was much closer than any human would be able to stand. His metal shell wasn’t immune to the effects of the fire, and the rumble in his workings reminded him of that. He rolled back a few feet just in case.

  “Get sand,” Marcello shouted to the workers standing about staring and clasping their faces. One did have a bucket, so he’d at least tried throwing water on it. The Italian grabbed up a bucket and thrusting it into the leavings of the sieve threw it onto the burning body.

  Seeing him, others joined in, but it took a good few minutes to extinguish the bright green flames. The sand hissed as it came in contact with the fire, but eventually its weight won out.

  Verity still hadn’t moved. Glancing up, Alexander observed that a thin line of sweat trickled down the side of her face, her eyes were wide, and there was a decided shake to her limbs.

&n
bsp; “Fire,” she muttered under her breath. “What a horrible way to die…” Her voice trailed off.

  Certainly seeing a person burned to death was hardly something to be celebrated, but he would hazard there was something more to it than this.

  Shaking off Marcello’s arm, the Welsh woman was the first to get close to the smouldering corpse. Picking up a stick, she actually poked at it experimentally.

  “Who is it?” she asked, her voice that of a schoolmarm calling out for a late attendee. “Well, does anyone know?”

  Certainly it was impossible to make out if it was man or woman, European or Turkish. All clothes and facial feature had been burned off. As the workers either shrugged or got busy throwing up their lunch. While they did so Alexander focused on the corpse, and flicking through his various lenses, he was able to make out something against the still forge hot figure.

  “There’s a patch of silver burned into the chest,” he said, using one of his arms to point out what might be harder for regular humans to see.

  The woman’s eyes latched onto him for an instant, and he wondered if he had over extended himself. It was dreadfully hard to pretend to be a regular bumpkin of an automaton—especially under these circumstances. His scientific mind still existed in this shell, and it was a devil to keep hold of things when it did.

  That Marcello fellow wandered over to crouch down next to her. “Doctor Granade had a pocket watch. A very nice silver one his grandfather gave him. Never took it off.”

  A puddle of silver was apparently all there was to identify to poor chap.

  Holding her hand to her mouth, Una McTighe ventured over to stand at their side. “He was overseeing the cataloguing in the field laboratory. What can have happened, do ya think Mrs Driscoll?”

  Every turned and glanced back to the only building on site. It stood about two hundred yards away, and would have been a terrifying run while consumed by flames.

  “Bechir,” Una called out one of the workers, and he approached slowly, shaking his head. By the looks of him, he’d seen it all.

  As he got nearer, Verity gestured to Alexander for them to move closer. That the child wanted to sneak nearer to a still smoking body beggared his imagination. She did appear to have a deep fear of fire, with her clenched hands and the tremble in her body, yet something drove her forward.

  With so much chaos, no one noticed them nudge their way through the crowd to stand only a few feet away from Julia’s mother. The Welsh woman however was the one taking control of the situation. “Bechir, what happened to Doctor Granade?”

  The Turk shook his head, adjusted his fez, looked down at his feet, and finally gathered himself. “I was in the laboratory assisting him with cataloguing some of the caskets. I didn’t see which one he opened… I just heard him screaming as he ran out. His—” he stopped to take a breath. “—His sleeve burned green. Something spilled on it, and it caught fire the rest.”

  Alexander was heartily happy to not have seen that, or heard the following screams. The Emerald Flame though—that had to be the reason he was drawn to the burning corpse. Something inside him recognised like for like. Unconsciously his brass hand tapped on his chest plate, as he wondered if the flame in there would kill a man just as quick.

  Verity put her hand on his back, giving him a little tap on his shell. He caught the warning. If any of these people found out that he contained the same thing, they might just tear him apart on the spot. Time to act very, very dumb.

  Just at that moment, Henrich appeared, with the children clustered behind him, however there was no sign of Christopher, the oldest and second most trying of them. He had a sly look about him, and Alexander was certain he would be off making mischief somewhere nearby.

  Emma and Liam kept trying to peer around the German, while the curly-haired moppet Julia ran to her mother.

  It was an interesting observation that when she collided with Una McTighe’s legs, she didn’t know what to do. Her arms flapped around a bit, before settling on an awkward few back pats. It seemed the Professor was about as well equipped as he was to deal with childish fondness.

  Verity guided him back towards Henrich and the children. The German seemed more concerned for them than surprised at the fact a man had just caught fire.

  Emma grabbed hold of Alexander and hugged him. Sometimes it was good to be made of metal he supposed. “Monkey Wrench, are you alright?”

  Maybe it was a little charming that she worried, but her familiarities were quite ridiculous.

  “Yes, unlike our friend over there, I am more resilient when it comes to flames,” he replied.

  “Well, I think our guide has quite a bit to deal with right now,” Henrich said, “Let me get you back to the tent for the moment.”

  As they allowed themselves to be lead away, Verity looked back over her shoulder to her friend, and her brow furrowed. Alexander couldn’t be sure, but the Welsh woman, the one called Driscoll stared at them for a long time. Strange how a gaggle of children could somehow be more interesting than a man consumed by green fire.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Into the Clockwork city

  “You don’t think it was ghosts, do ya Truth?” Liam asked. The question was a serious one, after the incident with the Pharaoh, but the excited tone it was delivered in made it clear the child wished she would answer in the affirmative.

  Huddled together back in their tent, Verity knew that they were experiencing an illusion of safety, but no thin canvas was going to save them from being burnt alive.

  She swallowed hard on that. She hadn’t witnessed her parent's death, but she’d heard screams. The plague of nightmares where she was with them in the house, burning, and suffering most horribly, haunted her still.

  Seeing what she had today brought everything back. It took all the strength she possessed not to leap into her hammock and pull the thin blankets over her. She’d have loved to do that, but like the bright-eyed Liam, that would be just an illusion.

  After swallowing hard on a knot in her throat, she shook her head. “No Liam, that wasn’t ghosts. It was a horrible lab experiment is all.”

  “Seems rather a coincidence,” Potts said, his eyes flaring brighter behind the lenses Julia fashioned for him. “We come here looking for answers about the Emerald Flame, and some poor Doctor catches a dreadful case of it.”

  “I don’t want to go out like that,” Emma said, looking up at Verity with wide eyes. “If it happens, you’ve got to—”

  “It’s not going to happen to you!” Verity snapped, shaking her fists in frustration. She wanted to scream, cry, and most of all get on the next airship out of this place. The Emerald Flame, Greek fire, whatever it was called, seemed a fascinating thing back in England, when its only iteration was the tiny flicker in Potts chest. Now, having seen and smelt the reality of the thing, it was suddenly terribly real. She easily imagined the horror of Doctor Granade as his sleeve caught fire, and the mad dash towards a source of water—which would not have helped him anyway. If she closed her eyes the intense light consumed the darkness and threatened them all.

  So, Verity wouldn’t be closing her eyes for a while.

  Taking a long breath, she asked with as much calm as she could muster, “Where’s Christopher?”

  It wasn’t nearly the first time she’d made that query, and hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. Being the second oldest boy of the Ministry Seven, he always chaffed against her leadership. After all she was ‘just a girl’. She’d wanted him to find Liam, and yet he wasn’t with the younger boy. If she suspected anything, it was he was on the lookout for some local booze, or maybe seeing what wasn’t nailed down. Hopefully he wouldn’t find anything that contained any Emerald Flame.

  Liam shrugged. He knew just as well as she how things were with the older boy.

  Shaking her head, Verity began to tie up her hair. Some of the blonde strands had come loose in the run towards the burning man.

  “Well, we’re not going to go chasing him around,
and we have our own mission.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what would that be?” Potts chimed in, possibly because he was under the impression that he was in charge. Adults even when stuffed into automaton shells still thought they were in charge of the Seven.

  “We’re going into the city, and see if we can find any clues,” she said as she began to pack her satchel. Mickey, her tiny automaton mouse was in there, along with all her favourite tools.

  Liam and Emma shared a look, but it wasn’t a frightened one.

  “It’s a bloody dream,” the boy whispered to himself. “An underground city filled with treasure…”

  “Rubies and diamonds maybe,” Emma said, clapping her hands together while her eyes gleamed with the prospect.

  “And more than likely traps of the sort Doctor Granade died by,” Potts said, his dome head bobbling up and down as he considered the possibilities. “Besides, far be it from me to point out, but what can you, a mere child, find that a team of experienced archaeologists cannot?”

  That might be a fair question, since he didn’t know about the Sound. Putting her favourite screwdriver safely into its slot in her satchel, she smiled at him. “I have quite a knack with machinery, and this is the Clockwork Country after all.”

  That only inspired him to wave his adorable three-fingered hands about, to underscore the point she supposed. “We should at least inform Miss McTighe and her mother. They could send someone with you.”

  Crouching down so she was at eye level with the automaton, she tapped him on the head. “Think it through. Julia is safer here, and if we mention it to her mother… well we don’t know who to trust in this camp. Anyone could be working for the Illuminati or my uncle.”

  “And don’t even think of suggesting we stay behind,” Liam piped in. “Verity knows better than that.”