The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  A hand snaked out of the air behind Thomas, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and nearly lifted him off his feet. He saw Lyle’s filthy face behind him, almost unrecognizable for the dust, and heard Lyle say through gritted teeth as he dragged him bodily out of the front door, ‘Time and place for everything, lad, but not now.’

  Behind him, Thomas heard the slow, inexorable grind of the roof hesitating, sagging and giving in, just as Lyle threw him out of the door and on to the gravel beyond. He fell heavily into a heap of terrified aristocracy. Dust and darkness rolled out of the door behind him, along with a low rumble.

  Dust settled. The rumble died. Thomas pulled himself carefully up on to his feet on the hard gravel, and listened. There was a sound, so tiny it was hard to tell whether it was real or imagined. A little crunching noise, like the sound of gravel underfoot, but he hadn’t moved to crunch it. It grew louder, rose to a roar. He glanced at his feet. All the fragments of gravel were bouncing furiously, like sand on a tambourine. He turned round and saw that Lyle too was staring down in horror. As they watched, the gravel bounced higher and higher, until it was rattling against Thomas’s knees. He looked round for Lyle, and saw him already on the grass. ‘What the hell are you waiting for?’ snapped Lyle.

  There was already an exodus of people off the gravel, screaming ladies and white-faced men. Thomas scrambled clear, almost falling on to Lyle and the safety of the lawn as, with a roar, the gravel seemed to coalesce, dragging the stones from its edges into a thick central pillar, then rear up and form a mouth, which opened.

  This time, Thomas didn’t need to be told. Running by Lyle’s side, he threatened to overtake him as the giant head of stone wheeled around, snapping at anything within its reach, stretching out long and thin to snap at the ankles of fleeing women. And still the gravel bounced and chittered in a thin storm, its sound like the laugh of a rattlesnake, lingering after the two retreating figures.

  Tess had landed on the edge of the sill when she fell. For a second she teetered, arms wheeling like a windmill as she struggled for balance. With a mighty push she toppled forward, and pressed her palms into the side of the window to hold herself there, gasping for breath. Under her fingers, the walls felt odd: warm, almost humming. The glass seemed to be vibrating before her eyes, tiny cracks spreading in it from the edges, as if it was being compressed between the walls that held it.

  From above, she heard a slow clapping.

  ‘Well done, little lady! Lyle really does pay for professionals, doesn’t he? Now what are you planning on doing?’

  ‘Busy here!’ sang out Tess, scrambling for another hold. The humming noise was now loud enough to make her nervous, inching its way into her skull, to bounce around, doing damage inside. She quickly swivelled and sat down on the edge of the sill. There was another, a storey below. Clinging on, she eased herself out on to the edge of the sill, turned and lowered herself. Even when dangling by the length of her arms, it was a long drop. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and let go. This time, her feet slipped on the ice of the sill, and dropped out under her. She flailed wildly and her fingers closed round something large protruding from the wall.

  It was a cherub, small and ornamental, hiding a gutter spill. She almost sobbed with relief, her aching hands scrabbling for better purchase around its chubby neck.

  From quite a long way above, Ignatius’s voice drifted down. ‘You’re doing well, little lady. But I think the next drop will be harder.’

  Tess risked peering down. There weren’t any handholds, not even a decent toe hole, not a chip in the wall nor a window ledge to cling on to, not a pipe nor a drain in sight. She whimpered. Somewhere below, a dark shape moved.

  ‘I think Mister Lyle should have been more noble and rescued you by now,’ called down Ignatius. ‘If I were in your position I would resent his abandoning you. Perhaps he really is a cruel man. Just using you, and leaving you to fall alone.’ Tess squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to shiver in the cold. Her grasp on the cherub was slipping; she could feel it. Below, she heard a thoughtful snuffling noise, then a sudden series of barks, short but insistent.

  Ignatius didn’t seem to hear it, or if he did, he didn’t care. ‘Tell me, little lady, if you had a chance, would you go back to the life you led before? Sinful, perhaps. But surely better?’

  Tess felt her fingers sliding apart, and tried to brace herself against the smooth, cold walls. She could feel something humming up through her toes, and from somewhere in the distance came a chittering noise, like the laughter of a rattlesnake.

  ‘Perhaps, if you weren’t already unredeemable, lost in sin and ignorance, I would mourn the passing of one so young. It’s almost a shame.’

  Below, the barking grew louder, and there was a sound in the snow which she recognized as panic, running. ‘Mister Lyle!’ She half-screamed. ‘Mister Lyle!’

  From below, a reasonable but breathless voice drifted up. ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  The sob got caught up in her gasp of relief. ‘I’m slippin’!’

  ‘I’ll save you, Miss Teresa!’ Thomas’s voice bounced off the stones.

  ‘There ’s that Ignatius person up there!’ screamed Tess.

  Lyle looked up at the dark outline in the high window, and his voice turned to an indignant squeak. ‘You’re the stupid idiot who thought it would be nice to turn loose a homicidal madman. Well, you’re in for it now, because I’m telling you . . .’

  ‘Mister Lyle!’

  ‘Yes, Teresa, just a second.’

  From below Tess, there was a conspiratorial murmuring, punctuated by Lyle’s occasional cry of, ‘Don’t be daft, lad!’

  Tess looked up. Ignatius had vanished from the window. Somehow his absence, and not knowing where he was, made her feel worse. Below, there was a shuffling sound. ‘Mister Lyle! I ain’t goin’ to be able to hold on much longer!’

  ‘Just . . . formulating . . . a method of decelerating . . .’ came Lyle’s breathless answer. The shuffling noise went on.

  ‘Mister Lyle!’

  ‘Teresa,’ came the sharp reply, ‘gravity is not the only problem we have at the moment!’ From somewhere round the front of the house, there came a long, primal roar.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ squeaked Tess.

  ‘Language, Teresa!’

  ‘Sorry, Mister Lyle,’ she quavered. ‘What the hot fiery place with demons was that?’

  ‘We think . . .’ The shuffling was now very loud, and punctuated by a little flapping noise, ‘that it’s a mad, rampaging monster imprisoned for an unknown amount of time by the Vatican on a small dumpy Italian island . . .’ A mutter from below. ‘All right, on a small Italian island the dumpiness of which we currently lack any evidence to determine.’ Another mutter. ‘Thomas! Anyway, we think it’s a mad rampaging monster made of stone who controls stones in a manner yet to be determined, with murderous intent.’

  ‘Oh. So which’s worse? The gravity or the monster?’

  ‘Depends where you’re standing.’

  There was another long, animal roar. It sounded a lot nearer. Tate started whimpering.

  ‘Tess?’ Lyle’s voice was suddenly changed, burning with fear and concern. ‘You need to let go.’

  ‘You takin’ the . . . you havin’ a laugh, sir?’

  ‘No. You have to do it now.’

  ‘I ain’t just droppin’!’

  ‘It’s all right. We’ve . . . we’ve come up with a very clever, scientific way of slowing your fall.’

  ‘Yeah? Tell me ’bout it!’

  ‘Well, we’ve . . . we’ve rearranged white crystalline matter in such a manner that the compressive force of the fall will be largely absorbed both through energy transferred thermally by work to cause a little . . . change of state, and through compression of the flexible crystalline structure to . . .’ There was another roar. It was much closer. ‘Tess, dammit, just drop!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I mean it! Right now!’

  ‘I ain’t . . .�
� Tess’s voice trailed off. Under her fingers, she felt something move. She froze, not breathing, not moving, as very slowly the stone cherub flexed its neck, turning this way and that in a slow, sleepy way, and opened its eyes. A pair of stone-grey eyes, without iris or pupil, fixed on her, and the huge, chubby smile on its face changed, twisting at the edges. Its lips drew back, revealing neat stone teeth. It drew its head back slowly, writhing in the wall, and then jerked it forward, right towards Tess’s skull.

  Tess let go, and fell.

  The actual falling wasn’t that bad. There was a moment when it was even enjoyable: the feeling of air rushing by and pressing against her, of the dark world streaming past with no prospect of ending. Then something cold and hard slammed into her, curled up round her, folded in over her head, her face, crawled coldly into her mouth and tried to suffocate her. Every nerve faltered as the breath and warmth were knocked out of her, and her head felt as if it was made of ringing brass. Then hands were pulling at the stuff over her face, brushing snow out of her eyes and she was coughing and spluttering while Lyle grabbed her, plucking her off her feet and clutching her to his chest, muttering frantically, ‘You’re all right, Tess? For God’s sake, tell me you’re all right!’

  ‘Let me go an’ I’ll tell you,’ she said, pushing at him.

  Lyle put her down again, brushing self-consciously at his coat. ‘Well, yes . . . well . . . I’m glad to hear it.’

  Tess turned to look at the thing which had broken her fall. It was . . . a mound of white crystalline matter, now squashed in a Tess-sized shape and a little bit wet where energy had been transmitted thermally by work being done against it.

  Tess thought about it. ‘It’s . . . snow. Piled snow.’ Then the indignation kicked in. ‘An’ I were up there thinkin’ how you’d come up with summat clever, summat smart to stop me, I thought how you’d use brains and maybe some kind of spring with coats and a trampoline or small gas balloon from Mister Lyle’s pocket an’ . . . an’ you just stuck snow there?’

  ‘No, no!’ said Thomas quickly. ‘It’s snow that was arranged in a manner to maximize its capacity to absorb the energy of your fall by collapsing as much as possible under your weight without actually allowing you to hit a more solid surface.’

  ‘It’s very cleverly piled snow,’ added Lyle helpfully.

  Next to him, Tate sniffed at the wall of the mansion, then in his very special way, made it a tiny part of his own little world.

  The roar came again, and it was much closer. ‘And now,’ sighed Lyle, ‘we’re going to have to run like a hot fiery place with demons.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Flight

  The bells are ringing across Old London Town. They ring from St Giles’s to St Clement’s, from St James’s to St Mary’s, and around them the sounds of London rise up through the night and the fog. When the sellers of hot nuts, tepid soups, warm coffees and brief pleasures slip to bed, the poor man who eats watercress from the market at Spitalfields or the old woman who sells violets at Covent Garden are only just waking. The city doesn’t sleep, only parts of it sleep, which never need meet the other cogs in the clock that make it tick. The sounds of the city never die, and tonight a new sound has been added: a low, deep resonance that whispers through the new sewers and the old, hums across the bridges and makes even the thick, deep ice, tough enough to support the dozens of sledges that the children drag across it, whisper the stories that usually only the stones whisper.

  Somewhere, a child in the suffocating twists of the black, crooked rookery sings, in the shrill, hungry voice of the frightened and alone, in the dark and the fog:

  ‘When will that be?’ say the bells of Stepney.

  ‘I do not know,’ say the great bells of Bow.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  Chip chop chip, the last man’s dead.

  And the bells still sing on quietly to themselves after the ringing has stopped, rocking gently back and forth in contemplation:

  Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town.

  Some in rags and some in tags,

  And one in a velvet gown.

  It is said by some that the stories of Old London Town make its people who they are, that the stones which make the city, make the man. For those who have walked through the smoke and the fog, felt the shiny new cobbles of Regent Street or the old mud paths of Bow, who have smelt the river upstream of Woolwich, and seen it glow at Richmond, the city changes them. Each street, it is said, makes a new person out of itself. You cannot leave it unchanged, and nothing you do will ever change it back, merely change the people who will come after. Old London Town will always have its stories.

  It is said by some that there are forces beyond any mere man’s control. Very few know what this really is. And they’re the few who it, whatever ‘it’ may be, will never change. Unless the stones that made them who they are change first.

  And now the fog is rising through the snow. It crawls through the narrow alleys of Bethnal rookery, down the plugged, black iron gutters of Holborn, and clings to the timbers of Clerkenwell and the stones of Mayfair. It laps against the walls of Hampstead, pressing down against the sights and sounds of the city on this night. It finds a little voice in the night, and tries to snuff it out, indignant that anything should break the stillness and quiet.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  ‘Where we goin’?’

  ‘The Heath.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that we can get out of this place.’

  ‘You ain’t scared, are you, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Teresa, there are some situations where an acceptable blood rush can simulate the most improbable emotional characteristics.’

  Tess dropped lightly down the other side of the mansion wall, on to clean snow and soft grass. Thomas followed more carefully, lowering himself inch by inch. Lyle glanced down, scowled, and jumped quickly, eyes half-shut, Tate cradled under one arm. The Heath was only visible beyond the snow as a place where the darkness was thicker, and could be felt underfoot as a gentle downward curve of the land. Behind the wall there were footsteps and voices.

  ‘Come on,’ muttered Lyle, patting his pockets. ‘Let’s get out of here before someone finds us.’

  He dropped Tate on to the ground, and immediately the dog started sniffing, padding this way and that. ‘What ’s he looking for, Mister Lyle?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Either something to eat or a scent.’

  ‘Whose scent, sir?’

  ‘Ours, I’m hoping.’ Lyle had the little spinning magnet out of his pocket and was fumbling with the handle. As the magnet whined and spun in its cage of wire, the bulb slowly lit up again. The light didn’t penetrate the fog, hardly even reached the ground beneath their feet, but cast an odd, luminous orange glow across the faces of the three as they scampered on as quickly as caution would allow. Between the snow, areas of rough, black brush appeared, snapping at their ankles, then their knees. Tate suddenly barked and started scampering forward. Lyle’s face split into a grim smile as he muttered, ‘Quickly, children! ’

  They ran, chasing the shadow of Tate and his muffled bark, the bulb in Lyle’s hand flickering erratically as he spun the magnet round and round inside the dynamo. Thomas could see how his fingers were unnaturally red from more than just the cold, and thought of chemicals burning. To Tess, the quiet and the stillness of the fog were more unsettling than a murderous mob; it left the imagination free to create monsters out in the shadowy unknown, and her imagination duly filled the picture until she could almost feel tentacles tickling at her face.

  They seemed to run downwards through the darkness for ever, until the shape of the land began to change and Tate led them uphill. Tess stumbled and almost fell; she struggled to get back up again, her legs aching almost beyond belief, her arms sore from her fall, her back bruised and head still groggy. Lyle caught h
er under the arm as she scrambled on to her feet, and half-carried, half-dragged her across the Heath. The land dropped abruptly into a crater-like impression, and then climbed again, filled with the tatty remnants of deciduous trees, all colour drained by snow.

  And then, almost without warning, they rose above the fog, and saw for a moment the city spread out below them. It was huge, sprawling, black and white with soot and snow. There were no clouds above the fog, and the moon shone full down on it, making every rooftop sparkle where the snow was only slightly stained with the ever-present overhang of smoke and dirt. They could see the miniature lights of carriages and carts still moving through the streets, tiny streams of fire through the cobweb of narrow streets and alleys. Running out from the city were the railway lines, stretching on silver rails towards an unknown destination, with their trains steaming like angry whales venting water. The river was a snake through the heart of the city, still and frozen, except out in the furthest eastern reaches where the estuary began among reeds and swamps and where the passage of the largest ships, and the sheer depth, width and salty dirt of the river had shattered the ice into little islands moving through a moonlit mirror. For a second, they paused, contemplating this, before Tate’s insistent barking drew them away.

  Outlined in the moonlight, at the top of the Heath, was a familiar box-like shed. Lyle scrambled towards it and struggled with the lock on the door. It had frozen solid. With a hiss of frustration, and giving the shed door a kick that made Thomas jump, he pulled a tube of clear liquid out of his pocket, uncorked it and dropped a few careful splashes into the padlock. The liquid started to hiss, and a thick, acrid smoke rose up from inside the lock. Lyle dragged at the lock again and, almost burnt through by the acid, it snapped open. The three of them yanked the doors back.

  Inside the shed, crouching in the darkness, was Icarus.

  A howl split the landscape. It made the branches of the black trees waver, sending avalanches of snow down with a little crack-splash , dripping white crystals. Lyle was inside the shed in a second, striking a lamp and inspecting every joint and strut of the slumbering machine.