The Spawn had abandoned any semblance of humanity. In ragged trousers and tunics, they slavered and leaped at the Neanderthals, clawing and biting, their skins grey and sullen like spoiled lead. As they attempted to bring the Neanderthals down with weight of numbers, Kingsley’s wolfishness responded. The battle called and the smell of blood was exciting but he had to hold on. He watched, eagerly, and his nails dug into his palms. His heart thumped. His muscles quivered as he leaned towards the fray.
Yes! The pack hunts together, to tear and rend, to separate the weak and to wreak havoc on the others! Terror is our friend!
He became aware that Evadne was looking at him – not with horror, but with concern. Angry at himself, he bit his lip and looked away. He couldn’t afford to surrender to his wild side, not now, not in this predicament. He needed all his wits about him, no matter how his blood sang.
The Neanderthals pushed towards the throne, roaring with triumph. The human darted away, disappearing through a five-sided door in the wall near one of the alcoves. The Immortals squeaked and gestured wildly, full of rage and indignation, pointing at the floating cube in the far alcove. It glowed a sickly green, then faded, which appeared to enrage the Immortals even more, but just before the Neanderthals reached the throne all three of them sagged, falling back onto their cushions like rag dolls.
The Neanderthals didn’t hesitate. Kingsley’s civilised self wanted to look away, but his atavistic wild side was excited. In the end, he watched grimly as the Neanderthals tore the tiny bodies apart, howling and brandishing limbs like trophies.
A new surge of Spawn erupted from the direction the human had fled. They screeched as they ran.
The Neanderthals stood back to back as Spawn attacked. In the middle of the ring, half a dozen were using projectile weapons to pick off Spawn at a distance with darts, bullets, bolts, tiny whirring chains and – astonishingly – tiny balls of fire. The noise was punishing. The Neanderthals clustered around these marksmen, smiling grimly or roaring defiantly, according to personal preference. The floor underneath became slippery with Neanderthal blood mixing with the spiritless ichor of the Spawn.
‘Please drop your weapons and turn very slowly.’
The voice was fussy, polite and human. Kingsley swallowed and shifted around.
A middle-aged man – Kingsley recognised him as the same one who had been standing with the Immortals – regarded them over the top of a decidedly ordinary revolver. In spite of it being ordinary compared to the exotic weapons Kingsley had been confronted with in the last few days, he had a healthy respect for the damage it could do. He took out the Incapacitator and dropped it on the floor. Evadne tossed her pistol aside, then the Scorpion and the Life Changer.
‘The satchel, too, young lady. And the . . . what is it? A sabre?’
With his striped trousers, cutaway jacket and topcoat, he looked exactly like a City stockbroker, if a little frayed around the edges and slightly dyspeptic. ‘Keep your hands away from your pockets. I know you probably only want a handkerchief to cry into, but I’d regret it if you took out something and I had to shoot you.’
Kingsley was convinced. He held his hands well away from his sides.
‘Wait.’ The man widened his eyes at Evadne. ‘You are delightful, aren’t you, my dear?’
‘Oh yes,’ Evadne said. ‘And harmless. Put down your revolver and I’ll show you.’
‘You’re game, too. Excellent.’ He glanced at Kingsley, then peered intently at him. ‘Move into the light. Both of you.’
Kingsley and Evadne backed into the chamber. The noise of the battle behind them echoed around the hard angles of the pentagons, blurring and overlapping to become a veritable bedlam.
The man with the revolver stopped smiling briefly, then a broad grin spread across a face that looked unaccustomed so such extremes of emotion. ‘You’re the boy that Kipling is after, aren’t you? Don’t bother to deny it – my question was purely rhetorical.’
‘Why’s that important to you?’ Evadne snapped.
‘It’s a matter of bargaining from a position of strength,’ the man said, his grin widening, if possible. ‘With you in my possession, boy, I’m now very strong indeed.’
Jabez Soames was not a gambling man. He preferred activities where luck didn’t enter into it. So he was unaccustomed to feeling as extraordinarily lucky as he was at the way things had transpired this evening. If this was how gamblers felt when the dice fell their way or their horse crossed the line foremost, then he could see the allure of Lady Fortune.
‘I want the boy,’ Damona said. She was sitting on a marble step in front of the rotating tetrahedron and looked satisfied. Smoke drifted about the grand chamber, left over from some of the more poorly constructed firearms.
‘I guessed as much,’ Soames said. The Spawn were heaped in a large pile near one of the vacant alcoves. They would rot quickly and unpleasantly. He took out a handkerchief ready to cover his nose in this eventuality.
Damona grunted. She was unhurt, and Soames thought that the way she gazed at her fellow brutes as they laughed, slapped backs and recounted their various braveries was more like a mother benignly watching children at play than a warlord at the end of a battle. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘What is that?’
Soames was careful with giving away information for nothing, but Damona did have the useful negotiating advantage of a horde of bloodthirsty savages at her back.
‘The Immortals called it a Temporal Manipulator.’
‘Time?’ The Neanderthal woman looked at it over her shoulder. ‘Magic stuff?’
‘The Immortals are pre-eminent sorcerers, bending space and time to their will,’ Soames said. It didn’t help them this time, he added to himself and smiled.
‘I can send people to study it?’ Damona asked.
As the new landlord, and as someone whose plans had fallen into place so well, Soames decided he could afford to be magnanimous to keep a client happy. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘In a month, say, once I’ve organised things here properly.’
The old woman croaked. It took some time before Soames realised she was laughing. ‘A month?’ she said. ‘Much can happen in a month.’
‘I’m sure it can,’ Soames said, disconcerted by the woman’s reaction.
‘Now,’ she said, turning her back on the Temporal Manipulator. ‘The boy.’
‘Ah, yes. The boy.’
Soames stroked his chin. The boy and the girl were an interesting problem. They’d refused to tell him why they were here, and he hadn’t had time to question them properly. The girl’s appearance was singular enough to make him think he’d seen her before, skulking about the Demimonde. If nothing else, he could make a tidy profit selling her to one of the slavers. He’d get a good price for her rare beauty.
The thought warmed him to the point of chuckling.
‘Funny?’ Damona spat on the floor. ‘Don’t forget. You tricked us. This place was too well defended.’
‘I? Tricked you?’ Soames managed to look affronted. ‘I hope, madam, that you are not going back on your word.’
Damona spat again, very deliberately. ‘The place is yours.’ She grimaced as she climbed to her feet. ‘I will take the girl and the boy. Their equipment, too.’
‘What?’ Queasily, Soames tore his gaze from the spittle on the floor.
‘Your face said you want her. So I want her.’
Soames bit the inside of his cheek, a tactic he employed whenever he had an impulse to shoot a customer dead on the spot. ‘I was about to offer her to you, but you pre-empted me.’
‘Liar.’
‘A pleasure to do business with you. They’re in the cells below.’
The Neanderthal woman signalled to two of her bully boys and they hurried through the door Soames indicated. Before Soames could instigate some polite sm
all talk, one of them was back. ‘They’re not there.’
Damona cleared her throat. ‘Soames?’
‘I put them there myself,’ he said quickly, before she could spit again. ‘If your people released them, I bear no responsibility.’
A shout went up, and a Neanderthal staggered backward through a door. Another emerged holding the white-skinned girl by the back of her neck, her feet dangling off the ground. The boy flew through the air, rolled well enough and snarled as another of the Neanderthals closed on him, but all the fight went out of him when he saw the girl was helpless.
‘One squeeze,’ the Neanderthal growled. ‘That’s all.’
The boy stood. Soames watched keenly as he shook himself and straightened, becoming an altogether different person – less angry, far more collected. The way he shuddered, however, suggested that he was having to exert himself to maintain this demeanour. It was almost as if he were warring against an impulse to throw himself at the girl’s captor, despite the odds.
‘Tie them,’ Damona said, ‘then we leave.’
Soames adjusted his cuffs uneasily. He had the distinct impression that something was going on here, something of which he wasn’t fully apprised. He hated that.
Jabez, he thought, it may be time for honey instead of vinegar.
Soames assumed his most charming aspect. ‘I’m impressed with the way your comrades disposed of the Immortals.’
‘It was good to do it.’ She smiled, and it was horrible.
‘They wouldn’t be for hire, would they? I occasionally have need of muscular types to help negotiations along, that sort of thing.’
‘No.’
‘I thought not, but no harm in asking, is there?’ He went to move away, but then looked back. ‘Oh, one last thing, if you’d indulge me. Curious as I am, I’m interested in why you want the boy so much.’
Silently, Damona regarded him for a moment. Soames was beginning to feel decidedly edible, and then she spoke: ‘Our business.’
‘Of course.’
Damona glanced at her bravoes. They had bound the boy and the girl. Soames was disappointed in losing her, but business was business.
And that, for Jabez Soames, was sufficient reason for nearly anything.
Gustave greeted Damona. ‘Good news, Eldest!’
‘Casualties, Gustave.’ Damona stood aside. Her fellow raiders dragged themselves up the ramp that led to the river. At the top of the ramp was the tunnel that took them home. It was good to see it. All were weary, but chaffed Gustave. That bluff heartiness that had been missing for years. Laughter. Jokes. The stories growing already.
She was pleased. Not just because she’d ended the threat from the Immortals. Combat bound people together. Useful soon, maybe. She took Gustave by the arm, explained. ‘Holger has a broken arm. Others have bad slashes. Have to get treatment for them.’ She rubbed her forehead. The night had been long. ‘Is Ragnar still practising medicine?’
‘Medicine?’ Gustave grimaced, then his eyes went wide. Two happy raiders toted the pair of bound prisoners. ‘Invaders?’
‘Useful prisoners.’ Would Dr Ward respond best if he saw the boy? Or should she threaten the boy separately? He might be able to convince his father, as long as he had an incentive.
She yawned. Not now. She needed rest and a clear mind. ‘We need some attention. Stitches, bone setting, nothing serious.’
‘You’ve been raiding?’ Gustave said. ‘I thought you were off looking for material for the project.’
Damona had done her best to keep the raid a secret. A failure would have been a disaster. Now, though, battle success on top of their engineering success? Times were good. ‘We were. In a way. Don’t concern yourself with it.’ Damona laced her hands in the small of her back. ‘What’s this good news?’
‘We’ve improved the extraction process already,’ he said. ‘Hilda had an idea about compression and dimensional pressure. Output is up by at least twenty per cent.’ He beamed.
‘Twenty per cent? Congratulations. Let me see this advance.’
‘You’d rather see it than your time machine, ready for testing?’
‘What? Already?’
‘I have enough volunteers for us to work in shifts.’
‘Together? Cooperating?’
‘It’s a miracle.’
The workshop. Clangour. The screech of metalwork. The smell of hot oil. Vibrations underfoot. More True People were working in one place at one time than Damona had ever seen before. Heads down. Passing tools to each other. Advising, listening, sharing.
The project had already grown far beyond Damona’s expectations.
The large space was now divided into bays. Each bay was abuzz with industry. Workers were happy to explain their tasks. Small machines to make larger machines. Devices which would be components. Fabricators. Plotters. Lamination mills. The workshop was a machine itself. Interlocking parts each depending on the other.
A serious youngster with a squint told her that the time machine was in a workshop of its own next door. Then he told her of their progress with reworking water distribution throughout the complex. Smiling.
Damona clapped him on the back. He returned to working on the filtration unit. Looked disappointed that he couldn’t spend more time explaining it to her.
Damona was thoughtful as she left him. Such diligence. Such concerted effort. Had she made a mistake in pursuing her dream alone for so many years?
Gustave caught her attention. ‘Eldest! Over here! Our new phlogiston extractor!’ The whine of cutting tools. Sparks from a grinder.
Damona made sure she didn’t limp. Gustave gestured proudly. Her eyebrows rose.
Right against the rock wall. The machine was long and only waist high. It bristled with large bore input pipes connected to the floor. Three extremely careful youngsters were polishing brass curlicues where none seemed necessary. One of the technicians crawled alongside on hands and knees. He was painting thin, parallel lines on the flanks of the machine. His work made the machine look as if it were speeding along while it was standing still.
It was beautiful. A song of brass and mahogany. Fine materials. From someone’s hoard? Damona hadn’t seen any wood like it for years.
Behind the machine, on the rock wall: racks of metal canisters. The wall itself was smooth and painted a deep cream colour. A gridwork of wires and struts surrounded the canisters. An open metal lattice. Brass pipes along the top of each row opened directly over the canisters.
Damona was impressed and curious. This machine was nothing like anything in her plans.
Gustave grinned. ‘Watch!’ He pointed at the output pipe.
The machine quivered. A glowing vial the size of her thumb flew from the mouth of the output conduit. It dropped into a metal basket. The basket ran along a wire. When it came to the far end the basket hinged open. The vial dropped into a canister. The basket then buzzed to the lattice tower at the far end. It stopped. Settled. Waiting for the next vial, Damona guessed.
Gustave held up a finger. ‘Wait!’
The vial that had just been deposited shot straight up. Sucked into the hole in the brass pipe directly above it.
Damona was so impressed she applauded. Gustave beamed, pointed at the ceiling. ‘Pneumatic delivery system!’ he shouted. ‘Everything in here is now phlogiston powered!’
Damona gazed up. A maze of pipes. Phlogiston extraction must have increased greatly to warrant such a system. But driving machines directly via phlogiston would provide an enormous boost in power.
‘Damona!’ Gustave touched her shoulder. ‘Hilda has news!’
Hilda was standing next to Gustave. She was short, even for the True People. Her coppery hair was tied in a braid that reached to the middle of her back. She wore dark goggles. Damona hadn’t seen her approach. Hil
da pushed back her goggles, remembered to wipe her hands on her white coat before she offered one. ‘Eldest!’
‘Phlogiston extraction! How long?’
Hilda understood the abbreviated question. ‘We have enough for a test, maybe two.’
‘The phlogiston is piped to the time machine?’
Gustave answered. ‘Of course, Eldest. It is our first priority.’
Damona squeezed Hilda’s shoulder. She paid her the ultimate compliment of the True People: ‘You do good work.’
Kingsley and Evadne were finally bundled into what Kingsley decided was a cell, but only after some consideration. It had the requisite heavy steel door, but instead of an institutional dullness, the ceiling, walls and floor were lined with glazed bricks suffused with a gentle blue colour. The hue wasn’t uniform. Darker in some places, lighter in others, it created a swirling, almost restful vista. Two o’clock on a summer’s afternoon, Kingsley decided. Perfect for an underground prison cell.
While Evadne fumed under her gag – a result of a fearsome tongue-lashing she’d launched into after being dragged out of the Immortals’ lair – Kingsley refrained from working on his bonds just in case one of their captors came back. He rested, Evadne subsided and before he knew it, he’d fallen asleep.
When Kingsley woke, he glumly took stock of his situation. Evadne was still asleep, which was good, but he was still dressed in the outlandish clothes she had given him for his excursion in the Demimonde, which was distressing. The yellow trousers were particularly badly off. Mud-bespattered, grass-stained, they looked as if they belonged to a clown who’d taken to rolling about in fields.
He inspected the ropes wrapped around him. Most people had no idea about tying up a prisoner. Even sailors had a tendency to concentrate on knots and not on the firmness of the actual binding. The simplest method – where he took a deep breath, and expanded his chest while the tying was going on – was usually enough, but one of the younger Neanderthals had been alert to this and had thrust a steely knuckle into Kingsley’s ribs. The action had made Kingsley lose his lungful of air, so the binding had thus been tight. As a bonus, he’d added another bruise to Kingsley Ward’s Marvellous Collection of Bruises, Grazes and Contusions, something he could have done without.
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