Beyond Compare

by Candace Camp

  Kyria glanced pointedly at the clock atop a set of shelves. It was not yet five o’clock. Ashcombe saw her gaze and had the good grace to look a trifle embarrassed.

  “I am sorry,” he repeated, standing, and there was little they could do but leave.

  “He was lying. I’m sure of it,” Kyria said as she sat down in the carriage. “And he is an opium addict.”

  Rafe nodded. “Yes, it makes one wonder, doesn’t it, if he is acquainted with the place we went last night.” He leaned out toward the coachman and said, “Go down to the corner and turn right, go to the end of that block, then come back and stop at the corner.”

  He sat down, closing the door, and the coachman did as he instructed. When the coach pulled to a stop, Kyria turned to Rafe.

  “What are you planning? Are we going to watch his house?”

  “Like you, I think he was lying,” Rafe said. “At the end, anyway, after we asked him about the medallion. I don’t know exactly what he knows—I don’t think he knows anything about the kidnapping. That seemed to disturb him. But I think he’s seen the medallion before. He may even know who wears it. But I thought we might get more out of him by watching his house and seeing if he leaves, then following him. If he is upset enough about the idea of Alex being kidnapped, then he might just go to the person he knows has the medallion.”

  Kyria’s stomach tightened in excitement, and she lifted the corner of the curtain to look out the window. “Do you think he will notice us?”

  “I am hoping if he watched us leave or set that maid to watching us that our turning the corner and disappearing from sight would have been enough. I don’t think they would wait to see if the carriage reappears at the corner. And this carriage is plain, not the one with the crest.”

  “What if he doesn’t do anything?” Kyria went on anxiously. “I’m not sure he would be able to. He was clearly drugged.”

  “Yes, but I think he had not smoked very much by the time we interrupted him. While we were talking to him, he seemed to grow more alert.”

  “I only hope he is alarmed enough that he doesn’t decide to go up and finish his pipe.”

  It was only a few moments later when the front door of Ashcombe’s house opened, and the man himself emerged. Not even glancing in the direction of their carriage, Ashcombe turned and began to walk the other way. Rafe leaned out and gave the coachman instructions, and after a moment, their carriage pulled out and started down the street after the archaeologist. Two blocks over, Ashcombe hailed a passing hansom and climbed in. The cab set off, the Moreland carriage following at a discreet distance.

  “Back to Cheapside, it looks like,” Kyria said, peeking out the side curtain.

  Rafe nodded. “This is starting to look very familiar.”

  Kyria leaned across him to look out his window, and his arm curled around her, steadying her. For a instant, she wanted nothing so much as to simply lean against him and give way to the tears and anxiety that hammered inside her.

  As if he knew what she was thinking, his arm tightened around her and he bent to brush his lips over her forehead. “It will be all right,” he murmured. “We’ll find him.”

  Kyria swallowed her tears, muttering thickly, “I know. I just wish…oh, why didn’t I send them back home earlier? I should just have sent Denby with them and not waited for Jenkins. None of this would have happened!”

  “Don’t fret over what might have been. You didn’t know what would happen. You couldn’t have. Besides, has anyone ever been able to keep the twins out of trouble?”

  Kyria smiled weakly. “No. I suppose not. Still, I feel responsible.”

  “It’s the bastards who did it who are responsible. And trust me, they will pay for it.”

  Kyria looked at his face, cold and implacable in the dim light, and she had no doubt that he would follow through on his words. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. It was all she could do not to tell him of the love swelling in her heart at that moment. It wasn’t the time or the place for the words, though, and she was not even sure that he would want to hear them at any time.

  So she contented herself with whispering, “Thank you.”

  He smiled at her, his face softening, and he started to speak, but at that moment his eye was caught by something outside the window. He turned to look.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, satisfaction in his voice. “Looks like we’re back.”

  Kyria’s gaze followed his. “The opium den! It is involved. Do you think he’s going to meet Habib?” Another thought struck her. “Do you think Alex may be held prisoner here?”

  “If we’re lucky,” Rafe said as the carriage eased to a stop. “At the very least, we are going to see who our friend Ashcombe talks to. And that person may lead us to Alex.” He paused, watching. “He’s gone inside.” Taking Kyria’s hand, Rafe opened the carriage door. “Come on, darlin’.”

  * * *

  Alex opened his eyes slowly and found himself staring at a brown-brick wall. He blinked, disoriented. His head hurt, and he had no idea where he was.

  It was cold and he was lying on a narrow bed, a cot, really, with only a thin mattress of some sort, not nearly as soft as the down mattress in his own bed. It was then that he remembered the masked men in black clambering over the garden wall and hitting Denby on the head, then seizing Con and him and climbing back over the wall. He had struggled and screamed, but his captor had placed his hand over Alex’s mouth and tossed him into the carriage, and the three men had climbed in after him. He had managed to slip out of his captor’s grasp another time after the carriage had gone some distance. He had stuck his head out of the window and yelled before they had yanked him back in. That was the last thing he remembered, that and his head cracking hard against the carriage wall as his captor threw him to the side.

  The blow must have knocked him out, he reasoned, as he had no memory of the rest of the trip. He wondered where he was. How long had he been asleep?

  He began to sit up, and for a moment the world spun sickeningly. After a time everything righted itself, and he moved again, more slowly this time, gradually sitting up. He looked around the room, moving his head in the same slow, gingerly way.

  There wasn’t much to see. Besides the small bed, there was nothing in the room but a wooden stool and a pot. The room itself was small, one wall of brown brick and the others of cheap-looking wood. The floor was wooden, also, old and pockmarked. High on the brick wall was one small window, through which came the only light in the room.

  It must still be daytime, Alex reasoned, for there to be light outside, but not bright enough for it to be midday. It must be late afternoon.

  Alex shivered. It was cool in the room; there was no fire. He wished he were home again. He wished Con were here. Things were always easier with Con around. He knew he wouldn’t have felt so afraid.

  He turned toward the door and lay back down on his side, curling up. His head hurt and so did his shoulder where it had slammed into the carriage door. His stomach growled. He was sure it was past teatime, and he thought with longing of Cook’s tea cakes. Tears filled his eyes. A drop trembled on the end of his lashes, then plopped onto the bare mattress.

  This was not, he thought, a very fun adventure at all.

  He lay for a moment that way, thinking of Con and his home. Of Kyria and Reed and Rafe. His chest ached, thinking how much he missed them, how far away from him they were.

  But thinking of them roused his spirits. They would come for him, he knew. Con would have run inside the house to tell them—Alex experienced a moment of bitter regret that he had not been able to get away from their captors as Con had—and they would have set out after him. But how would they find him? How would they know where he was?

  He sat up again, thinking, the ache in his head and his shoulder unnoticed now. He did not know why those men had taken him. He had heard of people being kidnapped and held for ransom, and he could only assume that that was what had happened. It was all, he suspected, relate
d to that box. Reed and Kyria would, of course, pay them to get him back, even if it meant giving up the box. But something might happen; something could go wrong. Anyway, it seemed unfair that they should have to give up the box or pay just to get him back. And though his family would search for him, they might not be able to find him. Clearly, he thought, he could not just sit around bemoaning his fate, waiting for the others to rescue him. It was up to him to do something himself.

  He cast his eyes around the room again. There was still nothing hopeful or prepossessing about it. He got up from the bed, crossed to the door and turned the knob. It would not open, which didn’t surprise him. There was a keyhole above the knob, and he bent to look through it. He could see only a dark hallway beyond the door, even more poorly lit than the room he was in. He turned back and faced his room. The only exit beside the sturdy, locked door was the high window on the brick wall.

  He walked over to it. It was too high for him to see through, even if he jumped. Nor was the window set in enough for him to get any purchase and pull himself up. He looked down at the stool and the bed and decided that the bed was higher, so he dragged and pushed the bed against the wall beneath the window and stood on it.

  Now he could see out the window—at least as much as the window allowed. The window frame had been painted apparently rather vigorously, for a great deal of the paint had slopped over onto the windowpanes. The rest of the glass was so grimy that he could see very little through it, only the vague suggestion of other buildings outlined by the pale glow of the setting sun. He reached up and tried to push open the window, but it wouldn’t budge. He spotted the window lock, and tried it, too, but he could not get it to move. He suspected that both window and lock were painted shut.

  He sat down on the bed, trying to think what to do. He wished he had one of Rafe’s guns—that little one he had given Kyria would be wonderful. He would call and call, and someone would surely come, and then he would pull the gun on him and force him to let him out…

  Alex sighed and sat down on the bed. It was no use thinking about the gun; he didn’t have it and that was that. He tried to think what Theo would do, or Rafe, if either of them was in the same situation. What was it Theo had told him and Con? If you’re stranded somewhere, you have to make do with what you have.

  He stuck his hands into his pockets and pulled out everything in them, making a little pile on the bed. There was a piece of string and three interesting pebbles he had picked up in the garden today, the stub of a pencil, his jackknife and one of Uncle Bellard’s little lead soldiers that he had found lying in one of the hallways.

  He studied his pile. It didn’t look like a very helpful lot. He picked up the small knife and unfolded it. The blade was only a couple of inches long. He thought about how he could conceal it behind his back and then lure someone in—surely there must be somebody here besides himself—and then he could plunge the knife into that person and make his escape.

  Looking at the small knife, he had to wonder if it would actually go in deep enough to do any damage. He had the feeling it might just snap off. It wasn’t terribly sharp, either.

  Finally, he stood up, climbed onto the bed and applied his knife to the lock of the window, scraping at the paint. After what seemed like an inordinately long time and a great deal of tugging—and one broken fingernail—he managed to force the lock open. The window, however, still would not open. The paint no doubt, and he set to work chipping away at the paint all around the edge of the window.

  There was the sound of feet in the hallway outside, and Alex quickly dropped to a sitting position on the bed. Nerves jangled in his stomach when he heard the rattle of a key in the lock. A moment later, the door opened.

  One of his kidnappers stood in the open doorway, masked and dressed in a black robe. A gold medallion hung around his neck. Involuntarily, Alex swallowed and scooted back a little. The man carried a tray. On it was set a bowl and a spoon and a hunk of bread. He set the tray down on the floor and pointed at it.

  “Eat.” He turned and started to leave.

  “No, wait!” Alex hopped off the bed and hurried toward him. “Don’t go yet!” He tried to peer around the man into the hall. Were there any others with him? “I…um, I need a light. Light. See?” He pointed toward the small window, through which increasingly less light shone.

  The man looked blankly at him, then at the window. He shook his head.

  “A candle. That’s all. Please? Couldn’t I have a candle?” Alex went on. “It will be dark soon.”

  The man continued to look blank, then finally shrugged and left the room. Alex heard the ominous click of the lock.

  He sat down on the stool and picked up the bowl and spoon. He poked at the meat and vegetables in the bowl of soup. It looked none too appetizing, but he was quite hungry. He wondered if they had drugged it.

  Eventually hunger won out, and Alex dug into the soup. It was not the best he’d ever eaten, but at least it was filling, and he didn’t feel any ill effects, at least so far. He gulped the food down as quickly as he could, then climbed back onto the bed to work on the window. He feared the light would not last much longer.

  He chipped away at the paint around the frame of the window as high as he could reach, pausing now and again to try to shove the window up. Finally, to his astonishment, the window let out a crack and moved. He renewed his efforts, and slowly, creakingly, the window inched up.

  Through the open window he could see the tops of a few buildings and the sky, deepening into purple now, but little else. He needed to be higher to see out of it properly.

  He jumped down and picked up the stool, placing it on the bed below the window, then stepped shakily onto it, holding on to the window for balance. He was high enough now that he could stick his head out the window.

  It wasn’t a pleasant sight. He was in the midst of a number of buildings of similar height and color. Below his window, the building ran straight down three stories to the narrow street below. Alex sucked in his breath, feeling faintly sick as he looked down. There was no hope of escaping through this window.

  He began to pull his head back into the room, and as he did so, he noticed that farther along the building, no more than a few yards away, the building jutted out below his floor, so that beneath those windows lay the roof of the lower part of the building. If he had been in a room down the hall, he would have been able to climb out of his window and jump down onto the roof below.

  He wished fiercely that he had been placed in a different room. He looked across the jut-out of the roof and saw that it came up to another building of the same height. It looked as if only a foot or so separated the two buildings. Alex knew that he could jump that easily. There would be an opening from that roof into that building, wouldn’t there? He would be able to go down the stairs of that building and out the door. Or there might be a fire escape running down the side of the building.

  It seemed bitterly unfair that they had put him in this room, instead of one farther down the hall.

  Alex eased back through the window and shut it. He returned the stool to the floor and sat down on it to think. If only he could get his captors to let him out of this room, perhaps he could run down the hall and into one of the rooms where the roof abutted. He knew that he could not outrun a man all the way down the stairs to the first floor, especially since he had no idea where the stairs or the door were. But surely, if he took them by surprise, he could get past them to one of the other rooms. And if he locked the door behind him, it would give him time to get out the window and across to the other building. It seemed to him an eminently reasonable plan. And wouldn’t Kyria and Reed and Rafe be surprised to see him?

  Alex allowed himself to bask for a moment in the imagined glory of his homecoming. Then he set himself to thinking about how to get out of his room and into the hallway. He would have to do it soon, as dusk was falling.

  He went over to the door and began to pound on it, using both his fists. “Hello! Come here! Op
en up!”

  A voice outside yelled something in a language Alex did not understand. He continued to shout and pound. Finally, the key rattled in the lock again, and the door opened. The same man who had brought him his food stepped in, frowning.

  “No!” he roared. “Silence!”

  Alex noticed that the key was in the lock, hanging from a string. Did all the doors open and lock with a single key? Alex looked as agitated as he could, saying, “Please…I have to, you know, use the facilities.”

  The man stared at him blankly, and Alex tried his best to pantomime his needs. The man glared at him, but this time with some understanding.

  “There,” he growled, pointing to the pot in the corner.

  “No!” Alex exclaimed. “I can’t! You don’t understand! I cannot! Please!” His voice grew higher and louder with each word, and he screwed his face up, wondering if he could manage to make himself cry. Con had done such a good job of whining and carrying on the day the men invaded their house, it seemed to him that he should be able to, as well. He began to wail, covering his face with his hands to hide the lack of tears.

  Then he remembered one of his many cousins, a pudgy blond girl who had thrown a tantrum when denied another tea cake. This, he thought, would be a perfect time to emulate her.

  “I won’t!” he screeched. “I won’t! I want to go home!”

  He then flung himself onto the floor and began to drum his hands and feet on it, shrieking and crying and making as much noise as he possibly could. The man backed out of the room quickly and closed the door. With disappointment, Alex heard the key turn in the lock.

  Alex drew breath and redoubled his efforts, screaming and pounding on the door. After a long time, he heard voices in the hall again. Pleased, Alex grew even louder in his sobs and wails.

  “Bloody hell!” he heard a voice say, and the door opened again.

  A different man stood in the doorway. He, too, was dressed in the black robe, with the same gold medallion dangling from his neck, and he wore a black mask on the upper half of his face. But this man had fair skin, and the hair on top of his head was strawberry blond.