by Andy Gavin
Dancer sighs. “Don’t be such rank culls. This caper’s been proceeding at a toddle. A bit o’ fire under our bums will provide right proper motivation.”
“But that’s the only door!” I must be crazy to draw his attention.
“Cravens.” Donnie gestures at the group. “There be an old chimney in the nave, at the other end of the church.”
“You know me dislikin’ ’em ’igh places,” Stump says. “Ain’t goin’ up no chimney, not never.”
“You prefer burning to death?” Donnie flops a loop of rope over Stump’s head and shoulders. “Take Carrot. And think, you might make the papers: ‘One-handed thief climbs to safety!’”
Stump goes, grumbling.
Donnie pulls the journeyman boy to his feet, forces him through the curtain, then yells for Yvaine and me to follow them to the big room. .
He wrests the boy to the top of the crypt stairs, in sight of the door below.
“You there! ‘Prentice in the crypt!” he yells.
“I see you,” the voice calls back up.
Donnie has his sword out now, the point against the journeyman.
“If you don’t open up, I kill your friend.”
“I don’t believe you,” the boy says.
Yvaine and I stand close to Ben. We hear a cough behind us and I glance back to see him lift his head from his bound chest.
“Yvaine, we have to do something,” I say. “Donnie’s crazy.”
She’s biting her lip again. “I’ll distract him. You try an’ untie Ben.”
“What do we do then?”
“His temper,” she says, “his anger makes him reckless.”
In my book, a guy wearing scarlet high heels is reckless any time of day.
“Last chance, ’prentice!” Donnie says. The poor journeyman is sobbing in Donnie’s arms, but he just raises his blade higher.
“Let him go, Dancer,” Yvaine calls out. “They’ll give Billy to the parish if we dinna get outta here.”
He looks at her, then back toward the front of the church. The fire from the door is now browsing through the nearby bookshelves.
He grunts and pushes his rapier into the journeyman, just below his shoulder blade. The boy’s eyes go wide in surprise as the front of his blouse tents outward and darkens with blood.
“You’re next, ’prentice!” Donnie yells. He lets the boy slump forward and slide off the sword.
Time grinds into slow motion as I watch the body flop down the stairs. The world dims a little. Oh my freaking God. He just killed him! Killed him dead and—
“Now!” Yvaine whispers, a sharp hiss that jolts me to my senses.
She runs at Donnie.
I force myself to turn toward Ben. I feel caught in molasses, unable to process what I just saw. It’s all I can do to place one foot after another.
I’ve never even seen a dead body before, much less a kid killed in cold blood. I try to blink away the image of the journeyman’s face.
I hear Yvaine yelling behind me.
“Dancer, you idiot cove! What will happen to Billy when they hang us all at Tyburn?”
I kneel before Ben, pull out my knife — the crazy gift from Donnie — and start sawing through his bonds. I smell smoke, hear the crackle of the fire, feel it biting back the chill.
“Mr. Franklin, you all right?”
His eyes are glazed, but he nods and moves his legs to expose the ropes, making it easier for me to cut.
Behind me, Yvaine and Donnie scream at each other like some quarreling sitcom couple.
“How did the building catch fire?” Ben says.
“Our criminal mastermind has a death wish,” I say.
“Look at the papers,” he says. “The flames are consuming the air, creating a vacuum that lures them in.”
Sure enough, the hanging sheets are fluttering. But who thinks about that while tied to a chair in a burning building?
“Fires are a source of great devastation in all cities,” he continues, “but London has an unprecedented level of organization regarding—”
I feel the bite of steel against my neck.
“I think you owes me one of these.” Stump takes my knife and pulls me to my feet.
Ben struggles against his ropes, but I only managed to free one arm.
I stomp on Stump’s foot and try to twist away but he only laughs and tightens his grip.
“Stump,” Donnie says, “this bunter has run rusty and ain’t worth the air she breathes.”
He approaches, dragging Yvaine by the hair with one hand. When she claws at him, he gives her a good smack with the other.
I lunge forward, but Stump’s knife only cuts deeper into my neck. I can barely draw breath for fear of killing myself.
“No need for that,” Donnie says, using the hand he just hit Yvaine with to push away Stump’s blade.
I gasp for air as his fist rises to strike.
Chapter Eleven:
End Game
London, Spring, 1725
THE WORLD SWIMS AS I COME TO MY SENSES. Moving brings on a wave of nausea. My jaw seems to have grown an egg-sized tumor, a really painful one at that.
“Dancer,” Stump’s voice says, “Carrot got ’isself ’alfways up that there chimney, but I comes for more rope t’make me ’arness. Not that I’d ’ave to if you ’adn’t set the place on fire.”
Donnie snorts. “Fusée gave me the idea. When they find a bunch of smoking bodies and burnt-up paper they won’t come looking for us. Besides, the big one might be docking me girl.”
Stump starts to cough.
“Anyways,” Donnie continues, “gimme your powder horn. I needs finish this charge.”
“But the fire be spreading to the rafters.”
The air is hot and smoky. I inhale and rattle my bruised brain with coughing. I hear shouting from outside, but if they’re trying to put out the fire they’re doing a terrible job.
I open my eyes.
Stump has his pistol pointed at Yvaine, who glares at him from the floor nearby. Donnie has a teapot he’s filling with dark powder from a little horn. What’d he call it? A powder horn.
Gunpowder.
Damn. A few lazy sparks flit about the room.
Donnie caps the teapot, grabs some loose paper from the presses, and twists it into a cigar-like wick.
“I’m going to set this,” he tells Stump. “Keep your peepers on them three.”
He dashes off toward the crypt stairs. I try to sit up, but Stump steps on my chest.
Back in two minutes, Donnie throws himself under a heavy table. I have the sense to clap my hands over my ears.
KABOOM! The explosion is like a weird pop. It starts loud and then cuts off. The air in the room constricts around me. A new cloud of smoke, dust, and bits of stone rolls our way.
Stump mouths something, but I can’t understand. I force a yawn to clear my ears. Moving my jaw hurts like a mofo.
“Rope… Carrot!” Donnie yells as he crawls from under the table, but it sounds like a whisper.
Stump’s foot lifts from my chest. He grabs up the rope they used to bind the poor journeyman and bolts off.
I manage to get to my knees in time for Donnie to crawl over and poke me with his sword.
“Cuz, go down to the crypt and bring me the money.”
I shake my head. No way I’m helping this crazy-ass dude.
He tips the sword over toward Yvaine.
I go.
But first I notice a jar of pens and some buckets of water by one of the presses.
“Can I take that?” I yell. “In case I need to put out any fire.”
Dancer looks up at the burning rafters and nods.
Using a single candle for light I pick my way down the stairs, hard enough thanks to all the rubble, and nightmarish when I have to step over the boy Donnie murdered. I don’t see any sign of the teapot bomb, but the door’s blown off its hinges and the wood’s scorched.
The crypt is filled with paper, some of it ch
arred but mostly just all over the place.
“Is that water?” The voice is quiet as a ghost.
The apprentice is surprisingly intact, considering that blood runs freely from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. His skin looks like half-cooked steak.
Feeling hollow inside, I kneel, scoop up some of my water with the jar, and press it to his lips. I see little tendrils of blood mix into the clear liquid, then he coughs. He tries to sip. Tries again. Stops. I can’t see his chest moving and I don’t want to touch him to check.
Over by the door, I can make out a shadowy hint of the other dead boy on the stairs. God. Two bodies in one day.
Yvaine, though, she’s alive. For now.
I try to hurry, but my hands shake as I take the Leyden jar parts from my jacket pocket. Some of the bucket water goes inside the former pen container. I fit the foil around the jar and fix the brass rod inside. Last, I rub the leather pad against the glass like crazy. Static pops and crackles as the charge builds.
Having wasted as much time as I dare, I gather up the scattered paper sheets. About the size of copy paper, they’re printed with a fancy two-color job — well, fancy by local standards.
On my way out, I pause near the apprentice’s still form.
“You were brave to the end,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
I didn’t kill these boys, but as I hustle back to Donnie I have to wonder if they might still be alive had my choices been different. The muscles of my jaw spasm uncontrollably, my body’s way of letting me know I’m scared out of my gourd. I struggle to balance the messy heap of crumpled bank notes in my arms while clasping — and hopefully hiding — the Leyden jar underneath.
Donnie sits on a press and nurses a gin bottle, but he has Yvaine throwing water onto spots of flame. I’m just happy he hasn’t killed anyone in my absence. The whole scene is surreal in the extreme. The walls of the church are all stone, but the roof above is crawling with flame. The hanging papers flutter, some sucked upward into the inferno.
I guess Ben Franklin knew what he was talking about.
Donnie hops down from the press and shatters his bottle against the wall. He has the big leather bag we brought for the loot.
“About time, Cuz. Stump and Carrot be on the roof already.”
“Maybe he’ll have himself a Stump roast,” Yvaine says.
I hold the pile up to Donnie.
“Here you go, Dancer. You’ve murdered us all for your money.”
He bends to take the papers. I jam the brass terminal of the Leyden jar into his hand.
There’s a spark and an electric pop as if he shuffled his feet around on a shag carpet for an hour before touching a doorknob. His eyes go wide and he jumps back. The papers fly everywhere.
He’s probably only stunned. The Leyden jar is a high voltage capacitor, but I’d have to be damn lucky to stop his heart, and time doesn’t seem to favor me for that kind of luck.
“Did that jar just make a spark?” Ben says.
The curious mind is always at work.
“Yvaine, untie him!” I scream.
I’m on Donnie before he can recover. I drop everything in my hands and punch him in the balls as hard as I can. Then in the gut.
He doubles over, and I slam both my fists into his head.
He falls to his knees, an agonized look on his face, hands clutching his groin. I reach for the hilt of his sword and he’s too stunned to resist as I pull it free.
For an instant, I consider just running him through, but just for an instant though I know he deserves it. For one thing, I’m not sure I could do it. For another, time might just break the blade or something. Instead, I slide the sword across the floor to Yvaine.
I grab for Donnie’s guns next. The first two I get free and throw into a stream of fire along a nearby wall.
CRACK! CRACK! Two small explosions blast even more papers around. Too late, I realize tossing metal tubes stuffed with gunpowder into a fire might not be the best idea.
His third gun is caught in his belt. While I struggle with it, he grabs my thighs and throws his weight forward, carrying us both to the ground. As I go down, I see Yvaine hustling to free Ben.
I kick furiously, but God, Donnie’s strong. We roll around in the pile of bank notes. He gets his pistol free and I grab at it. He boxes me hard in the side of the head, puts the barrel to my face, and pulls the trigger.
CLICK! I’m still here.
“Lucky cull!” He tosses the gun away.
I thank the patron saint of time travelers that flintlock pistols misfire easily. Then Donnie punches me in the head again. His face is a furious mask.
My brain feels too big for my skull. I hadn’t even recovered from when he uppercut me the last time. He raises his fist again.
“Billy’s not your son,” Yvaine yells from behind him. “You was too much the capon, so I found me a toffer. Mr. Franklin.”
Donnie’s face goes Looney Tunes angry and he pops up and off me. I sit up to see him charging at Yvaine and Ben, now just getting free of his chair.
I scramble to my feet as the three of them collide and Donnie locks his hands around Ben’s neck.
“You wanking bunter!” he screams. “No one bucks me.”
Yvaine beats her fists against him — like a girl.
I scoop Donnie’s sword up off the floor and line myself up for a good poke, but they’re hardly making it easy. Donnie’s choking Ben so hard, the founding father’s face looks like an eggplant.
I lunge forward with the blade, but my foot twists on some crap littering the floor and I stab a table instead.
“Dancer!” Yvaine screams. “Let him go. He’s not supposed to die.”
I yank the sword free and try again.
A burning beam falls from the ceiling and cascades downward. I’m forced to throw myself to the side to avoid being battered and burnt alive.
Foiled by time again. I throw the sword to the ground and look around for something a little less lethal.
CHIME!
A man climbs out of the hole in the floor. The swirling whirling hole that wasn’t there a second before. The man who isn’t a man.
My good friend, the Tick-Tock.
He dusts off his blue suit and saunters on over.
Even Donnie notices. “Mr. Fusée?” He drops Ben to the floor. “What are you doing here?”
The clockwork man opens his mouth but says nothing. Instead, he draws his weapon.
Donnie snatches up a fistful of bank notes, shoves them in his vest, and flees into the smoke and darkness of the burning church.
Yvaine kneels by Ben, lying motionless on the floor.
“We’ve bollocks’d it all.” Her hair is everywhere and wet trails streak her sooty cheeks.
I grab the sword I dropped and step between her and the clockwork man.
“Charlie, Ben still be breathin’,” Yvaine says behind me.
The Tick-Tock lunges at me. I clumsily bat away his blade.
“Can you drag him toward the back of the church?” I ask Yvaine.
My opponent stabs again. I’ve never actually fenced before but I’m pretty coordinated, and The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies.
His parry is lightning fast and I almost lose my grip on the blade. He pokes me on the arm of my jacket with the dull edge, then opens and closes his mouth.
I’m pretty sure he’s laughing at me.
Yvaine drags the unconscious Ben by one leg. She’s grunting and not moving very fast. I have to stay between her and the Tick-Tock.
I grab a burning bit of wood and throw it at him.
He skitters away.
I drop the sword and grab two more fiery brands. “Can’t take the heat?” I say.
He clicks his jaw at me again but backs away.
I may not have his fencing skills, but I do know how to throw things. I grip one plank like a javelin and throw the other at him. When he moves out of the way, I toss the remaining one right into his chest. His
suit flares and he starts dancing around, beating at his breast, limbs moving sluggishly, as if sunk in Jell-O.
I run to Yvaine and grab Ben’s other leg. Together we drag him as fast as we can toward the back of the church. There’s less fire there, but even so, the air is freaking hot. Smoke swirls around and we have to dodge piles of flame. Burning bits of ceiling rain down on us. This place won’t last much longer.
I don’t know how we’re going to get him up the chimney, but we’re out of options.
After a minute or so, the Tick-Tock gets his fire problem under control, but he takes his time following us. He walks around a perfectly good patch of floor, then watches as a huge beam falls upon it. Turning back to us, he resumes his slow-motion pursuit.
We reach the chimney by the anvil.
“There’s no rope!” Yvaine screams. “When you was in the crypt, Donnie pulled me over here, an’ there was a rope hangin’ in the hearth.”
I drop Ben’s leg, step into the huge fireplace, and look up. I see stars, but no rope.
“Donnie must have taken it,” I say.
“Bastard!”
That I knew.
The Tick-Tock closes on us. We duck and shield our eyes as the front half of the church roof collapses into a curtain of flame behind him. He pays it no notice, his mechanical form silhouetted against a wall of fire.
He’s too close now, sword drawn. I grab Yvaine’s arm and pull her so the anvil squats between us and our assailant.
“What about Ben?” she screams.
“You said the Tick-Tock couldn’t hurt normal people!”
The Tock takes something from inside his jacket, a shiny brass thing about the size of a paperback book. I’ve seen it on him before, when I first met Ben, and now at close range I think it actually is some kind of book. Made of metal, like the one my dad had back in Philly. The Tick-Tock looks at it, kneels, and presses one gloved hand to Ben’s neck. He nods his head and makes a mechanical clicking noise.
When he looks at me, the only thing I can read on his ivory face is amusement.
I study the walls for any other exit, but there’s nothing. The narrow stained-glass windows are at least twenty feet off the ground.