Abe, who had been in the process of sitting down, stood right back up. “You just said there was no one who came up besides me!”
She nodded. “I did say that.”
“And how do you know I'm not dangerous?”
“You're wearing tweed.”
“I had a gun!”
“A revolver.” She said the word as if she were correcting someone who had just left the 'pen' off of 'pen knife'.
Abe sat heavily in the chair and lifted his ankle, prodding carefully at the device wrapped around it. It was completely black except for a single red light that blinked quite rapidly. It was beginning to blink faster as Abe started pulling at it.
“Oh, come on,” said Myrtle. “You don't think you can just pull it off, do you?”
Abe picked up the butter knife from the table and attempted to slip it beneath the strap. Of course it wouldn't fit. Nevertheless Abe tried to press the flat of the knife into his skin and force it under the strap, which resulted in the light blinking even faster.
“Now, now. That's not going to work either. You can't simply take it off.”
Abe sat back in the chair and let his foot drop to the floor, then, struck by inspiration, he turned the knife around and glowered at Myrtle. “But you can!”
Myrtle shook her head. And she smiled indulgently.
“You didn't say anything about this thing going off if I were to kill you!”
“You can't kill me with a butter knife.”
Turning the knife in his hand Abe looked at the tame serrations critically. “I'd venture to suggest, madame, that anyone can kill anyone with just about anything...”
“You can't kill anyone,” she said.
Abe put down the knife and patted his pocket. “Do you know how many bullets are in my pocket, Myrtle?”
“None, of course,” she said.
“There were several, though. I had to reload.” He swallowed hard and made his voice serious and even and cool and deadly. He tried to sound like Roods. “After I fired every bullet I had into a man this morning.” His voice seemed to snag on the word man.
And Myrtle didn't react at all.
Abe sighed and looked her in the eyes. “Listen, ma'am. This Lady who came through here... did you see who was with her?”
“I did.”
“Then you noticed the wooden fellow and the tall, slender man with the dark glasses? Those two are working with the Lady—”
“—The Lady.” Abe could hear the distinction.
“They're working with her to keep those others against their will.”
Myrtle seemed downright offended. “The Lady wouldn't do such a thing!”
Abe heard such indignation in her voice at the very thought that Lady Darbyshire could be involved in anything so distasteful that he imagined any effort to convince her would be a waste of time. He wasn't even sure if this woman held the key to his freedom or not, but if she did, she certainly wasn't going to be sharing with a man who spoke ill of 'The Lady.'
“You may be right,” he said slowly. “I don't know anything about the... The Lady, but I know the two men. I know they're dangerous and I know they've taken the students.”
“Students?” Abe remembered the artwork on the walls from outside his cell, the yellowed drawings of a child who was no longer here. Perhaps away at school?
“There are several students, my friend Tym is one of them... the large boy with red hair, I'm sure you noticed. I'm quite sure he did not want to go with them and yet they have him. You saw it yourself.”
She nodded again.
“And the girl... blonde girl with green eyes, about your height... She's got this lovely upturned nose and a bit of a gap in the hair above her left eyebrow, you couldn't miss it. Anyway, that's Merry and—”
“I'll take it off.”
“—she has a... what?”
Myrtle stood up trying to look solemn even though she was barely repressing a smile. “I'll take off your tracker.”
“All right... I'm sure Merry would appreciate it. She has an engagement—“
“Ooh,” Myrtle swooned. “Love triangle, is it?”
Abe blinked, baffled. “What?”
“Well, she’s engaged.”
“No, not that sort of an engagement.” Abe said. “She has an event to attend, and I was hired to retrieve her... I'm a detective, you see, and... um... “
Myrtle got up and retrieved a small black device from a shelf. It was a flat oval-shaped thing with a few raised buttons on it, and she pressed one of them. Abe felt the device around his ankle loosen, and when he moved his leg it fell off completely, the light no longer blinking. He raised his leg up and rubbed at the ankle where the impression of the band remained. He looked from his ankle to Myrtle dumbly. “Thank you...?” He stood up. “So, I can just go then?”
Myrtle replaced the device on the shelf where she'd gotten it and opened a small narrow door nearby. She pulled out Abe's shoes and a few other garments and walked back to the table. “Well, you might want your shoes.”
She set his shoes on the floor beside him and then set the other things down on the table. “And your knife, which is not very impressive, frankly,” she set it down, a bit of that wood-colored clay-like substance still stuck around the blade. “And your gun, which Marshall had the boys unload, I'm afraid. Your ammo is in your sock.”
“Ammo?” Abe said slowly, as if testing out the word. The light bulb went off and he snapped his fingers. “Got it! Shouldn't it be amm-u?”
Myrtle shrugged and set the sock down, heavy with bullets. “Maybe. I found one of Marshall's old jackets for you, as well. You really ought to change your shirt and coat, sir.”
Abe dumped the ammo out of his sock and began to put them on. “Why, what's wrong with my clothes?”
Myrtle didn't want to tell him that he looked like a refugee from a historical society or an exile from one of those fringe groups that doesn't believe in zippers or one of those raving fanatics of the Highmark-set serial films. It would take too long to explain, anyway. “I don't expect you'll get very far without drawing attention in your... current attire.”
“Fair enough.” Abe stood up and shrugged off his jacket, then began to unbutton his shirt. “But why are you suddenly so helpful?”
Myrtle sighed melodramatically. “You have a job to do, don't you?” She seemed rather intent on the young man unbuttoning his shirt (being a rather raving fanatic of the Highmark-set serial films herself), but the situation resolved itself when Abe revealed a pale and somewhat unimpressive physique. Though, to be fair to Abe, Myrtle would have been disappointed in anything short of the massive muscles and coarse chest hair she associated with romance novel heroes and fictional firemen.
Abe hesitated and nodded. “Right.” He wasn't going to start questioning her motivations until he was safely outside. “Though I don't suppose you can suggest a sort of direction one might go in to find this Lady...?”
“Oh, I can do better than that, in fact.” She held up a finger as if to tell Abe to wait a moment and headed for the kitchen. Gathering things as she went, she moved from the kitchen to an area partitioned off with a curtain that Abe assumed was the sleeping area for non prisoners, talking all the while. “The Lady is hosting an event at her estate, tonight, and though we are always invited, Marshall, of course, wants no part of it. He dislikes social events. And most people. Also music and dressing up and shaving and cats, most of which are required for an event like those hosted by The Lady.
“She's raising money for Sarwell, I believe. Yes, here it is!” Myrtle hustled back into the room and tossed a shirt at Abe which he rather disappointingly failed to catch as he removed his other shirt.
“Hey!” he objected to the shirt-assault rather weakly and Myrtle wondered just how embellished the stories of Highmark heroes were. A great deal, she thought.
She laid two large cream-colored cards on the table. “Invitations. If your girl is with The Lady, she's bound to be there.”
“Ah to be young and ignorant,” Myrtle said. “You don’t call Lady Darbyshire Lady Darbyshire in Darbyshire, silly. The Lady is just The Lady, and that's part of the address. Don't you even know where you are?” She didn't wait for his response, but veritably danced into the kitchen where she began to make Abe another sandwich. “This is just the outskirts of course, but you're going in to Darbyshire proper, to a fancy soiree to find your lady love!”
Abe was blushing at the accusation. “She's not! I mean, do you mean Merry? I'm going to try and save all of the students!”
She handed him a wrapped sandwich and helped him on with the jacket which, like the shirt, was far too large. Then she opened a window that had a metal balcony outside with a ladder and said, “off you go, lad, on your adventures! Do give my regards to Merry!”
Abe said, “and Tym and the rest,” rather weakly as he pocketed the invitations and his weapons and the extra sandwich. He quickly polished off what was remaining of his food as she stood by the window waiting, and Myrtle was quite sure that it was not heroic for him to still be chewing as he began down the ladder.
She would tell her husband that Abe had bravely escaped, lent almost superhuman powers of persuasion and cunning by his fervent desire to be united with his beloved. In her imagination he was getting tanner and bulgier by the moment.
Chapter Twenty-one: Darbyshire
1.
The jacket was strange. It was thinner and lighter than wool and was covered in a sort of oilcloth exterior that didn't let in any wind and made it shine. Abe suspected it would keep out water as well, but it wasn't heavy or tacky like wax. It was a remarkable garment and Abe found the lightness of it odd, especially in contrast to the weight of his revolver in the pocket. It was also a bright blue color with highlighted ribs around the seams in an even brighter green. The thought that this garment would make him less conspicuous seemed mad, but once Abe stopped admiring his clothes and started to observe his surroundings he reassessed his assumption that bright and gaudy would be conspicuous.
The clock tower itself didn't seem terribly strange to Abe. It was big, the top levels and the clock itself actually concealed in a wreath of clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky, but in most other ways unremarkable (visually unremarkable: Abe was perfectly aware of the fact that the bowels of the clock tower connected to another world via glass elevator). Standing up on a cliff overlooking the sea below, it felt no different than being by the shore in Highmark... but it was only a few moments walk beyond the fence surrounding the clock tower that Abe came to see enough of Darbyshire to stop him cold.
The walkway from the clock tower ended at a wide black street with bright yellow lines painted down the middle. Everywhere along the street were brightly colored boxes of various sizes, some half Abe's height and some many times larger than him. The largest were buildings, towers that positively dwarfed the most magnificent structures in Highmark. Many of them, like the clock tower, seemed to attract their own clouds even though the sky above (where it could be perceived through the forest of skyscapers) was a clear and perfect blue.
Everywhere around him was motion, but he couldn't see any people about. There was a sort of white and silver train that ran on tracks that almost floated above the ground, and Abe had to look hard to discern the impossibly narrow supports holding the tracks aloft. On most walls that he could see were large flat panels, giant mirrors, it seemed, that reflected things that were not in front of them. Large windows in shops displayed racks of clothes that seemed to dance as they hung from moving hooks, and toys gleamed from across the street, playing with no children required, engaged in tantalizing battles on a miniature field built to entice the well-to-do and their progeny. Abe saw images flashing on a small screen before him built into the top of a sort of automated paper boy, the screen showing pictures and blaring headlines while a recording blared from the hidden speaker, “hot off the presses, polls show a dead heat! Who will be the new mayor of Darbyshire? Only our Guy Martindale knows for sure!”
Abe was only on the fringes of the busy-ness as he stood in front of the clock tower, and he wasn't sure he wanted to venture further in. Myrtle had said that his destination was in Darbyshire proper, though, and that meant that he was going to have to press on.
He had taken exactly one step into the street when he heard a loud piercing beeping sound, though, and Abe jumped back. He turned toward the noise and saw the thing racing toward him, a sort of bright red carriage with four thick wheels as black as the street itself. There was no horse pulling it, which was probably for the best, Abe thought, since the thing was going far faster than a horse could go. As the carriage whizzed past he suspected the operator had shouted something rude at him, but he couldn't quite make it out over the roar of the machine.
When he approached the street again it was with even greater caution. Abe did not relish the idea of another of those devices coming around the bend toward him. He stood on the edge of the sidewalk for quite a while, looking both ways and preparing to run. He was about to do it, too, when he heard someone yelling from some distance away, “hey, mister! Hold on a minute!”
2.
The person shouting was wearing mottled green and brown from head to toe, with a helmet to match and a pair of black boots and a matching giant black gun. “Oh no,” said Abe. The man was at least alone. And he wasn't pointing the gun at Abe. Yet.
“You look a little lost, son,” the man said as he got closer. He was still a fair distance away, but was close enough for Abe to take offense at being referred to as 'son' by a man who appeared to be his age or younger. Abe moved his hand toward his pocket and the man raised his gun and tensed. “Whoa! Hands where I can see 'em!”
He rushed forward and Abe held his hands out. The man ran toward Abe and had a solid head of steam built up when he slammed into something invisible. He dropped his gun in shock and Abe saw him stumble backwards, his nose smashed to one side and starting to bleed heavily as if he'd just walked run into a wall.
“What the hell?” the man said under his breath as he shook his head and raised his hand to his tender nose.
“I share your sentiments,” said Abe as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his revolver. He aimed it toward the man, impressively controlling his natural shakiness, and drew back the hammer when the man glanced at his gun.
“You can't shoot through whatever stopped me,” the man said. He glanced at his gun again. “Not with that antique.”
Abe raised the barrel of the revolver slightly. “Bet your life on it, would you?”
“Oh, shoot him!” a voice said, very near to Abe's shoulder. It was high-pitched and much too close to have been anything but...
“Spirit House?” said Abe.
“Close enough,” said the voice, now louder and deeper and not confined to Abe's shoulder.
“Trolls?” said the man. He began to back away, no longer paying the slightest attention to the gun. His eyes were big round saucers of abject terror.
“Well, are you or aren't you?” the voice was high-pitched again, seeming to come out of the collar of Abe's shiny new jacket.
Abe lowered his gun and there was a deep loud sigh of exasperation and then the man started to turn to run. Something caught him by the leg and he screamed until something else muffled his voice. His face was squished as if it was being held by a massive hand, but an invisible one... so that Abe could see the fear and the open-mouthed screaming even as the giant fingers muted his screams.
Abe heard a cracking sound and saw the man's leg start to twist back in an unnatural position (extra unnatural, as the man appearing to float in midair was already at odds with the concept of natural). He averted his eyes but the muffling of the giant hand was incomplete and Abe heard enough of the screech that
accompanied the sound of tearing bone and meat to guess what he wasn't seeing. A morbid curiosity seized him and he peeked between his fingers. The blood was now outlining what had been invisible before... a massive man-shaped figure with a titanic belly, easily seven or eight yards high. It was only visible where the blood showed, so Abe saw mostly the thick-fingered hands and the muscles of its chest and stomach.
And the teeth.
Huge jagged teeth in a sort of ursine snout, chewing grotesquely and with obvious rapture. Abe didn't know what it was chewing exactly, as the leg looked to have been only ripped off and not bitten... but then he realized that the man's head was gone.
“Don't throw up Abe,” said a familiar voice.
Abe turned away from the grotesque spectacle and saw Roods standing not ten feet from him, his hand beside his eyes blocking the sight of the meal.
“Roods!” Abe suddenly felt rage more than nausea and he raised his gun once more.
“He's with me, Crompton.” The troll's voice was deep and resonant and distorted with the mouthful of gore it was chewing.
“Oh, hell!” Abe lowered the gun and looked back at the troll. He looked away quickly and wished he had never looked at all.
“Probably best to just think of something else,” said Roods.
“But why did you kill him?”
“Because you didn't,” said the troll.
“And eat him?”
“That's a bonus.”
“I thought trolls ground people's bones to make their bread... “
“Giants,” said Roods. “You're thinking of giants. Trolls basically just eat folks.” Roods took the gun from Abe's unresisting hand and turned it over thoughtfully. He checked to see if it was loaded.
“Also goats,” said the troll helpfully.
“Also goats,” agreed Roods. “But no worries, Abe, my boy... he won't eat you.”
“Oh, lovely. Just going to shoot me?”
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