Ironhand

by Charlie Fletcher

  George rolled his eyes. “Um. What, like break a statue by mistake and end up being chased through London for a day and a half by gargoyles and minotaurs and all that? Er . . . yes.”

  She shook her head again. “No, I don’t mean that either; I mean before that. Your whole life, like something bigger, something that made you break the statue in the first place, something that screwed up your luck forever, that sort of thing. . . .”

  George had a brutal flash of memory: he was shouting something vile at his dad. He was shouting so loud that snot and tears were flying from his face. He saw the answering tears start in his father’s eyes. He saw the door he had slammed on his father. And he saw that same door opening later that night, revealing the policeman and woman who had come to tell his mother that there had been a car accident, that his father would never walk through that door, any door, ever again.

  “No,” he said.

  The tough spark in her eyes kindled a little as she cocked her head at him. “Been that peachy and perfect, your life, has it?”

  It was his turn to shake his head. “Edie. We don’t have time for this. We need to come up with a plan. We have to rescue the Gunner. If we don’t find him and get him back on his plinth by turn o’day, by midnight—”

  “I know. He’s a dead statue. He’ll never move again. I know, George. I’m not stupid.”

  “I didn’t say you w—”

  “I want him back as much as you, you know. I mean, it’s not just because he saved us and we owe him—”

  “We do owe him,” George cut in emphatically.

  “I know. But it’s more than that.” Edie took a deep breath. “The Gunner made me feel safe.”

  “Me too.”

  The first few fat drops of rain flecked the pavement, followed by a lot more right behind them. In no time, rain was falling so hard that it bounced back upward off the slick paving stones beneath them. George instinctively stepped sideways under the cover of a café front, pulling Edie in after him. They had the wall at their back and the meager protection of a thin awning overhead.

  Seven floors above them, the gargoyle on the roof snarled and leaned out, trying to keep them in sight; but all it could see was the pigeon-splattered plastic canopy above their heads. It hissed in frustration and scuttled back, trying for another angle. It stopped when it could see Edie’s feet. It was pleased they hadn’t gone inside the building. That would have been complicated, and it had enough novelty in its head right now.

  “What are we doing?” Edie asked

  “I need to think. We might as well stay dry while I do.”

  “Okay. But you’re right. Time’s ticking away. It’s getting dark already. Think fast.”

  They stood there watching the deluge. George tried to come up with a plan. The problem was that first he had to conquer the sick fear that was telling him that finding the Gunner, who had been spirited into thin air and could now be anywhere in the vast city, or indeed outside it, was just too big a task for him. He knew he really didn’t know enough to make a plan. His mind just kept spinning and returning to Edie’s question about whether he felt cursed.

  A young dad walked past with his toddler in a backpack. The backpack had a clear plastic rain hood on it, and the toddler was reaching out from its protection and tapping his father on the head with a series of gurgling laughs, as the dad reached back and squeezed his thigh, tickling him. They didn’t seem to mind the rain.

  George watched them walk past until he became aware of Edie watching him watching them.

  “Do you remember when you were a kid and it all seemed safe because your dad was there?” he said.

  It was her turn to shake her head. “Not really.”

  He took a slow breath. The only way to rid himself of her question was going to be to answer it honestly. Maybe then he could stop his mind sliding about on the how-to-rescue-the-Gunner problem.

  “Okay. I do. Before he . . .”

  He realized this was probably going to be hard to say.

  “Before he died?” Edie asked.

  “No. Before I messed it all up. Between him and me. I said stuff.”

  “Everybody says stuff.”

  He took a deep breath. “Yeah, but not everybody has their dad die before they get a chance to say they didn’t mean it.”

  He was surprised. Saying it wasn’t as hard as he’d feared. Time passed. More rain fell.

  Then Edie spoiled the moment by snorting derisively. “That’s the sooo terrible thing you did? That’s why you think you’re cursed?”

  He didn’t like her tone much. “What?”

  “So you said something nasty. That’s nothing.”

  He didn’t like her tone at all. “Yeah well, it doesn’t feel like nothing.”

  “Yeah well,” she mimicked, “it’s peanuts.”

  He hated her tone. Maybe it was the way she spat the P in peanuts. When you expose a private part of yourself, you really don’t want people to snort in derision. He pulled his dignity back around himself like a protective cloak.

  “Oh, and I suppose you’ve got a deeper darker secret, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great.”

  There was no way he was going to give her the satisfaction of asking what it was. She always had to have the last word. There was no way he was going to ask.

  Then she said, “Sticks and stones.”

  And because it made no sense, he almost said, “What?” but then he remembered he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, not after she’d snorted at him and made as if her big secret was sooo much darker and more important than his. So he didn’t.

  She looked at him with eyes as shiny and tough as the rain-slicked street behind her. “It wasn’t just words with me and my dad.”

  George suddenly knew she was telling him about why she felt cursed, and although he also knew the answer was going to be bad, he knew she needed to say it. So he asked.

  “What does that mean?”

  And she said:

  “I killed him.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Black Bird

  Something was wrong. The Raven felt it in its bones and feathers as it flew over the green space of Regent’s Park. It looked down and caught sight of its shape, doubled in the reflection of a pond below.

  For a moment it was distracted from the feeling of wrongness as it saw itself as others must see it. It made, it noted with grim satisfaction, an ominous sight—an elemental winged silhouette starkly outlined against the bruised cloud base above. In the past, it knew people would have looked up from their campfires or plow handles and shuddered at the black bird-shaped hole it cut across the sky, casting a baleful shadow over their lives. They would have seen it and thought it was an omen, and not a good one at that. Not that the Raven put much store in what people thought. Against the scale of time that it had to measure things against, most people were scarcely here before they died and were forgotten.

  It flew on and returned to the wrong feeling, which was this: it didn’t know where the Walker was. Most of the time the Walker’s presence exerted a magnetic pull on the ancient bird, which had spent the last four centuries or so in his control.

  It circled over the sharp-edged hump of the British Museum, slowing its flight as it came in to hover over the front courtyard, where the white-and-pink brick grid design on the ground was broken by a perfectly circular sunken area. It was here that the Raven felt it had the best chance of finding the Walker. But the circle was empty.

  It needed to find the Walker, and it needed to find the children the Walker had sent it to hunt. And because the Raven had an infinitely retentive brain, but only one pair of eyes, it decided it needed help looking. And with that in mind, it flew south into the tree-crammed space of Tavistock Square. At the center of the square was a statue of an emaciated man, half naked and cross-legged, sitting on top of a plinth that had a small arched shrine cut into it. The shrine held a couple of crumpled beer cans and a jam jar full of bri
ght marigolds. The cross-legged statue had his lap filled with cut flowers in varying stages between fresh-cut and compost. Opposite him, on one of the park benches, sat a tramp with plastic bags over his shoes and a hank of dreadlock hair hanging off the back of his head like a dead badger. He leaned back to upend a beer can, blue alcohol-washed eyes staring at the sky.

  As he satisfied himself that he’d shaken the last drop from the can, he belched and adjusted himself more comfortably on the bench, deep within a parka so greasy it looked as if it’d been dipped in engine oil at some time in the distant past.

  The Raven dropped onto the back of the bench where the tramp sat, and waited as the dreadlocks were racked by a complicated spasm of coughing that resulted in a small green gob of phlegm splatting onto the ground between the shopping-bagged feet.

  The Raven hopped onto the tramp’s shoulder and gripped hard. The tramp stiffened but showed no surprise. His voice slurred and rumbled in a deep, partially gargled bass.

  “What would you be wanting, bird? What would you be wanting with the Tallyman?”

  The bird ducked in closer to the side of his head and began a disjointed clacking. The tramp started to judder imperceptibly. His eyes closed and his lower lip disappeared under his upper teeth as he bit down, like a child concentrating. He nodded slowly.

  “We’ll see what we can see.”

  The tramp opened his eyes and stood up abruptly, tossing the empty beer can to join its mates in the shallow arch beneath the statue of the cross-legged man.

  The Raven hopped into the air and hung there, watching. The tramp still juddered, but his eyes had changed. Where once they had been pale and booze-bleached, they were now black, black eyes with no whites, as black and sharp as the eyes of the Raven itself.

  Which was exactly what they’d become.

  And all over London, under bridges and on park benches, in back alleyways and in hostels that smelled of old soup and new disinfectant, eyes that had been rheumy and bloodshot, blurred with drink or just simple hopelessness, suddenly changed. Men who had closed normal eyes as they went to sleep in the shelter of vacant shop doors woke up with Raven eyes and walked out into the street, scanning the roadway. Lonely women shuffling flat-footed under the weight of a life boiled down to what could be carried in old carrier bags stopped avoiding people’s eyes and straightened their necks, scouring the streetscape.

  The Raven had spoken, and all over the city, the eyes of the Tallyman had opened.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Smiler with a Knife

  Edie was staring at the downpour beyond the awning, face unreadable as she hugged herself against the cold. George was still absorbing what she’d just told him.

  “You killed your dad?”

  “Well, yeah; no, not as such.”

  He looked at her in outrage. “Edie! That’s not funny—”

  “No. I mean, he wasn’t really my dad. My real dad. He was a stepdad sort of thing.”

  George deflated a little. “Oh.”

  “No, don’t worry. I killed him all right.”

  George nodded slowly. Keeping up with Edie was sometimes exhausting, and this was not only exhausting but also distinctly confusing.

  “Right.”

  “No. It was all wrong.”

  A stream of water changed direction in the breeze and splattered them. The awning wasn’t much help. In fact, it seemed to be doing a better job of channeling water onto them than actually offering protection. Edie pulled her clothes tight around her and ducked into the alleyway beside them. George was still trying to get used to the fact that she had just claimed to be a killer, so a couple of seconds passed before he realized she had gone, and he hurried after her into the rain.

  The alley was empty.

  “Edie!” he shouted, suddenly panicked. There was nothing in the alley but a dead end and a dented Japanese car by a Dumpster.

  “EDIE!”

  He ran into the narrow space, checking the car as he went, looking for a hidden way out. He couldn’t believe it was starting again.

  “It shouldn’t have happened,” said a small voice from knee level. “I just belted him.”

  He looked down. Edie was squatted in the dry area provided by the angled lip of the skip and its overhanging tarpaulin, looking up at him. She shuffled sideways, making a space.

  He exhaled in relief and ducked out of the rain next to her. Once more he couldn’t make eye contact because she seemed to be looking at something beyond the wet traffic hissing past at the end of the alley.

  “Don’t do that again.”

  She might as well not have heard him for all the reaction she had to his words. She just carried on with her train of thought.

  “I just hit him. Didn’t know how else to stop him. See, he kept coming after me. With a knife. It was on a beach. I just hit him. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just hit him.”

  “You killed him by just hitting him?”

  “Well, I had a big rock in my hand. He . . .”

  She pulled her legs up to her chin and rested it on top of them. George waited for her to go on.

  She chinned herself hard on the knees, as if punishing herself for the momentary catch in her voice.

  “. . . He was a boozer, drunk all the time. When the pubs were closed, he’d go fishing. That’s what he called it, but he just went to his beach hut and drank more; that’s what my mum said. And then later, when my mum went, when she was taken away and never came back, and it was just me and him, he took me down to the beach. It was the first time I’d seen his hut. It wasn’t much. It was one of a half dozen, sort of set into the cliff next to each other. I’d always thought it’d be wooden, a cool shack on the beach kind of thing, but it was more like concrete bunkers set into the rock, and when he unlocked his, I saw something and I knew I was in the wrong place, and . . .”

  She ground her chin harder into the tops of her knees, jamming her mouth shut to help keep something inside.

  “What did you see, Edie?”

  She shook her head and exhaled. “Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t something that was really there anyway. It was something that had been there. Once upon a time. When I touched the wall, I saw it, and I knew I should never ever go in that hut, and I ran.”

  He thought of her gift for touching stone and metal and experiencing the memories of highly charged past events recorded in them.

  “You glinted it? You saw the past?”

  “Yeah.”

  She wasn’t going to tell him what she’d seen. She’d made a deal with herself that what she’d glinted in the beach hut was one of the things she just wouldn’t ever talk about.

  So instead she turned and looked at George and told him the rest of it, the other stuff: she explained how she had just run, and when her stepfather had tried to grab her and ask what was wrong, she’d hit him in the middle of his smile and sprinted off along the pebble beach.

  She told him of how tired she had got, running on pebbles, and how calmly he’d followed her, climbing over the wooden dividers on the deserted beach, the smile on his face wholly at odds with the open knife he held in his hand.

  She told George how she’d run up a final steep hill of pebbles and found her way blocked by a deep chasm between her and the new wooden wall being built to contain the pebbles in high storms.

  And then she explained the worst bit: how he had caught up with her on the lip of this man-made ravine. She didn’t tell him what he’d said, or how unnaturally bright his smile had been. She did tell him about the knife, and how she had felt the smooth flint stone under her hand, and how when he had lunged, she had hit him with it.

  He had gone down like a tree, tumbling into the dark pit at the bottom of the chasm, dislodging an avalanche of stones that landslid down in his wake. When things stopped moving he was more than half hidden by pebbles. She hadn’t known what to do. She had looked at the heavy stone in her hand, and when she saw something wet glistening on it, she’d tossed it in after him.

&nb
sp; And then she’d walked back into town and got on a train and come to London.

  George nodded slowly, trying to make sense of what she was telling him.

  “So it was an accident?” he said slowly.

  “No,” she said flatly.

  George saw the doors closing in her eyes, locking whatever heavy burden she was carrying back inside.

  “Look, Edie—” he began.

  “Have you thought where we’re going?” She dropped the question in front of him like a roadblock.

  It took him a moment to slam on the brakes and change mental gears.

  “I thought that’s why we stopped,” she continued. “So you could think.”

  He was aware that she was staring at the side of his face. When he turned, she turned away faster, as if she hadn’t been staring. But he knew she had. Her jaw worked.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked.

  “Stay alive. Rescue the Gunner.”

  “How?”

  “No idea. Start by asking for help seems like a good first step.”

  Edie thought of the things that had helped them before, things and people who hadn’t really given them straight answers, only riddles and obscure clues. Still, he was right. They had helped, after a fashion. But there was a problem.

  “We can’t go to the Sphinxes or Dictionary, because of the City dragons. We’re on the wrong side of the boundary, aren’t we? They’ll still be guarding it, on the lookout for you.”

  “We could go to the Black Friar.”

  She stared at him. “The Black Friar? Are you mad? You said you didn’t trust him!”

  “I don’t. Not entirely. Not as such. But he did show us the way to the Stone, didn’t he? I mean, he dressed it up and made it all flowery, but the information was good. He just—”

  “He just smiled too much and seemed too eager to get his hands on that broken dragon’s head of yours, right?”

  George felt the now-familiar heft of the dragon’s head in his pocket.

  Edie went on. “—and the Walker, he was awfully keen to get his hands on it, too.”