“You,” he said, his thick German accent making heavy shapes of the English words. “You, I remember. You came to the circus in London, the night that we lost Little Bird. You are policeman, ya?”
“A policeman!” Constanto exclaimed in horror, taking a step back.
Thaddeus held up his hands, eager not to lose the friend they had made. “No — I mean, yes. I am a policeman in London. But not here. Here, I am just trying to find a friend. Have you seen Rémy Brunel?”
Dorfmann looked at him with open suspicion. “You are searching for Little Bird?”
“Yeah,” said J, “but for a good reason, nuffin’ bad like I reckon you’re thinking, mister. We fink she might be in trouble, see. An’ more than that, Mr. Rec here, he loves her, like, and . . .”
“J!” said Thaddeus.
“Beg pardon,” said J, earnestly, “but we got to tell ’im the truth! Can’t you see that? If we don’t he’ll fink we’re hunting her for another reason, ’im knowin’ you’re a policeman and all. And we ain’t. Are we?”
There was a brief silence as Dorfmann watched the discomfort on Thaddeus’s face.
“Why did you think she would be here?” the German asked.
“Where else would she be?” said Thaddeus. “Once Yannick had shown her the poster for the Jamboree . . .”
At the magician’s name, Dorfmann looked surprised. Then his expression hardened. “Yannick? What do you know of him?”
“He met up with Rémy in London. They came back to France together. You know him?”
Dorfmann stared into the fire, nodding. “That one. He is bad news.” The German looked back at Thaddeus with narrowed eyes. “But I think you know that already, ya?”
Thaddeus swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “I have my suspicions, yes. What can you tell me about him?”
Dorfmann shrugged. “Up until two weeks ago, I was still with The Circus of Secrets. Until a month ago, Yannick was there, also.”
Thaddeus blinked. “What do you mean, Yannick was there?”
“I mean exactly what I say, Englishman. When we got back to France, some of the acts decided to move on. They were not sure Claudette had it in her to create a new circus from the ashes of the old. We needed new talent. Yannick turned up as we moved toward Paris. He was peddling his worth as a magician, and so Claudette took him on.”
“What happened?” J asked.
“Nothing, at first.” Dorfmann shrugged. “We went on. We were doing well. Yannick’s act was popular. Then one night, I heard an argument. It was between he and Claudette, though do not ask me what it was about, as I do not know. Yannick stayed for a few weeks after that, but Claudette would hardly speak to him. Then he left, and Claudette lost her mind.”
“Lost her mind?” Thaddeus repeated. “What do you mean?”
Dorfmann sighed. “We were supposed to be building a new circus, ya? A better one than under Gustave — bigger, stronger. Up until then we were doing well, but to be a big circus you must play the big towns, where there is money, ya? Claudette did the opposite. She avoided the cities and then even the towns. She moved us on to village after village, farther and farther away from where they can afford luxuries like a night at the circus. Then she announced that we would not be going to the Jamboree, which was insanity itself. Instead, she said, we would go south — so far south that we would leave France. She intended to head for the mountains and beyond that — Spain.”
“And you think that had something to do with the argument with Yannick?” Thaddeus asked, searching for a clue as to what had happened.
Dorfmann nodded. “I think so, though I have no proof, and I don’t know what. Anyway — with regret, I told her I could not stay in The Circus of Secrets, and I left. If money had been no object, I would have stayed, but I could not. So I came back to Paris in time for the Jamboree, to find new work,” he said. “Claudette is a good woman, a smart woman. But the summer will not last forever, and the mountains are no place to be when the snows come. Still, if you want my opinion, if you are to find Rémy Brunel, you must find Claudette. Those two are like sisters.”
Thaddeus nodded, thinking hard. “Tell me, Dorfmann,” he said, “have you ever seen Yannick hypnotize someone to do something against his will?”
The big man laughed, but without mirth. “Of course,” he said. “It is the best part of his act. It is also how he takes whatever he wants. Something else I think you know already, ya?”
“Yes,” said Thaddeus. “Yes, I do. And this is the man Rémy is alone with.”
Dorfmann stood, and then, to Thaddeus’s surprise, laid one huge hand on the policeman’s shoulder. “Do not worry yourself too much, my friend,” he rumbled. “I have never known Little Bird to do anything she did not want to do. A will like that cannot be broken by that of a mewling whelp like Yannick, and God help him when she becomes wise to whatever plan he has. But I do worry for Claudette. She has a darkness following her, with Yannick at its head.”
* * *
It was late when Thaddeus and J got back to the airship. The crowds of circus folk had returned to their homes. Constanto’s two hulking men nodded at them and then melted away into the night. J paused, looking after them with a wistful look on his face.
“Wish we ’ad the cash to hire those two,” he said. “I didn’t like what that chap Dorfmann had to say in the slightest, I can tell you. Oh, well. Looks like it’s just me and thee.” J stumped up the gangplank and into the airship. “Still, we done all right for ourselves before, ain’t we? I’m sure we can again.”
Inside, they found the ship almost as they’d left it, save for a cloth bag placed on the control desk. It was full of centimes — their take from the evening.
“Not bad,” said J, yawning. “That’ll keep us in bread and drippin’ for a while, at any rate.” He paused with a frown. “Er — do they ’ave drippin’ in France?”
{Chapter 23}
MORE QUESTIONS
Rémy woke to birdsong and the dapple of warm sunlight on her face. She sat up and looked around. The horses she and Yannick had stolen were grazing quietly where they had been tethered the night before. A blackbird cocked its head and regarded her from atop a fallen tree, but apart from that she was alone. The old woman, her caravan, and Yannick were gone.
Rémy jumped to her feet. The blanket she’d covered herself in the night before fell around her feet, and with it something heavier. It clunked to the ground and lay still.
It was a cube, golden-cultured and covered in intricate patterns, whorls, and connected circles that swirled across its surface like waves on a turbulent sea. Rémy sat cross-legged on the blanket, turning the cube over and over in her hands. It was small enough to fit into her palm, and it wasn’t heavy, though it felt solid. Then she looked closer and saw a series of tiny hinges cleverly hidden among the patterns.
Something else caught her eye, too, discarded among the blanket’s folds. It was a scrap of paper, folded roughly. Rémy opened it. A note was scrawled on it in untidy writing.
Show this only to the one you trust the most. Solve the puzzle. Find the truth.
Rémy stared at the words for a moment. Who had written them? Who had left her the box? Surely it must have been the old woman? She stood and looked at the patch of grass where the caravan had stood the night before, but already it seemed to be springing back into place. Even the cooking fire seemed to have sunk into the soft earth. Had the woman really been there at all, or had it all been a dream?
She got to her feet, picking up her pack and hiding the cube deep within it before looking around again. Yannick couldn’t be far away — after all, his horse was still there and he wouldn’t get far on foot. Rémy looked for an obvious way out of the small clearing and found a faint track. She was fairly sure that it wasn’t the one they had used the night before, though it still didn’t look wide enough for the caravan to have passed t
hat way. She shouldered her pack and followed it into the forest, glancing behind her. It wouldn’t do to get lost out here alone.
Rémy listened out for the sound of running water, thinking that Yannick had perhaps decided to bathe. The forest, though, was quiet apart from the rustle of wind in the leaves above her head and the occasional creak from one of the trees.
Rémy was just beginning to think that it might be best to go back to the clearing and work out a course of action there when she heard voices. She stopped, trying to place where they were coming from, and then realized that actually, there was only one voice. It was low and speaking in short bursts, though the wind made it impossible to hear what the speaker was saying. Rémy followed the sound, stepping as quietly as possible. She wove her way through the trees until, abruptly, they ended. Beyond the tree line was a road, as dusty and pebbled as the one they had been chased from by bandits the day before.
Yannick was crouching in the dust, his back to her. He’d changed out of his stage gear and back into his day clothes.
“Yannick?” Rémy asked.
He stood up quickly, turning to look at her. “Aha!” the magician said with a quick smile. “I was going to come and wake you. Look — we’ve found the road again!” He was trying to conceal something on the ground behind him, but it was too late — Rémy had already seen it.
“What’s that?” she asked, walking around him to see the object more clearly. For a moment she thought he had been left a puzzle box, too. But it wasn’t a box — or at least, not of the sort that Rémy had found in her blanket.
“Oh, it’s nothing . . .” Yannick said with a shrug, as they both looked down at the small device.
Rémy bent down and picked it up. It was made of silver-gray metal — an oblong with a rotating cylinder set inside it and wand-like antennae sticking out of it. She looked at Yannick with a frown. “I’ve seen this — or something like it — before,” she said. “It’s one of the Professor’s communication devices.”
“Oh, is that what it is!” Yannick laughed, though to Rémy it sounded forced.
“Did you take this from the workshop?”
Yannick made a face. “Rémy . . .”
“You stole it?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But there were so many things there — so many fascinating things. I couldn’t resist. I didn’t think you’d ever notice. And it’s not as if it’s worth anything, is it? It’s just a pile of junk, like the rest of the things in that place.”
“Who were you talking to, just now?” Rémy asked, still frowning.
Yannick looked confused. “Talking to? What do you mean?”
“I heard you, Yannick. You were using this to send a message.”
The magician held up his hands. “Rémy, I didn’t even know what it was for until you told me just now.”
Rémy set her jaw and stared at him. “Don’t lie to me, Yannick.”
“I’m not! I swear! Come on — as if this little thing could be anything other than a useless pile of junk anyway! Now, that really would be magic.” He laughed again, and then said, “Look, it’s going to make me sound stupid, but what you heard was just me talking to myself. It’s a habit — I don’t even realize I’m doing it. When I concentrate, I end up muttering things, telling myself what to do. That’s all. That’s what you heard, not me trying to send a message. Who would I be sending it to, anyway?”
Rémy stared at him for another moment before opening her pack and putting the Professor’s device inside. “I can’t believe you stole from me,” she said. “I thought you’d said you’d never do that?”
Yannick sighed impatiently. “I didn’t steal from you. I stole from the Professor. Who I thought was dead, anyway. He’s not going to miss it, is he?”
Rémy slung her pack over her shoulder and looked at him seriously. “Look, Yannick. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to carry on together. I’m grateful for what you did, breaking me out of that prison. But I don’t think you’re a good fit for The Circus of Secrets. Claudette wants it to be within the law. I know she does — she told me so. And you . . . I don’t think you can help yourself, Yannick. You see an opportunity to steal, and you don’t think anything of taking advantage of that opportunity. You always find a way of justifying what you’ve done. I don’t think you even see it as wrong. And that’s just not what Claudette wants. So I think it’d be best if we part ways, here and now. D’accord?”
Yannick looked away for a minute, staring down the road and at the dusty horizon beyond. Then he looked at her and shrugged. The magician lifted one hand to rub it through his hair and opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then felt better of it.
Rémy felt a buzzing in her ears. She shook her head to clear it. Everything suddenly seemed a little distant. She felt tired — her sleep obviously hadn’t been as sound as she’d first thought.
“Come on,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s get the horses and go. We’ll never catch up with Claudette and the circus at this rate.”
{Chapter 24}
SOUTHWARD
Thaddeus slept little, disturbed by more than just the snatches of music and raucous laughter that drifted on the shifting breeze. In the morning, he took one of the Professor’s devices from the row of pigeon roosts, closing the door of the hutch so the bird with the corresponding stone on its collar would not immediately follow its signal. Then he went to find Dorfmann again.
The overgrown camp was all a-bustle with the business of morning, full of laughter and chatter as the circus folk prepared for another day of performance. Thaddeus tried to imagine what it would be like to have such a life — to be always moving on, always thinking ahead. He concluded that it was probably something you could not imagine unless you had lived it yourself. That was why circus folk always stuck together — only another circus performer could truly understand the nature of this life. Thaddeus stopped for a moment, thinking about Rémy. She’d abandoned all that when she chose to stay in London. At the time he’d not given it much thought. But somehow he had just assumed that it would be better than a life on the road. Now, he realized that perhaps that was not the case. He felt guilty. Had he taken her decision to stay in London for granted? Maybe he had, he realized now.
Sighing, he raised his head. Thaddeus’s eye was caught by a poster nailed to a fence post. It was so colorful that no one could miss it, the paper having been stained yellow, and printed with bright blue lettering.
REWARD
BY ORDER OF COMTE CANTAL DE SAINT-CERNIN
FOR THE SAFE RETURN OF THE “LOST COMTESSE” ARIETTE DE CANTAL.
BRING THE COMTESSE HOME!
Thaddeus moved closer, frowning as a sudden chill washed over him at the sight of the Comte de Cantal’s name. He pulled the poster from its nail and read it over again as he continued on his way.
Dorfmann looked as if he’d been up for hours. He was tying down the guide rope of a new tent that had miraculously appeared, like a mushroom, since the night before. He nodded at the policeman as he approached. “I’ve got something for you,” Thaddeus said, holding out the homing device.
“What is this?” asked the German, as he turned it over in his giant palm, the green stone glinting in the morning sun.
“Where we’re going, we may need all the friends we can get,” Thaddeus said. “At the moment, in this place, that’s you. If I ever have to send you a message, this is how it’ll reach you. Don’t lose it.”
Dorfmann nodded. “I’ll help if I can, Englishman.”
Thaddeus held up the poster. “What can you tell me about this?”
The German shrugged. “What do you want to know? The missing girl, it is an old wives’ tale, made to scare misbehaving children. The Comte . . .” Dorffman made a hawking sound in his throat, as if he was about to spit. “Whoever she is, real or not, she’d do best to stay away from him.”
Thaddeus nodded. “I agree.”
Dorfmann raised an eyebrow. “You know of the Comte?”
“Our paths have crossed. Back in London. And —” He hesitated. “And I think Yannick is working for him. Thieving. We think that’s why Yannick’s with Rémy — they’re going to use her to steal something really big sometime in the next few weeks.”
Dorfmann frowned. “What is it they will take?”
Thaddeus shrugged, a little helplessly. “We don’t know. That’s why we want to find her — before they can force her back into her old life.”
The German watched Thaddeus silently for a moment, and then nodded. “So the Comte de Cantal needs money, ya? That explains the search.” He waved a finger at the poster.
“Oh? Why?”
“The story goes that the old Comte and his Comtesse settled everything on their missing daughter,” Dorfmann explained. “All their money is still sitting in a vault somewhere. It has been for decades. It will not be released to any descendant, until she turns up and claims it, or unless someone can prove without doubt that she’s dead.”
Another chill passed through Thaddeus as he looked again at the poster. “So the Comte . . .”
Dorfmann gave a short laugh. “I would say that this search is more about proving she’s dead than finding her alive, eh? Then he can inherit.”
“What happens if he finds her alive?” Thaddeus asked.
“Then she will inherit, and he will get nothing.” The German shrugged. “What fools these rich folk are, eh, Englishman? What a tangle they do make of their lives. For me, I am always happier poor. And now, I must get on with my work, or I will be too poor even for me.”
“Sorry — yes,” said Thaddeus. “Thank you, Dorfmann.”
The German nodded, patting the pocket he had slipped the homing device into. “Get me a message, Rec, and I will come if I can.”
Back at the airship, J was up and about, readying her for takeoff. Thaddeus could already hear the faint hiss as the ruby, recharged from a night of rest, did its job.
The Ruby Airship Page 15