A clang and a jerk signalled the end of her ride, which could only have been a few minutes’ duration. The cover was removed and she was lifted out, a guard taking her under the armpits. She looked about to find a chamber with floor, walls and ceilings covered with the flat white stones that the big people called tiles. They were slick and hard underfoot. Leetha sniffed, but the only smoke she could smell came from her tunic and trousers.
The single guard shut the cover on the pod. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Through the door. Hurry!’
Stairs took Leetha up a level. Another guard was standing in front of an iron door, waiting with a notebook and pencil. ‘You’re Leetha?’
Leetha was surprised. She had not realised that any of the guards knew her name. She nodded, and the guard made a mark on her paper. Then she stood aside and opened the door.
Four guards were standing in front of a large lorry, just like the one that had taken Leetha and her people from the docks to the lair of the Immortals. She shrank away, but the guard behind prodded her forward.
Then she saw Ubbo and Calli and three of her cousins inside the lorry. She climbed in and they huddled, embracing, in the far corner, surrounded by metal and hardness.
One by one, her people joined them. They smelled of smoke and fear, but it did not matter. Leetha counted. When all thirty of them were inside, the doors were locked and the lorry lurched off.
She hoped that it had all been worthwhile. She had risked much to set the gas free so their young champions – the ghost girl and the wild boy – could have a chance to escape.
Even though her journey was in the dark, in the metal shell of the lorry, her sense of direction did not fail her. They were travelling north, far north.
While they travelled, they sang songs of their home and songs of their family. Ubbo told stories. Mannor made them laugh. All of them were curious about their destination and played guessing games; most guessed they were being taken home, but that was through hope, not through knowing.
Leetha was calm. She had hope because she believed in her young champions. They would find Leetha’s people and set them free.
Leetha had kept the knowledge of her young champions to herself, uncertain whether telling of it would be a good thing or not. As she listened to the songs and saw the resolve in the faces around her, she decided she would tell her people about the wild boy and the ghost girl. When they arrived at their destination, she would share the news, and the hope.
It was the right thing to do. It made her feel content, but she knew, too, that an agreement like the one she had made with her champions worked both ways. Leetha had to do her part.
She hoped that the sorcerers had remembered to take the book with them, the book that belonged to the wild boy. Leetha needed to find it.
She’d promised.
EIGHTEEN
Kingsley had the door open in seconds. The corridor outside was rapidly filling with smoke, while the remains of windows and mirrors sparkled on the carpet. Raised voices were coming from nearby. Kingsley looked both ways and thought the corridor to the right was marginally less smoky. He took Evadne by the hand and they ran.
They stumbled upon a set of stairs and hurtled down them while the building collapsed in a chaos of smoke and flame. Coughing, they pushed on until they blundered into another locked door. He motioned for Evadne to crouch to find sweeter air, while he applied himself to the lock. For a moment, his Inner Animal threatened to take over, panicked by the smoke and heat. He had to beat it down, to impose himself on it, which interfered with his work on the lock. Evadne was beginning to cast worried looks his way when he finally had it, taking two or three times longer than was his wont and, in the end, using brutal rather than deft movements of his lock pick.
Kingsley hit the door with a shoulder. He nearly yelped with pain, but he pushed Evadne through into blessed fresh air. With his arm around her shoulders, they stumbled into a crowd that had gathered.
‘This way, this way,’ a motherly grey-haired woman clucked. ‘Give ’em some air, now, air!’
Kingsley sagged with relief. The crowd was a motley mixture, but they were not uniformed guards of the Immortals, nor were they Spawn. Neighbours and the few passers-by had been attracted by the explosion and by the flames that were consuming the house and the factory at the rear. He couldn’t imagine that the Immortals would be caught in such an ordinary manner, but he was dismayed to think of Leetha’s people and what could be happening to them – and to any children the Immortals had imprisoned.
He coughed, and each spasm was sublimely painful. Through the hurt, he wondered at the source of the explosion. He’d seen no evidence of magic, but this raised more questions than it answered. He refused to believe it was a simple accident.
A motor fire engine roared up. Several of the more eager firemen brandished axes and bounded into the smoke, their brass helmets gleaming until they plunged into the gloom. The more taciturn went to work uncoiling their hoses and priming the water pump.
Evadne thanked their grey-haired saviour and assured her that they were well. They stood and watched the fire brigade at work.
Kingsley approached a fire officer. ‘Any people inside?’
The fire officer harrumphed through his moustache and unhooked his sleeve from Kingsley’s grasp. ‘Not as far as we can make out, young sir. The buildings at the rear are clear, too.’ He squinted at Kingsley’s somewhat sooty and dishevelled appearance. ‘You know the residents, do you? The workers?’
‘The basement. Did you check the basement?’
‘No-one anywhere, but what’s your reason for asking?’
‘Civic duty.’ Kingsley tried to look appropriately noble. The fire officer snorted and went to join his fellows.
‘They’ve fled, haven’t they?’ Evadne said. She produced a scarf. She wrapped it around her head and knotted it under her chin, to protect herself from stares. With her dark blue spectacles, Kingsley thought it made her look exotic, a visitor from the East.
‘It looks so. The Immortals are good at that, it would seem.’
‘I suppose that changing from body to body for centuries makes shifting location seem a simple task.’
‘We’ve lost them,’ Kingsley said.
‘For now, but not to worry. We have a lure that I’m sure the Immortals won’t be able to resist.’
‘Not my brain, I hope.’
She took his arm. ‘Not yet. I was thinking of a certain dodecahedron.’
Together, they slipped away while all attention was on the fire, finally stumbling – exhausted, dazed and not a little sooty – into Evadne’s underground refuge.
Kingsley was wakened from a doze by the bathroom door being flung back. An immense cloud of rose-fragranced steam billowed out and Evadne emerged. She was clad in a startling blue satin robe and she was drying her hair vigorously on a towel. Her forearms, where her sleeves had fallen back, were pinkish from the heat, as were her cheeks. ‘I cannot exist without a bath,’ she announced in a voice that was muffled by the towel. ‘Starve me and I laugh, take away my liberty and I care not, but keep me from a bath and I’m liable to do anything.’ She dropped the towel. ‘Don’t you agree?’
Right now, I’d agree with anything you said. Kingsley had trouble formulating an answer, so overwhelming was her appearance. Unearthly, but altogether human, he decided, after rejecting a number of comparisons, mostly to do with goddesses and the like.
He noticed that her gaze was roaming across the chamber uncertainly, seeking him out but moving on when it crossed him.
‘You don’t have your spectacles,’ he said.
‘La.’ She kicked the towel into a corner. A large rat (myrmidon!) scuttled out from behind the bench, seized the towel and disappeared into the bathroom. ‘I have spares everywhere here.’ She held up her arm. ‘Would you assist me to my bedroom?’
Kingsley leaped to her side. ‘This way,’ he said and hoped she didn’t notice how hoarse his voice was. He dropped his gaze an
d was actually dizzy when he saw her bare feet peeking out from under the hem of the robe.
‘Was that another myrmidon I saw?’ he asked with what he hoped would pass for nonchalance.
‘Of course.’ They reached the bedroom door. She stretched out and touched the doorframe. ‘I keep a few about to make sure the place stays tidy, while the others are out there sniffing for information about the Immortals. And your father and Mrs Winter.’
‘Ah. When good help is hard to find, I suppose a rat will do.’
A laugh. ‘The bathroom is free. Towels are on the rack.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You need a bath. Doesn’t your highly attuned wild nose tell you so?’
Kingsley sniffed.
‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘You do. Go and attend to it and I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘The morning? Shouldn’t we be doing something about the Immortals, now, before they get too far away?’
She grasped his arm, hard. ‘Kingsley, we’ve just been outrageously lucky, escaping the Immortals like that. Now, I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted and aching. Any decisions we make now are bound to be bad ones. When we’re rested we’ll be in a far, far better state to do something.’
She closed her bedroom door behind her. Kingsley was left uncertain of everything except a desire to replicate the experience of the ten-step walk with a satin-clad, barefoot Evadne Stephens.
Both startled and warmed by this notion, he took the thought, folded it, folded it again, made a crane shape out of it and put it on a shelf to look at some time in the future.
Then he went to have a bath.
The next morning, Kingsley was touched to find that Evadne had stocked a wardrobe with clothing for him. Such thoughtfulness helped lighten the despondency that had accompanied him all through a fitful night’s sleep. As he donned a superbly fitting pair of black trousers, he fleetingly wondered how she’d managed to obtain his measurements. He also wondered about the tailor. No label proclaiming Jermyn Street premises, simply a discreet ‘Mus, Gloucester’ was enough for the remarkable craftsman (or craftswoman?) who made the garments. The shirt and the ascot bore the same label and were equally well made. After some thought, he eschewed a hat and completed his dressing with a handy walking stick from a selection by the door.
While he adjusted his cuffs and squared his jacket, Kingsley resisted the weight of dejection on his shoulders. On many fronts, he had cause to be grateful about what had happened at the factory of the Immortals – they had escaped, after all, and they had learned something of the Immortals’ plans – but he sank into gloom when he thought of the missed opportunities. Their botched incursion had allowed the Immortals to up stumps and take their machinations somewhere else, somewhere even more difficult to find.
And even though the search for this father’s journal had been demoted in importance, he’d always harboured some hope that, if they could find the Immortals’ whereabouts, he’d have a chance to find it.
Even worse was the possibility that the journal had been consumed in the fire. Only two days before, he’d had a tantalising glimpse of his past in diary form, a battered book that could hold the secret of a life that had always been in shadows for him. Now, at best, it was still in the hands of his enemies. At worst, it was gone forever – and with it the chance to restore part of himself. Kingsley remembered his prep school days as a solitary time. He was never lonely, as such, and his athletic prowess made him popular enough, but he had no true friends. For a time, when he first discovered his love of sleight of hand, he gathered a group around him. They were impressed by his feats of legerdemain and chaffed him appropriately when he fumbled or forgot a routine, but they remained only an audience; none of them ever approached and wanted to learn with him.
He was envious of the other boys when they were fetched by their families for holidays. Dr Ward was generous enough, but coming home to the large Bayswater house, mostly empty apart from books and servants, wasn’t the same as the homecoming he imagined the other boys enjoying. Sometimes, despite his foster father’s best intentions, he felt afloat, by himself, in unfamiliar waters.
Now, perhaps, he had lost his chance to fill in that hole in his soul.
He realised then that his past had become murkier, rather than clearer when the Immortals claimed to have killed his father. He was unable to summon the rage that such a claim should inspire because he was simply too uncertain of its veracity. He was ready to admit that he’d even entertained the notion himself. His father’s work in India had apparently taken him into some dark places – the sort of places that the Immortals revelled in. Their crossing paths was only too likely.
On the other hand, lying just to inflict pain is precisely the sort of thing they’d enjoy, he thought glumly, still mired in confusion. And then, with a pang, he realised he hadn’t given his foster father much thought at all. Immediately, he felt ashamed and wondered what Dr Ward and the bewildering and possibly dangerous Mrs Winter were up to.
He’s been in far stickier situations, Kingsley thought, if his stories are to be believed. He decided that Dr Ward could take care of himself. Most probably.
Evadne was waiting for him in the small parlour. She had a cup of tea in one hand and a small, black-bound book in the other. She cocked her head and inspected him over her spectacles. ‘You can be presentable, can’t you?’
‘I do my best.’ He bowed and took in her trim white skirt and blouse, both of which could have been silk. If they weren’t silk, he decided, they were definitely silkish. Over this she wore a scarlet coat, and her white hair was tied into a loose knot and hanging past her ear. Any hint of the demure was undercut by her boots, which were black patent leather and on the table in front of her as she lounged in the stuffed velvet chair.
Lily of the valley, Kingsley thought. ‘And I thank you. It’s why I take a charwoman with me everywhere I go. I hand her a stiff brush and she transforms me in no time. I always say that there’s no scrubber like a professional scrubber. It’s all in the elbow, apparently.’
‘You’re a fast learner.’ Evadne snapped her book shut, took a sip of tea, placed the cup back on the saucer on the table, and rose to her feet. ‘Not long ago, you would have been tongue-tied if I’d commented on your appearance.’
‘I’ve had a fine teacher.’
‘Tut. Now you’re on the verge of overdoing it, but I appreciate the sentiment, nonetheless.’ She frowned. ‘You’re trying hard, but I can see that you’re wearing your disappointment like a very heavy hat.’
‘It’s that apparent?’
‘Not to most people, no.’ She tapped her chin with a finger. ‘I can understand your frustration, and I share it. We had a chance to deal with the Immortals and we failed.’
‘That’s part of it, true.’
She touched his arm. ‘I know, I know. Your father’s journal. We simply have to hope that the Immortals took it with them when they decamped.’
‘You’re sure they escaped?’
‘No doubt about it. I’ve had my myrmidons nosing about in the ruins, avoiding sundry investigators from the Agency. Everything they found indicates that the Immortals were ready to move, and they moved quickly. With Leetha’s people and a handful of children.’
‘Clever rats.’
‘They’re not rats,’ Evadne said patiently. ‘I’ve told you: they’re mechano-rodental constructions of my own devising and very handy for scouting like this.’
‘Very handy for looking like rats,’ Kingsley said darkly.
‘They’re indispensable for taking messages to some useful people I know, and some useful non-people.’
‘Non-people?’
‘Some not exactly human members of the Demimonde.’
‘Such as Lady Aglaia?’
‘I wouldn’t call Lady Aglaia non-human.’ Evadne touched her lips with a finger, thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure I’d call her human, either.’
‘You know,’ Kingsley said, ‘I’m loo
king forward to meeting this Lady Aglaia. She sounds remarkable.’
‘You have no idea how remarkable.’
‘Any chance of a cup of tea with her any time soon?’
‘Don’t you think it should wait until after we save the world?’
‘Probably. I don’t want her to feel as if I’m slighting her, though.’
‘I think she’ll understand if we save the world before dropping in on her. She reassures me that she doesn’t believe half of the things she hears about you, Kingsley.’
‘Me? What half? And who’s talking about me?’
‘That’s much better,’ Evadne said. ‘Less unhappiness and more Kingsley.’
He couldn’t help it. He smiled. ‘You’re a tonic, but I can think of something that would complete my uplifting.’
‘And that would be?’
‘A solid and workable plan to find the Immortals.’
‘Then you’ve come to the right place.’
NINETEEN
Walking across London gave Evadne plenty of time to present her plan to Kingsley, while she gamely carried an enormous carpet bag the contents of which she was unwilling to divulge. He immediately saw the genius of her plan, but he also saw where he could add his own particular expertise and the right touch of showmanship he felt would guarantee success.
South of Victoria Station, near Tatchbrook Street, Evadne plunged down an unmarked lane – more of a gap between two leaning whitewashed houses than a thoroughfare. Not far down this lane, a grim-faced man was sitting on a doorstep. He wore a battered tweed suit and he had a wandering eye. As he watched them approach, Kingsley had the uncomfortable impression that someone was behind them, or beside them or, sometimes, floating overhead.
‘Hello Xerxes,’ Evadne said. ‘Is he in?’
Xerxes looked at them, grimaced, then put a hand over his wandering eye. ‘Last time I looked, he was,’ he said in a voice like a handful of gravel. ‘You’ve business with him?’
‘A proposition. One I think he’ll like.’
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