“It’s all right, Lucy, just stop trying, you’ve already done enough.”
Lucy looked him dead in the eye with a glare that said “help” and “shut up”, all at the same time.
“That’s just it, Ned, that’s always it, I can’t stop, I don’t know how!”
And for the first time since they’d been reunited, Ned understood. He had seen through Kitty’s eyes, seen just a glimmer of what it meant to be a Farseer. It had been overwhelming, frightening even, but it had only been a moment. Lucy lived like that all the time.
“If we ever get out of here, Lucy,” he said, “I’ll help you find a way. I promise.”
A fast-flowing stream of ooze came rushing towards them in the form of Gorrn. He was not accompanied by Ned’s mouse. Something had spooked the familiar and he was about to grunt his warning when everything stopped. The steam pipes stopped hissing, the pistons stopped pounding and they were left with a sudden and deafening silence. Lucy’s face crumpled.
“They’re close, Ned. So close,” she whispered. “Just on the other side of that conveyor belt.”
And now, for the first time, Lucy looked afraid.
The Central Intelligence
s they approached the conveyor belt, they came across Whiskers who was frozen in mechanical fear, nose twitching and fur on end. Ned pulled the little rodent towards him and both Medic and Engineer peered over the belt.
On the other side, the thief sat at a long table.
Schematics, magnifying lenses and a hundred other devices were carefully laid out on its surface. The largest lens of all had been set up over a Ticker no larger than a housefly, beating its minuscule wings. At the centre of the table sat the thief’s music box and beside it the inscribed stone, now re-formed.
“Well?” asked the thief.
There was a ripple around him, the whole machine room moving. From the other side of the table a huge construct of iron and steel sprang to life. Ned watched in horror as what appeared at first to be some kind of engine moved towards the table. Its outer casing was made up of countless sections of interlocking metal, like the carapace of some vile insect, only shaped like a human head and glistening with oozing black oil. Behind its hollow eyes and gnashing iron teeth, an inner furnace glowed an angry red, and trailing at its rear was a thick network of cables, pipes and eight crab-like legs.
“Bzzt,” said the horrific robot. “It is right. But, t’ching – not enough, the Engineer – tdzt, needs more.”
Ned’s ears prickled. The Engineer? Was it talking about his dad?
His first thought was: If it is, then Dad’s alive.
His second thought was: Surely Dad isn’t helping them?
No, he realised, if Terrence Armstrong was doing anything to aid this metal creature, it would be under serious duress. What had they threatened him with? He thought of his mum and just as quickly forced the notion away.
Stay focused.
By Ned’s feet there was a sound of oil on metal. He looked down at his pet mouse. The little rodent was so terrified that it had wet the floor and its whole body was now twitching in repeated spasms. The last time the Debussy Mark Twelve had had a serious malfunction was when he’d tried to dry himself by sitting in a microwave. It had not gone well.
“This tells us much. Bzzt. We will send the Armstrongs to the construction site immediately. But, bzzt, t’ching, we need final plans to build. T’chzt, all plans for machine.”
Armstrongs, plural! They were both alive!
If Ned could listen on, he might just find out where it was they were being sent. Somehow, someway, he’d find them, he and Benissimo and the rest of the troupe, Ned was sure.
Down on the ground, Whiskers’ inner workings promptly fell apart with an audible twang of fear, and Lucy scooped him up and put him in her pocket. A part of Ned wished he could hide there too. The machine’s voice was a rasping of gears against gears united in metal song, cold, cruel and entirely inhuman. But Ned was determined to listen, at least until he found out where his parents were being sent.
“Find, tzk, final piece. Make whole.” All around them the great factory clattered in agreement, as if also listening to its every word.
The machine in front of him had to be the Central Intelligence. And it was no wonder that it had been hidden away by its makers. It was terrifying. Suddenly the brave Engineer who’d been looking for clues felt tiny and scared, an unprepared boy out of his depth, and a very long way from home.
“And where do you suggest I look?” drawled the disinterested thief.
The machine moved closer as a myriad of pistons in its steam-powered brain clattered with thought, like a swarm of typewriter keys being pressed repeatedly and all at the same time.
“Bzzt – my swarm is already in its folds, t’dsk – you will go to the paper city. The plans. Get them, get them to build. No plans, no build, no build – no promises fulfilled. Get them NOW!”
The thief, dwarfed as he was by its vast metal face, did not flinch.
“These little jaunts you send me on are amusing, but I’m growing weary. All work and no play, as they say, makes for a bored thief.”
The Central Intelligence sprang forward violently, a blur of crabbish legs poised to strike, when a sound came from the steam-filled shadows.
A voice.
A person’s voice, and one that sounded oddly familiar to Ned.
He couldn’t tell what the voice was saying, but it seemed to be some kind of command. The machine mind froze. The blade-sharp points of its legs hung in the air and its inner workings whirred with intent.
Lucy started to shake, a rush of fear overtaking the revulsion that they both now felt.
“Go,” she gasped.
“Quiet, Lucy, what’s got into you? They’ll hear.”
“Oh, Ned, we have to go, now!”
She pulled at his sleeve furiously, tears now streaming down her face. But Ned hadn’t seen enough, he wouldn’t, couldn’t leave until he knew where his parents were.
That was, until the man who owned the voice stepped out into view and the world stopped making any sense.
“I … I didn’t know you were here,” stammered the thief.
By the table stood the most evil man Ned had ever met. A man he had hoped was dead under the mountain of Annapurna. Smiling, bold as brass, and totally, indisputably alive.
Barbarossa
he thief’s smug expression quickly turned to simpering appeasement. Ned stared.
There, in front of him, was Benissimo’s brother and nemesis, Barbarossa, looking every bit as alive as he ever had.
The same black-red beard, the same meat cleaver hanging from his side, and the same dark strength coursing through his bulky, odious frame. On top of his head was a bowler hat with three small feathers in its rim. He looked somewhere between a pirate and a butcher, though as Ned had come to find out, he was more butcher than anything else.
But how was it possible? Ned had seen tonnes of rock fall on the man with his own eyes.
“No, Carrion, you did not. There are many things you do not know. Where is your beast?” Barbarossa boomed.
“The mission required a delicate hand, Barba, I – I thought it best to work alone.”
“And you do have delicate hands, don’t you, Carrion? You should be careful, such slender fingers are so easily broken.”
The thief squirmed in his chair uneasily. Barbarossa walked round the table, stopping behind him. He laid two heavy hands on Carrion’s bony shoulders and pressed down hard.
“You are a preposterously greedy little man, yet good at what you do. I have already made you rich beyond measure. But money, Carrion, is nothing without power. Only power is power. The machine’s construction site is being prepared as we speak and the gold will be taken there tomorrow, along with the Armstrongs. But I need to know more before I can finish the device, I need the final set of plans, and I need you to retrieve that knowledge for me.”
“I was only teasing our ally,
Barba,” said the thief, glancing at the Central Intelligence. “Of course I will go. I meant no offence.”
“He is my ally, thief, not yours. You will finish this task that we ask of you, Carrion. You will do EVERYTHING that is asked of you. Or you will die.”
“Bztsk – DIE,” echoed the Central Intelligence, and its blade-sharp legs struck at each other like a wall of carving knives making ready to cut a roast.
The butcher’s voice alone was enough to make Ned’s skin crawl. But to see him in the flesh? In that instant the nightmare that had plagued him paled in comparison. Barbarossa was real, a thing of flesh and bone. Somewhere beneath him Ned’s shadow moved without being asked.
“Unt,” it pronounced, which in this case meant danger. The creature was readying itself to cover Ned and Lucy, but it was too late to hide, as Ned was about to find out.
He looked down at a skittering of small legs. A spidery ticker the size of a tarantula darted in front of him. Its eyes were like black-red pips and the tips of its legs like needles. It moved left, then right, in sharp angular motions. Within seconds nine more had joined it, now swarming around both Ned and Lucy’s feet. Back at the table there was a sudden blowing of steam, as the features of the Central Intelligence raged and twisted.
“Tsk – children. Children amongst my metal! The Engineer and, t’schk …’ It paused. “The Medic.”
Ned and Lucy were discovered.
All is Forgiven
arrion forgot his fear of Barbarossa, his greedy, pointed features alive now with the prospect of a chase. But as he moved to spring up from his chair, the butcher’s hand clamped down hard, like that of a hunter muzzling his hound.
“Be still, thief. Ned is an old friend of mine. As you know, he is the son of my esteemed guests. So much has happened since the last time we were together. Why don’t we see what he and his Medic are capable of now?”
Ned’s blood boiled. The man had his parents and now he wanted to test Ned’s skills. Was there no end to his cruelty?
“Show yourselves, please, children,” said Barbarossa. “If you wish to live.”
Now surrounded by spidery tickers, Ned and Lucy slowly stood up from behind the conveyor belt. Ned bit his lip. If only he’d had Gorrn shadow him earlier.
The butcher looked at Ned with a smile that was both broad and unfathomably unkind. Years ago, Ned had seen a boy at his school pull the legs off an ant; he had worn the very same expression.
“It’s good to see you again, Ned,” said Barbarossa. “Central Intelligence, would you kindly set your spiders on these children? You may hurt them a little, if you like, but refrain from killing them.”
Ned wanted to scream at Barbarossa, to fire his ring in an arc of unrelenting power. But fear and the memories it holds can do strange things to fourteen-year-old boys, even those that are deemed to be “heroes”.
He was brought back to his senses by the painful sting of a ticker spider, its sharp blade burrowing into the skin of his leg.
“Ned!” yelled Lucy.
What happened next, happened quickly. Whether it was some echo of his dad’s nagging voice telling him to focus, or the stab of pain at his skin, Ned’s ring crackled. Three of the spidery tickers launched themselves at Lucy’s throat, only to meet with a layer of quick-set ice; their limbs crumpled and they fell to the floor. Almost without thinking, Ned swung his arm in a violent arc, and the ice turned to a barrage of bullet-sized projectiles. They crackled through the air in a deadly spray and half of the spiders lay broken. But for each one downed, three more took their place. Ned lashed out wildly and Barbarossa was clearly enjoying the spectacle, though more than content to stay back and let the machine mind’s minions go about their work.
Gorrn did his best to help, but Ned’s shadow was used to bigger threats and his angry bites did little to stay the fast-moving tickers. Ned closed his eyes and “Saw” the cloth of his sleeve turn to hardened aluminium, thin enough not to weigh him down but still strong enough to batter his opponents. Every buzzing attack he countered, swinging his arm like one of Couteau’s rapiers at the needle-sharp assailants.
“Ow!” screeched Lucy. One of the creatures had pierced her skin at the neck in a splutter of bright red blood. Ned’s ring finger crackled and he “Told” the air molecules around them to push with such force that the spidery swarm was hurled away, shattering on the walls and sides of the factory’s inner bulk.
“Bravo, boy, bravo,” grinned the butcher.
The Central Intelligence’s pistons clattered and a hundred-hundred tickers rose up from the floor grating to heed its call. Ned swallowed – he was only one boy and the growing swarm like a cloud of needles. Terror, rage and confusion swept over him in a great wall of noise. Barbarossa was alive and he had his parents!
As he lowered his arms in anguished defeat, suddenly, and unexpectedly, Lucy … did something.
She screamed, it seemed, with her mouth and mind, one was the other – Ned both heard and felt it, a loop, an echo of howling anger and fear. Anger for the kidnapping of Ned’s parents, fear of the nearing swarm and the machine mind that controlled them, of the gleeful look on Barbarossa’s face, of everything and everyone and, somewhere in there, a fear of Lucy herself.
As the shockwave poured out of his friend, Ned glimpsed Barbarossa’s contorted face. This time there was no smile. Beside him Carrion buckled and clutched at his eyes and ears, and the machine mind that was the Central Intelligence became limp, its pipes and pistons still, its inner furnace cold and quiet. His spiders froze where they stood, with all the menace of stringless puppets.
Everything stopped.
Everything was quiet.
The outburst was not meant for Ned, but his vision blurred all the same and his ears pounded with pain. In a single cry his friend had stopped them all. What had happened to her, how could a Medic or even a Farseer’s powers do any of this? The notion was lost to Lucy’s wall of anguish, and in its blinding blackness a voice stirred.
“YeSs, yYeSs, LuUcy, SHoOW THeEM YOoUr StReNGTH.”
Ned’s breath lodged in his throat. The voice was the one from his nightmares, whispering like a distant rockfall, keening like a wolf in the night, cajoling, tempting and pushing. It wanted Lucy’s anger and it had come from his nightmares to get it. How was that even possible? He was awake – surely? A nightmare was just that, a dream gone wrong, it couldn’t be real and yet there it was, as clear as day.
Ned felt his ring vibrate on his finger.
“YeSSs,” said the voice. “USe yoUuR PoOWeR. YouRr StReNGTH. MaKE ThEMm PaAyY.”
Ned felt the energy coursing through him, the fear and the fury, till Lucy took his arm.
“The mirrors, Gorrn, PLEASE!” she yelled.
Ned’s for-once limber shadow hugged the floor and ironworks like a wave of rushing water. But even as Ned let himself be dragged away, the factory stirred. The Central Intelligence had awoken angrily, using its cranes, conveyor belts and machine arms to lash out at Ned and Lucy. From above and to their sides the factory struck with hammers, drill bits and hooks.
They ducked and rolled, vaulted and spun through strike after strike of the machine-mind’s assault, till its lethal honeycomb gave way to the hot iron corridor they had come from. Ned’s head was still heavy from Lucy’s outburst and his skin bled from the tickers’ strikes. But there it was, the hall of mirrors surrounded by steam. In here there were no conveyor belts, no drills or hammers to pound them, only a hundred possible doorways to freedom for which they had no key. Which one had they come through? And surely by now the other side was a puddle on the floor?
“What now?” he breathed.
The grating behind them filled with the buzzing of metal. The Central Intelligence’s spidery swarm had caught up with them, its needle-sharp limbs rearing to pounce. Gorrn growled, moving quickly to one of the mirrors. Slovenly, over-sensitive Gorrn, with his “Unts” and “Arrs”, had found it!
“Gorrn, all is forgiven,” stammered Ned.<
br />
But as he placed his hand on the mirror, he found only cool glass, solid and completely immovable. They had been in the city for too long and the doorway to the British Museum had closed. Ned turned to Lucy and then to the encroaching swarm, when a familiar voice called out to him from another mirror.
“Well, come on, then, what are you waiting for?!”
Three mirrors away and gesturing at them frantically was the glittery-jacketed figure of Ignatius P. Littleton the Third – The Glimmerman.
Ned, Lucy and Gorrn sped towards him and hurled themselves through the glass.
He’s Back
he Glimmerman ran the Circus of Marvels’ hall of mirrors and its portal to the mirror-verse. He had an affinity with glass, a way of crafting it like no other. He could read it as easily as most people read letters; navigating the mirror-verse to the Glimmerman was simply a matter of following the light. He also had the only skeleton key in existence, a sliver of glass sewn into his jacket that could open any portal. It was in his possession because Ignatius had fashioned it himself. Which was, as it happened, rather lucky for Ned and Lucy because without it they would never have been found.
“Hell and damnation, boy! What were you thinking?!” roared Benissimo.
Ned would have answered, and with an equally violent response, were it not for the calming tones of a cherry-faced Glimmerman.
“Now’s more a time for listening than it is a-talking, Master Ned. He’s thumping cross with you.”
Ned had just escaped Gearnish, where he was quite sure his parents were being held. A voice from his nightmares had somehow crossed over to the real world and Lucy had silenced an entire factory with a scream. Yet all he could think, in little more than a murmur was – He’s back.
“Out – out – out, Ignatius! The boy and I need words,” ordered the Ringmaster, in much the same tone as a lion might say he was starving.
Ned had never seen him quite so angry and it looked very much like a fleck of spit had somehow managed to bypass his waxed moustache and launch itself into the Glimmerman’s eye. Ignatius promptly wiped his face and scuttled out of his own hall of mirrors, like a frightened hamster looking for his wheel.
The Gold Thief Page 10