“You could have all been killed! Hades’ tears, pup!”
As the Ringmaster’s face continued to redden, it became apparent that he was not going to slow down, which was an issue. George had whisked a limp-limbed Lucy to her own infirmary the minute they’d stepped through and no one had actually been told what the two of them had seen.
“Of all the foolhardy, mutton-headed things to do. We were supposed to observe – no one said anything about following the thief through a blasted mirror! But to let Lucy go with you?!”
“He’s back,” Ned said quietly, though the Ringmaster was in no mood to listen.
“I thought a year or more might do you some good but oh no, you’re still a blasted pup, and now dear Lucy is beyond distraught and Jonny will have to piece her back together like he always does.”
Ned wasn’t sure what Bene meant about Lucy “being pieced back together”; no doubt the sin-eater would have to work his magic like he had on their stake-out at the British Museum, and for that he was truly sorry. But the conversation was going nowhere, and fast.
“He’s back, I saw who the thief is working for!” tried Ned again.
“I’m trying to help you, you know? We all are!”
“YOUR BROTHER! HE’S ALIVE! AND HE’S GOT MY MUM AND DAD!”
The Glimmerman’s hall of mirrors sank into silence. A silence like the calm of a village after an earthquake, waiting for its aftershock, knowing with certainty that it is well on the way.
The aftershock came in a low whisper.
“What did you just say?”
And Ned told him. It poured out like a torrent of water; gabbling and sputtering, he began with his desperate certainty that his parents were alive. He told Benissimo of the Central Intelligence, what he’d overheard about the much-needed plans and construction site, of Carrion’s real name. But the part he was asked to repeat over and over was his description of Barbarossa’s grinning smile, how gleeful he’d looked, and how alive.
For a moment, the Ringmaster seemed lost in thought, as though he’d quite forgotten about Ned’s parents or how desperate he was to get them back.
“Bene,” said Ned. “The Central Intelligence talked about Dad, said the Engineer needed more to complete the machine. I think Dad is helping them somehow.”
The Ringmaster’s eyes softened and the twitch of his moustache stilled.
“Men like your father, Ned, they’re as rare as you are. If he’s helping my brother, then he’s no choice in it, be sure of that – always.”
“But Gearnish, Bene – Mum and Dad are there! They must be! We could rescue them.”
“Not if I know my brother. He’ll have stepped up his plans by now and have them moved to this construction site you heard them talking about, along with all the gold. I’m sure of it, especially now that you’ve discovered the Central Intelligence’s involvement. Whatever peril your parents are in, they’ll be safe so long as Barba needs them. We still have time.”
The beating in Ned’s chest stilled just a little as the Ringmaster’s eyes glazed over again.
“And my brother, you’re quite sure it was him?”
“Bene, how could I forget his face? He nearly killed us, remember?”
“Yes, yes, I do. But we beat him, didn’t we, pup? We’ll just have to beat him more. Now tell me everything again – start from the beginning.”
Ned began again: the factory, the table, the Central Intelligence, what it had said about the Engineer, and how he needed the plans, and the thief had to go to get some papers …
Ned paused. “No. Wait. The paper city. That was what the Central Intelligence said. That the thief had to go to the paper city to get the plans.”
A crazed glint took hold of the Ringmaster’s eye and he muttered something under his breath. As he did so, he started to pace the Glimmerman’s hall of mirrors at an alarming rate till Ned was beginning to wonder if the news had somehow unhinged him.
“Bene, are you OK?”
“Paper city … paper, paper, paper,” repeated the Ringmaster, over and over as if the word was the key to some hidden puzzle.
“Bene?!”
Finally he stopped in front of Ned and shook him by the shoulders in a moment of deranged triumph.
“Paper city! What’s a paper city but a library? It’s a very old term, I haven’t heard it for decades, that’s why it took me a moment. Well done, boy, you have done extremely well, EXTREMELY!” he oozed.
“Hang on, you just told me I was mutton-headed a minute ago!”
“Ah but back then I didn’t know you’d been so barking useful. We’re hours closer to Aatol than Gearnish is. We’re sure to beat them to it if we make haste. Fear not, pup – till they get their hands on whatever tome lies there, your parents are quite safe.”
Ned’s chest and heart stilled further. His parents, at least for now, were in no immediate danger; what he didn’t understand was the wild glint in Benissimo’s eye. If Ned didn’t know any better (which he clearly didn’t), he’d think the man was actually happy that his brother had returned. How could he be, how could anyone be happy at even the slightest thought of him?
“I don’t understand, I’ve just told you your brother’s back and you seem sort of … happy? A bit weird but definitely happy.”
“Happy? That my own flesh and blood is alive?” For a moment Benissimo’s face straightened and his eyes and moustache calmed down. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, pup, when you’ve outlived everyone you’ve ever loved, the constants in your life are what make you feel whole. I have always fought my brother, always. The involvement of the Central Intelligence is beyond alarming and Tinks will have to notify Madame O immediately. But as for my brother, no one knows how to fight him better than I do. I think the saying goes, ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’. I remember it well enough because I coined it more than two hundred years ago, and I was talking about Barba.”
Ned would never share Benissimo’s enthusiasm, not for Barbarossa. The man had torn his family apart before he could even remember, but never more so than now.
“Barba’s going to pay for this, Bene.”
“Quite so, pup, but it’s I that will be collecting the debt.”
And with that he was out of the Glimmerman’s tent and howling orders at his troupe.
“Tinker?! Tinker! Where is that blasted gnome?! There you are – give me everything you have on the Central Intelligence and get a message to Oublier: tell her that Barba is back – last seen in Gearnish. We leave for Aatol immediately!”
The Circus Travels
ed had barely managed to doze at all before the necessary amount of fog started billowing out of the Guffstavson brothers’ airship, and the awaiting convoy blasted its horns. The Marilyn, Benissimo’s beloved vessel, had been deemed irreparable some eighteen months before, despite the Tinker’s best efforts. Its replacement – the Gabriella – had been designed from the ground up by a team of Florentine master craftsmen, which accounted for her Italian name.
Ned watched as a fire truck folded itself away and joined to another. Then the now-larger construction proceeded to swallow a jeep, then a van, and rather oddly a merry-go-round. Each time it did so, it grew larger until a vast eighteen-vehicle gondola hung from the inflated big top. She was wider than the Marilyn but only two floors high instead of three, and guns were positioned at seemingly every available porthole.
The necessity for the new design was immediately evident. Circuses are well known for firing smaller troupe members (in most cases gnomes or dwarves) out of cannons; they formed the first wave of an aerial assault and were perfect for boarding parties looking to weaken defences. The Gabriella’s cannons, however, were for the breaking of steel-plate armour and far larger than the ones he’d seen on the Marilyn. On top of her deck were three mighty guns – Bertha, Grunhilda and Desdemona – and the mere act of positioning “the three sisters” took the combined effort of the entire troupe. The Gabriella, much like Barbaro
ssa’s own dreadnought, had been built for war.
As he made his way to the waiting airship, something dawned on Ned. His dad had spent a whole lifetime nagging him about being safe, about staying hidden, and his mum had hardly been better when they’d finally been reunited. If anything, it had made things worse. That was the thing about wanting something so badly that it hurt: the Armstrongs had spent twelve long years wanting each other back, and when their dreams had been answered, the slightest notion of being broken apart again had been too much to bear.
But here they were. Ned’s mum and dad, his protectors, his mentors through every bit of training, through every bit of life, were being held prisoner, and it was Ned that would have to rescue them, when all he really wanted was for them to burst into the circus and take him home. The voice he was hearing terrified him to his core. If only his mum and dad were here, they’d know what to do, how to calm him, how to train him so hard that he’d be too tired to listen when it spoke.
But they weren’t here. They were the ones in danger now and Ned would have to fight for them, without their rules and without their guidance. The freedom he had longed for had been thrust upon him cruelly and without warning.
Even as Ned paced up the walkway and into the Gabriella’s belly, the butcher’s grin taunted him. Ned wasn’t a boy who hated, yet here and now he wished the man really had been crushed by the rockfall in Annapurna. Barbarossa was the reason Ned had spent a lifetime without a mother. The very same reason that both his mum and dad were now missing and the reason that Madame Oublier was so scared.
Ned needed a friend, and the one person he wanted to talk to was Lucy. What had caused her outburst of power in Gearnish? What was it she’d even done? It was then that he lingered on the voice. Even the mere notion of it trapped the breath in his throat and turned the pit of his stomach to a broiling mess. And in that moment he remembered: it had come at the precise moment that Lucy had lost control and it had used her name! Lucy must have been having the same trouble, have been hearing the same voice. It made perfect sense – they both wore Amplification Engines at their fingers, and had both connected to the Source. Even then he’d heard the voice, or so it now seemed to him, if only in a fleeting whisper.
Ned’s pace doubled.
Within the ship’s narrow corridors he came across Rocky and his wife. Jonny Magik was just coming out of what must have been his berth when he spotted Ned and turned an unhealthy-looking green. Both Abi and her mountainous husband noticed and recoiled from the sickly-looking sin-eater.
“You all right, dear?” asked the Beard nervously, with a tone that meant “please go away”.
“It’s fine, just a little indigestion,” and the sin-eater clutched at his belly. “I’m so sorry,” he said, keeping one eye closely on Ned. “I think I need to lie down.”
Abi waited for him to close his door before she turned to her husband.
“‘Indigestion’ – my buttocks, it is! We must be the only troupe on the circuit with a head of security that’s always takin’ to his bed. Bless my bearded heart, Rocky, we’ve got some weirdo walking amongst us, and now Barbarossa! How after all this time has he come back?!”
The great lump of rock-skinned troll put a clumsy arm round his wife and tried to console her.
“Babooshka, niet, niet, little bird, all will be well. De boy is with us – he and de girl, dey beat him before, da? Dey do it again.” Rocky turned to Ned for some encouraging words. “I bet you give tin can some kicking, da?”
Ned didn’t have the time or heart to tell them that the truth was far less glamorous, and that there had been little kicking of tin cans or anything else. Lucy had some talking to do; whatever was going on with her, Jonny Magik knew and there was something highly suspicious about the man that Ned hoped Lucy could explain.
When he found her cabin, though, he also found a small queue of troupe members waiting to go in and see her. The revelation of Barba’s return had gone around the circus like wildfire. The gathering before him appeared broken and weary, a look of desperation on each and every one of their faces. A dryad from Asia was first in the queue, the skin on her long limbs a beautiful knot of green and yellow leaves, her eyes a watery violet, and whenever she moved there was a waft of forest-scented pines and dandelions.
“She’s taking visitors,” she informed him solemnly.
“Err, visitors for what?”
“The Lady Beaumont shares her visions. Oh – and well done for last night, Master Armstrong, very brave of you.”
“Lady who? Tell me you don’t mean Lucy?” said an incredulous Ned.
“Oh yes,” said the dryad. “The Lady has quite the following.”
The Lady Beaumont
he dryad was right. A row of heads now filled the narrow corridor, queuing to see Lucy.
Ned pushed past them and put his hand on the door.
“Hey!” said one of the people in the queue.
“Patience,” said the dryad. “He’s the Engineer. Let him go first.”
When Ned walked into Lucy’s cabin, he expected to find her forlorn, embarrassed even, after her outburst in Gearnish, or in deep conversation about Barbarossa’s return.
Instead he found her sitting quite comfortably in front of a crystal ball, with what looked like part of a napkin tied round her forehead. The curtains had been drawn shut and the room was thick with incense. Added to which, the number of candles she’d lit had to be a fire hazard. To make matters worse, a much more together Whiskers was curled up at the base of the crystal ball as though a part of Lucy’s odd spectacle. A teary kitchen gnome in a red and white cooking apron sat on a stool in front of her. When she saw Ned enter, she dabbed her eyes dry.
“What are you doing, Lucy, and what is all this stuff for?”
“Be quiet, you’re ruining the atmosphere!” tutted his friend, before turning back to her client and continuing with their session. “Margery, I think Bertram is being very spoilt. I know he’s under a lot of pressure, what with all the trouble we’ve been having, but that’s still no excuse. Give him a proper earful and he’ll come round … I’ve ‘seen’ it.”
“Oh, bless you, Lady Beaumont, you’re absolutely right. Thank you a dozen times,” said a much-cheered Margery. “Here you are, dear, for your troubles.”
She passed Lucy a couple of fresh pastries and pulled another from her basket and gave it to Ned.
“You know, it’s very rude to barge in on folk, but you’ve been through a lot, dear, and I reckon you could do with a little feeding up.”
“Err, thanks?” offered Ned, who was still trying to figure out what he’d barged in on. “Lucy? Whiskers?”
With her cabin door closed behind Margery, Lucy pulled the napkin from her head and stubbed out what was left of the incense.
“They’ve been driving me nuts since they found out about my ‘sight’. But they mean so well, Ned, and I just can’t seem to turn them away.”
“What was up with Margery?”
“Man trouble.”
“Barbarossa is back and she wanted to talk about ‘man trouble’? What on earth is that?”
“I have no idea,” smirked Lucy. “But lighting incense and staring into this ball of glass seem to do the trick. Truth is, I think they just want to be told that everything will be OK.”
“What? You mean you can’t really see their futures?”
Lucy went quiet for a moment, her expression suddenly grey.
“I do have sight, Ned, but I rarely get to choose what I see – and that’s on a good day. On bad days it’s worse, like it was in Gearnish. I lose control and … and that’s what Jonny’s been helping me with.”
Lucy’s eyes looked close to tears. She sat on the bunk of her tiny cabin, laden with incense as it was, and stared back up at him.
“Ned, I think I know why you’re here.”
And the one thing Ned couldn’t say aloud, not even to his parents, trickled past his lips.
“The voice.”
&nb
sp; There was a pause, and Ned wondered for a moment if he was wrong, if it was just him, if she hadn’t heard it at all.
But then, finally, she nodded.
“Yes,” said Lucy. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me about that.”
The Voice
eil bound and all secure!” yelled one of the crewmen outside.
He was answered by the thunder of distant cannon as the Gabriella and her convoy lifted into the air. With the queue outside dismissed and a long journey ahead of them, Ned and Lucy finally had the time they needed to talk.
“At first I thought it was just me,” started Lucy.
“So did I. What does it mean, what is it?”
“I don’t know, not exactly. The thing is, Ned, Kitty’s gift – well, it’s not a gift at all, it’s a curse, at least it is to me. I hear and feel stuff all the time and there’s so much more bad stuff than there is good. When we went to the Source, when we connected with it, I think something happened to us. It’s like we got a glimpse of everything and our powers are …”
“Growing.”
“Yes. I’ve been hearing it in my dreams and the last two times I had ‘teething trouble’ it spoke when I was awake. Then yesterday I think it spoke to both of us. Didn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ned.
“It’s got to have something to do with our powers, with how they’re changing. Kitty could feel a person’s past and future, but I seem to be able to do more, much more, and I don’t have a Farseer’s experience or their control. It’s like there’s this signal that I can’t turn off, like a radio or something, and sometimes I don’t just receive, I transmit the signal, the feeling.”
“So in Gearnish, when you sort of … erupted?”
“Transmitter.”
“And with Jonny Magik on the roof?”
“Receiver; overload.”
“Sounds familiar.”
The Gold Thief Page 11