The Gold Thief

by Justin Fisher

  “The coffee cup, when you were talking to Madame O?”

  “Yeah. It’s like, when I get angry or upset I have these power spikes and I think my dad was really worried about them. Looks like he wasn’t alone.”

  Ned still had Madame Oublier’s note in his pocket and passed it to Lucy. When she read it, her eyes stopped glistening and her face turned to a scowl.

  “You weren’t thinking about your parents at all, were you, when I found you on the hay bales – it was this, wasn’t it?!”

  Ned felt dreadful, though to be fair Lucy had been keeping secrets of her own.

  “Did you know?”

  “Hello? Farseer – gift of sight. I knew you were lying but I didn’t delve any deeper because a real friend shouldn’t need to.” Her words carried the painful sting of truth. “I thought we had each other’s backs?”

  “To be fair, Lucy, I came to you and you didn’t offer up any of this before.”

  “But I didn’t lie to you, did I?”

  She was right.

  “Sorry.”

  She looked at him sternly but her face softened.

  “I know you are, I can read feelings, remember, but I’d still like to make you feel worse.”

  “With everything that’s been going on, I honestly don’t think I could.”

  “You should try being in my head for an hour – trust me, you could feel a whole lot worse. At one point Madame Oublier wanted to take me into her care. At first it was all like, ‘Lucy Beaumont, you are an extraordinary child of unequalled power.’”

  “My dad used to say the same thing. Only he called me Ned.”

  “Not funny. Anyway, I said no, I didn’t want to be, you know …”

  “Special?”

  “No one in their right mind would want this.”

  Ned thought of his life before he’d first crossed the Veil. He missed the safety of it, knowing or at least believing he knew how the world was, how it fitted together.

  “The troupe have been amazing,” continued Lucy. “They’ve been helping me through it, Ned, really helping me. That’s why I don’t care about ‘man trouble’ or all the other nonsense they badger me with. What with Gearnish closing her doors and all the Darkling activity, morale’s been bad enough and that was before we saw Barba. I think they need the ‘Lady Beaumont’ just as much as I need them. Despite their weird and wonderful ways, they’re the only family I’ve got besides your mum, and she’s yours, Ned, not mine.”

  “No,” said Ned. “She’s yours too. More, in some ways. You’ve known her a lot longer.”

  Lucy wiped at her eye. “Anyway, after a while Madame O started making threats, said I was a danger to the troupe. Benissimo fought her off, told her he could handle it – which wasn’t entirely true, until he brought in Jonny Magik.”

  Ned’s mind went to their meeting in the corridor and the sin-eater’s convenient bout of indigestion.

  “I don’t trust him, Lucy, neither does George – and I think I heard him howling on my first night back. Every time he sees me, he looks like he’s going to be sick, and it gets worse. On the rooftops, when he was helping you, something happened to his face.”

  Lucy looked at him sternly.

  “It’s his indigestion.”

  “Oh, Lucy, come on!”

  “It’s what he calls it. That man is the kindest person I have ever met. Sin-eaters absorb your pain, Ned, that’s their gift. But it doesn’t leave them, it becomes theirs, that’s what his howling’s about. That poor man is carrying the hurt and anger of everyone he’s ever tried to help. And every time it gets too much, he pretends he’s not feeling well and goes for a lie-down. You do make him feel sick, Ned – literally. We all do.”

  Ned opened his mouth, then closed it again. He didn’t know what to say. He felt terrible. If what Lucy said was true, the man was the complete opposite of everything he’d thought.

  “Do George and the others know?”

  “They don’t have the ears to listen. Think about it. Everywhere sin-eaters go, there’s trouble, because that’s where they have to be. After a while they get a bad rep, like they’re cursed or something, when they’re really just trying to help.”

  “Crikey.”

  “Yeah, crikey.”

  Despite how sorry Ned felt for the man, there was also a sense of relief. There was someone to watch over Lucy, a good and selfless man, and right now they needed all the help they could get.

  “I’m glad he’s here. You know, in Gearnish, you were kind of frightening.”

  Lucy then did something that he was not expecting. She pulled her fingers into a tight clench and punched him on the arm.

  “Oww!”

  Amongst a good deal of other things, she was also surprisingly strong.

  “Oh, did that hurt?”

  “Yes!”

  “Apologise!”

  “I already have!”

  “Not for lying about Oublier’s note, for being scared of me.”

  Ned started smiling.

  “Well, if I was scared then, it’s nothing compared to now.”

  Lucy followed up with another punch.

  “All right, all right, I’m not scared now. You know, you’re much harder work than I remember.”

  “And you’re a liar.”

  Ned was still rubbing his arm.

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes, idiot?”

  “I have got your back.”

  “I really hope so, Ned, because whatever the voice means, it’s got Jonny Magik scared and that man has seen everything.”

  A shiver went down Ned’s spine, not only because of the creature that was plaguing them, but because of what the others might think. If Madame Oublier was worried enough to place a Guardian outside Ned’s bunk under the guise of keeping him safe, what would Benissimo or even George think if they knew what was really going on?

  “Does Jonny know about me, about me hearing the voice?”

  “He must do, but he hasn’t told Benissimo, about either of us, at least I don’t think so. At some point I’ve no doubt he will. Whether he does or doesn’t, Bene’s not stupid, Ned, neither’s George. Lifting coffee cups is one thing, but what you did with the museum’s security – that’s not normal for an Engineer. What’s important is that you and me are together on this. No more secrets, Ned, not between us and especially not now.”

  “Deal,” agreed Ned, before spitting into the palm of his hand and holding it out to shake Lucy’s.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I saw it in a film, it’s like a blood oath, only …”

  “Spitty?”

  “Yeah,” blushed Ned.

  “Let’s just pretend we shook, shall we?”

  A Search for Answers

  bdul-Baari’s Menagerie arrived at the gates of Gearnish at four pm. They had travelled without rest on orders from Madame Oublier herself. The accusations were wild but Benissimo’s word was never taken lightly. Everyone behind the Veil was concerned about the Iron City and, if Benissimo believed the children’s story, then there was at least some hope of locating the Armstrongs.

  The walls of Gearnish, tarnished with soot as they are, rise hundreds of metres into the air. From the outside all one can see is a vast metal wall; above it, a black smog that blots out the sun.

  “Abdul-Baari, here to see the Chief Cog,” announced the Menagerie’s ringmaster.

  There was a long pause at the other end of the speech pipe. Finally a ruffled-sounding minutian spoke to him, or rather gabbled.

  “The – the – the Chief Cog is indisposed. We were not warned of your visit, a delegation is being prepared.”

  Abdul-Baari raised an eyebrow. “You were sent several communications, no reply was forthcoming and so here we are.”

  “Please wait, we shall be with you presently.”

  The speech pipe crackled before cutting out completely.

  “Salil, what do you see?”

  “Nothing, my Baari, this place has no u
se for my essence, but to calm its tempered steel.”

  Salil was an Apsaras, a water nymph from the Indian Ocean. She had webbed fingers and gills at her neck, with skin of a deep blue-green. Her hair was a mix of peacock feathers and mother-of-pearl, and she was as beautiful as she was fierce. She was Abdul-Baari’s second-in-command and could speak with water of any kind to get the lay of the land. But Gearnish was a place of industry and, as she’d said, had little use for water.

  “Are the Jala-Turga ready?”

  “At your command, my Baari.”

  To their side the jaguar men that made up his Menagerie’s fighters growled to show their willing. The Jala-Turga were born that way and did not transform like Weirs. They were noble and proud creatures, uncommonly ready to lay down their lives if their leader was just and true. And to them no one was more so than Abdul-Baari.

  The great doors of Gearnish creaked and rumbled, and in front of them a delegation of minutians stepped out to usher them through. As his party entered the Iron City, Abdul-Baari took a deep breath. This was not the same wonder he had visited in his youth.

  “Welcome, sirs and madams, to our humble clockwork city,” said one of the delegation.

  Had Abdul-Baari looked closely, he would have seen that the minutian was a low-level Piston, not even a Cog. Under normal circumstances his ilk would never be sent out to greet important visitors.

  But Abdul-Baari was still too much in shock to hear him properly, or to notice how malnourished he and his companions were. He had come here long ago to procure a clockwork stallion. The creature even now was a thing of wonder, but paled next to the city where it had been made. Gearnish’s bright streets, then, had moved with a will of their own, could carry you anywhere at the slightest whisper. Gardens of living metal, street lamps that housed great bolts of lightning – and the buildings … the buildings were living things, ornate and beautiful in the intricacy of their myriad moving parts. No one needed to work there; in Gearnish you worked for the love of science, the joy of creation and furthering the common good.

  But as he laid his eyes on its now-filthy rust-ridden buildings, he realised that today no one worked there, because there was no one to do the work. Its streets were empty, completely and utterly bare.

  “This way, sirs and madams,” bowed the Piston, his voice cracking ever so slightly with something that sounded like fear. “The Chief Cog sends his apologies for his ‘indisposition’. The truth is, our fair city has been sharing his fate for some time now.”

  Abdul-Baari looked at the minutian and suddenly understood. They had crossed the threshold into a dark, unlit factory.

  “Please go in, sirs and madams, please,” begged the Piston.

  The Menagerie’s leader looked at the throng of tiny men, knowing full well that whatever had taken the city, would have their lives, whether he refused or not.

  “Tell me, before I meet my maker, are the Armstrongs alive?”

  “Yes, quite alive, but gone from this place,” managed the minutian, his head now lowered in shame.

  “Do not be sad. I forgive you,” Abdul-Baari whispered.

  And the minutians, every one of them, started to weep, such was their shame.

  “Salil?”

  “My Baari?”

  “Let us end how we lived, in brightness and in song.”

  The factory’s doors closed round them, and a thousand metal eyes glowed red.

  Tick, tick, tick went their gears.

  There was a scraping of metal as the machines came closer. The Jala-Turga growled at the ready, and Abdul-Baari prepared. The right incantation spoken in the language of his ancestors could make his bones as strong as diamond. If he was to end his days here and now, he would take as many of them with him as he could.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Salil placed her weapons at his feet and started to sing. The final song of a water nymph could beguile and entrap any creature, large or small.

  But for those made of metal and for the purpose of taking lives it was an ugly noise, especially when compared to their own.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …

  City of Paper

  he island of Hjelmsøya, Norway, is further north than Iceland, a place so barren that it is thought to be completely uninhabited, but for the white-bellied guillemots that nest at its cliffs.

  Those who think it is uninhabited, however, are wrong.

  Between two vast mountains of rock, a lone figure walked, in his hands a rarely allowed box of matches. The Elder Librarian of Aatol, the “city of paper”, was so old that he had forgotten his real name. It did not matter: in his realm one read far more than one spoke.

  “More visitors,” he grumbled, though these ones were sure to be less destructive. If the Ringbearers were with them, then he would at least be able to pass on his burden, the very reason that Aatol had been dug from the ice and rock in the first place.

  He stopped his trudging, to the joy of his aching bones, and lit a large brazier of firewood. From the flaring blaze spat bright green flames, a landing beacon for his impending visitors. To the left and right both mountains rose as one. They rumbled, they roared and from their sides a rockslide of boulders tumbled. Higher and higher the mountains stretched till their peaks disappeared in the clouds.

  “Aroora! We watch, we wait, we listen,” announced the mountains.

  “Yes, yes, you wait and listen,” snapped the old man. “If you’d done a little less waiting and a little more watching, we wouldn’t have had the first break-in for over five thousand years!”

  The Colossi on either side of him did not answer, which was just as well because the Elder Librarian was furious. The agency he’d hired them from had assured him they were the best. But as mountainous and strong as Colossi were, they were not famed for their intelligence. Perhaps it was time for a griffon? On second thoughts griffons were useless in the cold. Come to think of it, so was the Elder Librarian – unfortunate considering his surroundings.

  “By the books, it’s freezing out here! Five minutes and I go back to my cosy chambers.”

  There was a chuckle from high above.

  “Hurr, hurr, you watch, you wait, you listen.”

  Which was when the Gabriella sounded her horn.

  ***

  Down on the snow Benissimo was joined by Ned, Lucy and George whilst the troupe secured their airships to the ground.

  “Crumbs!” moaned George. “Why can’t it ever be a Caribbean island or a nice jungle in Africa? Warm bananas and sunshine – nothing beats them, I tell you, nothing.”

  “Have you quite finished?” whispered Benissimo, who was focused on the important dignitary they were about to meet – the Elder Librarian, who was walking over to where they stood.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  The Ringmaster’s eyes crossed and his moustache gave an involuntary twitch.

  “I beg your pardon, Elder. But I was not aware that you had summoned us. We only messaged you a moment ago to ask for permission to land …” said Benissimo.

  “And yet, you are late. Fret not, all will become clear.” He eyed both Ned and Lucy closely. “Are these the Heroes of Annapurna?”

  “Ahem, yes, Elder, in the flesh,” answered an increasingly bewildered Benissimo.

  “Then all is not lost. They are most welcome. And I see that you have brought a primate to my city,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

  “Not just any primate, Elder. George is really quite unique.”

  “Hmm. Follow.”

  And they did so in silence.

  Ned’s mind was aflame. What wasn’t lost, and why were they late? And what did the Elder Librarian want with him and Lucy? As they trudged through the snow, he wondered how much time his mum and dad had, before Barbarossa was done with them.

  It was George who broke the silence, albeit in a rumbling whisper of his own.

  “Dashed rude; if that old fossil thinks he can talk about me like that, I mean really! I
’ve probably read just as many books as he has.”

  A firm glare from Benissimo stilled his lips and they continued quietly. The old man retraced his footsteps in the snow, till they came to their end, all around them nothing but white and the legs of the towering Colossi. Where was the city, where was Aatol? Ned was getting increasingly irritated by the old man’s pace and more anxious for answers when the Elder Librarian spoke, seemingly to the snow at his feet.

  “Nothing,” he warbled.

  A moment later there was a voice from the snow.

  “Whaat?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Budding? That is incorrect – turn back, traveller, the knowledge you seek is—”

  “For pity’s sake, Oddvar, it’s me!”

  “What’s that? Me who?”

  “THE ELDER LIBRARIAN OF AATOL!” he roared, at which point even Benissimo let out a chuckle.

  “The repository of all knowledge, my butt,” muttered George.

  “How do I know it’s you?”

  “The answer is ‘NOTHING’ – you know, to the impossible riddle that has no blasted answer!” implored the now red-faced Librarian.

  “How do you know about that? Only the Elder Librarian of – oh dear.”

  The snow at the old man’s feet trembled, before parting to form a perfect rectangle. Beneath it, the stony entrance to Aatol yawned wide, and beyond that a perfectly straight staircase led deep into the bowels of ice-cold rock.

  Step after step they followed the Elder Librarian, at every level doorways leading off from the vast stairwell into the rock surrounding them.

  “Our forefathers were not great planners,” said the Elder. “As our collection grew, more and more of the island had to be excavated. There isn’t a place anywhere on its shores where you are not standing above –” He paused for effect, before swinging open a large door – “paper.”

  In front of them, great mountains of books rose up to the furthest reaches of an enormous cavern. Every nook and cranny, every alcove and stairwell, was covered in books. Amongst them, around them and all about them, conveyor belts, winches and even a small-scale monorail system, all dedicated to the ferrying to and fro of books. The edges of the cavern were honeycombed with deep holes, full to bursting with scrolls, and up and down, left and right, librarians moved on stilts like bees distributing their papery goodness.