A harpoon came dangerously close to George, still crawling towards where they were hovering, and Ned Told his weapons to fly.
“LEAVE HIM ALONE!”
The air filled with screaming metal and the second ship’s airbag was instantly torn to shreds. Her crew roared in terror as they plunged to the ground below.
Meanwhile, though, Jonny Magik’s diversion was being undone by a dozen sword cuts from the other airship’s crewmen, and her captain was setting a course to ram the Gabriella.
Then there was a piercing screech from above and a war-owl dived at her canvas, tearing it clear in half.
The second airship fell like a stone weight, exploding on the rocks below.
“Ned,” breathed Lucy, pointing below them to the cliffs of the Viceroy’s isle.
As Ned had mended the holes of the Gabriella, so it had risen. George had reached the summit and was stretching up for the rope ladders, but as the Gabriella lifted, they lofted beyond his grasp.
Ned watched in horror: even worse, approaching from behind, more of the Twelve’s ships were closing, with loaded harpoons and muskets.
Then Ned thought of something.
Something crazy.
Something he wasn’t even sure he could do.
Concentrate
ucy,” said Ned. “I need you. I’m going to try to bring him to us.”
She stared at him. “You mean … teleport him?”
“Yes.”
“Ned, it could kill him! It could kill you both.”
Lucy was right: though Ned had managed to teleport Whiskers, the little rodent’s head had wound up backwards and he was now about to try and move several tonnes of living, breathing, lovable ape through the midst of a live fire-fight.
Right or wrong, though, there was simply no choice, not if he wanted to save his friend. They couldn’t get their ballast back and even if they could, lowering the ship would only mean more exposure to musket fire and harpoons.
“Then help me,” said Ned.
“Fine,” said Lucy. “But if this harms you in any way, I’m going to murder whatever’s left of you.”
“You do know what you just said, right?”
Lucy looked at him with the same expression of seriousness and care that a matron might use on a difficult patient. “Ned, just now I heard it too! You can’t give in to the voice, or it would be safer to leave George where he is. I can use my powers as a Farseer to try and block it out. But I can’t do what Jonny does; we’ll have one shot at this and you HAVE TO CONCENTRATE.”
“I know, I know, focus on the goal.”
Ned drew out Abi’s gold hoops from his pocket and Lucy laid her hands on his head. His thoughts softened as they intermingled with Lucy’s. Had it been anyone else, it might have felt strange. But nothing was strange when it came to his Medic. It was as though he were putting on a shirt that he didn’t know he’d lost. The battle around them ebbed away and Ned sensed her fear, her joy and her wish to help George, now focused on the ground below.
As their connection strengthened, the picture in his mind’s eye – or was it Lucy’s? – grew fuzzy and warped, as if something were interfering with the signal on a television. It was George.
Ned sensed the ape’s love of his precious bananas and of the joy of written words, a love for both Ned and Lucy and, overriding all of it, reddening the edges of everything, Ned felt George’s all-encompassing pain.
“George!” he breathed.
“Focus, Ned, focus!” called Lucy, and Ned wasn’t sure if she was speaking out loud, or somewhere inside his head. This was different from Whiskers – George was made of flesh and bone and vastly more complex.
Ned felt the atoms in the ape’s cells, from the fur on his skin, to the blood in his veins.
“It’s working,” came Lucy’s voice again.
There was an angry swoosh of a harpoon being fired, even as the teleportation undid the ape’s atoms. Ned sensed his protector’s fear and somewhere within it his own.
“YeSs,” came the voice.
“No!” yelled Lucy, but it was too late.
Beneath them, several tonnes of haired muscle disappeared in an instant, and Ned opened his eyes. Lucy came out of her trance, her watering gaze fixed on where the ape had stood with nothing more than a smear of blood to prove it.
“Oh Lord, Ned, what have we done? Where is he?”
There was a weak cough from behind them both and they turned.
George stood there on the deck as bold as brass.
“Over here, madam,” he said. “Do you know, I’m feeling a little peaky? And I appear to be missing a thumb.”
At which point George the Mighty, their brave and ferocious protector, promptly fainted in a pool of his own blood.
“Ditch all ballast!” shouted Bene.
And the Gabriella rose swiftly into the air, harpoons falling harmlessly below.
An Unlikely Pair
r Fox was in high spirits. His organisation would be very happy once the gold was located, but it was a trifling bauble compared to the true prize. After years of searching, the BBB would finally have actual proof of the Hidden’s existence and before long, he hoped, some clue as to the secret to their magic. He looked at the man next to him and his mood began to falter. Mr Fox did not dislike many people. In his world people were either part of the problem or part of the solution.
His informant was, Mr Fox liked to think, part of the solution.
The man had forewarned him about the break-in at the British Museum. Fox and his men had been there waiting for Benissimo for several hours before the boy had bypassed the museum’s security and, rather embarrassingly, his own.
Yes, the man seemed to know things before they happened – even if Mr Fox’s men had failed to use this knowledge effectively.
So far, anyway.
But there was something troubling about the man that Mr Fox couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was an oiliness to him and a certain gleefulness in the way he shared his information.
“Tell me,” he asked now, the pair of them standing in frost-covered undergrowth somewhere, Mr Fox was reliably informed, in Slovakia. “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you one of them? One of the Hidden?”
“Me? Oh no, Mr Fox, I’m not one of anyone. The only thing worth fighting for is money, and gold and jewels, and all the things that sparkle.”
“I’m not sure you’ll find happiness in that, Mr Slight?” said Mr Fox. “A man needs more.”
“I’m not sure I care,” Carrion grinned back.
Behind Mr Fox, his colleagues Mr Badger and Mr Elk puffed up their chests indignantly.
“Oh, per-lease,” said Carrion in feigned weariness. “Tell your oafs to relax, I would so hate our relationship to come to an end.”
“Badger, Elk – go for a walk.”
They didn’t move, for a moment.
A quiet look from Mr Fox told his two accomplices that doing anything else would not work out well for either of them – and they left.
“Now where were we?” drawled Carrion.
“I was asking you why. Why are you helping us?”
“Why, why, why – oh yes. Because of Benissimo, of course. He’s a dangerous man, Mr Fox. The sooner you incarcerate him and all of his troupe, the better. He has your gold, he and his accomplices, but it’s the children that are my primary concern. They’re being used, and the sooner you can separate them from his influence, the better.”
Mr Fox pointed at the clearing in front of them. “And you’re certain that this is their rendezvous?”
Carrion’s nostrils flared and he sniffed at the cold air noisily. A look of revulsion crossed his lips.
“Quite certain. The travelling kind are very like homing pigeons in their own misguided way. Wherever they go, it’s their tents and caravans that they always return to. Tell me, Mr Fox, what do you see?”
“Tents and caravans.”
“Well then, I suggest you take a large sip from that cup of
cheaply sourced cocoa and wait. It’s sure to be quite the show.”
Carrion gave Mr Fox one last oily smile and sauntered off into the night.
I would really like to arrest that man, thought Mr Fox, but then the first step to making an arrest was knowing who the arrestee really was. And Carrion Slight, like all of the Hidden they’d come across, was a mystery. The BBB, despite its powerful network of satellites and surveillance teams, had no idea.
It didn’t matter, though.
Very soon they would have more Hidden than they’d know what to do with. All Mr Fox had to do was wait.
And Into the Fire
t was not the screams and explosions that haunted Ned, but the silence that followed. The silence of the Gabriella’s shaken crew, of Jonny Magik who had still not woken, and the silence of their Ringmaster, now framed for the murder of his Prime – but above all it was the silence of Ned’s great ape protector, George.
He had not uttered a single word on their journey back to the mainland, and his hand on Ned’s was as light as a child’s. It was also missing a thumb, because Ned had somehow lost it.
Lucy did what she could to staunch the bleeding, but she couldn’t focus enough with her ring, while the ship moved, to heal him entirely – that would have to wait till they landed. As for the sin-eater, she could only shake her head.
“I don’t know how long he’s going to last, Ned. It’s not that my powers won’t work on him, it’s more that he needs a different kind of healing, and that kind just doesn’t exist.” And with that they let the brave magician rest.
Far beyond midnight, and with the air bitter and black, they alighted in the clearing in Slovakia. Ned could smell the fear on the frost-speckled ground. Though the troupe knew that the Gabriella was one of their own, the faces that greeted him looked haunted and distant, as though just woken from some terrible dream, or still lost somewhere within it, and none more so than Abi the Beard.
“It’s everywhere, boss! The news has been flyin’ in from all over. We’re wanted – one and all.”
In their greatest hour of need their allies had turned against them; Benissimo and his troupe had been made fugitives and any hope of uniting the Hidden was dashed on the political rocks of St Albertsburg.
“Gather them up, Abi,” said Benissimo. “There’s a storm brewing and we’ve work to do.”
Abi was too relieved by his return to notice, but Ned could see it in Benissimo as clear as day, like a mirror of his own: hopelessness, shimmering and bright. But that was the funny thing about hope and Benissimo. Sometimes he just had to make his own.
“Ned, Lucy,” the Ringmaster said now. “See to Jonny and George and get back here as quick as you can. Once I fire up what’s left of the troupe, we’ll need a location and it’s Lucy’s eyes that I’ll be calling on to do the finding.”
Ned felt his chest swell. There was just a sliver of a hope that he might yet save his mum and dad.
“Thank you, Bene.”
“No, pup, thank you. Mark my words, we might well be alone but we’re still the Circus of Marvels and if there’s any fight left in us, I’ll root it out.”
Ned glanced across the campsite to what was left of the battered troupe.
“There are so few of us. We’ll be slaughtered.”
The Ringmaster’s face turned stony and resolute.
“What I need, boy, is for the wheel to turn, and every spoke within it to carry its weight. You worry about your gifts and keeping them under control, I’ll worry about Barba, and we may just save your parents before it’s too late.”
Ned followed Lucy to George’s trailer, where Rocky and Scraggs had set both the ape and magician down. Lucy worked her Amplification Engine quickly and carefully, doing her best to help George without causing him more pain.
Whiskers, who was still clearly sulking, curled up into a ball on the gorilla’s chest. At least the little mouse still had a soft spot for some members of the troupe.
Ned watched Lucy as she held her hand over George’s wounds. Ned had never observed closely when she’d worked her gifts before.
“How … what is it you’re doing?” he said.
“You see atoms, Ned,” said Lucy. “But I see living cells. I can work them just like you and your atoms. Stitching them like this, it’s delicate stuff, and I have to be careful. Fusing them together can hurt just as much as breaking them apart.”
For a long time, she worked silently, her ring vibrating. George yelped a bit at first, but gradually calmed, before settling into a snore.
Ned had nodded off himself for a moment, when Lucy put her hand on his arm and he sat up, startled.
“He’ll be OK,” she said, with a thin smile.
Ned looked at the sleeping George and shared her smile. That was until he saw George’s hand, resting on the ape’s belly. Ned’s relieved moment promptly disappeared.
“What about his thumb, Lucy? It’s still gone. I-I lost his barking thumb!”
“I can mend, Ned, but I can’t grow things back.”
Ned had a vision of George trying to peel a banana with a four-fingered hand and his stomach churned.
“He is never going to forgive me.”
“Oh, Ned, George would forgive you for just about anything; it’s the rest of the Hidden we need to worry about.”
At that George stirred ever so slightly and he turned to look at them with bloodshot eyes.
“I say, how did we get here?”
“Go back to sleep, monkey, there’ll be time for talking later,” smiled Lucy, closing his eyelids gently till the great ape settled back into his slumber.
“He is going to be all right, isn’t he?” asked Ned. “I mean, thumbless, but all right, right?”
“He’ll be fine. We got to him quicker than Jonny and there’s no magic at work here, Ned. Just cells that need fixing. I reckon by morning he’ll be back on his nanas and cheery as ever.”
Ned’s eyes went to the sin-eater and a pang of sadness took hold. The man was ebbing away and fast. It had been the help he’d selflessly given to the troupe, but more precisely to Ned and Lucy that had drained him so completely. Ned vowed to himself then and there to make it count. By morning they would be carrying out their plan: teleporting to the weapon At-lan and rescuing his parents. Everything now hinged on keeping his focus.
“It was pretty bad back there,” said Ned. “The voice – it keeps coming back.”
Lucy glanced at George’s hand.
“It’s getting stronger, Ned, and we have to get stronger too. Whiskers ended up with his head on backwards and George’s thumb … well, it doesn’t even exist any more. You have to get through this in one piece, because if we get your mum back and your ear’s missing or your foot’s on backwards, she will kill me.”
Ned chuckled. “Do you know, I think she actually might.” And as he looked at Lucy, he saw the proud, brave expression of his friend somehow restored. “You’ve changed your tune since we talked on the Gabriella.”
“I meant what I said, I couldn’t bear it if I lost you. But I’m more scared of not letting you go, of what it would do to you if you didn’t try, and even if I can’t see what happens next, no matter how many times I look, I know this: that ring on your finger is yours for a reason, and mine too. You’re meant to save your parents, Ned, and I’m meant to show you the way.”
George’s snoring took on a familiar and warming rumble.
But as Lucy spoke, and unbeknownst to her, beyond the door to his trailer the first gust of the “brewing storm” the Ringmaster had spoken of stepped out of the shadows: an unassuming man in a light grey suit.
Suits
r Fox had not been expecting the Ringmaster to come without a fuss, but that was all right. This time he was more than prepared.
“Mr Benissimo, you can either come quietly or under arrest,” he said, as they stood outside the tents, where Mr Fox had made himself known only minutes before. “There really is no need for an altercation.”
“Altercation, Mr Fox? On another night, with a little less darkness in its bite, I might well have answered your questions, but tonight? I’ve not the patience nor time.”
His trusty whip uncoiled itself at Benissimo’s side, and as it did so Mr Fox spoke into the sleeve of his suit.
“Gentlemen, make yourselves known.”
On the far side of the tents and caravans, campfires and troupe members, there was a rustling of leaves. Seemingly as one, over a hundred men in matching grey suits stepped out of the undergrowth.
Mr Fox turned his attention back to Benissimo and spoke in a tone that sounded almost apologetic. Almost.
“For the record, I didn’t want it to be this way.”
Which was a far truer statement than he knew. There was a high-pitched whistle from somewhere in the darkness and on the opposite side of the encampment the undergrowth rustled in return.
At least another hundred men in matching suits revealed themselves. This time, though, they were not grey, but carried the symmetrical patterning of the Twelve’s pinstripes.
Mr Fox then did something that he had not done since the British Museum – he let himself be completely surprised.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured. “Are those men yours?”
“No,” said Benissimo.
And then the hurricane blew.
Benissimo had fought more battles than anyone in history, apart of course from his brother. But never in all his countless years had he had to fight like this. He was accused of murder, and his troupe caught between two ambushes. It is said that a wolf will gnaw its own leg off when caught in a hunter’s trap.
Benissimo howled with rage. “IT’S A RAID!”
He turned on Mr Fox, his arm slashing outwards and his whip bursting into flames. Mr Fox’s eyes widened – whatever he may have thought Benissimo and his troupe were capable of, nothing could have prepared him for this, not when the whip burned and crackled so hungrily for his skin.
He ducked, rolling to the ground before springing up again and drawing a baton from his waist. The BBB had their own kinds of magic, made with science and plastic and small red buttons that turned to “on”. As the baton connected with Benissimo’s thigh a vast dose of electricity was pumped into the ancient Ringmaster. His skin singed and Benissimo grimaced, grabbing at the baton and snapping it in two. Then his whip was at Mr Fox’s ankles and, a hard tug later, the BBB’s finest agent was downed on the floor and helplessly staring up.
The Gold Thief Page 23