“Which means he’s probably figured out where it’s stored. And knowing that I have the keys in my possession to enter it …”
“He’ll have gone there to wait for us,” Heidi finished. “One step ahead of you at last. Perfect.”
“So we meet him there,” I said. “And then we end this.”
“We’ll be outnumbered. Massively so.”
“I’m aware.”
“There could be any number of surprises waiting for us.”
I folded my arms, sticking out my hip. “Really, Heidi? Come on. You said yourself: I’m a Brand. You don’t think I won’t have one of my own?”
Her eyebrows came down low over her eyes. “Borrick has a horde of orcs, Mira.”
“So?”
“So?” Heidi threw up her hands. “Unless you’ve got a plan for us to get past them alive, I don’t think whatever little surprise you have up your sleeve really matters.”
“My surprise,” I said, “is how we get through that horde alive.”
She waited. Then: “Not gonna tell me, huh?”
I shook my head. “It’ll be my little secret—just like your little flashbang thing back there. So. Are you in, or aren’t you?”
She weighed it up for a moment. Then, finally, sagging, she loosed a long, agonized breath.
“Yes, I’m in.”
I clenched my fist, pumped it. “Thank you.”
“When are we doing this?” she asked tiredly.
“Now.”
“Right this moment?”
“Of course,” I said, stooping and opening the fridge, retrieving my can of liquid caffeine and stuffing it back into my jeans pocket. “There’s no time to waste.”
I stepped through the doorway and back into the library—no, strode. I was on a mission, carried by pure fire and determination, fatigue all but a distant memory as I marched down the central aisle for the wall leading to London.
“And the Chalice Gloria?” Heidi asked, keeping pace beside me. “Where’s that?”
“The Tower of London,” I responded. “But we’re not going there just yet.”
“We’re not?”
“No.” I shook my head. “There’s someplace else I need to go first.”
28
“Salutations!”
We were in Kensington, illuminated from behind by coppery sodium lights, a shaft of glowing white coming from the partially opened door in front of us. Lady Angelica’s ground-floor butler greeted us, peering around the wood’s edge with its eternally cheerful face.
“All right, G?” I said.
Heidi’s eyebrows knitted. “Who’s G?” she mouthed.
“Regrettably I am neither ‘G’, nor do I know such a person,” the butler chirped. “It appears you have stumbled upon the wrong property, visitors!”
“I was here literally today,” I said.
“Oh, but of course! Have you come to visit Lady Hauk? It is rather a late hour, but she remains wakeful. Please wait while I confirm that she is entertaining visitors!”
We waited awkwardly on the doorstep as the butler silenced. He did not move, remaining perfectly still, gears turning over and over in his body, whirring away.
I bet he and his buddies would feel right at home with my fridge.
“Err,” I said. “Why isn’t he going to see if she’s around?”
“Remote link, isn’t it?” Heidi muttered. “They’ve probably got, like, mobile phones embedded in their brains or something.”
“Not quite!” the butler chirped again, then quieted.
I glanced behind us, up and down the street. The butler was only three-quarters in view, but with night descended and a great big bar of light cast around him, his otherworldly appearance was pretty obvious.
Then again, I shouldn’t really say Heidi, Carson or I had been doing the greatest job of laying low. How many hours ago had it been that I swung a spear around my head in the middle of Russell Square? How long since we’d ridden the train, drenched to high heaven when there had been not a drop of rain in days?
“Who’s G?” Heidi asked after a moment.
“Yes!” the butler joined in. “Who is—oh, pardon; it appears Lady Hauk is available for visitors. She is on the third floor as we speak. Please! Come in!”
He wheeled back, the door opening wide for us. I took a quick glance back along the street to check no one saw, then hurried in alongside Heidi.
We trundled down the hall. At this hour it was lit by candlesticks. But they were too bright—more like miniature suns—and they were not held in sconces; instead they floated quite serenely. Wax trickled down their sides, but when it reached the bottom the drips vanished before spattering on the floor.
We were escorted onto the third floor by the usual string of robotic butlers. Mostly they hummed, although the butler on the second floor, whose faceplate was tinged blue, asked, “So who is this ‘G’?”
“Geoffrey, the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. That’s what Will called him. Seen it?”
“I have not, visitor!”
“You should check it out sometime.”
“Alas,” he said, a melancholy note in his electronic voice, “I am rather devoid of eyes.” And then he went along humming, cheerful as you like.
I exchanged a look with Heidi. The expression she shot back was just as baffled as mine as she mouthed, “How does he see?” I decided not to ask.
Lady Angelica stepped out to meet us as the last in our line of mechanical escorts concluded the journey’s leg.
“Young Mira,” she said. “And Miss Luo. I see you’ve made each other’s acquaintance.”
She looked much the same as when last I’d laid eyes on her, late this morning: all proper, dark hair still pinned up and adorned with the fat-petaled rose holding it together, her wide-skirted dress so much like something I might expect to see in a Victorian painting, or a period piece on TV. But there was something in her face—her composure was not quite as complete as it had been this morning. A modicum of worry had crept into the crow’s feet around her eyes, the tight lines radiating from her lips.
“Lady Angelica,” I greeted.
“Lady Hauk,” said Heidi.
“Your visitors, Lady Hauk,” the butler said. “I shall pass them into your capable hands. Do call when you wish them retrieved, ma’am.” And he wheeled back a couple of feet, as though giving us privacy, and stilled beside the wall.
“When I said your spell would be complete tonight, I did not anticipate you actually returning so soon to collect it,” Lady Angelica told me.
“I need it. Is it finished?”
“Of course. This way.” She began for the stairs. Despite her age, she took rapid steps that both Heidi and I struggled to keep pace with.
Even more impressively, she took the stairs two at a time.
“I hear it has been quite the day,” she said as we strode past a butler who she waved off.
“It has?”
“The Order of Apdau mounted another attack in Russell Square.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “News travels fast.” Flicking her gaze to Heidi, she added, “I shan’t enquire as to how you made your getaway.”
“It’s been kind of hectic,” I admitted.
“And it’s not over yet,” Heidi added in a low mutter.
“I can imagine.” Looking over her shoulder at me again, Lady Angelica asked, “Would your late visit also happen to correlate to the absence of the young man in your company earlier?”
“Unfortunately, yes. We’re conducting a rescue operation.”
“Idiot got himself captured by orcs,” Heidi grumbled. “Luckily their arse of a leader was kind enough to offer a trade.”
“Oh?”
“Decidian’s Spear, and Feruiduin’s Cutlass—essentially, the Chalice Gloria—for his safe return,” I told her.
“And you plan on taking him up on his offer?”
“Apparently,” Heidi said.
We reached Lady Angelica’s brewin
g room. She ushered us inside, where candlesticks burst into light of their own volition, hovering on the walls just as they had been in the many corridors we’d passed through to arrive here. The bright light threw the room into sharp relief, like the entire thing existed beneath a giant desk lamp.
Lady Angelica stepped to her brewing station. The spell, started this morning, was now housed in a round-bottomed vial held around the neck in a metal stand. A cork stoppered the little bottle. Wax sealed it.
Even before Lady Angelica retrieved it, the silvery liquid in the bottom seemed to swirl, like tiny clouds eddying around and around.
She clasped it delicately around the neck and passed it to me.
I took it, looking past my bulbous pale reflection into the softly churning fluid.
Such plans I’d had for this.
I still did, I reminded myself. The end goal had just changed.
“Thank you,” I said.
I had everything I needed now. Spear, cutlass, and Lady Angelica’s spell.
She escorted us right the way down to the front door, just as she had this morning.
“This fellow and his army who have your friend,” she said as we stepped back out into Kensington night. “What do you intend to do about them?”
“Simple,” I said. “Kick some arse, beat his orcs—and get Carson back.”
29
The Tower of London closed its doors at four-thirty.
With nine p.m. fast approaching, getting inside, as was necessary to reach the temple where the Chalice Gloria was now held, became slightly problematic. Fortunately, I’d prepared for that in the course of my research, and with just a handful of back-and-forth gateway passes, first via Madame Tussauds and second at the edge of a jute field in Bangladesh, we found ourselves right where I wanted to be.
The lights were off. As soon as we stepped through, Heidi clanged into something.
“Ow!”
“Careful!” I pulled the flashlight from my pocket, where it nestled against the umbrella, and flicked it on.
The armory came dimly into view.
The walls were loaded with racks, and in them were dozens—hundreds—of guns. Rifles, mostly, side by side, surfaces polished and gleaming. Some of them sported bayonets.
Much of the floor was taken up too, by long, sleek, dark cylinders. Cannons, I realized as my flashlight sailed across the one Heidi had slammed her knee into.
“Careful with that,” I warned, nodding to the Bluetooth speaker in her hand. “Don’t want to lose it.”
“Thanks for your sympathy.” She massaged her knee. “You think they’re loaded?” she asked of the rifles.
“I very much doubt it.”
“Shame. Could’ve helped us along a bit.”
“Decidian’s Spear and Feruiduin’s Cutlass not enough for you?”
“Against an army of orcs? Not even close. Even with that little concoction of yours from Lady Hauk.”
I’d filled her in on the train. The vial was nestled in my back pocket now. I’d been careful all the way here; it was a kind of Get Out of Jail Free card, and the last thing I needed was to smash it before the right moment.
“Come on,” I said, beginning to pick my way over the cannons spread across the floor. “The temple’s just on the other side.”
Heidi followed. The cannons were close, but just tall and wide enough to be awkward, even for her frame—although that was perhaps more a function of my jeans coming up so baggy on her legs than any ungainliness on Heidi’s part.
“Know what I don’t get?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“These objects were lost for years. Centuries. The best and brightest minds searched for them for their entire lives, and still came up empty-handed.”
“You better be leading into a pretty solid compliment, Luo. Thus far it doesn’t sound too promising.”
“What I don’t get,” she continued, “is how all the gateways are contained throughout London. Strikes me as awfully convenient, that’s all.”
“Well, convenience is our friend, then.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange, though? How they’re all here?”
I shrugged. “This gateway isn’t accessible to the public, never has been. And the gateway to the elves’ temple, that was underground; until the station was built, that space was all dirt and rock, or whatever. Doesn’t seem so strange to me.”
“I guess.” But Heidi didn’t look convinced, going by the illuminated side of her face. “Makes you wonder what other gateways are buried and inaccessible to us. Or in the sky, just waiting for some tower block to be erected.” She clunked against another cannon, and bit off a curse. “These stupid things. Why did they need so many?”
“Carson would’ve loved this,” I said.
“Carson would’ve tripped on every single one of these things on the way across the room, and probably knocked half his teeth out.”
Mm. I couldn’t really disagree with that.
At the opposite wall, I eyed my compass in the torchlight.
“Right here,” I said.
Heidi made it to my side. “Another temple?” She peered down at the image on the compass face. “Of course.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“The last time I was in one, the walkways broke away and we only escaped thanks to the sort of ridiculous luck you see in action movies. You can see why I’m less than thrilled to be going back.” She added, glancing at me sidelong with pursed lips, “Especially after you told me what we’re in for.”
“Chin up, Heidi. You’re spry; way more cut out for this than I am.”
She snorted with disbelief. “Just open the gate and let’s get this over with.”
I affixed the compass to my belt again. Taking my talisman in hand, fingertips caressing the spiraling pattern etched into it, I steeled myself against the soft warmth it radiated. Eyes closed, I inhaled, long and deep—and swiped.
The gateway split apart, edges shimmering. Cheerful color bloomed and danced its frenetic twists. Pulses of red and blue and green and yellow sailed up and down and across the cannons’ sleek surfaces.
Then we were through, weightless for a few long moments, breath held—
Out the other side.
There was no time to prepare. No sooner had I stepped into the rocky room from the gateway’s invisible antipode did something lumbering and far, far larger than me sweep me into its clutches.
“GET OFF!”
Heidi came through, and cried out a moment later as she too was snatched up.
I fought, kicking. My arms were clamped to me from behind, so I couldn’t grab for the umbrella on my belt—
And then it wasn’t on my belt. A hand slipped it off.
A human hand.
I ceased my wriggling, and set eyes on Alain Borrick.
He held the umbrella balanced between his forefingers, appraising.
A cold smile lifted his features.
“Decidian’s Spear. You brought it.”
“Put me down!”
“And Feruiduin’s Cutlass?” he asked. His eyebrows rose on his forehead and stayed there, like a teacher awaiting an answer from an unprepared student.
“Here, Mr. Borrick, sir,” rumbled an orc on my left. “The small girl has it.”
“I have a name,” Heidi retorted.
Borrick made his way over.
Although clamped in much the same fashion I was, Heidi swung up her legs, kicking madly through the air. Borrick was not quite in reach, so she did not manage to sail a foot into him. But he did pause.
“Let’s not make this difficult, now,” he said. The victorious lilt had left his voice now; his words were clipped, terse.
“You want it, come and get it,” Heidi snapped back.
Borrick’s lip curled. “Fine.” Glancing to the orc clasping her tight, he gave a nod. “If you’ll please.” And before Heidi had even opened her mouth to yell, a vast hand twice the size of her head reached down, r
ipped away the material of her bulging left pocket, and removed the Bluetooth speaker.
“HEY! GIVE THAT BACK!”
“Here, Mr. Borrick.” The orc threw it in a low arc.
“GIVE ME THAT—LET ME GO, DAMN YOU!!”
Borrick ignored Heidi’s frantic kicks. He had eyes for only these two things: one in each hand, atop an open, flat palm as if each of those were pedestals too, he took them in with fiery eyes, devouring each and every millimeter of their surfaces.
“Decidian’s Spear and Feruiduin’s Cutlass. Home at last.”
“You got what you wanted,” I grunted. The clamp around my chest was too tight; not enough to suffocate, not even close, but the vast power of the brute grasping me was impressed into my bones. Just one sharp squeeze and my entire body would be broken, chest compressing into my lungs, spine crushed. “Now where’s my friend?”
“Your friend? Oh. Yes. The American. Of course.” Borrick turned to a corner of the room, blocked by orcs, and snapped his fingers. “Bring him out.”
The orcs shuffled, parting like the Red Sea. I was able to glimpse a dark passage leading away which they had obstructed. Torchlight licked the walls, floor and ceiling, coming closer.
Clasped between two ugly, green-skinned orcs was Carson. They had an arm each. He struggled to keep pace. Although close to six feet tall, he had to hold both his arms up at an awkward angle, like a puppet on strings, to prevent the height differential from tearing his limbs from his sockets.
He stumbled into the lighter chamber we were in.
His gaze was on me immediately.
“Mira!” he gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you,” Borrick answered for me. “You ought to thank them for accepting my deal.”
“Your deal? Mira, what—” He glanced to Borrick, and saw, perched on his hands, the umbrella, as well as the Bluetooth speaker. So out of place that although he hadn’t been around to see its glamoured form on our return to London, it was clear that Borrick now possessed both Decidian’s Spear and Feruiduin’s Cutlass.
“No!” he gasped.
“It’s fine, Carson—”
“The Chalice Gloria! What about everything you said?”
I ignored him. “Did they hurt you?” To Borrick, without waiting for Carson’s response: “I swear, if you touched so much as a single hair on his head …”
The World Beneath (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 1) Page 18