The Watsons looked at each other, then back to Sarah. “Do you think they would?”
Nan and both birds laughed. “I think they would murder us if we didn’t at least ask them,” she said.
“Well then, let me take more time to formulate a complete plan,” said John. “While you young ladies set up a time when we can meet with your fearsome guardians, and I’ll have something more concrete to present to them.”
Sarah laughed, probably at the idea of Memsa’b and Sahib Harton being considered “fearsome” by anyone. She confirmed that with her reply. “They’re dears,” she said fondly. “And they’d only be put out at not being consulted because they are concerned about us. Now Agansing, Karamjit, and Selim . . . they are fearsome.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Would you object to a Gurkha, a Sikh and a Moslem being part of this party? It would be three more seasoned fighters, both in the conventional and the occult senses. And they were all involved the first time Nan and I encountered this Shadow Beast.”
“I’d welcome a half-naked cannibal princess and her pet tiger if they could be relied upon not to eat us!” John exclaimed. “And here I was concerned that four of us might be too few and was trying to think of a way to persuade Beatrice and anyone else she could dragoon in.”
“The addition of five more would make us nine, John,” Mary reminded him. “And nine is a very auspicious number in the occult.”
John nodded slowly. “So it is.”
“Then let’s take advantage of every bit of help we can get,” said Nan, and Neville and Grey bobbed their heads in agreement.
• • •
The nine of them stood in the bright sunshine just before noon outside Number 10, in the deserted mews that served as a sort of back alley. Standing around at the front of the house had seemed like a dubious idea—they hadn’t wanted to attract attention, and they certainly would do that as a group of nine people clustered at the front of the house. So John had obtained all the keys from the owner, and they had come, one at a time, down the lane that no one but the servants in these houses ever saw, and were now shielded from view by the buildings around them.
The first three days of the last week had been spent in careful preparation, working a little at a time, and one at a time, inside the old house. Most of the work had been done by Karamjit, Selim, and Agansing, who would not permit the others to undertake it. The remaining four days they had let the house stand empty and darkened. Darkened, because thick pasteboard had been carefully fitted over every window in the place, and every chink that could have let in light had been pasted over with thick paper and wallpaper glue.
John’s idea had been to confuse the Shadow Beast by putting the house in full darkness all the time, hoping that it was not somehow sensitive to the rising and setting of the sun by some other means. “The worst that happens is it will not come out to our bait,” he had said. “And in that case, we will have to try some other means to find whatever it is bound to.”
Now they were ready to face it. All the women were wearing extremely practical gear, something they could run, and run fast in, if need be. “All right, then,” John Watson said. “Let’s get in place. Sarah, Nan, give us half an hour, then come in and go to the room you were locked into the first time you were here.”
John and Mary Watson had performed some sort of business over themselves and everyone else except Nan and Sarah. Nan wasn’t entirely sure what it had been about, but John had called it “shielding” and said that he thought that when he was done, not only would the others be protected from this creature, for a while at least, but it would be unable to sense them while they took their places. The result didn’t look all that impressive to Nan—thanks to Robin Goodfellow, she and Sarah could see some magic, even if they couldn’t use it. These “shields” looked like nothing so much as soap bubbles. But then again, maybe they didn’t need to look like much in order to do what John and Mary wanted them to do.
Nan had a man’s pocket watch she habitually wore, so she was the timekeeper of the two. She and Sarah had their birds on their shoulders; Neville and Grey were sitting so quietly they might have been stuffed.
This was by no means the first time they had gone into danger together, but it was the first time they’d had so long to prepare for it. Nan thought that was probably worse than just rushing headlong into a bad situation; you had so much more time to brood over what could go wrong. . . .
Sarah seemed calm, but Nan knew her well enough to know that was the face she put on whenever things were bad. Then again, so do I. Sensing her unease, Neville finally moved a little, leaned forward—and stuck his tongue in her ear.
“Neville, ye blarsted little barstard!” she exclaimed, reverting to her Cockney accent.
Sarah burst into a nervous giggle, which broke the tension.
“Devil in feathers,” Nan grumbled good-naturedly, and reached up to scratch the back of his neck. Neville chuckled, and she looked at her watch.
The watch had reached the appointed minute, and she put it in her pocket. Taking that as the signal to move, Sarah went in the back door ahead of her. Sarah, after all, was what the Shadow Beast had been most attracted to the last time they’d come up against it, so Sarah was serving as the bait.
It was as black as pitch inside the door, and Sarah took out a little lamp of the sort that miners used, and Nan lit it with a lucifer match. By its faint light they made their way up the narrow, steep servant’s stair; it was too narrow for them to go side-by-side, so Nan went up first, with Neville clinging to her shoulder for dear life. Feeling their way as much as seeing it, they ascended to the third floor, just below the attic and the servants’ rooms, where they had last met the Shadow.
The room they entered hadn’t changed much since they had last been there, around ten years ago. There had been a thick layer of dust on the floor, which was scuffled up, perhaps by the sailors who had last been here. Nan held the lantern higher. “Look,” she whispered, pointing to where a couple of blankets were crumpled up in the corner. “That must be where those two idiots decided to spend the night.”
“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, Nan,” Sarah chided. “They might still be here.”
Nan shut her mouth. The paraffin lamps that had given an illusion that the room was tenanted were still here, miraculously unbroken, although she had no doubt they were empty. And there were still a few boards piled in the corner opposite the blankets, the remains of a bed from which she had wrenched a board as an improvised weapon.
Unprompted, Sarah walked over to where the window was, behind the pasteboard and paper, turned, and stood facing the door. Nan took her place behind her, with one hand on the improvised handle of twine at the top of the pasteboard window-cover.
“Well,” Sarah whispered. “The next thing to do is . . . be frightened.” She laughed nervously. “That’s not going to be hard.”
Nan wanted to pat her reassuringly, but that was the very opposite of what Sarah strongly needed to feel right now. They had to rouse that Shadow, make it think because of the darkness of the house that it was night, and lure it to where Sarah was—all without letting it notice where the others were. To do that, they had to make sure it was focused on Sarah.
That actually shouldn’t be too hard, Nan thought. I don’t think it’s been eating well. The police have been making sure nobody breaks into this place, and it’s not as if this is Spitalfields or Whitechapel, where there are hundreds of people who wouldn’t be missed. It must be ravenous by now.
Just as she thought that, the flame in the little lamp suddenly dimmed and burned blue. There it was, the same as last time. . . lights burn blue when spirits walk . . .
Nan felt a tingle go through her, and when she glanced down at herself, she was utterly unsurprised to see she was no longer wearing the practical bloomer dress she had walked in here wearing. Instead, she was clad in a tunic of bright re
d wool that came to her knees and a belt of heavy leather, her long hair in a thick plait that fell over one shoulder. Over the tunic, she wore bronze armor: armguards, a breastplate, and greaves. In her right hand was a sword that shone with its own light, bronze-gold as the sun. Neville on her shoulder was heavy, as heavy or heavier than an eagle might have been; well he was the size of an eagle now, and his wings spread protectively around her.
Unlike the first time this had happened, she was not chanting, nor was Grey. They had to make the thing approaching think that Sarah was helpless. But Nan could feel the words of the chant building in her mind, wanting to get out, as the temperature in the room plummeted until their breaths were puffing white in the dim blue light.
The darkness just beyond the open doorway somehow grew darker, stygian—it seemed to negate light. Ponderously, it moved toward them, not as if it could not move faster, but as if it was trying to induce still more terror by taking its time. This time she understood that the shadow hid a deeper shadow still at its core, something that could not be seen, but which sent out waves of terror to strike devastating blows on the heart.
And this time was different. This time the shadow-within-the-shadow opened its eyes. Two glowing, red eyes that promised horror and pain. It paused in the doorway, as if relishing their fear.
“NOW!” Nan screamed, and pulled at the handle of twine in her hand.
The pasteboard covering tore away from the window, and the bright light of the afternoon sun struck the thing full-on.
Nan clapped both hands to her ears—fruitlessly, since the dreadful howl the thing emitted was inside her head, not outside it. Then she gave a ruthless mental shove and grabbed for the mirror hanging from her belt as the creature turned and fled down the hall, looking for darkness.
But there was no darkness; Nan’s signal had made the other seven people in the house pull down their window-coverings as well, and the Shadow was faced at every door by someone with a mirror, ruthlessly directing the sunlight right at it.
It sped for the door at the end of the hall and vanished inside.
“Selim!” John Watson shouted.
“I am unharmed,” came the deep voice Nan knew so well. “And I see whence it has gone. Come!”
They all crowded into the room, to see that Selim was reflecting his beam of sunlight down upon one corner of the room. “It entered, and vanished through a crack in the floorboards,” Selim said calmly. “I think there may be a hiding place there.”
“Let me have a look,” said Frederick Harton, getting down on his knees with a little difficulty. “Selim, Agansing, Karamjit, have you any experience in finding concealed panels?”
“Not I, Sahib,” said Agansing. “Nor I,” agreed Karamjit. But Selim relinquished his mirror to Sarah, and got down on his knees beside his employer, fellow mystic, and friend.
“I think I feel the outline of it here—” said Harton, sketching the lines with his fingers. “The question is where the catch is. . . .”
“Ah, I think . . . permit me, Sahib,” said Selim, and withdrew one of his formidable daggers from his belt as the rest looked on, ready to combat anything that might emerge. He used the tip as delicately as a surgeon along the line of one of the floorboards.
Then he twisted the blade suddenly. There was a sharp snapping sound and a section of the floorboards lifted a trifle.
“Everyone please to back to the walls, and duck as low as you may,” Selim said, calmly. “I am not anticipating a trap, but it is better to be feel foolish and alive than surprised and dead.”
They followed his instructions; Nan and Sarah, accustomed to some of the wicked traps on objects in ancient tombs, curled themselves into tight little balls and shielded their faces. Nan looked cautiously over her shoulder, and saw Selim moving as far from the hiding place as he could and still lift the lid with the tip of his knife. With a single deft motion, he flipped the top of the hiding place open.
Nothing happened.
The room filled with the sound of nine people heaving a collective sigh of relief, and they all came crowding back around the now-open hole in the floorboards. All but Karamjit, who had the presence of mind to direct a bright beam of sunlight into the hole with his mirror, perfectly illuminating the small strongbox that lay inside.
It all but radiated cold, and evil.
And Nan got the sudden urge to wrest the thing out of the hole and wrench it open. From the sudden jerk that everyone else gave, she knew they must have been overcome by the same impulse at the same moment.
“That will be enough out of you,” Isabelle Harton said firmly and dropped a thick piece of raw silk fabric over the top of it. Abruptly, the impulse vanished.
“Thank you, Memsa’b,” said Karamjit, with feeling.
John Watson shook his head. “Whatever that thing is,” he said, slowly, “It’s no Elemental I ever encountered, or read about.”
“And I, for one, am not at all eager to study it,” Mary Watson said firmly. “If there are no objections, we’ll proceed with our original plan.” She looked up and they all shook their heads, Nan included. She pulled a pair of silk gloves out of her coat pocket and put them on, carefully wrapping the strongbox in the length of raw silk fabric that Memsa’b had provided. There was plenty to wrap it thoroughly. Isabelle had come equipped with several pieces of the cloth, which was used to bale the finer silks imported by her husband’s trading company; silk was a potent insulator of magic, and it didn’t matter if it was the slub-filled, heavy, raw sort, or the finest of near-transparent veils.
Agansing trotted downstairs while Mary Watson was wrapping the box in a silk shroud and returned with a heavy satchel. From it he brought sheets of lead—thicker than the foil that tinsel was cut from, perhaps as heavy as a sheet of thin cardboard. He laid one out, unfolded, on the floor, and Mary put the mummified strongbox in the center. Working deftly, but with great care, he molded sheets of lead around the box and its covering until it was completely encased in at least three thicknesses of lead on all sides. Then he took the pommel of his knife and burnished the seams down flat. When he was satisfied, he gestured to John Watson to take it.
“What do you plan to do with this thing?” asked Memsa’b, as he picked it up.
“I don’t believe we dare try to hide it anywhere on the face of the earth,” Watson said, slowly. “If I had my way—and if it was possible—I’d fire the damned thing into the heart of the sun. I discussed this with Lord Alderscroft at length, and we decided there are only two possible options. We give it to the Water Elementals to hide somewhere in the depths of the sea, or we give it to the Fire Elementals to drop into a volcano. We couldn’t make up our minds, so he decided to leave it to us.” He knelt there, the box in his hands, and looked around the group. “Everyone gets a vote.”
“Volcano,” Sahib said instantly, as Isabelle nodded. But Karamjit shook his head.
“I prefer never to dispute with you, Sahib, but what if destroying what it is bound to only releases the creature to work even more evil?” he asked. “If we could be sure the volcano was in Hell itself, perhaps but . . . we know it is contained now. And the Elementals of the Water will be aware it is dangerous and be sure to shun the place where they leave it.”
“I too, think that the sea is the best place to leave this thing,” agreed Agansing.
“But the efrits of Fire are wise. Surely they can combat this creature of darkness should it escape!” Selim objected. “I would send it to the fires.”
“You know my vote would be Water,” said Watson, and looked at Mary, who nodded.
“Volcano,” said Sarah firmly. “It hates the light, and a volcano is full of light.”
“It hates the sunlight,” Nan corrected. “It didn’t care at all about our lamps.” She looked around the group. “Four and four, so I suppose I cast the deciding vote.” She thought about this for a while. “I don’t
know anything about the Fire Elementals, but I know a lot about the Water.” She looked at John. “Can you convince them that this thing is as dangerous to them as it is to us, if not more?”
“Easily,” he said fervently. “If it escaped, it would probably devour them more easily, and more readily, than a mere mortal human.”
“Then I think it would be safest at the bottom of the sea,” she said. “And the sooner it is there, the better.”
• • •
They made an interesting little procession, what with Sahib’s three friends and employees being arrayed in slightly westernized versions of their native garb, Nan, Sarah, and Mary Watson in bloomer suits, and the Hartons, while in more conventional clothing, also bearing enough bags and pouches for an expedition to some exotic locale. And they wouldn’t all fit into a single cab, so the group required three. London cabbies, however, are a race that has seen nearly everything, and good tips generally ensure that they are utterly incurious and completely polite about whoever and whatever they are asked to convey.
John Watson had, it developed, taken the precaution of engaging a boat—and since it would be going some distance out to sea, and not just down the Thames, it was big enough to hold them all. Mary Watson had had the forethought to make sure the boat had taken on hampers of provisions, which was just as well, since they were all as ravenous as starving lions after the excitement of the capture.
Nan and Sarah had been on quite a few seaworthy boats on their visit to the Welsh coast and their adventures with the Selch, the seal-folk, but the Lively Lady was bigger than any of them. Well, it had to be, seeing as it was carrying nine people, the captain, and a crew. They all went aboard, Nan being the last.
It was also beautiful, flying away toward the sea under full sail.
It would have to be a sailing boat; Water Elementals would never approach a boat with a great iron and brass engine in it. It was a lovely thing, the wood almost alive under Nan’s hand, and when she looked up at the sails, she spotted sylphs playing among them. The captain was probably a Master, and likely Air; as such he’d always be able to guarantee a following wind. The crew were probably not Masters, but likely were a mix of Air and Water. They scrambled among the lines and canvas like a lot of monkeys, while the captain, after a few quiet words with John Watson, went to the wheel and stayed there, for all the world like a fancy engraving come to life.
A Study in Sable Page 8