by Dave Butler
This was not the first time Charlie had been in the shop alone. But every other time his bap had gone out, Charlie had known he was coming back. Charlie had never thought about it before, but it was bearable to be alone because he knew his father was returning. Charlie could handle the fact that Lucky Wu hated him because he knew his father loved him. It wasn’t pleasant, but Charlie could stand to be punched and hit with rocks when he knew that Bap was on his team, that he and his father would have tea together and then dinner and then he would read while his father worked.
Now Charlie’s father was gone, and Charlie had nothing.
He looked at Queen Victoria’s portrait for comfort and got none. It might have been the deep shadows of her frame, but she looked sad, too.
Charlie stood alone in the darkened workroom, staring at the closed shutters.
He was casting about to find one of the broadsheets the attackers had left behind when he heard a noise inside the chimney.
Slithering.
Charlie hid.
A wide and thin sheet of brass stood in the corner. His bap used it to punch out custom parts, and now Charlie threw himself behind the metal to hide. He pressed his eye to a hole shaped like a crescent moon. The workroom was only lit by low flames in the gas sconces on the walls and by pilot lights under the burners, so at first Charlie saw nothing.
Then he saw shifting inside the darkness of the chimney. And then a twitching on the shadowed floor in front of the fireplace.
Something moved, low and shapeless.
Charlie heard a soft bamf! He smelled rotten eggs.
The silhouette of a man stood up where the twitching had been, and brushed itself off with its hands.
Whump!
A black cloud billowed out of the fireplace, and a second man shape stumbled out of it. Both silhouettes coughed briefly and spat on the floor.
“Right,” the first shadow said. Charlie recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place it. Something about it sounded wrong. “Let’s get it and get out.”
The intruders rifled through the workroom, rummaging across worktables and benches and shelves on the walls.
“It ain’t ’ere,” one of them said after a minute. It sounded like one of the Sinister Man’s strongmen. Had they forgotten something? Why would they come down the chimney when earlier they had used the door?
“You sure?” asked the other. “You sure you’d know what it looks like?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty diffident. It’s got to look like the picture I drew.”
“Confident, you mean.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Heaven-Bound Bob and the baronet Oliver Chattelsworthy! The silhouettes seemed to shrink in size as Charlie realized who they belonged to. He almost stepped out, but caught himself. Why would his father’s customers climb in through the chimney? And at night?
He stayed hidden.
Bob in his searching walked up to the big brass sheet. Oliver Chattelsworthy was right at his shoulder. “ ’Ere now,” Bob said, “there’s something behind this.”
Bob dug an object from his peacoat pocket. He fumbled with it, and then Charlie heard the scritch and saw the flare of a match being struck. In the sudden light and through the punched-out moon, their eyes met.
“Get out!” Charlie shouted, and pushed the sheet forward.
The sheet toppled toward the boys, who both yelped. Chattelsworthy stumbled, but he caught the metal before it hit the floor.
“It’s the boy!” Bob hissed to his companion. He gripped Charlie by his shirt with one hand. Charlie grabbed him back by the peacoat, and they dragged each other awkwardly into the middle of the room. “It’s Clockwork Charlie!”
Chattelsworthy laid the sheet back against the wall with a soft clink. In the yellow wobble of the match’s light Charlie saw him pull something small from his pocket. “Keep quiet!” the baronet whispered. He waved his object in Charlie’s face.
It was a knife. All the waving blew out the match, and they were plunged into darkness again.
“Easy, Ollie,” Bob said.
Charlie slapped at the weapon, but in the darkness he only hit a jacket.
“ ’Ey now, stop it!”
“Mum, you get it, mate?” Chattelsworthy whispered. “You don’t wake up your dad, and we don’t have to kill him.” The baronet was no longer talking with his fancy vowels.
“Easy,” Bob said again, and struck another match. Reluctantly the baronet put his knife back in his pocket. Bob smiled at Charlie. “It’s all right; we ain’t gonna ’urt you.”
“Get out of here!” Charlie was stuck. He could fight, but it was two to one, and they were bigger and armed.
Chattelsworthy squinted at Charlie and elbowed Bob. “He looks scared, don’t he?”
“Like you’d be if I stuck that thing in your face an’ made threats.”
“Sorry,” Chattelsworthy said to Charlie, looking a little abashed. Then he screwed his face into an angry and violent expression. “But shut it, yeah?”
Charlie’s bap always spoke in a calm voice with his customers, even when they were unhappy. Especially when they were unhappy. Charlie wasn’t naturally calm in that way, but he tried. “I’m sorry to tell you that my bap—I mean, my father isn’t here right now. May I help you?”
“For real your dad’s not here?” the baronet asked.
Charlie nodded.
Bob hissed and dropped the second match as it burned down to his fingers. He let Charlie go and edged over to the wall, where he turned up the gas lights halfway.
“We don’t want no trouble, see,” Bob said. “We’ve just come for the things your dad’s making for me.”
“And we won’t want a receipt, if you know what I mean,” Chattelsworthy added with a swaggering step back.
“You mean you won’t pay for the Articulated Gyroscopes,” Charlie guessed. “You’re going to steal them. You’re not really a baronet, are you?”
“No, ’e ain’t,” Bob admitted. “An’ yeah, we are.”
“Hey!” Oliver Chattelsworthy cried.
Bob ignored him. “Sorry, mate,” he said to Charlie, “I ain’t got a choice. We only barely ’ad the brass to pay the deposit, an’ a bit of street sweeping such as I am ain’t going to get a second chance like the Jubilee. All those aeronautical thinkers in one place, that won’t ’appen again in my lifetime; I’ve got to strike while the iron is ’ot. Someone’s bound to notice me, but not if I ain’t there.”
Bob seemed like a nice young man. Where Ollie seemed to want to look cruel and dangerous, Bob was almost apologetic about the fact that he planned to steal from Charlie’s bap. Charlie needed help, and the only person he knew who might help was Henry Clockswain…only the kobold was fussy and easily surprised, and Charlie couldn’t imagine him being very useful. Charlie needed allies who were bold and took risks.
Adventurers.
“Yes,” Charlie agreed, “I understand. And I’ll help you, if you help me in return.”
Ollie looked suspicious; he put his hand back in the pocket with the knife.
“What kind of ’elp you need, then?” Bob asked.
“My father isn’t here because he’s been kidnapped,” Charlie explained. “Half an hour ago.”
A nasty little grin spread across Oliver Chattelsworthy’s face. “That’s bad luck, that is, mate. We’ll just collect our Articulated Gyroscopes right now and get out of your way then, shall we?”
“You can’t,” Charlie said. “They took the gyroscopes, too.”
Bob and Oliver cursed.
“Yes,” Charlie said, “that’s how I feel.”
“I can get off the ground without the gyroscopes,” Bob mourned, “but I can’t stay off it, an’ I can’t steer. It ain’t going to do me no good to take off during the Jubilee aeronautical display an’ crash right into the ground.”
“You’ll die,” Oliver said.
“Yeah,” Bob agreed, “an’ I’ll look a right dodo.”
&nb
sp; “We can help each other,” Charlie suggested. “You can help me rescue my father, and I’m sure he’ll give you the Pondicherry Articulated Gyroscopes, free of charge.”
“And give us back the deposit?” Oliver suggested.
“Easy, Ollie,” Bob urged, “it was already a good offer.”
“And return the deposit,” Charlie agreed.
“I’m not sure it’s a good offer even with the deposit,” Oliver said. “How are we going to get old Pondicherry back? This ain’t some sweeping job, mate—the man’s been kidnapped. Do we know where he is? Do we know who took him? What do we know—what’s your name, again?”
“Charlie Pondicherry.” Charlie held out his hand. They all shook. “Pleased to meet you.”
“ ’Eaven-Bound Bob,” Bob said. The light in the room was dim, but his eyes twinkled. “As you may remember.”
“Call me Ollie.”
“Chattelsworthy,” Charlie said.
“Naw,” Bob corrected Charlie, “ ’e ain’t Chattelsworthy any more than ’e’s a baronet. Some folk call ’im the Snake.”
“My friends call me Ollie,” Ollie said. “My friends and people that don’t want to get on my bad side.”
“Ollie.” Charlie smiled. “If you prefer, I can just tell the police you were here tonight instead. Maybe they’d like to talk to you about the kidnapping.” It was a bluff. The pouchy-eyed captain had said the kidnappers were policemen, so Charlie couldn’t talk to them for sure, no matter what.
But it worked. “Tough one, are you?” Ollie said. “All right, then. What do we know, Charlie?”
“I saw it happen,” Charlie told them. “A mustached man came. He had two hulders with him and a gang of men with swords, who all talked like Bob. The mustached man also talked funny.”
“What do you mean ‘also talked funny’?” Bob objected.
“How did he sound?” Ollie asked.
Charlie searched his memory. “Like this,” he said, and he tried to imitate the Sinister Man. “We have ze doctor.”
“French!” Bob and Ollie exclaimed.
“Oh.” Charlie had read all about France, with its Bourbon kings and its revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte and his march on Moscow, Monsieur Montgolfier with his hot-air-balloon airships, the loups-garou, and so on. “Is that bad?”
“The French are rotten.” Ollie grimaced at his feet.
Bob shrugged. “Knowing ’e’s a Frenchman’ll give us something to ’elp us find ’im.”
“Yeah, but it ain’t a proper clue, is it?” Ollie said. “Did he leave any clues, Charlie?”
Charlie knew what clues were from detective stories. Clues were a rare kind of mud on the guilty man’s shoes, or an exotic cigar’s ash left at the scene of the crime, or ink on the thumb of an extortionist. He considered. “One of the hulders smoked, I think. That isn’t much.”
Ollie scratched his head doubtfully.
“It’s something, though,” Bob said. “We could go round to the tobacconists an’ ask ’em if they sell to trolls.”
“Have you got any idea how many tobacconists there are in London?” Ollie objected. “And how many jotuns that smoke?”
Then Charlie remembered what he had been intending to do when the boys had plunked down his father’s chimney. “They left papers! Turn the lights up!”
The boys turned up the gas in the workroom and the reception room, and Charlie laughed.
“What is it now?” Ollie grumbled.
“You’re both covered in black from head to foot,” he said. “I didn’t understand that before, but now I see that it’s soot. From chimneys.”
“Yeah, we’re chimney sweeps; we ain’t exactly surprised,” Ollie admitted. “And you’re dusted all over in white, like it’s sugar and you belong on top of a cake.”
Charlie laughed again. “I came through the ceiling a different way,” he said, and he pointed to the hole above the reception room.
He wasn’t sure why, but the fact that all three of them were dusted with powder and all three had come down through the ceiling pleased Charlie.
There was a broadsheet on the table in the reception room, crumpled and worn. They located another copy on a table in the workroom. In the corner sat a whole stack of them, tied together with string, new and crisp, looking ready for delivery. Ollie cut the string with his knife so they could compare the pages.
They were printed using worn type on cheap paper with ink that ran and bled. No two copies were exactly identical, but the words were all the same. The broadsheet read:
!!! A warning to the SONS of APES !!!
You have trodden upon the Elder Folk of this Island long enough!! Today we remove your Queen, like a louse—easily and in clean conscience—Tomorrow, we will remove you too, and squash you in our invisible fingers!!
!!! FEAR the Anti-Human League and OBEY !!!
Neither Bob nor Ollie had ever heard of the Anti-Human League. Charlie hadn’t either. He dragged several of his father’s books downstairs and trawled through them, hunting for references. While he was at it, he looked for information on anything called the Iron Cog.
Nothing.
Bob and Ollie were no help. They dirtied a few pages of the Almanack and of the New British Biographical Dictionary before giving up. Then Bob fell to examining bits of machinery lying about the shop. Ollie mostly just scratched himself.
While Charlie was searching the books, he accidentally knocked the crumpled broadsheet to the floor.
Bending to pick it up, he saw printing on the back of it, faint and old, next to a picture of a smiling man in a frock coat and top hat. He read the smiling man’s words aloud: “ ‘This isn’t just a hat, my good man. It’s a Cavendish.’ ”
“I’ve got a hat,” Ollie said. “No, thanks.”
The lock on the shop door clicked, and with a gust of cold predawn air, Henry Clockswain stepped inside. He wore his neat tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows.
Bob and Ollie stood up straight and looked at the kobold. Bob grinned, but Ollie scowled.
“Goodness gracious,” Henry Clockswain snorted to Charlie, “what a mess!”
“It’s not my fault.” Charlie shut the Almanack and sat.
“Er, yes, of course,” Mr. Clockswain agreed. He hopped from one foot to the other as if he was trying not to stand in the plaster dust that covered the floor. “I meant, well, goodness gracious!” The kobold smiled and shut the door. “And you are seeing…customers.”
“Pfagh!” Ollie spat.
Mr. Clockswain looked up and saw the door owl askew on his brass perch. Tut-tutting with his tongue, the short clockwork engineer dragged a stool from the table underneath the owl and climbed up it. Standing on his tiptoes, he could just reach the owl.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked. Something about the kobold’s fussiness bothered him. The sheer normalcy of Henry Clockswain’s reaction to the plaster dust felt…small. Charlie wanted to do something so urgently, his hands were shaking.
“ ’E’s fixing the door chime,” Bob said.
Henry Clockswain only nodded, pulling a pair of pincers from his jacket pocket and gripping the owl with them, twisting it to push the clockwork back into place over the door.
“There’s no time for that!” Charlie cried. “My father’s been kidnapped!” He hopped down from his stool.
“Kidnapped?” The kobold spun around on the stool. His eyes blinked rapidly, he dropped the pincers, and if Bob hadn’t steadied him with a hand on his shoulder, he might have fallen. “What happened? Shall I…er…call a constable?”
Charlie shook his head and tried to think. “No, the kidnappers might have been constables. Also, my bap was kidnapped by hulders, so talking to the bobbies won’t do any good.”
“That’s right,” Bob agreed. “Human crime, human coppers, Queen’s Bench for the trial. Troll crime, trolls ’unt ’em down, tried at the Thing. Everybody knows that.”
“Hulders!” the kobold squeaked. “Hulder kidnapper
s in Whitechapel?”
Bob might have a point, Charlie realized. What he needed was troll help.
“There are hulders in Whitechapel,” Charlie said. “And the one I want to talk to is in Tumblewain Close!” He gripped the table to steady himself. It felt like he was having an actual adventure, but it was only because his bap needed to be rescued.
And that was Charlie’s fault.
“You can’t go to Tumblewain Close,” the kobold sputtered. His eyes blinked rapidly, and he opened and closed the pincers in his hand on empty air. “You don’t know where it is. You’ve never left the shop. You haven’t even got a map!”
Ollie snorted. “Who are you to tell Charlie he can’t go? Come on, mate.” He screwed his bowler hat tightly onto his head. “I know the way.”
Another fifteen minutes passed before they actually left. In the workshop Charlie covered his face and hands with the thick white cream that his father put on him every morning to protect him from the sun. The stuff felt gritty going on over the plaster dust, but it stuck and it covered his face. Bob watched attentively while he did it. Charlie didn’t mind; he was starting to think of Bob as his friend.
“It’s nice of you to help me,” he said as he finished. He screwed the cap back on the tube of cream and put it away.
The chimney-sweep aeronaut shrugged. “I need those gyroscopes. Besides, I’ve lost my own mum and dad.”
“Is Ollie an orphan, too?” Charlie put on his best jacket, which wasn’t quite a peacoat, but was close.
“Naw. But I reckon ’e’d walk a mile to spit in ’Enry Clockswain’s eye.”
“What happened to make Ollie so angry with Mr. Clockswain?”
Bob laughed. “The first time we came into your dad’s shop an’ asked the kobold to build us the gyroscopes, old ’Enry couldn’t sit still. The ’ole time we was talking, he kept balling up an’ unballing a little rag in ’is ’ands.”
“I don’t understand.”
“An’ then one minute Ollie looks the other way, an’ ’Enry Clockswain reaches over with that rag an’ tries to polish Ollie. Tries to clean ’im.”