by Dave Butler
“Brother?” The girl frowned.
“Our friend, he means.” Gnat flew between the two of them. That only made Charlie angry again.
He brushed the pixie aside and waved the hand. “Stop hiding things from me. This is his hand, so we know he’s here somewhere. Where is he?”
Rachel hesitated, but then looked at her feet. “He might be up on the mountain. In the Altstadt, that means ‘old town,’ the original part on the hill. At the castle.”
Charlie rushed down the stairs.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Gnat saying behind him. “Charlie’s under some strain.”
Ollie slammed the Almanack shut with a guilty look as Charlie passed. Bob whistled innocently, standing in the library door to give Ollie cover, but Lloyd and the rabbi didn’t even notice. Then Charlie was out the front door and heading up the mountain.
He found a staircase that climbed the retaining wall almost invisibly, hidden in a crease in the stone. At the top, he passed under an arch and emerged into an open plaza.
The square was cobbled and sloped up toward the castle, which was visible at the top of the hill, dissolving into several narrow streets before getting that far. Charlie’s end of the plaza was lined with tall, square buildings, mostly plastered or of half-timbered construction; to his left, the largest seemed to be some sort of town hall, built out of stone, sporting an explosion of windows and bearing a single tower in its center, with a door on the ground floor and a blue-and-gold clock face at its summit. At the upper end of the square a large fountain hurled jets of water from several spouts in an erratic pattern. Beyond the pool rose a half-timbered tower with a roof so pointy, all Charlie could think of was a witch. Or maybe a sharpened pencil.
Some of the buildings were restaurants, and diners sat at tables in front wearing leather pants and suspenders while they drank large mugs of beer and ate sausage. Some were booksellers, and students in gowns and caps poked slowly through the shelves of books standing outside in the sunshine. Others sold clothing or shoes, and customers walked out their doors looking down at themselves with smiles of satisfaction. Men in short boxy hats and fur-lined capes stood in small clusters in front of the town hall and conferred in low tones.
BONG! BONG! BONG! A copper carriage rushed in front of Charlie, the bell on its nose clanging. Hoses clung coiled along its sides, and men in India rubber coats and steel helmets crouched on top of the vehicle or hung off the back. Charlie had seen a similar carriage in London, when a hat manufacturer had caught on fire. In London, people who put out fires were called fire bobbies. What did they call them here?
The fire bobbies and their carriage raced away to the left, where, beyond them, Charlie saw smoke rising from a burning building.
Marburg had a large number of hulders. The male trolls seemed to favor fur hats resembling black cotton balls, and the women wore similar headgear with the addition of a pair of long horns. The hats made the jotun women and men resemble each other a little more; Charlie smiled.
Charlie also saw kobolds, though not in huge numbers. A few pixies flew along Marburg’s streets, which cheered his heart. Every pixie he saw wore a dress, even the men, which was the reverse of what he’d experienced in England. Gnat usually wore clothes Charlie thought of as old-fashioned men’s clothing—a tricorn hat, shirt and trousers, and buckled shoes.
The shopping pixies flew up and down as much as they flew horizontally. Charlie followed the flight of one pixie to see where they went, and realized that the upper stories of many buildings had their windows open and goods laid out on their windowsills for sale to fairies.
Marburg was a vertical town, climbing up multiple levels. How many levels down did Marburg go?
And if the humans of Marburg could use their upper stories to accommodate their pixie neighbors, what might be happening underground? Might the fairies have a space in their realm that welcomed humans? That thought made Charlie feel warm inside.
Charlie was taking in all the sights when a hideous hee-YONK! blared behind him. He dived left, scattering a knot of the caped men, and then looked back to see three mechanical donkeys roll past. Their barrel-shaped bodies, pinched in the middle to accommodate saddles, were mounted on three axles with large India rubber tyres. The tyres rattled up and down on the cobblestones and even over potholes while the riders—three young men with green felt hats—stayed level.
And then, looking at the donkeys, Charlie’s eye fell on something on the other side.
Thomas.
There he was, walking along by himself. He wore a long red cape Charlie had never seen before, but Charlie knew Thomas’s appearance as well as he knew his own. Pale skin, dark hair, short and slight.
Could it really be him?
As the donkeys neared, Thomas turned to look, and Charlie got a direct view of his face—and the Iron Cog pin at his shoulder.
Charlie scooted to his feet and ducked behind several of the caped men. For his trouble he got cursed out in German and kicked away, but he managed to shuffle directly backward, keeping the men between himself and Thomas.
When he had regained his balance and was out of range of kicking boots, he looked across at Thomas again. His brother was walking away, his red cloak spreading behind him.
And for a moment, clearly visible, Charlie saw that Thomas had two hands.
Gnat flitted close to Charlie. Charlie turned to look and saw Bob, Ollie, and Lloyd. They had followed him up the mountain.
“Did you see?” Charlie asked them.
“Aye, I saw him.” Gnat’s stern expression reminded Charlie that she was Natalie de Minimis, and that her foremothers had been the baronesses of the pixie realm of Underthames since time immemorial. Since Boudicca, Gnat had said. “And I saw his hands. Both of them. That’s not Thomas.”
Ollie and Bob crept over to join Charlie. They crouched, probably intending to stay out of sight, but all that really did was make them look very conspicuous in a crowd of midday eaters and shoppers. Lloyd walked at a more leisurely pace, singing something under his breath.
“You’ve got that look in your eye, mate,” Ollie said.
Charlie had a look? “What do you mean?”
“You’re going to do something crazy.” Bob tugged her bomber cap tighter by the straps. “We’re in.”
Charlie shook his head. “No, there are too many of us. Lloyd, can you…I don’t know, sing me invisible?”
“I don’t think so, boyo,” Lloyd said. “But I’m doing my best to sing that person—whoever he is—into a calm stupor of trusting, sheeplike peace.”
“I don’t quite know what sheep have to do with it, but that’ll do.” Charlie looked uphill, at the orange castle. Was that where the real Thomas was? “I think I’d better do this alone. I’ll be less conspicuous. Let’s meet back at the rabbi’s. His daughter knows something, and maybe he does too.”
He jogged after the false Thomas.
Thomas took a right turn at the top of the square. At the corner Charlie shot a glance after his quarry; the red cape was still moving steadily away, so Charlie had time.
The shop at the corner was a hatter, and Charlie picked a green felt hat with a feather in it from the rack. He still had a roll of banknotes from his father’s shop, one of the few things he’d salvaged from the wreckage. They’d survived in his coat pocket to Wales and now to Germany, never used. He slapped the hat and a one-pound note onto the wooden counter of the shop.
The shopkeeper, a square man with a square head and a square mustache, looked at the note, looked at Charlie, and said something in German, shaking his head.
Charlie sighed and added a five-pound note. He thought maybe he was supposed to sign the back of a note that large, but he didn’t do it, and the square-faced man didn’t ask him to. The shopkeeper took the bills and pushed the hat across to Charlie.
He’d paid to
o much. How useful would it be to speak German?
Charlie put on the hat and limped after Thomas again.
Here the houses got wider as they got taller, with each new story cantilevered up and out above the one below it. The houses resembled upside-down pyramids, and over his head as he raced down stone steps, Charlie saw short enclosed walkways connecting houses on opposite sides of the street.
Thomas stopped at the bottom of the steps, where the narrow street opened onto a wider road. Charlie turned right and grabbed the merchandise he happened to be standing in front of, pretending to inspect it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Thomas. Across the intersecting street was a storefront with a sign that said KAFFEEHAUS LANDGRAF VON HESSEN. His fake brother sidestepped a rider on a zebra and went inside.
Charlie put the merchandise back. He had been handling a broad leather belt with an iron bell hanging from it. Not a belt: a collar, for a horse or a cow. A thin woman with a pockmarked face and a warm smile said something to Charlie in German. He smiled back and left.
The kaffeehaus had large windows on two sides; Charlie walked once around the building and spotted Thomas. He was sitting at a table in the back of the shop, talking with someone who wore a black cloak, with the hood up.
Pressing his back against the wall of the building, Charlie considered. Thomas had lost a hand, and now someone who looked just like him was walking around in the same town where Thomas was.
Or was Thomas here at all? Had Charlie been following a severed hand all along?
But no, Rachel knew Thomas. She’d said he was here on the mountain.
Charlie looked up and saw another enclosed walkway, connecting the kaffeehaus with a building across the alley. That was perfect—he’d climb the stairs inside the other building, cross the walkway, and sneak down inside the kaffeehaus to get a good look at Black Cloak and the false Thomas.
But then he walked around the connected building and found its only door shut and locked.
Frustrated, Charlie looked up again.
The enclosed walkway had glass windows, and one of them was open.
Charlie looked around quickly to be sure no one was paying any attention to him, and then he started to climb.
An ordinary boy would have found the climb impossible, but Charlie was no ordinary boy. He gripped the corner timber of the kaffeehaus with both hands and leaned out, bracing his feet against the plaster and practically walking up the wall. Climbing this way meant his fingers had to be very strong. Insanely strong, even.
And it turned out that Charlie had very strong fingers.
Upon reaching the second story, Charlie grabbed the cantilever, the carved wooden support that branched out from the vertical timber to support the building’s wider second story. He easily pulled himself up and got his fingers around the timbers of the second story’s face, and thereby climbed up to the bottom of the third story.
Here there was no visible cantilever. The third story simply jutted out horizontally, three feet beyond the second. Charlie looked for a way to climb safely and saw none. Bracing himself and counting down from three, he jumped up and out—
missed his catch—
started to fall—
and jammed the fingers of one hand into the plaster of the wall. White powder rained down, and Charlie coughed a cloud of white dust away from his face, but his fingers had found something more solid, and he held.
By one hand, feet dangling.
Thomas’s scarf slipped from his neck and his hat fell from his head. Charlie grabbed for either, and missed both.
Someone below shouted in German. Charlie didn’t want to look down, because it would only give people a better view of his face. Instead he looked up as he dragged himself hand over hand across the timbers of the kaffeehaus’s third story until he could scramble into the walkway’s open window.
Charlie crouched, hiding from the view of anyone trying to watch him from the street. There was no door stopping him, so he waddled forward until he was inside the kaffeehaus proper, and finally stood.
The top floor of the building was furnished as living quarters: the rooms Charlie peeked into held beds. He slipped down the stairs to the ground floor, estimating where he was in relation to where he had seen Thomas and his companion.
At the bottom of the stairs, he found himself in a perfect position, where he could see both faces—or he could have, if Thomas’s face had been visible, but his hood was now up. He could see the other man’s face, though, and he knew it.
Gaston St. Jacques. The Sinister Man. Agent of the Iron Cog, and the man who’d shot and killed Charlie’s bap.
The false Thomas, who now just looked like a red cloak, leaned forward as the two talked and sipped coffee. The red hood hid his face completely.
Charlie waited; he didn’t like holding still, but he was good at it.
He did wish he could hear what they were saying, though. With the hood down so far, he couldn’t even try to read Red Cloak’s lips, and St. Jacques’s face was turned slightly too far away from him.
And then the Sinister Man left. Charlie heard the ringing of coins as he threw money on the table.
Still Charlie waited.
Red Cloak finished his coffee, set down the mug, and stood.
Charlie got a short, but clear, look inside Red Cloak’s hood. Thomas’s features were gone. Red Cloak’s eyes were black on black and shiny. And Red Cloak had no nose, no visible mouth, no eyebrows…nothing but two pure-black eyes in a totally smooth face.
Charlie held very still.
The faceless person—or thing—turned immediately and went from the kaffeehaus with measured paces.
Charlie let his head drop back against the wall with a plonk. What kind of creature, person, thing, or devil was Gaston St. Jacques consorting with? It was possible, of course, that the meeting had nothing to do with Charlie, Thomas, or his friends.
No, that was ridiculous. The creature had looked like Thomas!
Charlie crept to the long windows and peered out. Seeing no sign of Red Cloak or the Sinister Man, he straightened up and walked out the door, trying to look calm.
Something had happened while he’d been in the kaffeehaus. Every corner of Marburg’s upper town now had at least two, and in some cases four, men in black uniforms. They carried rifles on their shoulders. Charlie tried not to make eye contact.
The town square of the high city had the same shoppers and loiterers it had had earlier, with an eye-catching addition: twelve men stood at attention in front of one of the booksellers in the corner of the square. They wore black jackets above cream-colored trousers, with skull-and-crossbones patches on their cylindrical fur hats, and they leaned rifles on their right shoulders, too.
These were the same men who had been in the rolling war machine. Or men from the same group.
A man in a similar uniform, but with a slightly different combination of patches and medals on his jacket, stood among the shelves and dug through the books. Was he an officer? Other shoppers stayed several steps away, creating a void around the officer and making him impossible to miss.
When he had finished, the officer held three volumes tucked under his arm. Saying something crisp and loud, he paced along the length of the shelves and pulled another half dozen books off, dropping these on the ground and stomping on them with his boot heel. He looked coldly into the eyes of the bookseller—who looked away—and then turned and marched off.
Charlie kept walking. That the soldier was stealing and destroying books was not his business. Everyone seemed to see it, and no one was doing anything, including the men in the black uniforms. Were they the landgrave’s own soldiers? He scrutinized the uniforms for any sign of an Iron Cog insignia. He saw none. Did that mean he could trust these men?
But of course not. They were at least strangers, and t
hey could be enemies to Charlie even if they weren’t agents of the Cog. For that matter, they could easily be the Iron Cog’s men. There was no guarantee that every person in the Cog’s service bore its insignia. In fact, the idea that they might was ludicrous now that he considered it. They were a secret society, not an army.
Charlie descended the hill quickly. Just in case, he hid himself in a recessed doorway at the intersection of two alleys to watch for signs that he’d been noticed or followed. After five minutes of ordinary foot traffic, he dropped down the stairs to the rabbi’s house again.
He’d lost Thomas. He needed to regather his friends and find out what the girl Rachel knew about his brother.
The rabbi opened the door as Charlie’s foot touched the step. “Charlie!” He sounded concerned, like Bap always had when he worried Charlie had been out of the house too long, but his voice lacked the note of scolding that Bap’s voice had generally had.
Charlie stopped, and his shoulders slumped. He produced Thomas’s hand from his pocket and showed it to the rabbi. “I should tell you that I took this from your house without permission.”
Levi Rosenbaum laughed. “Well, that isn’t exactly my property, is it, Charlie? Come on in, before someone sees you.”
Without waiting for agreement, the rabbi grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and pulled him into the house, shutting the door behind him.
Charlie’s friends sat in the study. Thomas sat with them, his face drawn into lines of worry and his single hand and both feet fidgeting. Charlie held himself back from running and giving Thomas a hug—Thomas was shy, and it might embarrass him—but he smiled at his brother. Rachel wasn’t there.
“I guess my friends told you my name,” Charlie said.
“Yes,” the rabbi agreed. “But what no one told you, because you left before anyone could, is that Marburg isn’t safe right now.”
“It’s filling up with soldiers.” Charlie remembered what the rabbi had said to Lloyd Shankin. “The landgrave’s men, who dress in black. And another group of soldiers, who wear a skull and crossbones.”