The Traitor and the Thief

by Gareth Ward

  Stanley shifted position, his beanpole body folding into the chair’s contours. “Raised in the gutter, weren’t I?”

  “But now you have an opportunity to better yourself, to do good, to stop a catastrophe.”

  Stanley slurped some ice-cream. “Nah, I’m just here ’cos Eldritch caught me and promised free nosh.”

  Sin tapped his fingers against his book. “I’m guessing Eldritch didn’t chase you across the city, Lottie. So how come you’re here?”

  “I’m not really supposed to talk about it. My father’s stationed in Bucharest as head of the diplomatic corp. He says the politicians aren’t going to stop the war so it has to be done via the back channels. He’s been helping COG for years.”

  “So you knew what you were letting yourself in for?”

  “Not really. Father’s connections got me on a secret COG selection course but it was mostly academic tests and team games.”

  Stanley lifted his face from the bowl, his nose covered in melted ice-cream. “So why’d you join?”

  “It was either this or a young ladies’ finishing school. Running assault courses and shooting steamrifles takes the biscuit over embroidery and filling out dance cards any day of the week.”

  It sounded like reason enough to join, thought Sin. Except on a mission the enemy would be shooting back. No one really understood what it was like to face down death until it happened, and when it did, Sin wondered if Lottie would wish she’d opted for the dance cards. He swung his legs from the sofa and ambled over to where Zonda was challenging Jasper Jenkins to a game of chess. “Finished me book.”

  “So I heard,” said Zonda, her attention not straying from the board.

  A faint scent of strawberries wafted from Zonda’s hair as Sin perched next to her on the arm of the chair. He liked strawberries. In the summer the barrow girls would push their carts around the streets, hawking woven punnets to the toffs. If they had any left at day’s end he’d blag a handful for the price of a smile or, if he’d been lucky, a stolen trinket. He eased closer, inhaled deeply and pointed at the board. “Never did get me head round chess. Half the bits were missing from the set at the orphanage and we normally ended up chucking them at each other. Who’s winning?”

  Jasper tugged at a curl of hair, pulling it over the livid bruise on his cheek. “It’s a might more complicated than you’d understand. I’ve employed a Sicilian defence while Zonda’s attempting the Sebastopol gambit.”

  Zonda dipped her hand into the remnants of her banana split and pulled out a chocolate swirl. She popped it into her mouth and licked her fingers clean before advancing a pawn. Jenkins moved his horse, taking the pawn.

  “He got you there, ay?” said Sin, nudging Zonda’s arm.

  From the back of the board, Zonda pushed her queen into the knight’s square and removed it. “Checkerooney.” She raised her eyes to Sin and they hardened. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn to take the king.”

  There was something in her expression, or possibly an edge to the tone of her voice, that made Sin feel uncomfortable. It was like being savaged by a kitten. His thoughts drifted back to that afternoon when the silver guinea had spun from the post, struck by the nail. There had been no delighted squeal from Zonda or other girly emotion. She had simply pulled the magazine from her rifle and drawn the bolt back, making the weapon safe. In that moment, Sin had seen something different in Zonda. It was like on the smoggy streets of Coxford when you saw the dark outline of a gentleman, then a swirl in the mist would make everything clear, just for a second, and it wasn’t a gentleman, but a Sheriff and suddenly you needed to run.

  Jenkins knocked his king over. “Well played,” he said and offered his hand.

  Zonda grasped it daintily and smiled, her green eyes soft again. “Thank you, it was a pleasure.”

  “No, the pleasure was all mine,” said Jenkins, holding onto Zonda’s hand for a little too long as far as Sin was concerned. There was something about the boy that wound Sin’s spring. Below the dandified veneer and flawless manners lurked a malicious streak, Sin was sure of it.

  He plucked the queen from the board and said, “Don’t make no sense her being the most powerful. Should be the king who’s in charge.”

  “You’re confusing power with importance,” said Zonda. “The queen may be the most powerful but remove her from the game and it continues. The king is the most important; every army needs a rallying figurehead and without him the game is lost. Look at Nimrod. He’s by no means the most dangerous member of COG, but as the founder, he’s the most important. We’d be doomed without him.”

  Unlike the cheap wooden chess pieces from the orphanage, the ivory queen was heavy in Sin’s hand. Heavy with the burden of being the strongest, maybe. The weight of responsibility, that’s what the Fixer had called it when he’d given Sin the job of toughening up the weaker members of the gang. He’d been good at it too and had turned the scrawniest of runts into hardened scrappers. He considered Zonda, an idea forming. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  Zonda toyed with a black knight. “You know what? I posituitively do.”

  “Nice one. Meet me back here after lights out and be wearing your gym kit.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, Sin stole back into the common room. The rays from his chemlamp sparkled from the crystal bowls left over from their ice-cream supper. Zonda was already waiting for him, dressed in her gym smock.

  Turning the lamp down to barely a glimmer, Sin said, “Follow me.”

  They crept through the palace, Sin’s footfalls undetectable, the thump of Zonda’s feet worryingly loud. Sin stopped below a portrait of a knight in black armour, his sword dripping with blood, a pile of slain enemies at his feet. “There’s tons of ways to walk quietly, you need to find one that works for you,” whispered Sin. “I like to place my heel down then roll the rest of my foot on to the ground.” He took several steps, overemphasising the motion as Zonda copied the walk. “Yeah, that’s better,” he said. She wouldn’t be working as a sneakthief any time soon but the improvement was enough that they might avoid discovery.

  They navigated to the gymnasium, the padding of their feet the only sound in the deserted hallways and corridors. Sin turned a brass wheel on the wall and the overhead chemlights brightened. “You’re going to need two things to complete the course: more strength and better technique.” He guided Zonda past the wall to the second obstacle, the monkey bars. “Strength will come with time but I can teach you technique now.” Sin reached up to the first bar. “You hold it like this, fingers over the bar, thumb underneath. Both hands go on the same bar then one hand to the next bar and the second hand joins it.”

  Zonda swung over the water pit, her face turning beetroot-coloured with the exertion. One hand slipped from the bar and she flailed backwards. Sin clutched her waist and pulled her tight against him back to safety. Her body trembled as she sobbed. “I can’t get over the wall and I can only do two monkey bars. How am I ever going to pass the whole course?”

  Sin shuffled her backwards, away from the edge of the chasm. “Hey, where’s the steely-eyed soldier I saw this afternoon on the range?”

  “She doesn’t exist.” Zonda sniffed. “Father taught me to shoot and I was good at it. It was the one thing about me he was proud of, so I practised and practised. It’s simple physics really: distance, velocity and gravity. You just do the maths.” Zonda gesticulated at the assault course. “But this isn’t me. I want to pass, I posituitively do, it’s just too hard.”

  Sin turned Zonda around to face him. “The book you’re reading at the moment, it’s hundreds of pages long, right?”

  Zonda frowned. “I suppose.”

  “I’ve just read a five-page book with pictures, about a flipping dog called Spot. Everyone thinks I’m a dullard. The book Lottie’s reading is thicker than my head. I could look at it and give up reading right now, but I don’t, because tomorrow I’ll read six or seven pages, the day after that ten and then maybe, one
day, I’ll read as well as you and Lottie.” Sin wiped a tear from Zonda’s cheek. “Two monkey bars is your Spot the dog, but tomorrow, it’ll be three. You don’t need to worry about the whole course, just one piece at a time.”

  “I don’t think you’re a dullard. In fact, you might just be the smartest person I know.”

  “What, cleverer than Nimrod Barm?”

  “Okay. The second smartest,” said Zonda, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes.

  Sin clasped her shoulders. “You didn’t see Velvet when that coin pinged from the post – face like a sucked lemon, it was priceless. Staff Stoneheart is wrong. You’re not a weak COG, you’re a different-shaped one, and a machine isn’t made from all the same pieces.”

  As Zonda reached again for the monkey bars, Sin caught his reflection in the water below. How did he fit into the machine? The streets had made him tough and resourceful, but so were thousands of other kids. He hadn’t been recruited by accident, he’d been targeted. Not for the first time, he wondered why.

  CHAPTER 11

  I SPY

  The faint sulphurous aroma that pervaded the technology lab tasted like rotten eggs in the back of Sin’s throat. He peered at a blackboard covering the wall behind a long and cluttered desk. His lips moved as he silently sounded out the words chalked on the board: An Introduction to Technology with Nimrod Barm.

  With childlike enthusiasm, Zonda picked up a steam motor from a workbench and gave it an experimental spin. “This is fantabulous. Have I died and gone to heaven?”

  Sin lowered his eye to a tapered brass telescope that pointed out of the window. “Not unless your idea of heaven includes an introduction to technology with Nimrod Barm.”

  “It probably does,” scoffed Velvet. “Either that or a giant cake shop.”

  “Actually, I’m more of an ice-cream girl,” said Zonda.

  “You are too.” Velvet clicked her fingers. “Do you remember that time when Miss Derwent took us to Geovanni’s Gelato Parlour?”

  “No,” said Zonda.

  “You must remember. You got Strawberry Surprise on the end of your nose and walked around Coxford looking like some sort of circus clown. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much.”

  “You laughed. I got stung by a bee.”

  “That’s right. Your face swelled right up.” Velvet pinched her own nose. “And you couldn’t talk properly for a week,” she concluded, making her voice nasal.

  Trying to keep himself from grinning, Sin panned the telescope across the lake. “This is amazing; it makes everything seem real close.”

  Velvet smacked him on the back of the head, banging his face against the eyepiece. “It’s just a telescope.” A cruel smile crept onto her lips. “Although, you’ll find it useful to get a good view of my back as I win the Gears of Excellence trophy miles ahead of you.”

  Sin rubbed his eye. “The only reason I’d be watching your back is so I don’t have to see your ugly mush.”

  Velvet framed her face with both hands. “Radiant beauty. Your insults are as dumb as the rest of you.” She shouldered past Zonda and flounced off to sit with the other West Wingers. Sin hated to admit it but she had a point. Maybe not radiant beauty, more cruel magnificence, but she had it in spades. Movement outside caught Sin’s attention: a figure sidled along the hedge in the formal gardens. He redirected the telescope and peered through it.

  Lilith Von Darque checked over her shoulder then slunk to an alcove in the hedge. She eased onto a rustic arbour seat and again looked about furtively. Grasping the folds in her dress she hitched up the hem and reached down to a circular buckle on her boots. While pretending to tighten the strap, she took an envelope from her boot and slid it beneath the bench.

  Zonda pulled Sin away. “Come on, we need to sit down.”

  He glanced back at the window, however without the telescope, the gardens were just a blur. What was Lilith up to? Whatever it was, it was well dodgy.

  The balding head of Nimrod Barm appeared from behind the desk. “Ah, good, you’re here. Please do find a seat, everyone, I’ve just got to get the spindle-drive fitted back into this wotjamacallit.” He vanished back below the desk, his voice muffled. “That’s got it. Champion.”

  Sin pulled out two stools at the back of the class but Zonda took his hand and guided him to the front row. “Don’t be a sillies. We want to sit here.”

  “We do?”

  “Absolutamon.”

  Nimrod reappeared with a socket wrench in his hand, which he waved at the blackboard. “Welcome …” He stopped and focused on the wrench, his brow furrowing with confusion. “No, hang on, that’s not right.” He deposited the wrench and picked up a telescopic rod. “Welcome, candidates. I’m Nimrod Barm.” He indicated his name on the board. “And I’m a mass murderer.”

  A collective gasp escaped the room. Nimrod clenched the rod, his knuckles whitening.

  Sin had met murderers and he’d no doubt that the Fixer had killed more than a few, but Nimrod, he didn’t seem like the type.

  The portly scientist slammed the rod down and gripped the edge of the desk. “I haven’t personally killed anyone, nonetheless my inventions have ended more lives than I care to dwell on. The blood of hundreds of thousands of poor unfortunate souls is on my hands and that is one of the reasons I founded COG. We must stop the next war or millions will die.”

  Sin didn’t know how many a million was, but he’d once been in a big gang fight with the Barrel Lane crew where there must have been at least a hundred of them scrapping and that had been pretty scary.

  Zonda raised her hand. “Sir, you can’t be held accountable for the actions of others.”

  With trembling fingers, Nimrod removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s exactly what I told myself in my youth. I was just the inventor, the artist, the creator, never the user.” He blinked and replaced his glasses. “I was proud and arrogant, the great Nimrod Barm. My country needed me to design better guns, bigger shells, more efficient ways to maim and kill and I complied. I thought all technology was good technology; the advancement of science was to be applauded. I know better now.”

  From the pocket of his tweed trousers, Nimrod removed a red and white spotted handkerchief and wiped a solitary tear from his cheek. “I can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but between us we can stop those who are wishing for war.” He screwed the handkerchief into a ball and dropped it into a steel crucible. A match flared at his fingertips and he tossed it on top of the material. There was a loud bang and the crucible shuddered sending a ball of flame mushrooming upwards before burning out.

  A wave of heat and sooty smoke washed over Sin and Zonda. Sin nudged her under the table. “Real glad we sat at the front now.”

  Nimrod tapped the crucible with the telescopic rod. “I call that the flamekerchief. It works well as a distraction or an incendiary fuse and also …” Nimrod stared into space “… for blowing your nose.” He pulled a lever on the desk and, with a hiss of steam, a map of Europe descended from the ceiling. A loud crack echoed through the lab as he whacked the pointer against the map. “The Teutonians fear the Ruskovians and want to invade the Fromagians. The Fromagians fear the Teutonians and want to invade the Swisstalians. The Swisstalians fear everybody. The Ruskovians fear the Britannians and the Britannians fear nobody but want to invade everybody. In short, we have our work cut out.”

  His eyes fixing on the class with frightening intensity, Nimrod said, “There has never been a time in our history when the outbreak of all-encompassing war in Europe was more likely.”

  Sin had lived all his life in Coxford. He’d never been to another city, let alone another country. It was way too big for him to comprehend. How was he, or indeed any of them, going to make a difference?

  “Unlike these empires,” said Nimrod, gesturing towards the map, “we do not have armies. But COG has something far more valuable: a network of well-trained, well-motivated and well-resourced spies. Rather than the blunt ins
trument of military might, we will send you on missions to strike with surgical precision, sabotaging the war machines of the most powerful empires in the world. As COG agents you will achieve more than any army ever could.”

  The way Zonda gazed in awe at Nimrod, hanging on his every word, worried Sin. He’d seen the same look in some of the newbloods in the gang, lapping up the Fixer’s banter, believing the crew was the toughest and that they couldn’t lose. And it was the truth, the gang was the toughest, and the gang didn’t lose, but that weren’t no comfort to the same starry-eyed kids as they lay dead in the gutter.

  The map disappeared back into the ceiling as Nimrod strolled to the front of the class.

  “The purpose of these lessons is to give you a firm scientific grounding. Your missions may require you to work undercover and destroy experimental technology. If you understand the machine, you know where to best throw the spanner.”

  Zonda raised her hand again. Somewhere behind, Velvet tutted.

  “Yes, COG Chubb?”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to steal new technology rather than destroy it?”

  “Often you’re alone, in a foreign country, and so it becomes impractical. However understanding the science can be invaluable. A quick sketch and some scribbled notes may allow us to reverse engineer the technology.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Sin contemplated the likeness of Velvet to her mother. The Chinasians and Ruskovians are interested but they want more than rough sketches. That’s what Lilith had said in the Conserva-Observatory. She was from a foreign country. If COG stole technology from overseas, then surely other countries must do the same. Was Lilith stealing from the century’s greatest inventor, Nimrod Barm? Whatever she’d been up to in the garden, it was well suspect. He needed to check under that seat.

  Nimrod struck the bench with his pointer. “So let’s start with something simple. Who can name the three basic sources of motive power?”

  Zonda’s hand shot up and she issued little excited gasps, stretching upwards. Sin looked around the class, most had their arms raised. The only three who didn’t were the kids from the streets, the runners as they called them. Himself and Stanley Nobbs from the East Wing, and Skinner Grundy, a thickset bruiser from the West Wing.