by Tim Clare
She walked across the black cellar to the dumbwaiter, brushed dust from the panel. The button for the kitchen was smooth and black and humped.
She placed a jam-tin grenade in the dumbwaiter car, struck a match and pressed the button with her thumb. Somewhere in the shaft, a motor started. The car began to rise. Just as it was about to move out of sight, she touched the flame to the fuse.
She ran back through the cellar and up the stairs and at the door she paused. She held her breath.
The clocks struck nine.
In the kitchen, two vesperi, one with a triangular notch docked from her soft dark ear, were talking.
They spoke in short, crickling bursts. The first vesperi, the shorter, ran his stubby fingers along the ridge of the smooth oak worktop. He looked at his hand. He said something to the second vesperi. She snapped a retort.
The second vesperi opened a drawer and took out a whisk. She shook the whisk and it rattled. She slotted it into her belt.
The clock on the shelf began to chime. She wheeled round, noseleaf flaring as she chirruped an alarm call. A second clock on the wall beside the range made a straining noise, then a tiny pair of doors snapped open. A figurine dressed all in red puttered out along a set of wooden battlements. It stopped before a silver bell, tilted back as if surprised, then began striking the bell with a hammer.
A third clock went off, a fourth.
An animal groan came from the open hatch at the far end of the room.
The vesperi’s hands went to their daggers. The second vesperi pop-whistled instructions to her partner.
Something was rising. The first vesperi held back but his comrade advanced, her blade out in front of her.
The hatch opened onto a shaft. In the darkness, a cable was moving. Rising into view was the lip of a wooden box.
Her wings fanned. She approached on talontips.
The box was lit from within. It stopped with a shudder.
It was open at the front. Inside, something fizzed and smoked – a stub of black rope, stuck in a tin.
She squinted.
The lights went out.
The bomb went off.
Delphine heard the concussion, trains shunting in a distant yard. A couple of seconds later, the door rattled in its frame. She waited.
Chittering. Several sets of footsteps passed the door, moving rapidly from left to right, dashing for the kitchen. She let them fade, and as the clocks finished chiming she opened the door.
Her eyes were used to the dark. The corridor was clear both ways. Clutching her sawn-off, she crept east, past the gamey pong of the larder and the locked gun room, to the open doorway of the scullery. She pressed her shoulders to the wall, clutched the shotgun to her chest, listened.
Soft, steady weeping. A cough.
She hugged the abbreviated barrels, whispered the simplest prayer she knew:
Dear Lord, please.
She swung into the room.
To her left, people tied to chairs: Mother, Professor Carmichael, at least eight. Alive. Gasps. To her right, a lone vesperi raised its hooked dagger. She rounded on it.
It stared at her gun. The brindled fur covering its scalp and cheekbones ranged from chestnut to black with ruby notes.
The creature looked up. Its nostrils were little sideways mouths that flexed and pinched. It tossed its dagger onto the stone flagging, then slowly raised its palms. Its eyes were hazel, like Mother’s.
A chair leg scraped.
The shotgun bucked and the thing’s head burst like a gourd, painting the wall. She felt warm fluid on her cheeks and chin. The lower half of a torso slumped. One leg skittered and danced against the stone floor.
Delphine.
Through the ringing in her ears she heard groaning. She reached for her bandolier and discovered that her hand was shaking.
‘Delphine!’
She turned. Professor Carmichael was struggling against his bonds. He was perched on a chair far too small for him, wrists bound behind his back. She watched the motion of his lips. ‘Untie us.’ He had a bruise on his forehead the size of an egg.
Everyone was here, just as the Little Gentlemen had said, everyone, except . . .
She set down her satchel, took out her pocket knife and began to go from person to person, slitting their bonds. Besides Mother and the Professor there was Mrs Hagstrom, Alice the maid, the blacksmith Mr Wightman, Reggie Gillow, and two gentlemen she vaguely recognised from previous symposiums – most likely they had arrived early, hoping to catch the ear of Mr Propp – all ashen, shivering, drunk.
Mother barely noticed when Delphine set her free. Her gown was torn round the throat. She stared into space with the hollow calm of one who expects only misery.
Delphine looked about. There was no Lord Alderberen, no Propp. No Miss DeGroot either. She gripped Mother’s shoulder, shook it.
‘Mother?’ she said. She could barely hear her own voice. ‘Mother.’
Mother looked up. She blinked at Delphine, glancing around as if seeing the room for the first time.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here? I thought . . . I didn’t know . . . ’
‘I came to save you.’
Mother stared. Her thin arms swept out and she dragged Delphine to her greedily, clutching, hugging.
‘Oh, you silly girl,’ she said, rubbing her wet cheek against Delphine’s hair. ‘Oh, you silly, silly girl.’
Delphine wriggled and Mother let her go.
‘Where’s Daddy?’
Mother wiped her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Delphine. I don’t know.’
CHAPTER 27
THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS
Mr Henry Garforth grimaced at the freezing pain in his knees, the arthritis cramping the swollen knuckles of his right hand. He knelt amongst dead lilacs, holding the ferret in place while he peered into the clearing. In front of the burial vault, two minotaurs loitered with flintlocks. The harka bullmen were seven foot tall, glossy chestnut-skinned and swollen with muscle, their horns decorated with the complex martial insignias of House Dellapeste. The rifles looked dainty in their thick fists. Brass rings gleamed in their muzzles. They scanned the treeline with hard, intelligent eyes.
The door to Peter Stokeham’s tomb was open.
In the moonlight, the ivy-wrapped fallen larch looked like the shattered neck of a dragon.
Henry Garforth tightened the final loop of string around the ferret’s belly. The string was attached to a smoke candle. He struck a match and lit the fuse. White smoke began churning out. He slapped the ferret across its furry haunch and it ran from the bushes, trailing smoke.
The harka guards raised their rifles. Henry reached into his kitbag and lit a second match.
One of the harka squeezed the trigger. An instant later, its rifle let out a crack and white smoke frothed from the pan. The shot hissed through empty air.
The second guard took aim, tracing the ferret’s path, fired. The ferret jinked left and the shot thudded into the grass.
The first harka was already running, pursuing the trail of smoke as the ferret zigzagged towards the bushes. Its partner moved as if to follow. Henry let out a grunt as he flung a grenade towards the vault.
The condensed milk tin clanked off weathered stone and landed in the grass. The harka turned ponderously round. The grenade was at its hooves. It poked the unfamiliar object with its rifle. The harka threw its huge arms across its face.
Henry dropped flat.
The homemade grenade exploded. Chunks of hot horseshoe ricocheted off the granite tomb with crazy zinging noises.
Henry rose, his elbows protesting, and dashed across the clearing after the first harka. He could see its huge silhouette thundering into the trees after the ferret, slashing at smoke and foliage with the bayonet tip of its rifle. Henry heard a mechanism snap shut. The creature toppled, bellowing, clutching at the steel jaws that had gnashed into its ankle. It groped at the mess of blood and shattered bone, trying to prise the trap
apart. Henry stepped from the bushes and pushed a gun to the flat ridge of bone between its great horns.
A shot rang out in the dark wood. He reloaded.
Henry returned to the clearing just in time to see two vesperi bounding out of the vault, spreading their wings and taking off. As they wheeled towards the Hall, he swung his shotgun past them and fired. One beast jerked, its wing shredded, and spiralled into the treetops. Henry fired his second barrel. The remaining vesperi’s silhouette wobbled, glided out of view.
‘Damn.’ That meant reinforcements would be on their way soon. At least more trouble for him meant fewer vesperi at the house.
He broke his shotgun and the spent shells popped out like fat red crickets. He took two cartridges from his pocket,* slotted them into place and closed the gun. Behind him, the bushes were full of glowing lights. As he tramped over grass, the Little Gentlemen followed, emerging from the undergrowth with pliers and wire-cutters and lengths of fuse and traps and a stack of aluminium washing-up bowls. Their huge eyes left ghostly trails.
Henry trained his gun on the mouth of the vault. He gave the woods, and England, one last look, then stepped inside.
*1¾ oz. magnum loads of No. 1 shot, handloaded by the Little Gentlemen back at the cottage. They had become so skilled at measuring out powder and shot – by weight, not volume, he would remind them – and ensuring the seating wads fit snugly, he no longer had to supervise. The extra charge in each cartridge rattled his jaw – it was like firing an elephant gun.
CHAPTER 28
PATIENCE
Delphine peered into the dark and silent corridor. She ducked back inside the scullery.
‘It’s clear,’ she whispered.
Her torchbeam picked out glassy eyes, wet teeth. Delphine had given Mother the satchel to carry, explaining that it contained homemade grenades; with the strap across her thin shoulder, Mother looked like a schoolgirl. Professor Carmichael held an empty port bottle, slapping it into his big palm like a cosh.
Delphine gave Mrs Hagstrom a second torch, which the housekeeper accepted solemnly. Delphine fixed her with a stern gaze.
‘I’ll take you as far as the cellar. Once you’re inside, lock the door behind you and go to the room with the ale kegs. There’s a trapdoor under the sack. It leads to a tunnel.’ A murmur rose from the group. ‘Keep going until you reach the beach. Then run to Pigg. Call the army, call the navy. Tell them it’s an invasion.’
Mrs Hagstrom frowned at the torch in her palm. She snapped her fist shut.
‘And where will you be?’
‘Rescuing my father.’
‘No you bloody well won’t.’ The blacksmith, Mr Wightman, elbowed his way to the front of the group. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. The darkness turned the dent in his skull to a black pit. ‘This is no place for a twelve-year-old.’
‘I’m thirteen.’
‘Thank you for untying us. The men will take over from here. Give me that gun.’
‘One step closer and I’ll give you both barrels.’
Mr Wightman moved to take the sawn-off and she aimed it at his head.
‘You’re mad.’ He turned to the others. ‘She’s mad.’
Mother stepped out of the crowd. She looked Delphine up and down. Something in her expression had hardened. The old keenness had returned to her eyes.
‘I’m going with her.’
Mr Wightman threw incredulous glares at the other men.
‘Are you just going to stand there? They’ll be slaughtered.’ He waited for someone to agree. ‘Well, I won’t have it.’ He turned to Mother and folded his scarred arms. ‘You can’t go.’
Mother faced him squarely. ‘And how do you intend to stop us?’
She crossed to where Delphine stood and placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
Mr Wightman hiked his folded arms a little higher. ‘You won’t shoot me.’
‘No,’ said Mother. ‘Just ignore you.’
‘You’re not coming with me,’ said Delphine.
‘That goes for you too,’ Mother said, not unkindly. ‘I’ve made my decision.’
Professor Carmichael looked around the room. Beneath his green sweater, his shoulders rose and fell as he sighed.
‘I’ll go too.’
‘You can’t,’ said Delphine.
‘Nonsense. I can do what I like.’
‘But . . . but . . . ’ She couldn’t very well threaten to shoot him too. ‘You’re too big. They’ll spot you immediately.’
‘Well, perhaps that’ll provide the distraction you need. Ah! Don’t bother with your counter arguments, Miss Venner. My mind is made up.’
‘All right,’ she said. She pulled herself upright. ‘Well, then. Follow me.’
She switched off her torch and stepped into the corridor. She thought she saw a flicker of movement at the far end, held her breath, listening. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard the guests clustered behind her, panting, the rasp of Professor Carmichael’s blocked sinuses.
‘Okay,’ she whispered.
She had gone a few paces before she realised nobody was following her. She glanced back. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Alice,’ said the Professor. ‘She won’t move.’
Delphine returned to the scullery. Alice was sitting on a chair, fingers knitted across her eyes, shaking her head. She breathed in jagged sips.
‘Come on, now,’ said Mr Wightman. ‘You’re going to get us all killed.’
Alice began to rock. Delphine thought she could make out the mumbled edges of the Lord’s Prayer.
‘Please, Alice,’ said Delphine. ‘We have to go.’
Alice shrank into herself.
‘What are we going to do?’ said the Professor.
Delphine felt fabric brush her arm, then Mother was at Alice’s side. Mother laid an arm around Alice’s shoulder. Alice whimpered and flinched. Mother leant in very close. She spoke briskly in Alice’s ear:
‘Alice, dear. You’ve been working too hard and you’ve exhausted yourself. All this is just your worn-out brain playing tricks. We’re going to take you to the village for a good, long rest, and when you wake up, you’ll realise it was all just a silly dream.’
Alice did not reply.
‘Alice, dear?’ said Mother, her voice growing louder. ‘It’s time to go. Now, do you think you can help me walk, because I’ve hurt my ankle and I’m not very good on it.’
Alice opened her eyes. She looked at Mother.
‘Please,’ said Mother. ‘I don’t think I can manage on my own.’
Alice nodded. ‘All right, Mrs Venner.’
‘Thank you, Alice. That’s very kind of you.’
Alice got up from her chair and let Mother lean on her – though Delphine noticed that Mother did not lean very hard. ‘We’re ready,’ Mother said.
Delphine stepped into the dark hallway. Moving on the balls of her feet, the sawn-off at her waist, she led the group back east, towards the cellar.
Once they were gone, she and Mother and the Professor would head back to the gun room. She was breaking her word to Mr Garforth, but he had wanted her to abandon Daddy just to save idiots like Mr Wightman. She had to try. No matter that Mother couldn’t shoot – in tight corridors a trench shotgun would do the aiming for her.
Delphine reached the cellar door, gingerly turned the key in the lock.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You’re free to go.’
A shout made her spin round. In the gloom, she saw a short figure.
Miss DeGroot stepped out of the shadows, holding a handkerchief to her mouth and a hand up in apology.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered.
‘Patience!’ said the Professor. ‘God almighty, I thought you were . . . Where have you been?’
She did not answer. Delphine turned back to the cellar door. She lowered the sawn-off, touched the door knob and felt a small cold pressure against her temple.
‘Put down your gun.’
Delphine swallowed.
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br /> ‘Now,’ said Miss DeGroot.
‘This isn’t funny,’ said the Professor. ‘Pay . . . oh God.’
Delphine felt a shadow fall across her.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘We have to go.’
‘Drop the gun,’ said Miss DeGroot.
‘But – ’
‘Last warning.’
Delphine crouched. She set down the sawn-off.
‘Good girl.’ She heard Miss DeGroot kick it across the floor. ‘Now turn around slow.’
Delphine turned, her hands raised, to find a hulking minotaur filling the passageaway. Her gut sank. It breathed in deep, grating tides. Its hide was Guinness-black, its horns a harp. Fluid glistened in the pinks of its eyes. It stooped and picked up the sawn-off at its hooves.
Miss DeGroot stepped away and trained her gun on the entire group. She had pulled a pearl-grip baby hammerless – a pistol that, even in her satin-gloved hand, looked petite. The grip fitted inside her palm, the barrel extending just past her index finger. It was a pop gun, a piece of jewellery basically – the kind of dinky joke gangsters’ molls were always pulling in stories.
It scarcely qualified as a gun at all.
Mother spoke: ‘Patience, what the Hell are you – ’
‘Shut up.’ Miss DeGroot jabbed the snub nose at Mother. She turned to the looming bullman. ‘Now do you believe me? Come, lieutenant – let’s take them to your master.’
CHAPTER 29
VOYAGE AU CENTRE DE LA TERRE
Henry followed stone steps that curved downwards. Moisture clung to bas-relief carvings of smocked peasants bowing before minotaurs. As he descended, a beery smell grew stronger.
The Little Gentlemen followed with their tools and fuses and big aluminium bowls, negotiating each deep-cut step with precise hops. Henry reached the bottom, and stopped.
He listened.
‘Sounds like those vesperi were the last two on guard,’ he said. ‘They weren’t expecting a counterattack. Right. Two need to stay here and rig up some frustrations. Also – we need a channeller.’