The Mystery of Emerald Flame (Verity Fitzroy and the Ministry Seven Book 2)

by Pip Ballantine

  “These are my classmates,” Julia said, putting her hands on her hips. “I did write an tell me Mum about them.”

  The gears behind his only faintly glowing yellow eyes, clicked and clacked, but his programming was so rudimentary, that he merely nodded and spinning around led them to a second, much smaller airship.

  Verity saw it was open sided, with no cabins to speak of, but then Kayseri was not that far away, at least by air.

  “I don’t see any pilot,” she commented.

  “I am pleased to inform you, young madam, I am your pilot for this trip,” Baffle said, staggering to one side for a moment when his leg ceased up.

  “Right then, we’re all going to die,” Christopher said, not even trying to moderate his tone.

  Emma squeezed Potts tightly. "It's alright, I'll look after you, Monkey Wrench."

  "I don't see how," the automaton warbled, and breaking loose of her grasp rolled himself up to the taller brass man. "Exactly how old are you there? How many flights have you made successfully?"

  Baffle glanced at him but made no reply. He was a regular automaton, and not a very well maintained one, so such unexpected comments were very far outside his programming.

  Verity hoped that she might be able to assist him if things got too hairy in the flying department, but since the Sound was a secret between her and Henry, she didn't decide this was the moment to share it with the others.

  Liam was the only one to look excited by the prospect of an airship trip in an open-sided craft. Maybe if things got too bad he could have a go flying it, since he'd spent the last few days on the bridge of a proper craft. Couldn't be any worse that this dilapidated automaton.

  They climbed on board, though Christopher actually crossed himself before scrambling up the gangway. She'd never seen him to do that before, but he went and spoiled the effect by whispering in her ear, "Not got a shot of the good stuff in your bag, Verity, have ya? I think we could all do with one."

  Swatting him away, she took a very quick tour around the craft, listening for anything. Since there wasn't that much mechanical, it all sounded good to her, and from what she could tell the airship was in better nick than the automaton that came with it. Una McTighe obviously cared more about it than him. Still she would keep an ear Baffle just in case.

  Hopefully they would all make it in one piece. It would be quite embarrassing to travel all this way and be killed by a malfunctioning automaton—but then sometimes life did have an evil sense of humour.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Boy’s Adventure

  Jonathan whispered to Jeremy, who whispered to Colin. The little blond boy nodded sagely, looked up at Henry and said, "You ain't got a clue have ya?"

  Trafalgar Square was quiet in the morning, with most everyone hurrying of to their work. Only a few peddlers and the remains of the Ministry Seven stayed put. They'd perched themselves next to one of the lions at the base of Nelson's column, since it was out of the wind and faint rain. They couldn't stay for long before a bobbie tried to move them along, but it was as good a place as any to have their much-needed discussion.

  The three boys stared at him, and Henry tried to keep calm. They had just voiced his greatest fear. Verity and the rest had flown off to have fun in foreign climes days before and left him with the task of finding out if the Illuminati worked out their home base. Where they even aware of the Ministry Seven?

  Henry knew nothing of the Illuminati, and thus had no clue what information they might or might not have. He could ask Thorne about them, maybe get some inside information about them from the Ministry, but that would bring up a whole mess of further questions. Henry liked Harrison Thorne, but that didn't mean he entirely trusted him. Adults and their world were treacherous.

  The truth was children on the streets of London were a commodity, and while the agent seemed like he cared about the orphans, it didn't stop him putting them in harm's way if he needed something.

  Henry scratched his head for a moment and thought carefully about where to begin to pull on this thread.

  "I do actually," he replied with a sharpness in his tone that made the three younger boys sit up. "First let's go back to the house where this whole thing started and see what we can find there."

  Colin's eyes went wide. Getting snatched off the streets of London wasn't a rare occurrence for the Seven, but it wasn't usually one they liked to repeat—especially so soon.

  "The Monster isn't there anymore," Henry reassured him.

  "I know that," Colin snapped in reply. "I just... well everything burned down didn't it? Nothing will be left to help us."

  "You never know." He understood his temper was starting to rise, and he tried his best to grab hold of it before it disappeared. Verity warned him often about it, and he would hate to make her right about something—even if she wasn't there to see it.

  Jeremy whispered to Jonathan, who leaned across to impart their wisdom to Colin. He nodded sagely. "Jeremy says that we should go see the Underground Queen like Verity did."

  The very suggestion sent shivers up Henry's back. It wasn't that he disliked the citizens of the city under the city, but the Queen gave him the right willies. Verity didn't mind her poking around in her head, but he wasn't having any of that. It wasn't right to let another person into your thoughts. He had no wish to relive his father's hand connecting with the side of his face, or to hear the ragged gasps as he died.

  "Nah," he offered in a tone that he hoped conveyed confidence. "The Queen she deals in the future, and we need to know about the here and now. Besides, the Illuminati aren't interested in the citizens of the Underground. They're more above ground people I would think. We need to find someone with knowledge from the edge. You know the kind of bloke always looking over his shoulder."

  The four boys shared a look, and Henry let out a soft groan as he made the connection. He had just described Eddie the Scholar, and he'd sworn he'd never go back after last time.

  "Eddie," they all chimed in.

  The twins shook their heads and tucked their hands under their legs where they sat. Eddie fancied himself a teacher, though a lot of his teachings involved slapping about with the switch and not so much learning things.

  Colin shook his head vehemently. "No Henry, not going to do it. I'd rather go back to the house, than see the Scholar." The twins nodded their agreement.

  "You're going to let me go alone?" Henry demanded, and apparently, they were.

  Jonathan, Jeremy and Colin leapt to their feet. "We'll go back and check the Monster's house," they yelled over their shoulder as they darted away past the lions and towards the right-hand fountain.

  After that the only thing for Henry to do was trudge his way down to the river.

  London was full of characters. Mr Dickens snapped up many of them for his books. He made hundreds and hundreds of pounds off them, however he'd never met the like of Eddie the Scholar. At time Henry wished he'd never met him. Not only was he fond of discipline, but at times it was painful just to listen to him.

  Still he did have his habits, and that made him easy to find.

  The Thames stunk, always had and always would. The sailors lived as close to it as they could, and so the area was full of them, as well as those that preyed on them. Henry kept a keen eye out as he worked his way through these streets towards the river bank.

  It was early still, most business and robbery already took place the previous night, but even he experienced the prickle of fear when two brawny men in an alleyway followed him with their foreheads furrowed. He could almost see the calculations being made behind their eyes. Luckily, he didn’t look like he carried anything of value, and so they turned back to their conversation.

  The gang that ran this part of the city was the Bessarabian Tigers, and the young orphans ran jobs for them, while living in terror of attracting too much of their notice. Henry didn’t want any of that either, so he stayed alert as he reached the ramshackle houses on the edge of the Thames. The ports lay furt
her upriver, but eventually they’d move these homes on to make way for commerce.

  Eddie the Scholar was easy enough to find. He kept a sort of permanent lodging out the back of the Pig’s Whistle pub. Agnes the owner, concealed a kind heart under her gruff exterior, and let Eddie stay out the back, as long as he didn’t bother her customers. Vaulting over the rear gate, Henry peered into the little lean-to he kept there. No Eddie, but his space was full of broken smoking pipes, piles of pins, and chipped bowls. He collected everything that might earn a penny or be useful later.

  Since he wasn’t at the Pig’s Whistle, Henry guessed where he might find him. Down on the river bank.

  Mudlarks they called them, and usually it was young boys who worked the river. By scavenging whatever they could find washed up, they made enough to scrape by. Henry knew a few in his time, but they were considered the bottom of the street children hierarchy. The river reeked, and so did those that tramped through it. Selling scraps of canvas, rope, metal and even fat tossed overboard by ship’s cooks, was a hard living. Being the lowest of the low, Mudlarks were often beaten by police or the local gangs.

  It was the reason most adults left it to the children, but not Eddie the Scholar. He was easy to pick from among all the smaller forms working their way along the bank. The tide went out, and an army of children scattered to the mud like there was free lollies to be found there. Nothing that they found was like that of course.

  When Henry located Eddie, he was in full Scholar mode. Even from fifty feet away, his voice rose as he scolded two small, dirty boys. “Practise your ABCs, lads. Tomorrow is the test…”

  They ran off, using all their accumulated cuss words in a long stream. Eddie just shook his head and laughed.

  Henry’s hands clenched at his side. He was really doing this, and that meant he needed to gird himself or he might end up trapped in one of the man’s interminable lessons himself.

  “Eddie,” he finally called, not wanting to slog through the mud.

  The Scholar turned towards him, and the morning rays of the sun glinted off the polished brass colander on his head. The handle was currently directly over his eyes, which meant a relatively good mood. His clothes Eddie didn’t keep in nearly as good repair. A jacket that might once have been fashionable twenty years before, hung off his thin shoulders, caked in so many layers of mud its original colour remained a mystery. Slung off one shoulder was a thick leather bag, already bulging with his finds of the day.

  He waved for a long time, before making his way over to the cobblestones which stood above the high tide mark.

  “Henry,” he chortled, his scraggly red beard jiggling in the position he’d tied it to, which was to the left side of his face. Let loose it would brush his belt. The colander and the beard were the only things Eddie tried to keep clean.

  He clomped over to Henry and it was like holding a piece of the river right in front of his nose. The young man knew that he wasn’t exactly the model of cleanliness, but even he took a step back and shook his head. “Good morning, Eddie. How’s the mud today?”

  The man turned and looked over the river like a man of means surveying his tracts of land. His green eyes sparkled as he spoke, “Excellent, just vast possibilities… and lots of pins…”

  Opening his hand, he held them to Henry. Many of them could come from the middle ages. The Thames held onto things a long time, but they were no more valuable than any other metal. If they were the British museum would have gone broke buying them from Eddie.

  Turning back to Henry, he smiled out of the corner of his mouth. “So back for another lesson, young Hal?”

  Thinking of the welt the last one had left on his hand, he shook his head. “Sorry, not today. I am looking for some information.”

  “Oh, you’re here on business,” Eddie said, and rotated the handle of the colander from the front to over his left ear. “Right, then, let’s find a spot where we can be sure no one will overhear us.”

  Looking around Henry couldn’t see anyone in sight, but he let the older man lead him over to the wall only a few feet from the mud. It was designed to keep the lapping Thames from dropping into the nearby houses, but Eddie brushed it off as if it were a seat in a lawyer’s office, before sitting there.

  “What has your mind today, Hal?” he asked. The repetition of Henry’s name as a nickname often use in Shakespeare’s plays was a habit that the younger man did not appreciate. However, he sighed, and smiled as best he could.

  “Eddie, I want to ask you what you know about the Illuminati in London.”

  He might as well have electrified the mudlark’s head. His eyes grew huge and he started shaking, but he did take the time to unhook his beard—just so he could tug on it as if trying to make sure it was still attached. His hand hovered over the colander’s handle like he couldn’t decide which way to twist it.

  Finally, he made a decision and instead grabbed hold of Henry's hand. It was wiry and strong, despite the narrowness of it, and though he wriggled back and forth, the young man was unable to shake himself free.

  "You don't want to dig in that hole, Hal," Eddie said leaning forward and hissing into his ear. His spittle struck Henry's skin, and if he didn't need to information so damn much, he would have broken into a run then and there. Instead he stayed pinned where he was.

  "They're digging in mine," he replied through gritted teeth. The Scholar was no so close that the odour of the river was nearly overpowering. Eddie didn't have clean teeth, or indeed clean anything. "Got no choice."

  Eddie let out a hiss through his broken teeth that sounded like steam jetting out from a kettle and settled back on his haunches. Tears welled in his eyes, and letting go of Henry, he knotted his hands together. "Bad business, bad business," he muttered to himself staring out onto the river. His pride vanished and now he looked more like he might throw himself in there and start swimming. Like most mudlarks, Eddie was a strong paddler.

  Before he got the chance to do that, Henry knew he must win him over. "It's the boys, Eddie. They're after the boys and I don't know if I can protect them."

  The mudlark's shoulders slumped like the air went out of him. He shook himself, tapped on the outside of the colander in a repetitive beat and then nodded. "Got to look after the children. They like the children. Get 'em young, get 'em into the program. They'll never come out even if they try…"

  After a moment of long silence, Henry pressed a bit more. "I need to know where I can find them in the city. I must to get in with them and see what they know about our boys."

  Now Eddie began to rock back and forth, his eyes darting around every heartbeat, but after a minute of comforting himself, he seemed to come right and turning fixed his gaze with Henry's. "If you go in, you might not come out, Hal. They're tricky like that. What they say makes a kind of sense. Makes you feel good. Makes you feel wanted. You want to belong."

  The younger man saw it then, in his watering eyes and terrified expression. Leaning forward he asked, "You went in didn't you, Eddie? You became one of the Illuminati?"

  Now when he tugged on his beard it was as if he wanted to rip it off, but he nodded slowly. "Just a boy. They found me here," he said, jerking his head towards the river. "I had no one, and they made me family." He rubbed his face a few times, scrubbing at his own skin, and then let out a short laugh. “Family is family. You can’t get out of it even if you want to. No, no, no… you can’t leave your brothers and sisters behind. They come after you even if you try.” He tapped his colander again. “That’s to keep them out, because they read your thoughts your family. They can do that. Aether you see, they know how to use it. Brass is the only thing that keeps them out.”

  Henry swallowed on that, thinking of what Verity told them about aether, and the Emerald Flame they were looking for in Turkey. It was obvious that was what the Illuminati were after this time. He wondered if they knew about the expedition to Cappadocia. He didn’t think they got it from their minds, but even simple surveillance would have in
formed them. Nothing to do about it now. He’d just have to trust Verity. It was his job to confirm that they had a home to come back to.

  With that in mind, he pressed as much as he dared. “Where do they meet in London. I need to know, Eddie.”

  The mudlark’s hands twisted, tighter and tighter until they were red and raw. His whisper was so low that Henry had to lean forward into the stench to catch it. “I used to run the meetings, the planning, everything. Now my egg is brain. Brain is egg, scrambled up with a side of toast. Used to run them at the club. So many eggs…”

  “Which club?”

  Tears leaked out the sides of Eddie’s eyes, making clean tracks in the Thames mud engrained in his face. “The Unicorn, the mystic unicorn. He’ll gut you with his spear.”

  “Mosby's then,” Henry said, patting Eddie on the knee, despite it being still wet with mud. “Thanks for that.”

  Standing, he slipped the mudlark a coin and turned to leave. That was when the Scholar grabbed hold of his hand. “Don’t join 'em, Hal! Don’t do it. No going back once you’re in… unless you like you noodle scrambled.” He gestured to his colander. “You won’t like this hat. It's very tight and uncomfortable.”

  His face was folded in genuine concern mixed with fear, and Henry wondered what the Illuminati might have done to him to leave him like this. “I’ll make sure not to get a hat,” he reassured him, giving Eddie’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Yet as he walked away, he wondered if his fate might not be here by the Thames looking for pins next to Eddie the Scholar. He amused himself wondering what colour his colander would be if that happened.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Flight with Baffle

  Verity tried to keep her expression one of calm, because the other children would only read her concern as a reason to panic. They might be able to fight off gangs in London, face down mad scientists to reclaim one of their own, and give lip to a Ministry agent, but this was flying they were talking about.