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

by Pip Ballantine

  She’d given up trying to get them to do that many moons ago. Certainly, they would say they’d sit tight, but as soon as her back was turned they’d just follow. She’d also contemplated tying them to a chair before but understood immediately that no knot could hold any of the Seven. Bendy and double-jointed were part of the job description.

  Getting back up, she stared down at the automaton. “Oh, and by the way, there is no ‘you’, there is only ‘us’. You’re coming with us Potts.”

  He made a move to accelerate away, but Emma yanked him off the ground quick as a whip. His wheel spun uselessly.

  “I would only slow you down,” he said amongst a rapid succession of beeps.

  Verity smiled. “I can’t find the Emerald Flame Potts. I might have been horrified by what happened this morning, but I still noticed you get drawn towards it. Something of the flame in you connected you to the flame on that poor doctor.”

  His head bobbled for a moment, and she felt his gears spin harder and faster—trying to find a way out of this. She had some sympathy for him. It couldn’t be easy for one moment to be a stuffy old scientist, and then be thrust into an unfamiliar body made of metal, but he was still alive—more than Doctor Granade had.

  Still if she showed any empathy for the man, then he would only try and use it against her. Pushing forward with the Sound, she flicked one of the gears to a stop, causing his wheel to stop spinning. He let out a strangle sees of boops and beeps, before calming down a fraction.

  He wouldn’t be able to tell it was her, but she hoped it would bring him to his senses. He wasn’t immune to the world around him.

  "So, we're all in agreement then," she said. "Now is a good time to get going though. After the fire, everyone is running about and distracted."

  The children nodded, it was their favourite time to strike, but usually it was them causing the disturbance. Didn't mean they didn't take advantage of one given the opportunity.

  "Right then, make sure you have jackets and lights," she said to Liam and Emma. "It'll be cold and dark down there."

  Potts, restored to his wheel, stared up at her for a moment, and then slide aside a panel in the top of his head. A torch, lit by the Emerald Flame's light popped out of there and even Verity was surprised.

  Hidden from her Sound by the strength of Potts' personality, his functions were a pleasant surprise. Whoever constructed his automaton shell made him not only adorable, but also a bit of a Swiss Army knife.

  "I just found this," Potts said, his artificial voice managing to sound grouchy about it. "If you're making me go, then I suppose I might as well try to be useful."

  "What about Christopher and Julia?" Liam said, stuffing his pockets with marbles, stingers, and string from his rucksack.

  "Julia is safer with her mother," Verity replied. "Besides, I want them to have a chance to spend some time together. It's important."

  The three children shared a look. Mothers were something all of them lacked, but deep down there still existed that yearning, even if their mothers were not ideal.

  Verity tried not to think about hers, nor how she would have been amazed by the Sound in her daughter's head. Yet all the same, her bright eyes and smile popped up. They would have had a jolly old time of it if this was her father's dig.

  Pressing her lips together least a sigh escape, Verity lifted the back of the tent where Liam had previously got in. "Come on then, let's make the best of it."

  The camp had gone from panicked to eerily still since the burning of Doctor Granade. The Turks retreated to their tents, to talk in low voices with each other. The smell of burnt flesh lingered and blew among the people carried by an unkind breeze. Knowing how such things went the world over, Verity expected they would lose workers. After what they witnessed it wouldn't be surprising. Dig works were cheap manual labour, and despite the coin, no one wanted to end up burnt to a horrifying crisp by Greek fire. At the end of the day, it didn't matter what country it was, everyone wanted to go home to their families in the evening.

  So in that atmosphere of foul odour and dismay, no one questioned three children and an automaton wending their way through the camp. As they got nearer to the entrance, the guard they'd seen only an hour or so ago was no longer there. It was possible he'd already taken his pay and cleared out.

  If it was accident or intentional no one knew, but when uncovering ancient treasures, even the scientists got a little superstitious. Anything bad happening on a dig tended to cast a pall over the whole thing. If more happened, then they'd lose more workers and the whole thing could get shut down.

  It occurred to Verity, as she crouched there examining the chances of getting in unseen, that it would be better if it was. If the city was locked up, then there would be no opportunity for anyone to find out anything about the Emerald Flame from the dig. Suddenly the idea that Granade's death was foul play seemed more likely. However, who apart from her would want the whole thing closed up?

  "Let's go," Liam hissed, breaking her concentration. "No one about, let's leg it."

  Before she might have replied, he jumped up and dashed into the entrance with Emma and even Potts following after. Taking a deep breath, Verity dashed after them.

  Once into the tunnel they didn't need to put on their lights, thanks to the dig team's lighting, but the further they went in the more likely they'd need the automaton's light. They reached the door, and it was just as forbidding the second time around.

  Emma peered up at it and gave voice to what Verity wondered. "Who were they trying to keep out? Must have been very scary."

  Verity wished for a moment Julia was with them, because she might have suggested something.

  "The Cappadocians often had to fight off vandals and reprobates," Potts piped up. "Their engineering skills made them frequent targets."

  "I didn't think you were a history professor," Verity said.

  "I dabbled you might say. The history of engineering and the great darkness that took the ancients secrets from us is a particular fascination."

  "Great wot now?" Liam asked, unconsciously drawing nearer to Verity.

  "The Dark Ages," Potts continued, his mechanical voice developing the lilt of a man used to delivering lectures. “No one quite knows what finished off the Roman Empire. Something came from the North though, but too quick for anything to be written about it by the Roman scholars. Historians have been arguing about it for years, Goths, Visigoths, all got blamed, but nothing could be proven. In any case the knowledge of the time before was lost. Libraries burned, stories scoured from the rock which they were written on. Quite extraordinary.”

  The machine on the walls of the Silver Pharaoh’s tomb. Verity would never forget that image. Most academics gave it no more credence than the animal headed gods of Egypt; fanciful workings of ancient exotic minds.

  “Could it be that Emerald Flame stuff?” Liam asked as they squeezed through the door and into the tunnel beyond.

  Potts’ head turned in Verity’s direction. “Yes, perhaps,” was all he said.

  On the other side of the door Liam ran over to the line of three sheets of paper tacked to the wall. “Shall we pull em down and take em with us?” he asked.

  Emma stared at her a moment as if offended by the question. “You know I got it all memorised like, Liam.”

  It took the children sometime to work out why Emma was so excellent at remembering the streets of London, or even recite the stories of the day just from reading the newspapers blowing around the park. Eidetic memory, Harrison called it, and the expression on his face was one of delight. What the Ministry could do with a person like that in their ranks, but they could not have Emma yet.

  As it was the young girl came back from the Delancy Academy with a whole raft of new concepts picked up from the school library, but she didn’t use it at all. Memory wasn’t the same as talent or knowledge, but in this case, it would be very useful.

  Without even looking at the maps again, Emma pointed up the tunnel. “Take
the first two rights, go down a flight of stairs, a right and another left, and we’ll be heading to places off the map. Places they ain’t checked out yet.”

  They stared at each other in the flickering light. The might be children, but they knew the perils of going beyond the map.

  “Here there be dragons,” Verity muttered under her breath, before adjusting her belt. “The flame is down here somewhere. Not just the recipe, but actual relics with it inside, so don’t touch anything…” Then she looked at them, neither Liam nor Emma met her eyes. The youngest children were in the most danger. Leaning down, she stared at them. “Poking around could mean burning to death. I saw what happened, and I don’t want it to happen to you. Understood?”

  Their eyes got huge, but they nodded. She might try abandoning them there, but once again they were quite adept at following, and wriggling free of bonds.

  “Yes,” Emma and Liam said in unison.

  “Let me lead the way,” Potts said, surprising Verity in every way possible. As a rather stuck up university professor he had never really impressed her with his giving attitude. Perhaps seeing someone burned to death had readjusted his thoughts somewhat.

  So, she stepped back and gave him a little bow while gesturing him on. The automaton rumbled forward, rolling down the pristine corridors to Emma’s direction. Lights sprung up to light their way which was both convenient and disturbing. Old machinery awaited them, and it whispered into her mind. Dust on her tongue, secrets in her ears, both of which made her nervous.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Ancient Awakens

  The city around them was like no other mechanism that Verity ever felt before. It ran slowly, sleeping but with its distant gears still faintly turning. Her own eyelids drooped under its influence, and several times she stopped and shook herself awake.

  Ahead Potts moved through the tunnels, rolling at a sedate speed, his head bobbling back and forward as he peered into every corridor. Behind Verity Emma and Liam stayed close to each other. They were too old and wise to think of holding each other's hands, but they seemed only a breath away from doing it.

  The air started to close in on them. Verity found herself struggling to breath, as though something stood on her chest. Raising her hand to her chest, she gasped, almost choking.

  "Alright there Truth?" Liam asked, trotting up beside her.

  Neither of them seemed to be having any trouble. "You don't feel the air oppressive?" she gasped out.

  Potts and the children turned to her.

  "No," Emma said, slipping her hand into the older girl's, "we don't feel nuthin." She glanced up and down the corridor. "Maybe we should go back?"

  "We go on," Verity said, trying to calm her racing heart. "Julia's Mum is very close to breaking through... we... we can't let them find the secret of the fire."

  She staggered on a few more steps until the others were forced to follow along. Tracing Emma's directions they made slow progress through the city. It was an eerie place, with so many rooms and nothing at all in them. Everything must have been taken to catalogue or had been stripped by the inhabitants before they met whatever fate laid out for them.

  Ghosts were something that Verity had been forced to acknowledge existed. She's been chased through an English estate by one after all. You couldn't get more verification than that. If any place seemed a good candidate for ghosts it was this buried city. They lingered just out of sight around every corner.

  "Feels so sad down here," Emma whispered. "Like people never made it out of here."

  "From what I overheard," Potts interjected, "there have been no bodies found in the city."

  "Where'd they all go to?" Liam asked. He adjusted his flat cap, and flickered his gaze around the open doors and endless corridors. To a child of the bustling metropolis of London this felt terribly wrong.

  Potts extended his legs, so he could negotiate the flight of stairs Emma's memory indicated they should descend. "No one knows for certain. I heard the diggers talking about a plague, a fire, or.... lord have mercy aliens."

  "They don't really exist do they?" Liam bumped up close to Verity.

  She wasn't the kind of person to lie to anyone, let alone a fellow member of the Ministry Seven. So she shrugged and replied, "No one knows for sure. Rumours of creatures on Mars and on a couple of moons near Jupiter have been argued about since..."

  "We've got enough to worry about without bringing aliens into it," Emma snapped as they reached the bottom of the stairs. The torches down here only half-lit themselves so the shadows were longer and deeper.

  "Yes, you're right," Verity agreed. She paused after the final step, and stared around her. The weight on her chest was still there, but it no possessed a certain shape. The weight of time and stone, pressed down on her, and she finally understood, she was experiencing the sensation of the city around her. The Sound was something more here in this city of ancient clockwork. Was it possible for a city to have feelings?

  The sadness which she'd thought part of her own fancy, now had a distinct taste to it that Emma had picked up first. Loneliness indeed, but the kind of vast variety that a human could only touch a portion of.

  She stopped and braced herself against the wall as it washed over her.

  "Are you quite sure you want to go on, Miss Fitzroy?" Potts nudged up against her toe, and stared up at her. His luminous eyes might almost have been sinister in this kind of shadow.

  "I told you, yes," she snapped, pushing off from the wall. "We go deeper."

  They reached the end of the younger girl's map knowledge, and turning a corner found a new barrier, or rather nearly fell into it. Verity staggered, and only by Emma and Liam grabbing hold of her arms, did she avoid toppling into a depression. For a moment she thought she was seeing things.

  The hollowed out portion of the path glowed green. Not quite the vibrant shade of the Emerald Flame, but not far off. Staring ahead the liquid ran to a flat surface ahead in the tunnel. In the dim light she couldn’t make out everything about it, but scratched on the surface were shapes and symbols. She was sure that there were mechanics behind it, but for the first time there was nothing ticking in her head. Staring at that space was a black gap, and that set her teeth on edge. Then there was the fact that blocked and sealed as it was, there was no way to reach the other side by immerse yourself in the liquid totally. Everything about this felt worse and worse.

  Potts extended one of his automaton hands and brushing the surface quickly, held it up to examine. The phosphorescent glow clung to his three digits. He rubbed them between finger and thumb observing it all the time.

  "It seems to be some sort of oil," he reported, "though I can't say for sure if it is flammable or not."

  Verity shuddered, thinking of the man burned to death so many feet above. If it was combustible then wading through it would mean opening oneself up to sharing a similar fate, and yet there seemed to be no other choice.

  "Check for levers," she instructed hopeful that there might be some hidden way of draining the ditch. Though all the children and Potts examined every surface after a good few minutes they had to admit defeat.

  "It would appear that whoever built this city intended for there to be only one way across," Potts said helpfully. "I'm afraid I won't be able to. Who knows how this automaton body will react to be immersed in oily liquid."

  Certainly there was no way Verity could let Emma or Liam try. Christopher, if he'd been there... maybe...

  No, it had to be her, and as soon as she’d seen the oil and the clockwork door beyond she knew that.

  Maybe stripping down would have made the most sense, but not with so many of her fellow urchins watching. Modesty was something she'd amazingly managed to hold onto even on the streets of London. No, there was no other way to do it, but to get her trousers and shirt wet. Luckily her belt and satchel were designed to be waterproof. Once again the city's wetness prepared her for many other things.

  Still her flat cap would fare worse. Handing it
to Emma, she took her ponytail and wrapped it tight around her head.

  When she waded in, she almost turned around and went back. The first lick of the oil on her shins was cold and sent shivers up her spine. On the shelves in the biology lab of Delancy Academy there rested many jars of things that had once been alive, but were now sealed in liquid for the learning opportunities of students. She didn't really take much notice of them when she was there in the classroom, but now all she thought of was their sightless white eyes. The idea of joining their ranks was not a pleasant one, but by the feeling of the slope under her feet, it went down very sharply, and Verity was not a tall young woman. No doubt about it, she was going to have to swim.

  Casting one glance over her shoulder to where Potts, Emma and Liam stood by the edge of the ditch, she prepared herself to duck underneath. As it turned out, she needn't have worried; the oil around her was very slippery. Her foot slid out from under her in a sudden rush. Her breath wasn't ready, and in fact she half-screamed on instinct. Verity plunged beneath the surface and grabbed a mouthful of oil for good measure. The Taste was foul, clogging the back of her throat, filling her nose as well as racing over her tongue. People who slipped into the polluted Thames were condemned to death, and who knew what disgusting and dangerous chemicals there were in this concoction. It had been down here for centuries as well.

  Pushing madly for the surface, she spat out a gob of the oil, reaching and spluttering.

  "Verity!" Emma called out uselessly, her voice bouncing down in the corridor. The older girl understood, but wished she hadn't. The city slept, and part of her was terrified of awakening it. Still she managed to do a ragged doggy paddle towards the far side, but she couldn't get any words out to comfort the other members of the Seven. It was taking all her strength to stop from vomiting.

  Against the far wall, there was a ledge just under the surface of the oil, and a couple of pieces of stone sticking up. Handholds, she realised. This whole situation was designed then, though why she needed to be coated in the green-tinged concoction, she wasn't presently able to discern. For a moment she worried that she didn't have the strength to break the surface tension, like a winged insect who'd fallen into a pond. Primal panic didn't seem that far off, but she closed her eyes, marshalled what calm and strength she had left, and pulled herself out of the oil.