The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  As the wing slid back to its natural shape, she felt the cradle shudder beneath her, and thought that she could feel the wood stretching, see it bend under the sudden pressure. She looked back and saw the stone dragon, wings tucked in to almost nothing, diving after them, snout forward, marble eyes unblinking. Her stomach lurched as, laboriously, Icarus twisted, wheels almost scraping the railway, and righted itself, the world a blur merely a few feet below. Fog and cold and fast-moving dark air stung her eyes as Icarus raced along just above the railway line. Behind her, one of the tubes gave a little whine and died, the flames slowly retreating at its back. But Icarus was moving so fast now it hardly mattered, with Thomas struggling to keep the nose level as the whole contraption hungered for higher air and space. Ahead, Tess saw lights, dim and yellow, rising high above the track. An almighty shudder shook Icarus; the dragon was there, its claws blackened by the flames bursting out from the back of Icarus; blackened but not even scratched.

  ‘Bigwig!’ she screamed, but he didn’t answer, or if he did, the answer was lost. She heard the whistle of the train again, and this time it was closer, and this time there were other sounds coming with it, the steady cump-humph-cump-humph of the engines and fat belchings of steam. She looked with a sort of inexorable certainty towards the lights ahead and saw one growing larger and larger, bringing with it a vague blackness that cut out the lights behind it. ‘Tho-maaassss!’

  Thomas let go of a lever and Icarus, its wings nearly flapping loose with the strain against them, exploded upwards almost vertically, catching the rush of air with open wings and accepting it like the release from the pressure of low flight that it was. Another tube was whining and giving out, and then Icarus began to slow, hesitating, drifting. Tess looked down. Below, the railways were lit up with orange light on either side of the rush of a train, and, running along its roof, stone claws digging through the frail wooden ceiling, was the stone dragon, eyes still fixed on them. Icarus slowed and, for a second, seemed to hang in the air. The dragon leapt, stretching to its full, incredible length, claws open, teeth ready. Tess stared at it in rapt horror, unaware of Thomas’s shout in her ears, just feeling the sudden stillness of Icarus and the hypnotic steadiness of the black eyes.

  Something cold and wet struck her face as Tate brought her sharply back to the high-speed rush of the present. He bounced in her lap, ears flying out behind him like a flag, and Thomas’s words formed into a coherent exclamation in her mind. ‘Light it, light another or we’re dead, light it now!’

  She spun round and struck a light to two more fuses, just as a third tube was dying. They began to spark. Below, the dragon rose up with an almost luxurious ease, turned towards Icarus, and, claws outstretched, charged for the heart of the ship. It stretched hard, immovable death towards the belly of Icarus, and the two tubes exploded in flame. Icarus lurched forward, twisting on to one side unevenly as, with a bang that shook the ship, the dragon missed by an inch, and scraped along underneath, sending splinters flying as it scored the hull. Icarus dived back towards the light, and Tess heard something go clunk. She looked up.

  Two gears in the mass that controlled the wing were jammed, warping around the bolts that held them. She hammered at them with her fists, but they were wedged, trapped between each other. Icarus began to bend, one wing twisting down uncomfortably below the other, pulling the nose round with it in a spiral that brought them lower and lower. Tess half-stood up in the cradle and beat at the jammed gears with an elbow, but that just hurt her elbow. Below them, the slightly surprised dragon was rising again, tail writhing. Tess almost screamed in fury and frustration, grabbed the nearest dead tube, still sparking occasionally and, with utter disregard for the heat that seared her fingers, slammed it as hard as she could against the gear. It clunked, bent, wobbled for a second, and slid back into the whirling mass of cogs, which clattered happily on.

  Icarus lurched to the right, nearly throwing Tess out and pitching Tate against the side. The tube fell away from her hands, spinning leisurely down into the blackness, still sparking, trailing its burnt fuse line. Below, she saw the dragon spin automatically and catch the tube in its claws, snapping it in two and throwing the jagged metal pieces away, in a shower of black dust from the clogged and burnt up chemical fuel. Tess began to frown. There was . . . a feeling. A sudden, calm stillness inside. Just for a second.

  She found herself looking thoughtfully at the tubes.

  And Icarus was diving again, twisting easily through the air towards the lights ahead, which became clearer through the fog and formed, in quick succession, a large arch across the darkness ahead, then an arch full of steaming black shapes, then a giant arch full of shapes and people and lamps and luggage racks, then an arch full of shapes and people and lamps and luggage racks and bridges and steel girders and clocks and whistles and noises and trains and then became, in an instant, the giant iron arch of King’s Cross Station, into which, with utter ease, Icarus flew.

  Lyle was running. It was in many ways a liberating feeling. His legs had hit their stride and he was bounding blindly along, his direction given only by the slope and the gravity that pulled him towards its base. Thorns and brush and shrubs lashed at his ankles, snow spattered up around his shoes, ice slid under his heels, but he was moving so fast he hardly had time to register any of this. The noise of pursuit was all around, a constant rush of air and crunching of snow, no cries or thuds, but the unmistakable sound of heavy stone feet. And still Lyle kept running, face burning in the cold, breathing fast and shallow but keeping a steady rhythm. He’d passed the point of pain long ago; now there was just a throbbing in his legs that pushed him to run faster, if only to escape the burning of his own blood. He flew down the Heath, coat flapping, shoes soaked through, toes itching and burning from the melted snow and the weight of the run. The sounds of pursuit seemed further off, or maybe his own breathing was louder. Lyle hardly cared now, the run had turned into everything, his world, nothing else was important, all that mattered was the speed and the freedom and the darkness that stripped you of thought and fear and left behind a sudden, internal stillness, a perfection unutterable . . .

  The Heath stopped so suddenly under Lyle’s feet that he tripped over the brush at its edge and landed on his hands and knees on the hard stone road, new and barely disturbed either by the passage of traffic or by the dirt of the city. A single lamp burnt at the corner, casting a dull light on the snow at its base. Lyle shuffled towards it, and pressed his burnt palm into the ice that clung to it, gasping for air, ears ringing with the effort of the run, and looked back into the fog. He could see nothing, hear nothing. He began cautiously to sidle down the edge of the road, following the tracks of carts in the snow, away from the light. The Heath dropped away, to be replaced by the high walls of new mansions for the rich and privileged, gleaming with ice. He kept walking, four hundred yards, five hundred. The streets were empty, but he followed his nose and instinct through the thinning fog, smelling the dirt of a more familiar, older city somewhere ahead, the smoke and sewage that, even out here in the rich suburbs, was faintly noticeable on the air, and in many ways all the sharper for its subtlety - enough to notice, but not enough to get used to as the smell drifted in and out of perception.

  Lyle thought, A priest pays a fortune to smuggle from a Vatican madhouse a man made of stone who controls stone, and who may or may not be utterly mad, messianic and murderous. In my city . . .

  Nearly a quarter mile, walls on all sides; and the faintest noise. It was the wet, hissing sound of snow falling. Lyle stopped and listened. The noise came again, just a little bit louder. He advanced another cautious pace. The sound grew, and underneath it was another, a hard, heavy clattering. With a sense of weary dread, he turned.

  Snow was pouring down the street, a tidal wave of it, being pushed ahead of a moving wall of cobblestones that grew higher and higher as he watched, the cobbles building on top of each other, pressing against the walls on every side, rushing down towards him, the hardest
tidal wave he’d ever imagined. Lyle turned and ran. He reached for the nearest wall and was leaping for the top with an agility lent by terror, slipping on snow and ice as he scrambled at it. He clawed his way over the top, bracing his legs against the side and leaning his weight into the cracks between the bricks, as the wall rushed down, showering snow and dirt around, the street behind just a muddy mess of torn soil.

  Lyle threw himself off the top of the wall and down on to the other side as the wave passed by, snapping at his coat tail and sending cobbles showering this way and that. He landed badly, on one side, crooked, legs flailing and arm going under him. Beyond the wall, the wave of cobbles collapsed, useless, a deafening roar of stone crashing down. Lyle scrambled away from the wall, limping slightly, across the darkness of a lawn. The grounds seemed endless, trees neatly laid out, the glow of a house somewhere in the distance. A stone house; Lyle didn’t dare approach. He felt his way to the darkness of the wrought-iron gate and struggled to pull it open.

  Something brushed against his shoulder. He jumped, pressing his back against the iron gate, clinging on to it. His eyes now fell on two empty stone pedestals on either side of the gate, then moved slowly to the two figures standing before him. They were shorter than normal men, wore tunics in a classical Greek style and each had a laurel wreath in its hair. They were, in brief, the kind of ornamental statues Lyle told himself he should really have expected. They looked at him quizzically, a boy and girl, with tranquil faces. Lyle’s fingers tightened in useless fear round the iron of the gate; he didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, one of the statues reached out and ran its hand down the side of his face, starting at his hair, leaving a trail in the blood, sweat and dirt that stained his face, running its cold stone fingers under his chin, down his neck, stopping, two fingers lightly resting on the side of his neck, so that he could feel his own pulse against its cold touch. He swallowed, tried to speak, couldn’t think of anything to say, fell silent once more. More cold fingers slid down to touch his throat. He thought, What a waste, and closed his eyes.

  And something exploded through the gate.

  CHAPTER 18

  Friends

  People scattered as Icarus exploded into the arched metal tube of King’s Cross Station, screaming and running for cover as the wooden ship passed overhead, trailing fire and sparks on the waiting trains. Those who had stayed and watched, the intrepid who gaped and pointed and clapped and frowned as the machine rattled overhead, joined their neighbours in wild flight when, with as much confidence as Hannibal faced with a mountain, the stone dragon dipped easily down under the iron rafters of the station. Tess was struggling with an unlit tube at the back of Icarus - not trying to light it, but pulling it out of the clamps that held it down, freeing it and the fuse wire that ran to it, oblivious to the screams of people below and the rapid shrinking of the platform’s length. She dragged it free just as the stone dragon roared and dived, tearing at a train below with its claws before lashing up and towards Icarus. Looking up, for the first time she registered where they were. ‘Bigwig!’

  ‘Miss Teresa?’

  ‘What the hell are you doin’?’

  ‘We can fly out through the entrance!’

  ‘You ain’t never been ’ere before, ’ave you?’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I mightn’t know about distances, but I know if summat’s bigger than summat else and we’re big!’

  A slight hesitation. For a second there was just the rush of wind. ‘The entrance . . . isn’t small, is it?’

  ‘What d’you think?’

  Thomas’s eyes flew round the iron-arched prison, flickered up to the giant yellow brick wall at the end which was getting closer faster, and faster, and faster and . . .

  ‘Tess, get down, hide your head!’

  Tess looked up too and saw the wall, the two huge windows set in it. ‘You gotta be havin’ a laugh!’

  ‘Too late now!’

  Tess threw herself forward, pushing Tate underneath her legs and covering her head with her hands as, with a jerk, Thomas pulled on the controls. The wings dipped and rose, pitching the shell of the ship over on to one side, so that it arced through the air in a long curve that dragged it towards the wall. Thomas grabbed another lever, the gears slamming into reverse. One wing rose, the other dropped, lurching the ship on to its other side, into another curve away from the far wall and straight towards the window. Tess closed her eyes and, an instant before impact, so did Thomas, diving forward, hands over his head. The nose of Icarus ploughed straight into one of the huge, semicircular windows in the front of King’s Cross, smashing it into a million pieces which flooded down like snow in an avalanche, shattering into smaller and smaller parts off the hull of the ship. For a second Icarus travelled along in a cocoon of falling glass, small shards snagged in the wood or sliding along the wings, showering all around before it was free and spinning out towards the wall of a machine shop. Thomas opened his eyes, saw giant, friendly letters painted on the wall - ‘Machines, Weights and Scales, Gray’s Inn Road’ - and kicked at the nearest lever. The nose of Icarus swung upwards, arrowing for the moon. Behind, the great stone dragon slithered out of the shattered window, hesitating as it tried to find its prey again, then leaping forward with silent determination, claws stretched for Icarus.

  Lyle threw himself on to the ground out of instinct, covering his head with his hands, as something fast exploded through the gate. He heard two loud, sharp bangs and felt snow shower around him, then heard the whinny of horses and the stamp of hooves. He felt something a few inches away skidding in the snow and coming to an eventual stop. He slowly raised his head.

  A man, dressed all in black, face hidden in a burgundy-red scarf, looked down at Lyle. Lyle raised his head and peered past him, at the cab that had been driven through the gate behind a pair of wild-eyed horses, then beyond, to where one of the statues was already back on its feet. Cracks showed around its neck and arms where the stone was thinnest, but it was struggling inexorably towards them nonetheless.

  ‘Erm . . .’ began Lyle, pointing a trembling, burnt, filthy finger in the direction of the statue. Without looking up at it, the man in black bent down, grabbed Lyle by the back of his collar, and dragged him on to his feet and out of the gate at a brisk pace that left Lyle scampering feebly through the snow, slipping and sliding, half concussed and extremely confused. The cab was waiting under a lamp post, with the driver dismounted and holding the horses. Both were well-fed, sleek black stallions, not the average beast of burden that shuffled round the streets of London all the days of the year.

  Lyle found himself pushed up next to the driver’s seat and squeezed in beside the man in black, who grabbed the reins, nodded once at the driver holding the horses and murmured softly, ‘Xiexie.’

  The driver nodded back, turned and ran off into the darkness. The man in black snapped at the reins, in a few seconds urging the horses into a trot and then a gallop. Lyle clung desperately to the side of the seat with the last ounce of strength and willpower he had left. He felt in terrible need of a comfortable chair by a good fire, of answers and explanations and maybe a decent curve of direct proportionality squared with which he could feel at home.

  Instead, as they clattered through the streets, the man in the burgundy scarf demanded, ‘How many chemicals do you have left in your pocket?’

  Lyle patted them, in a daze. ‘Some,’ he muttered.

  ‘How many of them are acids or explosives?’

  ‘A few. Why?’

  ‘You’ll need them before this night is out.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that, Feng Darin.’

  The man in black hesitated, then smiled behind the scarf. ‘How long have you known, Horatio Lyle?’

  ‘Ever since you fed Tate one of those damn ginger biscuits. You’re the only spy I know with such a weakness for them. What piqued your interest this time? The mad priest with an intellectual deficiency? Or the madder man who t
urns to stone in bright light?’

  ‘A bit of both.’

  ‘And are you here out of personal attachment to the noble cause of self-preservation, or were you sent again by your employers?’

  Another smile, slightly wider. Amusement in his voice, though his eyes never left the road. ‘A little bit of both.’

  With one hand Feng Darin swept the scarf away from his face, and in the dull light that burned on the cab, Lyle saw the familiar worn features, dark walnut brown from both his origin and his occupation. Lyle said quietly, ‘You disappeared without a word after St Paul’s.’

  ‘No. I visited you in hospital, while you were still asleep, after your fall.’

  Lyle nodded, then frowned once more. ‘We’re in the poop this time.’

  ‘Tell me everything when we ’re safe.’

  ‘There seems to be no safety.’

  ‘I know a place.’

  ‘And you’d know what’s happening, too?’

  ‘Some of it. But if I knew everything, Horatio Lyle, I wouldn’t need you. What explosives are you carrying?’

  ‘Ammonia compounds, and reactants, one or two things that can oxidize very rapidly when exposed to heat, but nothing that does severe damage.’

  ‘I always wondered why you carried them.’

  ‘You never know when you’ll need to blow something up. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because we need to survive long enough to have a private conversation.’ They spun round a corner, rattling down towards the lights of the city, following the railway lines towards Euston and Marylebone. Lyle watched the cobbles racing by beneath them, saw the lights getting brighter and the squalid little houses that clung to the side of the railway lines growing thicker as the real city began to intrude on the false city of the suburban mansions. In the shadows, he saw something moving among the roadside slums, keeping level, and felt a shudder down his spine, and imagined a cold touch at his throat. Feng lashed at the reins again, eyes flickering this way and that, and Lyle knew he wasn’t the only one watching the shadows. And with that realization came the sudden awareness of a tune, hummed almost inaudibly under Feng’s breath. ‘London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady . . .’