Skulduggery Pleasant

by Derek Landy

  “Well, that wasn’t bad at all,” Saracen said, patting his stomach. “Ghastly, you enjoy that?”

  Ghastly winced, and rubbed his chest. “I think I may have lost a nipple up there.”

  Skulduggery climbed the steps out of the water and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. “Dexter.”

  Vex joined him, his hand already crackling with power. They looked back at Saracen.

  “It’s all clear,” he said. “No one around.”

  Dexter blasted the lock, and Skulduggery pulled the door open.

  Valkyrie hurried up with the rest of them. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she was starting to feel things normally again, and she scowled. Nothing worse than soggy underwear.

  The corridor was old and cold and barely lit. She watched the Dead Men check weapons.

  “We’re in the old facility right now,” Skulduggery said, keeping his voice low. “They should be waiting to spring the ambush at the entry point Lamour gave us. Instead, we’re going to set up our own ambush, and bring them to us. Valkyrie, at the end of this corridor, we’ll be going up. According to Trebuchet, Lamour and the Engineer should be beneath us, so that’s where you’re going. Down.”

  “You still think she should go alone?” Ravel asked.

  “The plan doesn’t change,” Skulduggery said. “Valkyrie can handle it. Besides, it’s going to take all six of us to keep Mandat’s forces at bay long enough for our reinforcements to swoop in and save us. Providing they’re even around.”

  Ravel looked at Saracen. “Well? Will they be here?”

  “I can’t tell the future, Dexter.”

  “Then what use are you?”

  “When you have the Engineer,” Skulduggery said as he passed Valkyrie a small wooden ball, “bring it back to this room, then come find us.”

  “How will I know where you are?” she asked.

  “Just follow the explosions.”

  Valkyrie twisted both halves of the cloaking sphere, and a bubble of invisibility blossomed out to cover her. She put the sphere in her jacket pocket and started down the stairs, her quick footsteps masked before they could start to echo round the stairwell.

  From lower down, she heard voices. She slowed to a stop, and peered over the railing. Four people – three women and a man – walking up, talking French. They took up the entire width of the staircase. There was no way she could squeeze by, but the alternative was to go back up. Well, either go back up or jump over them.

  She got to the next landing, turned and faced them as they came. When their eyes were level with her feet, she ran forward and jumped, passing over their heads and then making the steep drop to the landing below. She cushioned her fall as much as she dared – if any of them were Elementals, they’d notice the shift in air pressure – and slammed into the wall and bounced to the floor. She lay there and groaned. The four people kept going up.

  Still groaning, she got up, took the stairs a little slower this time. She got to level 3B and left the stairwell. She passed a group of sorcerers, talking quickly but quietly, and she really wished her reflection had paid more attention in French class. All she could decipher was that someone was waiting, and then she heard, in English, “les Hommes Mort”. She smiled to herself. Her friends. She was four steps beyond them when the alarm started to wail.

  She spun, certain for a moment that she had set it off, that the Cleavers were coming for her. Then, when everyone started hurrying in different directions, she relaxed – but only slightly. The alarm meant that her friends were being attacked.

  Valkyrie sped up, glancing into every room she passed until she found the old man she’d seen in the photograph. Lamour was small and thin and stooped over. The man he was talking to was younger and healthier, and much more dangerous. Valkyrie stepped in. She couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it was pretty obvious that the younger man had been sent to make sure nothing happened to Lamour while all this was going on, and Lamour wasn’t too pleased about it. On a hand-cart behind them was a humanoid figure covered in a sheet.

  She took the stick from her back. Immediately the sigils started to glow.

  “You had better work,” she said to it, keeping her voice down even though she knew they couldn’t hear her.

  She pushed the door closed. The younger man whirled, twin fireballs flaring in his hands. Valkyrie walked up beside him and pressed the stick into his side. He jolted off his feet, and crumpled.

  Lamour cried out, staggered back, and Valkyrie took out the sphere and deactivated it. His eyes widened when he saw her. “Valkyrie Cain!”

  “Hello, Lamour. Pleased to finally meet you.”

  He blinked. “Oui. Yes, indeed it is. I was just … I was just on my way to meet you and your friends.”

  “Some others met them instead. That’s what all the alarms are about.”

  “Ah,” said Lamour. “Well … yes.”

  “You’d probably be doing yourself a favour by not calling for help. It’d be less painful.”

  He grunted, and nodded, and all the while his eyes darted about, looking for a weapon. There was a knife on the table beside him. He glanced at it, then looked back at Valkyrie. She pretended not to notice.

  “Is that the Engineer?” she asked, nodding to the hand-cart.

  He hesitated. “Non. That is a … another thing. Not the thing you want. The thing you want is … not here.”

  “You are a terrible liar,” she said, and took hold of the sheet, pulling it off.

  The Engineer was a mangled mess, but it wasn’t what she was expecting. There were no wires, for a start. It seemed to have organs – solid, mechanical organs – that were dented and misshapen. Its limbs and torso were sculpted but, again, they had been bent by the accident that had led it here. Only its head wasn’t trying to emulate a real human’s. It had neither eyes nor a mouth, and would have been perfectly smooth were it not for the ugly gash that ran across its metal shell.

  “This is what I came for,” she said. “OK, Lamour, I’m going to give you a pair of handcuffs, and you’re going to put one of those cuffs on your wrist, and the other on the ankle of your friend here.”

  “Je suis désolé,” said Lamour, “I am afraid I cannot allow that. This mechanical marvel has been entrusted to me, and me alone. I am the one who will repair it. You think I will let you give it to that monster, Nye? You think I will let this happen without a fight? Come, let us duel!”

  He lunged for the desk, but Valkyrie waved her hand and the knife shot away from his grasping hand, to land clattering on the far side of the room.

  Lamour straightened up, curled his hands into fists and struck an old boxing pose. “Très bien! We can do this the old-fashioned way! Queensberry Rules.”

  “Yeah,” said Valkyrie. “I don’t know who Queensberry is, or why she’s so cool, but we’re not hitting each other.”

  “Then you yield?”

  She pushed at the air a little and Lamour went staggering back. “No, I do not yield. I just don’t want to beat up little old men.”

  “Then a battle of wits!”

  “Meaning what?”

  “A game of riddles. Surely you are not afraid? I am an old man whose memory is not what it once was. I could not possibly pose a threat to someone as youthful as you … could I?”

  “If your riddles are as transparent as your attempts at goading me, this should be a doddle.”

  Lamour grinned. “Excellent. I will start, then, yes? I run but cannot walk, I sing but cannot speak, I touch but cannot feel, and in the dark I eat. What am I?”

  Valkyrie frowned. “What?”

  “What am I?”

  “I’ve to guess?”

  “It is not a guess. You have to work it out from the clues I have given you.”

  “What was the first one?”

  “I run but cannot walk.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “It is not stupid, it is—”

  “How can something that runs not be abl
e to walk? If it can run, it can walk – it just needs to run slower.”

  “I can say nothing more about it.”

  She frowned. “Wait. Is it water? It’s water, isn’t it?”

  “I can say nothing more—”

  “What was the second one?”

  Lamour sighed. “I sing but cannot speak.”

  “A bird.”

  “That is not the answer to the riddle.”

  “A bird can’t speak, but it sings.”

  “Yes, that is true, but it is not the answer to the riddle.”

  “A parrot speaks.”

  “What?”

  “A parrot. It speaks.”

  “No it does not. It mimics. That is not speaking. A parrot cannot form independent—”

  “What’s the third one?”

  “This really is not how the game of wits is played.”

  “Just tell me what the third one is.”

  “I touch but cannot feel.”

  “And the fourth?”

  “In the dark I eat.”

  “Someone who likes to eat in the dark.”

  “That is not the answer.”

  “It’s an answer. I got three out of four, so that’s pretty good.”

  “Three out of—? No. There are not four answers. There is one answer. Each strand of the riddle adds to the answer.”

  “Then it’s a bird that isn’t a parrot who likes to swim and eat in the dark and likes to do one other thing.”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the answer?”

  “A Bush Stone-curlew.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a water bird indigenous to Australia.”

  “And how the hell was I supposed to work that out?”

  “I run but cannot walk. That’s water. I sing but cannot speak. That’s a bird.”

  “I got those two!”

  “But you didn’t put them together. I touch but cannot feel. Any physical object can touch, but in order to feel one must be organic. Inorganic objects cannot feel. A rock or stone is inorganic. In the dark I eat. What gathers nutrients in the dark?”

  Valkyrie frowned. “Roots?”

  “Exactly. The roots of a plant, or a bush. Bush, stone, water bird. The Bush Stone-curlew.”

  “But I’ve never even heard of that before.”

  “Is it my fault you haven’t studied ornithology?”

  “Fine. If that’s how you want to play it, at least I got it half right.”

  “You really do not know how to play this—”

  “Shut up. My turn to pose the riddle. Who sang ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’?”

  Lamour frowned. “Pardon?”

  “Who sang it?”

  “That is your riddle?”

  “Yep.”

  “But that is not a riddle, that is a …”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Un instant, s’il vous plaît. Just let me … What was it?”

  “‘Hit Me Baby One More Time.’ Or just ‘Baby One More Time’, whichever you prefer.”

  “And this is a song?”

  “Yes.”

  Lamour’s forehead creased. “Is it a modern song?”

  “Modernish.”

  “But I do not know—”

  “Is it my fault you don’t listen to the radio?”

  “Very well, very well … It is not the American, it is not Elvis Presley, I know that, because—”

  “He died on a toilet.”

  “He is dead?”

  “A while ago now.”

  “He died on the toilet?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I always imagined I would die on the toilet.”

  “That’s charming. Do you give up?”

  Lamour sagged. “I concede. Who sang the song?”

  “Britney Spears.”

  “You mean Brittany.”

  “I mean Britney.”

  “But she is missing an entire syllable from her name.”

  “Then I hope one day she’ll find it. But you lose, Lamour.” She threw him the handcuffs.

  “I … I am not exactly sure that you won, though.”

  “You don’t have to be sure. You just have to look at how sure I am, and assume I know what I’m talking about.”

  Lamour bit his lip.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “Just put the cuffs on and let me leave.”

  Lamour straightened. “If you really do not want to hurt me, you could leave now.”

  “I can’t. I might not want to hurt you, but there’s something inside me that does. And she likes it. If I let her out, even for a moment, she’ll flay your skin and pull out your fingernails and take your eyes and she’ll be laughing every time you scream.”

  “She sounds violent.”

  “She is violent. Please, Lamour. I can feel her in my head. She wants to get out. She wants to tear out your tongue.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Please, Lamour …”

  He hesitated, then cuffed himself to his unconscious bodyguard.

  “Thank you,” said Valkyrie, activating the cloaking sphere. She wheeled the Engineer out, closed the door behind her, and then carried on.

  Interesting.

  She got to the corner and let three sorcerers sprint by, then followed after them. The Engineer was heavy, but the cart made it manageable.

  Using me as a threat now, are you? That’s very interesting.

  She reached an elevator, pressed the button, waited for the doors to open.

  It’s almost as if you want me to take over. Is that it, Valkyrie? Is that what you want?

  The elevator pinged and the doors opened. She pushed the Engineer in, turned.

  You want to feel that power again?

  A woman hurried towards her, speeding up to stop the doors from closing. Valkyrie pushed gently at the air and the woman bounced off empty space, and Valkyrie just had time to see the shocked expression on her face before the doors closed.

  She got back to the shaft room, took the Engineer off the hand-cart and manoeuvred it into a harness that she attached to two thick ropes. Tying the other ends of the ropes to a rusted lever she’d found on the floor, she dragged the whole lot into the water. When the Engineer was directly under the gap, she let it rest, then used the air to raise the lever upwards. Ignoring the distant sounds of alarms and explosions and gunfire, she fitted the lever into the gap and pressed upwards, watching it rattle and splash as it went, taking the ropes with it. Halfway up she began to lose control. It was getting too far away from her. She pulled it back slightly, then spent a few seconds finding the point she needed. When she had it, she focused, and then thrust both hands up. She felt the lever hurtle away from her and then it was gone from her control. All she could do was look at the ropes as they continued to unspool …

  … and then stopped.

  Valkyrie waited. She waited a full minute, but the lever didn’t slide back down. It was up there, on the surface, in the stream. Now all they needed to do was get up there themselves, haul up the Engineer and escape.

  Easy.

  Making sure the sphere was still active, Valkyrie ran to the stairs and went up, following the sounds of battle. She threw open a door. The Dead Men had secured themselves in a corridor, forcing the enemy to come at them in smaller groups. Even so, they were about to be overwhelmed at any moment. Valkyrie took the stick from her back, bared her teeth—

  —and then the ceiling was ripped off.

  pologies for the interruption,” Amalia said, “but you asked to be kept abreast of what was happening in France. There is news.”

  Illori Reticent put the report she’d been reading to one side, and beckoned the other woman into her office. It was a small office, full of books, and smelled of old paper and warm leather. After Quintin Strom’s assassination, Cothernus Ode had moved into the Grand Mage’s chambers and the new Elder that had been promoted to replace him had instantly laid claim to Ode’s old office. Palaver G
raves was a man to take untold delight in petty victories, and Illori let him have this one. Besides, at no time did Ode’s office ever hold the slightest attraction for her – it was too big, too cold, and too close to the toilets for her liking.

  “The Dead Men broke into the facility as we knew they would,” Amalia said. “Grand Mage Mandat’s forces then sprang the trap.”

  Illori raised an eyebrow. “By the look on your face, I can tell things stopped going to plan from that moment on.”

  “I don’t have all the details, but it appears that the Dead Men received help from external forces.”

  Illori sat back in her chair. “The Australians?”

  “And the Africans.”

  “Both?”

  “I’m afraid so. The Dead Men escaped. Also, they have the Engineer.”

  Illori stared at her. “Does the Grand Mage know?”

  “He is being briefed as we speak.”

  “This is going to be fun,” Illori muttered. “Thank you, Amalia. You may return to your duties.”

  Once Amalia was gone, Illori pulled her cloak over her shoulders and pinned it into place with the clasp that signified her position on the Council. She fixed her hair and applied the lightest sheen of lipstick, then walked the corridors. She met Graves on the way, and with great reluctance he fell in beside her.

  “I take it you’ve heard,” he said, trying to get her to speed up.

  She maintained her pace. “I did indeed, Palaver. You’re not the only one who has little spies whispering in their ear.”

  “I would scarcely call them spies, Elder Reticent. Are you feeling all right, by the way? You look tired. Maybe you should rest.”

  She gave him a smile. “Your concern is touching. And maybe I do look tired. I tend to work a lot.” They reached Ode’s office, and Palaver opened the door for her. “You’re looking wonderfully well-rested, though,” she said as she passed through.

  Palaver came in after her, glowering.

  Grand Mage Cothernus Ode stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over London. While most other Sanctuaries had their premises below ground, thirty years ago, Quintin Strom decided to build upwards instead of deeper down. From the outside, the building was neither pretty enough nor ugly enough to catch the eye or hold the attention. From out there, the window Ode stood at appeared small and showed nothing but an empty room.