Lydia’s stomach turned over again, and she summoned her coin. Squeezing it hard in her right fist helped a little, and seeing that Maddie had gone a greenish shade helped a lot.
Poor Mr Smith had clearly lost the battle with the urge to vomit and he kept lurching over and his face was pale and sweaty. His throat was moving convulsively as he, presumably, swallowed back the bile. Maddie seemed oblivious and Lydia decided not to request that she unseal his lips. She told herself that it was because she wasn’t sure Maddie wouldn’t see it as a challenge to do something worse but the truth of the matter was that his comfort was not high up her priority list.
The girl had disappeared and the Silver cup with her. Lydia didn’t have time to worry about that, though, as the crowd had parted to reveal the Pearl King sitting on their throne and it was as if the whole cavernous space went instantly silent. Maybe it did, Lydia could no longer tell what was real, what was imagery cast by the Pearls and what was the white noise of her fear. The King was just as beautiful as Lydia remembered, but easily twice as angry. Their face remained immobile and fixed, but when they spoke the tone was truly terrible. ‘You are not invited.’
The figures nearest the throne shrank back and Lydia thought, when the monsters are afraid it’s time to run. Instead, she stepped forward. ‘We come to pay our respects to the Pearl King and to offer a valuable gift, a token of our esteem in the hope of a new peace between our Families.’
The King inclined their head. ‘The King will grant you audience.’
She had warned Maddie of the archaic way the King spoke and the need to lay on the courtly obsequiousness, but Lydia could see she still wanted to dive over and punch them in the face. Quickly, she tugged on the bound figure, pulling Mr Smith into the King’s view. A murmuring chatter began among the crowd of Pearls.
The King’s face flickered. For a split second their habitually blank and bored expression became avid, and they leaned forward a fraction. It was the equivalent of most people falling over in surprise.
Clearly fed up of obeying the ‘let me do the talking’ portion of their plan, Maddie stepped directly in front of the King, dragging Mr Smith with her. ‘After the truce between our Families you made another deal. Not an honest handshake one, like our truce, but a tricky one, written on paper.’
‘We have not invited this one to speak.’ The King looked at Maddie like she was something foul on the bottom of their shoe.
‘You discovered after the document was signed that you had made a deal with a company, not an individual and that it didn’t just die with that person. It held strong as long as the company existed, no matter how many times the directors changed or the company was sold.’ Maddie wagged a red-nailed finger. ‘That was very silly.’
The crowd surged as if ready to crush Maddie, but the King held up a hand. Their voice was flat and utterly devoid of emotion, which made their words more chilling. ‘You will die screaming.’
Maddie stiffened and Lydia knew the King was probably taking control of her body. Or trying to, at least.
‘Your Majesty,’ Lydia said. ‘My cousin means no offence. Just to underline the immensity of our gift. We have found the sole owner of the corporation trading as JRB. He holds the ability to release you from your bond. He can dissolve the contract between your family and JRB.’
The King’s gaze moved back to Lydia. ‘You should not lie.’
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it, anyway. ‘This man owns JRB.’
Mr Smith was sweating profusely. Lydia felt bad for him, but she also knew she didn’t have a choice. He had come for her, he had used Emma as leverage, he had tried to have Fleet killed. ‘You did this to yourself,’ she said, not meaning to speak the words out loud.
Smith’s eyes rolled to look in her direction, the whites showing. She couldn’t tell what he was trying to communicate, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t trust a single word from his mouth.
‘Is this true?’ The King asked.
Mr Smith made a muffled sound but his lips didn’t move.
‘Why does he not answer the King?’ A member of the court stepped forward.
‘He can’t,’ Maddie said, clearly struggling to speak. ‘I have… Him. Locked.’
The King waved a hand and Mr Smith’s mouth popped open, a stream of vomit-tinged saliva immediately flowing out and over his chin. The muffled moaning became, abruptly, a loud gurgling cry.
‘Enough.’
The cry stopped and his shoulders heaved as he fought to get control of himself.
‘Are you the owner?’
Mr Smith nodded.
‘Do you have sole authority to break the contract signed on the twelfth day of the twelfth month in the aboveground year two thousand and one?’
He straightened his spine and nodded. ‘I do.’
His voice was raspy and the front of his shirt was flecked with vomit, but Lydia had to hand it to Mr Smith. He had regained his composure remarkably quickly.
‘So do it, already,’ Maddie said. ‘But in return I want my cup. Where’s the girl gone?’
Her mouth snapped shut, her teeth making an audible sound as they clashed together.
‘Lydia Crow,’ the King beckoned. ‘Do you make a demand in return for this gift?’
‘No,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s a gift.’
‘Safe passage out,’ Maddie said over her, somehow managing to fight the King’s control and continue to have the use of her lips, tongue and vocal chords.
Lydia had thought about this and she figured that if the King decided to kill her, he would kill them all. Being struck down by the King wasn’t a pleasant thought, of course, but the result was all that mattered. Her friends and family would be safe from Maddie and Mr Smith. She closed her eyes and hoped it would be quick.
‘I can break the contract here and now,’ Mr Smith said. ‘But what do I get in return? Apart from safe passage?’ He nodded at Maddie. ‘You can do what you like with her.’
The King smiled thinly. ‘How quickly you turn on your friends.’
‘They are not my friends,’ Mr Smith said, ‘they are my subjects.’ Lydia realised instantly what he was doing. He was shooting for comradeship with the King, trying to position himself on a similar level. There was probably a seminar on it at MI6. ‘Making Friends With Despots for Fun and Finance.’
‘There you are wrong. They are the closest thing you have in this place. But you have shown your lack of loyalty. It has been noted.’
‘It’s simple,’ Mr Smith began. ‘I break the contract between your Family and my company and we both walk away free men.’
‘I am not a man,’ the Pearl King said.
‘It’s a figure of speech, I meant no-‘
Whatever Mr Smith meant was lost as his head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees with a sickening crunch and he fell to the ground. Lydia stared at his body lying on the packed earth, his dead eyes gazing from their unnatural angle.
‘Why did you do that?’ Maddie sounded mildly irritated.
Lydia managed a step backward. She didn’t think she could make it to the exit before the King snapped her neck, too, but she could try.
‘No living entity owns the company,’ the King said, their voice quavering very slightly with the tiniest betrayal of emotion. ‘We are free.’
And this was the part that had always been hazy for Lydia. In her plan, she would die, that was almost a hundred per cent certain, and she had hoped that Maddie would be executed alongside her, but the question of what the Pearl Court would do with their new freedom was the big unknown. Would they be free to roam above ground? And, if so, what did that mean for London?
She realised that the ground was shaking. Then a thick root burst through to her left, narrowly missing Mr Smith’s lifeless body.
Maddie was advancing on the throne and Lydia had a spark of hope that the King and the courtiers would be distracted enough for her to make it out. She couldn’t back out, keeping her eyes on the King and Maddie, not
with roots bursting through the ground and the unpredictability of the courtiers. She turned and moved over the pulsating, shaking ground toward the exit, pulling her jumper up and over her mouth and nose to try to filter out the dusty earth which was now whipped up through the air.
‘It’s over,’ she heard a courtier say in wonderment.
‘Free,’ another said. The word was running around the cavern like fire. Free. Free. Free.
The place had already been thick with Pearl magic, but when Lydia was hit in the back with a solid blow and knocked to the hard ground, she had no doubt what it was. Pearl magic unleashed. All that potential, all that rage, all that power. The cork had been popped. Feeling too vulnerable on her front, tiny shoots and roots pushing up through the packed earth on either side of her face, Lydia flipped over as quickly as she could. She was just in time to see the Pearl King rise from their throne, face shining with terrible power and purpose.
They were unleashed. They were uncontained. They were…
Lydia blinked soil from her eyes. The Pearl nearest to her, a girl with beautiful high cheekbones dusted with shining glitter, was screaming. Lydia had heard it as a whoop of joy, but looking at her face she could now see it was a cry of panic and pain. Her face was twisted, her large eyes suddenly grotesque, and she wasn’t the only one. Around the cavern, through the swirling earth and plant debris, faces were twisting, lithe bodies convulsing.
Maddie had moved away from the King and Lydia could no longer see her. The King was staring wide-eyed, their beautiful features utterly impassive. Something was moving under their skin and it took Lydia a horrified second to realise what was happening. Their flesh was rippling and changing, becoming wrinkled and shrivelled. The King’s shoulders rounded and slumped as their spine curved, their eyes clouded and lips thinned to the point of vanishing.
Lydia had glimpsed the true age of the Pearl Court once. A single split-second image which showed the wizened figures of humans long past their natural lifespan. Now those images were developing all around, as if emerging in a photographer’s dark room. The Pearls were withering and dying in a matter of seconds, like a gothic stop motion film or one of those speeded-up nature documentaries. The strong and the beautiful crumbled to desiccated figures which fell and began to decompose. The contract which had kept them contained in these liminal underground spaces and had prevented them from roaming London, had also kept them in a time capsule of sorts. Sealed from the world and sealed from the passage of time. It looked as if time was rushing back in and was eager to get to work.
As the Pearls died, their hold on the earth and rock crumbled. The whole space was shaking violently, the ground and walls and chunks of compacted earth and stray rocks were falling from the ceiling. There was going to be a cave-in any moment and Lydia turned and pushed her way toward the exit, praying it was still open. Her mind raced, trying to remember the advice for being caught in an avalanche. Her old boss at the investigation firm in Aberdeen had sent her on an outdoor skills weekend. Part of preparing her for some of the surveillance jobs which might take her into the Scottish countryside. She had, quite rightly, sized Lydia up as a southern softie who had never knowingly been further than ten metres from a Starbucks. That experience was mostly an unpleasant blur of stinging rain pelting her face and hiking for endless hours, while a barking ex-Forces man encouraged the group through the means of sweary shouting and telling stories of the hardships he had encountered while serving and comparing the group, unfavourably, with his old unit. Which, while perfectly fair, got a little bit old. Things like, ‘if we were in Libya right now, you’d already be dead.’
The air was filled with the thunderous sound of the ground shaking and breaking and Lydia could no longer see the dead Pearls nearest to her, let alone the opening which led to the steps out. Finally, she recalled the outdoor survival instructor. His voice spoke loud and angry inside her head. ‘In an avalanche, oxygen is your priority. You can live with broken bones but you cannae fuckin’ last without air.’
Helpful. Thanks, pal. Lydia knew she was panicking, now. Speaking to a phantom of her memory and one she hadn’t particularly liked, was surely the first sign of madness. She couldn’t see and her eyes were burning. She wondered if a mains pipe had been ripped open and that there was poisonous gas filling the cave. That wasn’t a calming thought.
She gripped her coin until she could get a hold of her racing thoughts. She told herself it was just the earth and grit making her eyes burn and that she was breathing good clean oxygen and that she was going to survive. She just needed to think. The pep talk didn’t exactly help, but her autopilot must have kicked in as she had already pivoted around and begun working her way back into the middle of the cavern. She realised, seconds behind her deepest survival instinct, that she was looking for the throne. The King might have aged rapidly, their body decomposing somewhere on the floor ahead, but the throne was carved wood and inlaid precious metals and stones. It hadn’t dissolved in a puff of smoke. It was the largest intact structure in the place. Her arms were out, but she kicked it before finding it with her hands.
The roof was coming down in chunks and a boulder landed to her right, narrowly missing spreading her brains across the dirt.
She felt for the back of the throne and tugged to pull it over. It didn’t move. A moment of despair. There was no light, and the air was chokingly thick with earth and the sounds of moaning. She was going to be buried alive under Highgate Woods. She would have been better off being knocked out. She tugged again, leaning back with all her weight and trying to get the oversized chair to budge. And then it did. It rocked up onto the edges of its legs. With what felt like the last of her strength, she hauled hard and felt the throne go past the centre of gravity and fall. With the long back of the chair resting on the churning ground, it formed a slanted roof. She scrambled into the space created and put both arms in front of her face, trying to form an air pocket. Even though the air was choked and foul, she inflated her lungs as deeply as possible, knowing that every centilitre of air could mean another minute of survival, another minute for the rescue crew to find her and pull her out.
* * *
The shaking earth and roaring sound of ripping, crunching, falling, eventually slowed and then stopped. It became strangely peaceful. Lydia could no longer see anything at all. There was no Pearl magic creating light in an enchanted subterranean playground, just dirt and rock and tree roots, churned up and thrown back, ready to start the organic process of rebuilding itself. Worms and beetles would tunnel through, seeds would grow, ripped roots would mulch down and new ones would be sent out from the trees. The ground would heal and it would be as if nothing had ever happened here. Except, Lydia supposed, the ground would be extra rich from all the human remains. Her body and Mr Smith’s and, she fervently hoped, Maddie’s. That was the tiny splinter she held onto in the dark. She had lost sight of Maddie and there was a small chance she had slipped away, making it back up the steps before the cave-in. If that had happened, Lydia had to stay alive. She had never realised what it felt to truly hate a person, but now she knew. She hated Maddie with an intensity which burned from inside and made her skin feel on fire. That might have been referred pain from her tissue compressing and slowly dying of oxygen deprivation, but she preferred to think of it as hatred. Bright, clear, burning, energetic hatred. She would survive so that she could check that Maddie was dead. Lydia couldn’t grip her coin, her fingers didn’t seem to be working. The space she had created with her arms was impossibly small. Who knew how many minutes of air she had left? The panic surged and she forced herself to ignore it. If she panicked she would gasp in air, use up her precious oxygen and die more quickly. The fallen earth was pressing against her folded arms, but she could lift her head a small amount. There was a pocket of space between her head and the back of the throne. It was a couple of inches at most, but it meant more air. She had enough, she told herself. More than enough. And Fleet would be coming.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lydia had been dozing. She had been dreaming, at least. She couldn’t feel her coin in her hand anymore, but she could picture it there. And she had imagined other things, too. An arch of blue sky. Stretching her aching arms out wide. Straightening her back and breathing deeply, her lungs expanding with sweet clean air. The pain was almost gone. No. That wasn’t true. At all. But it seemed further away somehow. Like it was happening outside The Fork on the street while she was sitting cosy in her favourite seat, a plate of buttered toast and a coffee on the table.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew this new comfort was not good news. It meant she was dying. Friendly brain chemicals and, maybe her Crow ancestors, were easing her passage to the great beyond. She would be the wind in the branches of the tree which shaded the Family tomb in Camberwell Cemetery. That didn’t seem too bad.
There was a rumbling coming from above or maybe the side. Lydia had no sense of direction in the pitch black. Her eyes were tightly shut against the grit and she could no longer tell if she was still crouched underneath the tipped throne or whether she – or it – had been tumbled into a different position. Her arms were still folded in front of her face and she couldn’t move.
The rumbling was sending vibrations through the earth and Lydia’s first emotion was irritation. She was floating away in the dark and the vibrations were bringing her back to her body. A body which was flooded with pain and fear. Soaring in the wide blue sky, wind ruffling her feathers or crouched in the cramped dark, pain searing every nerve, every muscle. No contest. No thank you.
The Shadow Wing Page 20