The Dark Flight Down (11 page)

5

“They had better be good,” Maxim muttered to Boy. “Whoever they are they had better be good. Once he’s in the mood for blood . . .”

Boy looked at Willow.

Yes, she had seen him, he could tell, from the way she was looking anywhere but at him. It was the same with Kepler. Both of them were studiously avoiding eye contact with him. He understood what it meant. Say nothing, do nothing to give us away. But Boy desperately needed to warn them.

They didn’t know that their lives hung by a thread, and that if they failed to impress the emperor, their end would have come.

Boy tried to catch Willow’s eye, but she was having none of it. She gazed straight ahead, paying attention only to Kepler when necessary. Boy tried to twitch his head to get her attention, but Maxim saw him.

“What are you doing, idiot? Be still. They’re the last for today, then you can go to your rooms until we have the book.”

Boy stood still, shut his eyes and prayed.

“What do you have to show us?” Maxim asked Kepler.

Kepler stepped forward.

“I am Arbronsius!” he declared. “This is my assistant, Mina.”

He indicated Willow with a flourish of his hand.

“We have come far to your great City to demonstrate our mystical powers to Your Highness.”

“Get on with it, man,” Frederick barked.

Wordlessly Boy urged Kepler to hurry up. The old lunatic might have them killed for taking too long.

“Indeed,” Kepler said, searching in a bag at his feet. “I just need some equipment. . . .”

“Equipment? Equipment?” snapped Frederick. “You’re not some confounded telescopist, are you? Can’t stand those upstarts!”

“No, indeed, no,” Kepler said hurriedly. “I have no truck with those modern natural philosophers, those scientists, treacherous telescopists!”

He sounded unconvincing to Boy, but then only Boy and possibly Willow knew that that was precisely what he was, a scientist, albeit one whose mind had definitely been influenced by the finding of the book. But Frederick and the rest of the court seemed to have believed him, as he bent down once more and pulled some things from his bag.

“No, sire, this is a truly magical appurtenance which I hold before you.”

With a flourish worthy of Valerian, Kepler pulled a short brass cylinder from his sack. Immediately Boy recognized it as the lens from the camera obscura, upon the end of which was mounted a frosted glass tube.

“Behold,” Kepler said dramatically, “the Spirit Tube.”

Frederick stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.

“The Spirit Tube is a conduit through which we can see the spirit world. Sometimes we are lucky enough to capture visions of this other world inside. Allow me to attempt a summoning!”

Kepler passed the device over for Willow to hold, while he moved his hands around it. He began to mutter under his breath, not loudly enough for anyone to hear. Boy was surprised. He had never imagined that Kepler could equal Valerian’s ability for performing, yet that was precisely what he was doing. Boy knew Kepler had no magical powers, was a scientist pure and simple, yet as he watched, Kepler made a very fair show of playing the magician.

For a while nothing happened; then the tube began to glow with a yellowish green light, soft and sickly. Kepler held the tube high above his head for everyone to see, and then there was a gasp as people saw a face appear through the glow inside the tube.

Now Boy knew what he was seeing—it was basically the same trick Valerian had used to summon the fairy in his hands for the first part of the Fairyland Vanishing Illusion, his most famous trick. Perhaps this was something Kepler had shown him too. A question arose in Boy’s mind. Was this why Kepler had sent him to the Yellow House to fetch the lens? Had he had this in mind even then?

“The Spirit Tube!” Kepler cried, then dropped it to the floor. The light disappeared, and he bowed at Frederick, praying he had done enough.

“Sometimes,” he added, rising again, “we even hear voices from the other realm!”

Boy held his breath, hardly daring to look at Frederick. Willow stood a little behind Kepler, stone still.

Frederick stood and pointed at Kepler.

“Excellent!” he declared, looking like a spoilt little boy. “Don’t you think so, Maxim?”

“Very impressive,” said Maxim coolly.

“Yes, very,” said Frederick, turning back to Kepler. “What was your name again?”

“Arbronsius,” Kepler said. “And this is Mina.”

“Very good, very good. You may take rooms in the palace, and you can show us more of your learning, by and by.”

“Thank you, sire,” Kepler said, bowing low. As he stood up he shot a glance at Boy, who nodded, ever so slightly.

Boy looked from Kepler to Willow, and saw the faintest trace of a smile cross her lips.

6

Boy was back in his chambers in the Winter Rooms. A different servant from last time was tidying, and clearing away the meal Boy had just eaten. She was young, and Boy had been relieved to see that she at least was not blind. He stood at the window, ignoring her, trying to get some bearings of the palace, trying to work out where his room was in relation to the rest of it, but it proved difficult.

After a while, he stopped thinking about the geography of the palace, and watched the snow fall once more. His nerves were ragged, he felt edgy and scared. Seeing Willow again, here, in the heart of danger, unnerved him. He not only had to worry about getting himself out, now he had to worry about her as well. He knew she was safe from Maxim’s men, but what would happen when they returned from the orphanage empty-handed?

At least the emperor liked him, but there was small consolation in that. Boy had seen how his mood might change on a whim.

Boy watched another flake of snow drift past the window, and automatically began to count, feeling a little calmer with every flake that fell.

He had no idea where Kepler and Willow were now. They had been led away in quite a different direction from the one he had taken to the Winter Rooms.

“Where do real guests go?” he asked the girl. “Not prisoners like me.”

The girl stopped her work and looked puzzled.

“If I was a proper visitor,” Boy explained, “where would I stay?”

The girl thought for a moment. She showed no sign of suspicion at Boy’s questions.

“It depends on who they are. Lords are put in Fountain Court, Dukes in the Western State Rooms.”

“What about people like the alchemists? That kind of person.”

“Oh,” said the servant. “That’s different. They all go to the Old South Tower.”

“And where’s that?”

“Long way from here,” she said, turning to leave. “Across the Great Court. It’s the tallest tower in the whole palace.”

Boy smiled. He could do something with the information the girl had given him.

There were guards outside each of the doors, but there was the secret stairwell by which he had first arrived in his rooms. That was locked, but then the older servant had also made a mistake, by letting Boy keep his lockpick.

Boy lay on the bed, and waited for it to get dark.

7

It took Boy longer to get started than he had thought it would. Despite having first entered his chambers through the secret door, it took him half an hour of slowly searching the walls to find it. Even when he did he could not actually be sure he had, so cleverly was it concealed.

It was not a hard lock to pick, once he managed to find the keyhole itself, which was hidden on the carved rail that ran round the room. A flick with his lockpick and the door popped open, hinged so cunningly that all the carved sections floated neatly away from their origin.

Boy made his way to his bed, and pulled some pillows together, arranging them to look like a sleeping figure. He pulled the sheets over the top, and stuck the corner of his nightshirt out of one side of the bed.

It was dark outside. It was even darker in the hidden stairwell, but Boy carefully took a small oil lamp from his bedroom, and set off down the stairs. He didn’t exactly have a plan. He thought it would be best to get outside, assuming that it would be easier to find the Old South Tower from outside than to wander aimlessly through endless corridors.

At the foot of the hidden stairwell he hesitated, pressing his ear against the door, waiting to hear any kind of sound. None came, but he made himself wait for several minutes to be sure. Still nothing. He lowered the small handle and swung the door open, then, putting the lamp on the bottom step, he shut the door behind him, noting its position in the wall carefully before he did so. When the door was shut it was once again almost impossible to see.

The corridor was just as he remembered, only half lit, as most of the palace seemed to be at night. There was the grand marble staircase leading away upstairs, and, guessing that a hall of such importance had to be near an entrance to the palace, he set off for a set of doors opposite. He found himself in a slightly smaller hall beyond which he smelt the night air. There was a row of large doors right across the wall, but Boy saw a much smaller door at each end, and made for the nearer of these. He was halfway through when he saw the guard, dozing on a narrow wooden perch by the other small door. Boy hurried through and gently shut the door behind him.

He was outside. For the first time in days he breathed fresh air, and enjoyed the gentle wind that brushed his face, despite its coldness.

It was a moonless night, and Boy waited till he could see a little better before moving, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a gray lawn in front of him.

Snow.

Snow covered everything, and was falling still. Immediately, he saw a problem: footprints. He would leave footprints wherever he went, and even in the half-light he could see that the snow was untouched.

He stood on the steps of the palace for a long time, getting more agitated. He couldn’t go back, and in the end decided to hope for the best. If it snowed heavily enough through the night, it might cover up any tracks he left.

Nonetheless, he kept to the sides of the buildings, it being his natural preference to cling to the shadows, and expose himself as little as possible.

He could not see the South Tower. In fact, he couldn’t see anything resembling a tower at all. His view was obscured by the height of the square he was in.

Half an hour later he had worked his way past buildings great and small, along cloisters and down spiral stone staircases, over low walls and some high ones, all the while cursing the snow he had grown to love. His hands and feet were numb, and whenever he looked behind him he saw an awful trail of footprints, clear to him even in the darkness.

But now, as he looked across one more quadrangle, there was a huge tower, narrow and round. Boy could see the southern wall of the palace not far beyond; this had to be the South Tower. Suddenly he realized the futility of his situation.

He assumed that the doors were locked, but that he would be able to open them. Even given that he could get inside, he saw that he had little chance of finding Willow. The Old South Tower stretched away above him into the snowy night sky. He counted eight floors at least before he could make out no more. As he approached the tower, he saw that while it had looked narrow from a distance it was actually enormous. He stopped, and tried to decide what to do. In a situation like this, Valerian would have stopped, and turned to Boy. Boy could practically hear his voice.

“What do we need to do, Boy?” he would have asked. Even during those last few days, Valerian had always addressed Boy with the problem in hand logically, trying to get him to think logically too, about the solution. The force of habit had been instilled in him well.

But what could he do? He skirted round the tower as far as he was able. He estimated there could be at least six rooms on each floor. He tried hard to calculate how many rooms that made if there were even only eight floors, but gave up before he had the answer. It was useless.

He felt like screaming, shouting “Willow!” and just running before anyone could catch them, but he knew that was stupid. They’d be caught long before they found their way to the outside world. Yet something in him would not give up.

He was moving back around the base of the building toward a doorway, when he noticed something strange at his feet. The snow was darker here, and slushy underfoot. Glancing up, he saw a low archway to his right that led down beneath a building at the foot of the tower. The trail of tainted snow led into the archway. Without thinking what he was doing, Boy walked toward the low archway, and then he heard a noise. It sounded like whimpering, like a hurt animal, but there was something else too. A wet noise that Boy couldn’t quite place.

Wishing he had brought the lamp with him, he stuck his head into the archway. The noise was more distinct.

He wondered if he should call out; if there was someone hurt they might need help. But he couldn’t risk giving himself away. Even as he decided this, he thought of Willow, and felt bad. She would help, even if it meant risking her own safety.

He moved a little way into the tunnel and was about to call out when he sensed something else. A smell that immediately made him understand what was happening. The darkened, wet snow, the gurgling noise, the whimpering. The smell was blood.

Without being able to help himself, he let out a cry of fear. The noise stopped and a dark shape moved before him. It was a hulking figure, crouched over something twitching on the ground. As it turned, Boy looked straight into its face.

For a moment there was nothing. Boy took in too many horrors in an instant. The poor thing dead on the tunnel floor. The Phantom sitting on its prey, blood dripping from its mouth. And its eyes, worst of all, its eyes.

The thing looked at him, failing to react, staring at him. Then Boy screamed and ran from the tunnel, heedless that anyone might hear him or see him as he flailed his way back across the palace grounds.

It took him a long while to realize he was not being followed, but still he did not feel safe.

He kept on running the way he had come, his legs burning, a stitch in his side; he did not stop till he was back at the door from which he had emerged an hour or so before. He slowed only briefly as he let himself back in, past the sleeping guard. He hurtled back up through his secret stairwell to his rooms, where he locked himself in, and stood shaking, his legs wobbling and his shoulders rising and falling. He climbed into bed fully clothed, and began to cry at the shock of what he had seen.

After a long time he grew tired of crying, and only dull aching pain remained. He tried to push the sight from his mind, but it was futile. He could not shift from his thoughts the image of the poor animal, or worse, person, who had died at the Phantom’s hands. And the Phantom itself. Not that large in truth. A small figure, but powerfully built, especially around its shoulders and arms, it had crouched like one of the apes Boy had once seen in the traveling menageries that sometimes came to the City. And its face. Its face was too awful to tell, and its hair was thin and patchy, revealing large areas of scalp underneath. The eyes were the worst of it; there was something about the eyes that had scared Boy to within an inch of his life. They were almost totally blank eyes, with maybe nothing more behind them but the thought of killing, and yet that was not quite all. There was something else in those eyes that had burnt its way into Boy’s mind and remained there now, yet Boy could not understand what it was.

Other thoughts rushed into his mind, not least the fear that he had left a trail that anyone or anything would be able to follow right back to the Winter Rooms, or at least to the entrance downstairs. He shivered, and longed for the snow to fall more thickly than ever, to hide his footprints, and to hide the blood, and to take all his pain away.

“Please snow, please snow, please snow,” he repeated to himself, again and again.

Despite being fully clothed, despite the warmth of his room, and the thickness of his sheets, Boy trembled as he desperately longed for sleep to come and take him.