The Dark Flight Down (3 page)

6

Boy got to bed around three in the morning, having first seen that his master was safely asleep.

Wilfred had taken Kepler upstairs and tipped him onto the mattress, then tipped his hat just as easily to Boy, and turned to go.

“Strange dreams for him tonight,” Wilfred had chuckled.

Boy looked at him quizzically.

“The absinthe.” He winked, and went.

Boy considered Kepler for a while, then decided he was too tired to do anything much for him. He pulled Kepler’s boots off and drew a coverlet up to his chin.

Boy slept late into the morning, and if Kepler’s dreams were strange, then Boy’s were every bit as disturbing. When Boy woke finally, it was with no gentle arousal, but with a lurch and a jolt as his dream frightened him awake. He sat up in bed for several minutes, breathing hard, trying to calm down. It had been a long time since he had dreamed at all, he realized. As if to make up for that, he had been ridden into the ground by a stampede of nightmares.

Almost automatically Boy thought of snow as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His dreams had been frozen like mountain snow, and with a sudden warm spell had thawed, sending a deluge of meltwater cascading down on him.

Dreams still lay in his mind like a fog as he staggered over to the washstand and splashed icy water into the bowl from the jug beside it. He had been in a dark space, a small dark space. That was not the frightening part. Not for Boy. Small dark spaces were where he felt safest, as he had grown up on the streets, and later with Valerian too. They had always been good places for him.

Having stolen a purse or a loaf, anywhere he could tuck his narrow bones to hide from the Watch was good for Boy; a tiny crevice in a church roof was heaven. Being with Valerian onstage, tucked into magical cabinets and other boxes, was at least one time when his master could not beat him or curse him. And, in the Yellow House, Boy’s room had been that narrow triangular tunnel, too small even to stand in, but a place of safety nonetheless.

So it wasn’t the small dark space in his dream that had been scary, but something else. Something lurking nearby. Something that breathed with a low, husky rattle, like a creature being half throttled. Some sort of fiend.

Boy remembered the dream and cursed it, for it signaled an end to his view of darkness as a benevolent thing. He plunged his face into the cold water in the bowl in front of him, and held it there, opening his eyes, so the water washed them, hoping it would wash the black clouds from his brain too.

But it did not. He was starting to fully feel the shock of all that had happened in the Dead Days. He stood upright again, breathing hard, knowing that the safety of darkness had already long gone. It had not just vanished with the previous night’s dream of some foul monster in the dark. It had died in those vile underground tunnels when he had been hunted by Valerian, his former master. His father?

Boy dressed and stood in front of the window. Outside, the snow was falling as heavily as it ever had over the last week. Boy tried his trick of watching the snow, to hypnotize himself into forgetting, but it failed.

His dreams had unlocked his emotions, the fear jerking him from the stupor of the previous few days. And this flood of emotions had unleashed another dreadful realization. He knew he had to find out the truth about Valerian, one way or the other. Not knowing had been tormenting him, he saw that clearly now, and he had to put a stop to it.

He knew how to do it. He himself had helped provide the answer to his problem.

The book. The magical book Valerian had sought. It contained answers, truths and secrets, and the histories and destinies of any who dared to read its pages. It had enlightened some, but had fooled many more, for its answers were not always clear and precise. The book revealed something of its readers’ fates, but Boy had already learnt that Fortune was a fickle mistress, largely because people saw only what it suited them to see.

Nonetheless, the book itself was all-knowing, as Boy was only too aware. He and Willow had helped Valerian hunt down the book, only to find that Kepler already had it, and, ensnared by its power, was trying to keep it from Valerian.

If Boy was going to look in the book, now was the time to do it, while Kepler slept off his absinthe-curdled dreams. The enormity of what he had decided to do dawned on him, and his heart began to pound.

Something else occurred to Boy. The book would also be able to tell him another thing, something he desperately wanted to know, and which no one and nothing else would ever be able to tell him.

His real name.

7

The house was quiet. The whole City felt quiet, as if everyone and everything in it were watching offstage, as Boy crept down the corridor from his room.

Words came into Boy’s head, from nowhere. They felt familiar, though he couldn’t work out why. It was true that the snowfall had been hypnotizing him, helping him bury his troubles, but if some parts of his memory were being hidden, at the same time he had become strangely awake to others.

“Surely you won’t run, when your boat is ready to sail.”

He pushed the words to the back of his mind, but they would not disappear.

“Surely you will stay and face the gentle rain.”

He couldn’t place the words, and tried again to ignore them.

Now he drew even with Kepler’s door, and paused, on tiptoe. He held his boots in his hands, not daring to risk booted footsteps on the bare wooden boards of the corridor.

Boy held his breath, straining to hear any sound from Kepler, any noise that might show he was stirring. All was quiet.

Boy breathed out and headed for the top of the stairs.

A first doubt rose in his mind. It wasn’t conscience, but fear. He had no qualms about looking at the book, which he supposed now belonged to Kepler. He had stolen enough things in his life not to worry about borrowing something without permission. No, that was not the cause of his doubt. The cause was fear.

Sitting on the last stair, he pulled his boots on. The floor was carpeted here, and he was no longer scared about Kepler’s hearing him. What he was scared of lay, he assumed, in front of him, in Kepler’s study, where he had last seen Kepler put the book.

Boy crossed the hall, and the rogue words pushed into his head again.

“Surely you won’t run . . . ?”

Willow had thought the book dangerous. He knew that much from the brief time they had spent together before Valerian’s end on New Year’s Eve. Why else would its owners, the Beebe family, have buried it in a tomb with their son, Gad, its last owner, if it were not dangerous? It had lain undisturbed in his grave in the church at Linden until Kepler had located it, and stolen it. At first Boy hadn’t understood how a book could be dangerous, but he now knew enough to make him nervous. The book was unadulterated knowledge, pure and powerful.

Boy reached the study door, and put his finger to the brass knob. The house was cold; he had lit no fires, and with no one else to do it, it would remain that way. He shivered, but turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Quickly he stepped inside and gently pushed the door to behind him, without risking making any noise by closing it properly.

He looked at the desk. Unless Kepler had moved it, the book lay inside the bottom drawer on the right-hand side, waiting.

The thing was just to do it, without thinking, without worrying. Boy thought of snowfall and took seven short strides over to the desk.

He sat down in the leather-covered chair and looked at the drawer. It would be locked, Boy knew that, and Kepler had the only key, but that was no problem for Boy. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the bent piece of metal that he used to pick locks. It had belonged to a metal hand that Kepler had once dissected with Valerian, and it had been Valerian who had shown Boy how to pick locks. So, he reasoned, they only had themselves to blame.

He leant down to the lock of the bottom drawer, and twisted the metal around inside, feeling for the tumblers.

Boy usually sprang a lock in a few moments, but he was not surprised that Kepler, a man of invention and mechanism, should have superior devices to secure his property. The lock resisted.

Boy got out of the chair and knelt down at eye level with the lock, determined not to be beaten.

On the other side of a finger’s width of oak lay the book, waiting to tell Boy everything.

He jiggled the metal pin inside the lock once more. He struggled with the lock frantically. He could sense the book only inches away, could sense its power, but the lock defeated all his attempts to open it.

He sat back in the chair, angry now, and kicked the desk.

He looked around, and his eyes rested on the fireplace. There was a heavy iron poker by the grate.

Boy stood.

He would smash the stupid desk apart, and take the book. He and Willow had agreed to meet by the fountain later that day, and so he would, but with the knowledge of his past and his future revealed. Kepler would be angry, but that wouldn’t matter—Boy would never see him again.

Boy reached the fireplace and grasped the poker by its twisted handle.

As he turned to make for the desk, the door swung open, and Kepler walked in.

For a second a hateful vision of violence passed through Boy’s mind, as he saw himself bringing the poker down on Kepler’s head, spilling his brains onto the red carpet of the study floor.

But it was gone in an instant. If anyone was in the
mood
for violence, it was Kepler. No doubt as a result of the absinthe, he was in a strange frame of mind. Boy saw the turmoil in his master’s eyes, and the sudden craving he had felt for the book disappeared. Boy had seen absinthe do this to people before. Normally calm people might practically murder each other when recovering from the strange hallucinations that the wormwood-ridden drink could induce.

“Boy!” Kepler snapped. “It’s perishing cold. Why aren’t the fires lit?”

“I’m just doing them,” Boy said quickly, waving the poker. “The house will be warm soon.”

Kepler ignored him, and staggered to the desk, where he sat in the chair. He was too hung over to notice either that Boy was poking a fire that had not yet been lit, or that the papers on his desk and the chair were not where he’d left them.

“You are not to see those people again,” said Kepler. He meant Georg and the others from the theater.

Boy was about to argue, but thought better of it. He would be gone by this evening, and what Kepler thought or said would not matter. He could be angry about it then, could laugh about it then, so for now he just nodded and went on preparing the fire.

“I need you to do something for me,” said Kepler thickly. “I need you to fetch something for me, this morning.”

Boy stood and looked at Kepler, whose head was still in his hands. Now he lifted it, but slowly.

“I need you to fetch something for me, from the Yellow House.”

Boy froze. The Yellow House. Valerian’s house.

“I—” began Boy, but Kepler was in no mood to argue.

“Just go,” he said. “I need a lens from the camera. It’s the only one of its kind in the City, and cost a fortune. I want it back. I built that thing, it belongs to me now Valerian’s gone. I want it to project an image. . . .”

Boy wondered what he was talking about, but said nothing.

“You must unscrew the bottom section of the brass tube and the lens will drop out. Don’t break it! And come straight back.”

Boy was used to being told what to do. It was all he had ever had from Valerian. He would help Kepler with this last thing. It wouldn’t take very long, and anyway he would have to wait now for another chance to look at the book. Once he had, he could disappear to be with Willow.

Kepler had saved his life, after all, by sending Valerian to his death, instead of Valerian sending Boy to his. He decided he owed the man one favor at least, but there was something else too. He wanted to go to the Yellow House one more time, to see what had become of where he had lived with Valerian all those years. Maybe, in some way, to say goodbye.

He put on his coat and made for the door, leaving Kepler clutching his head.

The Yellow House

The Place of Broken Futures

1

The new year was not quite a week old. Life in the City was not yet in full swing; it was a quiet time of year anyway, but people seemed to be using the endless snow as an excuse for doing as little as possible.

Boy turned into a squalid and narrow street called Three Horse Run to find it empty of its usual loiterers and layabouts, and as he made his way along it, his were the first footsteps that broke the snow’s perfection.

Everywhere was the same; he saw barely half a dozen souls as he headed for the place he knew so well, the Yellow House. Despite Kepler’s insistence that the men of the Watch were no longer after Boy, he retained his instinct to go unnoticed wherever possible, and was glad of the empty streets.

Finally, as he made his way down Salted Frog Alley, he heard voices approaching. He looked up and saw three costermongers wheeling a barrow of vegetables slowly through the snow. Relieved that they were not Watchmen, Boy nonetheless still had no desire to see or talk to anyone, and pressed himself into a deep doorway at the side of the alley.

He waited as they passed. They were deep in conversation and didn’t notice Boy, but even if they’d been looking for him they would probably have missed him, he was so good at hiding.

Boy heard snatches of their conversation.

“. . . all over the street . . .”

“. . . couldn’t even tell who it was. Poor blighter!”

“They said the snow was turned red for two hundred yards. This great long trail. Then it stopped at a gutter by the river.”

“I heard the blood was sprayed everywhere, like a firework.”

Boy shuddered. He knew what they were talking about.

“Bits of the body were missing, that’s for sure. The same as the others.”

“Nonsense!” said another. “It’s the blood it’s after. The Phantom can’t be seen or killed. It won’t be stopped.”

“You’re both exaggerating. It’s just some lunatic on the loose.”

His friend spat in the snow as they passed near Boy.

“Maybe. But whatever it is, it’s still killing for fun, isn’t it? The Watch have no idea what to do.”

Boy shrank back in the doorway. The Phantom had killed again.

It was around one in the afternoon when Boy turned the corner of Blind Man’s Stick and there was the Yellow House, looking the same as it always did apart from the snow covering its roofs: tall and imposing, but faded and in need of repair.

Boy couldn’t help lifting his eyes to the very top of the house, to the Tower, where it had all ended for Valerian. It was a bizarre addition to the rambling house, showing no sign of the horrors that had unfolded there on New Year’s Eve. Inside it lay the camera, and the lens that Kepler wanted. Boy would have to face his memories.

He still had the key to the house that Valerian had given him only a few days before, on Childermas, the unluckiest day of the year. Well, the key was one piece of good luck, Boy thought, as he rattled it in the lock of the outer gates.

He had to force the heavy iron gates away from him through the deep snow and squeeze through. Now he opened the door to the house itself.

From force of habit he checked to see that no one had seen him enter. Then Boy stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.

It had been only six days since anyone had been there, but the Yellow House had already acquired that strange eerie silence that houses gather about themselves when left alone for any length of time.

“Hello?” Boy said quietly into the air around him, then felt faintly stupid for doing so. Of course there was no one there. There had been no one there since the early hours of the new year, when Kepler had come back for him and Willow.

He made his way upstairs to the third-floor landing. From there he could have gone along to where the ladder led up to his little room, but he didn’t want to see it.

Only six days, but it felt like an eternity had passed. He couldn’t believe the house was so still, so empty, so big. Had it always been like this? Maybe he just hadn’t noticed, when Valerian had been there issuing orders and threats in equal measure.

He turned his back on the corridor and headed for the foot of the spiral staircase that led to the Tower. As he made his way up he could already see the remains of the shattered door where Kepler and Willow had burst in to save him from Valerian. Just the sight of the fractured wood made Boy panic, as a rush of memories rose unbidden in his mind.

He tried to concentrate on what he had come to do, but as he stepped over the threshold into the room itself, the events of New Year’s Eve overwhelmed him and he sank to the floor, weak and shaking.

He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“The lens,” he said aloud, as if the sound of his voice could dispel the demons lurking in the room. “Just get the lens and go.”

He looked up.

The room was a mess. They had left it exactly as it was after the awful cataclysm, the wind, the apparition. The hundreds upon hundreds of Valerian’s books lay in chaotic heaps across the floor, various papers and parchments strewn over them. Even the trapdoor in the middle of the room was covered in books and papers. Valerian’s great leather armchair lay on its side. Broken glass and tangled metal from his experimental equipment lay in confusion across the tabletops. The only thing that seemed unharmed was the camera obscura itself. The shutters were drawn, and in the half darkness of the room, Boy saw that the camera was still working. Kepler had warned Valerian that it would be of no use in saving his skin, but he had built a good machine, and it worked still, projecting a curved but clear image of the streets outside onto the circular white tabletop beneath it.

Boy scrambled over to it, passing the upturned armchair as he did. He paused, and then pulled Valerian’s favorite chair back onto its feet.

“That’s better,” he said, and smiled as he remembered Valerian sitting in it.

He turned to the camera. At the base that overhung the table was a wide brass cylinder. From this the image poured onto the table. He supposed this was what Kepler had been talking about, so he climbed onto the tabletop and lay looking up at the apparatus.

He pushed and pulled the thing, and could see no way of loosening it, but then remembered what Kepler had said about unscrewing it, and he began to twist. Immediately it turned, opening a join that was so finely wrought it had been invisible before the thread began to unwind.

Boy twisted some more, and the bottom half of the cylinder came away from the top. As it did, he suddenly recalled what Kepler had warned about breaking the glass lens, and slid underneath the projection device. The image of the City outside was now played out on Boy’s face and chest, and had there been anyone there to see, and had they looked closely, they would have seen snow falling across him. It fell across his eyes and face, but unlike the snow falling outside, which gathered in piles, the flake after flake after flake that crossed Boy’s face kept on falling, but hid no horror.

He nearly had it apart now, and chewed his lip as he lowered the bottom half of brass away from the top.

“Hold hard there, you brat!” said a voice from the door, and Boy jerked upright, hitting his head on the camera. He clutched the lens as he swung down to the floor.

“I said hold!”