Date: 2015-06-07 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: London 1902. Renowned art thief and cat-burglar, Abigale Egars, is good at her job. Assisted by contraptions created by her tinkerer and mentor, Octavius Knight, she is a ghost, evading the Met. at every turn. Unceremoniously abducted from her bed in the dead of night, Abigale learns that The Guild, an insidious and powerful organisation, has implanted a device in her head, a contraption that will administer poison directly into her system at the flick of a switch if she doesn't do what they say. Blackmailed into stealing three priceless artefacts by The Guild, Abigale must avoid being capture
Publisher: Steamworks Ink

Wanderlust

Adam Millard

Published by Steamworks Ink

An imprint of

Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

Novi, Michigan 48374

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious and are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events, or locales or persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

Cover by Martin Hanford

Edited by CLS Editing

Text Copyright © 2015 Adam Millard

All rights reserved.

Published by

Steamworks Ink an imprint of

Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

Novi, Michigan 48374

“The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.”

- Jimmy Breslin

“Imagination is the true magic carpet.”

- Norman Vincent Peale

1

Fly my little pretties. Fly!

Abigale Egars watched her scorpion scouts rush toward Harriett Haversham’s Jewellers—a small, though well-stocked, store in Central London. The trio of scuttling arachnids separated as they trickled over the cobbled road, chirruping to one another, lest their formation be rendered ineffectual. The archaic sensors implanted in the scorpions’ segmented tails fed directly back to Abigale, who remained in the shadows, where she was sufficiently concealed and much less likely to find herself on the receiving end of a truncheon.

Abigale pulled the monovision eyeglass down over her right eye, and through a hazy green light, she saw what the scorpions were seeing. It wasn’t a perfect image, but large shapes were easy enough to distinguish, and the scorpions had proved themselves effective time and time again, especially on high jeopardy heists like the one she was on. Once the automaton arachnids were in place, Abigale would be able to move forward, safe in the knowledge that she would be fed a constant stream—warning her of any Inquisitors or passing bluebottles.

In a perfect V, the scorpions slowed, approaching the shop frontage with a vigilance not usually seen in clockwork devices. In that moment, Abigale felt something like pride; not in the little beasties, but in her boss—their constructor—Octavius Knight. He’d built something sentient that actually worked, something that wasn’t going to erupt in a sudden fireball or malfunction at the most vital of times. She still hadn’t forgiven him for the miscalculation that had been the bronze toads.

Abigale stretched her legs, making sure every part of her remained obscured by the gloom. From the alleyway directly across from the shop, she had a perfect observation point, one that offered her enough of the street to make an informed decision on when to move. The unpleasant smell of jellied eels lingered in the air, but she was used to such disagreeable aromas. She had to be, living in the middle of London.

The scorpions, upon reaching the jewellers’ façade, had positioned themselves at perfect equidistant intervals, where they waited patiently, and for once, silently.

Through the eyeglass, Abigale could discern the entire street. The emerald glow highlighted shapes in what would otherwise have been perfect darkness, and she was pleased to espy that nothing seemed to move in either direction.

“Well done,” she whispered to no one in particular. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard one of the scorpions chitter in elated response. Abigale had set herself a three-minute limit for the caper. She checked the pocket watch attached to her corset, took a deep breath, and slipped like a feline from the shadows.

There had been a time, many years before, when Abigale would have been thrilled by the moment—an instant of calm before the storm. Her heart still rushed, but not the way it once had. She had become accustomed to the sudden surge of adrenalin, and it no longer stimulated her, at least not as potently.

A job.

That’s all it was. Another job, and another poor and frustrated business owner, come morning.

The problem, Abigale thought as she lithely scampered across the street, is that I am too damn good at it. The danger that she had felt in her first two years was now removed. Her expertise had eradicated the very thing that had made the whole debacle enjoyable: The small, almost unfeasible, prospect that she might be caught.

Leaping across the cobbles, Abigale pushed herself up against a wall. The scorpion to her right, chirruping like a frustrated cicada, had sensed movement somewhere in the darkness, though Abigale could see nothing untoward. Still, she waited. The automatons were seldom wrong—unless they were toads, in which case they were liable to explode without warning.

Abigale watched as the tail of the suspicious scorpion came over, teasing the air with its non-existent sting. Just then, a cat emerged from the very alleyway Abigale had been waiting in a moment earlier. It was a scrawny thing, most probably a stray. As it mewled sadly to itself and limped off along the street to Lord-knows-where, the scorpion to her right settled, and then chittered again, as if to say, “What? It was moving, wasn’t it? How was I to know it was a wounded tabby?”

Abigale sighed, shook her head, and went to work on the locks. Harriett Haversham must have been relatively successful because it took Abigale almost ten seconds to work her way through the duo of intricate security devices and slip in through the front door, far longer than she had anticipated or accounted for. She gently closed the door behind her and turned to face the room.

Glass display cabinets, containing everything from quartz brooches to diamond rings filled the room. Abigale was sure Haversham would have placed the more expensive items in the safe out back, securing them away from prying hands and eyes, but she’d done no such thing. It was all there for the taking.

Sliding the brown satchel off her shoulder, Abigale went to work on a tray of silver pendants. She was selective—she had to be—and only took the ones that she knew Octavius already had a buyer for. She quickly made her way onto the gold and pearl jewellery, dropping it into the satchel with a clink, and doing her very best not to get carried away.

Outside, the injured cat had returned and was batting one of the mechanical scorpions around as if it were a dying mouse. Abigale shook her head and continued to load up on gems. If she lost one of her clockwork beasties to a lame pussy, it wasn’t the end of the world. Octavius would be annoyed with her, but he could simply construct more.

Besides, who in their right mind tinkers with a clockwork scorpion and fails to arm its stinger? It was, Abigale thought, a ridiculous oversight. At least dip the thing in ether and give it a fighting chance.

It took less than a minute to fill her satchel; the minute locks for each cabinet were nothing more than an annoying hindrance. Since she’d gone there with what amounted to an extensive list—Octavius Knight had friends with exquisite taste—she’d only had to break into four cabinets.

She checked her pocket watch. Two minutes and thirty seconds.

She straightened and even yawned. It wasn’t complacency, just lack of sleep. The middle-of-the-night capers were taking their toll on her. She much preferred the mid-afternoon slip-ins. At least she got to bed at a decent hour with those.

Through her eyeglass, she saw that the cat had grown tired of the clockwork scorpion, though not before knocking it onto its side. The image of the street was askance as it fed to Abigale, and she watched the scorpion panic, not accustomed to being unceremoniously forced onto its edge. Abigale made a mental note to let Octavius know how the contraption had struggled to revert to its feet. Maybe he could attach an extra appendage, something to flip the foolish thing back over, should it ever find itself in such a ridiculous position again.

Abigale slipped her arm through the satchel and took a step toward the door.

“Now just you wait a minute, Missy.”

The voice came so suddenly that Abigale’s heart leapt up into her mouth, dropped back down and wedged somewhere in her throat. She didn’t turn, though, to the direction from which the voice had emanated. She already knew there was a gun trained on her. A person doesn’t stop a thief in the middle of the night unless they’re stupid or armed.

Harriett Haversham was far from stupid.

“Don’t move a muscle, you ken? I don’t want to be hurting you, but I will if you give me no choice.”

The voice was tremulous, but controlled. Abigale guessed, from its coarseness, that old Harriett was no stranger to the joys of pipe smoking. Many of the older folk in London found something they enjoyed and let it slowly kill them, and Haversham was obviously no different.

Outside, one of the clockwork scorpions whirred and chirped.

It’s a bit late for that now, you idi—

“Now, I want you to slowly remove the satchel from your shoulder and place it on the floor next to your feet. Like I said, I’m not one for violence, but I will shoot you if you try anything stupid.”

If she was lying, Abigale didn’t pick up on it. She really would shoot. The night had just gone from one of absolute simplicity to a complete fiasco. The toppled scorpion out front had no idea how lucky it was.

“Okay,” Abigale said. “I’m going to start to move. I don’t expect a bloody great hole to appear in me.” She didn’t know what gun Harriett Haversham was wielding, but from experience, Abigale knew it made very little difference. A bullet was a bullet, and they usually left a mark when they hit their target, regardless of calibre.

“Slowly does it,” Harriett croaked. “I don’t know who you people think you are, keep trying to steal from ‘onest working folk such as m’self. Well, you picked the wrong jeweller tonight, m’lovey, and make no mistake about it.”

Abigale sighed, slipping the satchel from her shoulder. She suddenly felt as if she was the one being wronged, that some bandit was trying to relieve her of her valuables. It wasn’t a nice feeling, but Abigale tried not to dwell on it for too long.

“How many more of you are there?”

“‘Scuse me?” Abigale was stalling, trying to figure out a way to escape with the jewels, her life, and without having to kill poor Harriett Haversham.

“You didn’t come here alone,” Harriett said. “Who else is there?”

Perplexed, Abigale began to turn. A click from behind told her it was probably not the best move she could make. She halted. “It’s just me. I work alone.”

In fact, the mere thought of having an accomplice annoyed her. She’d never even entertained the idea, despite Octavius’s constant jibes about her being—with the exception of him—friendless. Bringing in an associate thief was like telling her she had to break into Fort Knox with the aid of three elephants and a rather excited Yorkshire terrier. No, she worked alone, and that was that. Besides, she wasn’t willing to share her cut with a third party. Her agreement with Octavius was just about acceptable as it was.

“You mean to tell me you thought you could break in here unescorted?” Harriett laughed. It was a very wet sound, as if it might turn into a choke without notice. “But you’re just a girl.” She laughed again.

Abigale sensed her opportunity.

And took it.

Lightning-quick, she dropped to one knee. Flipping over backwards, Abigale heard the immense blast of whatever cannon Harriett Haversham had brought to the party. She really hadn’t been lying about shooting. Abigale felt her hair ruffle as the round flew past, shattering one of the glass cabinets across the room. She landed into a roll as the splinters from the exploded cabinet began to cascade into a thousand jagged shards that some poor soul would have to sweep up later on.

Abigale fell still, satisfied that she was suitably concealed by darkness. She could hear the woman cursing nervously as she tried to load another round. From the sound of it, she was having a right game. Abigale almost felt sorry for her.

“You made me shoot my own shop!” Harriett screeched. She sounded positively mortified, as if she would have much preferred to have a dead girl lying there, instead of the mound of glass she was faced with. “I can’t…my shop!”

Abigale sucked in air, though, in that moment, there didn’t seem to be much of it. She had to get out. If she didn’t, either she or the proprietor would die. Although Abigale didn’t have a gun, she was not the one at a disadvantage. Years of training and perfecting her skills had made her formidable. Faced with what was, essentially, a geriatric brandishing a hand cannon, there would be only one winner.

The door seemed so distant, but Abigale already knew what she was going to do—what she had to do. She launched herself from the safety of the shadows, hit the door with an almighty thud, and just about managed to turn the doorknob as her momentum carried her forwards. She landed behind a cabinet displaying various tiaras, and a second later, it exploded. Glass rained down on her, peppering her head and neck with jagged fragments.

“Goddammit, girl, keep still when I’m trying to shoot you!” Harriett was not having the best of nights.

Abigale heard her fumbling with the gun once again. Whatever it was, it only took one round at a time. Good job, really…

The door to the shop creaked open, and then there came the skittering, and the tinkling of glass being pushed aside by so many clockwork legs.

Harriett Haversham screamed. It was a sound that would haunt Abigale’s dreams for quite some time. Then there was another blast, and a chirrup that suggested one of the mechanical scorpions would need the expertise of a jolly good tinkerer if it were ever going to function again.

“Get off me! What kind of sorcery is this?”

The scorpions were gifting Abigale the opportunity she so desperately needed, and by the sounds of it, making poor old Harriett Haversham’s life an absolute nightmare.

Clambering to her feet, using the leg of the devastated display cabinet to steady herself, Abigale flew toward the door, snatching the satchel up from where it nestled beneath a sea of broken glass. Over her shoulder, she screamed, “I’m sorry for the damage.”

She disappeared into the night, with the jewels but without her clockwork scorpions, and she realised how wretchedly close she had come to being decimated. How close she had come to being shot by an angry old lady whose livelihood had been threatened.

I need a change of employer, she thought as the shadows enveloped her once again. Either that or a pay rise.

2

“You mean to tell me that you left three of my scorpions at the scene of the crime? And least one of them may, or may not, have been shot to smithereens by some irate jeweller wearing only her nightie?”

Abigale considered Octavius’s question for a moment. “Pretty much,” she said. “Though I don’t remember what Harriett was wearing. Could have been a nightie, could have been a robe.” For all Abigale knew, Harriett Haversham had been firing at her whilst wearing nothing more than the wig on her head and the dentures in her mouth.

Abigale shuddered.

“Well, that’s just great.” Octavius put down his screwdriver and the copper bat looking contraption he was working on and looked fixedly at Abigale.

Abigale thought, All that is missing was the folded arms and…there they are, right on cue…

“Please tell me it was worth it,” he said. His machinist goggles prevented Abigale from seeing how truly angry he was with her.

She dropped the satchel onto the table where he sat. “Worth me nearly getting shot?” she asked. “I wouldn’t say that, but I think you’ll be happy.” She gestured to the satchel, something close enough to a smile curling the corners of her lips.

Octavius studied the bag without picking it up. His salt-and-pepper beard twitched as he chewed over his next words. “Eighteen articles?”

Abigale nodded. She’d counted them twice. If nothing else, she was professional. “Your buyers should be very happy.” Though, if they were anything like Octavius Knight, they would regard the costly objects with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a grunt that, yes, they would do very nicely, thankee very much.

After a few seconds of silence, the tinkerer climbed to his feet. For an old guy, he didn’t creak too much. He was like a cherished antique, one that was regularly varnished and oiled. Abigale had never seen her boss ill, not even afflicted with as much as a cold. If she didn’t know better, she would have believed him in league with the guy below. What was a soul worth in this day and age?

“I suppose that can be classified as a good night’s work,” he said, making his way across the room, as he had done on so many occasions before. He removed a painting from the wall—a horrible thing depicting a hunter and a lion; the spear in the hunter’s hand penetrating the beast’s lower jaw—and opened the safe that was hidden there.

Abigale looked away. She didn’t need to know the combination. In fact, the safe was one that she had faced on many occasions. She knew she could crack it in just a few minutes if she so desired.

A thief didn’t shit on their own doorstep, though, and Abigale would never steal from the man that had taken her in, trained her, and given her the contraptions she’d needed to become so successful.

The best in the world, some people said. Based on the night’s evidence, that was debatable. She’d almost died, and worse, she’d almost lost the jewels. That was more inconceivable than dying. There was no shame in being killed, but there was a certain embarrassment with being caught red-handed, especially when so many across the world were seemingly paying attention to her every move.

“So, what’s next?” Abigale asked, glancing impassively at the contents of Octavius’s workshop. She’d seen everything a thousand times before, but didn’t know what half of it did. One shelf was lined with clockwork insects and arachnids, some of them uncanny, but whether they were as useful as those scorpions she’d left behind, she had no clue.

“Next?” Octavius closed up the safe and replaced the painting. He walked across the room, lifted Abigale’s hand by the wrist, and dropped several coins into it. “Next, you go home, you get some sleep. You’re obviously tired. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have left three of my best devices behind, and at the hands of some armed maniac in a pair of baggy bloomers.”

Abigale frowned. “She had a gun. And I didn’t say anything about bloomers. I was lucky not to get my arse shot off.”

“All the more reason to go home and celebrate, preferably with a nap.” Octavius produced a clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and set about filling it.

There was something acutely hypnotic about watching Octavius fill his pipe—almost spellbinding. It took everything Abigale had to break her gaze.

“Will you telephone me if anything should turn up?” Of course, something would turn up. It always did. Still, the idea that something might very well not turn up terrified her.

Octavius nodded once, lit his pipe, and blew a thin stream of smoke toward the roof. “Get some rest. You’re no good to anyone worn out.”

Abigale still couldn’t believe she was being dismissed. Any moment Octavius would erupt with laughter, perhaps rub her hair in a grandfatherly fashion before filling her in on the next heist.

When he didn’t, she felt obsolete. Superfluous. About as useful as a glass of water on Noah’s ark.

She turned, made for the door, hoping she wasn’t overreacting, and if she was, that it didn’t show as she solemnly walked the breadth of the room.

“Oh, the day after tomorrow,” Octavius said, pushing his tobacco pouch into his waistcoat pocket.

Abigale turned so fast that she almost lost her bearings. “Yes?”

“Big one. Three diamonds. Seven carats each. Bank of England, Threadneedle Street.” He sucked on his pipe, sent a wink toward Abigale, which seemed to have its intended effect. Turning, he headed back to his workshop, whistling a tuneless ditty as he went.

Abigale smiled. It turned into a yawn, proving that, she really did need at least for a few hours of rest. Besides, Mouse would be missing her something rotten. She left the workshop three coins heavier, and with the promise of bigger work to follow. Not bad for a night’s work.

*

Lighting a gas lamp at the door, as she always did, Abigale made her way into her quarters—a small, not-quite-dingy-not-exactly-a-palace kind of place on top of James Smith & Sons Hardware Store on Albany Street. It was a warm night, and Abigale looked forward to removing her corset and climbing beneath a set of cool sheets. Just the thought of it elicited another yawn. She made her way into the apartment proper, her lamp leading the way, and was unsurprised to find Mouse curled up on the edge of her bed, purring gently to himself.

Mouse was not, in fact, anything of the sort. He was a rather odd breed of cat, the likes of which Abigale had never seen before, nor since. He’d moved in pretty much at the same time she had, and once in, he was going nowhere. Abigale loved him too much. It was always nice to return home from work—and yes, if she forgot all about the criminal aspect of it and the fact that she hadn’t exactly earned it, it was still work—to a friendly face, and that night was no exception.

“Can see you’ve been keeping yourself busy,” she said, stepping around the bed and placing the gas lamp down on her dresser. Mouse didn’t flinch. Simply purred louder. Abigale was positive she felt the floorboards tremble. “Miss me?”

Mouse mewled. It was neither a yes or no, but it was good enough for Abigale.

Once she untied her corset, the world seemed a better place. She still hadn’t become accustomed Mouse watching her so intently while she undressed, but if she didn’t look at him directly, she found it didn’t matter as much. Besides, he was a cat, and cats didn’t go off and tell their cat friends about the size of its owner’s—

Just then, the telephone rang. After a moment of concentrated panic, Abigale composed herself and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Just making sure you went straight home,” Octavius said. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

Abigale sighed and rolled her eyes simultaneously. The combination made her dizzy. “What did you think I was going to do? It’s a little late to start on the bank tonight.”

“Goodnight, Abigale,” he said.

A click suggested that, if Abigale continued the conversation, it would have only been with herself, and she hung up, too. It was nice that he thought enough of her to check she’d arrived home safely, without further adventure or misadventure, and only slightly creepy. Then again, he was the closest thing she had to family, and she to him. He was the crazy uncle that the rest of the family avoided; the eccentric old man whose contraptions were nothing more than a topic of ridicule around the dinner table; the second-uncle-twice-removed that occasionally—only very occasionally—accidentally blew something up. He was all of those things and more, and Abigale loved him for it.

She turned the gas lamp valve, casting the room into exquisite darkness. At the foot of the bed, Mouse continued to purr, as was his wont, and Abigale slipped between the sheets with all the grace and proficiency of a drunken sailor. The bed wasn’t the comfiest she had ever slept in, but it was hers, and her body moulded into it almost immediately.

It would be a while before she succumbed to a much-needed slumber. At least she thought it would, but there must have been something rhythmic about Mouse’s purr that sent her into a peaceful limbo between consciousness and oblivion. A minute later, she was freefalling, plunging headlong into a dream world where she could get shot at and survive even if the bullet hit its mark. A place where the treasures were priceless and ubiquitous, where nothing, nothing at all, could trouble her.

3

Detective John Wesley Alcorn was not impressed. In fact, he was so unimpressed that it took everything he had not to start screaming at the team of constables messing up his crime scene. A man as tall as he was wide, Alcorn could clear a room with an austere grunt. He hadn’t earned the nickname Brass Knuckles by diplomatically conversing with his suspects, or witnesses, or innocent bystanders, for that matter. Wearing a long, black frock coat, he was certainly the best-dressed in the room, but then again, the competition was scant. The second best dressed person in the room was Harriett Haversham, and she was wearing what appeared to be a pair of flowery curtains.

“Anyone who isn’t me, or Miss Haversham,” Alcorn said. “There’s a door at the front of this room. I expect you to use it.”

The constables, of whom there were seven, exchanged glances. None of them promptly moved, which was odd as Alcorn was almost certain he hadn’t stuttered. In the corner, Harriet Haversham continued to sob. It was, Alcorn thought, very distracting.

“One…two…three…” The count wasn’t subtle, but it had the desired effect. Half of Cloak Lane’s constabulary ambled toward the door, muttering inaudibly to one another. Alcorn was sure he heard the words “who”, “think”, and “is” and managed to fill in the gaps accordingly. He wasn’t liked, but then again, he wasn’t there to be liked. Still, it would have been nice to be respected.

“Close the door behind you,” Alcorn told the last constable, who turned and performed a sardonic salute. If Alcorn had been in the mood, he would have taken the insolent rozzer outside and schooled him in the ways of the boot, and Alcorn had inexplicably large boots. When the door shut, he turned to Harriett Haversham and forced a smile. It wasn’t convincing, but Alcorn didn’t care.

“I told you everything I know,” Harriett said, dabbing at her eyes with a wholly dry handkerchief. Alcorn had seen tears like hers before. She was no more crying than he was dancing around on one leg.

“And I listened,” Alcorn said, taking a step closer. “According to you, there was a girl, no older than twenty, with,” he checked the notepad in his hand, “hair as red as a baboon’s derriere.”

“Thasright,” Harriett said, somehow condensing the two words into one. “Caught her red handed, so I did.”

Alcorn glanced around at the all but devastated shop. Shattered glass covered every spare inch of the floor, and splinters of dark wood jutted dangerously outwards, an accident waiting to happen.

“Yes, you caught her very well indeed,” he said. He crouched, picked up the broken exoskeleton of a clockwork something-or-other. It was difficult to tell what it had been, but there were many legs. Despite the damage, Alcorn knew whose handiwork it was. There was only one person capable of building such hellish contraptions.

“Like I told you,” Harriett said, giving up on the crying thing for the time being. It wasn’t working, anyway. “I was attacked by those three little coves. She let ‘em in, and they came at me like little bleedin’ demons.”

Alcorn straightened, placed the destroyed creature upon the only display cabinet in the room that hadn’t been shot out. “And you decided to start plugging them with bullets,” he said. He gestured to the wrecked shop—her livelihood. “And anything else that wasn’t moving, by the looks of it.”

If she was offended, she didn’t show it. “I’ve got a license for the gun,” she said. “All above board and whatnot. I’ve done nothing wrong here. Just trying to protect my business is all.”

Assessing the damage one last time, the irony was not lost on Alcorn. “Let me give you a better description of the girl,” he said. “The one I believe you saw tonight.” He took a few paces forward, glass crunching beneath his giant boots. It was a horrific sound, like a horse eating crackling. “I’d say she was around five-foot-four, very sprightly. If a good gust of wind got up outside, she’d probably have to push back against it to stay rooted.” He paused, considered, and then continued. “You were right about her hair. It is very red. I should imagine that, perched upon her head, was a tiny bowler. It’s there for decorative purposes only. Light brown. She was wearing a dark brown corset, pulled tight, tight enough to push her…well, let’s just say it was pulled nice and tight. Her trousers were tight, earthy, and even though she was wearing boots, she could back flip her way across the room with all the grace of a ballerina. A monovision eyeglass covered her right eye, and even though her face was partly concealed, you would be doing her a disservice if you didn’t think her beautiful.” He balled his hand into a fist and coughed into it. “So you tell me, Miss Haversham. Was that the lady you saw here tonight?”

Harriett grunted. “Well, she wasn’t too beautiful when she was dodging my bullets,” she said, “but, yes, that sounds like the tea leaf to me.” She lit a pipe, exhaled a plume of blue-grey smoke. “Sounds like you know who you’re looking for,” she said. “I expect I’ll have my jewellery back by the end of the week.”

Alcorn tried his best not to laugh. “Yes, well, I would suggest you don’t hold that rancid breath of yours.”

Harriett didn’t flinch at the obvious affront.

“The person responsible for this is not just some scallywag. She’s an expert in theft, lock picking, safe breaking, pickpocketing, and police evading.”

Why did it sound as if he was secretly impressed? Perhaps he was. Abigale Egars was his Moriarty. He’d been seeking her for three years, over fifty capers, and was no closer to catching her. That told him something and not just that he needed to try harder.

It told him she was one of the greatest—if not the best—thieves of the century.

Harriett Haversham shook her head. It wasn’t a pretty head when it was still, but when it was moving it looked like something that had crawled up from the depths of hell. “So that’s it, then?” she said, anxiously chewing the tip of her pipe. “Call yourself a copper. I’d have had more luck sending for the Porter Boys.”

Trevor and William Porter were two of the filthiest rogues in London, and already in Alcorn’s pocket. They were wanted in connection with so many crimes that Alcorn had an entire drawer dedicated to them. However, they were more useful to him out there in the city. They had also always been willing—with a little incentive, of course—to turn in a scoundrel, or at least jab a dirty finger in the direction Alcorn could find one. If the Porter Boys knew anything about Abigale Egars’ whereabouts, which he highly doubted, they would have imparted the information by now.

“This investigation is far from over, Miss Haversham,” he said, stepping toward the door. He could see the constables milling around outside like lost and confused puppies. “Let the coppers come back in here and gather the evidence. I’m going to get a head start.” With that, he opened the door and walked through it.

“Idiot,” Harriett muttered.

4

The dream took a very strange turn for the worse. One minute Abigale was running through a field, surrounded by beautiful nature and the distant sound of church bells. In the next, she was lying on a bed in some godforsaken place, being poked and prodded at by a man that clearly didn’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t that the change in tone of her reverie was so sudden, but that it was more vivid. She could almost smell the sweat on the man looming over her, could see each individual hair of his unkempt moustache, and the lip he kept biting as he went about whatever he was doing to her.

No matter how much she struggled, movement was out of the question. It was obviously one of those dreams. She might as well just lie there and wait for it to pass, lest she wake up with a stiff neck and an unbearably sore spine. So, that’s what she did. She lay still, watching the man’s intense expression alter as he worked above her. He was doing something to her head, but apart from the odd glint of steel, the occasional glimpse of a thingamabob, she had no clue what was going on up there.

Strange, she thought, once again willing herself to wake. It wasn’t happening, not yet anyway. She relaxed again, focused on the face of the mystery sawbones. He looked familiar, but then he would, wouldn’t he? He was probably an amalgamation of several people she had met the previous day. The mind is often a wondrous thing, with the propensity to play tricks on a person at any given moment. The dream was a rather peculiar trick, and one that unsettled her, perhaps more than it should have.

She watched as the man threaded a needle, and with a cock of the head, went about stitching her up. She didn’t feel anything. It was, after all, just a dream, but there was a strange tugging sensation on the left side of her head, one that perplexed her. It was so authentic. She should feel each pull through of the thread, she should smell the subtle hint of some chemical, and all of a sudden, her scalp began to sting a little.

Wake.

Wake…

“Ms. Egars, I suggest you calm down for the remainder of this procedure,” a voice said.

It wasn’t the man standing over her that spoke. He was too busy concentrating on the job at hand. No, the voice was sonorous, coming from somewhere to her right, though she couldn’t move to face its source.

She managed to make a noise in her throat, but that’s all it was, a noise—and not a very nice one at that.

“It will all be over in a moment, and then we can talk,” said the bodiless voice.

For the briefest of moments, Abigale panicked. Willing herself awake, giving it everything she had—which usually worked—she told herself that she was still at home in bed, with Mouse curled up somewhere down by her feet.

“You’re going to have to give her more Laudanum,” the voice said. “She’s starting to get a little feisty.”

“As you wish, Sir,” the man with the thread said.

He must have placed the needle down, for he disappeared momentarily. Abigale never saw him return. All she saw was the orange tinge on the ceiling and the effects of a flickering flame nearby. Then there was darkness.

She expected to wake shortly after, and when she did, there was…

*

An office. The kind of place people usually found themselves in if they were in trouble or about to inherit a lot of money. Abigale doubted it was the latter. A large desk stood in front of her, one of the biggest she’d ever seen. A large golden globe was its centrepiece. From her position, she could make out a few of the continents, but none of the singular countries. The faint smell of something nutty drifted across her nostrils, and for a moment, she thought she might wretch. She swallowed it down with very little saliva and fixed her gaze on the shape behind the desk.

A man, or the shape of one, seemed to lean in. In his hand was a glass of something, perhaps the source of the strange nuttiness. Suddenly, the man cleared his throat. Abigale started, and it was then that she realised she couldn’t move.

Still dreaming?

She couldn’t tell. She was dressed, though, which was a relief. If it wasn’t a dream, clothes, she thought, would come in very handy indeed. Her head buzzed, and there was something strange going on with her limbs—Pins and needles?—which made her question whether she had been dreaming to begin with. Either way, she felt helpless.

“Glad you could join us,” the man said.

It was the voice she had heard earlier, the one without a tangible body. Not that she was faced with it, she didn’t like it one bit.

“Ms. Egars…can I call you Abigale?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, which was good. Abigale wasn’t certain she could speak yet.

“Abigale, my name is Mordecai Pick. I’m not sure whether you’ve heard of me, though a lot of people have.”

“I…I know you,” Abigale just about managed. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue stuck to her palate, rendering her words a muddle of clicks. “You…The Guild.” She knew what she wanted to say, but it wouldn’t come, not just yet.

Mordecai placed his glass down upon a stack of papers and stood, clapping his hands together enthusiastically. “Fantastic,” he said. “Well, that’s saved a lot of boring nonsense. You have no idea how much I hate the sound of my own voice.”

Abigale’s head rolled back. For a split-second, she thought she was going to fall unconscious again, but she managed to compose herself. She had to. Something very wrong was happening to her. It would do her no good to miss it.

“What is…this?” she said. She was standing, she realised, tied to a board as if she were one of those scantily clad women whose job it was to remain very still lest they take a knife to the face. Abigale was more than a little relieved to see that Mordecai didn’t have any knives on his desk.

“Well, this is necessary,” Mordecai said. “Completely, utterly, inevitably necessary. I’m afraid that we might have gone a little over the top with our methods, but it’s of the utmost importance that we have your full cooperation in this matter.” He paused, stepping closer to Abigale. The nutty scent intensified, and Abigale held her breath in an attempt to prevent soiling Mordecai Pick’s luscious carpet.

“Kidnapped…” Abigale said. It was a word, and the one that she’d aimed for, which was a bonus.

“Well, if you’re going to get technical, I suppose so,” Mordecai grinned.

Through the gloom of the office, she saw his face clearly for the first time. He was handsome—If you liked that sort of thing—and his beard was neatly trimmed and darker than night. He was a lot younger than Abigale had anticipated, but then again, she’d never expected to meet the commander of The Guild face-to-face. That usually only happened if you were going to die, or find yourself on the wrong end of an exile.

“We would have approached you in a more gentlemanly fashion if we’d thought for one moment that you would agree to our proposition without an extra…incentive.”

Abigale didn’t like that word. It meant they had something on her. Incentive could usually be translated as “article of blackmail that will be of incalculable interest to the local constabulary”. Funny, she’d never had The Guild down as blackmailers. They were the scum of the city, as corrupt as the government, but extortion? Not likely.

“We require your skills to acquire some very important artefacts.” Mordecai walked the length of the room and glanced out of the large window there, his hands laced behind his back. “I’m not talking about a few jewels and a picture of some old biddy with a pearl earring. This is not some small heist that you can just waltz into on a quiet afternoon. I’m talking about three of the most secure museums in the world.” He turned and pointed to the globe on his desk as if Abigale didn’t know what the world looked like.

“How about…you let me go…and I won’t tell anyone…this happened?” It was a good counteroffer as far as she was concerned, but for some strange reason, she didn’t think Mordecai pick would go in for it.

He snorted. “Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, Abigale. We’ve taken special measures to ensure that you take on this little job for us, which really leaves you with no option.”

Suddenly, she was hit by a strange sensation at the top of her head. A slight stabbing pain, almost as if someone was pulling out individual hairs. Mordecai must have seen her wince, for he began to laugh.

“Yes, the sedative is starting to wear off. You might feel a little discomfort for the next couple of hours, but that should fade. Werner will give you something to take the edge off.” He gestured to a man, the moustachioed surgeon of her dreams, standing to the side of the room.

Suddenly, Abigale realised how bad things were.

“What have you done to me?” she said. It wasn’t quite a scream, but it had the potential to turn into one, should she try again.

Mordecai held both hands out in a placatory manner. His smile never faltered, though, which unsettled Abigale further. Whatever this was, it had been planned to within an inch of its life.

“No harm will come to you if you succeed in retrieving the triptych,” he said, a little too smugly for Abigale’s liking. “And I can assure you that this was the best way to go about it. Werner over there suggested abducting Octavius, but I told him that you would not be able to concentrate on the task if your precious tinkerer was in our custody.”

Raw anger surged through Abigale. She pushed herself back against the board to which she was bound. The cords of her neck stood out. “You don’t touch him!” she said. “You don’t—”

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” Mordecai said. For once, the smile dropped from his face. “No one is going to hurt Mr. Knight, you have my word, but that’s not what should be concerning you right now. That pain at the top of your head is a healing scar. You see, Werner over there is not as great as your Octavius Knight. He has, however, implanted a small device that will affect you somewhat terminally should you disagree with our proposal.”

The pain deepened. Someone was now yanking her hair out by the handful, or so it seemed. Through gritted teeth, Abigale said, “What have you done to me? What have you put in my head?”

“It’s a clockwork device,” the one called Werner said, somewhat proudly.

It went without saying that Abigale didn’t like him.

“Quite intricate, really, in that it will only dispense the poison at a yet to be arranged time in the near future, or if you should find yourself off course.” He smiled.

Mordecai smiled.

Abigale, unsurprisingly, didn’t.

“Get it out of me,” she said, calmly. “Take it out of me right now.” The pain was immense, but she thought she could cope. The knowledge that there was, somewhere inside her head, a device created to distribute poison directly into her system, well, that concerned her.

“Do we have a deal?” Mordecai said. “You acquire this triptych for us, we remove the device. It’s really rather simple.”

“Simply crazy,” Abigale said. “I’m not stealing anything for you, or The Guild. And your little minion over there better get out his needle and thread again.”

Werner looked nervously toward his superior. It was almost as if they hadn’t expected such resilience. It just proved how little research they had done. Abigale was not one to lie down and take a kicking, especially not from a coalition of jumped-up aristocrats with too much spare time on their hands.

“Fine,” Mordecai said, with a finality that alarmed Abigale. “Werner, can the device be set to introduce the poison immediately?”

Werner nodded. “Whenever you want, sir.”

“Shame,” Mordecai said. “I heard she was the best thief in England.”

“The world, sir,” Werner corrected.

“Yes, well, we’ll have to find the second best. Get her out of my sight and… Well, make sure that venomous little contraption of yours actually works.”

Werner moved across the office. He was almost serpentine, and if it was some sort of bluff, nothing about his mannerisms suggested so.

Abigale didn’t know what the hell she was doing, if not stalling for time. “Wait,” she said. “Look, if you take this thing out of my head and pay me a good fee, I’ll get your damn cryptic.”

“Triptych,” Mordecai corrected. “And that’s a no. Unfortunately, time is of the essence in this matter. I’m sure if you knew what it was you were going after, you would waive your fee.”

Highly doubt that, Abigale thought.

“No, we’ll find someone else to do the job. Werner?”

The weasel-like little shit moved behind her and began to wheel her from the room. The plank she was strapped to was sitting atop castors. And off she went, to her death, no judge, no jury, and her executioner looked like a silly caricature of himself.

“All right, I’ll do it!” Where the hell did that come from? Surely, she’d meant to say, “Go to hell, the both of you.”

Mordecai Pick spun from the window, his face all lit up like a gas lamp. He held his hands out palm up. “This is wonderful news, Abigale. What made you change your mind? Was it the thought of dying? The idea of poison running through your bloodstream and killing you almost instantaneously?”

“Not instantaneously,” Werner amended. “It would take up to thirty minutes for her to die. Before that, there would agonising pain as her innards liquefied and her vital organs shut down.”

“Yeah, that’s what changed my mind,” Abigale said. “Look, I’ll steal whatever you want me to. Just get me off this damn board. And give me something for this headache.”

Mordecai looked beyond himself with joy. As Werner began to untie her, she toyed with the idea of kicking backwards, knocking the little sawbones off his feet. Then it would just be her and Mordecai, a fight that she was certain she could win. But the pain inside her head reminded her that anyone could trigger the device. The Guild was huge. Even if she killed both men in the room, she wouldn’t be guaranteed that others weren’t aware of the predicament. Anyone could flip the switch that could kill her, and from what she’d gathered, she didn’t need to be anywhere in the vicinity for it to activate. She could be halfway across the country, the world, and all of a sudden…lights out.

“Take a seat, Abigale,” Mordecai said, signalling to a chair opposite. “Werner, fetch Ms. Egars something for the pain.”

The surgeon bowed before hurrying from the room. The speed with which he left suggested he was afraid of missing something. Abigale guessed she wouldn’t have to wait long for her painkillers.

“So what is all this about?” Abigale said, relaxing into the chair and pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger. The light streaming in through the window was enough to blind her. At least she was certain that Mordecai Pick wasn’t a vampire, as the rumour going around London insinuated. “I mean, this is a little low, even for The Guild.”

Mordecai lit a cigar, turned it slowly in his mouth. He considered Abigale silently for a moment as if she was a long lost daughter, and he was searching for the right words to reintroduce himself. After a while, he said, “Do you believe in magic, Abigale?” He shifted in his seat, causing the leather to creak beneath him.

Abigale snorted. It hurt her head, and she made a mental note not to do it again. “I believe in the power of illusion,” she said. “Smoke and mirrors, misdirection, pick a card, any card…”

“What if I told you magic, real magic, existed?” His eyebrows knitted together. “That this little world of ours has been harbouring wizards and necromancers since the beginning of time?”

“I’d say somebody has been topping off your cigars with something highly illegal.” She hoped he was testing her for some reason. She wasn’t prepared for something of this magnitude. “Aren’t wizards just fantasy? You know? Merlin? Big, long beard you could choke a donkey with? Bit of tree trunk, wave it around, and say something in Latin? Poof, you’ve got yourself a frog.”

Mordecai rolled his eyes. “Yes, that’s what the uninformed believe, but wizards seldom transform people into frogs. In fact, they’re more likely to just turn you inside out.” He chewed on the end of his cigar for a moment, watching Abigale as she tried to digest his words, as unbelievable as they were.

“So, you’re saying that magic is real? That there are actual wizards out there, and if you’re not careful, they’ll turn your innards into outards?” It sounded ridiculous, and yet Abigale’s interest was piqued, and she wondered what did any of it have to do with her, or The Guild. The pain in her head wasn’t getting any better, but for the time being, she pushed it aside.

Mordecai leaned forward. Abigale couldn’t help but notice he had heterochromia iridis, causing him to have one azure eye and one russet. It was unsettling, and once she’d seen it, she couldn’t look away.

“A wizard will do anything in its power to become more formidable. The more potent their magic, the more dangerous they become. Think of it as dilution. A wizard, to begin with, is a thinned down version of what it’s capable of. The more they learn, the stronger they become. Add more focus, more intensity, and before you know it, you’ve got yourself one hell of a powerful being.”

“Like Merlin?”

“Can we just get past Merlin for the time being? He was a hack, barely able to wipe his own…” He trailed off, and when he next spoke, it was with controlled assuredness. “A weak wizard falls by the wayside, but a powerful one can do anything. The Guild has been aware of magic, in all its forms, for centuries. We’ve crossed paths with many wizards in that time. Until now, we’ve successfully, managed to keep them at bay with sheer force and by outnumbering them a hundred-to-one.”

That made sense. The Guild was not an organisation you’d want to be on the wrong side of, whether you knew a few magic tricks or not. Who knew what they were capable of?

“So what does this have to do with me?” Abigale said. “And why are you telling me this?”

Mordecai grunted. “Unfortunately, it has been brought to our attention that the wizards are planning something big, something that will change this little world of ours forever, and not in a good way.”

He sighed and Abigale could see he was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’d aged since the conversation began a few minutes before.

“The three artefacts we intend for you to steal are more than just ancient fancies. They are the final parts of an extremely important and intricate puzzle, a puzzle that the wizards are close to solving. We cannot let that happen.”

Abigale shook her head. It was all a little far-fetched. As much as she loved a good story, she didn’t know how much of what he was telling her could be true. “So that’s why you dragged me from my bed and implanted a clockwork poisoner in my head? Because you want…. No, need me to help? Have you ever thought about counselling?”

“You need incentive,” Mordecai said. “And we need those artefacts before the wizards figure out where they are, which they are close to doing. We cannot fail. You cannot fail.”

“So threatening me with poison is supposed to make me more effective?” Abigale didn’t quite understand the logic.

“We know how good you are,” he said. “And we know that you will find it difficult to believe us. What’s to say that as soon as you leave here that you don’t go to the nearest station? Head off to greener pastures, beyond London? We need you to remain focused on the task at hand, at least for the next few days. When you return with the triptych, Werner will remove the device from your head, and you can go back to stealing trinkets from two-bit jewellers.”

“And what are you going to do with the artefacts?” She was getting ahead of herself. She didn’t even know what they were, where they were, how she would get them, or if it was even possible.

“They will be destroyed,” he said, with a decisiveness that caused gooseflesh to rise on the nape of Abigale’s neck. “These are the final pieces. Without them, the wizards will remain weak, in our pockets.”

“And with them?” Abigale said, once again getting ahead of herself. Patience had never been her forte.

“Well, it’s not something that we’ve entertained, but let us say that you, your precious tinkerer, and everyone you’ve ever known will become nothing more than pets to them. The necromancers will be able to summon the most powerful demons that have ever existed, and life on Earth will suffer in the most horrific way imaginable.”

He leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked, and Abigale exhaled a long, weary breath. Lacing his fingers, Mordecai looked like someone about to close an important business meeting, not someone that had just told a young girl the world was about to end. Abigale hated him for it.

She was about to speak, though Lord knows what she was going to say, when the door to the office flew open and Werner came through it. He quickly covered the space between the door and the desk. Abigale saw the glass jar in one hand and the syringe in the other, and remembered that she was about to receive something for the pain.

“So now you know why we’ve been so forceful,” Mordecai said.

Werner was already preparing the shot, flicking the needle with a trembling finger. Abigale was a little concerned with the man’s unsteadiness, and the fact that he was the one who had implanted the device in her head…with those nervous digits.

“Does she know everything?” Werner said, stepping around Abigale and speaking about her as is she wasn’t even present.

Mordecai nodded. “And I believe she will do what is right.”

Abigale felt a hand on her shoulder, and then a sharp sting to the right side of her neck as Werner plunged the needle deep and forceful into her flesh.

“Get some rest, Abigale,” Mordecai said, but he was already fading, blurring out of existence like a mirage in the desert.

Abigale mumbled something incoherent, and then the darkness enveloped her one last time.

5

“It’s a little early in the morning for jokes, isn’t it?” Inquisitor Lazarus Gurd hadn’t even stood when Alcorn appeared in his office a moment earlier, and he had no intentions of getting to his feet.

A small, wiry man with silver hair and spectacles, the Inquisitor’s appearance betrayed his absolute dominance. He was not a man with whom you messed unless you liked the inside of a prison cell, and Alcorn knew he was pressing his luck just by being there. Gurd disliked him at the best of times.

“You expect me to arm you?” He emphasised the last word to show how much the request had offended him.

“I’m this close,” Alcorn said, creating a minute space between his thumb and fingertip. “You know how dangerous she is, and now she’s got these little contraptions running around with her. I’m not going after her half-cocked.”

Gurd smiled. It wasn’t pretty, nor had he intended it to be. “You’ve been that close since you waltzed into my station three years ago. If I remember correctly, you almost had her then, too. ‘In a cell by the end of the month,’ I believe you said.” He shrugged. “That girl has spent less time in gaol than Sister McPhee over at the nunnery.”

Alcorn shifted from one foot to the other, nervously adjusting his coat. “I know, but I believe she is about to make a huge error,” he said. “I can feel it. She almost got her head blown off last night. That’s never happened before. She’s slipping, Sir, and I’m going to be there when she does.”

“And when she does, you want to be able to shoot her?” Gurd’s expression was one of disgust, as if he’d swallowed something that he knew would eventually sprout inside of him.

“Not shoot her,” Alcorn said. “But we don’t know what little toys her tinkerer has furnished her with. I don’t want to find myself faced with her, only to have some mechanical cockroach crawl up my arse.” The thought made him shudder. Whatever the automatons had been the previous night, Harriett Haversham had blown them away. Guns worked against them, and therefore, he wanted a gun, preferably a big one with two barrels.

“It’s not policy to hand out firearms to every Tom, Dick, or Harry that requests one,” Gurd said. “And I’ve made it my policy not to ever give you one, just on general principle.” Once again, he emphasised the ‘you’.

Alcorn winced.

“You’ve got your truncheon, haven’t you?”

Alcorn nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know how much use a whacking stick is going to be when I’m covered in hungry clockwork mice.”

“Well, let’s hope you don’t have to find out,” Gurd said, smiling. He pushed the brass spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. “Now, get out of my office before I have to make a new policy, one involving you and these handcuffs.” He gestured to a set of hand-shackles sitting upon his desk.

Realising he was wasting his time, Alcorn turned and made his way out of the office. He returned to his desk and slumped into the chair there. After a quick check around the room to make sure no one was looking, he unlocked the second drawer down and pulled out his father’s double-barrel 1866 Derringer. A relatively small pistol, it was prettier than any weapon ought to be thanks to its brass construction and white composite grips. The whole point in going to Inquisitor Gurd, first and foremost, had been to attain a pistol legally, but since he’d been declined, there was nothing else for it.

He slipped the pistol into his coat pocket, along with a box of .41s, and closed the drawer, making sure to lock it.

“I’m coming for you, Abigale Egars,” he said, leaning back in his chair. It was going to be a good day. A successful day. He could feel it in his bones.

6

Abigale woke with a start to find she was still dressed in the clothes she had removed before climbing into bed. Then it all came flooding back, and the dull ache beneath her hair threatened to send her spiralling toward insanity. She sat bolt upright. At the bottom of the bed, Mouse stirred. There was nothing in his languid movements that suggested anything untoward had happened, but she knew it had.

She climbed from the bed, steadying herself on the dresser. Sunlight poured in through the large window at the edge of the room. It hurt to look at, and so Abigale turned her back on it as if it had offended her in some way.

Mordecai…

Wizards…

Magic…

Werner…

Abigale dropped to her knees, allowing her head to brush against the cold, hard wood of her dresser’s leg. Her head hurt, though not as much as she’d expected. She reached up, and with a trembling hand, she fingered the scar in the bald patch Werner had created before surgery. It was about an inch long, nothing that wouldn’t heal, given time. Her hair would grow back to conceal it, but aesthetics were the least of her worries.

There was poison in there. Something nasty that would cause her an agonising death, and all they had to do was activate it. Was it on a timer? Was there a big red button in Mordecai Pick’s office that, when pushed, would set the whole thing in motion? Abigale listened carefully, but if the clockwork device was ticking, she couldn’t hear it. She’d never felt so violated in her entire life.

“Glad none of this is affecting you,” she told Mouse, who simply rolled over onto his side and began to purr. She waited for the nausea to subside before climbing back to her feet.

That was when she saw the wooden box sitting upon her dresser. Carved onto its lid was the word, Triptych, nothing more. She examined it fastidiously while she decided what to do next. Mordecai had made it clear that time was of the essence, but for Abigale, it was the one thing that no longer mattered. If any of it was real, which she was certain it was, it would take as long as it took to accept. No one wants to believe in wizards, magic, or things that go bump in the night and try to eat you when your back’s turned. Abigale had just discovered that they were all real, tangible monsters that were trying to take over the world.

Forgive me while I take a moment…

She warily removed the box’s lid and took a step back, as if that would somehow make a difference if there should be a bomb contained within. When nothing exploded, she edged forward again. The box was filled with papers. Abigale audibly sighed. From what she knew, papers were not known for their explosiveness, especially not ones with such conspicuous handwriting scrawled upon them. For all of Mordecai Pick’s faults, Abigale couldn’t accuse him of being untidy. The calligraphy was stunning. On the visible top page, it said:

Abigale Egars—Please Read Carefully!

She removed the papers from the box and placed them down. She was surprised to find a bag of money, previously hidden by the papers, and a ticket for something called Poseidon’s Gale. The ticket was dated the fourteenth of August. That was only a few days away, provided only one night had passed. She didn’t feel like she had excessively slept, but for all she knew, she’d been out of action for a week. A month, even. No, The Guild had stressed the importance of her mission. They wouldn’t allow her to oversleep.

The shrill ring of the telephone made the sharp pain in Abigale’s scalp return, and she quickly snatched up the receiver to stop the dratted noise. “Hello?” she said, closing her eyes.

“Ah, so you’re up.”

It was Octavius. Of course it was. He was the only person with her number, and at the moment, that was one too many.

“I need you to meet me this afternoon to discuss the Threadneedle Street job. There are a few things we need to—”

“Octavius, you need to help me!” She sounded like some petrified child lost in a store, which hadn’t been her intention. She hated her voice like that, but it was all that would come out.

“What is it?” he said, suddenly concerned.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up, put the papers back in the box, fixed the small brown bowler to her head—thankfully it covered the patch where the hair had been shorn and replaced by an unsightly scar—and rushed out into morning time London, doing everything in her power not to lose her mind.

*

The table was hard and uncomfortable, and as Abigale lay there, with Octavius leaning over, she was reminded of Werner and how she had unfortunately awakened during the initial procedure. Even with a friendly face looming over her, she was frightened. The thing he was holding did nothing to settle her nerves. It looked like some sort of brush, but the lustrous cobalt light issuing from its bristles suggested otherwise—.

He deliberately ran the end of the device across her entire scalp, making sure not to miss even an inch. Abigale couldn’t, for the life of her, fathom why he was cheerily humming as he worked. Was this not a dire situation? Certainly, she thought, dire enough to warrant silence, instead of a jaunty little tune.

“So you had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Pick, then?” Octavius asked, sounding positively jealous.

“He’s not royalty. You do know that, don’t you?” Abigale was anxious, and it came through in her tone. “He kidnapped me in the middle of the night and planted something in my head.”

“That sounds about right. On the bright side, most people The Guild abducts from their beds don’t live to tell the tale.”

“So I’m fortunate, am I? I should be thankful?”

Octavius moved her hair to one side and ran the device beneath it. “I’m not saying you should be thankful. No one likes being kidnapped and held ransom. I’m just stating that it could be so much worse than it is.” He dropped her hair and moved on to a section beside her ear.

“Yeah, it could be worse. How, exactly? Did you know about the wizards? About the necromancers, whatever the hell they are?”

Without pause, Octavius said, “There are few who are aware of their existence, yes, and I am one of them…”

“You knew?” she gasped.

Octavius clicked his tongue, palpably annoyed with her sudden activity. She relaxed. Of course, he knew. Everyone probably knew, except for her. And why would she know? She was just a thief.

“When were you going to tell me?”

He sighed. “Never. There are certain things that most people can go their entire life without knowing, and the existence of magic and wizards is one of them. Most of them are loath to reveal themselves, anyway. Since they’ve never bothered us, we’ve never bothered them.”

“Mordecai says there is some sort of uprising planned.” Abigale blew short, red hair from her face. “If they get their hands on these three artefacts, that’s it, it’s all over.”

“Mordecai Pick is the leader of a very dubious organisation,” Octavius muttered. “I’m reluctant to believe a word that drops from his fraudulent mouth. However, wizards are known for their unquenchable thirst for power. If one of them has discovered how to get more, it’s not unfeasible that they will do everything they can to attain it.” He slipped momentarily, and the strange, glowing, brush-like device clattered against the edge of the table. “Dammit,” he grunted, and then added, “Should have enough now anyway. Your head is surprisingly small for a mammal.” He switched the contraption off and stood, arching his back until it discernibly cracked.

“Can I sit?” Abigale asked.

“I don’t know, can you?”

As she did, Octavius walked the length of his workshop, taking the broom-machine with him. Once there, he attached it to a large bronze box. Abigale had no idea what he was doing, but she found it fascinating all the same. He pushed a lever on the side of the box and it whirred and chirruped into life.

“Right, let’s see what we’re dealing with.” Octavius lit his pipe and pulled his machinist goggles down over his eyes. After a few seconds of tumultuous racket, a thin slice of steel appeared from beneath the box. Octavius pulled on a pair of gloves and lifted the steel, took it over to a bucket of water, and dipped it for a few seconds, where it hissed and smoked.

“What is it?” Abigale asked.

“It’s a bucket of water. Multifunctional, really.”

Abigale rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in the mood for his ridiculous banter, not then, maybe never again.

He pulled the steel slice from the water and allowed it to drip-dry for a moment, whistling a jaunty tune while he waited. Abigale could have strangled him. Why was it that nothing ever seemed to affect him? Life was just one big fascinating game to him. He was as bad as Mordecai Pick. Well, perhaps not that bad, but most definitely in the same league.

“Okay, that should do it,” he said, carrying the steel over to the table.

The gas lamp was bright enough to see by. It didn’t help Abigale, though, who had no idea what it was she was looking at. Upon the sheet was an array of shapes. She could see one or two small cogs inscribed there, but apart from that, it was incredibly understated.

Somehow, Octavius saw something that she didn’t, and mumbled and nodded incoherently to himself for a few seconds. Abigale watched in despair, willing him to say something in English, something that would comfort her.

“Yeah, it’s not coming out,” he finally said.

That wasn’t what she’d expected. “What?”

He jabbed a finger at one of the small cogs on the blurry rendition. “You see that?”

Abigale nodded.

“Well, that’s what we like to call a failsafe. This whole device is tamperproof. You want it away from the rest of your body without it going off, you’ll have to chop your head off.” He sucked thoughtfully on his pipe. “Of course, that would also kill you, and I highly oppose such brutality.”

Abigale was dumfounded. She just stared at him, incredulous and unable to speak. He should have been telling her to lie down, that it would all be over in a moment, and would she like to keep it as a souvenir. Instead, he was telling her it couldn’t be removed, that he was stumped, and that she could always decapitate herself.

“So what do I do?” she asked, though her voice was broken and quavering. It didn’t sound like her, and once again, she hated herself for it.

Octavius removed his gloves and sighed. “There’s only one way to get that out of you,” he said. He gestured to the wooden box on the floor beside the table. “Let’s get to work.”

*

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Abigale said, separating the pages and spreading them across the desk so that each one was visible. There was so much to look at, so much to take in, it hurt her eyes and head simultaneously. “Look at all this. How long’s he been planning this for?” Her guess was quite a bloody while, but now the wizards were closing in, and time was of the essence. And Mordecai had passed the buck, and it was suddenly her under pressure.

Thanks very much, Mordecai, you absolute shit!

“This is all nonsense,” Octavius said as he browsed the pages. “Lots of detail about nothing. Mordecai Pick obviously has a lot of spare time on his hands.”

When he’s not making people disappear and swallowing up smaller organisations like some untamed beast.

“When have you ever needed to know how many guards would be working on a particular night?” He pointed to one of the pages.

“Well…never,” she said, although it would be useful information now and then. To her, one guard was as bad as twenty. Either way she had to take someone down.

“Okay, so this looks like your first objective.” He brushed a rheumy, liver-spotted hand over a single page. Abigale moved in closer to be able to read Mordecai’s exquisite handwriting.

“The Victoria and Albert Museum,” Abigale said. “Oh, goodie. Right on our doorstep.”

Well, technically, it was five miles away, but it was close enough to be under John Wesley Alcorn’s jurisdiction, and that was something she could do without. He’d come close to catching her on a couple of occasions, but she’d always managed to escape by the skin of her teeth. Something like this, though, a distinguished museum housing some of the world’s greatest antiquities, was dangerous.

Very dangerous.

“Bansei,” Abigale said.

“Bless you,” Octavius replied.

“No, it’s some sort of vase. Look. Thirteenth Century, Southern Song Dynasty.” She pointed at the illustration, which didn’t look anything special to her. It had ceramic handles on either side of a long, slender neck. To be truthful, Abigale didn’t know how it had lasted all those years without shattering. “If that’s part of this triptych, I look forward to seeing items two and three.” Probably a dusty old saucer and a wooden spoon, the way things were going.

“It’s not the vase,” Octavius said. “It’s what’s inside. According to this, the base is hollow. Whatever Mordecai wants, and what the wizards are after, it’s at the bottom of ‘Bansei’.”

Abigale wished she’d had a chance to ask exactly what the pieces of the puzzle looked like. If Werner hadn’t stuck her with that damned needle so abruptly, she might have more of an idea what she was going for. Still, if everything went to plan, she would find out soon enough.

“What’s next?” she said, scouring the spread pages, ignoring the superfluous information.

Octavius held up the brown ticket That read, ‘Admit one: Poseidon’s Gale.’ “Have you ever been across the ocean?” He knew she hadn’t. He also knew it would excite her more than a little.

“A dirigible?” she said. Her heart pounded inside her chest as the thrill of a potential adventure washed over her.

“First class to Saint Petersburg,” Octavius said, apprehensively.

It meant he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her. She would be wholly alone in Russia. If trouble presented itself to her, he would be powerless, and she could tell the thought perturbed him. Sure, she could look after herself—she always had—but Octavius had been her wingman, the one with the brains. Without him, she might find it difficult to adapt.

“Leaving on the fourteenth. That’s the day after tomorrow. No, this is just not possible. You’re not ready. I’m not ready…” he trailed off, clearly distressed.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said, reminding him that time was most certainly of the essence, unless she wanted to find out what clockwork-dispensed poison tasted like. “We prepare for the London job tonight. It’ll be easier to steal the vase during opening hours. Tomorrow, I’ll have crowds, people in the way.” It was true. Confusion amongst the unassuming public was a marvellous distraction. It would be much better than creeping around in the dark when guards would be at their most vigilant.

“This is not a good idea,” Octavius pressed.

He looked pensive, and Abigale found herself wanting to throw her arms around him and tell him that it was going to be okay.“Okay, so what’s in Saint Petersburg?” she said, changing the subject. It was no good dwelling on something they were powerless to change.

The tinkerer leaned in, scanning the pages for information. After a brief search, he said, “You are to pay a visit to the Hermitage Museum, where you will find a dinosaur egg from the Triassic period and belonging to a…” He very carefully enunciated the next word, which Abigale found endearing. “Chin-de-saur-us. Never heard of it.”

“How the hell did they get something inside a dinosaur egg?” It was a very good question, and once again, she wished she had more information. Damn you, Mordecai.

“Well, there are many ways in which they could have inserted something into an ancient egg. With the right tools and a little patience—”

“Okay, it doesn’t matter,” Abigale said. “So that’s two. Providing I get the vase, make it out of London and onto Poseidon’s Gale, get all the way across the ocean, where I’m to steal an egg. How big could it be, right? Then what? Where to next?”

Octavius removed his machinist goggles and began to nonchalantly clean them with his waistcoat.

Abigale sensed something was wrong; she reached out and touched his arm. He ceased cleaning his goggles momentarily and looked into her eyes. She knew what he was thinking. He worried too much about her, and right then he was petrified.

“I can do this,” she said, glaring into his face intently. “I have to. That fool Mordecai has left me no choice, so it will do us no good to stand around her pondering what-ifs.”

She was right, and she knew that he knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier. She knew he saw her as a daughter. A very crazy and slightly dangerous daughter.

“Paris,” he said.

“Paris?” She was temporarily confused, and it didn’t register straight away what her mentor was talking about. Then she said, “Oh! The third piece is in Paris?”

“The Louvre, of all places.” He pulled the goggles over his head. He seldom took them off, and when he did, it was for cleaning. He looked…odd without them. Like when a man who has had a moustache for a very long time and suddenly shaves. “The final piece is called “Wanderlust”. It’s a painting.”

Abigale glanced down at the picture. The painting depicted a sky-city. Towers stretched up to the clouds while the ground seemed to reach down to those below. One large structure stood out in the centre of the image, a gargantuan masterpiece of architecture that was something of an optical illusion. Turrets jutted up, interlacing after several storeys, twisting into one long spire that looked like a strand of thread. It was remarkable and nothing like Abigale had ever seen before.

“Wanderlust?” she said, chewing the word over. “I like that. Sounds like it’s worth a few bob.”

“Priceless,” Octavius confirmed. “Frederic Laffitte’s paintings are perhaps the most famous in France. Stealing it will most definitely substantiate the claims that you are, in fact, the greatest thief in the world.”

Smiling, Abigale said, “Sounds good to me. It’ll put an end to all those naysayers.” There were many of them out there, amateur bandits that had nowhere near her skills and portfolio, and yet, that didn’t prevent them from running around badmouthing her.

Octavius removed the bag of money from the wooden box and placed it down upon the table. “There should be enough here for your expenses,” he said, slowly and carefully counting it out. “If you find yourself in Paris looking at shoes, try not to get carried away. This is intended, one would imagine, for food and lodgings.”

“Hey, since when did I become a shoe hoarder?” She only had three pairs, not including the boots she wore when she was working.

“Yes, but you’ve never seen genuine French shoes,” Octavius said, stacking the money into a semi-neat pile. “You will have no capacity to carry unnecessary items.”

“Unless the triptych is smaller than it seems,” Abigale said. “These objects are just the vessels. You said it yourself, whatever Mordecai wants, it’s inside.”

He nodded. “Then you must get to the core of these objects and destroy the evidence.”

Was he suggesting what she thought he was? “You mean smash the vase? It’s been around since the Thirteenth Century. The dinosaur egg has been around since… Well, since dinosaurs walked the Earth…”

“All needless weight and bulk you can ill afford to transport.”

She knew he was right. He was always right. It just seemed sacrilege to destroy objects that had been around for so long, even if it was for the greater good.

“You need to study,” Octavius said, waving a gnarled and veiny hand over the papers strewn across the table. “I will build what I can, but time is limited.”

Abigale lunged for him, grabbed him around the neck and kissed him just above his beard. When she pulled away, he looked positively terrified. Creases in the corners of his eyes stretched right across to his ears. If Abigale didn’t know better, she would have said he was smiling.

They set to work.

7

The explosion wracked through The Guild headquarters with such force that three members of Mordecai Pick’s security team were instantly evaporated. When the dust settled a moment later, a large man wearing a rifleman’s coat walked slowly over the rubble. A lead in his hand finished at a brass-armoured wolf—his personal pet, Kai.

Dorian Clowes, a necromancer of some renown, did not look in the mood for games. His wolf growled, and its master released the lead. The wolf launched itself toward a suited man, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. With one snap of its gaping maw, the unfortunate man’s throat was torn away. Blood hit the wall at the edge of the room, painting it crimson, and the wolf momentarily nuzzled at the flesh at its feet before growing bored and returning to Dorian.

“Keep that thing on its lead, would you,” a beautiful woman said as she sidled up alongside the necromancer. Her hair was long, blacker than night. A dark, veiled hat covered one side of her face entirely. Her ruby-red lips gave her the appearance of some ancient vampire, but Blithe was worse than any vampire could ever hope to be.

“Yes, Mistress,” Dorian said, patting his brass-wolf on its side. “He is mostly harmless.”

Blithe nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind,” she said. “Come. I’m guessing they will be expecting us now.”

Dorian led the way, his brass-wolf loping steadily alongside him. Blithe followed, casually brushing debris from her shoulder. It had taken almost a year to find out where The Guild operated from, and they’d brought it to its knees in less than ten seconds flat.

*

Mordecai sat behind his desk, his feet up and resting next to a block of contracts he’d been working through. The explosion had surprised him, but only with its suddenness. It had always been inevitable that the wizard would track them. She always did, but it had taken a little longer than usual, and Mordecai had mistakenly started to believe they had finally given her and her cronies the slip. Someone had been complacent. He would find out who, if he survived the day.

On the other side of his office door, someone groaned, and then there was an almighty thud as if something—A limb?—had been launched in his direction.

Werner, standing at the edge of the room, shot Mordecai a nervous glance, but the big man just shrugged as if to say, “What do you want me to do about it?”

There was gunfire, another grunt, a scream that would have raised the hackles on even the most stoic of henchmen, and then the door burst from its frame in a great red conflagration of magic and fire. Mordecai didn’t flinch. He didn’t even drop his feet from the desk. There was no point. Escape was futile, and if he knew Blithe as well as he thought he did, she wasn’t there to kill him.

She was there to squeeze him for information.

Time to play dumb, he thought.

In she came, as stunning as ever, as deceiving as anyone that had ever graced the Earth. Mordecai had always seen her as a venomous snake, all pretty colours and very distracting, but deadlier than almost every other creature and liable to swallow you whole if she had half a chance. She’d brought her personal favourite with her, too, which didn’t bode well. Dorian was known for his lack of patience and love of gore. If that chainsword of his came out, it was all over. At his side was a brass-wolf. Never leave home without one.

Mordecai clapped his hands together, feigning joy. “Ah, Blithe, my dear sorceress. How delightful it is to see you again.” He remained seated, even going so far as to light a cigar. If she was going to torture him, he was going to get in something pleasurable first, take the edge off.

Werner held his hand aloft in the corner of the room. He looked pathetic.

“No, Werner, you may not leave,” Mordecai said. To Blithe, he added, “Honestly, they’re all loyal when the world is filled with peace, but as soon as the shit hits the fan…”

“Have you quite finished, Mordecai?” Blithe said. “You know why I’m here.”

“Have you killed everyone?” asked Mordecai. From where he sat, he could see a severed arm, and what appeared to be a clump of hair attached to a thin slice of scalp, lying just beyond the exploded door.

“Pretty much,” she said, indifferently. Kai growled at Werner as he edged along the wall. “I wouldn’t do that, little man,” Blithe told him without turning from Mordecai. Her long, witchy finger pointed toward him, though. “I don’t think he ate many of the people on the way up here. He’ll still be peckish.”

Werner fell still.

“Where are the final pieces?” Blithe said, hissing the last word, further proof that she was a snake in disguise.

Mordecai thoughtfully chewed on his cigar. “Aren’t you the all-powerful, all-seeing Blithe? Shouldn’t you know where to find them? If you do, please let me know. The Guild has been searching for those missing pieces for centuries.”

Dorian unsheathed his chainsword with a chi-ching. He took a step forward and was about to pull the starter cord.

Blithe stopped him. “Not yet, Dorian. I’m willing to give him a chance to change his mind.”

Dorian grunted and reluctantly stepped back. His eyes burned with rage, and the cords of his neck stuck out like razorblades.

“Now, Mordecai,” she continued. “As you can see, Dorian is very eager to cut you into tiny pieces, and I’m in two minds whether to let him just go ahead and get it over with. You’ve been a thorn in my side for long enough, and I don’t care about The Magocracy’s rules and regulations. I’m this close to putting an end to you, once and for all.”

Blowing out a smoke ring that was larger than his own head, Mordecai smiled. “You know very well that they won’t allow it. Murdering a mortal just because you’re tired of them is not acceptable behaviour, you know that. The Magocracy will put you to death, and then what? We’ll both be in hell. You’ll never get rid of me.” He snorted. It was so ridiculous, and yet true.

Blithe took a step toward the desk. Her corset crunched as she leaned over, pushing her face as close to Mordecai’s as she could without actually touching it. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Sitting up here in your mortal office, with your giant globe and your drinks cabinet?”

It was a sure-fire sign of success, yes. Did he think he was smart, though? Yes, he did.

Blithe raised her hand so it was between their faces, and as she slowly opened her fist, a small cobalt flame began to materialise. Mordecai could feel the energy radiating from it, could feel the heat as it grew and grew, still not leaving a mark on the sorceress’s slender palm.

“You know what you are, Mordecai Pick?” She pushed her lips into a pout, and then peeled them back to reveal a row of jagged teeth that would have better suited a shark. “You’re an ant. Such a tiny thing to be, an ant. Always walking around, trying not to get squashed. But then, one day, along comes a giant boot, and your head is where your stomach used to be.”

The glowing orb continued to grow. It was almost as big as Mordecai’s head, at that point, and no matter how hard he tried not to look at it, he found himself drawn into its beauty. Worlds swam around inside it, entire universes that scientists would kill to take a closer look at. For a brief moment, he wanted nothing more than to be devoured by it wholly.

“You have an important decision to make,” Blithe said in barely more than a whisper.

She was trying to hypnotise him, flummox him into giving her information. He fought against it, trying not to allow her to consume his thoughts. He didn’t know whether she was capable of it, but she was strong. Nothing would surprise him.

“Do you want to continue being an ant, Mordecai? Stumbling around, wondering how long it will be before that giant boot falls. Or do you want to become something much more? Something…unstoppable?”

Clouds flew around in the shimmering bulb upon her hands. Clouds and planets, a thousand of each. It was all he could do, not to reach out and plunge his hand into it, to feel the textures of such wondrous things. Smoke drifted up into his eye, snapping him from his reverie. He wedged the cigar into the corner of his mouth and clamped down on it,

“Not today,” he said, “but thanks for the offer.” Phew, close call. He didn’t think she’d managed to search his soul for answers because the angry face glowering at him across the desk suggested she had nothing.

“You will regret this,” she said. “I will make it my lifelong goal to cause you, and everyone around you, unthinkable pain.” The giant blue orb dissipated, fizzling out to nothingness. She clenched her fist and drove it straight into Mordecai’s smug face, knocking him back hard into his chair.

Blood dribbled from his nostrils, and his head buzzed as unconsciousness beckoned. He managed to gather himself and watch as the sorceress whirled and summoned her personal necromancer to follow.

“We’re wasting our time here,” she said as she reached the door. She spun, her face contorted into something like pure malevolence. “We’ll find those pieces, and when we do, you will be the first to know.” She walked through the hole in the wall that had, until a moment before, been a rather pleasing oak door.

Dorian followed, dragging his hungry brass-wolf with him. Someone fired a shot, but then came the scream, and the sound of Kai tearing at flesh filled the office.

“Well, that went about as well as expected,” Mordecai said.

In the corner of the room, Werner slid down the wall, gasping for breath and looking more than a little peaky.

Something exploded on the floor below, but that was okay. It meant they were leaving.

8

Studying the pages Mordecai had left her, Abigale realised how dangerous the whole thing was. She sat at Octavius’s desk, diligently working through the plans to each museum. They were rudimentary, but gave her an idea of where she would find each artefact, how many people would try to take it from her when she had it, and what other security measures the museums had in place to prevent people like her from earning a dishonest living.

Behind her, Octavius was grinding away at some contraption or other. It was hard to concentrate with all that noise going on, but she didn’t want to take the plans home with her. Mouse would understand, and Octavius had promised to keep an eye on the little bastard while she was out of the country, which was a huge weight off her mind.

Paris. Russia.

It was as if she was trapped in a dream, some magnificent delusion where she travelled the world and stole from the greatest museums ever built. It was easy to forget that she had a deadly device pushing against her skull, ready to kill her at any moment. In fact, it was a nice distraction. The last thing she wanted to do was worry about whether she was going to drop dead unannounced. It would throw her off her stride.

Ignoring the racket of her tinkerer, she pressed on, making notes in a small journal that she would take with her. The rest of it would remain with Octavius. He would destroy it as soon as she was gone, leaving no trace of it behind, nothing to link either of them to the crimes.

Rule number one was the most important—Always cover your tracks. If the police can’t find you, you will live to steal another day. Try robbing a bank from a prison cell. It’s almost impossible.

Almost.

She made notes, scrawling in her little book about every possible exit, every structural weakness of miscalculation.

Most people wouldn’t think an architect, building something designed to house hundreds of invaluable artefacts, would make such easy errors, but they do. Things such as forgetting to seal up a basement, or placing walls in a manner that someone could simply run through from one to the next, dodging the law all day long. Architects are all about aesthetics. If it looks good, they’re happy, and to hell with functionality.

The London job would be the most difficult. Stealing anything during the day was hard, and stealing it from what would be a heavily secured building made it even more difficult. It just so happened that Abigale was an expert in blending. Even with her bright red hair, intense emerald eyes, and propensity to wear alluring—though not revealing—clothes, she could meld into any background like a chameleon. Part of the furniture, some might say. It was easy to be unassuming because she knew what she was doing. However, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, she would have to be so inconspicuous that if her own mother were to come back from the dead, she wouldn’t notice her.

Vase. Egg. Painting. What could possibly fit inside those three very different objects? How heavy is it going to be? Will it be awkward to carry, with lots of sharp edges?

She had to consider each and every aspect. She would be bearing her satchel during the heists because she needed to make sure she would have her hands free once the artefacts were in her possession. People would be coming at her from all angles, and the last thing she wanted to have to do was toss the treasure in their direction in order to make good her escape. It had never happened before, but there was a first time for everything. If it was a choice between unloading a dinosaur egg and serving life in a Russian gaol, she didn’t think it would take her too long to decide.

She studied the diagram of Poseidon’s Gale. For some reason, Mordecai had seen fit to include a map of its interior. What was he anticipating? Surely, the trip across the ocean would be uneventful. She wondered why she would need to know where the life ships were, or that there were six of them strapped to the left-hand side of the dirigible?

According to the plans, Poseidon’s Gale had a capacity of two hundred, while each life ship was able to accommodate up to seven people. Abigale was no mathematician, but even she knew that didn’t quite add up, that the majority of the travellers would be going down with the dirigible if they should find themselves plummeting toward the ground. She guessed it was just a matter of first come, first served. She considered that maybe Mordecai knew that, too, and had included the information, so that Abigale could remain close to one of the ships.

How thoughtful of him…

“What do you think?” Octavius asked.

His voice startled her. She’d been miles away, and suddenly, she found herself staring down at a small contraption no bigger than a thumbnail. She could just about make out its wings, and the small golden body beneath. Once again, the tinkerer had opted for an insectile whatsit. He couldn’t get enough of those damn creepy crawlies.

“Looks like a fly,” Abigale said, picking it up and turning it over. She could see six tiny legs, no thicker than a strand of hair. It always amazed her how he could be so intricate with a hammer, a grinder, and a few good prayers.

“It is a fly,” he said. “It will act in the exact same way as those scorpions you lost.”

Again with the damn scorpions. Abigale thought about apologising again, but it would do no good. She would be hearing about those abandoned contraptions for quite some time.

“We just need to set it on the same frequency as your monovision eyeglass, and you’re good to go.”

Abigale handed the tiny gadget back to Octavius. “What else you got, old man?” It was affectionate, and not in the least bit insulting.

Octavius shot her a stern glance that quickly transformed into a smile. “Less of the old,” he said. “I’m very sensitive. And you’re one to talk. I’ve seen those silvers pushing through all that red.” He gestured to her head.

Abigale’s mouth fell open, and she reached up to finger her hair. He was, of course, joshing. She might be one of the greatest thieves in the world, but her gullibility was something she needed to work on.

The tinkerer placed the clockwork fly in a small, black box and handed it to Abigale. “I know you hate guns, but I’d rather you carried one on this occasion.”

He walked back to his workshop, lighting his pipe as he went. When he returned, he was brandishing a rather splendid looking weapon. Its brass grip looked as if it had been designed specifically for her small hands, but that was the only understated thing about it.

“I call it Big Daddy,” Octavius said.

Abigale could see why. It was an apt name.

“Steam-powered ammunition, holds six in the chamber.” He spun the cylinder like some Wild West wannabe. “Instead of a hammer, you pull this bit out here.” He tugged at a brass nugget at the rear of the gun, and a previously hidden section slid out. “And then you pull the trigger,” he said. “That gauge on the top will tell you when it’s ready to fire. Keep it topped up and the needle will stay up out of the red. The last thing you want is to pull the trigger, only to find you haven’t given her enough steam.”

“The last thing I want is to kill anyone,” she said. “I’m a thief, not an assassin. You’re mistaking me for John Bellingham.”

“I had a feeling that’s what you’d say,” the tinkerer sighed. “So I created these.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a handful of green cylinders, which shimmered upon his palm like glow-worms. “These will have all the effects of a real bullet, but without the death. Anyone comes at you, don’t hesitate. Take them down. They will live to see another day, and you will have enough time to make good your escape.”

She took one of the rounds from Octavius’s palm and examined it. At one end was a tiny pin, almost imperceptible. “Puts them to sleep?” she said.

“For a while,” Octavius said. “It leaves quite a nasty mark, too. You don’t have a problem with bruising your enemies, do you?” He sardonically smiled.

“Bruises are fine,” she said. “But I draw the line at grazes and nicks.” She dropped the round into his palm. “How many do I have?”

Octavius did a little count in his head, his lips moving, but nothing coming out. Then he said, “Thirty-six, all told. That means you use them wisely. Don’t go shooting pigeons at the top of the Eiffel Tower. If you run out, that’s it. I want that gun back in one piece, too. It’s a prototype.”

Oh, spiffing! I’m off to shoot people with something that hasn’t even been tested properly. Jolly good!

“I like pigeons,” she said. “And I expect to return with thirty-six unused rounds.” Gullible but optimistic, that was Abigale Egars.

“I’ve made a few adjustments to your glass cutter, too. Should be powerful enough to get through an inch now. Maybe more.”

“Wow, you really don’t want me to mess this up, do you?”

Octavius’s smile faltered. “I don’t want you getting caught,” he said, “or…” he trailed off.

Abigale knew how that sentence finished. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “But when this thing is out of my head, I’m paying a visit to that bastard Mordecai and shoving Big Daddy so far up his—”

“Abigale Egars, you are not too old for a spanking,” Octavius said, feigning astonishment.

Abigale sniggered.

“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

She nodded, rolling her eyes. “I promise. Honestly, it’s not as if we haven’t done this a hundred times before.” It was closer to a thousand, but Abigale had stopped counting after the tenth. The only thing that changed was the setting and the target article. It was easy to forget how many times she’d done it.

“This is different,” Octavius said, suddenly very serious. “If there are wizards involved, it could be very dangerous.”

Abigale had forgotten all about the wizards. Maybe it was because she was still coming to terms that such things actually existed. “Big Daddy works on wizards, doesn’t it?” She smiled, but it was forced. The atmosphere in the workshop had changed to an altogether more solemn one, and she was certain the temperature had dropped.

“Let’s hope you don’t have to find out,” Octavius said, which was about as comforting as a queen-size, four-poster bed of nails. “If they get wind that you’re in possession of something they want, they will follow you to the ends of the Earth.”

“Okay, stop now. You’re starting to creep me out.” It was true. Gooseflesh peppered her skin, and she shuddered at the thought of being pursued by anything more formidable than the Parisian Police.

“You’re right,” Octavius said, rattling the pipe against his teeth. “No point in speculating. I’ll just be happy when you’re back in London, that’s all.” Abigale knew he was thinking back where he could keep an eye on her, but he would never say it aloud, for fear she wouldn’t understand. “Well, I haven’t left yet,” she said. “And if I don’t memorise all this by midnight, I won’t even make it as far as Poseidon’s Gale. They’ll have me in a cage by tomorrow afternoon.” Alcorn would love that. He’d probably visit regularly, if only to tease her with bits of food. She didn’t know what gaol was like, but according to the vision in her head, it was similar to a zoo, only with more poo flinging and less yard time.

Octavius nodded. “You’re right. I’ll let you get back to it.” He looked, for a moment, as if he was about to add something else, but then he gave up and made his way back across to the workshop.

The sound of machinery kicking in spurred her on. The thought of aiming Big Daddy at someone and pulling the trigger distracted her for a second, but then she fell back into the work, learning everything she could from the pages Mordecai had left her. It was going to be a long night.

And a hell of a long day to follow.

9

People. Glorious people everywhere. The sun was shining, and hansom cabs pulled by magnificent beasts made their way along the cobbles, delivering the affluent to their desired destination. A person would have to be a miserable wretch not to appreciate the glory of life in that moment.

Abigale stood facing the Victoria and Albert Museum with the weight of the world upon her shoulders, and even she felt a grandness that she’d never experienced before. The weight of Big Daddy beneath her shawl was a constant reminder of what she was about to do. However, if she pretended it was something else, like a handbag filled with coins, or a particularly weighty article of jewellery, it somewhat soothed her.

She calmly made her way up the steps at the front of the museum, being careful not to trip. A trip would send the giant weapon from its holster and sprawling across the pavement. With all the people around, it would be disastrous. A person didn’t have to be a wizard to spot a brass and steel hand cannon.

As she reached the top of the steps, she took a long, deep breath. London smelt good. Three words she never thought she would put together, but it was true. There was a sweet tang in the air, perhaps from all the classy perfume wafting around. It was what Abigale imagined heaven to smell like.

She pulled her satchel tight to her shoulder and made her way into the museum, where a concierge waved her on as if she was of no interest to him. Abigale was a little annoyed he didn’t offer her a smile, internally grumping that it was their only job.

She turned into the room and took it all in. No matter how many times she’d pored over Mordecai’s pages, how many times she’d examined the diagrams and photographs, nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. She might as well have retired to bed early, instead of cramming into the early hours.

Beautiful women sauntered around, closed parasols swinging from arms drenched in jewellery, while men in expensive waistcoats glanced up at hanging art with concentrated enthusiasm. If Abigale had known the place was so elegant, she would have targeted it before then.

She casually walked the breadth of the foyer. She wasn’t even in one of the main rooms, and already, she was excited. The objective was not to allow her sudden exhilaration to show. That was the kind of thing that garnered attention, though not from the concierge, apparently. He was far too busy being grumpy to notice an obviously out-of-place girl’s strange elation.

A fine oil painting of an African elephant hung on the wall. It was nowhere near as grand as Wanderlust, but then she doubted anything was. Still, as far as elephants went, it was all there. Four legs and a trunk, yes indeed. The artist certainly knew his elephants from his aardvarks.

She made her way through the large double doors at the edge of the room, and was greeted almost immediately by the exquisite sound of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis”. Abigale wasn’t a connoisseur of classical music, but she knew a good beat when she heard it, and old Ludwig was a favourite of hers. People could keep their Bach, Mozart and Chopin. Beethoven, in her insignificant opinion, made those others sound amateurish. And he had the best hair.

In the centre of the room, several ladies and gentlemen gathered around a small display. She couldn’t see what they were looking at, but their mumbles of approval suggested it was something worthwhile. She made her way into the room, still doing a damn good job blending and absorbing her surroundings as she went.

It was second nature to her. If she walked past a door, she took it in. If she saw a window up on the second floor, she marked it down. If three guards were chatting casually over at the edge of the room, she wanted to remember that. If there were a group of people blocking her exits, she needed to memorise that fact. For when the time came, she didn’t want to be hanging about for the police to show, and she certainly didn’t fancy getting wrestled to the ground by a trio of overzealous security guards.

She recalled the plans, laying them all out in her mind. “Bansei” was in the room two across from where she stood, and she would get there in her own sweet time. The time she spent wandering was the calm before the storm, and unlike when she’d stood facing Harriett Haversham’s, a few nights prior, she was absolutely inspired. She took long, deep breaths, regulating her heartbeat and making sure that she didn’t start to perspire. It was all part of the game, and it was a game that she knew well. The rules never changed, but the stakes did.

“Are you here for anything in particular,” a resonant voice said.

Abigale almost screamed. Way to blend, you fool. She turned, expecting to find one of the security guards standing beside her. That would have been very bad, indeed. But it wasn’t a guard, and thankfully it wasn’t John Wesley Alcorn, either, which would have been worse than all the guards combined. It was a middle-aged gentleman with a monocle pressed tight to his eye-socket. His smile was relaxed and the Baker Street bowler perched upon his head was an aspect she’d seen on many a city banker.

“Sorry I startled you,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

Abigale sighed. The poor soul had no idea how close he had come to being the first volunteer to test out Big Daddy. “Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m not here for anything in particular” A bit of a white lie never hurt anyone. “Though I did quite like the elephant painting back there.”

The man grunted, clearly disappointed with her lack of taste. “Yes, well, I’m here for the Chinese exhibition. I’m not from London, but it came highly recommended by a dear friend of mine from Wimbledon.” He turned up the end of the sentence.

Quite why he would intend it as a question was a mystery to Abigale. Perhaps he was inferring that she must, of course, know his dear friend from Wimbledon.

Don’t all you Londoners know one another?

Chinese exhibition? Dammit, Abigale thought. That’s what I’m here for.

“Well, have a very pleasant day,” he said, tipping his hat and smiling a thin-lipped smile. “I hope you discover something you like more than that…elephant.” And with that, off he went, through the door at the left of the room.

The door that led to the room, which led to the door to “Bansei”.

Stay calm, stay focused, and whatever you do, don’t talk to anyone else. She’d already made a mistake by conversing with the out-of-town banker, not that he’d given her much choice. What was it with people these days? Thinking it perfectly acceptable behaviour to just start a conversation with a complete stranger? The world, Abigale thought, has gone mad.

She really wished she was wearing her monovision eyeglass, but that wasn’t acceptable, not out where everyone would see it. There was nothing more conspicuous than a corseted girl with a luminously glowing contraption strapped to her face. It was in her satchel, where it would remain unless she absolutely needed it. Still, she felt strange going into a caper without it, almost as if a piece of her was missing.

Without wasting any more time, Abigale made her way into the next room. Beethoven continued to drift from seemingly nowhere, and it relaxed her, bringing her back to her senses. In her opinion, that was another thing he was good at. If that was Haydn flowing into the museum, Abigale would have been trotting around the room, removing her overbust corset and swinging it around her head. Thankfully, it wasn’t Haydn.

The room was a little larger than the last. In the corner, a mediaeval knight stood guard, a blunt sword beside him. A flag hung upon the wall depicting a huge red dragon with flames erupting from its mouth. Beneath that, a set of stocks and a myriad of torturing apparatuses stood, none of which looked benevolent. Then again, a criminal couldn’t be persecuted with a feather and a few choice words.

Still blending and hoping that the banker in room three would let her browse in peace, she made her way through to the Chinese exhibition to where “Bansei” would be displayed.

The room, much to Abigale’s delight, was almost uninhabited. A woman stood at the far side, mesmerised by a traditional painting of a woman, replete with cheong-sam, battling a grotesque horned beast. It wasn’t what Abigale would call beautiful, but it was a step up from the elephant in the foyer.

There, standing a few feet from the hypnotised lady, was the banker, bent over a glass case, scrutinising a row of battered coins. He didn’t notice Abigale at the door. He was far too busy poring over ancient currency to notice anything else. Occasionally, he muttered appreciatively as if he knew exactly what he was looking at. If Abigale had been right with her assessment, and he was indeed a banker, then coins were his forte.

Abigale took a tentative step forwards, remembering herself and trying not to stand out. In her mind, a map presented itself to her. She closed her eyes for a second, arranging things so that they were just so. She thought she heard the ticking of the device up above her skull, ready to kill her, but then it waned and all she could hear was Beethoven. Wonderful, wonderful Beethoven.

She opened her eyes, and everything seemed to make sense. The clarity was overwhelming, but she managed to compose herself. Nothing less than complete control would suffice.

Six steps forward, the cabinet directly to her left. She turned and walked toward it, her gaze immediately drawn to the large, green vase behind the glass.

“Bansei”. Nothing special. Nothing that she would happily place next to her collection of porcelain swine. It looked, well, old. The glaze was all cracked, peeling off in places, and once again, she found herself wondering how it had survived all those years in one piece. Apparently priceless, and yet Abigale would have given all the money she had in her pocket not to have to look at it ever again.

Just then, a group of gents announced their entrance to the room with hearty banter and sonorous chortles. Abigale could see them in the glass, and, therefore, remained wholly focused on the vase. She didn’t have to turn, to face the potential witnesses, to offer them a glimpse of the girl that took “Bansei”. She knew their positions thanks to the replications in the cabinet’s glass, and they were ambling across to the other side of the room, which suited Abigale no end.

With her back to those present, she slowly removed the glass cutter from her satchel and pushed it to the cabinet. There was a slight tinkle as steel met glass, but the jolly fellows on the other side of the room were loud enough to cover it. Abigale took a deep breath and began to move the blade around in a wide arc. There was a muted screech as the blade cut through the glass, and she saw in the reflection, the woman examining the Chinese-demon painting. Momentarily distracted by the odd sound the lady glance across her shoulder. Abigale paused and waited for the woman to mind her own business before continuing.

It took less than a minute to create the hole, but it felt like an eternity to Abigale. She eased the circle of glass out and placed it into her satchel, leaving no evidence. She slipped her hand in through the aperture, and just as she brushed the cold, flaying glaze of “Bansei”, a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“We must stop meeting like this.”

Abigale panicked, retracted her hand from the cabinet, and pressed herself against the hole so that it wasn’t so obviously visible. She turned to face the source of the voice and forced a smile, but it was hard work.

“Did I scare you again?” he said. “I am sorry. I really must work on my approach.”

“That’s okay,” Abigale said. “I really must stop finding myself captivated by all these ancient trinkets.” She gestured to the room behind, and not the objects in front. Drawing attention to the vase was not a good idea. It would be easier to steal the thing if no one knew what it was that was missing.

“Yes, I’m the same,” the banker said. “There are coins in that cabinet over there that Emperor Chongzhen would have used. Isn’t that just fascinating?”

Not really. “It is,” Abigale lied, hoping her accord would somehow send the banker packing.

It didn’t. He simply looked at her, intrigued.

“Say, you wouldn’t like to show me around London, would you? The company of a beautiful girl such as yourself would make a lonely old man like me very happy indeed.” He grinned.

Abigale saw a wolf in there somewhere. She hadn’t brought her red hood, though, and grandma hated cookies.

“I really don’t think that would be appropriate,” Abigale said, making sure that she was still pressed against the freshly cut hole. “And I’m sure your wife wouldn’t like it if—”

“I’m not married,” he said, shoving an un-ringed hand toward her face as if to prove that, he was unmarried, and, therefore had every right to proposition any girl half his age that caught his eye.

For some strange reason, Abigale found her hand wrapped around the grip of Big Daddy. It was cold, unforgiving, and a reminder of how dangerous this whole caper was. The banker had no idea where her hand was, or what was in it, but Abigale doubted he would have said what he said next if he’d known.

“I can pay you.”

He had time to grin, but that was all he had time for. Abigale surreptitiously lowered the pistol, aiming its barrel to where she knew the banker’s leg would be. The one thing Octavius had failed to tell her was how noisy Big Daddy was, and so she was taking quite a chance as she squeezed the trigger. Thankfully, the weapon had been constructed with stealth in mind, and there was a faint thwump as the round left the barrel.

“Wha…” The banker looked intently into Abigale’s eyes, trying to figure out what was happening. His lip drooped listlessly to one side as if he’d been unceremoniously afflicted by some silent disease, and then he headed toward the floor, only the whites of his eyes visible.

Abigale re-holstered the pistol, snatched “Bansei” from the cabinet, tucked it under her arm beneath the shawl and rushed to the door just as someone noticed the fallen banker.

“Oh my God!” the woman screamed, covering the distance between her and the unconscious pervert in only a few steps.

The gaggle of boisterous men, never ones to stand by with a fair maiden in need of assistance, rushed across the room to help. One of them yelled for assistance at the top of his voice, and as Abigale made her way coolly into the Mediaeval room, two guards ran past, paying her no heed whatsoever.

That was good. She wasn’t going to stick around to wait for them to find the dart, or the gaping hole in the cabinet next to the comatose fellow, so she pushed on toward the main entrance. The confusion had sent the uninformed crowds into a state of utter panic. Elegant ladies tightly clutched onto their gentleman friends, expecting to be protected. Beethoven had stopped playing, and with its cessation, came an unsettling silence.

Abigale was blending, edging toward the exit without drawing attention to herself. At least she thought she was. Not well enough, though, as a voice suddenly boomed from out of nowhere.

“Don’t move!”

She spun to find a small man blocking her path. His red moustache was almost as wide as his face, but despite the amazing show of hair upon his lip, there wasn’t a dot on his head. A set of handcuffs dangled from his hand, meaning he was either with the police, or he was just one of those men that liked to carry a spare pair of cuffs with them wherever they went.

“You’re Abigale Egars,” the man said, smirking, clearly pleased with himself.

Abigale heard footfall behind her but didn’t turn. She knew there were guards there without having to check.

“If you say so,” she said. —The terrified women and comforting men in the room —all seemed to gasp in unison. It would have been funny under other circumstances.

“Wait until Alcorn hears about this,” the little policeman said. “I always knew I’d be the one to catch you. Not Alcorn.”

Abigale shuddered at the mention of her adversary’s name. She’d always imagined it would be Alcorn that finally incarcerated her, not some midget with ginger face fuzz. “How did you know I was here?” she asked. The guards closed in ever so slightly, but Abigale was very aware of them. She wouldn’t allow them to get too close.

“I didn’t,” the policeman said. “It’s my day off. Just browsing with the missus.” He gestured to a small, plump lady wearing a long, flowery dress. “I don’t even like all this dusty old shit. It’s her. She loves it.”

His wife looked moderately offended, but then realised there were more important things going on, and that a domestic dispute could wait until later.

“Put your hands up,” the copper said, waving the handcuffs so that they tinkled.

“You don’t have a gun,” Abigale said. “Surely you need a gun to say that.”

The policeman thought about it, then said, “Look, just put your hands up anyway. I’ve heard all about how tricky you are.”

She couldn’t put her hands up, not without the vase slipping from the nook of her armpit. She was already pressing her arm down just to keep it in place. But she knew she was stuck, backed into a corner, and that the little rozzer was not going to let her pass. Things were about to get very, very ugly.

“Okay,” she said, sensing the guards edging closer still, two of them, one much larger than the other. “Don’t say I didn’t give you the chance to let me walk out of here.” She smiled and lifted her arms.

She felt “Bansei” begin to slip, and then something hard and heavy clattered against her knee and continued all the way to the ground, where it shattered into what sounded like a million pieces. It all happened in less than a second, but Abigale had already been plotting her next move. As soon as the vase came apart, she was down, fishing around in the broken fragments, searching for something that could have been just about anything.

The guards lunged for her, as she knew they would, and while she was bent forward looking for the first part of the triptych, she swung a leg high and behind her. There came a grunt as her boot connected solidly with the first jaw. She then flicked out her leg, jabbing at the area she believed the second guard would be, and hit him diametrically in the stomach. Both guards went down, one of them struggling for breath and the other having a little snooze.

“You bi—” the copper said, launching himself forward and swinging the handcuffs around his head like some tribal barbarian.

Abigale dropped onto her haunches and pulled the shards apart, revealing the object—a golden L shape no larger than her pinky finger. She’d have plenty of time to examine it more closely later if she made it out of the museum in one piece. First, she had to dodge the copper and his handcuffs, which were already arcing down on her.

She stood, sidestepped the man and drove a roundhouse kick into his sternum. It was a lot easier than it should have been, since his sternum was where most people’s navels sat. There was a collective gasp from the onlookers as the policeman went down, and then a scream from his wife, which would probably have been audible in Peckham.

Abigale dropped the L-shaped whatnot into her satchel and ran toward the exit, leaving two guards and a rozzer sprawled behind her. “Everyone remain calm,” she said. “This will all be over in a moment, and you can all go about your business as normal.” Quite why she felt the need to explain herself was a mystery. Perhaps she believed they would bear her graciousness in mind when the police were taking statements later on and would suddenly forget what the thief had looked like. The police had many enemies, and Abigale hoped that some of them were present.

She reached the door that led out onto the street, where she could disappear amongst the hustle and bustle of London, but the man blocking her way shot her a glance that said she would have to work for it. It was old misery-guts, the man who’d waved her indifferently through upon her arrival. He was making himself as large as possible, blocking both doors behind him, and the determination on his face reminded Abigale of Octavius. He always had the same look when he was hammering away at a particularly recalcitrant piece of brass.

Fine, Abigale thought. “Step aside,” she said. “I don’t want to, but if I have to, I will go through you.” She thought about pulling Big Daddy but decided against it. What if Octavius was wrong? What if the banker was back in the Chinese room, dead or dying? The last thing she wanted to do was kill the curmudgeon, no matter how hard he frowned at her.

“You ain’t going nowhere, missy,” the concierge grunted. “The police are already on their way. I hope you like prison food, missy, ‘cos that’s what you’re going to be eating for the next—”

Someone grabbed Abigale around the neck and tried to drag her backwards. She hadn’t heard them approaching, but the cheap perfume stinging at her nostrils suggested her assailant was of the female persuasion.

“Take her to the ground!” the concierge bellowed.

Not likely, Abigale thought. She reached around with her right arm and grabbed a handful of hair. The woman—Mrs Rozzer?—screeched as Abigale pulled. The hefty arm relaxed a little, and Abigale seized the opportunity to throw the woman across her shoulder. It was hard going, but over she went, hitting the museum tiles with a meaty thud. She looked up at Abigale with a sort of wounded confusion, as if she had no idea what had just happened.

Abigale straightened and rushed across the museum, heading for a door that she had not yet used. Behind her, there were shouts of “Get her!” and “Don’t let her out of your sight!” However, none of them seemed to be following, and when she burst through the door, into a room filled with wooden crates, she realised that none of the bystanders had attempted to pursue her.

Without stopping, she traversed the huge boxes and found herself at the foot of a set of stairs. As she began to climb, she heard the guards calling to one other behind her. She un-holstered Big Daddy, just in case. She had no qualms with taking out a few guards if it meant she could escape. Failing was not an option. If she was caught and thrown in a cell, she wondered how long it would be before The Guild flipped the switch. How long before the poison was released into her system? It would be much tidier for them if she didn’t get the chance to talk. Abigale pushed the thought from her mind as she reached the top of the stairs.

A long and regal hallway stretched out in front of her with various paintings hanging on the walls that might, at one time or another, have graced the museum downstairs. The whole place smelt of damp furniture, and the mustiness brought bile to her throat as she pressed on.

There were doors leading off left and right, but that wasn’t what Abigale wanted. Right at the end of the hallway was a stained-glass window, and she ran for it, knowing that the security guards were right on her tail. She could hear them panting and grunting as they climbed the stairs at her back.

She ran, keeping Big Daddy out in front. If she was going to do it, there was no way her tiny frame would break the glass. Something solid, like Big Daddy, well that was a different story altogether.

She leapt into the air, just as a guard called out from behind. She seemed to float forever, and everything was so vivid. It wasn’t until the glass was already shattering that she realised it had been a picture of Saint Martin handing half his cloak to a naked beggar. And then it fell all around her, the second priceless artefact she’d destroyed in less than three minutes.

In an instant, she was outside, facing the sun and feeling the breeze as it buffeted her face. It was a lot higher than she’d expected it to be, but not for long. She swiftly descended, holding her breath and readying her feet for what would surely be a bumpy landing. Luckily, she had emerged at the rear of the museum, and no one was there to watch her fall. No one was there to hear the slight whimper, at least she thought it was slight, escape her throat as she dropped from the window.

The impact jarred, but she knew exactly how to land, and she rolled into it, minimising the collision by spreading it across her whole body. She quickly clambered to her feet and ran as fast as she could along the grass, not looking back once. As she tucked Big Daddy back into its holster, Abigale was thankful she’d only had to use it on one person, and he’d deserved it in a way. Still, she hoped he wasn’t dead. He didn’t deserve it that much.

She could hear the guards at the window, cursing and trying to figure out a quick way down. Abigale had found the quickest way, but none of them seemed to want to follow suit.

A wrought-iron fence stood at the edge of the museum, perhaps six-feet high. Once she was over that, she fell into the back of a hansom without having to beckon one.

“Where to, Miss?” the driver said as he closed the carriage door behind her. If he was concerned about the state of his passenger, the pieces of multi-coloured glass in her hair or the fact that she could barely breathe, he didn’t show it.

After a few seconds of frantic gasping, Abigale said, “Head toward Lambeth.” She relaxed back in her seat.

The driver nodded, then climbed up and urged the horses forward.

He took them past the front of the museum, and Abigale pushed herself back, making sure that she wasn’t seen. She could see out, though, and as the cab brought them level with the entrance, she was sure she glimpsed the unmistakeable brown frock coat of Detective Alcorn flapping up the steps.

She smiled. That was one hell of a caper.

10

“You idiots!” Alcorn said, addressing none of them in particular. As far as he was concerned, they were all worthy of the title. “You had her cornered, and you let her get away.” He turned to the concierge—a man by the name of Aldous Rigsby, whom he’d known for ten years or so. “Aldous, how many guards are working right now?”

“Sir?” The concierge didn’t look as if he wanted to be any part of the little tête-à-tête.

“How many, Aldous? Right now?” Alcorn paced back and forth, back and forth, and looking as if he was either extremely annoyed or needed to use the amenities.

“I believe there are twenty security guards on shift,” Aldous said. His jowls rose and fell with each word. “Twenty-one if you include me, but it isn’t my job to get involved with that sort of thing, and I—”

“Thank you, Aldous, you pompous fool,” Alcorn said, turning his back on the concierge and concentrating only on the remains of what had once been a rather expensive Chinese vase. “Can any of you tell me why she was trying to steal this? Inspector Thorneye, you saw it all, did you not?”

Thorneye stepped forward. His wife continued to fan herself with her shovel-hands. “Damn near killed us both,” he said. “Poor Cynthia’s got a dicky heart, too. Haven’t you love?”

Cynthia nodded but didn’t speak.

“Right, and so you say she dropped this only because you made her put her hands up?” Alcorn picked up a fragment of the vase, turning it over and over in his palm. “If she wanted to take it, if it’s so damn valuable, why do you think she would do that?”

Thorneye shrugged. “Accident? Maybe she wasn’t after that at all. Maybe she changed her mind, didn’t like the colour.”

“Hogwash,” Alcorn said. Thorneye was keeping something from him. He could see it in his beady little inspector eyes. “She knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t after the vase.” He turned to face the room. Fifteen or so expectant faces looked back at him. None of them wanted to speak. “Come on, then. Inspector Thorneye didn’t see anything, but one of you must have.” Even though he knew his colleague was lying, for reasons unbeknownst to him, Alcorn was willing to work on the other witnesses. It was what any good detective would do.

A tall, gangly man wearing a brown suit took a tentative step forward. His bowler didn’t match the rest of him, but Alcorn wasn’t about to start judging people solely on their inability to colour coordinate.

“Yes?” Alcorn said.

The man removed his hat and scratched nervously at his baldpate. “Well, um, she picked something up from the broken shards,” he said, turning to his fellow witnesses as if hoping at least one of them would corroborate.

Three of them nodded, and one lady went as far as a posh, “Yar.”

“Something that she’d dropped, perhaps?” Alcorn had to cover every possibility. All the time, he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon Inspector Thorneye. The inspector had been shaking his head frantically, since the lanky witness stepped forward, as if he was concerned the new evidence would paint him in a bad light.

“No, I think it was inside the vase,” said the tall man. “I mean, I was standing over by that ghastly elephant painting. I had a better view than most, and I would say that whatever she picked up had been in the vase all along.”

“I beg to differ,” Thorneye said, “but I was standing right in front of her, and I didn’t see her pick anything up from the debris.”

Alcorn had been a detective for many years. Fifteen, all told. One of the things he specialised in was detecting bullshit. If he couldn’t smell it, he could sense it. He had no idea why Thorneye was lying, but if bullshit was visible, the inspector would have been covered from head to toe in it.

“Thank you,” Alcorn told the gangly man. He was about to start in on Thorneye once again when two guards led the banker Abigale had shot in the darted leg through to the foyer.

“Ah, you must be the unfortunate banker,” Alcorn said, reaching for his notepad. “And what a lucky man you must be considering yourself to be at this moment.”

“Not really,” he said, limping across to where Alcorn stood.

The two guards sensed they were no longer required, and didn’t want to befall the same set of questions their associates had already been submitted to, so they quickly dispersed.

“Oh, come, come,” Alcorn said. “You took a dart to the leg, but it could have been so much worse. Three inches up and to the left and you would have been neutered.”

The expression upon the banker’s face faltered. “I want the girl behind bars,” he said as if it was a new concept to Alcorn, something that he hadn’t tried on numerous occasions before. “She’s a maniac. I was just talking to her and…” It must have been too much for him, and he trailed off.

“Did she say anything to you that might be of use?” Alcorn said. He already knew what the answer would be, but it didn’t hurt to ask. One day, she would slip up, give away some vital piece of information. No matter how good a criminal is, it’s only a matter of time before they start to get complacent.

“I was telling her about coins,” the banker said. “If I’d known she was packing poisonous darts, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Alcorn scribbled the word coins down on his notepad, for no other reason than it looked much better than an empty page. “You were right beside her when she removed the vase from its cabinet,” Alcorn said. “Did she show any interest in the vase, perhaps fill you in on its rich history, anything that would explain why she risked life and limb to remove it from its rightful place and then smash it into myriad pieces like some worthless china teacup?”

“Nothing,” he said. “One minute I was talking about Chinese currency, the next I was being slapped around the face by two burly guards.” He didn’t mention the brief exchange between himself and the girl with regards to a little companionship. It would only draw more questions.

“So she shot you, you went down, she ran with the vase, and that was when she came up against Thorneye?” Alcorn turned his attention back to the inspector, only to find he wasn’t there any longer, and neither was his wife. “Did anyone see where the little one went?” he said, but he mainly directed it toward Gangly Joe, who had already provided him with a nugget of information that might help.

None of them saw Thorneye vanish, and none of them saw Cynthia Thorneye leave either, which was a much larger trick if you took into account her considerable girth and the fact she liked to wear only the finest carpets.

Great, Alcorn thought. I knew he knew something, and I let him slip out. I really must practise this catching people and keeping them malarkey.

*

“Ah, thank God!” Octavius said, rushing across the room to the door Abigale had just come through. “I take it that all went to plan?”

Abigale removed the satchel from her shoulder and collapsed into Octavius’s favourite armchair. “I wouldn’t say it was perfect,” she said, “but it was…interesting.”

Just then, Mouse jumped up onto Abigale’s lap, already purring. Abigale leaned forwards and nuzzled his fluffy, little face. The baby speak was a little weird, though, and she managed to curb herself before Octavius had her removed from his workshop.

“I’ve been listening to the aftermath on the wireless,” Octavius said, lighting his pipe and exhaling two columns of blue smoke from his extraordinarily large and hairy nostrils. “The reporter said that you shot an innocent bystander?” He smiled. All he cared about was whether Big Daddy was as successful as he hoped.

Abigale nodded, still stroking Mouse. “Yeah, took him down in a matter of seconds. Can you believe he tried to hire me for some light relief?”

The thought of it turned Octavius’s stomach. “You should have shot him in the face, my dear girl,” he said. He walked over to a tin kettle and placed it upon the stove. “I should imagine you’re thirsty. I don’t suppose you managed to find time to stop at the wonderful tearoom they have there.”

Abigale almost burst into a fit of giggles. “No, I was in quite a rush,” she said, “but I’ll be sure to bear your recommendation in mind, should I ever return to the scene of the crime.” Which she wouldn’t.

Ever. Shame really. It was a most delightful building.

When Octavius had finished preparing the tea, Abigale ushered Mouse from her lap and reached for the satchel. She was intrigued as to what it was she had been carrying all that time. For all she knew, it was some terrible weapon designed to detonate and take as many people with it as it did. However, from what Mordecai Pick had told her, it was worse than that.

She felt its cold, hard surface as her fingers brushed past it. For a few seconds, she toyed with the idea of leaving it precisely where it was. It seemed to be fine in there, and the less she knew about it, the better.

The curious part of her, however, wouldn’t allow it, and she pulled the object from the satchel and pushed herself up from the armchair.

“So this is what they wanted me to get,” she said as she turned it over and over in her hand. It was gold in colour, but nowhere near weighty enough to be wholly composed of the precious metal. She considered it could be some kind of special steel.

Octavius ambled across the room, placed a teapot upon his desk before turning to examine the small L-shaped object.“It’s not what I expected,” he said.

His face was so close to Abigale’s hand that she could feel his warm breath.

“Does it do anything? Has it ticked, or tocked, or lit up luridly?”

Abigale shook her head. “Not that I know of. It does not look as if it’s made of more than one part. I couldn’t imagine there being any clockwork inside.”

Octavius sighed. “Well, I guess that renders me obsolete for the time being.” He sounded almost disappointed as if he’d been hoping to make himself useful. “Are you going to deliver it to Mordecai Pick straight away?”

If that had been an option, then she might have. Mordecai had made sure she was blindfolded and led from The Guild’s headquarters, and she’d not been able to recognise any of the surrounding buildings the view from his office window had afforded. It could be anywhere.

“I’m sure he’ll come asking for it once I have all three pieces.” Whether he would honour his part of the deal and remove the deadly device from her head was another matter entirely. She’d considered negotiating with him, promising the triptych’s delivery only once the mechanism was out and destroyed, but she knew what type of an organisation The Guild was. They would have no misgivings about killing her first, then hunting down the pieces. She was doing them a huge favour just by putting all three fragments together. If they knew the triptych was in London, it wouldn’t take them long to track it down, not with their contacts.

Octavius plucked the small oddity from Abigale’s palm and said, “In that case, you’d better leave this here with me. There’s no point in taking it halfway around the world with you, and by keeping the pieces apart, you’re much less likely to become an easy target. No one will risk taking you out, not if you have an incomplete set.”

“My God, you’re right,” Abigale said, suddenly shocked. “I didn’t think about that. Put it in your safe. Or better yet, bury it somewhere even I don’t know about. That way, I won’t be able to tell anyone where it is, no matter how hard they torture me.”

Octavius shuddered. “There will be no talk of torture in this workshop,” he said. “But I will make sure it is safely hidden until you return. Now that you know what you’re looking for, these next two capers should be a doddle, hm?”

“Am I all packed, ready to go?” she asked.

Mouse had jumped up onto Octavius’s desk and was making short work of the sugar lumps piled up in a bowl there. Abigale picked him up and gently stroked him. Even with the promise of untold adventures, she found it incredibly difficult to leave her cat behind. At least Octavius was old enough and ugly enough to look after himself.

“You will be leaving on time. I have been tinkering all day long, and you are now the proud owner of a rope-gun. I’m pretty sure you will figure out how to use it before you set sail for the heavens. I know how much you enjoy dangling from high places, so I thought it would come in handy, but that doesn’t mean you are to start throwing yourself off the Kremlin roof. I can’t abide silliness, and I—”

“Thank you,” Abigale said. Two simple words, that’s all, but it was the manner in which they were delivered that made all the difference.

Octavius’s features softened, and for a moment he looked as if he might cry. “Yes, well,” he said, coughing away any solemnity that might have been betraying him. “I want you back here in a few days’ time, and we can put all this nonsense behind us.”

If being abducted, implanted with a killer device, and forced to steal from three renowned museums across the world was “nonsense”, Abigale hated to think what the tinkerer considered a real problem.

“You need to get some rest,” he said. “Take the weight off, drink some tea. I’ve got a little more work to do tonight, but it shouldn’t keep you awake. You need to be up bright and early for your midday departure.”

Poseidon’s Gale. Her first ride on an airship and there was every possibility it would be her last. She settled back into Octavius’s armchair with Mouse curled up on her lap. Before she had a chance to drink any tea, she was dreaming of faraway places, of European landmarks and political intrigue. She slept well as Octavius went quietly back to work, stopping every now and then to watch his prodigy dream.

11

Inspector Joe Thorneye nervously made his way into the dark, dingy chamber. Candles flickered around the room, casting nightmarish shadows upon walls that were terrifying enough already. A huge salt star had been drawn in the middle of the floor, and inside the star was a series of small circles. Candles surrounded the strange motif, flickering in a breeze that didn’t seem to exist. Thorneye shuddered. He’d known it was going to be difficult, but at that moment he felt the sudden urge to just turn and run for his life. A voice prevented him from doing so.

“Ah, Inspector. What brings you to our neck of the woods?” She came out from the shadows, a large snake draped across her shoulders. Thorneye didn’t know where to look, since the snake was all she appeared to be wearing. He focused on one of the flickering candles, but he could still see her naked form upon the wall, a provocative silhouette dancing in the orange glow surrounding it. It was more frightening than the actual thing.

“I’ve…well, I think I’ve got some important news.” His voice cracked, and he reproached himself for sounding so weak and feeble, but there was nothing he could have done about it. Blithe was the most powerful sorceress in London. She could crush him with the most subtle of blinks. He wasn’t being feeble at all, simply sensible.

“You think, or you have?” Blithe said. Either she was hissing or the huge snake curling around her breasts didn’t like Thorneye.

He kept his gaze fixed upon the candlelight as Blithe’s shadow seemed to separate, and two of them appeared, each as beautiful as the other. She knew what she was doing, and so did Thorneye.

“I have, I think,” he said, knowing the sorceress was only seconds from turning him into something with twice as many legs..

Blithe slipped through the air behind him, but Thorneye didn’t hear her, such was her craftiness. He didn’t think her feet were even touching the floor.

“Go on,” she said. “I’m having one of my impatient days.”

Thorneye gulped. His throat felt as if it was being raked at from the inside, hundreds of miniature talons clawing their way to freedom. “I think I saw a piece of The Configuration today.”

Blithe audibly gasped. She was somewhere behind him, but the duel shadows she cast upon the wall fell still. “How sure are you?” she said.

There was venom in that voice of hers. It suggested he’d better by very sure or be ready to face the consequences. He was neither, but he wasn’t ready to die just yet.

“I’m certain,” he said, his voice aquiver. “I didn’t get a chance to have a close look, but it was golden, and oddly shaped. It was definitely the correct size and…” That was as far as he got before he felt Blithe’s hand wrap around his throat. At least he hoped it was Blithe’s hand. Snakes and Thorneye had never gotten along.

“Where?” she said, her razorblade fingernails teasing his throat.

“At the…at the museum,” Thorneye whispered. He kept his head faced forward, knowing that any sudden movements would result in his neck opening wide, like the gaping maws of Blithe’s adder. “Victoria and Albert Museum. It was in a vase all along, can you believe that?”

Blithe could believe it. Many of the pieces had been located in ancient antiquities. Nine of the pieces were already in her possession, but without the other three, they were useless. For centuries, her kind had sought the missing pieces, and she and Dorian had been getting close. She’d felt them calling to her—the final three pieces, thrumming from their hiding places. By the end of the year, they would have them all, a dozen pieces, and once they had all twelve, she would be unstoppable.

Immortal.

She was pleased to learn that a piece had revealed itself ahead of schedule, and the pissant informant-cum-detective knew exactly where it was.

“And yet, I don’t believe you brought it with you,” Blithe said. If the Inspector was possessed of a piece of The Configuration, she would have felt it, would have heard it, calling to her.

Thorneye began to mumble. Something about a vase, something about his wife, and how he hadn’t even wanted to be there. Blithe had no time for his excuses, so she tightened her grip on Thorneye’s throat, cutting him off suddenly.

“The next words to pass your lips had better be good,” she said, dragging one jagged fingernail along his carotid, “or I will be forced to kill you, and I really don’t want to have to do that. You have your uses.” She eased up a little, just enough for Thorneye to talk coherently.

He seemed unable to for a few moments, and then finally he said: “A girl.” He dry swallowed. “A girl took it.”

“What do you mean, ‘a girl took it’?” The snake began to coil around Thorneye’s chest. It was colder than ice, even through his waistcoat.

“She seemed to know it was there,” he said. “I didn’t know what she had until it was too late.”

Blithe forced power along her arms into her fingertips. The inspector’s throat audibly sizzled as it began to burn. He whimpered, but no scream would come.

“What girl?”

Thorneye coughed and spluttered. Sweat streamed down his face. He looked as if he was about to suffer a fatal coronary, but Blithe wasn’t ready to ease off him, not just yet. He had valuable information, intelligence that she badly needed.

“We know her,” Thorneye said, trying to ignore the smell of smoke drifting up to his nostrils and the constricting snake around his torso. “Oh, please, Sorceress, we know who she is.” There was certain desperation in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. Thorneye sensed his days were numbered. There was a chance Blithe would kill him right there where he stood, even though he’d come to her with news of the missing piece. It was as much his prerogative not to have said anything, to have simply overlooked the object and keep it to himself. Blithe had to give him some credit—he was loyal.

She released his throat, and he dropped to his knees, feeling around his neck for the damage, hissing through gritted teeth at the charred texture he found there.

“Who is she?” Blithe said, slowly uncoiling her snake from Thorneye’s chest. “And why is she in possession of something that we’ve been searched centuries for?

Inspector Thorneye waited for the snake to be wholly removed, then relaxed a little. “Her name is Abigale,” he said. “Abigale Egars.”

“Why does that name ring a bell?” Blithe said.

“She’s quite well known in the thieving community,” said Thorneye. “If it’s not stuck down, she will take it, at least that’s what they say. The Met has been chasing her for the last few years, but she’s always one step ahead. She’s a nightmare for us, and no matter how many of us are put on the case, she always gets away.”

“And she has a piece of The Configuration,” Blithe said. “Even though she has no idea what it does?”

“Sorceress, I came to you as soon as I could.” He climbed to his feet, still running his fingers over his wounded throat. “Please, you have to understand that there was nothing I could do…”

“Yes, of course,” Blithe sneered. “You’re just the police. How are you expected to deal with one little thief? How silly of me.”

Thorneye could see the rage boiling over inside her again. If he wasn’t careful, he would not have the opportunity to rectify his gaffe.

Blithe took a deep breath and walked around to face him head-on. “You’ve never been able to catch her before,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “That’s because you’re useless mortals, and she’s obviously well-trained, unlike your lot.” She snorted. “With magic we can find her. There is nothing that brass-wolf of Dorian’s can’t sniff out. It’s what they’re trained to do, and Kai is the best.”

Thorneye blinked sweat from his eyes, which were painfully stinging. “So you will be able to track her?” You get a piece of The Configuration, and I get to arrest Abigale Egars?” It sounded too good to be true, but he was willing to roll with it.

Just then, Blithe clapped her hands together twice and hard. Hard enough to startle Thorneye, who hadn’t been anticipating it. There was a thunderous rumble, and a door at the side of the chamber flew open, slamming against the chamber wall.

Inspector Thorneye had met Dorian Clowes once or twice before, and there was no love lost between them. It had all stemmed from a joke Thorneye had made about Dorian being a girl’s name. Not a great thing to tell a necromancer, especially one as volatile as the man standing before him.

Dorian’s brass-wolf, Kai, sat at his feet, sniffing the air and growling in Thorneye’s general direction. It was a slavering beast of a creature, and Thorneye had often wondered what the thing’s armour was for. He, for one, would not step up to battle the thing if their paths should cross in a dark alley. Its teeth were razor-sharp, and his eyes flashed with the fires of hell if you looked into them for long enough…which Thorneye tried not to.

“Dorian, we have word on our missing pieces of The Configuration.” Blithe was cool and collected as she told the necromancer the news.

He grunted in return, proving that magic alone did not make a person happy.

“I want you to take Inspector Thorneye and track down the stupid girl who has recently acquired one. I’m sure she won’t put up much of a fight, but the Metropolitan Police Force have, thus far, been unable to apprehend this larcenous jezebel.”

Dorian grunted again before shooting Thorneye a look that would kill most mortals.

“I, erm, I didn’t say I was…willing to get, erm, involved,” Thorneye said. He had taken the information to Blithe so that it was out of his hands, not pressed further into them.

“You’re a snivelling weasel, do you know that?” Blithe’s naked form seemed to harden. For a moment, she had the countenance of a much larger woman, one that could take Thorneye apart with harsh words and intent stares. “You will go with Dorian, and you will collect that piece. Or you will remain here, and I will torture you to within an inch of your life for the next twenty years, or until I grow bored.”

Options, options, Thorneye thought. “I guess I’m going with Dorian.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Blithe scowled. “Now, I trust that you have something belonging to her in evidence?”

The Inspector thought about it for a moment. “We’ve got a few items collected from crime scenes,” he said. “Mainly broken contraptions she used during the thefts.”

“That will do nicely,” Blithe said. She slipped the snake off her shoulder and passed it to Dorian, who glanced nervously at it for a moment before it transformed into a large, rusty weapon. A chainsword.

Dorian sheathed it and grunted.

“You will need something that she has made contact with for Kai to be able to track her. Once he’s connected, though, you might want to stay out of his way, isn’t that right, Dorian?”

I’ll bet he grunts, Thorneye thought, and a moment later was proved right.

“Now, get out of my sight,” Blithe said. “And if you show up unannounced again, I will have you flayed, framed, and hung upon that wall there.” She pointed to a bare section of the chamber wall, a place that could have done with a little something or other.

Thorneye didn’t want to be that little something or other. He followed Dorian out of the chamber, making sure there were at least six steps between him and the mangy brass-wolf.

Blithe slammed the door and began to laugh heartily to herself. It was a sound that would give Inspector Thorneye nightmares for the rest of his life, however long that should be.

12

Abigale couldn’t believe that she’d slept right through, but when Octavius woke her with freshly brewed tea and a bowl of porridge, it was already light outside. She could hear the city coming to life, the people commuting to their workplaces, and the hansom cabs going about their business.

“Goddammit, how far did I run yesterday?” Abigale said, wincing as she stood from the armchair she had fallen asleep in. Mouse was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t unusual. He liked to do his own thing in the mornings.

“Sore?” Octavius asked, handing her that morning’s newspaper.

The illustration on the front page was of her, but Abigale laughed. “I don’t really look like that, do I?” she said. “I mean, my cheeks aren’t that…podgy.”

“It looks nothing like you,” Octavius said, lighting his pipe. “Which is a good thing. If they are going to keep employing these inept artists, why not make the most of it?” He smiled, patted her affectionately on the shoulder, and fell into the newly vacated armchair with a heavy thwump.

“You look tired,” Abigale said. “Don’t tell me you were at it all night long.”

“My dear, it has been so long since I was at it, but if you are referring to my tinkering, then yes, I did work late, or early, if you want to look at it that way.”

Abigale shook her head. “You’re going to kill yourself, Octavius Knight, and it will be all my fault.” She smiled, but her words were a little too close to the truth and it quickly dissipated. “Promise me you will sleep once I’m gone.”

The tinkerer’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you joshing with me? I shan’t sleep until you return safely, and even then, it will be with one eye open to make sure no one’s followed you.” He closed his eyes and ran a gnarly hand through his beard. “By the way, there are three small objects on the desk. They might look like silver charms, but I grant you that they are not.”

Abigale walked on stiff legs toward the desk. Sitting there were, as the tinkerer said, three small objects. “They look like something one of your automatons would do if they could poop.” She reached in to pick one up but then decided to make sure it was safe first. “I’m not going to burst into flames am I? Or suddenly find myself irresistible to rats.” Stranger things had happened.

“No, no. You will be perfectly safe.”

Abigale picked them up.

“They react to body temperature…. Oh, I see you’ve picked them up. Well, a word of advice. Do not put them down again. You will have triggered them, and they are very sensitive.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘don’t put them down again’? What am I supposed to do? Walk around with them clenched in my fist?”

“Octavius sighed. “There is a chain there on the desk. They will not detonate if you wear them around your wrist, but when you do take them off, do so one at a time. I’m not sure how destructive they are going to be, and I don’t want you starting a war with Russia, or France for that matter, though mainly Russia.”

Abigale fed the charms onto the chain and fixed the clasp around her wrist. “So now I have a gun that can knock people out and three miniature bombs that could be powerful enough to start a war. Whatever happened to ‘no one gets hurt.’ and ‘Stealing is a victimless crime.’?”

“Well, this is different,” Octavius said. Only one of his eyes was open now, and it was firmly fixed upon Abigale. “You’ve never come up against wizards before. I’m not saying a few exploding trinkets are going to make a difference, but it’s better to have them and not need them—”

“Than it is to need them and not have them,” Abigale finished.

“So you do pay attention,” he said. “That’s…well, surprising.”

Abigale turned to the large grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Its pendulum had been stationary for as long as she could remember, but it still ticked, and if you were really lucky it would chime once every couple of hours, but only when the mood took it. “Octavius,” she said, suddenly anxious. “It’s almost ten.”

“And you paid attention in clock reading class, too,” he smiled. “Fascinating.”

“That means I only have two hours until Poseidon’s Gale launches.” She paced this way and that, not knowing which would get her wherever she wanted to go the quickest. “I’ve got to get ready. I have to get over to Kensington Airfield in two hours. Lord knows how long it’s going to take to summon a hansom—”

“Already done,” Octavius said. “He’s been waiting outside since eight this morning, and will wait for as long as it takes for you to get some breakfast into you.”

Abigale relaxed. “You’ve thought of everything,” she said. Of course, he had. That’s what he did. He was the brains, she was the muscle, and so it should always be, forever and ever, amen.

“Not everything,” he said. “I forgot how much you hated porridge. It’s all I’ve got.”

Abigale laughed. Was it right for a girl with a poisonous time bomb in her head and three mini-bombs around her wrist to be laughing so merrily? Probably not, but Abigale Egars had never considered herself to be packing a full deck.

She ate breakfast, and although it was porridge, she really rather enjoyed it. After two cups of tea and a trip to the privy, she was ready to go, standing at the entrance to Octavius’s workshop with the satchel over her shoulder and Big Daddy concealed beneath her russet military coat.

Octavius clutched Mouse, who looked genuinely shocked that he was being left in the hands of a madman. “I wish I could go with you,” he said, the pipe rattling around in the corner of his mouth. “Just doesn’t feel right, you going off like this.”

Abigale sniffed. “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” she said. “Any longer than that, you have my permission to hunt Mordecai Pick down and brutally slay him.” She grinned, but Octavius’s expression insinuated that he’d already considered it. “Stay out of trouble, old man. Everything’s going to be fine, once I get this damned device out of my nut.” The emerald bowler—she’d grown tired of the brown one—perched upon her head and covered the scar, but she could still feel it there. Not in the least because it was itchy as hell.

“You take care,” Octavius said.

Leaning in, he embraced her. Abigale reciprocated, and the tinkerer’s beard was almost as itchy as the scar on her head.

“You know me,” she said. “I didn’t get to be this good without taking care of myself.” They broke out of the hug and Abigale patted Mouse on his little, furry head. “And you be good for the old man. He can’t chase you around like I can.”

Octavius snorted. “I’m old, not an invalid,” he said, though his voice was frivolous. “Now go, before I change my mind.”

“Actually, changing your mind would mean they set the poison off, and—”

“Goodbye, Abigale,” he said, and slowly eased the door shut.

*

“What do you mean one of the scorpions is missing?” Alcorn wiggled his finger around inside his ear. His face screwed up as he did. “Right, you can say that again now. The piece of wax causing all the confusion has been removed.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Detective,” Inquisitor Gurd said. “You heard me perfectly well the first time.”

Yes, but I still don’t believe you. “Why would anyone have taken a piece of evidence?” Unless they wanted to rebuild one of the arachnid devices, it made no sense.

“The only people I know with access to that evidence were you, Detective Hatterfield, and Inspector Thorneye, and I—”

“Thorneye,” Alcorn said.

Lazarus Gurd made a face that intimated he didn’t like being interrupted, not when he was in the middle of an accusation, but then he looked perplexed.

“What?”

“Thorneye. He was there yesterday, at the museum. I knew there was something strange about the way he acted then, but now this…” He trailed off, tried to put two and two together and came up with seventy-three. What could Thorneye possibly want with one of the clockwork scorpions? They were no good to man nor beast, not in their current state, and Thorneye didn’t strike him as the type of man to enjoy tinkering. He was more of a drinking and whinging kind of man. An arsehole, if Alcorn remembered correctly.

“Are you saying that Inspector Thorneye removed a piece of important evidence from its cabinet and has taken it on some merry trip to Lord knows where?”

“I’m saying that it wasn’t me, and Hatterfield is as honest a detective as any I’ve ever worked with.”

Detective Hatterfield was one of the good guys. He’d once handed in a suitcase of stolen money he’d found in his own back yard. If that didn’t say commitment, what did? Alcorn shook his head.

“No, this is something to do with Thorneye. If you had seen him yesterday, the way he acted when I was getting answers from the witnesses, you’d have thought he was in on the whole caper.” That wasn’t possible, was it? That officious wife of his wouldn’t allow him to get involved in anything as exciting as criminality.

“I don’t understand,” Gurd said, turning his back on Alcorn long enough for Alcorn to notice the expanding bald patch on his superior’s pate. It was heart-warming.

“Neither do I,” Alcorn said. “Not yet. However, if Thorneye is involved in this somehow, and I’m almost certain that he is, I’m going to expose him for the treacherous rat he is.” He turned and made his way across the room. It was nice having a lead for a change, and Thorneye would be easier to find than that thieving bint, Abigale Egars.

“Alcorn,” Gurd said, still facing the myriad papers pinned upon his wall.

“Yes, Sir?”

“If you find that son of a harlot, and he is involved, you have my express permission to strike him several times before arresting him.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Alcorn said, leaving Gurd’s office with a smile wide enough to catch a dragonfly. It will be my pleasure.

13

The nerves began to hit Abigale like a ten-ton hammer as soon as she left Octavius’s lair. While she rode the hansom cab over to Kensington, anxiety stabbed at her like so many pins. For the first time in her life, she was utterly alone, a lost girl with a thousand things on her mind, a thousand-and-one if you wanted to get technical. Though the device wasn’t ticking, it might as well have been. The wound was itchy and annoying, but buried beneath her hat, she was unable to scratch it. It was best not to touch it, anyway. For all she knew, a slight change in wind direction could trigger it. The best thing to do was forget it was there and hope for the best.

She went to pay the hansom driver, but he simply smiled and shook his head. “Your old man already took care of it,” he said. Abigale tried not to look directly at the driver’s multi-coloured teeth. She was about to offer the man a little extra for the gentle and potentially life-extending drive over, but he’d already whipped his horses and was on his way, waving casually as he went.

Abigale turned to face the street she’d been delivered to.

Sunshine beat down upon the London cobbles. Market traders bellowed at the tops of their voices, flogging cheap fruits and vegetables or freshly baked breads. Abigale wasn’t hungry, but she bought an apple from one of the vendors and dropped it into her satchel for later. She’d never travelled by dirigible before, and she wasn’t entirely sure if they catered to their passengers, or if they did, how expensive it would be.

The moneybag was at the bottom of her satchel, but she didn’t want to break into it, not straight away. She would need money to get from Saint Petersburg to Paris, and that wasn’t going to be cheap. Of course, she had to survive Saint Petersburg first.

“Excuse me?” Abigale said, slowly approaching a stall that seemed to specialise in textiles. The proprietor, a silver-haired woman with a large and unsightly wart upon her cheek, stopped folding material and glowered toward Abigale as if she’d said something offensive.

Abigale, for a moment, forgot what she was going to say. The woman’s penetrating glare had stopped her in her tracks. “Erm, I…” Pull yourself together, girl. “The airfield?” She practically blurted it out. “Yes, you wouldn’t be able to point me in the direction of the airfield, would you?”

Perhaps that was just her face; maybe the wind had changed and left her like that permanently, because without any change to her expression whatsoever,——the textile lady said, “You’re right next to it, lovey.” She jabbed a rheumy old finger in the air. “If you go and stand over there you’ll see the blooming thing.”

Abigale smiled, wished the barmy old dear a pleasant day, and went over to where that ghastly finger had pointed.

She turned, scouring the skyline above the market tents, and at first, she saw nothing. She took a single step back, and one step was all it took.

There, beyond the market and behind a tall, wire fence, was a huge dome. She recognised it as the front of a dirigible, even though she’d only ever seen them from afar, usually hundreds of metres up in the sky. It was slightly surreal being level with one. Its sheer immensity rendered her mute, and she couldn’t even see the whole thing, yet.

With her heart racing and a childlike excitement coursing through her, Abigale made her way past the market, seeking a way onto the airfield, to where Poseidon’s Gale sat waiting.

*

Alcorn didn’t know where to start, but he figured the best place was Thorneye’s apartment on Hertford Street. From across the road, he stood watch, using the archway of another building’s porch for cover. From there, he could see all four storeys of the building, but he kept his attention fixed upon on the front door. As much of an idiot as Thorneye was, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come out the window, not even if he was being chased by a pack of wild boar.

What are you up to, Joe? Why did you take the busted scorpion? Why is it that I can’t trust you as far as I can throw you? They were all good questions, and they kept running through Alcorn’s head, tormenting him. He was missing something simple, one part of a puzzle that would ultimately explain everything, but what was it?

He watched the building for ten minutes before deciding he was wasting his time. Marching across the street, no longer in surveillance mode, he walked right up to the large, black door and grabbed the lion’s head doorknocker in his clammy hand. Whack, whack, whack! If that wasn’t enough to wake the neighbours, Alcorn didn’t know what was. He took a step back from the door and glanced up to where Thorneye lived with his wife on the second floor..

“Come on,” he urged. He hadn’t considered what he might say when someone answered. The trip to their home was a little heavy-handed, even by his own reckless standards. However, there were certain things that he just didn’t pussyfoot around. This, Alcorn thought, is one of those things.

After knocking once more, Alcorn was all but ready to leave when Cynthia Thorneye appeared in the crack of the door. She was grotesque, wearing nothing more than a flowery gown and a grimace that suggested he’d caught her in the middle of something strenuous. He hoped it wasn’t something strenuous for two participants.

“Hello, Mrs Thorneye,” Alcorn said, turning on the charm, and why not? He had enough of it. “I’m looking for Joe. It’s official Met business, and it’s very important that I locate him immediately.” Good enough. Maybe the part about official Met business was a little over the top, but apart from that…

“Joe’s not here, Detective,” she said with a voice that would have frightened small children and pets. “He didn’t come home last night. He telephoned me very late. Said he was working a very important case and that he didn’t know when he would be back.”

Alcorn was dumfounded. Who in their right mind would give Joe Thorneye a very important case? No one, that’s who, and certainly not Inquisitor Gurd, who had no idea where the Inspector had disappeared to.

“Yes, the very important case,” Alcorn said. “He’s getting really close to cracking that one, from what I hear.” He took a step toward the door and the chubby face peering through the crack. “He didn’t happen to mention where he was, did he?”

Cynthia shook her head, making her jowls flap. “No, no, he didn’t tell me anything. Confidential, no doubt.”

So confidential that he had to steal a piece of vital evidence from the station and take it for a walk.

He could see she wasn’t lying. Thorneye wasn’t home. He was off, up to no good, and it was killing Alcorn not knowing what it was.

“Okay, Mrs Thorneye,” he said, backing down the steps in front of the building. “Sorry to disturb you. If he comes back can—” The door slamming cut him off. “Can you tell him I’m going to give him the slapping of his life,” Alcorn added. It didn’t make him feel any better.

Where the hell are you, you son a bitch?

Alcorn walked along Hertford Street and turned left onto Old Park Lane. He was looking for a needle in a haystack, and at the back of his mind, all he could think about was Abigale Egars.

He summoned a hansom and instructed the driver to head wherever the hell he wanted to. Alcorn was relying on blind luck, more than a smidgeon of providence, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit.

*

The brass-wolf was still making Thorneye nervous, and yet none of the people they passed seemed to notice the beast for what it was. Surely, they could see it wasn’t a dog. What kind of dog wears armour, anyway? Has the world gone so mad that people can’t distinguish between a bloodthirsty beast of the wild and a mangy mutt in a costume?

“We’ve been walking for ten hours,” Thorneye said. The sweat was trickling down his spine and pooling in an area he didn’t care to think about. “Are you sure the wolf’s not just taking a tour of the city?”

The giant necromancer, Dorian, grunted. Conversation had been limited during the night, which was fine by Thorneye, but occasionally, something more than a grunt was necessary.

“If you say so,” Thorneye said. On the inside, he was crying, cursing at himself for taking his news to Blithe. This was all his fault, and he was to suffer by walking the streets of London for all eternity. At least, that’s what it felt like. Next to him, the necromancer hadn’t even broken a sweat. His breathing was well regulated, and he looked as if he was able to carry on walking to the ends of the Earth if that’s what it took.

Just then, Kai sniffed excitedly at the ground, slobbered his way up a bright red pillar-box. Drool dripped from his aroused maw. It was one of the most hideous things Thorneye had ever seen, and he’d worked the beat on Old Kent Road.

“Oh, thank God,” Thorneye said. “I thought we’d lost her.”

Dorian shook his head. His jaw tightened as he glanced in the direction they were going. He pointed, and grunted once. Kai began sniffing at the ground once again, leading them onwards to Abigale Egars and a fragment of something very, very important.

*

As she walked tentatively across the airfield toward Poseidon’s Gale, Abigale realised how colossal the task ahead was going to be. She’d never doubted herself before, not even on the riskiest of jobs, but this…this was an altogether different kettle of fish.

Once upon a time, when she’d had a mother and father and everything had been as close to normal as one could expect, her father had told her stories of massive skyships, tremendous cigar-shaped dirigibles that drifted through the sky as easy and as smoothly as clouds. At the time, Abigale had chortled and told her daddy that he was being silly. Such things could never exist. It was fantasy, something he’d created to charm and delight her at bedtime.

“Look at me now, Daddy,” Abigale whispered as she slowly approached the very thing her father had prophesised. While he had described its shape in perfect detail, he’d left out just how beautiful the skyships would be. Perhaps, in his own head, he’d had an image, an idea of how they might turn out, but he’d been unwilling to commit—just in case he turned out to be wrong.

There were two dirigibles sitting on the grass, one much larger than the other. The one on the right was called, according to the inscription upon its side, The Mad Knave. Catchy, but not her ride. She was on the big one, and her smile grew broad as she turned to face it.

Poseidon’s Gale was astonishing. Her gondola filled the entire right side of Kensington Airfield, which must have made her around one-hundred and fifty foot in length. On either side of her, steps stretched down to the grass, and people were queuing at the bottom—talking excitedly and being generally merry. It was a lot for Abigale to take in, and she found herself constantly drawn to the mammoth balloon overhead. Everything beneath it was cast into a gloomy darkness, and yet, the atmosphere was akin to that of a festival banquet.

She joined the queue of two-hundred people all dying to climb aboard and cross the sea to Europe. Abigale felt as if she weren’t quite sure if she was dreaming or if it was all real and she was having an out of body experience as she gawked up at the huge gondola. Those must be the life ships, she thought as she noticed the six smaller vessels secured to the larger dirigible’s side. They were like miniature versions of Poseidon’s Gale, as if the ship had birthed them and was taking them along with her for the ride. Carbon copies of their mother, each had a small balloon already filled with hydrogen and gondolas with the Poseidon’s Gale painted along their sides in eloquent script.

“Have your tickets ready,” a man said as he marched up and down the line. “Everyone, please make sure you have a valid ticket and passport, otherwise you won’t be flying today.”

He looked like the type of guy who should be taming lions in a travelling circus, and he must have seen Abigale staring at him, for he turned on her, his tailcoat whooshing behind him.

“And I know a beautiful young thing like you wouldn’t be trying to stowaway on old Mother Gale, here, would you?” he dampened his lips and grinned.

Abigale tried not to let her disgust show. The last thing she wanted to do was annoy the Ticketmaster, who was well within his right to simply deny her admittance.

“I have a ticket,” she said, fumbling around in her satchel. A moment of panic washed over her, but then she remembered she’d put the ticket in her coat pocket. She retrieved it and flashed it at the lip licker, hoping it would be enough to send him off to pester someone else.

“Indeed you do,” he said, grinning.

Why did all the sleazy ones always latch onto her? She wasn’t even dressed pretty, and she certainly didn’t feel attractive, what with the itchy head and the fact she was carrying a multitude of explosives.

“Enjoy the journey, ma’am. Be sure to come find me if you have any,” he gave another lick of his lips, specific requirements.”

Abigale forced a smile. It was either that, or she was going to upchuck right there on Kensington Airfield. “Thank you.” She tucked the ticket back into her pocket and faced forward. Off he went, questioning other people. I’ll bet he doesn’t slaver all over them, Abigale thought as a shudder ran down her spine.

With aching legs, she stood waiting, silently praying for a comfortable seat when they were finally allowed to board. Her excitement had waned a little. She couldn’t help feeling that everything was running too smoothly and that it was all a little easy—something that she wasn’t used to.

Don’t tempt fate, a voice in her head reminded her. You’re a good thief, girl, but you aren’t infallible.

Wise words for a bodiless narrator.

*

“Slow down!” Alcorn said, leaning out of the right window and calling back to the driver. He waved his hand in the air. “Stop right here!” The horses slowed to a halt, and Alcorn stepped down from the cab and made his way around the back.

It’s him!

Thorneye was walking alongside a much larger fellow with the biggest damn dog Alcorn had ever seen. Alcorn couldn’t believe his luck.

“I know you’re a copper, and whatnot,” the driver said, glaring down at Alcorn like some Roman emperor, “but I’ve got two bleedin’ kids to feed.”

The man held his hand out, and after fumbling around in his pocket without taking his eyes off the dawdling Inspector on the opposite side of the street, Alcorn paid him.

The hansom galloped off down the street, leaving Alcorn exposed. It didn’t matter. Thorneye was too busy rambling to his friend to notice anything else. They looked as if they were on a mission, and Alcorn had to move quickly if he wanted to keep up. He fell in behind them, all the while keeping his distance and wondering who the hell the other man was, anyway.

They came upon a market, and Alcorn watched as the large man allowed his dog to sniff around. It wasn’t like any dog Alcorn had ever seen before. It was almost wolfish, and he guessed it was probably illegally imported from another country, but that didn’t matter right then. What mattered was keeping Thorneye in his sights.

Whatever that fool was up to, it was wrong. Corruption was a problem in the Met, had been for quite some time. Alcorn loathed nothing more than a dishonest copper. He hated them more than he hated the run-of-the-mill arsehole criminals.

“You want apples?” a voice said.

A woman with one tooth had crept up on him, which took some doing. She was holding a tray of what appeared to be tomatoes, but Alcorn didn’t have time to correct her. His mark was moving, the weird dog leading the way.

Where are you going?

Alcorn kept close, following them through a set of gates that had been somewhat concealed by the bustling market. If Thorneye turned, that would be it. All over. See you later. No arrest, and no corrupt rozzer behind bars, where he belonged.

He stood between the gates leading onto Kensington Airfield. Thorneye and his mystery associate were heading toward a dirigible, but Alcorn knew the Inspector wasn’t about to go anywhere. Why would he? His wife would kill him, Inquisitor Gurd would suspend him, and then his wife would divorce him. That chain of events seemed unlikely to happen, but the longer Alcorn stood there watching—they were almost at the dirigible, now, and getting closer still—the more he believed Thorneye capable of anything, no matter how silly.

“He wouldn’t,” Alcorn sighed, and yet he realised he was nodding at the very same time.

*

“Where does she think she is going?” Thorneye asked, shielding his eyes from the midday sun and inspecting the huge dirigible sitting on the grass. “What, she steals something she knows nothing about and then takes a holiday? Hey, you don’t think she’s sold it, do you?”

Dorian huffed. It was a rather welcomed change from the grunt Thorneye had expected.

“I’m serious. How else can she afford to fly to…where is this thing going?” He looked up at the side, but apart from the name of the ship, there was nothing. “Anyway, she’s going somewhere, and we need to get her off here now before…wait, where are you going? We can’t. We don’t even have tickets, and my wife…please stop walking...”

Dorian stood at the bottom of the steps, facing some maniac that had deemed it appropriate behaviour to accost a necromancer. Thorneye couldn’t help but wonder if the man had not noticed the giant armoured beast by Dorian’s side. Did he, too, think it was some sort of mutant Chihuahua?

“Tickets, please,” the man said, leaning against the side of the gondola and twirling his handlebar moustache between thumb and forefinger. He looks like the type of person that should be taming lions at a travelling circus, Thorneye thought.

Dorian grunted, and Thorneye stepped forward, ready to mediate before things got ugly. “I’m afraid my friend here doesn’t speak English.” He flashed his badge at the suspicious man and smiled. “I’m Inspector Thorneye, this is my associate…” He looked up at the necromancer and tried to pluck a name from obscurity. The first thing that came to mind elicited a snarl from Dorian. “Detective Gulliver.”

The ticket master straightened himself up. Most people did when they realised they were addressing the law, and that’s because most people were doing something illegal.

“What is this about?” the man asked, his confidence sapped.

To say that he looked dubious was a little like saying Henry the Eighth had women issues. Thorneye knew he could use it to his advantage, as he’d done with so many before.

“We need to get on board this ship,” Thorneye said. “We have reason to believe that a well-known and wanted thief has taken it upon herself to leave the country, and we must do everything within our power to make sure that does not happen.”

The ticket master sighed. “There is nothing I can do. Poseidon’s Gale is property of Russia, and to Russia, she must return. She is already late, and I…” he trailed off there. The knife protruding from his stomach might have had something to do with his sudden silence.

Thorneye shot Dorian a reproachful look. “Really? We couldn’t have talked him into letting us on board?”

Dorian grunted, threw the corpse of the ticket master over his shoulder, and made his way up the steps in front.

“And now we’re taking the dead body with us. I’m sure that will go down well with the other passengers. Why not…we already have a brass-wolf…not to mention the biggest necromancer... Hey, wait for me.” Thorneye scrambled after Dorian, and by the time they reached the ship, the ticket master had made a miraculous recovery, albeit with a twist. Dorian placed him down on the ground and gave him a slight nudge forward, as if expecting him to suddenly fly free.

“This way, gentlemen. I’ll show you to your seats,” the ticket master said, pulling his moustache through bloody fingers. At first, Thorneye didn’t know what was going on, but then he remembered, Dorian was with a necromancer. Reviving the dead was a specialty of theirs. It didn’t matter if it’d been dead for ten seconds, or ten centuries; a powerful necromancer could bring back anyone or anything. To be truthful, it made Thorneye’s skin crawl just thinking about it.

“Can we just get the girl, find out where the Configuration piece is, and get the hell off this thing?” Thorneye had had enough. The situation was way out of his league. Blithe and the necromancer could go to hell. Once he was out of that mess, that was it. No more. Wizards…who do they think they bleeding are? “Hey, wait a minute. Are we moving? It feels like we’re moving, which I know can’t be happening because…”

The ship rose slowly from the grass beneath and suddenly drifted across to the right. Those that saw it coming had managed to grab onto something stable, but Thorneye hadn’t, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

“Erm, yes. Well, that answers my question. Spiffing. Off to Russia we go.” There was no joy in his voice whatsoever, and the other passengers watched him rambling with some confusion.

Kai sniffed at the air, trying to pinpoint the scent he’d been following for almost ten hours, but for the moment, amongst all the people, it was lost. Dorian growled at the brass-wolf, and it lowered itself to the ground, whimpering. Once they were up, and the ship was more stable, they would find the girl. They had her trapped at what would shortly be eight-thousand feet, and unless she was feeling lucky or had some magnificent clockwork eagle that she could ride back to Earth, she wasn’t going anywhere.

*

Alcorn ran across the airfield as quickly as his legs would carry him, but he’d left it too late. The ship was up and out of reach, and no amount of arm waving or bellowing was going to bring it back down.

Had they killed that man? It sure looked like it, but Alcorn had been too far away to be certain. Now they were drifting off to wherever the magnificent bitch was going, and he was being left behind. What a terrible week he was having.

“Miss the boat, did you?”

The voice was a little too cheerily for Alcorn’s liking. As the dirigible got smaller and smaller in the sky, the sun bouncing off it like pure magic, Alcorn shielded his eyes and turned to face the source.

A small man, wearing coveralls obviously made for a man of much larger frame, stood before him. . The sleeves hung listlessly from his wrists, and if he wasn’t careful he’d be tripping over the legs, which covered his boots entirely. Strapped to his head was a pair of aviator goggles, and despite the coveralls being cleaner than the day they had been made, the man’s face was absolutely filthy.

“Where’s it going?” Alcorn asked, pointing at the shrinking shape in the sky. The run across the airfield had left him breathless and shaky.

“Oh, Poseidon’s Gale?” the man said as if that should mean something to Alcorn. “She’s a Russian dirigible, so I’m guessing she’s off back to Rus’.” He grinned.

Alcorn could see that dental hygiene was not something that the fellow considered important.

His smile faltered, and the dirty creases making up his face momentarily lessened. “Should you have been on board?”

Alcorn took a deep breath; the air was dirty, and he almost choked on the steam the departing dirigible had left in its wake. “I wasn’t,” he said, “but neither were two men that I followed here.”

The filthy man frowned. “’Ere, you’re not some sort of pervert, are you? Can’t be doing with none of that nonsense and—”

“I’m a detective,” Alcorn said before the man had time to tell him what he thought of perverts. “One of our inspectors just headed off to Mother Russia on a dirigible with some modern-day Hercules, and I need to know why.” Even as he’d spoke the words, Alcorn wondered, Is he though? Is he one of us?

“Oh, the big fella with the bronze-plated dog?” the man said. “Yeah, they walked right past here. I thought they were an odd couple, and there was something wrong with that dog of theirs.”

He took a step forward and wiped his hand on the front of his coveralls before pushing it toward Alcorn. “Clem O’Connell’s the name. Dirigibles is my game. Though nothing as big as the one that just left. I’m a cargo man. Less aggro if I fall into the sea, if you know what I mean.” He realised that the detective wasn’t going to accept the offer of a handshake and lowered it.

Alcorn was too busy scrutinising the smaller dirigible behind O’Connell for niceties. “That’s yours?”

“Yeah.” O’Connell admired his skyship across his shoulder. “Ain’t she a beaut? The Mad Knave. Named her after my Granddad.”

“Yeah, I don’t care about that,” Alcorn said, curtly. “You’re taking me after the big ship.” It wasn’t a request.

O’Connell’s mouth opened and shut a few times before anything came out. “The Mad Knave? No, Sir, I don’t think so. She’s being repaired. There’s no way she could make a sea journey, not in her current state.”

Well, this is just getting better and better.

Alcorn felt the sudden urge to hit something—anything—and O’Connell must have sensed it, for he took a few steps back, wincing like a reprimanded child.

“How long until she’s fixed?” Alcorn asked. Poseidon’s Gale was no longer visible in the sky, and all of a sudden, Alcorn knew time was of the essence.

“She’s got a busted rudder on the right side, and I’m pretty sure there’s a small hole in the balloon on the aft. She’s been dragging a little.”

“How long?” Patience was something Alcorn had never had much of, and the guy was testing it more than he knew.

“Couple of hours if I have an extra pair of hands, but even then, I don’t think we’ll catch up with the Gale. She does forty an hour, which is nippy for a ship of her size and…well, it’s not a route I’m familiar with, and there’s a storm coming in from the Baltic which could get messy and….” he trailed off and stepped aside.

Alcorn was already removing his coat and rolling up his sleeves. “How soon will they dock in Rus’?” At forty-miles-per-hour, it wouldn’t take long.

“My guess? Less than two days. Around forty hours, give or take. There ain’t many places to set down on the way unless they don’t mind getting wet. The storm might slow them down a little, but she’s a feisty ship. Should be able to battle through it without too much trouble.”

“And yours?” Alcorn gestured to The Mad Knave. “What are the chances of it getting through a storm in one piece?”

O’Connell pondered it for a second as if a series of difficult sums were running through his mind. Alcorn could practically hear the clockwork.

“We get her fixed up nice and good, sort that rudder out, fix the hole in her balloon, I’d say there’s a good chance she’ll push through it…like, fifty-fifty. Well, maybe forty-sixty. But hey, she’s been through worse.”

Alcorn didn’t doubt it. “Okay,” he said, despite the short odds. “Let’s get to work.”

14

The cabin surpassed Abigale’s expectations tenfold. In fact, she hadn’t been expecting such hospitality, but it turned out that Mordecai Pick had a lot more money than sense. Despite forcing her into the caper with heavy hands, it was clear he wanted her to be as safe as possible until she’d upheld her side of the deal.

First Class. She hadn’t even seen it on the ticket, right there at the bottom in small, semi-legible print. It must have cost a small fortune. From what she’d seen, the majority of the passengers had been siphoned into shared rooms, where they would have just enough room to stretch their legs if they were very careful.

“This is unreal,” Abigale said, slipping the satchel from her shoulder and absorbing her surroundings with acute wonderment.

At the far side of the cabin was a bed. Red satin sheets had been neatly folded at the corners, ready for a tired passenger to simply slip beneath. There was a single porthole, through which she could see the clouds whipping past. The room was almost exclusively dark wood, and it smelt of fresh varnish as if it had only recently been completed. To her left was a tall cabinet, and when she opened it, she discovered a plethora of bottles and glasses— beverages for the journey. Even though she seldom drank, part of her knew she wouldn’t be able to resist temptation for too long. She closed the cabinet and made her way over to the porthole.

Down there, beyond the wispy clouds that looked as if they were made wholly of pleasant dreams, the ground slowly edged away. Poseidon’s Gale was such a huge ship that it didn’t feel as if they were moving at all, more like they were simply suspended up there in the heavens, going against all laws of physics known to man. The slow thrum of her engines was the only sound Abigale could make out, and it was a soothing noise, liable to put her into a deep sleep before she’d even had time to finish exploring.

“Well, thank you, Mordecai.” As much as she hated him—perhaps more than she’d hated another human being before—she knew he hadn’t been obligated to offer her such generous quarters. He could have stuffed her back in the crowded den with all the other passengers, but no. There was something about it that didn’t make sense.

He wants me to steal for him, and he’s planted a device in my head that could kill me if he so wishes. Yet he’s pulled out all the stops to make my journey as comfortable as possible…

Maybe he wasn’t such a ruthless arsehole after all.

After pouring a large glass of something golden, Abigale made sure the door to her cabin was locked, headed across to the bed, and emptied the contents of her satchel, spreading them out. If there was anything missing, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it, but at least she’d have time to figure out how to improvise.

She removed Big Daddy from its holster and placed that onto the bed, after checking how many rounds remained in the chamber. Five. Of course, it was five. She’d only shot one man, and deservedly so. She hoped he was okay, though. Just because he’d come on a little strong didn’t mean she’d had the right to execute him on the spot. There had been no news of a death on the radio that morning, and Octavius would have told her if he’d heard anything through the proverbial grapevine. Pushing thoughts of the fallen banker aside, she focused on the items laid out before her.

The monovision eyeglass was very important, especially for the Saint Petersburg job. The automaton fly in its box, even though she hadn’t had time to test it, she knew would be very useful. She checked off the lock picks, glass cutter, apple, rope-gun, and a small box containing twenty-four darts for Big Daddy. No swinging from tall buildings, girl. Octavius’ warning about the rope-gun left her smiling as she continued to go over her belongings.

She had her notebook containing basic information such as the addresses of the two museums, locomotive timetable from Saint Petersburg to Paris, possible security measures that Mordecai might have overlooked in his initial plans. There was also the money bag, which she counted out once again, just to be sure she wasn’t going to be left stranded in Russia. She smiled, sure that wasn’t going to happen, not with the amount of money Mordecai had furnished her with.

“All present and correct,” she said, stuffing it all back into the satchel. She took a huge bite from the apple, not knowing what time dinner would be, or how she would go about ordering one to her cabin.

She placed the satchel up near the pillows and stood, arching her back until it audibly cracked. No matter how comfortable her quarters, she was loath to undress and make herself entirely at home. She was on a job, removing her corset or even her hat for that matter, was a big no-no. She needed to remain focused. At least I’m not tired, she thought. She’d had a good night’s sleep at Octavius’s, and he’d left her snoozing even while he’d worked.

She glanced down at the three charms wrapped around her wrist. She’d almost forgotten about those, which just wouldn’t do. What if she’d subconsciously removed them, the way she did with most of her jewellery. A woman seldom paid attention when taking things out of their ears or slipping bracelets from their wrists, the action was almost like second nature. Since it was only her body heat preventing the charms from detonating, it seemed more than a little important that she remembered what they were and what they were capable of—if they worked.

After staring from the porthole, mesmerised, for ten whole minutes, Abigale knew she needed to explore the rest of the ship. She wasn’t the type of girl to spend forty hours locked away like some captive maiden, and since there was no prince coming to rescue her—not that she needed or wanted one—it was down to her to escape the confines of her large and eloquently decorated cell.

She re-holstered Big Daddy, making sure he wasn’t visible beneath her coat and slipped the satchel over her head, being careful not to knock her hat askew. With a rumbling stomach and everything she possessed on her person, she unlocked the cabin door and slipped out onto the main deck.

*

“I mean, really, how many people are you going to kill?” Thorneye asked, watching the necromancer lower the woman to the ground, his chainsword slipping out of her back with incredible ease.

For a brief moment, the woman stood motionless, half-leaning against the side of the ship. She was dead, but not for long. The necromancer did something with his hand, and a glowing orange light trickled along his fingertips and shot into the dead woman’s back.

She perked up, as if rousing from a bad dream, and glanced around, her mouth opening and shutting like a fish out of water.

“That’s some trick,” Thorneye said. “Have you ever thought about not killing them, that way you wouldn’t have to penetrate them with your orange mist, or whatever the hell it is?”

Dorian grunted, turned the woman bodily around to face him. She looked intoxicated, but it quickly passed, and then she smiled a sweet smile meant only for the man who had resurrected her. The fact that he’d been the one to put her there in the first place didn’t seem to bother her.

“Thank you, Dorian,” she said with her eyes rolling up into her head so that only the whites were visible. “I serve you and only you.”

Thorneye sighed. “How is this helping? I mean, surely this is only exacerbating this whole mess.” He couldn’t understand how making zombies would lead them to Abigale Egars. The brass-wolf had lost the scent, it didn’t seem to be a big deal. They had her cornered. She was on the skyship somewhere. All they had to do was walk around, knock on a few doors, and they’d find her.

Instead, the necromancer was raising an army of undead, and none of them seemed to be sentient enough to actually help. The ticket master had been sent to search for Abigale an hour before. Thorneye had visions of the insensate buffoon toppling over the side of the ship. All the powers the necromancer possessed, and he wasn’t able to revive a genius, someone that could actually assist them.

Dorian mumbled something into the newly dead woman’s ear, and her eyes burned a sharp blue. At their heels, Kai growled, clearly annoyed with himself for losing the girl’s scent when they were so close.

“I understand,” the woman said. Her voice was groggy as if she’d recently imbibed something hard.

Dorian grunted and stepped away from his fresh subordinate. Her corset was drenched with blood, but apart from that and the strange coloration of her eyes, she looked alive. She sidestepped Dorian and bounced off Thorneye, who was unable to move out of her way. Then she took a few unsteady steps forward and left her cabin through the open door.

“No more,” Thorneye said. “Seriously. This is getting out of hand, and there’s absolutely no need for it. We will find her.”

The necromancer scowled. He had a face only a mother could love. Thorneye didn’t know what the Sorceress, Blithe, saw in him.

“Right, I’m going to ask around, see if anyone’s seen a young girl with red hair. We’re going to do this the old-fashioned way, necromancer. No more zombies.” With that, he turned and left, ignoring the brass-wolf’s low growl as he went.

*

“Wow, I can have anything off this menu?” Abigale said, glancing down at the list of expensive meals in her hand.

Her server nodded. She was only a little older than Abigale, and she had the face of an angel.

How do you end up working on a skyship, anyway? That was the stuff of Abigale’s dreams.

“Anything you like,” the girl said. “You have a first-class ticket, which means that you’re entitled to eat, drink, and be merry to your heart’s content. Didn’t you know that when you purchased the ticket?” She sniggered, the way an adolescent girl might snigger after holding hands with a boy for the very first time.

“I didn’t purchase the ticket,” Abigale said.

The girl frowned.

“I mean, my uncle, he was the one who got the ticket. This is a gift. It’s my birthday, and he’s a very rich man…”

The girl’s smile returned. “Sounds like a very generous man, too,” she said. She held out her hand. “I’m Cornelia Maddern. Most people just call me Corny, which used to offend me, but nowadays, not so much.”

Abigale shook her hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Cornelia,” she said, ignoring the fact that she’d been given permission to use the impertinent short version. “I’m…Octavia.” Phew, that was close. She needed to concentrate more, or risk giving herself away.

“What a wonderful name,” Cornelia said.

She had an infectious smile, one that Abigale found herself envious of. Two perfect dimples dotted her cheeks. Her long, auburn hair was fine as if it never required combing. Simply put, Cornelia Maddern was the kind of girl that Abigale would have, under other circumstances, given the time of day to.

She turned her attention back to the list. “And if all this is paid for, I’m going to make the most of it.” She ran her finger down the menu, not paying much attention to the dish because it was the price that mattered. “Lobster,” she said, turning her head.

Cornelia nodded and wrote something upon a small piece of paper. “Good choice. You’re going to love it. I’ll be back in a few moments with the wine list.” She did an eloquent about turn and strode off across the restaurant deck, past the otherwise empty seats.

Abigale wondered why she was the only one eating, but the clock hanging upon the wall answered her question. It was only two in the afternoon. Most people had either eaten already or were waiting for a later hour. Still, she couldn’t starve her stomach, not when it was ready to eat. Abigale could have, in that moment, eaten a rotten horse between two slices of mouldy bread.

Suddenly her brain went haywire with questions. Lobster? What if she didn’t like it? What if poor Cornelia Maddern went and fetched her lobster and had to return it untouched? What on Earth had possessed her to order something she wasn’t sure would agree with her? It came down to one thing and one thing only. It was the most expensive thing on the menu. That didn’t mean it was going to be delicious. She’d made that mistake same with caviar some years before.

Suddenly she found herself yearning for a bowl of squashed potatoes. Too late now, though.

The restaurant was wonderfully quiet. It afforded her time to get her bearings and figure out exactly what was going on. It was still a dream, all of it. Had to be. Through the eight porthole windows on either side of the restaurant, the clouds drifted slowly by. There was no noise down there, either, which meant the restaurant was at the opposite end to the engines. Abigale was glad of the peace and quiet as she tried to fathom just how she’d ended up on a skyship, travelling across the ocean to Russia. Surreal didn’t even begin to cut it. If someone would have told her the week prior that she would be doing such a thing, she would have laughed in their face and told them to go fool some other monkey.

“Octavia?” Cornelia Maddern said it as if it wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get her attention.

Abigale snapped out of her reverie. “Sorry. I was miles away.” She smiled.

“We soon will be. We’re already miles away from England. It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it? Relieving?”

She clutched a piece of paper with another list upon it, and Abigale remembered that Cornelia had promised to return with a wine menu.

“I suppose it is. Nice, I mean. I’ve never been away from England before. This is all very new to me.”

Cornelia handed her the list. Abigale had no intention of ordering wine, but she gave it a cursory glance anyway, so as not to appear rude.

“You won’t want to go back,” she said. “Trust me. It’s a big world out there, and all of it is more beautiful than London.”

Now, that’s just rude, Abigale thought. London had a certain charm that had always fascinated her. As much as she was intrigued by the foreign lands she was about to set foot upon, she felt hollow inside as if a part of her had been temporarily removed. As soon as she returned to London, she knew that feeling would wane. It was home, and if a person got past the stench of polluted rivers and the rat epidemic, they’d struggle to find a more accommodating city—no matter how far a skyship could carry them.

Just then, the door at the end of the restaurant opened and a woman stepped over the threshold. Abigale and Cornelia both turned. Even though there was perhaps twenty feet between the woman and where Abigale sat, the blood saturating the front of her clothes was clearly visible. Cornelia let out a little whimper, and Abigale climbed to her feet. There were suddenly far more important things to worry about than wine lists.

The woman staggered forward, her hip connecting with a table. If it hurt, the she did a good job of keeping it to herself. She seemed to be staring straight at, or rather through, Abigale and hissing.

Why is she hissing like that?

“Are you all right?” Cornelia asked, making her way slowly toward the injured woman. “You’re hurt. Do you need medical assistance? I believe there is a doctor on board.”

The woman moved toward Abigale, spitting like a cat protecting its young. There was something wrong with her eyes as if all pigment had been sucked out and replaced with windows. Abigale feared that, if she looked into them, she might lose her soul. Instead, she focused on the tip of the woman’s nose and took a few steps back, dodging the table where she had recently sat.

“Ma’am, would you like me to call for assistance?” Cornelia was doing everything she could to elicit a response from the injured woman, but it was getting her nowhere.

“Is she in shock?” Abigale asked. That would explain the vacant glare of her eyes, the listless appearance of her face, and the fact that she seemed devoid of spatial awareness.

The woman bounced off another table, and then a chair. Abigale had had enough. She reached beneath her coat and wrapped her hand around Big Daddy’s grip. As much as she didn’t want to shoot anyone else for as long as she might live, she came to realise she might have no choice. Some people seemed intent on getting themselves blasted.

The woman lunged for Abigale, her mouth falling wide open to reveal a row of jagged teeth against an otherworldly blackness. She hissed again, and strings of tarry drool slipped from her lips, but she didn’t seem to notice. All she cared about was getting to Abigale so she could tear her apart with claws that seemed to be growing by the second.

Abigale parried the lunge, and the woman spun around. There was no way for her to free Big Daddy, not at such close quarters, and so she did the next best thing. She threw an arm around the woman’s neck and pulled down hard.

Cornelia was running around somewhere behind them, screaming for help, calling for a doctor, but Abigale knew she had to incapacitate the frenzied woman and fast.

They both went to ground, and Abigale lost position. The woman scrambled out from under her and leapt onto her haunches, still hissing and snarling as if she’d contracted rabies. Her eyes… terrible, dead eyes. Abigale couldn’t help but look directly into them, and she saw nothing there that was remotely human.

“What are you?” she whispered, pushing herself onto her knees.

The woman glowered at her, drew her lips back over drool-blackened teeth, and then she was in the air, flying toward Abigale like something from a bad nightmare. Abigale barely had time to flick an elbow out, but she managed it, and it caught the woman on the left cheek. Her head snapped aside as if Abigale had broken her neck, and momentum carried her over the top, where she slammed into the wall of the ship.

Standing, Abigale took a deep breath. She was exhausted, and yet the woman, or rather the thing in a woman’s skin, leapt up as if she had all the energy in the world.

“Calm down,” Abigale reasoned, but she knew it was no use. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. She could see it in its eyes, and the wound on its chest was deep enough, and in just the right place, to kill a person. No, it was something else. Something terrible.

Something impossible.

“Is she insane?” Cornelia screeched from the edge of the room.

“I don’t think so,” Abigale said. “I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

The woman grinned, all black teeth and icky drool. Abigale knew there was only one way to put the thing down. If it worked. Octavius said it might work against magic, but that wasn’t the hundred percent she needed right then.

She reached into her coat, forgetting that Cornelia was present for the time being, and pulled out Big Daddy. Cornelia made a sound in her throat that was almost inhuman.

Never seen a gun before, Corny?

The madwoman’s expression didn’t falter, and it was as if Big Daddy’s sudden appearance meant nothing to her. She rushed forward with precarious strides that were odd to look at. Abigale expected the thing to topple before it even reached her, but she wasn’t taking any chances, though.

She pulled the trigger, just once, but the thing kept coming, implacable. As it thumped into Abigale, she managed to shift the gun down between them, firing again and again. Thwump, thwump… Abigale was forced backwards, where she clattered against a table, and there was an almighty screech like nails on a chalkboard as the table scraped the wooden floor beneath. She refused to go down though and held the snarling, snapping woman’s head away from hers with a solid elbow wedged into the woman’s throat.

Something had changed, though. The woman, the thing, was less animated as if it was tiring. Its snarls became less frantic, and the strength seemed to be draining from it, and Abigale could push it back without exerting herself too much.

Cornelia appeared over the wild woman’s shoulder, standing far enough away to make a quick exit should she need to.

Abigale said, “Move out of the way.”

Cornelia nodded though she looked as nervous as hell.

The thing was all but still, and Abigale forced it back. It slumped into an untidy pile, hissing and gasping for air that would do it no good, whatsoever.

Abigale realised Cornelia was staring at the weapon in her hand with acute dread. “It’s okay,” Abigale said. “It’s not lethal. Tranquilisers, that’s all.” Yes, that’s all. Tranquilisers. Perfectly normal. Stop looking at me like that…

The thing on the deck uncontrollably shuddered, as if in the throes of some immense seizure, and then fell wholly still. Black goo seeped from the corners of its hellish chops and trickled slowly down its cheeks until a small pool had formed on the wood beneath its head.

Cornelia looked up at Abigale. “Just tranquilisers, huh?”

Abigale shrugged. She was about to explain herself in some fashion when the door flew open so hard it came off its hinges. Abigale and Cornelia snapped their heads across, both knowing that, if it were the peelers, they were in big trouble. They were, after all, standing over a presumably dead body and the gun in Abigale’s hand was still steaming.

However, it wasn’t the peelers.

It was something much worse.

“Cornelia, run!” Abigale screamed, pushing the girl toward the back of the room. Surely, there was a way through the kitchen area, somewhere for the girl to hide from the huge man filling the door. Some sort of huge dog, followed at his heels, looking resplendent in brass armour. Abigale had never seen the man before, yet she knew he was trouble—big trouble.

Cornelia grabbed Abigale by the hand and pulled her across the room. “This way,” she said. “There’s a way out through here.”

That was good enough for Abigale, and she followed Cornelia across the restaurant deck as quickly as she could. She was all at once aware of a guttural growling just behind them, along with the clanking of steel upon steel. The giant had let his beast of its leash, and it was hurtling after them, loping just behind, hungry and feral.

Abigale didn’t turn; hearing the thing and knowing it was there was terrifying enough.

Cornelia lurched for a door, dodging an arrangement of chairs with all the elegance of an inebriated hippo. Abigale fared better, managing to evade the skidding chairs completely. As a pair, they all but fell through the door, and Abigale wasted no time in slamming it shut behind them.

Something heavy and hard impacted the door almost immediately, and Cornelia screamed, slapping a hand to her quivering lips. A was to about, and Abigale slid the large bolt affixed halfway up the door across, not expecting it to hold forever.

“We need to get out of here,” Abigale said. “You said there was a way out?” She turned to find a kitchen area. A man wearing the whites of a chef, cleaver in hand and a whole lobster sitting before him, stared back at her. To say he looked a little perturbed was like saying Jack the Ripper had a small problem with dollymops.

The door shook in its frame as the beast threw itself against it again and again. Cornelia took a few steps back, and Abigale realised she was still wielding Big Daddy.

“Chto proiskhodit?” the man with the blade said, and then quickly added in broken English, “What is going on?”

Abigale took a few steps forwards, and the door rattled behind her. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t going to stop until it had breached the door. “Cornelia?” she said. “A way out?”

“Yes,” Cornelia said, suddenly alert. She turned to face the bewildered chef, who looked as if he really wanted to find somewhere to stick that cleaver of his. “Sergei, we need to get out of here. Something is after us, after her,” she amended, “and I don’t think it’s going to stop until it has her.”

“What do you mean, something is—”

Sergei didn’t get to finish his sentence. There was a sudden roar, and then a blade came through the door, its spinning chain tearing through the wood as if it was butter. Splinters flew through the air, singed or still aflame.

Abigale rolled forwards, away from the roaring blade, and scrambled to her feet.

“Okay, yes, something is after you,” Sergei concurred, staring down at the insignificant cleaver in his white-knuckled grasp. He turned and led the way across the kitchen as Abigale and Cornelia quickly followed. It wouldn’t take long for the chainsword to cut through the door, and it was not the time to stop and deliberate.

The rumble of the sword carving through the door behind them was more than enough incentive to pick up the pace, and Sergei led them down a set of wooden steps at the end of the kitchen.

“Please tell me you have the key,” Cornelia said, more than a hint of panic in her voice.

“Konechno, ya yego,” Sergei said, fumbling around in his pockets. “I keep it on me at all times for…things like this.”

The sarcasm was not lost on Abigale.

“Ah, here it is,” he said, retrieving a small, bronze key from his breast pocket. He slipped it into the lock and turned.

Cornelia pushed the door open. She was terrified, and though the chainsword continued to roar behind them, the quicker they were on the other side of the door, the better.

Sunlight poured in, drenching the previously dark stairwell with golden light. Abigale hadn’t been anticipating it, and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. Cornelia and Sergei were already outside, and Abigale could just about make out their shapes as they set to work on something that was not as easily discernible.

Abigale stepped out into the light, and as she did, Sergei lunged for the door, closing it behind her. He locked it on the third attempt and went back to help Cornelia prepare.

“Is that a life-ship?” Abigale asked. She knew exactly what it was. She’d seen six others just like it strapped to the side of Poseidon’s Gale before boarding. The one before her, though, was slightly different. It was rudimentary, without the embellishments of the passenger life-ships. Whoever had built Poseidon’s Gale had decided not to waste needless time and energy on something that would ultimately remain unseen.

“The workers are meant to use this one,” Cornelia said, unhooking a rope from the side of the small vessel. “There are two more for the rest of the crew, one halfway down the skyship and another at the rear. It’s so we’re guaranteed safe exit should tragedy strike.”

Makes sense, Abigale thought. Tragedy had certainly struck, and it was all her fault, apparently.

“Who is after you?” Sergei asked, climbing aboard the life-ship. He turned a giant wheel, and the thing hissed. Smoke and steam plumed up into the air forming man-made clouds that were nowhere near as attractive as Mother Nature’s.

Abigale shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She had an inkling that it was something to do with her, and the fact that she’d been hired by The Guild to retrieve some very important items, but that was all she knew.

Cornelia stopped what she was doing for a moment and turned to face Abigale. She glanced at the pistol, then back up to Abigale’s face. “So you carry that thing with you everywhere you go?” she said.

Ah, touché, O wise one.

“I’m a girl travelling alone to shores unknown,” Abigale said. She hadn’t meant it to rhyme, and it made her sound stupid, but it was too late to take it back. “Doesn’t it make sense to arm oneself?”

Cornelia looked thoughtful for a moment, and then returned to whatever it was she had been doing before being beset by doubt.

“Okay, everyone on board,” Sergei said, taking a seat in the cockpit, which was basically a steering wheel and a series of gauges that all looked identical.

How it was meant to accommodate seven people, Abigale didn’t know. There was barely room to swing a cat.

As she climbed over the side of the life-ship, it rocked gently. Abigale tried not to glance down through the small gap between the large and small vessels, but it was hard not to. The ground was down there somewhere, below all that thick cloud, and it would certainly come sharp if she should suddenly fall. She pushed the thought away and pulled her trailing leg onto the life-ship.

Cornelia untied one final rope from the side of Poseidon’s Gale before climbing aboard. “This is not how I imagined my day would—”

She was interrupted by the raucous growl of their pursuer’s sword as it pierced the door to their right. The smell of charred wood drifted across to the life-ship, and tiny splinters flew outwards, the sunlight illuminating them, making them look more magical than they probably were.

“Now would be a good time to leave,” Cornelia said, not taking her eyes off the buzzing blade as it cut through the door.

Sergei said something in Russian, made the sign of the cross, and pulled a lever down at his side.

There was a mechanical sounding clunk as the life-ship detached from Poseidon’s Gale, and the balloon above gently hissed as it filled with an amalgamation of hydrogen and helium. Abigale was surprised she could hear anything over the chainsword tearing through the door to their right.

They dropped away from Poseidon’s Gale, shifting gently to the left. There was clear space between the two vessels, which should have been reassuring. Yet, for some reason, it wasn’t.

Being on the skyship was one thing, but being on its smaller, far less sturdy spawn was unsettling to say the least. She wasn’t stable, and as Sergei put more sky between them and Poseidon’s Gale, the life-ship banked so sharply that Abigale grabbed onto the side for dear life, lest she be spilled out.

“Everyone okay?” Sergei said.

They were gaining altitude again, which could, Abigale thought, only be a good thing. If they were going up, then it was impossible for them to be going down at the same time. Simple physics.

Abigale holstered Big Daddy but continued to grasp onto the side of the life-ship with white-knuckled intensity. “I guess,” she said. “Have you ever piloted one of these before?”

At the helm, Sergei shook his head. “How hard can it be? This one,” he gestured to a lever, “works the right paddle, that one works the left paddle, and this big circular thing steers, I think…”

Not very comforting, but it did sound remarkably simple.

They rose up alongside Poseidon’s Gale, and the escape door they had just, well, escaped through. Their pursuer stood on the ledge, glowering up at them. The armoured beast stood at his side, growling and howling as the life-ship continued to drift away from the skyship.

Who are you? Abigale thought. Just then, a second man appeared behind the herculean one, and she recognised him almost immediately. It was the peeler from the museum, the one that had expected her to give herself up on the strength of a pair of handcuffs.

“I don’t believe it,” Abigale said. She hadn’t realised she was speaking aloud until Cornelia replied.

“Believe what?”

Abigale turned to face the girl, a simple server girl who was just a stone’s throw away from being arrested or murdered, thanks to her. “The guy who’s after me,” she said. “He’s got a copper with him.”

“That was a bit heavy-handed for the police, wasn’t it?”

Cornelia was right, which meant it wasn’t the police she needed to worry about. The peeler was in on it, whatever it was.

“And why would the police be after you, Octavia?” Cornelia added, her expression once again riddled with suspicion.

“I have no idea,” Abigale lied. Telling the truth was out of the question. Sergei would probably throw her over the side, or return to Poseidon’s Gale for the “police” to do their thing. No, she needed time to think. Whoever the big fellow was, he was no wizard. A wizard would be able to throw some magic at them. If he wanted her dead, he would conjure up some chthonian fireball and take them out. If he wasn’t a wizard, she wasn’t sure what the hell was he, or what had been with the crazy lady back in the restaurant.

“How long can we last like this?” Cornelia asked. “I mean, up here, away from the Gale?”

Sergei pulled the life-ship to the left, keeping a steady distance between themselves and the skyship. He shrugged. “I’d say a couple of hours. These things aren’t meant to drift for long periods of time. More of a ‘straight down’ kind of life-ship.”

Abigale sucked in a mouthful of smoky air and began to cough. So much for first-class.

They slipped gently between the clouds, much steadier once Sergei had had time to practise, and Abigale couldn’t help but think about that moment back in her beautiful cabin, where she’d tempted fate.

Well, girl, here you go. Here’s the trouble you expected. Enjoy.

15

Clem O’Connell was the most irksome character Alcorn had ever come across in all his years upon the Earth. Just assisting the irritating little half-wit for two hours had made Alcorn reconsider his life completely. It was all he could do not to take the man by the scruff of the neck and slap him around the face until all that dirt fell off him. Sure, his heart was in the right place, but that just made him easier to kill.

“How much longer?” Alcorn said, pacing nervously alongside The Mad Knave. He checked his pocket watch. It was already almost three in the afternoon. A couple of hours, O’Connell had said, and yet, there they still were, feet very much planted upon the ground.

O’Connell’s head popped up from the dirigible’s gondola. He was coated in so much dirt and grime that he looked like some sort of subterranean rodent, gawping from its burrow on the off chance there was food passing by.

“Did you say something?”

Alcorn sighed and wondered long would he, a respected and very successful detective, receive for murder in the first. “How long? They’ll be in Russia by the time we get this heap in the air.”

Standing, O’Connell smiled. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. She’s ready. I just had to tighten up a few things on the deck. It’s amazing how nuts and bolts can just rattle loose, don’t you think?”

Alcorn didn’t care, although he might once they were up in the air. “So we can go?” His heart was suddenly beating again as if it had been manually restarted.

“Climb aboard,” O’Connell said. “Make yourself as comfortable as you can, but I will say, she’s not built for fare.”

“So you don’t have a tennis court,” Alcorn said, climbing the long, wooden ladder at the side of The Mad Knave. “I promise not to tell anyone.”

Once aboard, Alcorn realised what he’d gotten himself into. Apart from a few wooden and rusty metal crates, the deck was bare. O’Connell hadn’t lied about it being a cargo ship. From what Alcorn could see, there was nowhere to sit down, at least nowhere comfortable.

“What do you think?” O’Connell asked, a little more proudly than he had any right to.

Alcorn nodded. “I think this is going to be a very bumpy ride/” As O’Connell walked briskly past him to get to the cockpit, Alcorn had the sudden urge to ask, “How long have you been doing this for? I mean, how long have you been a skyship pilot?”

O’Connell stopped briefly and began to count his fingers—not a good sign. After a few seconds, he dropped his hand. “Only joking,” he said. “I was born into it. My father was a skyship pilot. Of course, that was back when ships were in their infancy, not like these mechanical marvels we have today. I’d say that—”

“That’ll do.” Alcorn strode nervously from one side of the deck to the other. “Let’s just get up in the air, shall we. We’ve got a ship to catch.” That was something he’d never expected to say as long as he lived. It perturbed him to think it might be one of the last things he’d ever get to say.

“Yessir!” O’Connell said, following it up with a mock salute. “Right away, sir!” He strode across to the small room housing the cockpit. Actually, to call it a room was offensive to rooms. It was more of a lean-to, a cobbled together patchwork of multi-coloured wood that looked about as structurally sound as the tower in Pisa.

Alcorn said a quick prayer, even though he wasn’t, nor had he ever been, remotely religious. For him, it was nice to think that if there was a god up there, he would see fit to take care of even the non-believers—otherwise, that was just favouritism.

Suddenly, something roared and clattered. Machinery kicked in all around as motors whirred and pressure built. Either they were about to take off, or the whole thing was going to go up in flames.

Alcorn, all of a sudden, didn’t want to be out on the deck. He rushed across to the cockpit, to where O’Connell was hammering away at switches and levers, so fast that his hands were nothing more than a blur.

“She’s looking good,” O’Connell said, which was about the best news Alcorn could have expected. “Everything’s ready to go. A few minutes to fill her up, and then off we go.” He smiled.

Alcorn wished he wouldn’t. His teeth were depressing.

“I’ve made a few adjustments. Hope you don’t mind.”

“What do you mean, ‘some adjustments’? Like you gave the steering wheel a lick of paint, huh? Polished the hell out of the brasswork?” Those would have been good because they were the kind of adjustments that didn’t affect The Mad Knave’s ability to remain airborne. Anything else was a big no-no.

O’Connell must have sensed Alcorn’s trepidation, and so he waved a placatory hand in the air. “Ah, it’s nothing major. Just, remember when you said you wanted to catch up to Poseidon’s Gale.”

Alcorn nodded. That was all he could do, since no words were forthcoming.

“Well…I, and you can thank me for this later, left a few things off. Lost a good ton, maybe more. She should reach sixty, now, at least, which means we’ll catch up to that hulking bitch in around six hours, give or take a few minutes.”

Alcorn liked the sound of that, but there was something niggling at him. Something…important. “What did you take off?”

O’Connell continued to pull levers and check gauges. Without looking up, he said, “You know, took off a few boxes, the life-ship, some crates, some brass—”

“Wait a minute. Say that again, slowly.”

O’Connell snorted. “What? A few boxes, some crates, some brass—”

“The life-ship? You’ve dropped the life-ship?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe how much that thing holds you back. I mean—”

“We’re heading into a storm, toward a giant ship aiming for Russia, which The Mad Knave might not even make, and you’ve decided to leave off our only way of surviving if we hit any trouble.”

O’Connell nodded. “Yeah, but I told you to thank me later. Right now, I need to get her up in the air, and your constant questions are more than a little distracting. God, you can tell you’re a peeler.” He clicked his tongue and returned to the console in front of him.

In that moment, Alcorn made his peace with the god he wasn’t sure existed. It was good news that they’d catch up to Poseidon’s Gale before nightfall, but it wasn’t fantastic news that they were, most probably, going to die doing it.

He thought to himself, It’s funny how things just…happen. How one thing can lead to another, and before you know what’s happening, there you are, Russia-bound, tailing a corrupt copper and some giant with a big dog, just because there aren’t enough fun things to deal with at home.

Then there was Clem O’Connell, the most exasperating, not to mention filthiest and daftest, nincompoop Alcorn had ever come across. If the journey didn’t kill him, Alcorn was almost certainly going to.

“Okay, she’s going up,” O’Connell said, though even he didn’t sound sure. When she began to move, swaying slightly, the ground slowly shifting beneath them, he perked up. “Ah, there’s nothing like a smooth take-off. Are you a superstitious man, Detective Alcorn? Well, I am, and a good take-off usually means the rest of the flight is going to be a doddle.”

Alcorn wasn’t listening. In fact, he’d stopped listening at ‘okay’. He was too busy staring out over London, at the buildings as they shrank below, at the people ambling around, unaware that they were being watched by a terrified detective. They looked like ants. Cliché, indeed, but in his case it was true. They grew smaller and smaller, and the buildings around them began to look like ants too, Alcorn turned to O’Connell, who was smiling back at him.

“What?” Alcorn said. “Please don’t do that. And, by the way, I know a really good dentist when we return to London. If you give him my name, you might get a good deal.”

“I saw you,” O’Connell said, still grinning. “You like it.”

“What are you babbling on about, you silly buffoon?”

“You were nearly, very nearly, smiling as we were taking off,” O’Connell said. “Admit it. You like it.”

“Just shut up and make sure we don’t crash.”

“We won’t crash…a friend of mine, well not really a friend but one of those people that you know through a friend…”

And on and on O’Connell went, but Alcorn didn’t care. He figured out a way to mute the man and pulled up a small crate.

I’m coming for you, Thorneye, and it ain’t going to be pretty when I get my hands on you.

16

The life-ship chugged along on the clouds. Sergei had decided to fall in behind Poseidon’s Gale and utilise her slipstream. He was a smart guy, it transpired, and once he’d got the hang of it, a decent pilot.

“They’re going to wonder where I am.” Cornelia sighed, glancing at the small watch pinned to her lapel.

“So, people miss a meal,” Sergei said. “There are more important things afoot, like figuring out how we’re going to get back to the ship without being murdered.”

Abigale stood, stretching her legs and arching her back. They had only been in the life-ship for an hour and already she ached. Visions of her bed, the beautiful, huge bed back in her first-class cabin, ran through her head. She was about to return to her seat when something caught her eye on the left side of Poseidon’s Gale. She squinted, trying to discern the shapes and movement through the wispy clouds, and when she realised what she was looking at, it was all she could do not to scream.

“Sergei!” she said, stumbling toward the cockpit. “Look!”

The Russian pulled the life-ship slightly to the left, to better see what Abigale was pointing at. “Mudak!” he said. “They’re coming after us!”

On the left side of Poseidon’s Gale, three of the life-ships were loose, drifting across the void toward their vessel. Abigale could see the large man on the nearest ship, his armoured dog howling at them from the rear. On the ship just in front of the big man, the sunlight reflected from the peeler’s monocle as his ship spluttered and faltered toward them. In front of the copper, the third ship contained the ticket master.

What are you doing here?

He hissed and growled, and even though he was furthest from them, Abigale could see the dark drool daubing his chin.

Like the madwoman…

“This is bad, yes?” Sergei asked, and then confirmed, “Yes, this is bad.”

“Can you outmanoeuvre them?” Abigale asked.

Cornelia had seemingly fallen into a state of shock and simply glanced across at the approaching ships, wearing a blank expression and a pallor which suggested she was about to be sick.

“I can try, but these ships aren’t known for their ability to evade, and there are three of them.”

In other words, the answer was no.

Abigale un-holstered Big Daddy. She dropped to the deck of the life-ship, slipping the satchel from her shoulder. She grabbed the box with the rounds and flipped open the cylinder. Two shots remained, so she filled the empty slots and closed Big Daddy up.

“What are you doing back there?” Sergei called. “They’re getting close.” He sounded very concerned.

Abigale stood and pulled the satchel over her head once more. It contained everything,—absolutely everything, she needed. Losing it in a sky-battle was not an option. “Okay,” Abigale said, pointing Big Daddy toward the Neanderthal in ship one. “Sergei!”

“Yes!”

“Try to keep her still. I’m going to try to take out the big guy.”

“That sounds like something you should definitely do.”

Abigale faced Cornelia, who had become, if it was at all possible, even whiter. “Corny, I need you to lie on the deck, and stay there until I say otherwise.”

Nothing. No response.

“Cornelia!”

She snapped out of it. “They’re going to get us.”

Abigale placed a hand on the terrified girl’s shoulder. “They’re not. I won’t let them. Just lie down on the deck and don’t move. This is going to get messy.”

Cornelia nodded and took a deep breath, as if she knew it might be her last. She slowly lowered herself down onto the deck of the life-ship, muttering incoherently. Once she was safely down and out of sight of the approaching ships, Abigale turned back to the big man and his…It’s a wolf! She could see it clearly, now. It was much easier to discern when she wasn’t running away from it.

The rumbling of the nearing ships was almost deafening, and Abigale had to focus really hard just to remember what she was doing. With six rounds in the chamber, she knew she couldn’t afford to be careless. She had more in her satchel, but there might not be time to reload, not once the ships were upon them.

The trick was to keep them as far away as possible, which Sergei was working on, though not well enough, it seemed.

Something slammed into the side of the ship, and Abigale stumbled backwards, almost dropping Big Daddy. When she snapped her head across to the front of the ship, she saw the ticket master glowering back from his own vessel, black goo slavering from his mouth, and eyes white and very, very creepy.

“I thought he was further away than that!” Sergei said.

“Well, obviously not!” Abigale called back. She leapt across the deck, clearing the cowering Cornelia’s head by the merest of margins. The other two, the peeler and the giant, were a little way off, still, but getting closer with each second that passed. “Keep him close!”

“Don’t have much choice,” Sergei said. He was struggling to keep control over their own vessel as the ticket master’s ship continued to slam into them, buffeting them like flies in a hurricane.

Abigale knew she had to shake him off, and fast. She came level with the zombie ticket master’s craft and trained her gun toward his face. He snarled and growled, flicking his tongue out maniacally and smearing drool about his lips and chin. For an instant, Abigale felt sorry for the man, or rather what had once been a man. Something had taken him and was using him. It wasn’t his fault, and that didn’t make Abigale’s next move any easier.

She pulled the trigger.

The ticket master’s head flicked back as the dart thumped into his forehead. His ship drifted across, away from their own. It was such a perfect shot that it took Abigale by surprise, and as she watched the ticket master lose control of his vessel, she felt pangs of guilt and sorrow stabbing at her. Then, he was gone, down somewhere on the deck. The life-ship, no longer under his un-dead control, began to fall from the sky. She didn’t have time to consider what would become of the ticket master, though she had a pretty good idea, as the two remaining crafts were hot on their tail.

“Does this thing go any faster?” she called to Sergei, but if he heard her over the engines of the three life-ships, he didn’t show it.

She rushed to the rear of the vessel, once again avoiding Cornelia, who was doing a really good job of staying down. The ships behind were so close that Abigale could make out the individual teeth of the big man’s chainsword as he waved it angrily in the air. The ship with the copper in it was gaining on them. A terrified grimace was etched upon his face, as if an air-battle was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

Abigale didn’t think it would help, but before she knew what she was doing, she said, “What do you want?” She kept the pistol trained on the copper, as she wondered why he wasn’t aiming one back at her. The only explanation was that he didn’t, in fact, have one. Of course, why would he if he hadn’t expected her to have one either. He didn’t really need one, not with Gulliver backing him up.

“The Configuration!” the copper screeched. “You have a piece of something he wants.” He flicked a hand across his shoulder toward the big man.

Comprehension hit her so hard that she almost lost her balance. They weren’t trying to kill her. At least, that wasn’t their primary intention. They wanted the very thing she’d been hired by The Guild to steal, which meant they were affiliates of the wizards. Talk about police corruption.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Abigale called back. “I don’t have anything!” It was true. She didn’t have the first part of the triptych. It was back in London, hopefully, locked in Octavius’s safe. It hit her that if the wizards were so intent on getting the final three pieces, they would stop at nothing. Octavius wasn’t safe at all.

The peeler’s vessel bumped the back of their gondola. “Look, he’s not going to stop until he gets it!”

How his monocle was still in, Abigale didn’t know.

“Just come back to the skyship, and we can discuss this like adults, Abigale Egars.”

There was something in the way he said her name that caused the hackles to rise upon her neck. He wasn’t offering her a good deal. He was offering her a quick death at the hands of Hercules and his whirring buzz-sword.

Thanks, but no thanks.

“Wait, what are you doing?” the peeler screeched as Abigale levelled Big Daddy. “You can’t shoot me! I’m an Inspector of the Metropolitan Police Force!”

Abigale shrugged. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could come between her and Russia. She would die if it did, in the most agonising fashion. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

She pulled the trigger, and even though the Inspector did everything he could to dodge the speeding bullet, it hit him square in the chest. He slumped unconscious over the life-ship’s steering wheel, dragged it to the left, and as the craft dropped through the clouds, Abigale closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see what became of it.

Sergei guided them back into the slipstream of Poseidon’s Gale, in an attempt to put some distance between them and their final pursuer. However, the big man seemed to know exactly what they were going to do before even they did and shifted over to the right, equidistant from Sergei’s craft and the skyship. Abigale didn’t know how that chainsword of his functioned, but he did something with his thumb and the contraption buzzed into life. The armoured wolf howled as if in joy and leapt up onto the side of their craft for a better view.

“Erm, Sergei?” It was barely a whimper, and there was no way the chef-cum-pilot would have heard it. Abigale was on her own back there, and for some reason, she didn’t think Big Daddy would prove as effective against the big man as it had against the others.

Gulliver yanked down hard on the steering wheel and the life-ship surged across at great speed. Abigale braced herself for the inevitable impact, which came less than three seconds later. She tottered backward, grabbing onto the side of the ship for balance. Their rival life-ship clunked along the side, thumping into them repeatedly, relentless and hungry.

Cornelia had balled herself up on the deck and was whimpering, praying for it all to end soon. Abigale believed that, one way or the other, she would have her wish granted.

The side of the life-ship burst inwards as the whirring, clunking blade of the chainsword penetrated it. The deafening racket that came with it caused Abigale’s teeth to rattle in her head. Her heart hammered in her chest, and not for the first time that day, she had time to contemplate death and all it entailed.

She raised Big Daddy, aimed it over the side of the life-ship, but the big man’s head didn’t appear, and neither did that of the wolf. They were lower down, and he was carving his way through their vessel with determined ferocity. The blade jabbed in and out and wood peppered the deck, smoking and stinking.

Abigale scarpered backwards, barely avoiding its terrible reach. She felt something rattle against her wrist and realised there was a way out of all the battle.

The charms. Explosive, allegedly, and armed as soon as she removed them from her person. As much as she hated the thought of setting off bombs at lord-knows-what altitude, their options were limited, and the chainsword was carving them up like a Halloween pumpkin.

Quickly, she unfastened the bracelet, and keeping two of the charms pressed tightly to her flesh, allowed one to slip off the end into the palm of her hand. She refastened the bracelet and sighed with great relief. It took less than a minute, altogether, by which time the big man had gouged a huge hole in the side of their life-ship and was peering through it, grunting and growling.

“We’ll see about that,” Abigale said, pushing off the side of the vessel. “Sergei!”

A moment’s pause suggested the pilot hadn’t heard, but then he answered with a simple, “What?”

“Take her as hard and fast to the left as you can! Do you hear me?”

Another pause. “The left?”

“The left! As hard as you can take her!”

Abigale stumbled back, level with the offensive vessel. The chainsword was still tearing through the wood, and the armoured wolf continued to howl as loudly as it could, clearly enjoying the whole spectacle. Abigale felt something tug at her, a pull that meant they were moving. The sword vanished from the side of the craft, and its thunderous roar faded, as did the wolf’s keen.

She grabbed the side of the decimated ship and peered over. Their rival was down and to the right. The big man was glaring up, snarling and whipping his chainsword through the air like some ancient warrior. Abigale knew she had one shot, and one shot only. To miss would give the attacking life-ship time to recoup, and by the time she slipped another charm from her bracelet, they would be under siege once again.

“God bless you, Octavius,” she said.

She threw the charm toward the life-ship, the big man and his sword of doom, and the armoured wolf. She wasn’t happy about that bit, but there’s was nothing she could do about the animal’s presence.

It landed right on the deck, bouncing around as the big man lost control of the vessel. The armoured wolf, sensing its master’s despair, simply howled at the sky. Then, there was nothing but bright orange light and immense heat.

When Abigale opened her eyes again, all she could see was burnt wood and a punctured, singed balloon dropping away beneath the clouds. Smoke whorled up, and for a moment, Abigale thought she saw the shape of a death’s head in there somewhere, snarling and glowering toward them as if in sheer dissent.

“What the hell was that?” Sergei called from the cockpit. He followed it up with something Russian, something that could only, in the tone it arrived, be a very bad word.

“Just keep her steady!” Abigale yelled. She rushed across the deck to where Cornelia was piled in an untidy heap, sobbing. “It’s okay, Corny,” she said. “It’s over. They’re gone. We can get back to the skyship.”

Cornelia Maddern peered up through her dishevelled hair, her bottom lip quivering like a reproached child. She threw her arms around Abigale and cried with relief. “Did you…did you kill them?”

Abigale took a deep breath and turned her head up toward the sky and the dark olive balloon above them. “Yes,” she said, her own lip beginning to tremble. “I suppose I did.”

17

The Configuration piece was close. Blithe could feel it drumming through her bones, heating her up on the inside. London was a big place, especially if you were looking for something, but if you had wizard instincts and focused hard enough, you could find anything.

She’d known that the missing piece was close. It had been calling to her, pestering her, for quite some time. Once it had been moved, taken out into the open city, she knew she could hunt it down. She couldn’t rely on the two nincompoops to track it down, or to find the girl that had supposedly obtained it. Dorian was good, loyal, and great in bed, but he wasn’t a genius. Far from it, in fact. He had the mind of a six-year-old, and his Brass-Wolf, Kai, was probably more intelligent. The little fool, Thorneye, was about as useful as a backwards clock. She was already beginning to regret not killing him when she’d had the chance. Maybe later, when they failed to find the piece of The Configuration. At least then, she would have the perfect excuse.

She wasn’t going to wait to find out if they’d failed. London was a big place, and yet, it was familiar. If a person knew where all the nooks and crannies were, the city was nothing but one big and fascinating game.

She dressed in dark clothes and slipped out into the semi-gloom of London, where the fragment laid waiting, still calling to her, beckoning her to come and get it.

*

Octavius removed the tin kettle from the stove and began to prepare a pot of tea. It wasn’t the same without Abigale. Inside, he felt hollow, as if a very vital part of him had been removed. He’d never realised before how much he relied on the girl, or how much he cared for her. Yet, he questioned himself that if he cared for her that much, why wasn’t he hunting down Mordecai Pick. Why wasn’t he doing everything in his power to stop The Guild from putting his sweet, dear Abigale through such a traumatic exercise?

There was no doubt in his mind that she would succeed. She knew no other way. But to be held at ransom, with the price her own death was just cruel. In the end, what would Abigale get for it, other than the life she’d already banked on? Where was her recompense? Surely if the pieces were that valuable and powerful, Abigale should receive something in the way of restitution.

He made the tea and headed into his workshop. Mouse, such a sweet little thing, was sleeping alongside one of his newer contraptions—an automaton demon. Two brass horns stretched upwards, and between them, a fizzling energy bounced back and forth. Octavius had never felt more like Victor Frankenstein. He just hoped this marvellous device wouldn’t be his monster.

“Always sleeping,” he whispered to Mouse, who didn’t even stir. Octavius could see why Abigale loved the little critter so much. He was wholly innocent, something to which not many creatures in London could attest.

Reluctant to make too much noise, the tinkerer began to draw up some plans for his next masterpiece—a machine designed to work out complicated sums in just a fraction of a second. He was familiar with the French contraption, the Arithmometer, but it was archaic, to say the least. No one wanted to wait twenty-four seconds for a simple sixteen-figure division. Whatever gave the French the impression that people had such valuable time to waste? In that time, one could work out the damn sum oneself, with a scrap of paper and a quill.

No, Octavius’s design was sleeker, much more accurate, and, above all else, unashamedly British. That, he believed, would be enough to put the arithmometer manufacturers out of business for good.

Suddenly, whilst in the middle of what should have been a straight line and was now nothing of the sort, there was a knock upon the door. It was most worrisome, since no one knew of any tenant within. Octavius had ostracised himself from all of London, concealed himself within four walls, where he lived a simple life of mechanics, automata, and clockwork innards. For someone to pay him a visit, after all these years, struck him as both odd and vexing. He clearly hadn’t dug himself in deep enough.

There was a simple way of dealing with the caller, though, and one that he’d already settled upon. He wouldn’t answer. They would grow bored and go away soon enough. If not, then they would remain there, in the darkened alleyway, knocking fruitlessly for a very long time.

He returned to his sketch and was about to correct the rickety line when, all of a sudden, he heard the low growl of magic from across the room. He threw himself backwards, grabbing Mouse from the counter as he went. The door snapped from its hinges and flew across the room, where it smashed into a rather expensive and antique bookcase.

Once the dust had settled—and there did appear to be a lot of dust—Octavius clambered to his feet. There was no point in hiding from the unexpected caller. They would find him eventually, hiding amongst the rubble. They were obviously eager to get in, which meant they were eager to get their hands on something someone.

Standing there, in the middle of his quarters, was a wizard he’d never wished to see again for as long as he lived. “Blithe,” he said, his voice no more than an irritated hiss.

“I don’t believe it,” Blithe said, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Octavius Knight, you old rascal. Where have you been hiding all these years? I thought you were dead.” Her smile was about as genuine as a three-bob note.

It fascinated Octavius that, after all the years that had passed, she was still trying to cover up that hideous scar. “You hoped I was dead.”

“Same thing.” She took a step back and absorbed her surroundings. “What’s all this nonsense? Oh please tell me the great Octavius Knight hasn’t turned his hand to tinkering.” She began to laugh aloud.

The sound turned Octavius’s blood to mercury.

“Wow, I never thought I’d see the day when—”

“What do you want, Blithe?” he said, stroking Mouse, who was now nestled deep in the nook of his arm. “There’s nothing for you here.”

The sorceress inhaled deeply through her nostrils as if on the hunt for something. Octavius knew exactly what she was after, but there was no way he would allow her to get it. She might be an all-powerful wizard, but that didn’t give her the right to huff and puff and blow his house down.

“You have something I’ve been looking for.” Blithe took two small steps forwards. “Something I need. You don’t have to die here tonight. You can simply fetch it for me. I’m in no rush. It’s nice to see a face from the past, even if it does look like it wants to stave my head in with something heavy.”

Mouse purred and mewled. Even the damn cat was petrified. “I have nothing that you could possibly be looking for,” Octavius told the wizard. “This place is just automata and scrap. I can do you a good deal on brass armatures, if you’re interested…”

A ball of green energy slammed into him, knocking him backwards. He hadn’t even seen her preparing it. Good lord, she was quick. Mouse leapt from his arms and skittered away to hide in a dark corner. Octavius almost wished he could follow, but instead, he staggered to his feet once again and brushed the dust from his clothes.

“I have very little patience this evening, as you’ve probably already realised. So I’m going to ask one more time, and then that will be all. You have something for me. I suggest you go and get it.”

Shaking his head, Octavius said, “You’re stronger now than you ever were, but it’s still a no from me. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and even if I did, I…”

Something hit him from the side. He hadn’t even felt the energy surging toward him, not that time. The power with which it slammed into his temple sent him sprawling across the room. The hits were really starting to smart. Burn, too. He could smell the charred hair as he slowly picked himself up from the floor.

“That was the last time,” Blithe said.

Octavius heard it muffled, as one might hear another person’s words underwater.

“There will not be another.”

Taking a deep breath, Octavius realised the trouble he was in. Blithe was far too strong, and in that moment, extremely angry. He looked up, through the dust yet to settle, and saw that the sorceress was already preparing the deathblow. A bright green flame slowly grew in her hand, spinning so fast it was nothing more than a blur, as it accumulated energy and raw power. It was a sight to behold, and Octavius knew that he was looking at the cause of his death, though the coroner would never think to mention it upon his filed report.

“So that’s it?” Octavius’ his firm voice belied his countless years upon the Earth. “I never had you down as a cold-blooded killer, Blithe. A maniac, sure, but a murderess?”

“It’s amazing what a few years do to one’s persona,” she said, somewhat proudly. “And unfortunately, you’re giving me no other choice.”

She drew her hand back, the magnificent green flame dancing across her palm like an emerald vortex, and Octavius knew that was it if he didn’t do something quick.

“Glaciem!” he called, flicking out a long, thin wrist.

A stream of azure light blasted from the tinkerer’s palm. For a moment, Blithe’s expression was neither here nor there. She hadn’t anticipated the retaliation, and by the time it hit her, she was powerless to stop it. She pitched as the magic coursed over her, her thin lips pulled back over blackened gums in a sneer. The green flame waned for a moment as its wielder began to crackle. with the ice that crawled across her, freezing her where she stood. Octavius couldn’t maintain the potency of the magic, and his weakening wrist began to falter. It had been so long since he’d used magic of any sort that he was rustier than some of his contraptions.

Blithe gritted her teeth and dug her heels in. Octavius could feel her fighting back, and it terrified him. She began to unfreeze, and the whirling green vortex spun quicker than before. Octavius could do nothing to prevent what was about to happen.

She screeched, batted the tinkerer’s magic aside as if it were a stream of light from a gas-lamp, and unleashed the emerald flame. It slammed into Octavius’s chest, sending him back through the air. Octavius’ body went extremely limp when he smashed into the floor, his old bones rattling inside him like spare keys in a honeypot. He was unconscious before he hit the ground, which might have been the only thing that kept him alive.

When he next opened his eyes—an indiscernible number of minutes later—Blithe was standing over him, looking awfully pleased with herself. Octavius could scarcely breathe, and any notion of attempting to conjure something up was quickly dashed. He didn’t have the strength to move his legs, let alone cast a spell.

“Well, well, well,” Blithe said, smiling a god-awful smile. “Not just a tinkerer after all. To be quite frank, I knew you would never be able to give up the wizardry. How many years has it been? Since you last cast?”

Octavius simply shook his head because it was about all he could manage.

“Never mind,” Blithe said. “Oh, and I helped myself to your safe. I hope you don’t mind.” She held up the L-shaped piece that Octavius had placed in his safe the previous day.

Abigale had gone through hell to get it, and the bitch was simply going to take it and add it to her almost complete collection. Worst of all, there was nothing Octavius could do to prevent it.

“Be sure to thank that little thief of yours, if you manage to not die in the next few hours.” She leaned down and planted a dry, sickening kiss upon his forehead. “Sorry, old wizard, but I did warn you.”

Then, she was gone, back to whatever stone she had crawled from underneath, and Octavius was left alone, broken in both body and spirit.

18

After an hour in Abigale’s cabinSergei and Cornelia returned to work, though Abigale doubted much would be done for what remained of the flight. They had been involved in a very tense sky-battle against things none of them were able to explain, it would be difficult to go back to cooking steaks and potatoes after that.

As soon as they left, Abigale fell to her bed and broke down. She hadn’t asked for any of this. People—things—were trying to kill her, or at least get to her, and it was all Mordecai Pick’s fault. The son-of-a-bitch had thrust her headlong into something she was nowhere near prepared for. Wizards, zombies, and corrupt inspectors. It wasn’t just a job, a simple chain of thefts, it was a suicide mission. If the thing in her head didn’t kill her, the inhuman monsters pursuing her would. Abigale could see no other outcome.

The Configuration? That was what the inspector had called it. The triptych she had been tasked with retrieving, somewhat unlawfully, completed The Configuration. Abigale willed Poseidon’s Gale forwards. She needed to reach Saint Petersburg, telephone Octavius and tell him to bury the piece as far and deep as he could away from his lair. If the wizards had managed to track her halfway across the ocean, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that they would hunt down the piece right there on their own doorstep.

Grief coursed through her trembling body as she lay upon the bed. If Octavius was harmed by anyone, she would kill those responsible, magic or no. She would hunt them to the ends of the Earth if that’s what it took. Her tinkerer was too old to take care of himself, and it was up to her to defend him, to protect him from…all of this.

She curled up on the bed, tucking the satchel into her body like a child’s doll, and soon her sobs faded and her breath returned to some sort of regulated normalcy. The only sound in the room was the gentle tick-tock of the clock in the corner of the cabin. It wasn’t long before she was lulled into a dark and lonely dream, in which she sat atop a dusty mountain with the clouds spread out under her, and the howls of an armoured wolf circled somewhere down below.

*

“There she is!” O’Connell said, pointing into the darkness ahead.

For the last hour, he’d sung the same song over and over—something tuneless about cherries and frogs—and so his sudden exclamation came as quite a surprise to Alcorn, who was on the verge of falling asleep upon his crate.

Alcorn jumped to his feet and stared out into the night. “Where? I don’t…” he trailed off as the rear end of Poseidon’s Gale appeared between the thick, grey clouds in front of them. He patted O’Connell hard on the back, almost winding the poor fellow. “You did it! I have to say, I doubted you would. The sky is a large place.”

O’Connell nodded. “That it is. I told you I knew what I was doing. It was just a matter of staying in a straight line. The skyship’s route is direct. As the crow flies, I believe the adage goes.”

Alcorn nodded. “Yes indeed.” He was turning this way and that, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. For six hours, he had pondered the moment, and yet, once it had arrived, he was at a loss. “So, what, we just creep up on her and—”

“Whoa there,” O’Connell said, holding up an oil-stained hand. “I can get us so close, but there’s no way I’m playing chicken with The Gale. I might look crazy, but that thing could knock us out of the sky with just a slight change of wind direction.”

Alcorn was flummoxed, not for the first time that day. “Well, I didn’t come all this way to just look at her. I need to get on board.”

“That’s all well and dandy, but I’m going to need a minute to think this over.”

He fell silent, and Alcorn was loath to interrupt him while he considered their predicament.

“So you want into the skyship,” he said, more to himself than Alcorn, “and I don’t want to end up in the drink down there.” He gestured out through the window to the sea of clouds upon which they drifted.

“That life-ship would have come in rather useful right about now, wouldn’t it?” Alcorn said.

“Shut up, I’m trying to think.” Then, brightening, he added, “I’ve got it.”

“Go on,” Alcorn said, not quite believing that the pilot had constructed a safe plan of his own accord.

“Check those crates back there. The big ones. There should be rope around them.”

Rope? That was exactly what Alcorn didn’t want to hear. That meant he would be dangling at some point in the very near future, and dangling was one of those things he seldom practised. There was just never much cause for it back in London.

He headed onto the deck, where it was cold and raining as O’Connell had forecasted. The storm was in its infancy, but once the wind picked up, there would be no way of reaching the deck of Poseidon’s Gale, and dangling—that thing which he rarely did—would be out of the question.

He rushed across to the crates at the rear of the gondola, being careful not to slip on the slick deck. A thick blanket of mist trailed around his feet and around the cargo—another bad sign. Through the gloom, though, Alcorn could see the lengths of rope, looping through steel eyeholes and holding the crates together. He set to work untying one. By the time he was done, his fingers were sore and wet, and a huge blister covered the entirety of his right palm.

He coiled the rope and returned to the cockpit. O’Connell had closed the gap between The Mad Knave and Poseidon’s Gale, and Alcorn could make out the rudders upon the huge skyship’s sides and rear.

“This doesn’t look long enough,” he said, holding the rope out for O’Connell to inspect.

The pilot cast it a cursory glance. “That’s plenty. But rather you than me.” He turned his attention back to the gargantuan dirigible in front, maintaining an easy pace, and slowly creeping up on her like a thief in the night. “Okay, I need you to take the rope and tie it to the starboard side.”

“You say that like I should know what that is.”

“The right side,” O’Connell said, incredulous. “Do they not teach you anything in police school?”

Alcorn thought about countering, but there was no time. He took the rope and headed back out onto the deck. The right side had very little in the way of anchors, but he found a massive steel hook buried deep in the side of the gondola. A short length of chain hung upon it, and deciding that it was of no use, Alcorn removed it and began to wrap the rope tightly to the hook. While the fresh blister upon his palm throbbed with every move he made, he managed to secure the knot with relative ease. Whether it would hold or not was another matter entirely.

As if wishing to test Alcorn further, the rain began to hammer down onto the deck with such force that it bounced back up over the descended mist. This, he thought, is not going to be easy.

Poseidon’s Gale’s thunderous engines were close, and Alcorn could barely hear himself pray. He returned to the cockpit, where O’Connell was starting to sweat. Dirt and grime trailed down his face, pooling beneath his aviator goggles as if his eyes had been entirely removed and all that remained were empty sockets.

“I’m going to take you over the left side of her,” O’Connell said. “I’ll get as close as I can, but it won’t be as close as you’ll want. You’re going to have to swing yourself across to make the deck.”

Alcorn’s heart leapt up into his throat and knocked him for six. For a moment, he was speechless. When he finally gathered his thoughts a few seconds later, the voice that came out was almost unrecognisable, such was the fear with which it was affected. “There’s no other way?”

“If there was,” O’Connell said, “I would suggest it.” He sounded solemn, as if he, too, feared for the detective’s life. “It’s too dangerous to try anything else.”

And this isn’t dangerous, not in the slightest, Alcorn thought but didn’t say. “Then I guess that’s that,” he said.

“Good luck.” O’Connell threw a mock-salute toward the detective one last time. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. Come see me when you get back to London safe, just so I know…well, you know?”

Alcorn did know. The pilot didn’t want a death on his conscience, and Alcorn understood completely. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” O’Connell said. “This is the most excitement I’ve seen in thirty years. Now go, before I turn us around, and we can forget all about this nonsense. Chalk it up to a bad decision.”

Alcorn nodded, offered O’Connell a salute of his own, and headed out onto the deck where the rain was drumming incessantly upon every surface it hit. It was almost tribal, the noise, and combined with the sonorous growl of the skyship’s engines, it was rather infectious. Alcorn found himself swaying along to the beat.

Taking the loose end of the rope, he stepped up to the edge of the vessel, and for some strange reason, deemed it a good idea to look over the side. He found himself staring into an abyss, and the only thing stopping him from falling into it were thick, dark clouds. However, it was not as if they would offer much resistance as he passed through them toward the ocean thousands of feet below.

Don’t think about it, he urged himself. And whatever you do, don’t look down again…

He felt The Mad Knave drift across, and the engines of Poseidon’s Gale suddenly boomed, as if the skyship knew what was about to happen and disapproved highly. While some devices were now apparently sentient, such as Abigale Egars’ lobsters, Alcorn doubted a dirigible of such size could be programmed to think. Therefore, the sudden roar of her engines was nothing more than mechanical racket.

Then she appeared, slicing through the clouds like a giant whale. In the dark, she looked much more ominous, as if she’d been crafted by the devil’s own hands. O’Connell drifted up alongside her, making sure to remain below her immense balloon. At least The Mad Knave was a smaller vessel. The entire scheme would be impossible if she were the same size.

Once they were level, Alcorn closed his eyes and tossed the rope over the starboard side. What the hell am I doing? I’m going to kill myself over that git Thorneye. It was too late to back out, he hadn’t endured six hours of O’Connell’s gobbledygook and singing to simply back out at the last moment.

He slowly and carefully climbed up onto the edge of The Mad Knave, wrapping his hand around the rope as he went. His heart hammered in his chest as the rain hammered down onto the deck behind him. He managed to contort himself around to face the ship which he intended to depart, and after a few breathless moments, began to lower himself sluggishly down the rope.

Rain slammed into him from all angles, and wind buffeted him from side to side, but his grasp upon the rope was strong—it had to be. Before long, The Mad Knave was above him, and he was dangling, of all things, between the two vessels.

Lord, if there is such a thing, please help me…

He lowered himself until there was no more rope at his feet, and he realised he’d had his eyes closed for the last few metres. He opened them, and glanced across his shoulder.

There, a few metres behind him, was the deserted deck of Poseidon’s Gale. Her passengers had done the sensible thing and headed indoors. The storm would get worse before it got any better, and to remain out on her deck was idiotic.

Okay. Swing, monkey, swing as you’ve never swung before…

It was gentle at first, rocking back and forth, but Alcorn very quickly worked up a decent momentum. Before long, he was shifting in a long arc. Swooping below The Mad Knave, and over Poseidon’s Gale, again below The Mad Knave, and again over Poseidon’s Gale.

You can do this all night, a voice told him, but you won’t get anywhere.

Alcorn dry-swallowed and completed three more swings before working up the courage to let go.

The next thing he knew, he was falling, and he prayed he’d got it right. He dropped for what felt like an eternity, but then something very hard and solid punched into his feet. His legs buckled, and he rolled over backwards. Whether it was the stress of what he’d just put himself through or the altitude at which he’d done it, he didn’t know, but for the briefest of seconds he blacked out. When he came to, he was lying on his back staring up at the underside of a huge balloon.

There, slipping across the sky in front of him, was The Mad Knave. In its cockpit, Clem O’Connell controlled the vessel as best he could and drifted further away, enveloped by thick, murky clouds.

Alcorn climbed to his feet and did everything in his power to push down the nausea that threatened to wash over him.

He failed, and dropping back to his knees, brought up the entire contents of his stomach. On the bright side, he hadn’t fallen into the abyss. He had to be thankful for the little things.

19

The big man raised his chainsword, swinging it down in a wide arc toward the life-ship. Abigale screamed. Behind her, Cornelia Maddern fell backwards, went over the side of the small vessel and disappeared from sight. The pilot, Sergei, was doing what he could to keep the life-ship steady, but the zombified ticket master had clambered aboard and was chewing at the Russian’s neck, tearing flesh and fat from an already irreparable wound.

The ship faltered, and the sword came buzzing down. The armoured wolf—it was a wolf; she could see its eyes, now, and those razorblade teeth, snapping and snarling—jumped across and landed with a meaty thump on the deck of the small vessel. The sword came down, buzzing and whirring, a mechanical death-machine, and cut through the ship with veritable ease.

There was no way they would survive, no way of avoiding the inevitable. Abigale tried to clamber to her feet, but the armoured wolf latched onto her shoulder, dragging her back by the flesh. There was no pain, oddly enough, but the sound of the creature’s snapping maw was enough to confirm her injury. The big man appeared, towering over her, his chainsword raised high above his head. As he brought it down one last time, Abigale cursed the device attached to her skull, and cursed Mordecai Pick for involving her in such ludicrous matters. Then there was darkness, and nothing else.

*

Abigale lunged forwards, gasping for air that would not come. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did, it all came flooding back. She had been dreaming, but her situation was very real. She was in her cabin aboard Poseidon’s Gale, heading for Russia, sought after by wizards and lord-knows-what else.

Sleep would not be forthcoming, so Abigale clambered from the bed and lit the gas lamp sitting upon her bedside table. With the room illumined, she relaxed a little. The dream had frightened her, and yet, it hadn’t been just a dream. What she saw was an alternative of how things could have gone that afternoon. Cornelia could quite easily have toppled over the side of the life-ship, and that grotesque ticket master had very nearly reached their vessel. An inch either side of the actual happenings, and things would have been very different.

She poured herself a glass of water and settled down next to the porthole, which was being peppered with heavy raindrops. Not much could be discerned beyond the glass because a dense fog seemed to be dragging alongside them, blocking any view of the stars above and the clouds beneath.

What am I doing? Why am I doing this? If it wasn’t for the deadly clockwork device embedded in her head, she wouldn’t even entertain continuing, no matter how much Mordecai should offer her as recompense. The only thing that mattered was staying alive, at least long enough to get the thing out of her head and to exact some sort of revenge upon those responsible for the mess.

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but Abigale preferred it steaming hot. That was when she was at her most brutal.

One thing was for sure,for the remainder of the journey, Abigale would confine herself to the sanctuary of her quarters. Mordecai had known exactly what he was doing by purchasing a first-class ticket. Stay in your kennel, and you should be fine. Well, in her kennel she would stay, and if someone should knock upon the door, well, they were wasting their time. Abigale had had enough fun for one journey, and the sooner Russia appeared on the horizon, the better.

She finished her water and moved across to a writing table in the corner of the room. With her notepad already laid out, she began to make notes. She drew sketches of the big man and his wolf, of the little peeler, of the undead ticket master, labelling them for possible weaknesses. Though they had dropped from the sky like swatted flies, Abigale yearned for knowledge of failings, should she find herself face to face with such beasts again.

The chainsword? How had that worked? Octavius would know, and, if he was there, he would explain it to her in such great detail that she would simply look at him with utter bewilderment. She wasn’t borne of automata and gears. She knew how to use them if Octavius provided her with simple instructions, which he always tried to, but that chainsword had perplexed her.

The big man had flicked his thumb—nothing more. There had been no switches upon its handle or minute buttons that would set the contraption working. Perhaps it was magic. He, whoever he was, had been in league with the wizards, who would see it as nothing to arm him with a magical sword, especially if it benefitted them.

Then there was the ticket master. Sure, he had unnerved Abigale while she had been queuing for the ship, but at least then, he had been…alive. What she had seen out there had been very much dead—a corpse, a slavering cadaver. Something had created it, and thusly, controlled it. Not only was she up against wizards and giants with mechanical swords, she was facing reanimated beings.

She made notes in her little book about everything she knew so far, and the things she would have to learn pretty damn quick if she were going to survive the caper.

Poor Cornelia. The girl had been terrified, scared to within an inch of her very existence. There was no going back for her now. One minute, she’d been a simple server upon a very prestigious skyship, and the next, she’d been battling things that should not be. While it would take some time for Abigale to come to terms with the wholly new world, she doubted a girl of Cornelia’s utter innocence would altogether adjust. Still, there was nothing Abigale could do to help. She had a job to do, one that required focus and expertise. To ponder too much upon the wellbeing of another would compromise her own existence.

She went over the plans for the Hermitage Museum, making sure there was nothing she’d missed, and several hours later, she collapsed back upon her bed and closed her eyes, not expecting to sleep.

It was a surprise, therefore, when she succumbed almost as soon as she took up her position, and this time she dreamt of Octavius—her very own saviour.

20

“Excuse me,” Alcorn said as he briskly made his way across the rain-drenched deck. The woman, his target, seemed to recoil in horror as if it was the most absurd thing for a person to approach her. She had an air of graciousness about her, and the way in which she was dressed suggested she took great pride in her physical appearance. Perhaps she was royalty. Alcorn didn’t care.

Tell me what you know, Princess. “I’m looking for a man,” he said, holding aloft a placatory hand.

“Aren’t we all, dear,” the woman said, relaxing slightly.

“This is a very specific man, almost impossible to miss.” Alcorn would have given his right arm for a photograph of Thorneye in that moment. Instead, he provided the woman with his best description, and that of Thorneye’s new associate. “He’s a relatively small man with a red moustache. He wears a monocle.” Alcorn made a circle from his thumb and forefinger and pressed it against his eye as if the woman might believe a monocle to be some kind of new-fangled transportation machine. “And he’s travelling with a very large, brutish-looking man?”

The woman shook her head. “Can’t say I’ve seen them. Have you asked one of the workers?”

Alcorn nodded. He’d asked several of the staff, and none of them could recollect setting eyes upon the incongruous passengers. All day and night, he’d been looking, a full twenty-four hours, and no one seemed to know a damn thing.

Suddenly remembering something vital, Alcorn said, “They had a large dog with them. Surely you would remember seeing such a beast.”

The woman’s eyes suddenly widened. “Ah, yes! That thing terrified me. I’m not sure what breed it was, but it wasn’t something I’m familiar with. Almost had me ankle off, so it did.”

“So you remember the big man and the little man with him?” Finally, we’re getting somewhere…

“No,” the woman said, shaking her head. “The monster was roaming around the deck on its own. I did report it to one of the team, just in case it should stumble across a child or the like, but they seemed reluctant to do anything to help.”

Great. That’s just friggin’ fantastic.

The woman flashed a smile, one that suggested her thoughts were not entirely wholesome. “I believe we’re landing in Saint Petersburg within the hour. Are you in a rush to be somewhere, or would you—”

“Unfortunately,” Alcorn said, checking his pocket watch, even though he knew very well what time it was, “I must find the aforementioned man and his associate, but thank you for the kind offer.” He turned and stalked away across the deck. Someone on board must have seen the Inspector. Someone must know what had become of the giant and his apparently ferocious hound.

People, Alcorn thought as he set his sights upon his next possible witness, do not suddenly disappear at eight-thousand feet.

*

The ground settled beneath them. Abigale had always dreamt of skyship travel, and yet, she was incredibly happy to be reunited with the earth. She stared out through her porthole at the sun rising in the distance. Although it was still ever-so-slightly raining, it was nowhere near as inclement as Abigale had anticipated. She’d heard such things about Russia, that it’s a tundra for eleven months of the year. Apparently, that was a fallacy.

Gathering her things, Abigale made her way across to the cabin door. She’d locked herself away for an entire day, and so it was quite difficult to suddenly throw open the doors and welcome any dangers that might be waiting beyond.

She unlocked the door and slowly eased it open.

People were disembarking, pushing one another aside in an attempt to shave mere seconds off their journey. Abigale joined the queue accumulated at the top of the steps leading down onto Russian soil. While she was not in as much of a rush as some of her fellow passengers, she was eager to settle into the city, find a place in which to recover from the flight and once again peruse the plans for that night’s action.

The line was slowly edging forwards, and as Abigale glanced across to her right, she was met with the solemn gaze of Cornelia Maddern. Abigale offered the girl a smile, which was returned in the form of a pleasant nod. Abigale mouthed the words ‘thank you’, for the server had had every right to turn her in. She had killed, and while the fallen had not been entirely human, Abigale felt as if she owed Cornelia Maddern something for her silence. Maybe one day she would be able to show her gratitude, but not that day.

Facing front once again, Abigale climbed down onto the steps leaning up the side of Poseidon’s Gale. There was a chill to the air, and she shivered. It was still early, and there was plenty of time for the temperature to rise to something more suitable. London, by comparison, was not much colder during its harshest of winters.

Ten minutes later, she was in Saint Petersburg proper.

It was time to get to work.

*

There are times in one’s life when pieces all of a sudden fall into place and begin to make some sort of sense. Most of the time it’s nothing more than fortuitous luck, but how these things come to be is of no import. What matters is that they do, and when they do, one must act upon them as if the chance is time-limited and liable to be snatched away as easily and briskly as they presented themselves.

When Detective John Wesley Alcorn saw Abigale Egars descending the steps a few metres in front of him, he believed her to be nothing more than a cruel mirage, a simple case of ‘you see what you want to see’ and nothing more. However, she turned to the side, offering him the perfect view of her face. Then she failed to disintegrate or drift slowly upwards towards the Russian sky, and he knew she was very, very real.

It was better than locating Thorneye, although he guessed the two were inextricably linked somehow. After all, it had been Thorneye whom she’d embarrassed at The Victoria and Albert Museum a few days prior. There was always the chance that he’d sought some sort of revenge and followed the girl onto Poseidon’s Gale with murder in mind. That would explain his burly companion. As devious and corrupt as Thorneye was, he was less than capable of exacting the kind of punishment he’d no doubt intended. Much easier to employ a large man to do the dirty work.

As he watched Abigale step down onto the expansive airfield, that the aforementioned pieces had fallen into place.

The trick was not to lose her.

She walked briskly across the field, and Alcorn knew that a certain distance left between them would be required, lest he forfeit his fortuitous upper hand. She wasn’t getting away, not that time.

As he watched, Alcorn pondered what she was doing in Russia. Was it a simple holiday? Had she fenced years’ worth of stolen goods and purchased a one-way ticket to a foreign land? There were laws, rules of jurisdiction, that Alcorn was loath to break, but she was his, she always had been. If he were going to arrest her, and return her to London for the justice system to do their thing, it would take thought and considerable care. The last thing he needed was The Ministry of Internal Affairs coming down on him with a very large hammer.

As he clandestinely made his way across the field, Abigale remained in view, still very much striding as if eager to reach her final destination. It became apparent that Thorneye had simply disappeared during the flight, along with his giant friend.

Again, Alcorn’s mind went to work with the endless questions. If they had intended to track the thief, where were they now? Why weren’t they closely following, and why hadn’t he seen them? The idea that Abigale Egars had somehow disposed of them mid-flight sent a shiver along Alcorn’s spine. He’d always considered her extremely dangerous, but she’d never killed anyone before.

There was always a first for everything, and if she’d managed to take out Joe Thorneye and Goliath during the course of a few days, he’d certainly underestimated her.

Suddenly, something very important dawned on him. He’d travelled without a passport, and was, therefore, an illegal in a foreign land. There would be checks in the building Abigale Egars was entering—a large brick construction that looked about as welcoming as Hades. At least Hades was warm.

Shit! He was going to lose her yet again. Not only that, but he was going to find himself arrested and thrown into a gaol cell. If only he’d had time to consider how crazy the whole thing was back at The Mad Knave and had asked Clem O’Connell to turn around and aim for London.

Of course, then he wouldn’t be a hair’s breadth from capturing and detaining the bane of his life. No, the situation required a certain cleverness, something which he was more than capable of.

Glancing across to the side of the large, brick building, he saw a tall and rusty fence. At its highest, it bordered on twelve feet, and at the top, sharp wire stretched across from one side to the next. From what he could see, there were no guards waiting on the other side, no patrolling Russians armed to the back teeth with whatever it was that Russian soldiers shot people with those days.

Whether it was simple excitement that pulled him toward that massive fence, Alcorn didn’t know. All he knew was that he had come too far, that Abigale Egars was up to something and that the time for her incarceration was near.

No one seemed to pay him any mind as he fell out of the steady stream of travellers and headed for the fence. One child brought his bizarre behaviour to the attention of his mother, who responded by covering the boy’s eyes, instructing him that they didn’t have time for getting involved and to mind his business.

Good parenting, Alcorn thought.

Upon reaching the fence, he had a better view of the street beyond. A horse and cart cantered along the rain-damp street, but apart from that, there was no sign of another living being.

Alcorn hooked his foot through the steel and pushed off the ground. He knew he had to be quick, despite the lackadaisical security. Apparently, the Russians relied on a certain amount of honesty when it came to passing through into their country. How damn foolish of them…

Alcorn was up and over the fence in less than thirty seconds, and after a quick glance around to make sure he hadn’t been noticed, he dusted down his coat and pushed his hands into his pockets.

He made his way round the front of the brick building through which Poseidon’s Gale’s passengers were passing. The boy with the nosey tendencies saw him and tugged on his mother’s sleeve. She glanced up, and upon spotting Alcorn, simply nodded in his direction. He nodded back and continued to scan the passengers as they stepped out into the early morning light. After thirty seconds, he knew he’d lost her again. She was already long gone, and Alcorn wanted nothing more than to fall to his knees, turn his face up to the heavens and scream at the top of his voice, “Why? Why, you son-of-a-bitch, why?”

*

“She’s arrived in Saint Petersburg,” Werner said, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. In his hand, he clutched a small box, upon which a green light flashed. The sawbones’ hair was unkempt, and his face was peppered with stubble. Sleep had not yet paid him a visit, nor did he expect it to anytime soon.

Behind the large desk, Mordecai Pick sat, cleaning his pipe. “At least we know she isn’t trying to deceive us. She’s a smart girl, and I’m almost certain the thought has crossed her mind.” Perhaps, he thought, that’s all she’s thinking about.

Werner took the empty seat opposite his employer and placed the flickering box upon the desk. “Are we doing the right thing? I mean, bringing those pieces out in the open is extremely dangerous, is it not?”

Mordecai nodded. “This needs to end, once and for all. I, for one, can no longer just sit here and wait for one of the wizards, and by that I mean Blithe, to reach those artefacts. It would be Hell on Earth, the end of everything as we know it.” He sighed, pushed the pipe into the corner of his mouth and blew air clear through it. “We’re doing the right thing.”

“Why not destroy one piece?” Werner said, frowning. “Would that not render The Configuration powerless?”

That was something Mordecai had long considered. “Have you not seen the transition? Blithe is twice as powerful as she once was. The nine pieces in her custody have already increased her strength exponentially. With all twelve, she would be unstoppable. I dread to think how many innocent people would die as a result, but even with ten or eleven pieces of The Configuration she would be most formidable. Perhaps not unstoppable, but strong enough to challenge the Magocracy.”

Werner hissed. “So this is simple damage limitation?” he asked. “Destroy the final three pieces and keep Blithe on a leash where we can handle her.”

Mordecai nodded. “Exactly. The Guild refuses to bow to any wizard, and I intend to keep it that way.”

Werner watched the green light upon the side of the small box flicker. He hadn’t realised before then just how important that girl, that poor thief who had wanted no part of their plan, was to the world. She was out there somewhere, doing whatever she could to prevent Armageddon, and she had no idea of her own significance.

Godspeed, Abigale Egers, Werner thought. He picked up the box and departed the office, leaving Mordecai Pick to his own devices.

21

The Nevsky Inn was perfectly situated across the street from the Hermitage Museum. Abigale couldn’t have asked for a more blessed location. The landlady, Anja, had a voice that suggested years of chain smoking, but she was impeccably mannered and welcoming. She had offered Abigale a choice of rooms, each of which was more than adequate for her needs. After settling in, Anja had brought her a selection of teas and cakes, which Abigale hadn’t anticipated but had accepted graciously.

“Are you here on holiday?” Anja asked in thick Russian. She lit a cigarette and casually leaned against the doorframe, awaiting a response.

Abigale nodded. “Yes. I’ve heard many great things about Saint Petersburg. I’ve always wanted to travel.” She smiled. Lying was second nature to her.

“Ah, wanderlust,” Anja said, so suddenly that she caught Abigale off guard.

“Excuse me?” Visions of the painting, with its coiling towers and strangely mesmeric qualities, rushed through her mind. Surely, the landlady wasn’t referring to Frederic Laffitte’s finest work.

Anja chortled as smoke trickled from her mouth. “A person with the strong urge to travel and discover,” she said. “It’s called wanderlust.”

Abigale sighed with relief and wondered how she had not known that. “That’s a wonderful word,” she said, pretending it was the first she’d heard of it.

“Indeed it is,” Anja said. “Well, Ms Egars. I will let you become acquainted with our fair city in peace. If you need anything, I’m never far away.” She smiled.

It was a thing of beauty, and Abigale realised that the woman, though advanced in years now, had once been a sight to behold.

Abigale thanked her for her hospitality and watched as she disappeared along the hallway, singing something to herself in a language Abigale didn’t understand. She closed the door and turned the key. There was so much to do still and so very little time. There was no telephone in her room, either, so any plans she’d had of contacting Octavius fell by the wayside.

He’s fine, she thought. He’s always fine.

She set to work, pulled a chair up to the window, and watched as the Hermitage Museum began to attract visitors in the same way dung attracts beetles.

*

This, Alcorn thought, is ridiculous. He’d walked for hours, hoping the fortuitousness continued, praying that Abigale Egars would simply bump into him on the streets of Saint Petersburg. He’d been wasting his time, of course. She was nowhere to be seen. He cursed himself for losing her in the first instance, and again for spending so much time scouring the streets of a city he knew nothing about. He was tired, angry, and very disconcerted that she’d been snatched so unceremoniously from his grasp yet again.

What he needed was somewhere to recoup, a quiet place in which to get his bearings. He walked a little further before stumbling upon what looked, on the outside, at least, like an accommodating place. He knocked the door and waited.

After several minutes—maybe a lot less, but it felt like it to Alcorn, who simply desired the warmth of a comfortable bed for an hour or two—a face appeared between the crack in the door.

“You in need of a room?” the man asked. He had a large jaw and a flat nose, and a small scar stretched across his brow as if he’d recently been involved in a scuffle of some sort. His drawl was just about coherent to Alcorn.

“Do you have one?”

The man pulled the door inwards and grinned. “The best in the city!” he said, suddenly animated. “Come in. You are English?”

How very perceptive, Alcorn thought as he stepped over the threshold. “Yes, and you must be Russian,” he said, extending his hand. “We must stop meeting like this.”

The man frowned, obviously perplexed. After a brief moment, he shook Alcorn’s hand, introduced himself as ‘Oleg’, and led him along the hallway, to where a set of grotesquely carpeted stairs led up to the first floor. “You are alone?”

“Yes,” Alcorn replied. “And I won’t be staying long. I just need something basic. Do you have food?”

Oleg nodded excitedly. “The best in Russia.”

Alcorn, glancing around the place, highly doubted such claims.

“Mother is a wonderful cook. Will make anything you want. She is, how you say, very ‘appy to ‘elp.”

Oleg’s attempt at a London accent was not far off the mark, and Alcorn had to stifle a laugh. “Thanks, Oleg.” Then I would very much like to stay here for the duration of my visit.”

With the deal sealed, Oleg grabbed a key from a hook high up on the kitchen wall. “I will show you to your room now. Mother will cook you something nice.”

They were halfway up the stairs when a lady appeared, descending. Smoke drifted along behind her as she came toward them. “Mother,” Oleg said. “Mr. John would like some dinner.”

She stopped level with them. Alcorn held his hand out once again. “John Alcorn,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

The woman smiled and shook his hand. “Anja. Make yourself at home, Mr. Alcorn. I will bring food to your room within the hour.” With that, she was gone, on her way to the kitchen to prepare his dinner.

Perhaps, he thought as he followed Oleg to his room, my luck will return once I have a full stomach.

*

Afternoon gave way to evening, which in turn ceded to the night. Sitting in her room, staring out through the window at the museum had made her impatient. The moment had taken its damn time in arriving, but Abigale was pleased the hour had finally arrived.

With her satchel slung across her shoulder, she made her way around the side of the museum. The Neva River was beautiful and ran along the rear of the huge baroque building. The sound of water smoothly rushing past soothed her. It wasn’t Beethoven, but it was the next best thing.

She approached the large glass doors halfway along the side of the Hermitage, keeping to the shadows the night so charitably offered. Once she’d discerned there were no guards beyond the glass, she began to cut through the door. It was easy. Octavius had worked wonders on the device. He was quite the wizard when it came to tinkering.

She gently removed the circle of glass and laid it on the concrete as she climbed through the aperture. Once inside, she pulled the glass toward her and sealed the hole once again. Whether it would remain sealed all depended upon the weather. A good gust of wind would send the circular cutout smashing into the museum. She tried not to think about it, and quickly made her way through to the adjacent room.

There were allegedly four guards on duty, but none of them was in the same room as Abigale. She lithely approached the next room, which was much larger than those she’d traversed. It had to be, for a full-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex stood in the centre. Even though it was dead, and certainly no threat, Abigale found the looming monster terrifying.

Just then, someone coughed. Abigale dropped to her haunches as footsteps echoed around the room. She hadn’t expected the caper to be easy. Not at all, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hope.

She reached into her satchel and quietly removed the automaton fly. With a flick of a switch, her monovision eyeglass revealed exactly what the fly perceived; which was, in that moment, her own terrified face. She turned it away from herself and gently released it, watching as it drifted along on the air, flapping its wings so quickly they were barely discernible in the gloom.

Abigale settled back and watched as the fly swooped and soared through the dinosaur room, silently searching for the guard she knew was present.

At the edge of the room, he sat reading a paperback book. The fly approached cautiously, giving Abigale all the information she needed to make a quick assessment. She would have to take him out, and yet, she was loath to shoot him with Big Daddy. She’d already sent enough people crashing toward unconsciousness. It was time for a little hand-to-hand and a more natural snooze for the guard.

The fly returned, and she replaced it in its box, before returning it to her satchel. Standing, she edged around the room, sticking to the gloom, and keeping the giant T-Rex between herself and the guard.

He coughed again, startling Abigale. For a moment, her heart rate doubled, and it took a moment to compose herself. The fact that she couldn’t see the guard only served to exacerbate her nervousness. All she could see was the grimacing, snarling, skeletal face of a long extinct beast, and yet, she knew the face of the guard would be just as terrifying.

Through the gloom, at the far edge of the room, was the Chindesaurus egg, encased in a glass cabinet and surrounded by what looked, in the semi-darkness, like ordinary hay. It certainly wasn’t Triassic hay, if such a thing had ever existed. Once she had set her sights upon it, she felt better. All she had to do was remove the guard from the equation.

Suddenly a roar shattered the silence in the room. The guard jumped to his feet, dropping the book he had been reading. Abigale pressed herself tight to the wall, her heart still in her throat as she tried to discern where the roar had come from. It sounded close, very close, and Abigale felt gooseflesh begin to rise on her skin.

“Who’s there?” the guard said to no one. “Is that you, Karlov?”

As Abigale pressed herself against the wall, the guard slowly made his way across the room toward her. The roar continued to echo around the room, and the large skeletal shape in the centre began to tremble and crackle into life. When the roar came again, Abigale had a pretty good idea from where it emanated.

“What the…” the guard managed, but the bones of the dinosaur suddenly spun.

Before Abigale knew what was happening, the poor man was in its skeletal maw, being whipped frantically from side to side. Its colossal and ancient teeth clamped down hard. Bones cracked, and the guard roared in pain. Blood dribbled down from his limp form, speckling the museum floor.

Abigale stifled a scream, and it was then that she felt the presence of another. She turned to the window at the far end of the room and saw the big man with his armoured wolf glaring in at her. She knew that a very large shit was very much in the middle of hitting a very large fan.

*

As the glass exploded inwards, Abigale rolled across the floor. The dinosaur skeleton was still chewing on the guard—it hadn’t eaten for quite a long time—and Abigale took the opportunity while it still presented itself.

She lunged toward the glass cabinet and threw a leg out. The glass exploded just as two guards rushed into the room, but they didn’t immediately notice her with the egg she was about to smash to bits, or the hulking man with his pet wolf standing just beyond the shattered window. A reanimated dinosaur will always steal your thunder, no matter what you’re up to.

The guards exited the room as quickly as they had entered, and Abigale didn’t expect to see them again.

She slammed the egg into the floor and was pleasantly surprised when it smashed. She’d half-expected it to have gone through some sort of treatment, some process which might render it less fragile. Apparently not.

Abigale grabbed the S-shaped nugget from the shards of broken egg and lunged beneath the dinosaur’s swinging tail. The big man’s chainsword suddenly began to growl, and she realised he was closer than she’d thought.

Scrambling to her feet, she raced from the room and into the next. Without stopping, she pulled Big Daddy from its holster and trained it upon the window in front of her. She pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. The glass spider webbed outwards where the darts had impacted.

“Shi-i-i-it!” Abigale screamed. She leapt up into the air and pushed out both feet. The glass gave way all around her, and then she was out, on her back, briefly winded. Since it was not a great time for a lie-down, she clambered to her feet and raced across the concrete. Something roared behind her—The dinosaur, the big man, his wolf?—but she didn’t stop to look back.

How had he found her? Why was he still alive? Why was the dinosaur alive? All good questions, none of which she could answer, but she knew her time in Saint Petersburg was over. She had to keep moving and get as far away from the city as possible.

Why is nothing ever simple? She asked herself as she approached The Nevsky Inn from the rear. Utilising the rope-gun for the first time, she scaled a wall that would otherwise have been impossible to climb. She lowered herself down on the other side and slipped into the Inn through the back door.

Breathless and scared, she leaned against the kitchen wall and closed her eyes. She was dealing with the fact that she’d seen a reanimated dinosaur. Not only that, but she’d witnessed, first-hand, its feeding process, something that she would never forget for as long as she lived. Add to that the fact that Gulliver was still very much alive, and he was still after her, had chased her halfway across the world. “Could this night get any worse?” she whispered into the darkness.

“You have no idea,” a voice replied, and then came the unmistakeable click of a gun’s hammer being readied.

22

Abigale almost screamed. Once that had passed, she had to choke back the nausea, which threatened to envelop her. She’d had guns pointed at her before, but not from such close range, and not by someone with whom she’d shared such a tumultuous history.

“This is, I have to say, quite remarkable.” Alcorn could barely contain his excitement, and it was palpable in the staccato quality of his voice. “Abigale Egars. I had to travel halfway across the globe to catch you, and yet, you managed to evade me so gallingly in little old London.”

“Detective, this is not the time or place for this conversation.” Abigale had a strange feeling that the big man was already hunting her down. Either he could smell her, or that thing in her satchel. Either way, he was coming.

“This is the perfect time,” Alcorn said. “I’ve waited years for this moment, and you’re not going to ruin it for me now.”

Abigale took a deep breath. “You don’t understand. This isn’t about you and me. There are things at work here that you can’t yet comprehend.”

“Oh, I comprehend them very well,” Alcorn said, jabbing the Derringer toward her. “Not content with stealing from one city, you’ve expanded. Is nowhere safe from your wretched thievery?”

Abigale shook her head. “Something is trying to kill me, right now, right this minute. I will explain everything to you once we are safely away from this place, but please. You must trust me.”

Alcorn frowned. “Trust is something you know very little about. Have I been wrong all these years, Abigale Egars? Is there actually honour amongst thieves?”

Taking a step toward him, she said, “John, you have to trust me. I promise I am not deceiving you on this occasion. We are in very real danger, and unless we—”

Something began to rumble. The china cups, which Oleg probably cared very little for but would have meant the world to Anja, vibrated across the shelves where they sat. Alcorn tilted his head and pricked his ears, but Abigale already knew what was coming.

“He’s coming!” she said. She no longer cared if Alcorn was thinking about shooting her. She would be dead in a moment anyway. They both would if they continued to stand there. “Come with me. I will explain, but let’s just get the hell out of here.”

“Who?” Alcorn said. Suddenly he looked quite terrified. “Who’s coming?”

Just then, perfectly timed, though not as far as Abigale was concerned, the door through which Abigale had just entered flew off its hinges.

Abigale pulled Big Daddy from its holster, and while she concentrated on the armoured wolf loping in through the gaping hole, Alcorn turned his Derringer upon the big man with the roaring sword. It was safe to say that all hell broke loose.

The giant flew backwards as rounds riddled his torso, his face contorting into something altogether horrendous. Alcorn couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was the man from the skyship, Thorneye’s companion, but Thorneye? And how many bullets was he going to have to put into the giant before he went down?

The answer to that one of his questions was all of them. His Derringer clicked dry, and while he reloaded, Abigale pulled him across the kitchen toward the front door.

“We don’t have time to fight him!” she screamed. “We have to leave. Now!”

“What on Earth is going on down here?” a shaky voice said from halfway up the stairs. Anja stood there with her gown pulled across her, and in her free hand, she held a large hammer.

“Go back upstairs, Anja!” Abigale said. “Lock your door and call the police!”

Abigale left Anja to decide for herself the best course of action for the sleeping armoured wolf in her kitchen and the bullet-riddled man flailing about in her backyard. She lunged through the front door and out into the night, dragging Detective John Wesley Alcorn with her.

*

Moskovsky station was dead, which was exactly what Abigale thought they needed for the time being. Alcorn had a lot of questions, and a certain calm was required in order for Abigale to explain everything without sounding like an absolute maniac. Though she expected to come across as one, regardless of their surroundings. The next locomotive to Lodz, Poland, was thirty minutes away, and from there, Paris was one more locomotive. Another two days of travelling would see her reach the final piece and another step closer to ending the madness.

First, she had to convince the detective she was telling the truth.

They sat beside one another on the bench adjacent to the platform. Abigale didn’t realise what she was doing until it was too late. She’d pushed herself against Alcorn for warmth, and he was staring back at her with no uncertain amount of incredulity.

“Where do I start?” she said. There was so much to tell him, and even though she had never wished to share anything with her arch-nemesis, she knew very well that without his cooperation, she was as good as dead. The device in her head would trigger as soon as she deviated from her objective. A trip back to London would be the final nail in her coffin.

“What are you doing here?” Alcorn said. That, he thought, was a good enough place to begin. “In Saint Petersburg? Why did you fly halfway across the world?” He looked intently at her, awaiting a response.

She sighed. “You’re familiar with The Guild,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Of course he was.

“Who isn’t?” Still, he hadn’t expected them to have anything to do with her. They were practically untouchable—an invisible entity with more power than even the Metropolitan Police Force.

Abigale slowly slipped the clip from her hair and removed the emerald hat, which had been pinned there. Leaning forwards, she revealed to the detective her shorn head and the scar yet to heal. “Well, let’s just say that my first run-in with them has not been a pleasant one.”

“What is that?” Alcorn asked, going to touch the wound. “Did they try to kill you?” It looked as if someone had gone at her with a hatchet before changing their mind and stitching it up.

She replaced the hat and sighed. “They implanted a clockwork device that will administer poison directly into my system if I fail to retrieve a few, let’s say, items for them.” Wow, when she put it like that, it really sunk in.

Alcorn considered her words for a moment, and while he did, Abigale removed the small S-shaped nugget from her satchel.

“What is it?” he asked.

“This is what they’re after, and what the wizards are after. I—”

“The what? Did you just say wizards?”

Abigale couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to mention the third party in all of this. “I know, it’s hard to believe,” she said, “but I swear, I’ve seen some things these last few days that I’m never going to forget. That guy back there, Buzzsaw, he’s not human. I watched him explode over the ocean, and yet here he is, angrier than ever, and that wolf of his, too.”

“Thorneye?” Alcorn pressed. There were so many questions running through his head that he didn’t know where to begin.

“The little rozzer?” Abigale asked. “Honestly, I don’t know what his part in all this was.” She was reluctant to tell Alcorn that she’d seen the inspector die, drop from the sky like a dead bird. It could easily be construed as murder. In fact, there was no other way to explain it.

Alcorn sucked in a huge lungful of air and slowly let it out. “So these pieces you’re being blackmailed into stealing,” he said, gesturing to the one she held in her hand. “What are they? Are they worth something? Is that it? Is The Guild trying to make even more money?”

“They’re worth something to the wizards,” she said. “From what I know, which isn’t much, if a wizard gets its hands on these pieces, they’ll be unstoppable. You, me, London, none of it will matter anymore. It’ll all be over. It seems The Guild is more than just some huge illegal conglomerate. Mordecai Pick talked about these things as if this has been going on for centuries.” She reached up and scratched an itch at the side of her wound. “I swear to you, John, I’m not doing this for fun. I’m doing it to stay alive, at least long enough to find out what’s going on.”

Alcorn shook his head. “You know I can’t let you go,” he said. “Not after everything you’ve done. When we get back to London, I have to take you in.” He tried not to sound as if he would enjoy that moment, but it was difficult.

Abigale nodded. “I don’t care about that anymore,” she said. “All I care about is getting this thing out of my head. Once I have the final piece, we pay a visit to The Guild. After that, I’m all yours.” She held a hand out. Unsurprisingly, it was trembling. She was terrified, and part of her couldn’t believe what she was about to give up.

After staring at it as if it was a bunch of snakes for a few moments, Alcorn shook the extended hand. “I’m willing to go along with you,” he said, “but only because if what you say is true, I don’t want you falling down dead. I’m not your friend. I’m not your helper. I’m here to keep you alive long enough to receive justice. If you try anything, if you so much as leave my sight, I will cuff you so fast and hard your unborn children will have sore wrists. Understood?”

Nodding once again, Abigale said, “No tricks. I just want to get back to London in one piece.” She thought about Octavius, about everything he’d done for her, and it hurt. She would be leaving him, perhaps for good, and that was something she’d never contemplated before. No matter how close Alcorn had come to capturing her, she’d remained one step ahead.

He’d caught up to her, though. If she lived through the caper, returned to London, and faced a judge and jury, the next twenty years of her life would be spent staring at four walls. If she was lucky, she’d serve her gaol time without getting killed, and then what? Walk out of there a middle-aged woman? Octavius would be long gone, and so would Mouse. She’d be destitute and homeless, with no one to call friend. All in all, there wasn’t much to look forward to if she allowed Alcorn to take her in, and yet it was better than dying.

“So, you have two of the pieces,” Alcorn said. “Where is the third?”

Abigale forced a smile. “Have you ever been to Paris, John?”

*

Octavius opened his eyes, and for a moment, he thought he was underwater. Panic washed over him, but he quickly learned that he could still breathe. He was not underwater, but his eyes were streaming. Then came the pain.

Surging through him, it felt as if he was being repeatedly stabbed all along the one side, from his neck down to his toes. He could just about move his right arm, but even without looking down, he knew there was something wrong with it. It would need resetting. Where was Abigale when he needed her?

Far away. The best place for her.

As Octavius slowly pushed himself up, he saw the door to his safe, wide open. None of the jewels had been taken, none of the expensive items. Blithe had only sought one thing, and she’d got it.

Damn you, witch!

He clambered to his feet, his legs threatening to give way beneath him and stumbling backwards, he latched onto the edge of the desk to prevent himself from returning to the ground.

He was drained. He’d used magic for the first time in many years, and it had almost killed him. The fatigue brought with it a strange nausea, and it was all he could do to fight back the sickness.

You old fool! You silly old fool!

Whatever had convinced him that he could beat the sorceress? She was hugely powerful, and he was…well, extremely rusty. It had to be the most unfair match-up in the history of magic. Blithe had toyed with him at first, and as soon as he’d relented and reverted to wizardry, she’d dispatched him with considerable ease.

It struck him that he should be dead. Blithe certainly believed that she had killed him, for he could see no reason why she would allow him to survive.

Unless she wanted him to bear witness to the end of the world. She was twisted like that, always had been, even as a young sorceress. Octavius had known, even back then, she would grow up to be trouble, and yet he’d never guessed she would rise to such power in so short a space of time.

Limping across the workshop on disobedient legs, Octavius settled into his armchair. The pain, he felt, would dissipate soon, and he would be able to stand again, but there was nothing he could do. He had no way of contacting Abigale. In fact, he was rather surprised and a little perturbed that she hadn’t telephoned him yet. So all he could do was await her safe return.

“Come on, you,” he said, staring across the room and into the shadows. He gently patted the arm of his chair.

Mouse slowly emerged from the darkness, glancing around as if to say, “Is she gone?”

“You’re quite safe,” Octavius told the cat. Mouse jumped up onto the tinkerer’s lap and began to purr. “Everything will be okay.”

Yet, as the words passed his lips, he knew he was lying both to the cat and to himself.

23

Abigale was not surprised to discover that Alcorn was penniless and sans passport. He told her that travelling halfway across the world had not been on the cards on the morning he’d left London.

“You seldom require a passport for Chiswick,” he told her, which was, at first, about as far as he was willing to go to track Thorneye down.

Fortunately, Mordecai Pick had presented her with enough money for two tickets to Paris, which was where they found themselves heading.

The carriage was of decent size, with plenty of legroom for Alcorn. He was a tall man, taller than Abigale had remembered him from their previous encounters, and he required a certain amount of space for those gangly limbs of his. Abigale, on the other hand, was more than happy curling up on her seat with her feet nestled beneath her. It was how she always sat if she could.

“Can I ask you something, John?” A deathly silence had fallen over the carriage, and she wanted to stifle it before it got any worse.

He glanced up at her with no uncertain amount of trepidation, as if frightened of what she might ask. “If you must.”

She allowed her feet to drop to the carriage floor and sat forward. “Why, after all these years, have you never given up on chasing me?” She smiled.

Alcorn didn’t.

“You’re a criminal,” he said. “It’s what I’m paid to do.”

Abigale shook her head. “No, you’re paid to uphold the law. I know that, but surely you knew you were wasting your time trying to find me.”

It wasn’t obnoxious cockiness with which she asked the question, and Alcorn could see what she was getting at.

“I will admit, Abigale Egars, that you have been a most formidable adversary. I would even suggest that, on several occasions, I found myself enjoying the thrill of the chase. You sure like to make a detective work for his supper. But that doesn’t mean I would never have caught you.”

“Are you suggesting, John Wesley Alcorn that if we were not here now, inextricably linked by sheer luck and nothing more, you would have eventually captured me on the streets of London?”

Alcorn nodded. That was exactly what he was suggesting. “You can only run for so long. In the end, there is only ever one outcome.”

“Gaol?” She was starting to hate that word even more that it was all that awaited her back in London.

“Gaol,” he said. “Most people, though I’m not suggesting you are ‘most people’, have a tendency to grow tired of it all, of running and trying to remain one step ahead of the police. One day, they simply forget something simple, leave a strand of evidence behind that would inevitably lead back to them.”

“So, you think that a felon intentionally allows that error in order to put an end to it all?”

“People like you don’t make mistakes,” he said. “You said it yourself. No matter how close I always thought I was, you were out in front, probably watching and laughing. Yes, I would have caught you in the end, but would it have been through my own resoluteness? I highly doubt it. There would have come a time when you simply tired of running, got bored of dodging peelers left, right, and centre, and that’s when you would have allowed yourself to make a mistake.” He arched his back as if satisfied with his answer. “I’ve seen it a hundred times before.”

Abigale sat back in her seat. She could never imagine allowing herself to be captured. It had never once crossed her mind. It just went to show the utter ineptness of the Met, if they had to rely solely upon the mood of criminals to meet their monthly quotient. How many people were sitting in gaol just because they could no longer be bothered to keep a low profile? It boggled the mind.

“So tell me something about yourself, Abigale Egars,” Alcorn said, allowing his eyes to close for a moment. He looked…peaceful.

“What’s there to tell?” she said. “Surely you’ll get it all out of me during the interview at the station…”

“No, tell me something about you,” Alcorn pressed, still with his eyes closed. “Something no one else knows. You’re not just a thief, you’re a person. Tell me something about Abigale Egars, the person.”

To say that Abigale was taken aback was an understatement. No amount of preparation could have readied her for such a thing. “Erm, okay. I’m a Sagittarius.”

“Born December 7th,” Alcorn said. One eye was wide open and trained upon her. “I said tell me something I don’t know.”

If she was taken aback by the initial question, she was wholly flabbergasted about how he knew her date of birth. She’d only ever told Octavius, and it was rarely celebrated. It meant that, at some point, Alcorn had found out about her biological parents, maybe gotten hold of a birth certificate. He really hadn’t been too far behind catching her, after all.

After a few moments of pondering, Abigale said, “I like purple.”

Alcorn opened one eye again. “Purple?”

“Purple,” she said. “It’s my favourite colour, but don’t tell anyone. For some reason, I’m always associated with red and green. Must be the hair and the hat.”

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t tell a soul. Now let me go to sleep. Do you not have anything in the way of preparation to be getting on with?”

How could one prepare for the unknown? She had plans of The Louvre, yes, but there was nothing more she could do to ascertain things went off without a hitch. Still, she removed the notebook from her satchel and laid it open upon her lap.

“What about you?” she said, forgetting for a moment Alcorn’s prior instructions to leave him in peace.

“Excuse me?” His eyes remained shut.

“I’ve told you something about me,” she said. “It’s only fair that you should share a little something about yourself.”

“There is nothing I could tell you that would elicit excitement on your part,” he said, though in a manner which was relaxed.

Abigale knew she could get something out of him if she persisted. “Oh, come on, John,” she said. “It hardly matters now. After all we’ve been through, and you can’t give me a simple piece of information about yourself. That seems highly unfair, and more than a little suspicious.”

One eye fell open yet again. “I was married once, a very long time ago.” The way it came out, so matter-of-fact, implied that the parting of he and his wife was less than amicable.

For the briefest of moments, Abigale wasn’t sure that persevering was the best course of action, but when she glanced up to find he was staring back at her through his one open eye, she knew he was expecting more questions, and that it was okay to ask them.

“What was her name?” Seemed like a good place to start. The nasty details could wait.

“Emma,” he said, shifting slightly in his seat. “I was young, she was younger. It was never going to succeed, especially with my job.” He paused as if in fond reminiscence, and said, “It was nice while it lasted, but it’s a mistake I’ve never looked to repeat.”

Abigale nodded. She knew precisely what he meant. Love was hard to come by in their line of work. If you were a criminal, it was one more person to lie to, and if you were an officer of the law, it was simply another soul to disappoint when you failed to return home at a decent hour.

“What happened?” Abigale said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She held up a conciliatory hand because he’d already told her more than enough.

Alcorn took a deep breath. “Her father, he was a churchgoing man. In fact, he was practically part of the clergy.”

He laughed though Abigale could see it pained him.

“Anyway, one day, Emma and I were setting out for a trip. I can’t recall where we were going, now, but I believe it was somewhere down on the south coast. We were in the middle of packing our cases when her father arrived at my house with a rather unscrupulous looking bunch of gentlemen. They smuggled Emma off in a hansom while her father remained behind to hand out some rough justice. Apparently, I should never have married his daughter. You see, we’d eloped the week before. She was barely of age, and I had no real job to speak of. It was only going to end badly.”

“So they just took her?” Abigale said. “Your wife of one week.”

Alcorn nodded. “I don’t blame him for what he did. We were stupid and young, and neither of us knew what to expect from life. It was never a marriage, really. Just two dumb kids with a piece of paper.”

Well I never, Abigale thought. You think you know a hard-arse and then they suddenly drop a bombshell like this on you. “Did you ever see her again?”

“Actually, I saw her the following week. She was in the bank with her father. He gave me a look that would have terrified a herd of wild buffalo, and she did her utmost to ignore me. I have to admit, that was one of the worst moments of my life. If it wasn’t bad enough that the woman who I loved…. At least, thought I loved, had been cruelly snatched from my arms, she was now ignoring me at the request of her father, the clergyman.”

“Well that, John Wesley Alcorn, is one of the most depressing tales I’ve ever heard.” Abigale shook her head. In a way, she was glad she’d managed to get him to open up, and in another, she wished she hadn’t bothered. “You can go to sleep now,” she said, settling back into her seat.

“Why, thank you very much,” Alcorn said, his words dripping with sarcasm.

For a while, Abigale simply sat watching him. He snored, and occasionally the corner of his eye twitched as if he was being pestered by an invisible fly. It was such a surreal moment—her and Alcorn sharing a carriage to Paris where a crime would be committed and they would both be involved—that it was hard to believe it was truly happening.

She scribbled the name Emma in her notebook and drew a large heart around it. For some reason, it seemed appropriate, but for what reason, Abigale didn’t know. She closed the book and turned her attention to the window, where large fields rushed by at an incredible rate. It wasn’t the first time she’d travelled on a locomotive, but it was no less thrilling than when she’d visited Southampton for the purposes of acquiring a very large ring.

It would be another twenty-five hours before they arrived in Paris. Abigale made a mental note not to ask John Wesley Alcorn any more private questions.

24

The Gare du Nord was filled with the hustle and bustle of a busy weekday, and as Abigale and Alcorn debarked, they were immediately troubled by the hectic station.

“People sure do love Paris,” Abigale said, making sure her satchel was properly concealed beneath her arm. The last thing she wanted was to fall prey to a Parisian dipper. To them it would be a handful of money and an object they would never be able to discern, but to her, it would mean an excruciating death at the hands of a very disappointed Mordecai Pick.

“They call it ‘the city of love’,” Alcorn said, glancing around at the ensuing chaos. “It’s a lot like London, only they speak French here.” With that little nugget of wisdom, he led Abigale away from the locomotive and through a series of halls and doors until they arrived safely on the street out front. “Oh, and they like to call them Rues instead of streets. Apart from that, just another busy city in another shite country.”

“Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the carriage,” Abigale said. To her, Paris looked nothing like London. In London, she would have been pick pocketed five times by then, and then there was the smell. There was something of a difference in air quality. Where London had the Thames, a veritable quagmire of filth and bodies, Paris had the Seine, and it was the wonderfully perfumed scent drifting from the city’s river that assaulted her senses. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, all the while thinking, Try doing that in London and see how far it gets you.

“So what now?” Alcorn said.

Abigale could see he was agitated, and with good reason. He was part of a bizarre scheme, soon to be up to his neck in it. For a man of the law, that took some balls.

“Well, I don’t think our giant friend has followed us,” she said, though it didn’t hurt to scan the crowd one last time. “We know he’s capable of magic, or immortality, or both, so we can’t take anything for granted.”

“You say that like it’s the most natural thing in the world. All this talk of wizards and…and raising the dead…doesn’t it bother you, because it scares the bejesus out of me?”

Abigale nodded. “You have no idea how scared I am right now. But as long as Gulliver’s back in Saint Petersburg, I don’t think we have much to worry about.”

“You’re assuming he didn’t climb onto the roof of the locomotive and hitch a ride all the way across with us.” As soon as he’d said it, he glanced around, making sure that there was no sign of the big man with the chainsword, or his pet wolf. “No, you’re right. He would have come after us on the locomotive, wouldn’t he?”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Abigale said. The crowds were going about their business around them, closing in like walls of flesh.

Alcorn nodded. It was the most sensible thing she’d ever said.

*

Le Maison d’Anne was an elegant little townhouse not far from Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. It was certainly better than its Russian counterpart, but Abigale quickly pushed thoughts of Anja and Oleg away, for she didn’t want to consider the idea that they had not survived the chainsword-wielding maniac’s attack.

The only thing Abigale didn’t like about Le Maison d’Anne was the woman examining Alcorn as if he was a piece of rather expensive venison. She’d introduced herself as Miss Anasthasie Blaine, which to Abigale meant that no one in their right mind was stupid enough to marry her. She had stupidly tall hair, and her cheeks were so daubed with rouge that she looked like a porcelain doll. What annoyed Abigale more, however, was the fact that Alcorn was ceding to the woman’s charms and flirting as if tomorrow would never arrive.

Though, in their case, perhaps that wasn’t too far off the mark.

“So, the room is yours,” Anasthasie said, holding out a hand with a key dangling from it. As Alcorn went to get it, she snatched it back and smiled. “If you need anything, anything at all, then please come see me, yes?”

Alcorn nodded, and graciously accepted the key. “Thank you.”

“And the same goes for your daughter,” Anasthasie said, before smiling toward Abigale. “She has your eyes.”

Abigale scowled. She didn’t like the lady, not one bit, but before she could retort, Alcorn was ushering her along the foyer to a large door. Once they were safely through it, and heading up a set of stairs, Abigale said, “I saw that, by the way.”

“Saw what?”

“You and the Parisian Madame,” Abigale said. “So that’s the kind of girl you go for.”

Alcorn sniffed. “I’ll have you know that girls of any kind do not interest me. I merely aim to make polite exchanges when possible. One never knows when a little flirting might pay off.”

As far as Abigale was aware, flirting only paid off in the form of more carnal intercourse. There was never much in between.

They reached the room and Alcorn slipped the key into the lock. As he pushed the door open, Abigale peered round. “I like it,” she said. The room was sparse, and what furniture there was had been arranged entirely at one side.

Alcorn stepped in and pushed the key into the lock on the other side, ready to turn once they were both settled. He faced their quarters, stepping aside to allow Abigale room to pass. “It could be much worse,” he said. “At least there’s a river between us and the museum.”

La Seine cut through the city like a deep scar, and their lodgings were south of the river. Alcorn had insisted that they keep a fair distance from the Louvre, and even though Abigale had tried to force him to reconsider, he had been resolute. Once they had arrived, she did, though she would never tell him, agree with him. Taking up residence across the street hadn’t worked out too well back at The Hermitage.

Alcorn followed the chain protruding from his pocket all the way along to his pocket watch. He checked the time and said, “We have seven hours to kill before the museum closes for the night. I don’t suppose Madame Blaine has furnished us with anything in the way of games.”

Abigale fell backwards onto what she’d already chosen as her bed. “I’m sure there are a few games she would care to partake in with you,” she said, trying not to sound bitter. Why was she so affected by their landlady’s interest in Alcorn? She didn’t…no, that wasn’t possible…

“Like I said,” Alcorn sighed, “I don’t have time for any of that nonsense, not that it’s any of your business.” He wandered across to the window and absorbed the view. Down beside the river, a steady stream of carriages moved along, the horses at their helms seemingly disinterested by the romance of the city. “Do we need to hide that thing?” he said, suddenly turning from the window. The view was nice, but there were more pressing matters, not least the S-shaped item currently sitting in Abigale Egars’ satchel.

“What thing?” Abigale pushed herself up onto her elbows and frowned.

Alcorn gestured to the satchel hanging around Abigale’s neck. “The thing. The weird object that everyone seems to be falling over themselves to possess. Shouldn’t we be putting it somewhere safe?”

Abigale hadn’t thought about it, but once she did, it seemed to make sense. “You’re right. Goliath seems to be able to latch onto it as if it’s calling to him.” She removed the satchel and took the small, golden article, placing it upon the flowery-patterned quilt making up her bed. “The only thing is…what do we do with it? I mean, how do we stop him from tracking it, tracking us?”

Seven hours was all that stood between them and the final piece, but a person could do a lot of things in seven hours, cover a lot of miles. If the big man was already on to them, he might arrive in Paris before they even had a chance to get to the museum. Then what? They had been lucky thus far, but there were only so many times they could dodge that armoured wolf of his.

Alcorn settled onto the bed opposite, and it creaked beneath his considerable frame. “What was it in when you stole it?” He stroked his chin, which rustled through two-day-old stubble.

“A dinosaur egg,” Abigale said. “Why?”

Alcorn leaned forward, focussing intently upon the object nestled in beside Abigale. “If they’d been able to detect this thing before, wouldn’t they have it by now? I mean, there are three of these things outstanding, is that correct?”

Abigale nodded. “They already have the other nine.” The thought sent a chill coursing through her.

“So if they had been able to sense these things inside the museums, what would have stopped them just taking them? No, I think there’s more to it.”

Abigale, suddenly brightening, clambered to her feet. “What if the objects where they’re concealed somehow stifle the noise they make, so to speak?”

Nodding, Alcorn said, “Sounds like a theory. But how?”

“Okay, so someone…The Guild, I don’t know…deemed these objects dangerous. They knew that some wizard, at some point or other, would try to complete The Configuration. So they scattered them far and wide, placing them inside ancient artefacts, thus making them almost impossible to find.”

“Why didn’t they just destroy one of the pieces?” Alcorn asked. It was a damn good question, and one that had been bothering him since they left Saint Petersburg.

“Maybe they can’t be destroyed so easily,” Abigale said. She was clutching at straws, but what did Alcorn want from her? She was a thief, not a philosopher. “Or whoever scattered them in the first place knew that, one day, they might need to call upon whatever power they contained.”

“Greed?”

Abigale shrugged. “Hey, people have to take care of themselves first. Anyway, I digress. So these ancient artefacts mute the pieces, better than any other object could. Why is that? Why is the chainsword-wielding maniac able to find me wherever I am? And don’t give me any nonsense about that magical wolf of his.”

Alcorn shrugged. “Too much perfume?” he smiled.

“Very droll,” Abigale said. “No wonder you’ve never caught me. It’s because my satchel is not ancient. Sure, it’s a little tattered around the edges, and it smells sometimes, but it’s only a few years old.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Alcorn’s brow furrowed. “So, you’re suggesting that old objects can stifle these things.”

“Makes sense,” Abigale said. “Think of all the history behind that Chinese vase, and I’m pretty sure the dinosaur egg had seen some stuff. What if that history, all those years of just existing, has given the ancient artefacts some sort of blocking ability?”

“Like an aura?” Alcorn said. It sounded feasible in the grand scheme of things.

“Precisely. Take the pieces out of those artefacts and you might as well just telephone the wizards and tell them where you are.”

“Not feeling better about that one,” Alcorn said, pointing at the S-shaped piece sitting upon Abigale’s bed. “So we need to find it somewhere…old to live, just for the time being.”

“It might be enough to scramble whatever signal it’s emitting,” Abigale said. “Kind of wish I hadn’t smashed the dinosaur egg now.”

“You weren’t to know,” Alcorn said.

For the first time, Abigale felt that she had him on her side, and that, however it ended, he would see it through with her.

“So we need to find something seriously old,” Abigale said. “Throw that monster off the scent, at least for today. Where the hell—”

“Remember what I said about flirting?” Alcorn interjected. The early stages of a smile curled the corner of his lips.

Abigale frowned, and then she realised what the detective was suggested. “Oh, you think…”

“She must have something,” he said, taking the S-shaped piece from the bed and moving toward the door. “Just lock the door behind me, okay? If I’m not back in thirty minutes…well, just wait a little longer.”

With that he was gone, leaving Abigale to wonder just what the hell he was going to do with the Parisian landlady to get his way.

25

“Ah, I knew you couldn’t resist,” Anasthasie Blaine said through the crack in the door. She glanced across his shoulder. “You’ve left that daughter of yours back in the room, have you?” She smiled like a cat that found itself faced with an impossible amount of cream.

Alcorn nodded. “Just a little drink,” he said. “It’s been a very long journey and…well, I’m sure you can understand my yearning for a proper conversation with a, shall we say, beautiful adult.” It was a little bit much, but he had an agenda, one that he could ill-afford to screw up. Once inside, he would ease off, lest he be seduced entirely by the landlady’s ample charms.

“Then you’d better come in,” she said, allowing the door to fully open. “It would be most pleasurable to share a drink with someone so charming.”

Alcorn stepped over the threshold and was immediately assaulted by an incongruous scent, one that could only be resultant of combining perfumes. It settled at the back of his throat like a bitter grape, and it was all he could do not to splutter and cough it back up. “Nice room you have here,” he said, scanning Anasthasie’s quarters. Everything was pink, or a shade thereof. It was like walking into a fairy princess’s dream.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Anasthasie said, easing the door shut. “Whiskey?”

Alcorn nodded. “Whiskey would be wonderful. He hadn’t taken a drink in some time, but for the first time in years, he believed he had good reason to imbibe. There was something about being pursued by violent giants that brought out the potential alcoholic in him.

“So, what’s your story?” Anasthasie asked as she sauntered suggestively across what was essentially a boudoir. Arriving at a large, wooden bureau, she began to prepare the drinks. A large—Too large, Alcorn thought—glass of whiskey for him, and something horribly opaque for her.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have one,” he lied. “Just sightseeing. You know? Taking in some countries while I’m still young enough to care about them.”

Anasthasie, sucking something or nothing from a perfectly manicured finger, sniggered. “You’re a very handsome man for your age,” she said, whatever that meant.

Alcorn took it as a compliment, even though he hadn’t been fishing for one. She carried their drinks across the room and handed Alcorn the tumbler containing what smelt like decent scotch.

“And you’re a very beautiful woman,” he said, clinking her glass with the edge of his own. “And I must say…congratulations on this place. It’s a remarkable feat to maintain a successful business in this day and age, something which you seem to be achieving with some aplomb.” He waved a hand through the air, encompassing Le Maison d’Anne in its entirety.

She settled upon the arm of the chair in which Alcorn presently sat and glanced around the room. “Yes, and it’s all mine. My husband, God rest his soul, was never much help when it came to running the business.”

Shrewd. Throw in a mention of the deceased husband. Anasthasie Blaine was no amateur when it came to seduction.

“Well, you should be very proud.” The smell of the whiskey was doing a good job of stifling the perfumed surroundings. He took a large gulp and was pleased to find that it all but killed the gross tang at the back of his throat.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “There are times when the company of a good man would be most appreciated, but as you can see, I’ll take it where I can.” She allowed a long, slender hand to fall upon Alcorn’s arm and began to make small circles upon his wrist with a fingernail long enough to puncture a man’s throat.

It took a few seconds for Alcorn to remember his purpose in the room. “Ah, yes, I’m mostly here for the museums,” he said, changing the subject and allowing his arm to slip away from Anasthasie’s grasp. “I’ve always been intrigued by artefacts, things that have survived the centuries only to end up behind glass for all to see.”

Somewhat disappointed at her gentleman caller’s sudden reserve, Anasthasie stood and ambled across to the centre of the room. “Yes, though I can’t be doing with all that nonsense, myself,” she said. “How such things can be worth so much money is beyond me.”

Alcorn, realising that he was losing her, said, “Oh, come now. You must have a few desirable objects yourself, a woman of your immense class.” Yes, that ought to do it. Just sit back and wa—

“Why thank you!” she squealed, fluttering eyelashes long enough to fan a warm sheikh. She guzzled her opaque drink as if it would somehow calm her.

Alcorn was all of a sudden worried that things were moving much too quickly.

Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she said, “I do have a few old pieces. Though they’ve seen better days, I’m afraid.”

Alcorn waved an indifferent hand through the air. “Ah, the best pieces are the ones that have been well-worn. I’ve always wondered what the Mona Lisa would look like now if it had simply hung in some old lady’s drawing room.” He had never thought such things.

“My great-great-great-grandmother handed down a few remarkable objects though you wouldn’t think it to look at them.” She placed her glass upon the escritoire and gestured to a door at the edge of the room. “If you’re in no rush to return to that daughter of yours, we could perhaps share a few more drinks, and I could show you my inheritance.”

She looked hopeful, and if Alcorn had not been in the middle of a very important mission, he might have felt sorry for misleading her.

“That would be wonderful,” he said, swallowing down the remains of his tumbler.

Anasthasie clapped her hands together excitedly and disappeared into the other room, where a series of clatters and curses ensued.

The things I do for my country, he thought.

*

Abigale glanced at her timepiece. Half an hour, he’d said, but surely that had already passed. She was on edge, pacing across the room, considering all the terrible things that might have happened to John. He was big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself, but that didn’t offer her much comfort. Anasthasie Blaine had all but devoured him with those massive eyes of hers, and though Abigale had never seen Alcorn as anything other than a very interesting enemy, she felt somewhat possessive of him.

How dare you steal my nemesis! How very dare you!

Wandering across to the window, Abigale glanced out over the city. Paris, in other circumstances, would have enchanted her. It was difficult to be seduced when she considered her reasons for being there. It was self-preservation of the highest order. She was simply there to avoid death. It was hard to try to enjoy a city with that hanging over her head.

Down below, the river flowed smoothly along. All the innocent people, completely oblivious to the existence of wizards and devil dogs. Abigale had been one of them, once, though perhaps slightly less innocent.

Since then, she had been tasked with something of great import, something that would either save the world or destroy it. She wanted to scream down at all the innocents, Hey, up here! I’m the one keeping you alive! You’re very welcome!

“Where are you, John?” she mumbled, turning away from the window. She had never had to rely on anyone, except for Octavius, but that was different. However, now that the rest of the errand included Alcorn, she found herself wondering how she’d ever believed it possible without him, he was up to lord-knows-what with some tricky vixen. Something just didn’t sit right in her stomach.

Collapsing onto the bed, she closed her eyes. Six hours and counting…

*

Alcorn examined the patina of the small wooden box Anasthasie Blaine had just handed to him. It was well worn as she’d previously informed him and had clearly been polished to within an inch of its life, but that did nothing to detract from its obvious beauty.

“They don’t make them like this anymore,” Anasthasie said, easing the lid back on its hinges. Inside, a series of cogs and gears sat on the left side, while a large brass barrel sat at the uppermost edge. An array of thin white tubes extended downward from the barrel. “I believe it is a segmented comb, something that changed in the early part of this century. Would you like to hear it?”

Alcorn nodded. Why the hell not.

Anasthasie wound the brass key upon the box’s side. “It’s capable of playing two tunes,” she said.

Alcorn could smell her breath, such was her close proximity, and he came to the conclusion that she had been drinking something similar to tar—or at least, that was his guess.

“I have no idea what the tunes are, so please don’t ask me to explain their conception, but they are quite infectious if you listen to them for too long.”

She handed the box to Alcorn and walked across the room to pour another drink.

The box began to tinkle, and then the music kicked in proper. It was a high-pitched tune, not what Alcorn would have referred to as infectious, but quite soothing, nevertheless. He watched as the barrel rolled over and over, the white lines beneath it crawling along with their little protrusions striking the right notes at precisely the right time.

“It’s a thing of beauty,” Alcorn said, and he wasn’t just humouring her, not on this occasion. “Something like this should take pride of place in one’s home.”

Anasthasie snorted. “While I do find it entrancing, it is nothing more than a dust collector, yet another object in need of cleaning. No, it’s far better placed in the suitcase beneath the bed. At least there, the dust forgets all about it.”

Alcorn listened to the music box as it slowed to a complete halt. With the flick of a single switch upon the box’s edge, the innards jolted suddenly. He turned the brass key and waited, and a few seconds later, the second tune began to sound.

“I know this one,” he said. “I believe it is Haydn, perhaps Symphony No. 8?” Though he wasn’t certain, he knew he wasn’t far off.

Anasthasie seemed impressed with her guest’s impeccable knowledge. “Not just a charming face,” she said, walking toward him and thrusting her hips out suggestively. “Why don’t I return that to its proper home and then…you and I waste no more time with these pointless frivolities.” She licked her lips and arched one eyebrow.

Alcorn almost erupted with laughter. “Yes, I see,” he said, handing her the music box.

As soon as it touched her fingers, the music ceased to play.

Was that an omen, perhaps?

She left the room and returned a moment later empty-handed. Her blouse was slightly lower than it had been a moment before, and Alcorn could see the gentle slopes of her breasts. He swallowed, but there was no saliva.

One thing he could say about Anasthasie Blaine was that she knew exactly what she wanted, and he’d bet, nine times out of ten, she got it.

She climbed onto Alcorn’s lap, hoisting her frock up so that it wasn’t in the way. “Kiss me,” she said, though there was more than a slur to her voice.

Alcorn knew he had to see past her appalling, tarry breath and just do it. He leaned in, pressed his lips tightly to hers. He’d heard all about how the French liked to kiss, and he was having none of it.

She groaned and moaned, and Alcorn felt rather terrible about the whole thing. It was during that kiss that thoughts of Abigale entered his head. God. He’d left her all alone in their room. If she was still there. How foolish! He’d trusted her not to run away, left her to her own devices, and there he was, kissing the landlady for the purposes of stealing something from her. Something that was still sentimental, despite living in a suitcase under a bed. It was madness.

After about a minute of passionate kissing, Anasthasie seemed to relax into it. Gone was the forcefulness of her initial attack, replaced by a more lethargic mauling. However, as if by a stroke of luck, Alcorn realised something.

The landlady was snoring.

Dear God, am I that bad? Alcorn thought, but then he remembered the amount of drink the woman had consumed, more than enough to euthanize a small animal, and clearly enough of a dose to knock out a fully-grown woman.

He pulled his lips away, carefully. He didn’t want her suddenly regenerated. She was wholly unconscious, her huge eyelashes trembled as she continued to snore her pretty little head off.

“Let’s put you down for the afternoon,” Alcorn whispered. She was a lot heavier than she looked.

*

There was a gentle rapping at the door. Abigale thought she was dreaming for a moment, but then it came again, marginally louder. She stumbled to her feet and walked across the room.

“Who is it?” she asked with a groggy voice as she wondered how she had fallen asleep and how long she had been out for.

“It’s the pope,” came the reply. “You wouldn’t happen to know the way to the Vatican, would you?”

Abigale turned the key in the lock and flung open the door. “Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been worried sick.”

Alcorn stepped into the room and watched as Abigale frantically worked the key. “Where do you think I’ve been?” he said. “The lion’s den. Purgatory. Anasthasie Blaine’s own private boudoir, and let me tell you, I didn’t enjoy one moment of it.”

Abigale leaned in, examining his face. “Then you simply traded make-up secrets?” she asked. “I didn’t have you down as a pink fellow.”

“Well, she took a lot of convincing,” Alcorn said, rubbing feverishly at his lips. He held out the small, wooden music box. “She won’t miss this for a few hours. We can always leave it in here when we check out.”

“Is it old?” After all, that was all that mattered. “It doesn’t look that old.”

“Old enough,” Alcorn said. He opened it up to reveal the small, S-shaped piece. “Let’s just hope it blocks our giant friend out long enough to get this done. God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining this.”

Smiling, Abigale said, “That was exactly how I felt a few days ago.”

“Yeah, but at least you’ve got a good reason to go through with it. If you don’t, that thing in your head is going to…” he trailed off as he saw Abigale’s smile falter. “Oh, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You’re right, though,” Abigale said. “I’m doing it to stay alive. And you’re doing it so that you get to be the one to throw me in gaol when we get back to London. Sounds like we’ve both got our reasons.” She moved across the room, stretching her legs, interlinking her fingers and yawning. She looked as if a few hours’ sleep wouldn’t do her any harm.

“Get some rest,” Alcorn told her. “We need to be ready to move tonight, and I want you at your best.” After chasing her for what seemed like forever, he knew all too well what her best entailed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, staring out at Paris—the city of love. “I don’t know any other way.”

26

Darkness settled over the city. Without the glow of the full moon reflecting upon the Seine, it would have been absolute pitch. A chill wind blew through the open square, and by the time Alcorn and Abigale arrived at the Louvre, they were both shivering.

The huge monolith that was the museum reached up into the Paris sky like a yawning giant. Alcorn had not expected such a magnificent structure and understood why it was no wonder people fell into hysterics when they recounted their visit. It was stunning, a truly remarkable building, and that was just the outside. Somehow, though, he knew there would be no time to stand back in admiration once they breached the doors.

Several young couples walked hand in hand along the plaza, occasionally stopping to kiss. She reached down and grabbed Alcorn by the hand.

Without facing her, he said, “What are you doing?” It was a surreptitious whisper from the corner of his mouth. He would have made a terrible ventriloquist.

“Fitting in,” Abigale said. “We need to get through the Passage Richelieu, do we not?”

Alcorn nodded. “And the only way to do that is by holding hands?” His tone was drenched with sarcasm.

“People are less likely to remember us if we look just like another love-struck couple.” Abigale gave his hand a playful squeeze. “Just go along with it. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

At the left side of the square, a tall archway led to a wide passage. On either side, windows displayed various objects, though nothing of real worth. Only an idiot would put the priceless stuff in the window display.

Still holding hands, Abigale led Alcorn deeper into the passageway, where they came upon a tall man wearing what must have been museum security uniform. He nodded in their direction.

Alcorn squeezed Abigale’s hand, as if to say, What now?

Abigale reached into the satchel with her free hand, and for a moment, Alcorn thought she was simply going to shoot the man with the hand cannon. Instead, she retrieved what looked like a folded paper, and smiled at the guard.

God, she is good…

“I wonder if you could help us,” she said, momentarily releasing Alcorn’s hand. “We’re a little lost.” She proceeded to unfold what turned out to be a map and thrust it toward the guard, who seemed suddenly overwhelmed by such a large object.

“Madame…” he said, but that was as far as he managed to get before Abigale pulled Big Daddy from its holster and pulled the trigger.

The map rustled as the bullet passed through it, and the guard grunted. Alcorn couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. “What are you doing?” he said, incredulous. Not content with simply stealing from the Louvre, of all places, Abigale Egars had just shot a man in cold blood.

Terrific!

“It’s okay,” Abigale said. “He’s just going to take a small nap. You might want to catch him before he hits the ground, though.” She stepped aside as the guard began to lose control of his legs.

“What…” Alcorn trailed off and grabbed onto the guard’s stumbling body.

They tottered back and forth for a few seconds, and then the man was wholly unconscious. Alcorn simply eased him back onto the pavement. Once he was safely down, Alcorn dragged him by the feet across to the edge of the passageway, where Abigale unfolded the map completely and draped it over the guard’s prone form.

“Was that entirely necessary?” Alcorn said, shooting Abigale a reproachful look.

“I’d much rather shoot him with my gun than you shoot him with yours,” Abigale said, re-holstering the pistol. “Plus, I had to improvise. He wasn’t supposed to be down here. No one was.”

Alcorn shook his head. “Well, we’re off to a great start with those plans of yours,” he said. “Can we just try to keep the violence to a minimum? I know I’m out of my jurisdiction, but I do know how much paperwork is going to be involved for the poor bastards following this up.”

“I’ll do my best.” Abigale winked at him. “By the way, I hope none of what we do here tonight is going to reflect on what happens to me back in London.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “none of this is even happening. And I don’t know an inquisitor in the world who would believe me, even if I submitted a thousand-page report.” He shrugged. “None of this will go on your record. If what’s happening is real, and The Guild is taking these things out of commission, then you’re doing the only thing you can do.”

Abigale tapped the side of her head. “And staying alive at the same time.”

Alcorn had almost forgotten about the device in Abigale’s head. Perhaps it was because of her stoical façade. She was extremely difficult to read, but he knew deep down she was affected by it. He knew he would be.

“Come on,” Abigale said. “This is getting us nowhere.” She reached into her satchel and came out with an odd-looking contraption.

“What’s that?” Alcorn asked. By then, he should have known better.

Abigale paced across the passageway to the large window. “This is our way in,” she said, pushing the device against the glass. She began to squeeze a small, black ball on the side of the thingamajig, and it hissed a little. Turning to Alcorn, leaving the thing hanging from the glass, she said, “How wide are you?”

“What?” It was the obvious response to a question he was seldom asked.

“Girth,” she said. “I need to know how big to make the hole.”

Alcorn frowned. “I don’t know. Can’t you just guess it by looking at me?”

With a flick of the head, Abigale said, “I suppose I’ll have to. You’re a pretty big fellow, so I’ll just set it to maximum and we’ll see what happens.”

“You do that.” Alcorn didn’t know whether to be impressed or offended. “Just hurry it up. We don’t want Sleepy Joe’s buddies coming ‘round the corner while we’ve got our pantaloons down, so to speak.”

“Hold your horses,” Abigale said, easing the blade of the glass cutter slowly round. It screeched, but not loud enough to be heard outside the passage.

After three minutes—Alcorn timed it on his pocket watch, when he wasn’t glancing nervously across his shoulder—Abigale lowered the glass through onto the window display and slid it carefully across. She turned to Alcorn and placed a finger across her lips as if to say, “Be quiet from here on.”

Alcorn nodded. What the hell am I doing?

They slipped in through the aperture, Abigale leading the way to Wanderlust as if she could smell the paint upon the canvas.

*

Mordecai Pick lit a cigar and poured a large glass of whiskey. Werner paced frantically back and forth across the office, the small box with its flickering green light clenched tightly in his hand. The girl was in Paris right, and they were so close to possessing the final three pieces, so very close to destroying them before they fell into the hands of a madwoman.

“Oh, sit down, will you,” Mordecai said, irritated. “You’re making me dizzy.”

Werner shook his head. “This isn’t right. Something’s not right.” He could feel it in the pit of his stomach and he knew, despite his relaxed demeanour, Mordecai could too.

Mordecai sniffed his whiskey before taking a large gulp. Through clenched teeth, he said, “We must wait. That’s all we can do.”

“And what happens when we get the triptych?” Werner said. “This place will be crawling with wizards, and you know as well as I do that we’re not equipped to deal with such an attack.” He plonked himself down in an armchair on the other side of the room. “They must be destroyed immediately.”

“That’s exactly what’s going to happen,” Mordecai said. “I’ve already fired up the combustion engine. Those pieces will be melted down into worthless nuggets before Blithe even knows they’re here.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” a voice said from the door, which had yet to be repaired.

Mordecai dropped his glass and spluttered a mouthful of smoke across the room. “Blithe, we were just—”

Raw energy slammed into him, sending him back into the wall. On the edge of the room, Werner tried to stand, and a moment later, he was hit with a blast twice as powerful as that which had incapacitated his superior.

The office smouldered as magic fizzed all around.

“Fools,” Blithe said, throwing her head back and inhaling the errant magic. And then everything reduced to a dot, whipped away across time and space, to where Blithe could better deal with it.

*

Thick, cream columns stretched up to the glass roof, through which the moonlight was visible and dimly illuminating the museum’s interior. It was almost impossible to remain quiet on the marbled tiles, but Abigale and Alcorn did their utmost to remain light-footed.

Huge paintings lined the walls,some as big as the walls themselves, but none of them were Wanderlust, the objet petit, which Abigale would notice as soon as her eyes fell upon it. Alcorn merely stared at everything in the hope that she would hurry up and pick one. For Christ’s sake….

Abigale tapped the detective upon the shoulder and pointed to an archway at the side of the room. Through there…

Nodding, Alcorn turned and slowly headed in the direction Abigale had gestured. His heart pounded inside him, despite being a man of the law, this was the single most exhilarating thing he’d done in his entire life. He was going against every moral he’d ever believed in and robbing a goddamned museum. The implications might very well be too much to ultimately live with, but he was in the moment, and very much enjoying the adrenalin surging through him. No wonder Abigale couldn’t help herself.

He paused at the large archway and turned to make sure that Abigale was close by. She was attaching something to her eye— that monovision eyeglass of hers. To Alcorn, she looked like something from the future, some robotic Cyclops from outer space. She shot him a coy smile, to which he simply shrugged.

“Stunning.” he whispered.

Abigale silenced him with a finger to the lips once again, and then removed what looked like a small bug from a wooden box. She held it out on the palm of her hand, and a moment later, the thing flickered into life.

Alcorn, who knew very well that nothing Abigale Egars did should ever surprise him, was genuinely shocked. He’d seen the scorpions back at Harriett Haversham’s, and they, in his mind, were magnificent automatons, a miracle of engineering. However, this fly was so small, so lifelike, and so creepy. It was something else entirely. He watched as it buzzed up into the air in front of his face, and then it was gone, soaring through the gloom ahead.

Inside the monovision eyeglass, Abigale could see everything. Splendid art flew by on either side, and as the fly reached the end of the corridor, it turned right and continued on to the next room.

Abigale dropped into a crouch, concealed herself in the shadows. Grabbing Alcorn’s hand, she urged him to do the same.

“What’s it doing?” Alcorn breathed. Abigale could just about see his face through the dark, and it was with a disbelieving glare that he now regarded her.

“Searching,” Abigale whispered. “Making sure Wanderlust is where it’s supposed to be.”

The detective nodded as if that was a perfectly acceptable answer. Of course, it’s searching. How very silly of me…

*

Abigale watched as the fly manoeuvred the great columns. No matter how close it came to the cream stanchions, it would never crash. Octavius was a perfectionist, not some fly-by-night contraptor with half a brain and a bucket of spare parts. There were plenty of those in London, and all around the world, but not any Tom, Dick, or Harry could create things such as this automaton fly. It was genius.

The device glided through the museum, taking in information quicker than any human being could ever dream of and relaying it directly back to Abigale. The green images were clear, though a little dark. It didn’t matter, for the next corner the fly traversed was the one leading on to exactly what they were looking for.

“There she is,” Abigale whispered.

Her eyeglass revealed to her the painting, that wondrous imagery by Frederic Laffitte. The towers stretching up to the sky, wrapping round one another as if in embrace. Even though the painting was in various shades of green, it was still beautiful. She could barely contain her excitement. She was going to see it, touch it, stand beside it…and then what? Destroy it?

No. There was no way she could do that. Wanderlust would not suffer the same fate as “Bansei” or the Chindesaurus egg, not if she could help it.

“Come on,” Abigale said, sliding out from the shadows. “The path is clear. No guards en route.”

“That, Alcorn whispered, is a minor miracle.” They would need more of them if they were to survive the night unscathed.

*

Octavius woke, and though he had no real idea how long he’d slept for, he knew the time had come to gather himself. His shoulder ached, and his stomach felt as if someone had jumped up and down repeatedly upon it, but they were minor inconveniences. He was more than capable of healing himself.

He slowly climbed from his chair, summoned energy from the four corners of the room, and took a deep breath. For a moment, everything was dark, and then there was the most penetrating of lights. Hues of orange and red surged around him, passed through him, through his body and mind, touching his soul, even. After several minutes, he opened his eyes and sighed. The room no longer consisted of incongruous angles and odd shadows; it was as if he’d been plucked up from his workshop and planted in another realm. He’d existed in darkness for far too long, using gas-lamps to see by, tinkering with toys and devices that he was capable of simply thinking into existence.

Magic was overrated, but by god it was useful when you needed it.

Octavius Knight knew that by the end of the night, his life, and that of his adopted daughter and friend, would rely upon it.

*

Alcorn stared through the gloom at the painting hanging upon the wall. It didn’t look like anything special, but he’d learned a lot about artefacts in the last few days, and had arrived at the conclusion that the less extraordinary something seemed, the more it was probably worth. To him, though, Wanderlust looked like every other madcap painting. Surely, the artist behind its creation had partaken in something highly illegal before picking up a brush and setting to work. How else could you explain such a peculiar design? No one of sane mind would conceive that painting he looked at.

“Help me,” Abigale said, reaching up and grabbing one side of the frame.

Alcorn grasped onto the other.

“Be careful.”

“I am being careful,” he whispered, as loudly as he possibly could. She might know a thing or two about thievery, but Abigale Egars was severely lacking when it came to people skills.

Carefully, they removed Wanderlust from the wall and set it face down on the marbled floor.

As Abigale had thought, the rear of the painting was covered over with a desiccated brown sheet of paper, pulled tight over the edges of the frame. It was a good thing because it meant that she didn’t have to devastate the painting. Wanderlust would live on. It would need a new frame and a good remounting, but as far as she was concerned, that was a small victory.

She pulled out her lock picks from the satchel and selected one. She jabbed it into the paper at the corner of the frame and began to peel it back—slowly, of course. There was no need to go in heavy. One slip, and she’d stab the canvas, and that just wouldn’t do at all.

Once she’d cut enough of the paper away, she tore at the edges using her fingers. Carefully peeling it away from the frame, convinced they must have used some sort of super-sap to stick it down. She cleared enough space in which to slip her whole hand.

“Where is it?” Alcorn whispered, suddenly wishing they were anywhere else but there.

“Tip it from that end,” Abigale said, retracting her hand.

She lifted her side of the frame, and Alcorn matched her move-for-move. Something rattled from within, and when they lowered Wanderlust to the ground, sitting there at the bottom of the frame was a small T-shaped nugget.

“I don’t believe it,” Alcorn said, trying to keep his voice low. He watched as Abigale slowly picked the piece up from the golden frame. “That’s it. The final piece.” If he sounded relieved, it was because he was. Now all they had to do was get out of there.

Just then, something howled. Alcorn ran through a list of things that howled in his terrified mind, but he knew very well what it was.

“We need to go,” Abigale said, lunging to her feet. “Now.”

Then, all hell broke loose, not for the first time that week.

*

The guards were the first to arrive in the room. Three of them, armed with pistols and gas-lamps. None of them looked particularly comfortable as they trained their weapons on the girl and her accomplice in the centre of the room. Abigale considered that it was probably the first time they’d ever come across anyone stupid enough to try and steal from the Louvre. If only they knew what would happen next, they might very well have turned the guns on themselves.

In strolled the giant, as calm as you like, his armoured wolf snarling beside him and sniffing at the air as if it could smell the fear in the room. Most of that fear belonged to the guards, who had underestimated the situation and had just then realised that there was no way out of it. However, Abigale felt her stomach lurch as the big fellow made his entrance, suggesting that she, too, was a little concerned about Gulliver’s sudden arrival.

One of the guards spun and was about to level his gun at the big man when the wolf leapt into the air. Screaming, the guard stumbled backwards, slamming against one of the huge pillars holding the ceiling up. The two remaining guards turned on the big man, whose chainsword roared to life in response.

“Go!” Abigale screamed.

Alcorn seemed to have rooted himself to the spot. He couldn’t take his eyes off the madness unfolding. He began to move when Abigale’s command finally sank in.

By then it was too late.

The armoured wolf had torn through the first guard’s throat, leaving the poor bastard gurgling and choking as the life drained from him. The wolf loped across the room andsat directly in front of the door through which Alcorn and Abigale were about to make their exit.

Not anymore.

They could only watch as the giant cut through the remaining guards with his infernal sword. Limbs flew left and right, and guttural screams echoed though the hall. Abigale couldn’t watch.

She pulled Big Daddy from its holster and aimed it toward the giant, who was too busy bodily throwing the guards around to notice. Alcorn fumbled for his Derringer, remembering that Abigale’s weapon was intended for snooze-time only. They needed to put the maniac down for good, not allow him to have a little rest.

Alcorn was on the verge of pulling the trigger when a body flew toward him. The guard impacted with such force that Alcorn’s arm flew back. The Derringer went off, but the bullet shot straight upwards and embedded itself in the intricate painting on the ceiling. Alcorn landed on his back with the guard on top of him, and the roar of the chainsword grew louder. Things had become very bad, indeed.

Abigale dodged left and right, firing Big Daddy at the giant, to no avail. The rounds simply thumped into his armour. One of them peeled off his shoulder with a high-pitched ching! She fired what remained in the pistol and then took a few steps back.

The giant grunted, and his brass-wolf howled. On the ground, Detective John Wesley Alcorn wrestled with the dead guard, and in her hand, the T-shaped piece thrummed as if it was alive.

“You want this?” Abigale said. She was so breathless it was almost incoherent, but the expression on the giant’s face suggested he understood. “It’s no good to you, not without the final piece.” She grinned. “You’ll never find it, not if we’re dead.”

The giant took a step toward Alcorn and pulled the dead guard from him, tossing it against the wall as if it weighed nothing more than a wicker basket. He pulled Alcorn to his feet and grabbed him round the throat. He snatched the Derringer from Alcorn’s hand and snapped it with one giant fist. Then he lifted Alcorn from the ground, and reached into his frock coat with his free hand. He came out with something.

“Oh, you didn’t!” Abigale said, realising she was staring at the small music box they’d managed to acquire from Madame Blaine.

The giant dropped Alcorn, who fell into an untidy pile on the marbled floor, rubbing at his throat. “I didn’t think…we’d have any…trouble,” he said, his voice coarse and broken.

The giant flipped open the lid of the music box and removed the golden S. He grunted, clearly pleased with himself.

“Well, we’re going to have trouble now,” Abigale said. Oh God! He’s going to take the two pieces, which leaves the final piece, still tucked away in Octavius’s safe. If they get their hands on that…

The giant tossed the Configuration piece toward his armoured wolf, which caught it mid-air between slavering jaws. Then he turned to Abigale, a smile creeping onto his face. She’d seen things that week which had terrified her—a reanimated dinosaur, zombies, dead people—but the giant’s face in that moment was by far the worst. He was staring into her soul. At least, that’s what it felt like. When he took a long stride toward her, it was all she could do to not scream.

Alcorn scrambled to his feet. “Don’t you touch her. You son-of-a-bitch, you don’t get to hurt her…”

The giant growled and was about to throw out a huge hand that would have destroyed Alcorn, when something very odd happened.

The room filled with crimson light. Everything blurred for a moment, and when it returned, it was much more vivid. The giant seemed to know what was happening, for he straightened up and closed his eyes, as if in prayer. The temperature in the room seemed to drop about twenty degrees, and Abigale’s very bones began to judder. Then there was absolute darkness, and Abigale thought, just for a moment, that she was already dead and on her way to the afterlife, whatever that might be.

However, then she was falling, and Alcorn was beside her, his face contorted into a wild grimace. The ground approached fast, and Abigale screamed just before they hit…

27

…a solid concrete floor with such force that it elicited a whimper from Abigale and a grunt from Alcorn. Although it seemed as if they had been falling for minutes, rather than seconds, Abigale knew that magic must have been involved. Otherwise, they would have surely splattered upon the ground, instead of dropping from a few feet. Still, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

Wherever it was they had been so unceremoniously dumped, it was dark. There was a faint tang in the air as if something was smouldering, and yet the ground beneath was incredibly cold, almost frozen.

Abigale pushed herself onto trembling knees and fumbled around in the blackness. She knew Alcorn was there somewhere because she could hear his laboured breaths. “John?” she said.

A grunt, and then, “That was no fun.”

He was okay. Their situation didn’t warrant witticisms, and yet Alcorn had managed to find one. He was beside her, and as she ran her hand through the air, she brushed against his arm. “You hurt?” she said, patting him like a prize dachshund.

“Just my pride,” he said. “I’ll live.”

“Where are we?” Abigale said, not liking the trepidation in her voice one bit.

“In the dark. I don’t think we’re in Paris anymore.”

Abigale knew he was right. Although their surroundings were concealed, her body fizzed with a sensation she hadn’t felt for days.

London. They were back in the city. They were home, and without the aid of a great, hulking skyship. It just didn’t make sense.

There was a moment of silence as they both tried to get their bearings. Myriad thoughts ran through Abigale’s head, none of them particularly comforting. Were they dead? Had they been shuffled loose of their mortal coil? That might explain the cold, hard environ. It was not the heaven Abigale had been taught about, but then life was filled with disappointment. Was it so difficult to believe that the afterlife continued the trend? Then again, how had they died? The big guy hadn’t killed them. she would have remembered something like that—and his wolf had been across the room, sitting, chomping down on the Configuration piece.

They couldn’t be dead.

Imprisoned? That made more sense, and Abigale was about to reveal her thoughts to Alcorn when the room was suddenly filled with intense light. She clamped her eyes shut, but the brilliance still found a way in. Through the thin skin of her eyelids, she saw movement and shadows, and she knew things were about to go from bad to worse.

“So glad you could join us,” a woman said. It was a cold, punitive voice. There was no gladness there at all—just pure malevolence. “I was starting to get a little worried.”

Abigale managed to force her eyes open, and after a few moments, all became clear. Too clear.

Alcorn stood next to her, blinking and rubbing at his head. His nose was bleeding, and two columns of crimson trailed down to his agape mouth. He shot her a glance that seemed to acknowledge the shit they were in.

Tied to chairs in the middle of what Abigale could see was a cavernous chamber, two men struggled against their bonds. She could only see the face of the one on the left—Mordecai Pick—but she didn’t have to be a genius to figure out who the other man was.

Werner’s head shot left and right as he tried to loosen the material strapped around his jaw. He mumbled and groaned, but his struggles proved fruitless.

The woman gazed intently at Abigale. One side of her face was concealed by a black veil, but Abigale could see that she was attractive. Her long, black hair danced around on smooth, exposed shoulders as if independent of her.

Smiling, the woman said, “You’re probably a little confused right now.” She took a step toward Alcorn, who staggered back to maintain safe distance. If she was offended, she didn’t show it. “I’m sure a bright girl like you can put the pieces together.”

Abigale shook her head. “I’m not as bright as I look, and it’s been a very long week.”

The woman grinned. “Hasn’t it? Well, my name is Blithe. I’m sure your little friend over there in the chair,” she gestured to the struggling form of Mordecai Pick, has told you all about me.”

Abigale shrugged. Was it wise to piss off a sorceress? “No. Are you important? I’d have thought he would have mentioned you if you were anything to worry about.”

The woman’s grin faltered for a moment. “Yes, well, The Guild has been underestimating me for many years. It’s only now, with their leader in the palm of my hand, that they’re starting to take me very seriously.”

Something moved in the shadows behind the sorceress. Abigale tried not to flinch as the armoured wolf loped toward her, followed closely by its master, the giant.

“You gave my man quite the run-around,” Blithe sneered. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse him. He’s not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Of course, if I’d come for you myself, this would have all been over by now. Pity, I didn’t know you’d left the country until it was too late.”

“Real pity,” Abigale said. “You would have really liked Paris. It’s filled with insufferable bores just like you. You would have made friends there quite easily, one would imagine.” Whether she was running on pure adrenalin or not, Abigale didn’t know. She knew she would have to rein it in a little, though, or risk being reduced to cinders where she stood.

“I like you,” Blithe said, giving Abigale a sideways glance. “You’ve got some zest. Hard to come by in this day and age. It’s such a pity that you find yourself in this situation and that you were deceived into retrieving the missing triptych by a couple of cunning runts, pardon my French.” She smiled and turned her attention on Alcorn. “And you…you were just doing your job. I feel a little guilty for not allowing you to arrest this poor girl and summonsing her to court, where she would, most likely, pay for her countless crimes. Not that the justice system, or anything else for that matter, will survive for much longer.”

Alcorn wiped the blood from his mouth and spat on the floor a few feet from Blithe’s black leather boot. “Well, at least I got to see the sights, witch,” he said. “While you’ve been hiding down here in the dark.”

Blithe sighed. “It was I who brought you back from your little vacation. You should be very careful how you address me. I can make this extremely unpleasant for you, should I wish.”

“Just being here, looking at you is unpleasant enough.” Alcorn straightened and seemed to gain several inches. “Whatever you’ve got planned, I suggest getting a move on. Being bored to death is not how I wish to go.”

“All in good time,” Blithe said. “And I assure you, it will be far from boring.” She turned to Abigale and took a step toward her. “You have something for me?”

The final piece. She’d forgotten all about it, and yet it was still in her hand. She could feel its cold steel against her sweating palm. “You’re really going to hate me,” she said. “But I think I dropped it on the way down here. If you’d like to send your giant up to look for…”

Suddenly, the thing in her hand began to heat up, and then it was scorching, searing her flesh. She smelt it before she felt it. She dropped the piece, and it didn’t even make it to the ground. It flew toward Blithe’s open hand, and as soon as it landed in the sorceress’s palm, she threw her head back and began to laugh. Abigale felt physically sick. It was all she could do to stay on her feet.

“Well, that was easy, wasn’t it?” Blithe said, composing herself once again. “Dorian? The second piece?”

Dorian? Really?

The giant crouched and grunted a command toward his wolf, who allowed the small chunk of Configuration to fall from its mouth. He picked it up and carried it across the room to the sorceress, who thanked him with the briefest of kisses.

“So you have two,” Abigale said. “That makes eleven altogether. You might as well just have one, for all the good they are to you.”

Blithe reached into her cleavage, and what she came out with was enough to send Abigale spiralling toward insanity. The L-shaped piece, which should have been tucked away in Octavius’s safe. The implications of what that meant didn’t sink in straight away. All she could think about was Octavius, and what the bitch had done to him.

“If you’ve hurt him, I’ll—”

“Will you?” Blithe interrupted. “Little girl, I don’t think there’s a damn thing you can do to stop me. The Guild should have kept their noses out of my business. It would have taken us a few years to find these pieces. Thanks to them and your light-fingered self, I’m ahead of schedule. Thank you.” She curtseyed before moving across to a table, upon which a small tower had been constructed.

The Configuration. Abigale could see where the nine pieces interconnected to make a solid pillar. At the top, it all became a little disjointed, with turrets jutting upwards in three places. The whole room began to vibrate as Blithe slotted in the remaining pieces.

“You don’t have to do this,” Abigale said, clutching at straws. “This isn’t right, and you know it.”

“Nothing is right,” Blithe said, with more than a modicum of indifference. “But we’ll soon change all that.” She removed one piece and placed it somewhere else, and it clicked into place. The sorceress sighed as if in the throes of orgasm, and the newly arranged tower lit up. A swirling vortex appeared directly above it. In the corner, the armoured wolf began to howl as Dorian the Giant stroked its head in an attempt to pacify it.

Yes, Abigale thought, because wolves often need assuring…

Alcorn suddenly rushed across the room, aiming for the table and the golden tower sitting upon it. He got halfway before Blithe threw a ball of green energy toward him, knocking him out of the air like a swatted fly. He landed with a thump on the ice-cold concrete. He rolled over onto his back and simply lay watching as the dark maelstrom surged above the Configuration. He was powerless to stop it.

Blithe closed her eyes, held her hands out, and waited for the power to flow into her. For centuries, wizards had sought the Configuration in its entirety, and where they had failed, she had succeeded.

Abigale tried to move forwards, but she was paralysed, unable to shift her legs even a little. The energy coming out of that thing was keeping her away, keeping them all away. Except for Blithe. She was nearest to it, and about to swallow its power down in one fateful gulp.

This was it. She’d done everything in her power to prevent this from happening, and there they were, fighting a losing battle with an all-powerful sorceress. Life had a tendency to just kick her when she was down.

Just then, something strange happened. The murky whirlpool above the Configuration closed up, and an intense white light surrounded the tower. Blithe must have sensed something had changed as her eyes shot open. She looked wild and very dangerous. Not to mention, extremely disappointed, as if she’d expected gunpowder and got a cheap firecracker instead.

While Blithe tried to figure out what had gone so very wrong, Abigale focused her attention on the man at the edge of the room. He hadn’t been there a moment before, and yet, he came forward, and Abigale’s heart heaved in her chest.

Octavius.

“What have you done!” Blithe screeched toward the tinkerer, who simply waved her anger away with a long and rheumy hand.

“It would seem, I arrived just in time,” Octavius said.

There was something different about him, something odd. Abigale had never seen such confidence in her tinkerer before. He’d always been cocksure of himself, but not arrogant. Now, though, he dripped with it. Abigale wanted to warn him. Did he even know what he was getting involved with? This wasn’t a fight between a couple of angry humans. It was wizards and necromancers—and wolves!

“Octavius, look out!” Abigale screamed.

The wolf was almost upon him when it suddenly froze in thin air. Just froze solid, as if it had come into contact with some unseen force. Octavius winked at his prodigy.

“What the…”

“You fool! You have no idea what you’ve done! How?” Blithe was so shrill that it was almost impossible to discern her words. Despite her anger, she seemed to be keeping her distance as if she knew something that everyone else didn’t.

“Oh, come now,” Octavius said, as confident as you like. “You know how? The power will flow into the most senior wizard present, which you, I’m afraid, are not. It’s simple, really.”

Blithe’s mouth opened and shut, and yet nothing came out.

“Did you say wizard?” Abigale said. “As in magic, Merlin, long white beards and parlour tricks?”

“I’m a little rusty,” Octavius said. “But it seemed like a good time to dust off the old robes.”

The giant, Dorian, took a step toward Octavius, but quickly joined his pet wolf in temporary stasis, his face frozen in a grotesque grimace.

To Blithe, Octavius said, “I have no idea what I’m going to do with these new ornaments of mine.” He gestured to the wolf, and then Dorian. “But I’ll make you a deal. You get out of London tonight, take them with you and never return, and I’ll forget any of this ever happened.”

“You bastard, I’ll k…”

She trailed off as Octavius threw out a hand, lifting her from her feet. She grasped at her throat as if all the air in the chamber had suddenly vanished. Her legs kicked frantically beneath her.

“Take it or leave it,” Octavius said. “There will be no negotiations.” He lowered his hand and Blithe dropped to the concrete, where her legs gave way, and she crumbled into an untidy heap, whimpering.

Alcorn stood. “You didn’t tell me your grandfather was a wizard,” he said to Abigale.

“He’s not my grandfather,” Abigale said. “He’s more like my father, and I didn’t know.” To Octavius, she added, “It would have been nice to know.”

He simply shrugged as if to say, “We’ll talk about this later.”

From her place on the ground, Blithe whispered, “Deal, wizard.”

It was one of the most unwilling acceptances Abigale had ever heard. Of course, the sorceress had come so close to so much power, only to have it snatched from her grasp at the last moment. No wonder she was maddened.

“Let us leave. You will hear no more of us.”

Octavius nodded. “Then leave. I will know if you ever return, and I will find you. Do I need to embellish?” He ran a hand through his beard while he waited for a reply.

“No,” Blithe said.

“Then let me help,” Octavius said, and before the sorceress could object, the most powerful wizard in the room, and now the world, flicked out a hand.

The sorceress, Dorian the Giant, and the armoured wolf vanished into thin air, leaving no evidence that they’d ever been there to begin with. After a few moments of absolute silence, one of them managed to speak, and it wasn’t Abigale.

“Okay, so that was weird,” Detective John Wesley Alcorn said, taking a cautious step forwards. “Can anyone explain? Anybody?”

Abigale did something that she’d never done before, and would never do again as long as she should live. She fainted, and hoped that when she came to, something would make sense.

28

Abigale didn’t know who to be angrier with, but when all was said and done, everything had turned out fine, so she couldn’t truly be angry at any of them.

Werner had removed the device as promised—nothing more than a series of cogs attached to an empty syringe. Yes, there had been a failsafe, as Octavius had warned, but tampering with it would have done nothing to harm her. Essentially, The Guild had planted a dud in her head and told her it was dangerous, and she’d done what any sensible girl in her position would have done and believed them.

She’d almost died on so many different occasions that week, and yet the real death sentence hanging over her had never existed in the first instance. At first, she was livid.—Who wouldn’t be? However, she realised that The Guild had never intended to cause her harm, and certainly not enough to kill her. They’d simply needed her to accept the job. Had it not been for that device, spurring her on, keeping her focused, would she have agreed to retrieve the Configuration pieces? Of course not, and then things would have been much, much worse. Perhaps not right away, but in the very near future.

Mordecai had apologised profusely, as well he should, but there was something in his manner which suggested he wasn’t entirely satisfied with the outcome. Yes, Blithe had been banished. Yes, the Configuration had now been melted down into pieces that would never fit back together. Yet, its power, or the majority of it, had trickled into Octavius. Should the wizard ever choose to go rogue, The Guild would be powerless to do anything about it. In which case, Abigale had told Mordecai he’d do well not to piss off Octavius. The leader of The Guild had failed to find anything funny in her words but bade her good luck in gaol all the same.

It was a conclusion that Abigale could live with.

*

There was a knock and the door rattled in its frame. Octavius removed his machinist goggles and placed them down on the desk, where Mouse slept like a newborn baby. The cat had settled in just fine. Making his way across the room, the tinkerer stretched and yawned. He hadn’t been sleeping well, not since what had happened. He had too much pent-up energy, and nowhere to point it. Even if he knew what to do with all that magic, he’d fight not to use it. It had caused him nothing but pain, and he was a much better tinkerer than he ever was a wizard. There was no going back for him, no matter how hard it called to him.

He reached the door and turned the key. Slowly, he pulled it open to find John Wesley Alcorn, the finest detective in London, standing there.

“You’re here for Abigale?” Octavius nodded as he spoke because he already knew the answer.

“She’s expecting me,” Alcorn said, trying to forget, just for a moment, that he was conversing with an extremely powerful wizard.

Abigale appeared from the room at the back of the workshop. It was the first time Octavius had seen her wearing anything other than green or brown, and it came as quite a shock. She looked beautiful. Very purple, but beautiful.

She walked toward Alcorn, a smile creeping onto her face.

He reached across the threshold and handed her the flowers he’d been nursing. “You look stunning,” he said.

“Thanks. Purple,” she said. “I told you, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he replied. “Come on. I’ve reserved a table for eight, and I know how much you hate being late.” He winked at Octavius, who shot him a surreptitious smile.

“Have fun,” Octavius said. “And John?”

Abigale stepped out into the night, arm already linked through Alcorn’s.

John turned back to the tinkerer. “Hm?”

“Take care of her,” Octavius said.

Alcorn nodded. He didn’t need to speak, to explain that she meant the world to him and that he would never allow anything bad to happen to her. Take care of her? The tinkerer-cum-wizard knew as well as he did that with Abigale, it was the other way round.

Table of Contents

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