The Custodian of Marvels (32 page)

“His life must be worth more to them than that,” said Yan.

“They can’t bargain,” said Chronis.

“They’ll soon bargain if I leave them your ears to find!”

There was fear in the agent’s eyes. Enough fear for me to know he spoke the truth.

“It’s the law,” he said. “An agent’s life can’t be traded. They can only swap me for her because it’s not letting her go. There’s no way for you to get out.”

I looked to where Lara sat, bent forwards. Fabulo was rubbing her back and her breathing had slowed. “Let’s take the trade,” I said.

“Why?” asked Yan. “If there’s no way out?”

“We’ve got a bunch of keys,” I said. “While I’m holding them up negotiating, you can be pressing on ahead. In this place, who knows what you might find?”

Jeremiah let me through. “Good luck,” he said, then wedged the door ajar. Feeling intensely alone, I began to retrace my way along the passage.

All I’d said to the others had been true. By negotiating, I could slow our pursuers. They might try to grab me. That was a risk. But if they really believed we had no way out, there was nothing for them to lose in trading honourably. They would surely want to save the life of Agent Chronis.

All the minutes I occupied talking to them would be time my comrades could use. If we could find our way to the very end of the tunnels, we’d be in a stronger position. It was against the law for them to let us free in exchange for one of their own. The same might not be true to save the Custodian.

I had reached the door barring the passage ahead. The speaking grille was silent. I pressed the button.

“Attention, Agent Farthing. This is Elizabeth Barnabus. Please respond. We want to trade.”

I could feel my heart beating faster as I waited. Though my logic was faultless, that alone would not have been reason enough for me to take the risk.

The grille crackled.

“This is Agent Farthing. What do you propose?”

“You’ll have cut through to the next section soon enough. I want you to step through alone. I’ll do the same and we can parley.”

I turned the torsion bar in the lock, as Jeremiah had showed me and heard it click open. The noise of the cutting machine was suddenly louder as I stepped through. He’d also given me a sliver of wood, which I used to wedge the door.

“Don’t let it shut with you on the wrong side,” he’d said.

I advanced down the passage towards the noise. I could see sparks fountaining from the door ahead. Threads of smoke drifted close to the ceiling and there was an acrid smell in the air. With one final shriek, the machine pulled back. The engine noise subsided. Then there was a sharp impact and a rectangle of metal fell to the floor.

I stopped, feeling the queasiness of fear and excitement.

The door swung half open and John Farthing stepped through. There were other faces crowding behind him, but he turned and pushed the door closed again, shutting them out. Then he scooped up the rectangle of cut metal and fitted it back in the hole.

I’d intended to wait for him so we could meet halfway. But, as he closed the distance and I began to see the pain in his expression, my feet began to carry me forwards, one step after another. It was he that started running first. We threw ourselves into each other’s arms.

He held me.

For a moment, I knew nothing but the touch of his cheek against mine, the heat of him and the scent of his skin. I closed my eyes and pressed myself more firmly against his body.

“Elizabeth.” My name burst from his mouth.

“John,” I whispered back.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “It should never have been like this.”

I don’t know how long we stood entwined. It may have been only seconds. The effort of will it took for me to pull away was like nothing I’d experienced before. We held each other at arm’s length. His eyes, his beautiful eyes, locked with mine. I stepped back.

“Remember,” I said. “Whatever happens next, what we just felt was real.”

He nodded, then looked down to the ground between us and would no more meet my eyes.

“It’s time to make the bargain,” I said, though speaking the words felt like driving nails into my own flesh.

“We have your driver,” he said. “You have Agent Chronis. Do you still wish to exchange?”

“Yes.”

“How do you wish to do it?”

“Can you control your men?”

“I can.”

“Then it’ll work. We each go back to our own side. You’ll send your prisoner walking towards us. When she passes the halfway point, we’ll send ours. But if he tries to grab her or if any of your men do anything stupid, then things will turn out bad. Do you understand?

“I do.”

“And do you agree?”

“I do. And I…” His words faltered. He was breathing heavily.

“What?”

“I must ask once more for you and your collaborators to put down your weapons and surrender. If you fail to do so, I’ll be obliged… be obliged to authorise lethal force.”

“I thought you’d done that already,” I said, then turned and walked away, though my legs and heart seemed made of lead.

CHAPTER 29

12.40am

The novice learns through ear, eye and mind. But to be a master is to weave your craft into muscle, sinew and bone.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

Yan held his throwing knives at the ready as we watched the exchange. Only when Agent Chronis had passed Ellie did he slip them back into their pockets. We pulled her through the gap and slammed the door closed.

“You’re safe now,” I said.

But Ellie was weeping and wouldn’t be consoled.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “So sorry.”

We ran back along the passage then down yet another flight of spiral stairs, passing through three more doors on the way. Only one of them had been damaged by the light machine. It seemed that Chronis’s keys had speeded our progress. Each door had been wedged by Jeremiah. Once we pushed them closed behind us, he turned the torsion bar and they were locked.

When the others saw us, Lara ran and gathered her friend in her arms.

“I didn’t mean to be caught,” Ellie sobbed.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’ve ruined everything!”

“It’s the other way round. We were seen first. You were caught because of us.”

As they held each other, Fabulo beckoned me towards one of the side doors. “You’d better see this,” he said.

I followed him through to another vast storeroom. Ceiling lights illuminated rack upon rack of shelves, receding into the distance. It was similar to the first storeroom, but the shelves were more closely packed one above the other. And where those shelves bore wooden crates, these were stacked with muskets.

The sheer scale of what I was seeing didn’t hit me all at once. I began to walk along the edge of the room, counting the racks. After ten paces, I gave up.

“Close your mouth or you’ll swallow a fly,” said Fabulo, his voice a whisper.

“How many?” I whispered back. Somehow it felt wrong to let my voice disturb the air.

“Don’t know. Two hundred thousand? Three?”

“It feels like… a graveyard.”

“You got that too?”

He stepped across to the nearest rack and hefted one of the guns from its place. Dust drifted as he dropped it into my hands. “Your old man was a bullet-catcher,” he said. “What do you make of that?”

I rubbed my sleeve across the stock. It came away smeared black. Beneath the dust, the wood had a dull shine. The metal too. I could see no corrosion. “It was oiled before they stored it here,” I said. “I’d say it’s old. But the design’s strange to me.”

Fabulo turned it over in my hands. “What’s that?” he asked, tapping the barrel where it met the stock. A small catch projected from the gun. I pushed it and a section of metal sprung out, like a trapdoor, exposing a slot beneath.

“It’s a barrel breech,” I said, remembering what Professor Ferdinand had said. The phrase occurred sixteen times in my copy of
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
. But he’d found it nowhere else, not in any book in any library.

“What’s a barrel breech?” asked Fabulo.

“It’s something the Patent Office have written out of history.”

“I mean, what does it do?”

“This gun wouldn’t be loaded through the muzzle,” I said. “It’s not like an ordinary musket. The bullet and charge must be slotted in here. Then the cover clicks back over it and they can fire.”

“It can’t fire,” he said. “There’s no flint in the hammer. And no pan for the powder.”

The extraordinary scale of the room was sinking in. “All these guns – so many. A million, I’d say. They were made to fire. No matter that we haven’t seen how. But what did they fire? Where are the bullets to go with them?”

“Ah,” he said. “That I can show you.”

I took the strange gun with me, resting it across my arms, and followed him out of the room. He opened the door on the opposite side of the passage and led me through. This time I was expecting the scale of what I would see, but it still brought me up short.

Fabulo hefted down a small box from the nearest shelf. It clinked as he laid it in front of me. Crouching, I pulled back the lid and found a layer of metal cartridges resting on hessian. A ball of lead projected from each. Below the fabric were more layers. If the other room held a million guns, this one must hold a hundred million bullets.

I flipped open the trapdoor on the gun and slotted one of the cartridges in place. The fit was perfect. The breech snapped closed with a click.

“It can’t work without a flint,” said Fabulo again.

I stood, pulled back the strange hammer, took aim down the length of the room and braced myself. Fabulo stuck fingers in his ears. The recoil when it fired felt like being punched in the shoulder.

Yan and Tinker came running.

Fabulo batted smoke from before his face. “Why load a gun through a barrel breech?” he asked.

I sprung the trapdoor and the spent cartridge flew out. Then I stooped to take a fresh one from the box and had it quickly slotted into place. The hammer clicked back and I fired again.

This time Fabulo had no time to protect his ears. He was not best pleased. “Why did you do that?”

“How long did it take me?”

“I didn’t time you!”

“Ten seconds? Less? It takes me three times that to load my pistol through the muzzle. And this you could load lying flat. Can you think what it would mean in a battle? A hundred men dug in might hold back an advance of ten thousand!”

“What did you mean, the Patent Office have written it out of history?” Fabulo asked, as if the importance of my words had only just hit him.

“They’ve broken their own law,” I said.

Fabulo slapped a hand on his own forehead. “You mean all this…”

“It’s part of a secret big enough to bring them down.”

“Then they’ll kill us here tonight for sure! They won’t risk us going to trial. Not after we’ve seen this.”

I was about to answer, when Lara rushed in, leading Ellie by the hand. “Jeremiah sent us,” she gasped. “You need to come.”

Yan took the gun from me. As we left, I saw him lifting two more boxes of cartridges from the shelf.

Our locksmith had not been idle. We passed through three more wedged doors before reaching him. He was sitting on the ground facing our approach, his back leaning against what seemed to be a huge mirror blocking off the passage. At the centre of it, a Greek letter had been etched.

ɸ

I’d once seen the same design tattooed on John Farthing’s skin.

“This is the end,” said Jeremiah.

“The end of what?”

“The end of us. I can’t get you through.”

Yan was bringing up the rear, labouring under a load of cartridge boxes and guns. He knelt to lay them down. “Can the boy shoot?” he asked me.

“Course I can shoot,” chimed in Tinker.

“No one’s going to shoot,” I said.

“You keep thinking that. I’m going back for more.”

He loped off the way we’d come.

“This can’t be the end,” said Fabulo. “We haven’t found the Custodian.”

“We’ve found him,” said Jeremiah, pointing to the stone above the mirror. “We just can’t get to him.”

I looked up and saw the stone was a lintel. Where Roman numerals might have been carved was the inscription:
Hall of the Custodian
.

Only then did I understand the nature of the mirrored surface behind him. “It’s a door?”

“We tried your machine,” said Lara. “The light just bounced off. It burned a hole in the roof.”

Jeremiah’s head dropped. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his eyes.

“If you can’t help open it, get out of the way,” growled Fabulo. “We’ll blast through if we have to.”

Jeremiah didn’t get up, but hauled himself over the stones until his back was propped against the side wall.

Fabulo hammered his fist against the door and shouted, “You can’t hide in there forever!”

Each impact made the dullest of thuds.

There was a small rectangle in the mirror. I’d not noticed it before. It had been hidden behind Jeremiah’s head. I tapped my knuckle against it. Hearing the hollowness, I began picking at the edge with my fingernails.

“You have to push,” said the locksmith.

I did, and was rewarded with a crisp click. When I pulled away, a hatch swung out, revealing a cavity behind. I had to lower my head to see inside. At the end, perhaps a foot deep, was a small keyhole.

When I made to reach inside, Jeremiah shouted, “No!”

“What is it?”

“It’s a guillotine lock. I’ve seen schematics, but never before the real thing.”

“It has a keyhole. You must be able to pick it.”

“I’d have to reach inside. Both hands.
These
hands.”

He held them up. They were twice the size of mine. He’d barely have room to get them in, let alone manipulate the picks.

“The lock’s fitted with a hair trigger. There are blades inside. They cut in from all directions. And with great force.”

“Open up!” shouted Fabulo, heaving his shoulder against the door. It didn’t even vibrate. “We’ll blast you out!” He turned to Lara. “Run back to Yan. The cartridges are full of black powder. If we empty enough of them… we could fill one of the boxes, pack it tight…”