The Perilous Journey (35 page)

Reynie turned and ran as fast as he could.

The storm shelter’s door was on the path. He would have to go back out in the open. He passed one building, then another, then veered and raced out to the path again. He was now well away from the Salamander and directly across from the shelter. He didn’t see the Ten Men anymore — they must be circling behind him — and the shelter door was still open. This was his chance. But just as he started for the door, Martina emerged from between two buildings nearby, and Reynie knew the chase was over. Martina was faster and had a better angle. She was going to cut him off for sure.

“You’re mine, Muldoon,” said Martina, her face twisting in vengeful delight.

Reynie skidded to a stop in the middle of the path. “Close the door!” he yelled. “Close the door, Kate!”

Kate appeared in the dark doorway, but she didn’t close the door. She was holding her slingshot, drawing a bead. Reynie felt a burst of hope — he still had a chance! With an excited, incoherent cry, he lowered his shoulders and rushed for the door. Martina lunged to cut him off… Kate let fly with the slingshot… and Martina fell to her knees, howling and clutching her head.

“I saved one marble for you!” Kate called as Reynie ran inside. Then she saw something that made her jerk her head back. An object streaked past her nose and stuck in one of the wooden beams behind her with a loud
thwack
! Even in the darkness she could see it was a pencil — it must have been a very sharp pencil — and it quivered in the wood like an arrow. Kate slammed the door and threw the iron bolt.

“We made it!” Reynie gasped, scarcely believing it. The windowless storm shelter was pitch black inside. “Sticky, Constance, are you there? Are you all right?”

“Kate nearly broke my ribs,” Constance complained, which Reynie took as a good sign.

“I thought I was gone for sure,” said Sticky. “I thought we all were.”

In the darkness Reynie felt Constance grab hold of his hand.

Kate shone her flashlight on the wooden beam where the Ten Man’s pencil had stuck. She tried to yank it out, but it might as well have been set in cement. She couldn’t even break it off.

“I wonder what they’re doing,” Sticky said, putting his ear to the door to listen.

“Why, they’re waiting for us to let them in,” said a deep voice, and Reynie thought he might throw up. The voice had come from directly overhead.

Kate’s flashlight found the Ten Men in the rafters. There were two of them, squatting on their haunches and peering down at the children with malevolent smiles, like gargoyles in business suits. They seemed gigantic and spidery, all elbows and knees, and their shadows took up the whole of the ceiling.

“But… but how… ?” Sticky stammered.

“It isn’t such a mystery, dearies,” said one of the Ten Men. “You’ve just been outsmarted.”

Hold still if you like your ears,” said one Ten Man with a grin. He showed them a small cylindrical device in his hand. “I don’t want to have to use this pointer on you — it takes all night to recharge the battery.”

The children, who did rather like their ears, were soon placed in handcuffs and made to stand against the back wall of the shelter. Meanwhile the other Ten Man opened the door to admit the rest of his crew. There were four of them in all, not counting Martina (who was holding her head and, for the moment at least, appeared too furious for words), and each was as well-dressed, calm, and cheerful-looking as his comrades. The shelter was suffused with the smell of expensive cologne.

“Garrotte,” said the largest Ten Man, speaking to the one with the laser pointer, “be a friend and fetch us a lantern, won’t you? Now that you mention batteries, we might as well spare our flashlights, too.”

“That’s a lovely idea, McCracken,” said Garotte, who was a bearded man with pointy ears and a flattish nose. In his dark suit he looked unnervingly like a giant bat. “Would you care for any victuals as long as I’m going? Will we have a midnight picnic?”

McCracken chuckled. “Just the lantern, thank you, Garrotte. I’m still full from supper.”

Given the nature of their work, the Ten Men’s pleasant demeanor was more disconcerting than anger or harshness would have been, and indeed it would be hard to find anyone more disconcerted than the children. Even Kate was in a heightened state of alarm, not only because they were captured (though that did contribute somewhat) but also because she recognized the largest Ten Man’s name — McCracken — and knew him by reputation.

Milligan had mentioned him before. The leader of all the Ten Men, McCracken was also the most elusive (Milligan had never laid eyes on him), and Kate now had the dubious honor of meeting him before her father did. He was an imposing figure — a huge man with shoulders like bedside tables, perfectly coiffed brown hair, and piercing blue eyes — but his reputation was more imposing still. According to Milligan, McCracken was the most dangerous Ten Man of all, and now here he stood, smiling at them in the darkness.

“You might as well open your little peepers, cookie,” he said to Constance, who had squeezed her eyes closed, trying to imagine herself elsewhere. “We can see
you
even if you can’t see
us,
you know.”

“Leave her alone,” Sticky squeaked, his words inaudible although he had intended to shout. McCracken didn’t even notice he’d spoken. Sticky swallowed, trying to find his voice. He was experiencing something close to a breakdown, not from fear (although he was certainly afraid) but from an overwhelming feeling of shame. All thought of pride or personal safety had long since flown from him now. The only thing Sticky wanted was to save his friends from whatever lay in store as a result of his terrible blunders. Yet he had no means of saving them — his talents were of no use here — and his mind was spinning in a tumult of frustration and despair.

Reynie was in quite a jangled state himself. What had struck him at once — and most unpleasantly — was how quickly McCracken had appraised the situation and taken control of it. In a matter of minutes he’d learned of the children in the village, deduced where they would hide, and gone into the shelter’s rafters to await them. It was McCracken who had spoken to them from the rafters, and he had spoken correctly: the children had been outsmarted, which meant McCracken was very smart indeed.

Reynie took a few deep breaths. If they were to have any chance of getting out of this, he had better calm down and think.

Martina Crowe, meanwhile, had mastered her anger well enough to speak and had begun barking orders at the Ten Men. To the children’s surprise, the Ten Men seemed to answer to her. None of them appeared to like it very much (though McCracken seemed amused), but whenever Martina spoke they answered, “Yes, ma’am” and did what she said. She couldn’t have gained this authority through any action of her own — Mr. Curtain must have granted it to her — but it was hers, regardless, and Martina clearly relished it.

The first order she gave was for McCracken to chain up the children so they couldn’t run again. McCracken had obviously planned on doing that — he’d just taken a length of slender chain from his briefcase — but he only smiled and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and finished what he’d begun. Each child’s wrist had already been handcuffed to the next child’s, with Kate at one end, followed by Constance, Sticky, and Reynie. Now McCracken cuffed Reynie’s free hand to the length of chain, which appeared to be nothing more than a lot of paper clips linked together — the sort of thing a bored businessman might create while sitting through a long telephone conference. In fact (as McCracken cheerfully explained) the chain was made of high-tensile metal, perfectly unbreakable by human hand.

“Not even I can break it,” said McCracken, wrapping the other end of the chain around one of the shelter’s wooden beams and securing it with a padlock. He winked. “And I’m good at breaking things.”

“Stop socializing with them, McCracken,” Martina snapped. “Give me the key to the handcuffs.” She thrust her hand out peremptorily, and McCracken, with an unconcealed smirk, put the key very daintily into her palm. The children stared at the key, which seemed the perfect symbol of their predicament. They were now in the hands of Martina Crowe.

And Martina Crowe hated them with a passion.

Martina Crowe hated most things, actually. She hated the children in particular, but the children only represented the top of a long list. She also hated weakness and foolishness, and because she regarded most behaviors as weak or foolish, these two categories contained many subcategories, which in turn contained still
more
subcategories, and so on until very few things were left outside the range of Martina’s hatred. One of these few things, however, was barking orders. Martina was fond of barking orders, and especially fond of barking them at Ten Men. She also enjoyed distributing them evenly, so that no one was left out. For instance, after she’d demanded the key from McCracken, Martina looked imperiously at the bespectacled Ten Man and barked, “Find me something to sit on, Sharpe!” Then she ordered Garrotte, who had just returned with a lantern, to place it on the floor in the center of the room. And finally she snapped her fingers at the fourth Ten Man (a bald man with only a single eyebrow — the one over his left eye — which gave him a perpetually wry expression), and barked, “Close the door, Crawlings!”

Reynie watched Crawlings bar the door with a feeling of great desolation, as if it were his own tomb being sealed. He hoped Milligan had only been delayed, but when Milligan came back —
if
he came back — how could he rescue them if he was locked outside? He’d chosen this building for its sturdiness, after all. And even if he did manage to get inside, Milligan would still be greatly outnumbered, and the children would be chained up and couldn’t even make a run for it.

Crawlings joined the other Ten Men by the lantern, where Martina had ordered them to gather. Sharpe, the bespectacled Ten Man, had failed to find her a seat, and Martina gave his briefcase a covetous glance but said nothing. Evidently the briefcases were off limits to her. No doubt she hated that.

“Well, McCracken,” Martina said, “do you want to explain how she got away?”

“She hasn’t gotten away,” McCracken responded. He was casually picking his teeth with the sharp end of the pencil that had been stuck in the beam. Reynie had watched him pull it from the wood as easily as one might draw a thumbtack from a bulletin board. Kate had seen it, too, and her jaw had dropped.

“She hasn’t gotten away?” Martina said with a sneer. She glanced around the shelter and threw up her hands. “I don’t see her. Where is she? Is she hiding behind one of these beams?”

“She’s in the woods. Sharpe saw her heading into the trees, and I had him blow the tunnel entrance so she can’t cut through to the other side of the island. We can track her down that much faster now.”

“Then why aren’t we tracking her?”

“I thought perhaps we should deal with the little darlings first,” McCracken said. “They didn’t materialize out of the air, you know. Someone must have brought them. Better to find out right away who it was, don’t you think?”

Martina acknowledged this with a grunt. The truth — which was clear enough to everyone in the room — was that she wanted nothing more than to focus on the children, but thought it best to establish that failing to catch Number Two would be the Ten Men’s fault and not her own. Spinning on her heel, she marched over to stand before Kate. Of all the children, Martina bore a particular enmity toward Kate, who had done the most to embarrass her at the Institute (to say nothing of the past few minutes).

“How do you explain your presence here, Wetherall?” she demanded.

“Magic,” Kate said, coolly returning the older girl’s stare. “How’s your forehead, by the way? You might want to put some ice on that.”

Reynie noticed that Kate had slipped her free hand inside her bucket.
Don’t do anything stupid,
he thought.
Don’t get yourself hurt, Kate.

Martina touched the swelling bruise on her forehead. Her eyes flashed. “And
you
might want to consider your
position.
” She held up the handcuff key that McCracken had given her. “Do you see this? I am in control here, Wetherall, and
you
are the one in chains, so if you don’t want to find yourself —”

Kate stomped Martina’s foot, snatched the key from her hand, and butted her in the chest with her head.

Martina staggered backward, her cry of pain cut short by the head butt, which had knocked the wind out of her. She turned toward McCracken, her eyes wide with outrage, and jabbed a finger toward Kate, who was scrabbling at her handcuffs with the key.

“Yes, ma’am,” McCracken replied to the unspoken order. He made no attempt to conceal his amused smile, but neither did he waste time striding across the room and grabbing Kate’s wrist. “I did enjoy that, plucky,” McCracken said to Kate, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t also enjoy this.” He squeezed. Kate gave a gasp of pain and opened her hand. The key fell to the floor.

McCracken checked the handcuffs. They were still locked tight. Martina, meanwhile, had snatched up the key and backed out of Kate’s reach. Recovering her breath she said, “I want you… to make… that girl… pay!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said McCracken, opening his briefcase.

“I thought you wanted to know how we got here, Martina,” said Reynie quickly.

Martina looked at him suspiciously. “Don’t try to put this off, Muldoon. Your snotty friend’s going to get hurt no matter what you say or when you say it.”

Reynie shrugged. “Okay, well, if it doesn’t matter to you — or Mr. Curtain — then I can certainly wait to tell you what’s going to happen.”

“What’s going to… happen?” Martina repeated. She glared at him. “What do you mean?”

“If we don’t return to the boat by morning, Risker will contact the authorities,” Reynie said. “So I suggest you think long and hard about whatever actions you’re planning to take now.”

The room was quiet. Then all the Ten Men looked at one another and burst into laughter. Martina laughed, too, and she shook her head a long time before saying, “Risker? You mean that greedy coward in Thernbaakagen? Thank you for the warning, Muldoon — it will be very useful — but we’re not really worried about someone like
Risker.
I’m surprised he agreed to bring you here in the first place.”