Wild Boy and the Black Terror (14 page)

W
ild Boy opened his eyes.

He lay on a damp mattress, looking up at a ceiling that seemed ready to collapse at any moment. Much of it
had
collapsed. Chunks of plaster had fallen to reveal bug-eaten timbers and broken tiles. Snow had melted through from the roof, and needle-thin icicles dangled over Wild Boy’s head.

The room reeked of gin and damp and rotting wood. Wind rushed through a broken window, rattling the last shards of glass that clung stubbornly to the frame. Thin walls shook from a commotion next door. Wild Boy heard cheering and stamping, and the slap of a fist against a face. It sounded like a boxing match.

“Where am I?” he groaned.

His coat was wet from the snow in Lady Bentick’s maze, and the back of his head throbbed where the killer had struck. Another pain there was sharper and more vicious, like a bird pecking the wound. Something tugged at his skull, causing his head to twitch.

He tried to rise, but a hand held him down. Its skin was pasty and wrinkled. Its nails were encrusted with blood.

“Don’t move,” Gideon grunted.

Wild Boy saw him now in a mirror on a wall. He saw, too, what tugged at his head: a needle and thread.

Gideon made a final stitch above Wild Boy’s ear, sealing the wound. Leaning closer, he bit the end of the thread. There was at least a bottle of gin in his breath.

“That should hold it,” he said.

He gave the end of the thread an unnecessary tug, causing Wild Boy to gasp with pain, and then sat beside the remains of a fire. He lit a clay pipe from the pulsing embers.

“Who done it?” he said.

Wild Boy sat up, an effort that exhausted most of the energy left in his arms. He touched the wound, feeling stitches that were tight and precise. It was an impressive job, even though it felt as a nail had been hammered into his skull.

“Where’s Clarissa?” he asked.

“She’s fine. Outside. I said, who done that to Marcus?”

Gideon’s face screwed up even tighter as he drew on his pipe, as if he was sucking in needles. Wild Boy realized that he must have seen Marcus in that state, too. Black-veined, tormented by his own mind. What had the killer called it?

The terror
.

“What happened to him?’ he asked.

“Lucien and his Black Hats showed up,” Gideon said. “They took him away. To a hospital maybe, or an asylum. He was still alive. If you can call that living.”

“I gotta see Clarissa.”

Suddenly Gideon bolted up, grabbed Wild Boy and pinned him against the wall. “You think this is all about you, don’t you? You’re Wild Boy! The great detective genius! You think this is all your story and don’t mean nothing to no one else.”

His eyes were red and blurred. Veins bulged beneath his neck cloth.

“I’ve served Marcus for sixteen years,” he said. “I owe that man everything. He saved me once. You’ve known him for, what, four months? You think it was hard for
you
, seeing him like that? So I am asking you again:
who done that to him?
”

He pressed Wild Boy harder against the wall. Instinctively Wild Boy lashed out, head butting him and sending him tumbling back beside the fire.

Sparks crackled up the chimney.

Gideon clutched his nose, but blood leaked between his fingers. He scrabbled towards Wild Boy, about to attack, but stopped, seeming to realize that fighting wouldn’t help Marcus. Instead, he turned and neatened the cloth around his neck.

“None of the Gentlemen wanted you,” he said. “They said you were trouble. But Marcus stood up for you. He said you and Clarissa could do amazing things. Said you would be great one day. He protected you, defended you. Saved you over and over, and you had no idea.”

The pain grew sharper in Wild Boy’s head. “You said he saved you too?”

“That ain’t none of your business. Your business now is saving him back. So you better be amazing, like he said. Do you find a way to save him.”

Gideon leaned closer to the fire, breathing in the smoke. “Do you remember what the killer said to you?”

Wild Boy did, every word. The killer offered a deal, a cure to save Marcus in exchange for the next black diamond. He’d even given him a clue to find the diamond. A single word.
Oberstein
.

He suspected Gideon might know what it meant; the man had spent years with Marcus, and Marcus knew everything. But could he really help the killer? Marcus wouldn’t want that, not for anything.

He watched Gideon place a cooking pot over the fire, only just realizing something about this place. “This is where you live?” he asked.

Gideon shrugged. “Seemed like the best place to bring you. Not many Gentlemen or coppers come here. We’re in the Rat’s Castle.”

The Rat’s Castle
. It was one of the roughest inns in London, yet just a knife’s throw from Lady Bentick’s house.

Wild Boy looked around the frigid room. The bed sheets were stiff with dried sweat, and the mound of empty bottles under the bed was so high that it raised the mattress. Surely Marcus had offered Gideon a home in the palace. Why did he choose to live here then, in squalor?

Gideon’s coat sleeves were rolled up, and Wild Boy spotted a faded Indian ink tattoo on his sinewy arm – crossed swords over a crown. He’d seen the symbol on soldiers that visited the fairground. Had Gideon been in the army? Wild Boy realized how little he knew about the man, even though they’d quarreled almost every day over the past four months.

A Bible sat on a chair beside the bed. He flicked it open where a crease on the spine suggested it had been read. A passage was circled on the page.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow…

Gideon snatched the book. “That ain’t none of your business either. You and I are friends as long as you’re saving Marcus. If you ain’t got a plan for that, you can take your chances on the streets. You got that?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Go get Clarissa. You need to eat.”

Wild Boy swung his legs from the chair, testing their strength. His head whirled as he walked to the door. The walls moved in crazy circles.

He turned back. “You ever heard of some place called Oberstein?” he asked.

Gideon looked up from the cooking pot. His face changed from rage to something like fear. “Why you asking that?”

“You know it or not?”

“Yeah I know it,” he said. “But it ain’t a place, it’s a person. Oberstein’s a jeweller, got a shop on Bond Street.”

A jeweller? Well, that answered something at least. Wild Boy went outside to find his friend.

14

W
ild Boy stepped outside, squinting in the midday sun. He was on a wooden balcony that overlooked the courtyard of the coaching inn, a rickety rat trap of shedlike rooms and greasy doorways. Everything glistened with ice and grime.

Noise came from all around him, beery singing from a tavern below and grunts and cheers from the boxing match next door. The courtyard’s square of snow was speckled with colour. There were yellow holes where punters had relieved themselves, steaming brown dung, and flecks of red from fights. Wild Boy didn’t need his detective skills to tell that a snow-covered lump in the corner was a man, short and squat and buried by the snow where he had died.

A flurry of snow sprinkled from the tavern roof. Despite everything, Wild Boy smiled. He’d known where Clarissa was the moment he stepped outside.

Always up high.

Still shaky on his legs, he walked to where a barrel was collecting rainwater from a broken drainpipe. The barrel was full, the water frozen solid. He climbed on top of it and gripped the pipe, but his head whirled and his feet slipped on the ice. Just as he was about to fall, a hand shot out from above and grasped his wrist.

Clarissa hauled him onto the roof and wrapped him in a tight hug. Then she released him and shoved him in the chest. “It’s your fault!” she said. “You should’ve seen the clues. You should have saved Marcus.”

Wild Boy crouched, pressed a palm to the tiles to steady his balance.

Clarissa towered over him. Her dress was torn, and its sequined sleeve snapped in the wind. A bandage around her head was spotted with blood. A trickle had escaped from beneath; a red tear sliding down her face.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “We don’t have another plan, Wild Boy. Now the Gentlemen are after us and Marcus is gone. We only ever had him.”

A rush of wind swept across the rooftop, swirling up snow and dislodging tiles. It carried Clarissa’s rage away with it, and she sat beside him on the roof.

They huddled closer, enjoying the feeling of being together. From up here they could see across the patchwork of rooftops that spread towards the river. Factory chimneys protruded from the riverbank, belching brown smoke. In the other direction rose the tall, elegant architecture of Mayfair. Church towers jutted up here and there, their white stone streaked with dark grime.

Wild Boy pictured Marcus as they’d last seen him. He wanted to tell Clarissa about the killer’s deal, but she wouldn’t think twice about accepting it. He had no idea what danger was involved in finding the next black diamond. And he knew Marcus wouldn’t want them do to it, not even to save him.

Was there another way? His mind kept spinning. Pain pounded his skull. He couldn’t gather his thoughts.

“What clues do we have so far?” Clarissa said. “The killer is collecting black diamonds. He stole one from the Queen and then from Lady Bentick. But why, and why’d he save me at Lady Bentick’s house and no one else?”

Wild Boy had wondered about that. He sensed it might be an important clue. “You still got that note he gave you?”

“Said to destroy it,” Clarissa said, “so I threw it on the fire as I left the dining room. I thought it was from you, remember. Ain’t we got nothing else?”

Wild Boy slid two papers from his pocket – the Queen’s card and the page from the
Encyclopaedia Demonica
. He handed them to Clarissa and she read about Malphas, that screaming crow with those black eyes and barbed-wire teeth.

“A demon,” she said. “Destroyer of cities.”

“No,” Wild Boy said. “The killer’s crazy, thinks he’s working for a demon. But he’s a real person, all right.”

“What did he say? Anything that can help us?”

“I’m… I’m not sure.”

She shifted closer, pressing against him. He felt her body tremble.

“I’m scared, Wild Boy. We won’t make it on the streets, not us.”

Somewhere across the roofs, a crow cawed. Wild Boy’s wound throbbed harder. He saw a flash of his nightmare – crows and a fairground field, a caravan and a showman.

Clarissa was right. They wouldn’t make it on the streets. Not together.

The crow called louder.

“I… I was lying,” Wild Boy said. “I did hear the killer.”

“What? What did he say?”

“We gotta steal a black diamond.”