The Dark Flight Down Read online

  “That’s not true!” Boy cried. “I do. I’ve lived here for years. I’m Valerian’s boy.”

  “His son? He has no son! Don’t make a fool of me, boy.”

  “No, not his son. That is, I’m not sure. . . .”

  At this all three of the guards laughed and began to move toward Boy.

  “You’re not sure!” said the leader. “You lived here for years and you don’t know if you’re really his son or not? I’ll tell you what, you rascal! You are a thief. Now get out of here, we have serious business to attend to.”

  “No,” shouted Boy, “you get out of here. This is Valerian’s house, and yes, he’s dead. But I live here and this place belongs to me if it belongs to anyone! I was his boy!”

  Now the leader of the guards looked at his two men, then back at Boy.

  “You say you were his?”

  Boy nodded.

  “I lived here and worked for him. I was his assistant.”

  “Right, then, you’re coming with us. We have orders to remove all articles belonging to Valerian, and if you were his boy then that includes you.”

  Boy laughed nervously.

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  “Don’t give us trouble, now. You can’t get away. It will be easier for all of us if you just come along with us to the palace.”

  “The palace?” Boy spluttered. “You can’t!”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” the guard said to his men. “Get him out of my sight.”

  And with that the two other Imperial Guards made for Boy.

  “No!” cried Boy. He glanced at the guards, then leapt to the wall where the release for the trapdoor lay. He pulled the lever and the floor opened up between the guards and himself, shedding books and papers that tumbled down into the air.

  The guards, surprised for a moment, smiled when they looked down through the trapdoor and saw the perilous drop not to the third- but the second-floor landing, a leg-breaking fall.

  “That’s not going to help you!”

  “We’ll see,” said Boy, and shoving the lens into his coat pocket, he launched himself for the gap, catching hold of the winch rope that was used to hoist things up to the Tower.

  He had gambled that it would unwind slowly enough to break his fall somewhat, and because of his slight frame, it worked. He landed on the second floor with a thump, but nothing bad enough to stop him.

  “Get him!” cried a voice from above.

  Boy scrambled to his feet, briefly glancing up. The guards peered down at him. The end of the hoist rope had freed itself from the pulley and fell around Boy’s legs.

  “Don’t just gawp at him! After him! The stairs!”

  Boy leapt for the stairs, taking them three at a time. As he made the ground floor he felt safe. He could hear the guards lumbering along the second-floor landing. He sprinted across the hall for the door, and then something tangled his legs and he went sprawling along the stone floor, jarring his wrist as he fell. He looked to see what had caught him, and glimpsed one of the guards leaning over the banister. He had thrown the winch rope in a bundle, which had snagged Boy’s calves as he ran.

  Footsteps thudded closer. Boy struggled to his feet and pulled at the front door.

  He flung it open and ran straight into a fourth guard, waiting there for such an event. The guard was surprised and took a second to react. Boy tried to sidestep him, but it was too late.

  First one, then two pairs of hands pulled him back and wrestled him to the ground.

  “Right! You little swine,” said the guard. “You’re coming to the palace.”

  They brought the rope and tied his arms behind him and then his legs, leaving him trussed up like a slaughtered deer.

  None of them saw the lens fall from Boy’s pocket and roll a little way into the snow.

  Outside in the street was a cart attached to a sturdy-looking horse. Boy was the first of Valerian’s possessions to be thrown into it, and while one of the guards waited with him, the other three spent the afternoon loading alongside him anything from the Tower room that wasn’t bolted down.

  Darkness had fallen when the cart finally set off at walking pace. Boy lay uncomfortably on his side, half covered by Valerian’s books and other possessions. His arms and legs had gone numb hours before, and it was all he could do to keep one eye on where they were going. After a while he gave up, and tried to ask the guards what they were going to do with him.

  They did not reply.

  “Please,” pleaded Boy, “at least tell me where we’re going.”

  One of them turned round and grunted.

  “We told you. The palace. You belong to the emperor now.”

  3

  Willow waited by St. Valentine’s Fountain, but Boy did not come. As the night deepened, the temperature fell from freezing to well below that. For a while she stood and chatted to an old woman huddled over a brazier of roasting chestnuts, until finally the cold was too much. Though Willow had said nothing, the old woman glanced back at her.

  “He ain’t coming, you know,” she said, and before Willow could reply, shuffled away.

  Willow started to worry. They were supposed to have met as the church bells rang seven, but it was long after nine by now. Willow had studied every inch of the frozen fountain, whose long icicles hung from its spout like tusks, where in the summer the water gushed.

  Something must have happened to Boy. She thought about what the old woman had said. Something must have happened to him, because there could be no mistaking the plans they had made.

  Unless . . . what if she had misread him? She had been doing most of the talking; maybe she had just heard what she wanted to hear, that Boy wanted to come with her.

  She stamped around on the snowy ground by the fountain, getting colder all the time.

  It had all seemed so easy sitting in the Feather the night before, but out in the freezing streets it was different. How would they find somewhere to live? She wasn’t earning enough to feed them both, let alone rent a room. Perhaps Boy had thought it over; perhaps he’d realized how stupid it was, and maybe he didn’t even want her the way she wanted him. He was living in splendor now, relatively. Kepler had given him clothes and a proper room with a real bed in a well-to-do house. It even had that amazing system of electrical lighting Kepler had created. Why on earth would Boy want to leave all that to come and live on the streets again?

  She hadn’t even known Boy that well at the theater. It was only in those last five days of the year, when she and Boy had become entwined in Valerian’s terrible adventure, that she had realized that she felt something for him.

  Willow brushed some snow off the edge of the fountain’s basin and sat down. She put her head in her hands and cried.

  The bell of St. Valentine’s Church chimed ten.

  Now Willow was angry. If Boy had decided not to be with her, the least he could have done was tell her to her face, rather than leave her freezing by the fountain. Her anger grew as she began to feel shamed: how foolish she was to believe Boy cared about her.

  She’d let him know how angry she was!

  She set off for Kepler’s house. She’d been there only twice, briefly, but she knew she could find the way. It would be a long walk, but then, at least she would be moving, and might feel a little warmer.

  She was in a fury, and as she walked as fast as she was able along the snowbound alleys of the City, her mood did not improve. But now as she turned into the Square of Adam and Sophia, something softened in her. Though her route did not take her that way, she knew she was only a street or two away from the Reach, where she and Boy had been together just over a week before. It was enough to trigger a flood of memories of the fraught time they had spent trying to save Valerian’s life, only to have him try to take Boy’s in return. Maybe they had been wrong about Valerian, but she couldn’t be wrong about Boy; there was no way to fake what had passed between them, and she began to worry again. Something must have happened to him.
/>   When she got to Kepler’s front door, it flew open almost the moment she pulled the bell handle.

  “Oh, it’s you. Where is he?”

  Kepler seemed distracted, even a little angry, but Willow could see that he too was worried.

  “Where is he?” Kepler asked again.

  “Can I come in?” Willow said. “Please. I’m freezing.”

  Kepler blinked.

  “Yes . . . ,” he said, standing aside.

  He pushed the door closed behind her and ushered her into the study.

  “Well?” Kepler asked, as Willow moved to stand in front of the fire. “Have you seen him?”

  Willow shook her head. She suddenly felt incredibly numb. Her teeth chattered and she started to shake.

  Kepler pulled a chair up by the fireplace for her, muttering as he did so. He fished around in his desk, and pulled out a small bottle that Willow recognized.

  It was the drug that Valerian had taken so much of in the days before he died. She shook her head, afraid of what it might do to her, but Kepler ignored her protests.

  He poured a capful of the green liquid into her mouth, and waited. Warmth and strength began to wash over Willow in a delightful way, and she immediately felt herself begin to recover. She felt light-headed, even felt like laughing.

  Kepler pulled another chair up by the fire and sat down.

  “Well, Willow?” he asked again.

  Willow shook her head. “I came here to find him. We were supposed to meet. . . .”

  She stopped, realizing she shouldn’t have told Kepler that, but he seemed too preoccupied to notice or to care, staring down into the fire.

  “I sent him out earlier, he was supposed to come straight back. . . .”

  “Where?” asked Willow.

  Kepler looked up at her.

  “What?”

  “Where did you send him?”

  “To Valerian’s.”

  “You sent him there!” cried Willow. “You shouldn’t have sent him there, anything might have—”

  “What?” Kepler snapped. “What might have happened to him? It’s an empty house. There’s nothing dangerous there. Not now. Not now Valerian’s gone.”

  “You still shouldn’t have made him go there. . . . It’s a bad place for him.”

  Kepler shrugged. “I don’t want him hurt any more than you do.”

  “Really?” said Willow sharply. “Why is that?”

  “I assure you I want the best for him. You could not understand.”

  “Well, if you did you wouldn’t have sent him there.”

  Kepler opened his mouth to bite back at Willow, but then shut it again. He thought briefly, frowning. “What matters is this. Where is he? There’s nowhere else for him to go, except back on the streets, and this is the coldest winter in memory.”

  Willow nodded.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just worried that . . .”

  “The Yellow House. That’s the only place to look. You can stay here and get warm, I’ll be—”

  “No,” Willow said firmly, getting to her feet. “I’m coming too.”

  “Nonsense,” said Kepler. “You aren’t fit to go anywhere. I look after the boy now. You can stay here until—”

  “No!” shouted Willow. “I’m coming with you. You have no right to tell me what to do. If you care anything for how I feel, then you’ll give me another drink of that stuff and help me find Boy!”

  With that Kepler thrust the bottle at Willow and went off to find a coat.

  Willow smiled as he went, took another sip of the drug and put the bottle in her pocket. She found Kepler in the hall, wrestling with a long winter coat. By his feet was a canvas shoulder pack, which he picked up and swung onto his back.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Kepler,” Willow said brightly, and led the way to the door and out into the snow-swirling night.

  The Dungeon

  The Place of Deceitful Histories

  1

  Boy’s first view of the Imperial Palace of Emperor Frederick III was not welcoming.

  The cart trundled wearily uphill toward the palace walls for ages, but when almost at the gates, turned onto a path that wound back down around the outskirts of the mound on which the walls were built. This path reached an end at a solid iron gate right at the base of the palace hill. Behind it a long, low tunnel led deep into the earth under the palace buildings.

  Boy looked up at the moldy ceiling of the tunnel as the cart was manhandled along it by torchlight, being too small for the horse to make it down. Every now and again the tunnel was pitted by defensive openings, through which arrows or crossbow bolts could be fired should anyone try to attack the palace by this particular route.

  Far above Boy’s head, through the bedrock of the palace hill, perched the magnificent, sprawling splendor of the palace itself, but Boy saw nothing of this. Up in the dark night sky, the palace burned like a precious jewel, torches and lights flaring from every ornate window, picking out a gleam here and there from the gilded dome of the palace chapel, or the spire of the bell tower. The palace was a place of wonder, made to impress the onlooker with the greatness of the imperial line, and to dwarf the ordinary mortal. It had been built over many years, each emperor adding something new, trying to find a way of outdoing his predecessor, with a more elaborate spire, or a more preposterous tower. The result was a vast, heaven-reaching concoction of architectural hallucination, all teetering on a low hill south of the river. The palace faced in on itself; the wonder was not, after all, for the rabble in the City to admire. They were impressed enough by the high walls and battlements that marked its perimeter. The true splendor of the place was only visible from inside; from the Great Court or the Emperor’s Green or the Royal Gardens. Then one could stop and stand and stare openmouthed at the acres of gilded rooftops, copper-topped cupolas and sculpted marble embellishments.

  Much of its finery was presently hidden under several feet of snow, but Boy saw none of it anyway. He was shuffled down the tunnel into a wider, higher space deep underground, where the cart was upended and he, along with all Valerian’s other possessions, fell out onto the cold, unforgiving flagstones.

  He heard the squeak of a door or gates, and then the sound of a heavy lock being secured. Footsteps led away, and then all was quiet.

  Boy tried to wriggle onto his backside, and having achieved this, managed to sit up and lean against the wall.

  All around was blackness. His wrist still hurt from the fall in the house, and he was cold and tired.

  Straining to see anything at all, he suddenly became aware of something.

  A noise.

  It was faint at first, then got a little louder, coming nearer to him. The sound was a shuffling, a scraping, soft but heavy, and with it there seemed to be a low, rasping breathing, like a creature half throttled. But almost as soon as Boy was convinced it was not mere imagination, the sound receded and then disappeared entirely, leaving something else behind. A smell.

  The smell of fresh blood.

  2

  Willow and Kepler stood on the doorstep of the Yellow House, and knew something was wrong. Neither of them had a key to the house, but they didn’t need one. The snow on the porch and outside the house was a confused mess of footsteps and the tracks of cartwheels. The door was ajar.

  “Thieves?” whispered Kepler.

  “They could still be in there,” Willow said, her voice wavering.

  “Then we’d better tread quietly.”

  Kepler took a step forward, and as he did, his foot kicked something lying in the snow. He looked down and picked it up. With surprise he saw it was the lens.

  “What is it?” Willow asked.

  “It’s the very thing I sent Boy here to collect.”

  They both fell silent, and looked again at the open door of the Yellow House.

  It was dark in the house and they had brought no light.

  As they made their way gingerly inside, Wil
low and Kepler waited for their eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. Only the faintest shimmer of light made its way into the house from the torchlit street, showing feebly through the grimy windows high up in the hall.

  They listened keenly, but though no sound could be heard, they didn’t relax. The house seemed predatory, like a vicious animal waiting to pounce.

  They moved upstairs and found themselves drawn inexorably to the spiral staircase that led to the Tower.

  There was a little more light drifting down through the high glass skylight above the third-floor landing, and they were able to pick their way up to the Tower more easily, but still they went cautiously.

  Instinctively, they had found their way to the wounded heart of the house. Kepler led the way, and they immediately saw that the Tower room had had its guts ripped out. The room was stripped of almost everything valuable. All the books were gone, all the scientific apparatus and magical paraphernalia that had given it its identity. All that was left was anything that was too big to move or was broken, the projection table of the camera obscura and the old leather armchair.

  Kepler shook his head.

  “What in God’s name has happened here?” he said.

  Willow said nothing.

  “Dare we risk some light?” she asked. “He kept a packet of matches on the windowsill. . . .”

  Willow fumbled in the gloom, but soon she found the matches where she had seen them last.

  Kepler turned to her and nodded.

  “Very well,” he said. “The villains are long gone.”

  Willow struck a match, and held it up above her head, letting its feeble light cast a glow around the room.

  “Look out!” she shouted suddenly, but at the same moment Kepler had seen that the trapdoor lay wide open, the hatch a gaping black mouth in the floor just inches from where he stood.

  He stepped back a pace.

  “So they stole everything they could. . . .”

  “Who?”

  Kepler shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But where’s Boy?” Willow asked.

  Kepler looked around the mess.