Clockwork Twist : Trick (27 page)

“What's wrong with kittens?” Myra asked.

Twist laughed again and opted out of the ridiculous battle that ensued, preferring instead to simply watch.

After a small breakfast of toast, jam, and tea at a local cafe, and a
pleasant walk through the once-again dreary London streets, Twist, Jonas, and Myra found themselves being followed.  Jonas noticed it first, but said nothing.  Twist, meanwhile, noticed his quiet concern and started watching in reflections until he saw two large men in black following their every turn.  As they came to Baker Street, they found two other large men in black suits walking towards them from up the block.

“Don't run yet,” Jonas breathed quietly, leading them across the street and into a small park of grass and flowerbeds.

“From what?” Myra asked curiously.

“If anything happens,” Twist
whispered to her, “leave your puppet and call for Idris.”

“What could happen?” Myra asked, her face growing worried now. “What's going on?”

“We're not in trouble yet,” Jonas said as they came to the other side of the park.  To their left, another pair of men in black appeared.  Jonas led sharply to the right, down a narrow street.  “Just stay calm and be ready to run.”

Twist nodded and took Myra's hand off his arm to hold it instead.  He also slipped his walking stick into the holster hidden on his back.  At the end of the narrow street, a set of stairs led down to the gray brick embankment of a thin canal.  Twist couldn't hear footsteps behind him, and there were no windows or reflections down beside the water that would show if the men were still following them.  The buzz in his neck still felt highly alert, however, so Twist assumed that Jonas must still believe that the men were there.

The canal curved away under a low, arched bridge, and Twist began to see a few long, narrow boats appear along the quiet green river.  There were no other people walking by, and the houses up on the street seemed deserted.  There didn't even seem to be any life on the small boats.  It felt to Twist as if they were alone in the whole of the city.

The moment they walked out from under the bridge, behind the edge of the long curve in the canal, Jonas grabbed Twist and Myra and dragged them both back against the side of the bridge.  They moved quickly and silently, Twist holding his breath to keep himself that much more quiet.  Jonas placed himself closest to the corner's edge and pulled the goggles off his eyes, waiting as footsteps began to sound under the bridge.  The footsteps then stopped, just out of sight.

“How stupid do you think we are, exactly?” a gruff voice asked from around the bend. “Come forward and you won't be harmed.  Try to jump us, and you will.”

Jonas cursed under his breath and looked to Twist.  Twist couldn't give him much more than a shrug and a resigned expression.  Jonas put the goggles back on over his eyes and stepped away from the wall slowly, with his hands held up.  Twist and Myra followed after him to find six large men in black suits all staring at them.

“A thug with a brain,” Jonas said, putting his hands down. “Never saw that coming.”

“I thought you were supposed to see the future,” the man in the front of the group said in the same gruff voice.

“Very funny.  You're a riot,” Jonas said flatly.  He then seemed to look them all over, even though he obviously couldn't see through his goggles. “So, now what, chuckles?”

“Turn around and keep walking,” the man said, nodding forward along the canal. “You've got an appointment to keep.”

Jonas and Twist turned around and did as they were told, while Myra clung tightly to Twist's arm and continually looked back at the men in black.  The six of them followed behind, each one watching their wards carefully.

“Twist, some of the people in that horrible castle looked very much like these men,” she whispered to him fearfully.

“Don't worry, they can't take you away again,” Twist replied. “Remember what I told you.  Don't worry about Jonas or I.  We will be fine, too.”

“I understand,” she said, nodding, but her grip on him didn't loosen.

“For the record,” Jonas said to Twist. “You're going to follow my lead, right?”

“Of course,” Twist answered. “I haven't got a clue what I'm doing.”

Jonas smiled. “You're more capable than you think you are.”

“Stop here,” one of the men said as they walked by another of the small, narrow, barge-like boats.

Once again, they did as they were told, and one of the men in black leaned down to pull a small plank of wood off of the boat to sit on the stone embankment as a walkway.  He took the two steps down onto the boat’s narrow ring of decking and opened a low door in the raised body.  The faint sound of a violin wafted up to them with the scent of cinnamon and vanilla.

Without needing to be asked or shoved, Jonas, Twist, and Myra stepped aboard and into the boat.  Inside, the sunken cabin was more spacious than they
had expected, and furnished lavishly.  Plush benches padded with cream colored silk ran along the two long walls, while a small table was placed against the curved far wall.  An orange rose stood in a small crystal vase under the round window, behind a porcelain tea set and a plate of still-steaming, blond, caramel-drizzled cookies.

The other windows that sat high on the walls were shaded with white lace, while the wall between was painted a rich red color.  The floor was cherry wood, inlaid in a complex pattern of maple leaves, in colors of only slightly varying richness.  Aden sat at the end of the bench on the right, with a violin propped under his chin.  The bow in his hand paused instantly as they entered.

“Ah, gentlemen, welcome,” Aden said pleasantly to Jonas and Twist. “And greetings to you too, my dear,” he added to Myra.

“I'm not your dear,” Myra snapped
.

“Be nice,” Jonas shot to her quickly.  Myra bristled, but remained silent.

“My apologies,” Aden said, putting his violin aside, next to the table. “Please, have a seat if you like.  I hope I don't have to inform you that the men outside are armed and listening to us very carefully.”

“Naturally,” Jonas said flatly. “Are those fresh cookies?”

“Would you like one?” Aden asked.

“Why not?” he said, stepping forward to take two. “If you insist on being all pompous and genteel, I may as well get something out of it.”  He dropped down on the far end of the other padded bench, near the door, and handed one of the cookies to Twist.

Twist stayed standing by the open door—while the men in black took up stations around it outside—and took a bite of the cookie.  It was warm, soft, crispy with a thin layer of sugar on top, and tasted of butter, caramel, and cinnamon.  For a moment, he didn't much mind being taken prisoner.  Beside him, Myra also remained standing and watched Aden.

“So, what do you want, then?” Twist asked Aden.

“Well, I know for a fact that your clockwork friend here freed herself from my fortress.  So, I can hardly blame either of you for it,” he added sounding only slightly bitter.  “But that was quite ingenious, utilizing her ghostly abilities to free the djinn.  At the moment, we are still trying to turn half of the men who were in the fortress back into human beings.  I don't know whose idea it was to change so many of them into walruses, but the added weight almost flattened Piccadilly.”

“I thought Idris said something about slimy amphibians,” Jonas said to Twist.

“Oh, there were quite a number of toads and salamanders as well,” Aden said. “But those are easier forms to change back into human ones.  There's a precedent for it, you see.”

“And I thought that my life was getting strange,” Twist toned.

“And on that note,” Aden said. “I'd like to offer you a sort of truce.”

“A truce?” Jonas asked with as little belief as humanly possible.

“You people wrecked my castle,” Aden said bitterly. “The city of London had no idea it was there.  It's been invisible and untouchable for nearly three hundred years, and now I need a permit from the queen before her Air Force will let me put it back.  I stole your friends from Paris,” he said directly to Jonas, “put them in cages specifically designed to hold each one of them, and every one managed to get free again in a matter of hours.  I played on your weaknesses, and you evaded me.  I threatened you and you paused just long enough to strike at me again from a different angle.  The problem is that I have too many toys you can break, and you have too much damned determination.”

“Are you saying we're at a standoff?” Twist asked, frowning.

“I'm saying I'd rather be your friend than your enemy,” Aden said.  “All I really want from you is the information that you apparently can't give me.  If we keep fighting one another, someone will get hurt.  And if it's you,” he said to Twist, “then the secrets die with you and I lose.  You might know something after all,” he said to Myra, “but I now know that I have no power over you.  You've made that quite clear to me.”

“Good,” Myra said,
her smile in no way kind.

“The best way for me to get what I want is with your willing help,” Aden continued. “Since I took over this operation from my predecessor, I've been doing all I can to bring us out of the barbaric and pandering darkness of our past, and into a more seemly and modern light.  I want to start everything over.  You three are a perfect opportunity to show my fellow Rook just how much we can get out of cooperation.  So, tell me.  What can I offer you?  What will make you start to see me as an asset instead of an adversary?  There must be something.  How can I make you believe that I truly want peace with you?”

Jonas and Twist shared a silent look, only slightly impaired by Jonas's goggles, until he gave a sigh and pulled them off his eyes to hang around his neck.  He reached out to Twist with a reluctant hand.  Twist seemed to understand and took it, looking directly back at Jonas's now deep-purple eyes.  After an initial moment of white fog and chill, Twist focused his thoughts on Jonas's quiet emotions, dancing like a haze at the edges of his own thoughts.

“Are we going to trust him?” Twist asked.

“Hell no,” Jonas said.  “That's not the question.”  Twist listened intently to the subtle feelings and shifting thoughts that poured through his Sight.  Somehow, he gently came to realize that Jonas was considering using Aden, but never trusting him.

“Oh, of course,” Twist said, nodding. “What about the deal he offered me before you burst in to save me?”

“The one that sounds too good?” Jonas replied.  Repeating the process of searching for Jonas's emotions was much easier to Twist than the first time.  He quickly found that Jonas meant to say that there must be something wrong with the offer, but Twist couldn't guess what.

“Yes, exactly,” Twist toned, wondering quietly how Aden might use it against them.

“He said he'd send us out with a mag escort to all the shows Myra performed, right?” Jonas asked.  This time Twist instantly caught his meaning: the Rooks that would go with them as protection could easily become wardens and spies.

“That's a 'Rook' escort,” Aden muttered darkly. “Calling us magpies isn't funny.”

“Is too,” Jonas said quickly, only borrowing an instant of his attention from Twist.

“Who's to say we'd be safe without them?” Twist asked
.  He thought silently that anyone could spy on them at any time, and maybe without their knowing about it.  If they took the deal, then at least they would know who to watch out for.

“Good point,” Jonas said with a slight smile, seeming to catch his meaning. “He just said he didn't want anything to happen to you.  I assume that means Myra too.”  It wasn't likely, Twist guessed, that the Rooks sent to protect them would turn on them openly.  As long as Twist and Jonas never let their guard down, and knew not to trust them, there wasn't much of a danger from the Rooks.

Twist gave a sigh, wishing for the briefest instant that his life was simple.  Jonas smiled and his grip on Twist's hand tightened comfortingly.  Still looking at Jonas, Twist could feel a subtle warmth in the corners of his mind that made him feel like everything would be all right.  For a moment he thought it might be his own thought, but then realized that it was Jonas's.  Lying or not, believing it himself or not, Jonas was trying to calm him with the idea.  A thought of Twist's own then surfaced.  No matter how complicated his life got, he didn't have to fight alone.

Twist released Jonas's hand and looked away, breaking the contact.  The world around him darkened instantly, turning hollow and cold, but his mind was significantly clearer
now.  Checking carefully, he found that the emotions wafting around in his mind now were all his own again.  He looked up to find Aden and Myra both staring at him and Jonas curiously.