Read Extraordinaires 1 Online

Authors: Michael Pryor

Tags: #TEEN FICTION

Extraordinaires 1 (6 page)

BOOK: Extraordinaires 1
10.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Their feet didn't touch the ground.

‘You are Soames?' the female asked. Her voice was squeaky, but as far from comic as it was possible to be. She was clad in a long scarlet robe, silk, with wide sleeves and lapels. One of her companions wore a robe as well, but it was in the Roman style, dyed the purple of kings. The other was the odd one out. He had furs strapped onto his body with leather belts. He wore leather boots on his dangling feet instead of expensive-looking slippers. He pouted.

‘I am.'

‘I am Jia,' the female said. ‘This is Augustus.' The Roman. ‘And Forkbeard.' Fur.

Soames essayed a polite, interested expression, his normal approach to a new and possibly lucrative engagement. Briefly, he wondered why the creature had adopted the name ‘Augustus'. Then he had a moment of unaccustomed unease when he considered the alternative – that the name belonged to him. ‘I'm pleased to finally meet you.'

‘You're not,' Augustus said. His voice, too, was squeaky, but Soames could hear a hundred lifetimes' experience in giving orders. ‘No-one is pleased to see us.'

‘With reason,' Forkbeard said. He shifted in his seat and looked away, over his shoulder. ‘Finish with him quickly. I'm hungry.'

Soames's gaze went to the extremities of the Immortals. Forkbeard's hands were wrapped in bandages, gauze-swathed mittens on the end of his arms.

Years ago, when he had first been contacted by the Immortals to arrange shipping of various exotic items to them in India, Soames had made discreet enquiries in the Demimonde, as was his habit. The more he knew about his clients, the better off he was. The most reliable rumour suggested that the Immortals used their magic to create the Spawn from lopped-off pieces of their own bodies. The notion was a novel one, with a significant disadvantage that Soames was quick to realise. If one wanted a minion horde, one would soon run out of body parts. Soames had uncovered a blind, half-mad collector of magical documents who revealed, after some persuasion, the secret to the Immortals' immortality and why the loss of body parts was only a minor nuisance.

The Immortals had perfected the transference of souls. After hundreds of years – perhaps thousands – they no longer occupied the bodies into which they had been born. They had passed through a succession. As each body wore out, sickened or weakened in any way, the Immortals migrated their essence to a new one. Unfortunately for the owner of the new body, their essence was extinguished in the process . . .

Over time, however, the essence of each of the Immortals had become rich with accumulated decadence, steeped in the horror of their existence. This putrid essence tended to corrupt each new body, wearing it out all the faster. Much as acid would eat away at an iron vessel until it gave way, the soul of an Immortal was too much for an ordinary human body to bear for long.

The younger the body, however, the more resilient it was. Perhaps it was due to the freshness, or to the innocence, or to some other factor about humanity, but the Immortals had worked their way through host bodies, younger and younger, until they now occupied the bodies of children.

Foul, ancient beings dwelling inside the bodies of children gave Soames pause, but mostly to consider that if the Immortals were back in London, they would be needing a supply of hosts.

Jabez
, he thought,
the Immortals are lucky, lucky clients with you to attend to their needs!

Jia hissed between her teeth and threw a glare Forkbeard's way. Then she speared Soames with a look. ‘Shipping,' she squeaked. ‘You can make arrangements?'

‘As I have in the past. Efficiently, discreetly and inexpensively.'

A look of puzzlement so brief that Soames doubted that he'd actually seen it crossed Jia's face. Augustus glanced at her and cleared his throat. ‘Of course you have. This time we need you to bring something from India, rather than ship it the other way.'

‘Something you've left behind?'

Forkbeard jerked his head around. ‘Do not ask questions unless you value your hide at naught!'

Soames rocked back on his heels at the force of the creature's fury, but as soon as Forkbeard had spoken, he looked away again, muttering, Soames forgotten.

Augustus went on as if Forkbeard hadn't said a word. ‘The Spawn will give you details.'

Soames was still taken aback by Forkbeard's abrupt anger, but he couldn't help wondering why the Immortals had asked to see him if the Spawn could have communicated such. Taking his courage in his hands, he asked: ‘Is there anything else?'

Jia barked a laugh. ‘Of course! You are ours, now, Soames! Once you work for the Immortals, you are bound to us!'

‘I am bound to all my clients,' Soames said carefully. He felt as if he were negotiating with a keg of nitroglycerine.

‘Good. Remember it,' Jia said.

‘This other matter?'

‘You know this writer, Kipling.' It was a statement rather than a question. ‘Find him.'

Soames was taken aback. Of all the things he could have been asked . . . ‘I shall bring him here immediately,' he said.

Augustus raised his hand. Soames had seen many dangerous people and many dangerous creatures in his time in the Demimonde, but he had never seen any as familiar with death as the Immortals who addressed him. Tolerance, patience and understanding were alien to such beings. ‘Do not disappoint us,' Augustus piped in his horrible child's voice. ‘We do not want Kipling. We want the boy.'

‘Kipling has been searching for a boy,' Jia said. ‘A special boy. We have reports of them in the vicinity of your Hyde Park. Find Kipling and you will find the boy. Bring him to us.'

‘May I use some of your assistants? I may need to penetrate their police service, other officials . . .'

‘Spawn?' Augustus glanced at Forkbeard, who was scowling. ‘By all means.'

Soames bowed, but his thoughts were circling. If he could find out what was so interesting about Kipling's target, he might be able to use it as a first step in ousting the Immortals and assuming their place.

Jabez
, he thought,
only you could identify such a fleeting opportunity!

‘I will set to work with alacrity.'

Forkbeard jerked his head around. His baby face was a dreadful blend of madness and hunger. ‘And you will bring us children.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘We need children. Young children. Many of them. Soon.'

Soames stared at Jia and Augustus. ‘You will be well paid,' Augustus said.

‘Phlogiston?'

‘No. We need it to power our manipulating machines. Gold will do.'

‘But of course,' Soames said. He was already riffling through the long list of felons and cut-throats he employed, choosing the worst of them. ‘I will supply your needs immediately.'

Jia pointed at him. ‘And then you will do something for us at the site of the great gathering in your city. Most secret, most careful.'

‘Great gathering?'

‘We have not left India on a whim,' Augustus said with relish. The other two Immortals smiled. ‘These Olympic Games are an auspicious moment that we simply could not ignore.'

T
he motor car raced along Bayswater Road as if fired from a gun. Kipling peered through the side window, hissed, then tapped his driver on the shoulder. ‘Faster, Trubshawe, if you please.'

Next to Evadne, Kingsley was pressed into the rear seat as the automobile accelerated. He was numb.

‘It's more serious than I thought,' Kipling said after he turned around to face them.

‘
More
serious?' Kingsley said.

‘They're following us.' Kipling pointed.

Kingsley and Evadne leaned towards the window. After a moment's embarrassed rearranging, they both found a position to view Hyde Park as it flew past – and Kingsley felt Evadne stiffen.

He pressed his face close to the glass. He didn't see police constables or the brutish figures of the intruders who had been in his foster father's study. Instead, four or five shadowy forms were loping through the shadows on the far side of the fence. Behind the pickets as they were, it was difficult to discern details, but Kingsley shuddered at the sight. The creatures were unnaturally thin and long-armed, almost pawing at the ground as they ran. He was glad when the swiftness of the automobile left them behind.

‘What are they?' he breathed, and he became aware that his heart was pounding.

Kipling's face was grim. ‘They're a sign that we are in great strife indeed.'

‘I'd prefer to entertain you at home,' Kipling said as he poured the tea for Evadne and Kingsley. Thin, early morning light came through the lace curtains of the hotel room. Traffic was beginning to cast its noise about, but the sounds coming from the street were still muted – horses' hooves, a motor car or two. ‘But home is in the country, and here we are.'

Kingsley took the cup Kipling offered him. He knew he should be tired, but the events of the night had pushed him past exhaustion into that stretched state where exhaustion was strangely irrelevant.

Kipling wasn't exactly unknown to Kingsley. His foster father had copies of all of the writer's work in neat, identical leather volumes, each containing a thorough Kipling bibliography, but discouraged Kingsley from reading them – so naturally he'd done so in secret. He'd read them all, particularly enjoying
Barrack-Room Ballads
, but he'd never been able to find either of the
Jungle Books
,
which were missing from the shelves of Dr Ward's study.

At the theatre Kipling had appeared to be a small man, but now Kingsley could see that even though he was short, he wasn't small – his shoulders were broad and he was well built. His posture was upright and he moved about the hotel room with ease, never fumbling or uncertain in his movements. His thick spectacles naturally made him look studious, and already Kingsley had noticed how the writer listened intently, with all his being, whenever Evadne or he were speaking. He moved his top lip under the thick moustache while he listened, as if chewing on every word. He also showed a writer's curiosity about Evadne's exotic looks. He was frankly fascinated, but not rude.

‘We're grateful, Mr Kipling.' Evadne stirred her tea with a silver spoon. ‘But why on earth would a respected writer help two fugitives escape the police?'

Kipling looked startled, then took another of the large armchairs that Kingsley and Evadne were occupying. He pressed his hands together. ‘I thought my assistance could be valuable.'

‘That it was, Mr Kipling,' Kingsley said. ‘Most timely. Puzzling, but most timely.'

‘I could say it's because I'm an admirer of Miss Stephens's skill,' Kipling said. ‘I saw you at the Bedford, last year,' he said in response to her sceptical look. ‘Your juggling is sublime.'

‘But that's not the reason for your rescue,' Kingsley said. ‘Nor for your watching us in Aldershot, is it?'

‘Ah. You noticed me.' Kipling looked disappointed. ‘I hoped I was doing a good job of being clandestine.'

‘There's been altogether too much that's clandestine for my liking,' Kingsley said. ‘That's why I'm asking you to throw some light on things.'

‘With apologies to Miss Stephens, it's you I'm interested in, Mr Ward.' Kipling paused. ‘Perhaps interested is too mild a word. Fascinated would be better. You were born in India, weren't you?'

‘You're fascinated in me because I was born in India? That's hardly unusual, is it?'

‘I was born in Bombay myself, so I'd agree with you there.'

‘Then what is it?' Kingsley was beginning to feel nettled. Granted, Kipling had whisked them away from a sticky situation, but Kingsley's gratitude was wearing thin.

‘I'm after details, you see, details that could confirm my theory.'

‘What theory?'

‘That you're Mowgli.'

While Kingsley battled stupefaction, Evadne tapped her teacup with a fingernail. ‘Now, there's a thought.'

Even though Kingsley hadn't read
The Jungle Book
, he'd heard of Kipling's wild boy hero, mostly in taunts from lads at school who were unaware of just how apposite the epithet was. ‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘It might explain a few things, Mr Kipling, and he
does
look a little Mowglish.'

‘Mowglish?' Kingsley said. ‘Really, Evadne, you've lost me now.'

‘It's not his looks, Miss Stephens,' Kipling said, ‘it's his background. I have reason to believe that our young Mr Ward might once have been the child who was found by the Indian Forestry Service after being raised by wolves. The newspaper story about this child was the inspiration for my
Jungle Book
tales.'

With an uncertain hand, Kingsley placed his cup of tea on the side table. ‘Wolves?'

Kipling leaned forward, his eyes bright behind his spectacles. ‘I didn't believe it when I first read the story, so I travelled to the Central Provinces and spoke to the forestry officers myself. Decent chaps, they convinced me that they had indeed found a child whose nurture had been solely undertaken by wolves.'

‘That sort of a start to life would tend to stay with one.' Evadne looked pointedly at Kingsley.

‘What happened to the child's parents?' Kingsley managed to ask, while memories of his schooldays clamoured for attention – the yearning for freedom, the realisation that others did not have the same sort of wild side that he did, the understanding that he was different. With a start, he realised that for a long time he had shied away from his Indian past in an effort to be as the others around him.

‘The parents?' Kipling looked away. ‘The forestry officers had no idea. There was no sign of them when they rescued the boy.'

‘Rescued.' Kingsley's memories of his earliest days were crowded and confused, but the notion of rescue didn't jibe with them. He recalled terror and separation, but not rescue. Any memories of the wild came with feelings of exhilaration, four-footed security and the smells of familiar beasts surrounding him. He had comfort amid the pack, and the two-legged intruders had taken him away from it.

He almost cried out as the loss he'd felt all those years ago reached out and plucked at his heart.

‘And what makes you think that Kingsley here is your Mowgli, apart from his being born in India?' Evadne asked.

‘A month ago, your foster father delivered a lecture that I attended. It alerted me to several intriguing features of your background, Mr Ward. How your foster father brought you back from India, for a start, and of his business travelling about that country and the possibility he was in or around the town of Seoni at the time of your discovery.'

‘Discovery?' Kingsley echoed, and his voice sounded thick in his own ears. His back ached, and he realised he was holding himself poised, tense, until his muscles were screaming. ‘You make me sound like an uncharted island.'

The pain caused by the memories that had launched themselves upon him unbidden was redoubled by Kipling's revelation. Even though Kingsley knew it was in his foster father's nature to be forthcoming where science was concerned, he was still hurt to think his peculiar past had been shared with strangers.

Kipling looked pained. ‘I apologise, Mr Ward, I truly do. It's at times like this that my enthusiasm gets the better of me. I have a horror of those who intrude on my own privacy, and yet here I am doing the same to you.'

Try as he might, Kingsley couldn't dislike Kipling. The man's enthusiasm was appealing, as was his careful formality. ‘You heard my father speak?'

‘At the Royal Society about the recent discovery of
Homo heidelbergensis
remains. He did tend to wander from the topic when he became excited.'

‘That is a weakness of his.' Kingsley was spent, stretched thin by exhaustion and the events of the last half-day. His foster father was missing, his housekeeper had been murdered in the most horrible fashion and now, on top of all this, a writer was hinting at the origins that Kingsley had thought long forgotten. His hands trembled and it wasn't solely due to lack of sleep.

‘Aldershot,' Evadne said to Kipling. ‘How did you end up there?'

‘I have a great many acquaintances of all kinds.' Kipling flipped the pages of his notebook. ‘Once it was clear that you had embarked on a career in the theatre, Mr Ward, I was able to make enquiries. Eventually, it was suggested that I visit the Alexandra Theatre and “I might see something to my advantage”, I believe is how my informant put it.'

‘You were in the balcony,' Kingsley said.

‘For an unexpectedly captivating show,' Kipling said, ‘ending in pandemonium.'

Kingsley had almost forgotten. His stage career could be at an end before it even started. His life was in ruins. ‘Mr Kipling, I'm glad, and a little unsettled, to find that I'm your literary inspiration . . .'

‘A part of it,' the small man said.

‘A part of it, then, but I'm not sure why you're so excited.'

‘You don't understand what it means to a writer to see a character he has written come to life and stand in front of him and . . . well.' Kipling took off his spectacles and polished them sturdily. ‘But it is more than that. Since I first heard of your origins and first began planning the story that would become
The Jungle Book
, I have learned much. I do not exaggerate when I say that your fate and the fate of our species may be intertwined.'

‘I say.' Kingsley rocked back in his chair as if he'd taken a blow on the chin. ‘One likes to think one is important, but don't you think you're overstating things a little here?'

‘I love India, my boy. When I was there, however, I saw things.' Kipling paused, and for an instant Kingsley saw fear in the man's eyes. ‘Things that here, in civilised England, I have difficulty believing weren't a dream. Wonders and nightmares. Splendour and terror. Miracles and horrors.'

Evadne chanted, in a whisper: ‘
Hard her service, poor her payment – she in ancient, tattered raiment – India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
'

Kipling smiled. ‘You know my work?'

‘Of course.'

‘Then you will understand that it – that everything – is a matter of the struggle between civilisation and the wild. Both impulses are in us, both tendencies have their strengths. You, my boy, because of your origins and your upbringing, have managed to unite both within you. If you are as I hope, you show that the wild can be controlled. Civilisation can subdue and benefit from the wildness within. You are unique.'

‘He doesn't look unique,' Evadne said. ‘He looks nonplussed.'

‘I'm tired,' Kingsley said. ‘And worried. And suspected of a murder. The combination is often mistaken for nonplussment.'

‘That's better,' Evadne said. ‘Meet adversity with a quip. It mightn't help, but it will give your obituary readers a smile.'

‘None of us will have obituary readers,' Kipling said. ‘Nor obituary writers. Not unless we manage to do something about the horror that is unfolding.'

BOOK: Extraordinaires 1
10.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith
The Garden of Burning Sand by Corban Addison
Bad Catholics by James Green
The New Breadmakers by Margaret Thomson Davis
A Gift of Gracias by Julia Alvarez