Obsidian Mirror (23 page)

“We come on a nark’s word.”

“Nark?”

“Grass. Informer.”

Jake frowned. Symmes had set up the raid, he would have been ready. He’d have already taken the mirror in the cab. He turned quickly, past the peeler. “I have to find him!”

“Ah now sir, you can’t just…”

But Jake was already out in the dingy courtyard. The rattle of hooves made him turn; he saw the quick
glimpse of a cab rattle past the archway; saw in the flash of the gaslight a plump, rather smug-looking man settling down inside.

Jake raced after the cab. Bursting out into the street, he saw it swallowed by fog. He took two steps after it and crashed into a small shape that burst from the alley and grabbed him to stop itself falling.

He looked down and saw the dirtiest child he had ever imagined. The girl wore a ragged blue dress over trousers and worn boots. She screeched, “Let me go!”

He dropped her, but the cab had gone; the fog was a silent, greasy swirl. He swore. Then he said, “Listen kid, what year is this?”

The girl stared. Her eyes widened. “You from the Bedlam, mister?”

He pulled out the two-pence coin and tossed it; she caught it, bit it, and pocketed it in one smooth move. “Foreign tin and no good.” She grinned. “But as I like yer face, I’ll tell you. It’s 1848.”

Two years.

Wrong raid. Symmes had had the mirror for two years. Jake swore again.

He said, “I don’t have much time. You live here?”

She shrugged.

“Two years ago a man came here. A gentleman.”

She rolled her eyes. “They all do.”

“Not for opium. He came to buy a mirror. There was
someone in the back room, a man with a scar on his face…” He groped after the name. “Maskelyne. Do you know him?”

For a moment intelligence flashed into and out of her face. Then a yell from the den made her twist.

“I knows him. And I knows them as robbed you.” She sounded breathless. “As took yer siller. Bail me and I’ll take you to ’em.”

For a moment he thought she was speaking some foreign language. Then a peeler came out of the door and said, “You! Girl! Come ’ere.”

The girl snatched Jake’s hand.
“Bail me.”

The peeler came over and grabbed her. “With me, you.” He dragged her away; she screamed, tugging and struggling, a small thin whine of woe that set Jake’s teeth on edge. He shook his head.

“Siller? What’s siller?”

Did she mean…
silver?

With a sudden terrified jerk he whipped up his sleeve, and stared.

The only thing around his wrist was a bare white ring in the flesh.

The snake bracelet was gone.

A small yellow flame cracked and flickered in the darkness and Piers’s high voice said, “Don’t anybody move. I don’t want any injuries. Or accidents.”

The flame moved jerkily across the blackness of the hall; Wharton heard noises of opening, and then the click of a powerful flashlight beam swept his face. He had a nightmare glimpse of a slot of dark room with Sarah standing in it before Piers focused the beam on the generator.

“This is our emergency supply. If everything’s in order, we should get…”

Light.

A faint, flickery crackle as the overhead lights came back on, the generator erupting into an efficient hum.

Then it went off, just as abruptly.

Piers groaned and tried again. Nothing. “I loathe machines,” he hissed.

Wharton took the flashlight and turned it on the mirror, black and enigmatic in its silver frame. Sarah came and stared into it, and her reflection turned Wharton cold.

She looked devastated.

He hurried across. Rebecca, just a voice behind him, said, “But where’s Jake? What happened?”

“Are you all right?” Wharton caught Sarah’s elbow and drew her gently back.

She shook her head. Near the glass the air was charged; it felt as if a great surge of power had somehow drained it; and Sarah too. As Wharton held her arm she staggered; he grabbed her and said, “Fetch a chair, quickly.”

Rebecca dragged one over.

“I don’t want a chair.” She wished the shaking in her fingers would stop—no wonder he thought she was scared. How was he to know it was dismay and sheer fury. Jake—Jake!—had
journeyed.

“This girl is in shock.” Wharton swung accusingly to Piers. “And I have to say so am I. What has happened to Jake and Venn? Have we lost them too?”

Piers had lit a candle and was studying the controls. He seemed calm, but Wharton could see the faint sweat on his lip.

“How am I supposed to know! You’re the teacher, mortal!” He took a breath. “Okay. They both seem to have entered the mirror, apparently only one-fiftieth of a second apart, though only Jake wore the snake. I don’t know what that will mean. They could come back at any moment. Or not for hours.”

Or never,
Wharton thought, catching the panic under the forced control. He drew himself upright. “Then I’m taking charge. Listen to me now. We need to re-group. Split up and work together.”

In the slant of the flashlight beam he caught Rebecca’s giggle.

“Well, you know what I mean. We have two emergencies here. This intruder. He seems to have disabled the lights. How?”

“The mains supply comes down under the drive.
There’s a control box in the stable block.” Piers shook his head. “I’ll need to get over there and work on it. But after I’m gone, you must make sure every window and door is firmly locked.” He glanced at Sarah.

Wharton said, “Is this intruder anything to do with you?”

She wanted to tell him. But then: “We know who it is.” Piers came over, wiping his hands on his coat. “He’s been spying on the place for a while. We call him the scarred man. Venn thinks…well, you’ve read the journal, Sarah. You’ve read about Maskelyne…”

Rebecca, turned, restless. “Look, it doesn’t matter who he is, he could be forcing his way in right now. You should have seen that huge white wolf. It was terrifying. Let’s lock this place down!”

Wharton nodded. “Okay. You’re with me. Sarah, stay with Piers. No one is to be on their own.”

He hurried out, and Rebecca, after another glance at the mirror, ran after him.

Sarah reached out toward the obsidian surface, and touched its solidity with her hands. “So where did they go, Piers?” she said quietly.

He shrugged. “Somewhere near where the mirror is. David told us that he did not actually emerge from it, but it was within a mile or so from his arrival point. They have to find it.”

But his voice was uncertain.

As she turned, a flicker of eyes caught hers, a green glimmer in the mirror.

She gasped. “Who’s that?”

Piers grabbed a crowbar. “Where?”

At first she thought it was one of the cats. Then she reached into the shadows and drew him out. He slid into the candlelight as if he had materialized out of air, a green-eyed boy in a ragged frockcoat, watching her with the wary stare of a trapped deer.

The boy from the Wood.

Gideon said slyly, “Don’t you know me, Piers?”

Sarah saw Piers’s eyes widen in disbelief and then raw fear. “You! How did you get into the house?” He whirled, flashing the flashlight into all the dim corners. “Are they here? Is Summer here?”

Gideon smiled. “Stay calm, little man. It’s just me.”

His eyes moved to Sarah’s. “After an eternity in the greenwood, I finally got inside.”

“Wait!” Jake came forward and grabbed the peeler’s arm. “There’s no need for this. The kid’s…the child is perfectly harmless.”

His heart was thumping. Terror froze him. Without the bracelet, he was trapped here forever. He would have to live out his life in this stinking century and never see his father again.

The girl watched him through her thatch of dark hair. Her eyes glinted with sly triumph.

“Er, allow me to…” Jake’s hand scrabbled in his empty pockets. A single pound coin remained; he pulled it out and held it up, so that it glittered in the gaslight. “Allow me to recompense you for your troubles, my man. And leave the child out of this.”

He sounded like a bad actor in a worse period drama, but that was all he knew of the past, all anyone could ever know, the thousand clichés of film and TV. All the history lessons in the world couldn’t help him now.

The coin gleamed.

The peeler said, “Well…mebbes I could.” His eyes on the coin.

Jake threw it.

It flashed through the dark. The man let the girl go and grabbed for it; instantly she ran, past Jake, so that he had to yell and twist after her, over the slippery cobbles of the yard, under the arch into a street ripe with the refuse of the dark houses that overhung it.

She was fast and fleet as a rat, and he was still aching from the
journey,
but he caught her at the corner and flung her around.

“Wait, you little brat.” Breathless, he held her off as she kicked and tried to bite. Then he held her in a firm arm-lock. She screamed.

“Will you be quiet!” Jake looked around nervously. The fog masked the houses’ deep doorways. “Quiet! You said you saw them. The men that robbed me. I paid for your freedom. You owe me!”

She stopped struggling and stared at him. Then she said, “Leave off.”

He let her go.

She looked up at him through her hair, poised to run. “You don’t ’arf talk rum.”

“So do you. What’s your name?”

“Moll.”

He grinned. “I’m Jake. Moll, I need to find these men and I need to find them now.”

Behind them in the fog, a whistle blew. The girl gave a quick glance and said, “Not here, mister. Too many rozzers. We’ll go to Skimble’s.”

Before he could argue, she was gone, running into the fog, and he had to follow, clutching at the pain in his side.

Down dim streets lined with runnels of flowing sewage, through labyrinths of dark alleys the girl led him, and he followed, deeper into the warren that was London’s squalid heart, totally lost among the courtyards and warehouses, the occasional flaring naphtha light of a late shop or a tavern where shrieks and shouts echoed. Cabs clattered by him, dark figures in cloaks and tall hats, women with painted faces called at him
from doorways. Every wall was a patchwork of peeling advertisements.

Moll slowed to a walk, darted down a passageway between two derelict buildings and clattered down some steps behind a rusty railing.

“Wait,” Jake said, uneasy. “Why here?”

“Because this is it, mister.” She pushed at a warped dark door until it opened.

Jake stopped.

She caught his arm, impatient. “Don’t be frit. It’s just Skimble’s.”

She pushed through into a corridor and he followed, wary. The corridor was dark, running with damp. Once it had been ornate though, because above him were odd swirls of gilt paint, a ragged swathe of scarlet curtain, tied with a fat tassel of silk.

“What is this place?”

She shrugged. “A doss. A night pad.”

He had no idea what she meant. And then, as they came to the end of the corridor, she ducked under a broken barricade of what looked like smashed-up chairs and led him into a sudden emptiness of tilted palaces and crumbling, painted paper mountains.

They stood on a wide stage and before them ancient seats soared in tiered glory into the ceiling.

“Skimble’s,” she said.