The Fire Chronicle (17 page)

“Y-yes.”

“The Dire Magnus must not have it! Promise me. Promise me!”

“I … promise.”

“You will be its Keeper! Katherine foresaw this! You understand? Do you understand?”

Michael nodded, but he felt panic grip him, and he suddenly
knew that he wasn’t ready. Why had he pretended he was? He tried to say this, but his throat was dry and the words wouldn’t come.

Emma was shouting, pointing down the canal.

The wizard turned. “Thank goodness, he saw my signal.”

Michael could hear it now, an engine, growing louder. And he saw a floatplane skimming along the canal, its pontoons cutting large Vs in the still water. It was passing under a bridge and would be even with them in seconds.

“Once you land in the water—listen to me, Michael—once you land in the water, hold to your sister tightly. They will only have one chance to pick you up.”

“You—you’re coming too,” he managed.

“No. Someone must stay. Rourke knows about the grave. We cannot risk him learning the location of the
Chronicle
. I am the only one who can slow him down. I can buy you time you need.”

“But I—”

“I know what you’re afraid of. Trust Emma. Trust yourself. You have a good heart. Let it guide you.”

“But you can’t—”

“He is coming. Go now.”

And Michael could see the bald man stepping up onto the roof.

“Now you have to jump! Go!”

He pushed Michael toward Emma. Michael seized his sister’s hand.

“We have to jump!”

“What about Dr. Pym?”

“He’s not coming!”

Before she could argue, Michael clenched her hand tighter and—remembering to take off his glasses and slip them in his bag—took three running steps and Emma had no choice but to jump.

They fell and fell and fell. Hitting the water was like striking concrete. Emma’s hand was ripped from his as Michael plunged deep underwater. He struggled upward with all his might, and as he broke the surface, he saw the propeller of the plane bearing down. Emma was a few feet away, looking bewildered and scared, and he swam to her, wrapping his arms tightly around her, and, at the last moment, the plane swerved, the propeller missing them, and Michael felt himself seized by iron hands, and he and Emma were lifted from the water and into the plane. Emma cried out, and Michael, still sprawled on the floor and struggling to breathe, saw her hugging Gabriel, Gabriel, who had pulled them in and who was now shouting to the pilot, and the plane was rising into the air, clearing a bridge by inches, and they climbed higher and banked, and Michael scrambled to put on his glasses and, through the open door, he saw on the roof two distant shapes, facing one another and outlined against the flames. Then the building teetered and collapsed, crumbling into the canal, and the plane, still rising, banked again, and Malpesa vanished behind them, and there was no sound save the engine and the rushing of the wind, and nothing to see but the darkness of the night sky, and Emma was hugging Michael and crying, “Oh, Michael, Dr. Pym … he … oh, Michael …”

“I say, Master Jake …”

“Yes, Master Beetles?”

“I do believe she’s finally waking up.”

Kate opened her eyes. She was once again lying on the floor, and, once again, two sets of eyes were fixed upon her. But the room she found herself in was a different one, and the two boys were not leaning over and inspecting her for signs of life; they regarded her from a pair of rickety wooden chairs, their feet propped up on crates and pushed close to a battered iron stove. Both boys were smoking pipes.

“How long have I been asleep?” Kate raised herself to a sitting position.

The one named Beetles removed his pipe and seemed to consider the question thoughtfully.

“How long would you say she’s been asleep, Master Jake? Five hours?”

“Oh, I’d venture six hours, Master Beetles.”

“Six? That many?”

“At the very least. I half suspected she was going to open a shop—”

“All right,” Kate said.

“Is that so?” Beetles grinned. “What sort of shop, Master Jake?”

“Why, one a’ those Sleepin’-on-the-Floor-All-Day-Gettin’-Nothing-Done sorts a’ shops, Master Beetles.”

Kate shook her head as the boys collapsed into laughter, Beetles making a great show of doffing his cap and bowing, evidently in deference to his friend’s wit. She took a moment to look around.

Pale winter light forced its way through a single dirt- and frost-scrummed window, illuminating a small, unremarkable room. There was little to behold apart from the stove, the overturned crates now serving as footstools, and the chairs the boys were sitting on. The room’s one notable aspect was that the walls and floor were constructed from large blocks of gray stone. Only the ceiling beams were wood.

Kate saw she had been laid on a folded blanket, and that another blanket had been placed over her bare feet. The gesture seemed oddly considerate. She was still wearing the wool overcoat she’d gotten in the Bowery, the one she’d acquired by trading the chain from her mother’s locket, and her hand now went into her pocket, seeking out and closing over the locket’s familiar
egg-like shape. She would have to find a new chain soon. She missed the weight of the locket around her neck, being able to reach up at any time and know it was there. She thought about the magic bazaar, and the witch who’d drugged her, and the two creatures who’d tried to carry her off. She thought about how she’d been saved by that other boy, Rafe, and she saw him again, leaping down from above—he’d known her, recognized her. But how was that possible? Who was he?

She glanced at Jake and Beetles. They were having a smoke-ring competition, though every time one blew a ring, the other would conveniently cough or leap up crying that something had bitten his backside, and in the process destroy his friend’s ring, until Kate realized that disrupting the other person’s smoke ring was the game.

They were having such a good time she couldn’t help but smile.

“You do know,” she said finally, “that smoking’s bad for you?”

The boys found this frankly hilarious.

“Listen to her, smoking’s bad!” guffawed Beetles. “Everyone knows a pipe’s about the best thing you can do for your body.”

“Best medicine in the world!” Jake agreed, and blew another ring.

“Smoking ain’t good for you! Har-har!”

“And look who’s telling us what’s good,” Jake said. “Didn’t we tell her not to go to that witch?”

“We did,” Beetles replied. “We told her and she done it anyway.”

“Fine,” Kate said. “Next time I’ll listen to you.”

“Good,” said Beetles. “ ’Cause we ain’t always gonna find Rafe in time to save you, right?”

“So, Rafe—is he the one who brought me here?”

“Yeah,” Beetles said. “You were passed out. He had to carry you the whole way.”

Kate thought about the blanket placed over her feet and wondered if that same fierce boy from the alley had been the one to do that.

“Where is he?”

“Well, well, well, ain’t this a nice change, Master Jake?” Beetles grinned broadly. “Suddenly, someone wants to see ol’ Rafe.”

“Sure. She’s in love with him, ain’t she?”

Kate felt a rush of heat across her face and was glad for the gloom and smoke.

“I want to thank him for saving my life.”

And, she thought, ask him how he knows me.

“He’s a busy man, Rafe is,” Beetles said. “He told us to make sure you don’t go running off.”

“Though that ain’t likely now’s you want to marry him,” Jake said.

“Nope. Not likely at all.”

“You should open a shop. The I-Wanna-Marry-Rafe-and-Have-a-Hundred-Babies Shop.”

Kate could sense when she was being baited and let the remark pass.

“So where am I?”

“You’re in the hideout, course!”

“What hideout?”

“What hideout?” Jake repeated. “Ours! The hideout a’ the most ruthless, most best gang in New York!”

“Best gang anywhere!” Beetles said.

“Yeah, best gang anywhere, that’s us! The Savages!”

The hideout—Kate had been laid in a back room—turned out to be an old, abandoned church. It must have been, at one time, a magnificent structure, for, on stepping into the long main hall, Kate was struck by the scale of the thing. Stone columns rose eighty feet to a vaulted ceiling. Many of the stained-glass windows had been broken and covered with boards, but those that remained filtered in green and red and yellow and blue light, in complex and beautiful patterns. There were lines of cots up and down the stone floor, and sheets hung up to cordon off areas, and Kate’s impression was that it looked like the dormitory of a large orphanage.

She saw perhaps twenty children, girls and boys, most around the age of Jake and Beetles. And as she and her two guides walked between the lines of cots, it struck Kate that the other children, despite being neither especially clean nor well dressed, all looked fed and happy. In their lives of going from orphanage to orphanage, Kate and her brother and sister had learned to read the mood of a place almost instantly. Was it happy, sad, desperate? Were the children or adults vicious or generous?

She knew right away that this was a good place.

In the center of the church, a group of girls and boys stood at a large table sorting through a pile of objects—watches, silk handkerchiefs, rings, necklaces, earrings, small ornamental boxes, fur
coats and wraps—while a boy with a ledger carefully wrote down what the other children called out.

“What is all that?” Kate asked.

“They’re doing the day’s take,” replied Beetles.

“What do you mean, the day’s take?”

“What was brought in by all the different teams. That’s a pretty good haul, that is.”

Kate realized what they were saying, what the huge pile of loot was—

“Wait, you’re—
thieves!
”

“That’s right,” Beetles said, proudly hooking his thumbs into his suspenders. “Best thieves in New York City.”

“Or Brooklyn,” Jake said.

“Or there,” Beetles said. “Though we never precisely been there.”

Kate knew that it was unreasonable of her to be angry with the children, but she couldn’t help herself. “So that’s your gang? You’re a gang of thieves?”

“Yep,” they said happily. “Everything we learned, Rafe taught us.”

“He’s the best, Rafe is,” Jake said.

“The very best,” Beetles affirmed.

“Great,” Kate said, biting her tongue, “that’s just great.”

After agreeing that it was indeed great, Jake and Beetles asked where to find Rafe and were told he was in the teaching room.

“What’s he teaching?” Kate asked. “How to pick pockets? How to break into houses?”

But the boys only laughed and led her away. The room was
down a hallway at the back of the church, was well lit, and had a wood floor and a large fireplace. When Kate and her companions entered, the boy called Rafe, the one who’d saved her in the alley, was stoking up the fire so that it blazed and crackled furiously. A dozen children, all of them younger than Jake and Beetles, sat on the floor, facing him. A thin-shouldered, nervous-looking girl stood at Rafe’s elbow.

There was an unlit candle, Kate saw, positioned close to the fire.

“You ready?” Rafe asked the girl.

She nodded, though she was clearly scared. None of the other children spoke or moved.

“What’s going on?” Kate whispered.

Beetles shushed her. “Watch.”

Rafe placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Go on then.”

And the girl reached out her small, trembling hand into the fire—

“No!”

Kate ran forward and yanked the girl back. She’d been fast enough: the girl wasn’t burned, and Kate hugged the startled child to her, as if afraid the boy might try and steal her away.

“What’re you doing?” she cried.

Rafe looked at her without expression.

“Heya, Rafe!” said Beetles brightly. He and Jake stood at the door. “We watched her just like you said.”

“She didn’t run off ’cause she’s in love with you,” Jake said.

“Obviously,” Kate said, “that’s not true.”

“Yeah.” The dark-haired boy turned to the children. “We’ll finish later.” The children, including the small girl, who had
squirmed out of Kate’s arms, hurried from the room. Rafe set the poker against the hearth. “The boss wants to talk to you.”

“Answer me—what were you doing to her?”

“Teaching her. Trying to.”

“What? How to get burned?”

The boy looked at her for a long second. Then he bent over and calmly placed his own hand directly into the fire. Kate gasped, but to her amazement, the boy’s hand didn’t burn. The skin remained unmarred. Then he reached out his other hand and touched the wick of the candle. It burst into flame.

The boy took his hand from the fire and touched Kate’s wrist. His skin was cool.

“I wouldn’t have let her get burned.”

He blew out the candle.

“Now come on, the boss is waiting.”

He led her to the bell tower, at the base of which a large iron bell lay on its side, its shell cracked open and the stone floor beneath it smashed to rubble. A wooden staircase curled upward along the wall.

Kate said, “Wait—”