The Custodian of Marvels (33 page)

Lara stood her ground.

“It won’t work,” said Jeremiah. “You can see the depth of metal before you even reach the keyhole. If you set off enough black powder to crack it, you’d bring the whole Patent Court down on our heads!”

“There must be a way!”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“We’ll die here if we can’t get to him!”

“Then we’ve lost.”

Yan returned along the passage, a cluster of guns strung over one shoulder and four of the cartridge boxes balanced between his hands and chin. “They’ve cut through another door,” he said, unloading. “There’s time for one more trip. After that we’ll have to lock ourselves out from the hall of guns. Help me, won’t you?”

He made off without waiting for an answer.

I looked at Jeremiah, slouched on the floor, then at the guillotine lock. It was a diabolical device. The skill of the locksmith, all the years of training, all that put at risk if he would even reach towards the keyhole.

I turned to the others and said, “Go and help Yan.”

“I thought there wasn’t going to be any shooting,” said Fabulo.

“Do it. Please.” Then I bent to his ear and whispered, “Buy me a minute alone with our locksmith.”

Fabulo met my eyes. A second passed before he nodded. Then he snapped his fingers. “You heard the lady. We’ve work to do!”

Once they were gone, I stepped across to sit next to Jeremiah. He looked at me. I saw a broken man.

“Have you proved yourself?” I asked.

“Proved?”

“Have you picked the secret locks of this place?”

“You know I haven’t! The dwarf wouldn’t let me. First there was your cursed machine. Then we had keys.”

“But not the key to this lock?”

He shook his head. “The hole’s too small for any of them.”

“So you’ll never know the answer. The examination they failed you on – was it fixed or was it not?”

“You want me to reach into a trap?”

“Yes. But that’s not the important thing. All that matters is that
you
want to do it.”

He held out his hands. “These are everything I have.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to tell me I’m going to the gallows anyway, so it’s worth the risk.”

“They won’t hang us,” I said. “They’ll shoot us here. Unless we can get through that door and take the Custodian hostage.”

“I’d rather die with my hands than live without them. I know that won’t make sense to you.”

“It makes perfect sense. Your hands are who you are.”

“So how could I do it?”

“Because it might not be so bad dying if you knew you were the finest locksmith of the age.”

“If I could pick that lock, I’d be one of the finest, for sure.”

“You’d be better than the Grand Master,” I said.

“How?”

“Did you never wonder how it is he’s got a metal hand?”

Jeremiah didn’t answer. He stared at the guillotine lock. A shiver passed through his body. It was as if two great forces pushed him, one towards it and one away. He lurched forwards onto hands and knees and crawled. He peered inside the hole, then covered his eyes with his hands like a frightened child.

“Imagine it’s done,” I said. “How would you feel?”

“Like the greatest locksmith of the age,” he said, his words barely a whisper. Then he unrolled the bundle of picks on the floor.

CHAPTER 30

1.10am

It is sweet and fitting to live for your art. But die for it and you will be remembered forever.

The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook

The last load brought it to fourteen boxes of cartridges and seven guns. The noise of the machine cutter had stopped some minutes before and then resumed louder and closer.

From where I sat, there were but three paces to the guillotine lock, before which Jeremiah was laying out his tools, and twenty paces back down the passage to the last of the doors he had opened for us. That would be our final line of defence. Yan had wedged it a foot open and tied his jacket across the gap by its sleeves so that it formed a half-curtain. It would not stop a bullet, but it would make it harder for them to aim.

Fabulo and Tinker came running back along the passage. Yan lifted the jacket and they edged through underneath.

“That’s another door breached,” said Fabulo. “Two more and they’ll be in our sights.”

Jeremiah shot back a fiery glare. “Will you keep quiet, Mr Dwarf? I’m trying to work!”

Fabulo seemed ready to shout something in return, but caught my warning glance and retreated to where Yan was getting the others to practise loading and unloading.

Jeremiah laid down his jacket and rolled his shirt sleeves high. He selected a torsion bar and a simple hook-ended pick, then stood facing the door, adjusting the spread of his legs, bringing himself an inch lower, aligning his arms with the hole. I saw now how unnatural his body position must be to reach inside the guillotine lock. He brought his elbows close together, paused for a second, then eased his hands into the hole, shuffling his feet forwards, bringing his face close to its reflection.

He closed his eyes and his body became still. His breathing slowed until I could no longer see it. His forehead was glistening under the ceiling lights. A drop of sweat broke free and ran down the side of his face.

The machine cutter had stopped again. I’d been so focused on Jeremiah that I hadn’t noticed the moment it happened. The others were no longer loading and unloading. They stood, holding their guns still, listening. I forced myself to breathe and focused on the locksmith. Though his body seemed frozen, there was a slight rippling under the skin of his forearm, betraying the shifting of muscles.

A metallic scream sliced through the stillness. The machine cutter had started again. I clenched my teeth against the noise. Jeremiah pulled back from the lock and stumbled away from the mirror. Dark patches of sweat showed under his arms and at the top of his chest.

“I can’t do it!” he shouted.

Flinging down his tools, he stormed away and grabbed the gun from Tinker’s hands. I leapt up to follow. For a heartbeat, I thought he was going to try to use it on himself, but he took aim over the tied jacket and fired down the passage. Sparks flew from the door up the other end. But, as the ringing in my ears began to subside, the sparks grew more intense, becoming a fountain.

The machine had cut through.

Ellie fired next, then Lara, each report so loud it felt like a slap across the ears. Fabulo waved his arms. His mouth opened and closed.

Spent cartridges jumped free from the guns and all were reloading. Lara fumbled and dropped her bullet.

Then Fabulo’s words reached me through the whistling of tinnitus. “Stop firing! Stop firing!”

Ellie looked around, wide eyed, as if startled by her own actions.

“There’ll be time enough for shooting once they’re through,” said Yan.

“Please don’t,” I said.

“And why not?”

“It’ll make no difference in the end. Except more will be dead.”

“We’ll be dead anyway,” he growled. “I’m not waiting for the gallows. I’m not going alone!”

The air in the passage smelled acrid and sulphurous. I walked back to the mirrored door and rested my forehead against its cold metal, wondering how much the Custodian would have heard. He might be standing on the other side, his ear pressed to the metal. Though that would put him within touching distance, he may as well have been a thousand miles away.

I’d known this would be the end, most likely. It wasn’t so long ago that I’d flung myself at death’s feet. But the memory felt alien, as if I had been a different person. Now I wanted to live. And, more than that, I wanted to save the others from harm.

“Here we are then,” said Fabulo, his voice quiet and close.

“If only I could save Tinker,” I said.

He leaned his back against the door and sighed. “Sorry about that.”

The others were huddled around Yan’s flimsy barricade, too far away to hear our conversation.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I’ve lived again in the last few weeks. I mean, really lived, like I haven’t for a long time. You gave me that.”

But he shook his head. “It’s been a selfish thing I’ve done.”

“We were all of us selfish. It’s just we were all after different things. Different goals.”

“But I never told you mine,” he said. “Not really. This was Harry’s plan. It was all I had left of him. So I couldn’t give it up.”

“You
did
tell me that.”

“But I didn’t say the other thing. Somehow I can’t tell the rest of them. But I want you to know that I loved Harry.”

Way back when Fabulo first approached me with his plan, I’d thought it was madness speaking. Then later, when I saw that it
could
be done, I’d put that notion aside and tried to understand what was driving him. I’d never found the answer. But, by that time, I’d become caught up in the excitement of it all and his motivation seemed unimportant.

I’d understood the motives of everyone else. Jeremiah was in the tunnels, trying to regain his self-esteem by breaking locks that no one else in the world could break. I’d set out to take hold of the reins of my own destiny. Tinker was here because he wanted to belong, and I was the person he’d chosen. Lara and Ellie and Yan were a home for each other, and together they’d judged the spoils worth the risk.

But Fabulo himself – I now saw
had
been mad all along. It was the first and deepest of all madness.

“Did he love you too?” I asked.

Fabulo nodded. “He used to say it was only because his eyes were shot that he could feel that way. Pug ugly, he used to call me. But that was never the truth of it. I think it’s ‘coz he’d spent all those years looking at conjuring tricks and seeing past the obvious to what was happening underneath. When he looked at me – even that first time – he didn’t see what everyone else saw.”

I felt a twinge of guilt. It had taken me too long to get past the simple illusion of his stature.

“I think maybe Tania sensed it, but only because she was a fortune teller. The rest of them never knew. It was easy enough to hide – what with Harry keeping himself locked away in that wagon. We could be together there with no one else to see it.

“There’s a story Harry picked up on his travels out east somewhere. It’s about this man who gets down on the ground outside his house and starts sifting the dust. A friend comes over to ask what’s happening. I lost my ring, says the man. It’s gold and it’s got a ruby, big as a cherry on it. So the friend gets down in the dirt to help. But after an hour they haven’t found it and the sun’s getting hot. So the friend asks if he’s sure he lost the ring just there. The man shakes his head. No, he says. I lost it in my house. But the light inside is too bad for me to search.”

“That’s a good story,” I said.

“Harry liked it. But then he was always searching for things. I liked it because he did. But now here I am, trapped under this damn building. And the truth is, it’s him I’m looking for. We both know I’m not going to find him. But if I stopped looking it would be like saying I’d never be with him again. Even though this is the most crazy place in the whole Gas-Lit Empire to be. And it’s going to get us killed. It was his plan and that’s all I’ve got left of him. I’d rather be here searching than be anywhere else without hope.”

“And the light’s better down here,” I said, pointing to the ceiling.

“Exactly! Do you think Harry told me that story so many times so I’d remember it after he was gone – so I’d understand?”

“No. I think he told it because it’s a good story. If he were here now, what do you think he’d say?”

“He’d tell us to stop moping and find a way out.”

“I think you’re right.”

Jeremiah at first refused to return to the guillotine lock. I took one of his doughy hands and eased him forwards until we were standing before it.

“I need you to try,” I said.

“To pick a lock, you… you put your mind inside it. But all I’m thinking about… All I can think about… it’s those blades.”

“We’ll all die if you don’t.”

“I know it. But I can’t put my hands back in there… unless…” His reflection met my eyes. “Unless… you could… end me. Shoot me clean if I spring the trap.”

I remembered holding the knife to the duke’s throat, being unable to kill him. “We can get Yan to do it,” I said.

“No.”

“But I’m not a killer.”

“It’s mercy, not murder. In
that
I trust you more than any of the others. Yan could do it. But he might not.”

My feet felt heavy as I walked back to the guns. I took one and loaded it. The trapdoor in the barrel snapped shut over the cartridge.

“Promise me,” whispered Jeremiah, when I was close enough to hear. “A clean shot. And quick. I don’t want time to know what’s happened.”

“I promise,” I said.

“With this lock, I’ll only get one chance. One way or the other it’s not going to take long.”

He took up his tools and positioned himself as before, his wrists together as if they were bound. He edged forward and they disappeared inside the mouth of the guillotine. Adjusting my stance, I raised the gun. He watched me in the mirror. Only when I’d aimed at the back of his head did he close his eyes.

Then the scream of the metal cutter stopped. There was a moment of terrible silence followed by the harsh clang of the lock smashed with a hammer.

I braced myself, forcing my focus to stay on Jeremiah.

At the other end of the passage, a piece of metal clanged to the floor. Then the shooting started. Five shots from close behind me. I couldn’t hear the reloading. I would be deaf to the snap of the guillotine lock if it sprang.

Then came the reply from the other end of the passage. A stream of bullets smashing into the door. Not sporadic as ours had been, but a drumbeat, perfectly regular, inhumanly rapid, followed by silence and then another burst.

A scream of pain whispered through my deafness. It was one of the women. I couldn’t turn to see who. A fog of gun smoke seethed in the gap between my gun barrel and Jeremiah’s head. I forced myself to focus on the muscles of his arm.