The Phenomenals: A Tangle of Traitors (6 page)

Vincent had not forgotten the silver chain around Kamptulicon’s neck or the lumps under the fingers of his glove, rings with large stones if he was not mistaken.

Time to find out a little more about Mr Leopold Kamptulicon, he decided.

He set off for Chicanery Lane, but it was not easy to blend in with the other pedestrians. Normally he would keep close to the walls but this proved impossible, mainly because of the amber
touchstones. It also became quickly apparent to him that Degringoladians avoided stepping on cracks in the pavement. All this haphazard movement came as second nature to them, but Vincent succeeded
only in drawing unwanted attention to himself by bumping into people. Eventually, concentrating hard, he achieved a sort of synchronized gait with the nimble pedestrians. He even began to touch his
left shoulder intermittently, in order to blend in further.

Chicanery Lane was reached via a series of ever-narrowing streets leading off a main road that ran south from Mercator Square. Kamptulicon’s shop was situated about halfway down the lane,
indicated by a sign in the shape of a lantern projecting from the wall.

The street was not well lit, the lamp posts were spaced far apart and the light cast was too poor to properly illuminate the lane. The acrid smell that pervaded the city was
stronger here. And of course there was still that constant wailing.

‘I suppose that’ll be our friendly Lurids,’ Vincent said to himself, laughing.

The area was grimly unattractive and the ongoing festival was not much in evidence. Here and there people had made half-hearted attempts to hang bunting between the lights, but already it was
trailing on the ground. Vincent saw that each lamp post had a large oval badge screwed to it, stamped with the letters ‘LDTC’ – Leucer d’Avidus Tar Company, he guessed.

Vincent peered cautiously through one side of the shop’s bow window. On a tiered display within was an assortment of lights of all sizes and shapes – brass lamps, glass lamps,
hurricane lamps, candles, candle holders, candle snuffers, rope wicks and plaited wicks, glass globes, frosted globes and etched shades. On the highest tier of the display there were cans of tar,
varying in price according to size and quality, but all stamped with the increasingly familiar LDTC logo.

The display was dusty. Cobwebs stretched from handle to handle to spout to wick and back again, like a collection of little hammocks.

Perhaps Kamptulicon has other pursuits to keep him busy, wondered Vincent presciently. The blind was down, the sign turned to ‘closed’. The interior was unlit and when he tried the
door it was locked. Leopold Kamptulicon was not expecting customers.

Vincent knocked and waited. Neither sound nor movement came from within the shop. He stepped on to the window ledge and reached up to the semicircular fanlight above the door. Sometimes these
windows were neglected and came loose, but this was tightly shut. Undeterred, he set about examining the door. There were three locks.

‘Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,’ he mused. ‘What can this Mr Kamptulicon have to hide that requires such cautious security? Shame he didn’t reckon on Vincent Verdigris
coming to town.’

Vincent opened the pouch of treen on his belt and pulled out two long, narrow pins. He knelt in the shelter of the porch, inserted the pins into each lock and listened with satisfaction as they
released one by one. Once inside the shop he locked the door behind him, but unhooked the window arm above, leaving it just loose enough to open from the outside. He noticed a three-legged frog
over the door.

‘Another believer,’ he murmured. ‘Now, Leopold, show me your secrets.’

By the glow of his smitelight Vincent could see no reason to think he was in anything other than a light shop. The counter was tidy, if dusty, with a stack of wrapping paper held down by a
chunky paperweight. Scattered about the counter were small tins of Fulger’s Firestrikes – ignitable sticklets used for lighting fires – and on a shelf behind the counter were more
cans of tar. Vincent oathed softly. He wasn’t used to coming away from a place empty-handed. He pocketed a couple of tins of firestrikes, just because they were there, and rounded the counter
to take some tar. In doing so he tripped on the dog-eared corner of a rug. The rug folded over on itself, exposing a metal trapdoor.

Much heartened by the discovery, Vincent pulled on the ring handle but the trapdoor didn’t budge. He looked for hinges – they could be unscrewed – or a padlock, but there was
neither, only an irregular-shaped shallow hole stamped into the metal. He sat back on his heels for a minute, thinking. Something in his pocket was digging uncomfortably into his leg.
Wenceslas’s acorn. He fished it out but to his surprise it was snatched straight from his hand as if by an invisible force and stuck fast to the trapdoor with a loud click. Of course! It was
a magnetic lock, which could only be opened by the corresponding magnetic key.

Vincent hoped that Kamptulicon had not taken the key with him but guessed that it would be hidden nearby. He prised off the acorn and pocketed it thoughtfully, then straightened and looked
around. The paperweight on the counter stared back at him. I wonder . . . he thought. Hidden in plain sight?

He took the paperweight and placed it in the shallow hole of the metal plate. It fitted perfectly. He gripped it firmly and turned it clockwise. There was a very soft scraping sound and the
trapdoor eased, as if the pressure was off. Vincent pulled on the handle again and this time the trapdoor opened noiselessly. He shone his smitelight into the opening and saw a set of stone
steps.

Cautiously Vincent descended, his ears alert to every sound, excited but unafraid. He left the trapdoor open; he did not intend to be down there for very long.

The darkness was such that the smitelight revealed the space no more than a foot or two ahead before blackness closed in. The staircase proved to be precipitously steep and the stone steps so
perilously narrow that he had to go down sideways one step at a time. The air was cool and smelled strongly of damp. Vincent could hear his every breath. His heartbeat pulsated through his fingers
as they walked their way along the wall.

‘Spletivus!’ he whispered. ‘I must be a hundred feet below the city by now!’ In fact it was not quite that deep, but darkness has a habit of exaggerating reality.

Finally he reached the last stair and stepped off into a narrow passageway with craggy walls and an uneven floor and low ceiling. He moved ahead haltingly, expecting at any moment to plunge into
a yawning chasm or to smack his head on some rocky protrusion. The tunnel led him on, inexorably, towards . . . towards what? He did not know. He turned a corner and sensed rather than saw that the
tunnel had widened out into a chamber. In trepidation about what it might reveal, he held his smitelight above his head. His jaw dropped open and he oathed involuntarily.

The chamber walls were shelved from floor to ceiling, and every shelf without exception bowed under the weight of the most fabulous thaumaturgic paraphernalia. Vincent blinked hard. He had a
sudden flashback, of his father at his bedside, telling him the tale of a man of magic who lived in an underground room. This chamber could have been that very room. But that was a bedtime story;
this was real. Vincent had seen all manner of oddities in his thieving career; he had uncovered people’s darkest secrets, the ones they kept locked in cupboards and pushed to the back of
drawers, but none of them could possibly come close to what he could see now.

Slowly he turned on the spot. He saw bottles and bell jars and demijohns, their contents grotesque. He saw animal bones and grinning goat skulls, foul-smelling fungi and pungent herbs, dried
leathery wings and peacock feathers, rare objects of beauty in a place of frightful sortilege. This was not the workshop of a merciful diviner or benevolent astrologer; this was the secret lair of
someone who engaged in troublesome devilry. And not just that – set away from the table was a chair, bolted to the floor, with leather straps on the arms and legs and on the headrest. Its
purpose was not difficult to discern: the practice of torture.

After the initial shock of the find Vincent’s innate sense of self-preservation took over and he sprang into action. He lit a lamp and began to rummage through the contents of a large
table. Its surface was practically hidden, covered as it was with an abundant array of instruments and disturbing appurtenances, some of which caused him to recoil; others he held up and regarded
with morbid interest. A short, stout metal cylinder with thin pipes spiralled tightly around the outside caught his eye. It looked a little like a tavern tankard, with a handle on the side. The
lidded end was rounded, the other end flat. It was very cold to the touch and was stamped with a manufacturer’s trademark. He dropped it into one of the larger pockets of his coat, another
visit to the Caveat Emptorium in mind.

As he rummaged, his practised, searching hand unearthed a very small book that was concealed beneath several layers of curious objects. It was written in what he took to be Latin, and not
knowing the language he was about to put it back, when on second thoughts he put his foot up on to the table and reached down to the thick heel of his boot. The heel swung out to reveal a hidden
compartment he had crafted himself. He pushed the book into the space. It just fitted.

Satisfied that he had taken all that was useful or valuable, Vincent put out the lamp and shone his smitelight around the room one last time. It was then he saw the rectangular cabinet sitting
in the shadows against the far wall. It was made of black metal and was humming softly. There was a handle on the front. Vincent went over and pulled on the handle. The door was heavier than he
expected and when it opened there was a soft hiss and an outrush of cold air. The interior was cold to the touch, there were ice crystals on all the inner walls, but the cabinet itself was empty.
Vincent shivered and closed the door. Then, coat pockets bulging once again with his spoils, he retraced his steps up the tunnel.

What Vincent did not know was that if a trapdoor opens soundlessly one way, then it most probably closes soundlessly the other. And it did, merely moments after he had gone through it, the
magnetic lock sliding back into place. To further compound Vincent’s plight, two large barrels of tar were rolled on to the trap door, the noise dulled by the rug.

If only Vincent had arrived a couple of minutes later this would not have happened, but chance is a two-way street. Unfortunately for him, Vincent reached the shop only moments after Leopold
Kamptulicon had left for the Tar Pit. Although the lamp vendor was out of sight, he was still within earshot. He heard Vincent’s knock, went back to investigate and watched the boy break in.
He was most surprised, and put out, when he realized that this brazen intruder had discovered both the trapdoor and the secret of the lock. As soon as Vincent went down the steps Kamptulicon
slipped back into the shop, closed and secured the trapdoor and reseated the window arm. Then he set off once more on his Lurid business and his unwitting meeting with Folly.

Nobody took advantage of Leopold Kamptulicon and got away with it.

In another part of Degringolade, far away from the luxury of the Capodel Townhouse – where Citrine was mulling over Florian Quince’s recent revelations – but
close to the underground chamber where Vincent was unwittingly trapped, Edgar Capodel shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other beside his Phaeton and blew loudly on his cold, soft hands. He
didn’t like this part of Degringolade.

‘Domne, but hurry up,’ he urged into the night.

As if in answer to his plea, a polished Troika drawn by three black horses pulled up on the other side of the road. Edgar ran over to it – the carriage door opened and the steps were let
down.

‘Thank the Lord you’re here, sir,’ he said as he climbed in.

‘And good evening to you too, Edgar,’ replied a smooth voice from the tenebrous interior. The carriage lights were low and the man sitting opposite Edgar was a mere shadow.
‘Would you care for some Grainwine?’ he asked, taking an elegant bottle of transparent liquid and two glasses from a small cabinet built into the back of his seat. ‘You see, I
have put your idea to good use.’ The cold air within the cabinet rolled out and the atmosphere in the carriage became distinctly cooler.

Edgar nodded.

‘You seem troubled,’ said the man.

‘I am!’ replied Edgar, and gulped down a mouthful of the chilled yet burning liquid. ‘It’s Florian Quince, sir, the interfering old maggot. He says he has some of these
“Depictions” and that they prove I was at the Bonchance Club drinking and gambling.’

‘And this means what?’ enquired the other man.

Edgar hesitated. ‘There’s a condition in the will. I cannot inherit for five years.’

The silence was brief but meaningful. ‘Then we need a new will. What about the Capodel Manufactory? Are you still in charge?’