Wild Boy and the Black Terror Page 9

  A rush of wind swept across the rooftop, swirling up snow and dislodging tiles. It carried Clarissa’s rage away with it, and she sat beside him on the roof.

  They huddled closer, enjoying the feeling of being together. From up here they could see across the patchwork of rooftops that spread towards the river. Factory chimneys protruded from the riverbank, belching brown smoke. In the other direction rose the tall, elegant architecture of Mayfair. Church towers jutted up here and there, their white stone streaked with dark grime.

  Wild Boy pictured Marcus as they’d last seen him. He wanted to tell Clarissa about the killer’s deal, but she wouldn’t think twice about accepting it. He had no idea what danger was involved in finding the next black diamond. And he knew Marcus wouldn’t want them do to it, not even to save him.

  Was there another way? His mind kept spinning. Pain pounded his skull. He couldn’t gather his thoughts.

  “What clues do we have so far?” Clarissa said. “The killer is collecting black diamonds. He stole one from the Queen and then from Lady Bentick. But why, and why’d he save me at Lady Bentick’s house and no one else?”

  Wild Boy had wondered about that. He sensed it might be an important clue. “You still got that note he gave you?”

  “Said to destroy it,” Clarissa said, “so I threw it on the fire as I left the dining room. I thought it was from you, remember. Ain’t we got nothing else?”

  Wild Boy slid two papers from his pocket – the Queen’s card and the page from the Encyclopaedia Demonica. He handed them to Clarissa and she read about Malphas, that screaming crow with those black eyes and barbed-wire teeth.

  “A demon,” she said. “Destroyer of cities.”

  “No,” Wild Boy said. “The killer’s crazy, thinks he’s working for a demon. But he’s a real person, all right.”

  “What did he say? Anything that can help us?”

  “I’m… I’m not sure.”

  She shifted closer, pressing against him. He felt her body tremble.

  “I’m scared, Wild Boy. We won’t make it on the streets, not us.”

  Somewhere across the roofs, a crow cawed. Wild Boy’s wound throbbed harder. He saw a flash of his nightmare – crows and a fairground field, a caravan and a showman.

  Clarissa was right. They wouldn’t make it on the streets. Not together.

  The crow called louder.

  “I… I was lying,” Wild Boy said. “I did hear the killer.”

  “What? What did he say?”

  “We gotta steal a black diamond.”

  15

  BOND STREET

  It seemed almost impossible that the squalour of the Rat’s Castle, where dead bodies were left where they fell, existed just a few streets away from this – the most exclusive road in the richest city in the world. Here were London’s poshest clothing boutiques selling mink muffs, fox-fur mantles and beaver-pelt opera hats. Footmen in powdered wigs stood like dusty statues by coaches that were decorated with crests of dukes and counts and viscounts and marquesses. Behind jewellery shop windows, breathtaking displays of gemstones reflected the midday sun in the colours of the rainbow.

  The sweep of shops was broken halfway along the street where one building stood detached from the others, and two floors taller. Plasterwork columns climbed its façade, and sculptures framed its tall windows: twisting stone wreaths and fat-cheeked cherubs blasting bugles. While the other buildings had been scrubbed of the green-black grime that encrusted most of London’s buildings, this one had been left to its mercy, so that the cherubs appeared as demons clinging to withered leaves.

  “That’s it,” Gideon said. “That’s Oberstein’s place.”

  Wild Boy had guessed as much. It was the only building here that matched the killer’s description. Dangerous.

  They watched from the roof across the street. Gideon had led them here by breaking into the shop below and sneaking up the service stairs. That had been the easy part of their plan. Now they had to get into Oberstein’s building, steal a black diamond and get out alive.

  It had no shop sign and nothing on display. The windows were hidden behind steel shutters. The only door, bolted and made of iron, looked as if it was designed to guard offenders at Newgate rather than greet the shoppers of Mayfair. Two burly guards stood by it; they had long leather coats and arms as thick as their necks.

  Clarissa stood beside Wild Boy, balancing on the edge of the roof. “You sure that’s Oberstein’s place? Don’t look like no jeweller.”

  “That’s because it ain’t like no jeweller,” Gideon replied. He lit his pipe, blew a cloud of smoke. “From what I’ve heard, Oberstein used to cut stones for the most powerful folk on the planet: kings and queens. Indian maharajas, Chinese emperors, even old Bonaparte himself. Every toff in the world wanted to be seen in that shop.”

  “So what happened?” Wild Boy asked.

  “No one knows. Around a decade back, the place just went dark. The shutters were closed and the door bolted. See them guards? Those are Swiss mercenaries. They make Lucien’s Black Hats look like toddlers.”

  Wild Boy wondered how Gideon knew so much about the guards’ military pasts. Then he remembered the tattoo on his arm, the army symbol.

  “What are they guarding?” Clarissa asked.

  “Can’t say,” Gideon said.

  “A black diamond?”

  “Can’t say that neither. All I know is stories. Some say the place is haunted, or rigged with traps. Hard to know what’s true. Place has become a legend among crooks. A spook story, bit like you two.”

  “We ain’t scared of traps,” Clarissa said. “Wild Boy can spot ’em a mile off.”

  Wild Boy wished he was so confident. The truth was, that building gave him the creeps. It seemed unreal. Every bit of ice and snow had melted from its ledges. Water trickled down the bricks, mingling with the grime and dripping darkness onto the pavement. A faint haze around the walls quaked the air.

  “Marcus spoke of a feller once,” Gideon said, drawing on his pipe. “A thief who tried to get into that building. Wanted to prove he was the best at his job. Marcus thought he was too.”

  “I know what you’re going to say,” Clarissa said. “He was never seen again, right?”

  “Oh no, he was. In lots of places. His head was found on top of St Paul’s Cathedral. Sawn off at the jaw.”

  Clarissa stepped back from the edge. “What… What about the rest of him?”

  “His arms were found in Notre Dame, in Paris, his legs outside a mosque in Constantinople, and the rest of him turned up in a temple in Calcutta, I think. Could just be a story though.”

  Wild Boy noticed some drivers whip their horses harder as they rode past Oberstein’s building, and how a few shoppers crossed the street rather than pass its shuttered windows. Had they heard the same stories as Gideon?

  “I ain’t so sure about this,” he muttered.

  Gideon grabbed his wrist. “You ain’t got a choice,” he growled. “If you don’t get that black diamond, Marcus dies. Ain’t no risk we won’t take.”

  He let go of Wild Boy’s arm. “Besides, what happens to you if he dies? Think about that, eh?”

  Wild Boy had thought of little else. That was what scared him. He knew he wasn’t doing this for Marcus. Marcus would never want them to help a killer. He was doing this for himself.

  “Let’s get on with it,” he said.

  Gideon dropped a canvas bag by Clarissa’s feet. For the first time, Clarissa didn’t scowl at him. She simply nodded, a begrudging acceptance that, for once, they were on the same side.

  “I’ll be ready in five minutes,” Gideon said, trudging back to the door to the service stairs. “You’d better be ready too.”

  Clarissa opened the bag. It was filled with items Gideon had brought from the palace – a rope, candles, a tinderbox and a pronged tool like four butcher’s hooks welded together.

  Clarissa tied the end of the rope to the tool’s base. “Grappling hook,” she said, sw
iping it through the air.

  Wild Boy searched her face for any hint of a smile. Usually Clarissa lived for this sort of thing, a chance to cause some trouble. But right then he saw nothing in her expression other than a fierce determination to save Marcus.

  He wished they could talk more, but there was no time. A wind was rising, whipping snow across the roofs. Clouds began to dapple the buildings in shade. Their plan relied on bright sunshine, to dazzle the guards. It had to happen now.

  He peered over the edge of the roof. Below, Gideon had begun to ride his carriage along the street. He yanked the reins with deliberately clumsy jerks and bellowed at the shoppers as if he was drunk.

  “Look out, toffs!” he yelled. “I’m coming through.”

  As he neared Oberstein’s building, he turned the horses. The carriage slammed against a lamp post, sending him tumbling from the seat to the pavement.

  That was the cue.

  “Now!” Wild Boy said.

  With a sweep of her arm, Clarissa sent the hook high into the air, carrying the rope across the street. It disappeared over the top of Oberstein’s building, from where they heard the gentle clink of it landing.

  She pulled the rope until the tool’s claws caught the parapet of Oberstein’s roof. Rushing back, she lashed the other end around a chimney stack, forming an uphill tightrope across the street.

  She jumped up and stood on the rope as easily as if it were a foot-wide beam. She strapped Gideon’s bag over her shoulder. “Ready,” she said.

  On the street, the guards shouted at Gideon and tried to pick him up. But he just grinned and rolled his eyes, acting too drunk to understand. The distraction was working. The guards hadn’t seen the tightrope.

  “Go!” Wild Boy said.

  Clarissa was already off, so fast she was almost running. Her silk dress shimmered as she raced up the sloping line.

  Wild Boy watched, holding his breath as if breathing might somehow knock her off balance. Clarissa vanished onto Oberstein’s roof and then reappeared holding the grappling tool. She hooked its claw onto her dress, fixing herself to the line, then swung her legs over the edge of the roof and climbed down. Her fingers dug into cracks in the stone while her boots sought footholds on the cherubs’ cheeks.

  A shout came from the street.

  Wild Boy’s breath finally came out in a stream of curses. One of the guards had seen the rope. The man charged across the road and into the building below.

  “We can still do it,” Wild Boy muttered, trying to convince himself. But he couldn’t help wondering if that was the guard that had sawed the thief’s body to bits.

  “Hurry, Clarissa…”

  She was going as fast as she could down the building, like a spider. The rope slackened with her descent, then grew tight again as she climbed to the windows on the next floor down. She hooked the grappling tool around the rivet where the shutter met the wall. Now the tightrope sloped downwards to the third-floor window.

  Clarissa forced the window open and climbed inside. She signalled to Wild Boy to follow.

  Wild Boy peered again over the edge of the roof. The ground rushed up at him and his knees turned to jelly. The stitches in his head began to throb again. He felt dizzy and weak.

  Footsteps stomped up the stairs. The guard would be here in moments.

  Crouching, he pulled off his coat and draped it over the rope. He had to jump and let it carry him, but his arms shook so hard that the whole line quivered.

  The guard stumbled onto the roof, coughing and wheezing. He saw Wild Boy and his face flushed an even deeper red. Veins bulged in his temples. He reached for a weapon in his coat.

  Wild Boy closed his eyes and jumped.

  He expected to start sliding, but instead he hung from the line. He filled the freezing air with more curses, wiggling his arms. “Come on,” he urged. “Come on!”

  The coat jerked and he began to slide. Cold air rushed at the hair on his face and chest. His shriek of fear turned into a cry of victory as he shot towards Oberstein’s building. “It’s working,” he yelled. “It’s bloomin’ working!”

  But now Clarissa’s face changed from a smile to a scream. She reached from the window, pointing to something across the street; something terrible.

  On the roof, the guard cut the rope.

  The line sagged, and for a second Wild Boy felt as if he was floating. Momentum carried him forward and he slammed against the wall. One hand scrabbled at the brickwork, hoping to hold on. The other gripped his coat tighter, praying it might still somehow save him, even as it slid from the rope.

  And then it did.

  Instead of falling he remained against the wall, dangling from the sleeve of his coat. Above, Clarissa clung onto the other sleeve. Her hair hung down and her freckles looked as if they might pop off her cheeks.

  She began to pull him up. “Stop screaming,” she grunted.

  Wild Boy hadn’t realized he was screaming, but now that he did he screamed even louder and didn’t stop until he had clambered through the window and tumbled to the floor inside Oberstein’s building.

  “Well,” Clarissa said, “they definitely know we’re here.”

  Wild Boy lay on his back, trembling as much with fear as relief.

  They were inside.

  Now came the hard part.

  16

  “This don’t look so scary.”

  Clarissa pulled the window shutters closed, but sunshine sneaked between the wooden slats, giving just enough light to see the room they had broken into. “It’s just an ordinary bedroom,” she said, sounding disappointed.

  The fire was unlit, but the air was warm, prickling the hair on Wild Boy’s face. The walls were decorated with faded green paper and golden fleurs-de-lis. Heavy woollen drapes enclosed a four-poster bed. The door was open, inviting them into a long, dark corridor.

  “Come on,” Clarissa said. “Let’s find the black diamond.”

  She moved towards the door, but Wild Boy held her back, sensing danger. It was an instinct he’d learned to trust, and so had Clarissa.

  “What is it?” she breathed.

  He still wasn’t sure. His breaths slowed as he scanned the room. He saw a sheen of dust on the door handle. He saw a dead fly, dried and shrivelled, on the bed. He saw how the fleur-de-lis, bright against the dull green wallpaper, were unevenly spaced. And above, he saw a pinprick of light on the ceiling.

  His hand tightened on Clarissa’s arm. “Don’t move,” he said.

  “What do you see?”

  “That light up there. What’s it coming off? There’s something we ain’t seeing.”

  “Don’t be a thickhead, you see everything.”

  Not now I don’t. “You got a light in that bag?”

  Clarissa brought a candle from Gideon’s bag, a black wax stump. She lit it with a tinderbox and raised it to the gloom. As the light spread they saw that the air was filled with jewels.

  Dozens of crystals hung on impossibly thin threads, so transparent they were invisible without the reflection of the light. The crystals were suspended at different heights. Some kissed the rug. Others dangled at eye level. Some even hung from the canopy of the bed.

  Clarissa held the candle close to the nearest crystal. The light bounced off its facets, speckling the walls. “These ain’t for decoration, are they?” she said.

  She tilted the candle and prodded the jewel.

  “No,” Wild Boy said. “Don’t!”

  Psst. Something fired across the room and shot into the candle. A hiss of steam rose from one of the fleurs-de-lis.

  The candle quivered in Clarissa’s hand. A small shard of glass was stuck in the wax. “A dart,” she said.

  Wild Boy plucked a hair from the back of his hand and let it flutter over the dart’s edge. The brown strand split in two as it fell. He’d never seen anything so sharp.

  “Why would someone do this?” Clarissa said.

  “Protection,” Wild Boy guessed. “Oberstein’s scared of someth
ing.”

  He watched steam drift from the fleurs-de-lis and began to understand why the room was so warm. “There’s machines in the walls,” he said. “I reckon each stone sets off a dart if it moves.”

  “It’s impossible,” Clarissa said. “No way through the room.”

  Wild Boy took the candle and raised it high, studying the suspended stones. His gaze moved among them, searching for the best passage; the wider gaps between the jewels and the dead ends where the spaces were too slim to pass. A map formed in his head, a twisting path through the maze.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  He pressed the hair down on his face, fearing it might brush the stones. Then he stepped through the gap. He tried not to think of punctured organs, knives slicing through butter…

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Clarissa asked, edging carefully behind him.

  Wild Boy didn’t reply, for fear of unsettling the stones. He kept moving, inch by inch, following the map in his mind. Clarissa followed as they shuffled forwards, backwards, ducked to slide under one jewel, turned sideways to move around another.

  “Almost there,” Wild Boy said.

  There were only two threads left between him and the bedroom door, but the gap between them was less than a foot wide.

  “You ain’t gonna make it,” Clarissa warned.

  He could do it. He was sure of it. He breathed in, held the breath and moved. A hair on his nose sprang up and brushed one of the crystals.

  Psst.

  Wild Boy closed his eyes, waiting for the impact. None came. Sliding a hand to his back, he felt a tear where a dart had sliced the fabric of his coat.

  He sighed with relief.

  Several threads swayed.

  “Jump!” Clarissa cried.

  Psst. Psst. Psst. Psst.

  Glass darts shot across the room as they leaped into the doorway. Wild Boy rolled over, feeling for rips in his coat or cuts on his limbs.

  “You all right?” he gasped.

  Clarissa rose, brushing back her hair. Wild Boy expected her to grin, or say something cocky. Instead she turned and yelled along the corridor: “Hey, Oberstein! We’re still alive and we’re coming for your black diamond.”