The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) Page 19

  Lyle clung tighter to the side of the cab.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You don’t just try an’ hit nothin’, bigwig!’ Tess was leaning over the side of Icarus, almost on her feet, holding a loose tube in one hand. Icarus raced over the roofs of Gray’s Inn Road, over yellow-brick houses selling weights and measures and old clothes and broken furniture, sending the ladies who haunted the area, and the men who pretended they didn’t, scattering below. Seven of the tubes were now blazing at the back of Icarus, and still the stone dragon was keeping behind, twisting its way through the air with a snake-like movement. Gravity clearly had decided to look the other way, rather than deal with those claws.

  ‘Can you get higher?’ Tess yelled.

  ‘Why do we want to go higher?’

  ‘Who’s givin’ the orders round here, bigwig?’

  Thomas tugged at a lever. Icarus jerked, flaps moving in the wings, the area facing the wind of their passage growing larger, pushing Icarus bodily upwards. Tess had the outer casing of the tube stripped away, revealing the packed, staged chemicals compressed around the central fan, like a second casing to the tube. She grabbed at the fuse, which ran from the end of the tube into the heart of the fan, passing through one chemical and one only, which was to burn at a constant rate, heating the air that passed through the small inner fans to provide thrust, and started wrapping the fuse tightly not only round that chemical, but round every other weird, compressed chemical pack that surrounded the tube, so that only a small part of the wire was left free as she slid the tube back into its casing. She turned and screamed, ‘Bigwig?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Teresa?’ Thomas’s teeth chattered and his voice wheezed with effort. Icarus was still climbing, the air growing thinner and colder as they rushed for the moon, trailing sparks and fire.

  ‘You need to let the dragon get close!’

  ‘I need to what?’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ snapped Tess. ‘I want you to let him get real close, so close he can touch us, and then, when he’s close, an’ I give the word, I want you to dive, go right back down the way we was, and don’t stop for nothin’ ’cos we need to be a real long way away very quick!’

  ‘Why?’

  Tess looked down at the tube in her hands, the tiny nose of the twisted fuse peering out from the end. ‘’Cos there ’s goin’ to be a real big bang.’

  ‘Miss Teresa?’ Thomas’s voice was a faint wheeze in the air. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’

  Tess looked down. Below, the city lay black and still, half-washed in the fog, a misty outline of dull fires, eclipsed by the rising shape of the dragon. ‘Well . . . there ain’t nothin’ better, is there?’

  For a second, she had the feeling of eyes on her, and looked up, and saw the moon filling the sky, rocking from side to side in front of her. She realized that, just for a moment, she was a shadow across its face, a blackness blotting out its light. It was a feeling she’d never had before, and it was both frightening and wonderful. Briefly she smiled and wondered who, a long, long way below, might be watching.

  ‘That’s them!’

  Lyle almost stood in his seat, pointing at the moon. ‘Look!’

  Feng glanced up from the reins, and then half-leant round Lyle to see properly, eyes widening.

  ‘What is that?’ The silhouette of Icarus, stretched across the moon, seemed to hang overhead like an eclipse by a tiny planet across the face of a watery sun. It didn’t visibly move, but they could see the faint haze below it, where the sparks and flames of its passage floated towards the earth.

  Lyle laughed. ‘It’s them! It’s working, it’s working - look at the height, look at it! They’re all right, it worked!’

  ‘Lyle, get down!’

  Lyle ducked automatically. There wasn’t any disobeying a voice like that. The gargoyle sprang off the roof to his right, missed his head by an inch and slid down the side of the cab. Stone claws hooked into the wood of the cab, which lurched as Feng slapped the horses into a wilder and faster gallop. Lyle looked and saw the gargoyle, all odd angles and bent, sharp limbs, climbing, talon over talon, up the side of the cab. He scrambled on to the roof, belly down, swaying with the speed, his feet dangling over one side, and as the first claw reached the top, he drew out a tube from his pocket and slammed it on the claw. A howl split the night, and it didn’t just come from the gargoyle. The streets hummed with it, the houses swayed with it, everything of stone or clay or brick offered its own unique noise to the overall cacophony.

  The contents of the tube spilt out on to the talon and the wood of the cab; it hissed, smoked and gave off white, obnoxious vapour that stung Lyle’s eyes. The stone of the claw began to dissolve, melting away to leave a thick black scorch mark, and where the acid had missed the stone, wood bubbled and dissolved. Lyle shoved at the gargoyle and, with one claw boiled away, it fell back, tumbling with a clatter into the road.

  The cab swung round a corner, nearly throwing Lyle off. He saw lights ahead, recognized them, heard the bleating of sheep and the mooing of cows coming in from the west along Marylebone Road for the early morning market at Smithfield and the rattling of carts laden with vegetables and fruits for Spitalfields and Covent Garden; heard too the clocks ringing out the hours between night and morning when all decent folk should be abed.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he yelled at Feng.

  ‘Hyde Park.’

  ‘Why? What’s at Hyde Park?’

  ‘Safety!’

  The cab clattered on through the thick traffic, sending horses neighing and shying as it belted along, while men shouted abuse. Lyle looked up and saw the Greek columns of a church, four huge stone ladies supporting the giant stone roof, turn their heads ever so slightly, eyes fixed on him, on him, before the sight of them was whisked away in the rush of the cab. He could feel something more than just the swaying of the cab, and see it too. Trees were twisting in pain, snow trickled off rooftops in avalanches, the light in the lanterns flickered and stretched itself thin. He half-closed his eyes and sensed the hum rising up through his shins and fingertips.

  ‘Feng!’ he yelled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need to get off this cab!’

  ‘Why?’

  Lyle opened his mouth to answer, and behind, just a few inches behind, the street exploded. Cobbles and dirt and brick and snow ruptured out and upwards, luxuriously reaching out for the sky like a mouth opening its jaws hungrily for its prey, the edges bending back like lips, eating up all that might be above it. Then, with an almost languorous air, the mouth closed around the space where the cab had been, sucking in the air and snow, and slid back down into the street.

  ‘Because of that!’ yelled Lyle.

  He felt another rumble in front of the cab. He saw the cobbles bend and yelled, ‘Feng Darin!’

  Feng pulled at the reins, swerving the cab off the road and into a side-street that ran between a wall of factories and sweat shops and smelt of coal and mould and stagnant water turned to solid ice. At that moment the street behind them erupted into another mouth that kissed at the air. And there was something else too. Looking back, Lyle saw two faint bulges in the street, saw the stones peel back like eyelids, saw the mouth bend, before it collapsed again, into a cruel, unnatural smile.

  Feng stopped the cab so suddenly it nearly threw Lyle off.

  ‘Can you ride?’ Feng had already jumped down and was unharnessing the horses.

  ‘I’m a bloody scientist, not Sir Galahad,’ snapped Lyle, scrambling down from the roof of the cab.

  ‘It’s incredible that you’ve survived as long as you have, Horatio Lyle,’ muttered Feng, swinging easily on to the bare back of one of the horses, before pulling Lyle up behind him. ‘Just try not to fall off.’

  Feng dug his heels into the horse’s sides. It leapt forward with an angry snort, and pounded off down the street with utter disregard for the discomfort of its riders. Lyle clung on, trying not to let his fear show, listening to the so
unds of a city coming alive around him.

  CHAPTER 19

  Escape

  Icarus reached the top of its flight and, for a second, hung there. The last tube went out. They drifted gently through the cold air.

  ‘Miss Teresa?’ Now that there was just the gentle humming of the wind across the still shape of Icarus, gliding past the moon, Thomas’s voice sounded clearly, and Tess could hear the fear in it. She could also hear the wind being beaten out underneath the dragon’s wings below them, a thick whumph, whumph sound.

  ‘Yes, bigwig?’

  ‘What was your plan, precisely, from this point onwards?’

  ‘Mister Lyle was tryin’ to tell me about this thing to do with work,’ said Tess calmly, leaning out and peering down at the rising shadow. ‘An’ . . . an’ how heat and work were really kinda part of the same thing, I mean, just like another way of moving energy about. Do you see?’

  ‘You mean the laws of thermodynamics, the transfer of heat to do work?’

  Tess frowned. ‘Ain’t no need for words that big, bigwig.’

  To his surprise, Thomas heard himself say, ‘I’m sorry, Miss Teresa. Please, carry on.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Tess’s voice had a thoughtful quality to it, a distant maturity. She had changed, Thomas realized, in the few months Lyle had been looking after her. She’d learnt to read, for a start. ‘. . . Mister Lyle was sayin’ how it ain’t just heat what can be used to do work, but work what can be used to do heat. How . . . if you work on something like . . . like a smith banging away with his hammer . . . then that thing gets hot. I pretended I weren’t listenin’. But sometimes it almost seems peaceful, just listenin’. Like . . . quiet an’ warm. Safe.’

  ‘And how is this relevant to us, Miss Teresa?’

  Tess snapped sharply out of her train of thought. ‘’Cos,’ she hissed, as if talking to a child, ‘that thing’ - as the dragon rose up level with them, and swung round the gently gliding Icarus as if it was a toy, flexing its claws - ‘could crush us into a little bitty piece of goo.’

  And as Icarus slid along under the stars, the dragon stared straight into Thomas’s eyes, and for a moment, he too felt as if he was stone, felt as if a greater intelligence, an old and ancient force, was watching him, and him alone. Then something sailed past his head, swinging through the sky, tumbling one end over the other. It was the tube of compressed chemicals and a fan, so simple and scientifically elegant, something where he’d seen the numbers that made it the shape it was, running together towards the equals sign, to make up a perfect, satisfying answer to a question he’d never even thought to ask. Cold air comes in, hot air goes out, and it goes out fast.

  He saw the dragon spin, the tube bouncing uselessly off its stone side. It looked almost bemused, as if wondering whether any intellectual being could really be foolish enough to think it could hurt an entity made out of stone and improbability. Thomas watched the tube fall away, slightly bent where it had bounced off, saw the dragon reach out a luxurious claw and catch it lightly, holding it up towards Icarus as though to say, ‘This? This is the best you can do?’ It tightened both claws around the tube; squeezed. He saw the end of the tube give off a single, fat, embarrassed spark. Behind, he heard Tess say, quite casually, ‘This is where we goes down, bigwig.’

  He saw the dragon look at the tube compressed between its claws with a surprised expression. Thomas pushed at a lever, tipping the nose of Icarus earthwards. The tail rose slowly, the wings dipped, presenting a smaller and smaller line to the wind. Creaking gently, Icarus began to dive. As it dropped, pulled down by sheer gravity, it picked up speed and began to rock from side to side. Cogs started to rattle, wood to creak and bend. They were already travelling fast when above them a high-pitched whiiinnnggg sounded, like a child’s whistle. They were a blur when the tube, still suspended in the dragon’s grip, started to spout fire at both ends: flickering, angry red fire. They were an unstoppable rush through the sky, just a black shimmer against the moonlight, when the tube, compressed and twisted, every chemical inside igniting at once in a deadly inferno of reactants, exploded.

  Stone rained down, spinning through the air as it tried to catch up with Icarus, shards that here or there contained the image of an eye or the shape of a wing or the half-impressed outline of a scale, spattering down like rain, with fire and smoke and twisted metal mingling in the overall ruin. Even propelled by the force of the explosive blast, it fell too slowly to catch up with Icarus.

  Below, getting closer with every second, Tess saw a white pool of frozen water, rising up to meet Icarus’s dipped nose. She heard the sound of cogs grating as Thomas struggled with the levers, kicking against them furiously to make them shift in their gears. The giant whiteness rose up to fill the world: thick ice swept clean of snow by enthusiastic skaters. A lever slid back and Icarus lurched to one side then the other, rocking like a ship in a storm. Tess heard something go clunk above her, and, looking up, saw the gears warping, splinters flying off the top and bottom of the wing, heard something else give, saw something small but vital pop out of the central core of gears and cogs and spin away, flying into the night. Icarus seemed to back-pedal in the air as the wings swung round to catch the wind, almost pushing its nose backwards over its tail with the force, and slamming Tess back against the cradle. They hit the fog that hung over London, and the world filled with thin greyness, turning the outline of all things distant into mere blurs on the edge of perception. As the world rose up to meet them, Tess put her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

  Icarus hit the ice, bounced back up, landed, bounced again, one wheel jerking, ready to snap, landed again, and spun like a confused ballerina, the ice pulverizing under the sudden force of their impact, leaving a long wet pool behind as they wobbled and shook, wheels screaming with effort, and the cradle almost shaking loose from the wings. Underneath, Tess heard something snap; Icarus tipped sharply on to one side, almost throwing Tate out. She half-saw in the darkness one of the wheels, sparking madly, flying away, and now they were spinning around one point, the leg of the wheel, dug deep into the ice, scraping and screeching like nails across a blackboard. They spun until her vision whirled and her ears buzzed and her stomach churned, and stopped.

  Tess crawled out of the cradle, and collapsed on to the ice, shaking with relief and terror. Thomas followed. Where Icarus had spun round, the remaining wheel had defined a perfect circle scraped over the ice. Thomas looked at Tess, Tess looked at Thomas. Tate slunk out, sat down with doggy determination on firm land just beyond the edge of the ice, and stuck his nose in the air with a look of profound indignation. Something tickled Tess’s head. She looked up, then held her hand out to the sky to catch whatever it was that was falling. Thin grey powder settled lightly in her palm. She rubbed it, then let it trickle away between her fingers on to the ice. Stone dust. She smiled.

  Behind, in the shadows, a voice exploded. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing to my ship?’

  A few minutes before Thomas’s and Tess’s descent from the sky, any persons who happened to be in the vicinity of Soho Square might have been startled to see an unsaddled black stallion explode out of Charing Cross Road and gallop in a westerly direction with two dark riders on its back. Their surprise would have been increased by the extraordinary swaying motion of the riders, as if they were trying to avoid something unseen from sneaking up unawares. Surprise would then have converted to amazement if the perceptive viewers, seeing through the fog and gaslight and general fatigue of the hour, had noticed the quite remarkable manner in which the cobbles seemed to ripple behind them, like the wake after a ship, and how unnaturally the trees bent in their passage, and how oddly the buildings suddenly looked, as if they were things alive, monsters shuffling in for the kill.

  Ahead of Feng and Lyle, the shadows moved, and behind them too. Lyle could hear something on the street: hard, ponderous sounds thudding through the snow, which only slightly muffled them.

  ‘What’s behind us?’ yelle
d Feng as the horse twisted its way through the streets.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You’re the detective!’

  ‘I hear . . . four legs, moving . . . very heavy, at a gallop!’ Lyle saw a shadow getting bigger, rising out of the fog, growing from small to horse-sized to a towering shape that filled the street, its shoulders pressing against the walls of the houses, which seemed to make space for it to pass, leaning away from its giant form. ‘Get us somewhere narrow!’ he yelled. ‘Do it now!’

  Feng made no answer, but pulled on the reins. The horse twisted round a corner and dived down a dark alley, just as the lion, one of four usually swarmed over by children and pigeons, that guarded Nelson’s Column, slammed its shoulders against the old, crooked timbers of the alley, sending splinters and shards flying after them, its shadow cutting off the light from the lanterns in the street beyond. The horse galloped down the alley and out the other side. Lyle looked back the way they had come, and saw the lantern light again, unobscured by any shape. He looked ahead, and there were no lights burning, except for the occasional glimmer from under a rotting door.

  ‘This is the rookery!’ he yelled.

  ‘I know!’

  ‘You really want to go in there?’ Above, something roared. The lion looked down at them from the roof of a house, claws unsheathed, and snarled.