The Thief's Apprentice Read online

  School, meanwhile, vexed me more than ever. Everyone had noticed I was doing better in tests and was less likely to be embarrassed by unexpected questions from teachers. Skipper Percival, my Head of House, actually confided in me that I might be prefect material now that I had pulled my socks up. “Thank you, but I’m not sure I really see that in myself,” I said. Skipper probably thought I was being modest.

  In fact, I was desperate to disprove that Mr. Scant’s deception had resulted in any improvement whatsoever—so much so that every word of praise felt like a slap in the face. Mr. Endmarsh’s delight that I knew about Pythagoras before he even began his lesson—a slap. The librarian asking why I hadn’t been coming lately, because she had been so happy to see someone eager to learn—a slap. Chudley saying everyone called me a swot now—a slap, accompanied by a literal one as well. But while I didn’t want to validate Mr. Scant’s plan by being a better student, pretending I didn’t know the answers made me feel no better.

  As for Mr. Ibberts, his tutoring sessions were the same as ever, only now, rather than thinking him a halfwit, I thought him a manipulative schemer. As he blathered on, I wondered if he had dreamt up plots for other children he had tutored. I doubted it, because who would be as credulous a fool as me?

  For my first two tutoring sessions after Mr. Ibberts admitted what had happened, I managed to keep up a look of great hatred throughout. But after that, I lost the will and resorted to simply sitting like a dead thing, as if a vampire had sucked all the life out of me. Which was more or less how I had previously sat in Mr. Ibberts’s classes, the only difference being that now I usually knew everything he was trying to teach me in advance. We never spoke about the Ruminating Claw again, but then, despite the endless torrent of words running from his gray lungs to my ever-grayer brain, we had never truly spoken about anything.

  The photograph of the Claw had intensified public interest in the villain. For a while, Scotland Yard promised an investigation into the identity of the young accomplice, but with no solid information to work with, the detectives soon fell silent on the matter. Police artists produced sketches of what the Claw ought to look like without the camera’s distortion, and though they thankfully looked nothing at all like Mr. Scant, almost all showed an older man. I wondered if the real Claw took offense at these sketches of someone else altogether. After a week of these reports, I began to fret about whether or not we had hindered the investigation into a real thief.

  One paper interviewed the father and daughter who had taken the photograph, who were very pleased with themselves—in their version of the story, they had bravely put themselves in danger to try and keep the Claw from escaping. The fee they earned from selling their photograph had allowed the father to replace his old-fashioned flash-lamp with an expensive new one that lit its powder with electric sparks, and he was quoted as being “happy as Larry.” The interview ended with a lengthy description of how to find their portrait studio, which made me wonder if they wanted a visit in the night from the real Claw.

  Several times, I found myself wandering to the Ice House, perhaps to find some evidence that I’d then slip to Father. However, the door—such as it was—had been locked tight. On my fourth or fifth visit, on a day so cold that sleet was falling throughout the garden, I went so far as to try forcing the door open, but it would not budge. Instead, my labors had an effect similar to the rubbing of a magic lamp.

  “I should exercise caution if I were you, Master Oliver,” said the djinn I had summoned. “You remember Mykolas’s little traps, do you not?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Mr. Scant, now a well-practiced expression on my part. Any contrition he had previously shown was long gone.

  “Father ought to know what’s going on in his garden,” I said.

  “Should he manage to open the door, I assure you that I’ll adopt the appropriate look of surprise. Quite as though I had nothing to do with it.”

  “How much of it was lies? About your brother? About how you both loved science?”

  “I have a brother. As children, we were very much interested in becoming men of science. The kernels of truth in the story were there—but alas, they did not grow in such fantastical directions.”

  “Are you happy you made me look such a fool?”

  Mr. Scant said nothing for a moment, then stepped closer and laid a gloved hand on my shoulder. “I set out to make you a better student, and we succeeded beyond our expectations. In that respect, I am pleased. But for a time, I really thought I might be able to consider you a friend. My first in many years. And my youngest. I sincerely regret that I destroyed that possibility.”

  “If you want to make friends with someone, don’t start with lies,” I said.

  Mr. Scant nodded. “This is why your poor exam results were so worrisome to your parents,” he said. “You so often remind us that you are wise beyond your years.”

  Content with that, Mr. Scant turned toward the house, leaving a trail of light footprints through the thin layer of snow. I stayed where I was for a few minutes more, wishing the snow would settle upon me but watching it melt away. Then I gave the hidden door a smart kick and went to sit on top of the coal bunker.

  For a time, the world was silent. I sat alone like Mr. Wilde’s selfish giant, in a winter of my own creation. After some ten or twenty minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I heard the sound of horses’ hooves. A few minutes later, the riders came into view—the two peculiar women I had seen before. Once again, they were playing their game, peering all around them with opera glasses held up to their eyes. On horseback, they could see over our garden wall, and from my perspective, they looked oddly like puppets operated from below.

  To my surprise, the smaller of the two women turned her opera glasses to me. Her face lit up with pleasure, and she waved enthusiastically. When I only raised a hand in response, she pouted and then blew a kiss. The taller woman raised a fan and gave her companion a reproachful slap on the shoulder with it, and the two of them laughed together. Through all of this, neither lowered her glasses even for an instant.

  Once the riders were gone, I flopped back onto the snow, ignoring the cold on the back of my head. My life’s path stretched out clearly before me—good results in exams; a job with numbers and sums, day after day; a family of my own to quietly grow old with. No more adventures in hidden libraries or fights with mad, cleaver-wielding women. The library had been a stage, anyway, and the Valkyrie merely one of its players. I would join the ranks of Ibbertses, spending my evenings in contemplation of interest rates. The world was gray, and all of its lines were straight and clean and rigid and unbreakable.

  Which is why I somewhat welcomed being grabbed on the way home from school the next day by a wild-haired and wide-eyed man in a raincoat.

  XII

  The Sound of an Axe on Wood

  he false Mr. Reginald Gaunt raved and gabbled, shaking me by my shoulders.

  “I found you! Thank the Good Lord. Thank the Good Lord God! Boy, boy, listen to me, boy! You have to.”

  “Mr. Bristow, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “I . . . no. What? No. I’m Reggie Gaunt. Born Reginald Scant. Why would . . . what?” He let go of me to take off his cap and scrub at his shock of hair. “How can you forget that? Reginald. Gaunt. Me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if they haven’t let you know, but you don’t have to keep up the act. Mr. Scant told me.”

  “Act? Act? Wh-wh-wh—? He told you what?”

  “He . . .” I hesitated. “He said you were an actor . . . and you were only pretending. That he wasn’t the Claw at all, and that it had all been a trick.”

  “Oh, you little fool! And you believed that? No trick. This . . . trick was the trick! He’s lying. About having lied to you before! Oh, that is very like Heck. That bounder. Bounder! No. Listen. You have to listen. Why are you laughing?”

  “I hardly know myself,” I said, but I couldn’t stop. Delight bubbled up like badly poured soda water. Reggie Scant’s
wild eyes and his obvious, undeniably bizarre character. The realization that my world was not gray after all; Mr. Scant had only painted it that way. And I had fallen for it.

  “Get a hold of yourself, boy! Are you mad?”

  “Ha! You saying that to me!”

  “Stop this at once!” Mr. Gaunt demanded. “This is why I’m happy we never had a boy. Will you shut up a moment and listen? Listen! Oliver! They have captured my brother and he is in grave danger.”

  That stopped my laughing. “What?” I said.

  “They have taken him! The men who employ me. And you know what sort they are! They worked out who he was and they took him.”

  “How? I mean . . . where?”

  “That Valkyrie woman, no doubt. I don’t know the particulars. What is important is that he has been caught and is in some very hot water. Possibly in the literal sense.”

  “What can we do?”

  Mr. Scant’s twin had turned deadly serious: he spoke with such intensity I feared he meant to mesmerize me. “This is very important. Heck must have a base of sorts. A lair, a den—somewhere he keeps his claw.”

  “Yes!”

  “You know it! Excellent. We must go at once and fetch that claw of his. The Valkyrie could never have bested him if had it. We must convey it to Heck if he’s to have a fighting chance.”

  “Right! Okay! I’ll grab it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Reginald Gaunt was not as fast as his brother, and he puffed hard as we ran back toward the house, but I didn’t let him rest—not when Mr. Scant depended on us. True, Mr. Scant had lied to me—he even had Mr. Ibberts play along—but I saw now that the close call with the photographer had made him fear for my life if I were identified.

  But now he needed me.

  We arrived, breathless, at the house, and even though Mr. Scant’s brother stopped to catch his breath at the gate, I went back to pull him on by the sleeve. Through the garden we went, until we arrived at the Ice House.

  “This is it,” I panted.

  “This? This . . . what?” managed Mr. Gaunt.

  “If you look here, there’s a ring. Mr. Scant has a key.”

  “Can we get inside without it?”

  “Well . . . I don’t know,” I said. “We’d have to force it.”

  “The two of us? Oh, you must be joking. Ha! It’s not as easy as all that, you know. But don’t you worry, one of the lads will be bringing a big old axe. Better hope it doesn’t get any attention from the house. Shouldn’t think it will. It’s good and hidden from view. Ahhh. That was too much running.”

  “Wait—lads?”

  Mr. Scant’s brother straightened up and stretched his back out. “Yes, my boy. The lads. I imagine they’re—ah yes, here they come now.”

  If I swallowed the anchor from the biggest ship in His Majesty’s fleet, I could hardly have had more of a sinking feeling in my belly.

  There were a dozen of them or more. Perhaps fifteen men in all, crossing the lawn with looks of murderous intent. Each had a weapon in hand, from cricket bats to hunting rifles. As Mr. Gaunt had predicted, two of them bore wood-chopping axes.

  “What is this?” I said, though really I knew and hoped desperately that asking the question would somehow stop it from coming to pass. The other Mr. Scant ran a hand down his sorrowful face and slapped his own cheek.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you, boy. But you know I don’t have a choice, don’t you? You’re probably best off running inside your Father’s house, really. That’s what I’d do if I were you.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Well, don’t ask me how, but they rather got wind of you. Probably the Valkyrie noticed something. They somehow cottoned that I knew a thing or two I wasn’t telling them, and really, that was that. I don’t get much of a chance to keep secrets, you see. I’m terribly sorry, my dear boy, but, mmm . . . now that you’ve led us here, there’s really not much other choice. No stopping it now, I’m afraid.”

  “So nothing’s happened to your brother?”

  Mr. Gaunt’s eyes widened. “Keep it down. They still don’t know we’re related. And be careful not to call me ‘Scant.’ To these men my name is Gaunt. As for Heck, well, I haven’t the foggiest where he is.”

  By then, the Society thugs were within earshot. With a nervous smile, Reginald indicated the door of the Ice House. “Yes, over here, lads. There—that’s the one. Careful, though. Probably booby trapped. Approach like the lair of a wild beast! Sorry. I’ll shut up now. Yes. Pardon me. Woo! That was a bit violent. Careful how you swing that. Now, Oliver, you come here now. Come stand out of the way, there’s a good lad. Before they hurt you.”

  “Let go of me!” I yelled, pulling away and running toward the man swinging his axe at the door. Someone else grabbed me from behind before I reached him, and a second later, I found myself lying on the wet grass a few feet away, my head ringing.

  “You can’t stop them,” Mr. Gaunt said, helping me up. “Might as well try to block the Nile with your hands. It really is in your best interest to get away from here. This lot might just decide to ignore their orders to leave you unharmed. Make you an addition to their next dogfight. Nasty business. Not that I’m suggesting we do that! Not suggesting that, okay, lads? Heheh. No. But they’ve tossed lads younger than you in there. So watch it.”

  “Stop them,” I whispered, low enough that only he could hear me. “Please make them stop.”

  He looked into my eyes for a moment and then gave a small, helpless shake of his head.

  With a final grunt of effort, the two men with axes forced their way through the door and kicked the remains into tinder. The moment the door fell away, it set off the tree stump on a rope, which smashed into one man and sent him sprawling. The others just laughed at him, then cut down the stump and pushed inside. The brute who had been knocked down soon recovered and followed the rest, leaving me alone with Mr. Scant’s brother. Mr. Gaunt appeared to care nothing at all for my repeated pleas.

  “Stop asking the impossible, you idiot child. Don’t you think this is tearing my very soul to shreds? Do you think this is what I want? This is what I’m forced into, if I don’t want my family to suffer. Now for once in your life, listen. Listen. Go back in the house. Do not argue. Do not try to make a difference here, because you cannot. If Heck comes home, make sure he does not cross paths with these men. And then stay hidden. Because if one of those troglodytes realizes that they can use you to get to Heck, that’s the end for you. Keep causing problems, and my story that you’re some errand boy Heck is manipulating won’t last. So go. Go now. Go!”

  He gave me a push, and once I began running, I don’t think I could have stopped if I tried. I ran until I collapsed in my room, in my own little protected world. I could not see the men from my window—the Ice House wasn’t visible from any window of the house, as I’m sure Mr. Scant was aware—but I could see the gate, so I could watch for when the men left. They departed after almost an hour, laughing and congratulating one another. Mr. Gaunt followed them meekly, lingering a moment at the gate and removing his hat as though someone had died. When I glimpsed smoke above the trees that hid the Ice House from me, the reason was obvious. The men had put all Mr. Scant’s belongings to the flame.

  XIII

  Razed

  fter I was sure the men were gone, I somnambulated down to the Ice House to watch the smoke. The fire burned less fiercely than I had expected, and when only a little rivulet of smoke still rose from the doorway, I stepped inside to see what remained. As I had feared, the men had destroyed everything but the staircases they needed to reach the next thing to smash. The papers and furniture had been thrown into a pile and burnt; the charred remains still smoldered in the center of the chamber. The top of the dome was stained black, a hellish inversion of a snow-capped mountain.

  Mr. Scant found me hugging my knees and watching his papers crumble into ash. I didn’t acknowledge him as he descended, pretending I was insensible. That would have been
easier. His touch on my shoulder fell gently, more gently than I thought he was capable of, and I looked up.

  “Men from the Society came and burnt everything,” I said.

  “They did.”

  “I couldn’t stop them.”

  “You are safe, and that matters far more, Master Oliver.”

  “They even burnt your rocking chair. You loved that chair. You never said so, but I knew you did.”

  “I did. It belonged to my mother.”

  I buried my head in my arms again. “This is all my fault.”

  “No . . .”

  “It was! Don’t you dare pretend you don’t think it was! All of it. I led them here. I thought . . . I was so happy when your brother told me it wasn’t all lies. But I was foolish, I-I . . . didn’t think, I led him straight here when he said you were—”

  “Hush . . . hush now, I know. Mykolas told me what happened. Come on, let’s get you up.”

  I didn’t resist as he helped me to my feet, but seeing him try to disguise the anguish on his face, I felt a lance of shame pierce through my chest. “I’m so sorry,” I said, through a tight throat.

  “Master Oliver, I mean it when I say you have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “But I do.” Not thinking about what I was doing, I stepped forward and touched my forehead to the front of his shirt. “I could have stopped them. I’m so, so sorry . . . I couldn’t do a thing because I’m completely and utterly useless.”

  “There was no way you could have stopped them,” said Mr. Scant. “I am grateful you did not try. You have come through this unscathed, so the situation is far from the worst it could have been.”