Lessons From Underground Read online

  The little bald man’s guards were upon Mr. Jackdaw a moment later. “Restrain him,” the man said.

  “My apologies, Mr. de Soto,” said Aurelian, as Mr. Hunter gathered up all the diamonds. “I did not foresee this.”

  “No matter,” Mr. de Soto said, producing a watchmaker’s eyeglass. “I will be able to identify the real one with little difficulty.”

  The battle was becoming hopeless. I swung my shovel wildly, but the man with the club deflected it to the ground, stomping down so that the metal head snapped off and leaving me with little more than a stick. The man with no shirt seized my arms, holding me so that I could not escape. The Valkyrie and Mr. Scant now had five or six opponents each, which was too much even for them.

  As I struggled in the Society man’s grasp, I watched in the distance as Mr. Hunter stepped forward and snatched the eyeglass from Mr. de Soto’s face.

  “What are you doing?” said Aurelian.

  Mr. Hunter ignored him, keeping his eyes locked on Mr. de Soto. “Why do you have this?” he asked, pointing to the bald man’s eyeglass.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” Mr. de Soto replied. “It’s an essential tool in our line of—”

  “This eyeglass comes from this mine,” Mr. Hunter said. “From the Big Hole. Only Union employees from this company have these eyeglasses. Men on the payroll of Basil Fields. Why do you have them?”

  “I borrowed them,” said the old man, who I could just about see from my position was missing some teeth. He licked his lips uncomfortably.

  “Who do you work for?”

  The little bald man stared at Mr. Hunter for a moment, then croaked, “Seize him.”

  The guardsmen did as they were told. Mr. Hunter jumped back in alarm and gave a loud whistle. Abruptly, the pressure on my arm stopped. The Society’s brawlers—including the man who had held me—were running to help Mr. Hunter, who strained barehanded to defend himself against two batons.

  “Damn it all,” said Aurelian, and from inside his waistcoat produced a tiny revolver. He cocked the hammer and levelled it, and I was surprised to see he was pointing it at Bartholomew Hunter.

  Without thinking, I found myself running forward. I had nothing but the broken shaft of an old shovel—but just maybe I could push Aurelian’s hand away.

  It was not a lunge that would have earned me a place on the school fencing team, but the pointed tip of the broken shovel found Aurelian’s knuckle, bumping the revolver just enough that he fired above Mr. Hunter’s head, not through it.

  Aurelian bared his teeth at me, but others were coming for him too. The deal was off, and he knew it. “I learned this one from the Claw,” he said, and from somewhere on his person he produced a vial shaped to look like an hourglass. He threw it on the ground, where it rapidly began letting off smoke.

  “I learned it too,” the Valkyrie said, running forward into the smoke. “Got you!” I heard her say—but when the smoke cleared, she was holding only a cloak.

  The bald man’s six guardsmen were fierce fighters, with no qualms about striking heavy blows to the heads of the men attacking them, knocking them insensible. When one grabbed Mr. Hunter, his wife got up and started trying to pry the guardsman’s fingers away, but she was knocked to the ground. Then Mr. Scant appeared, his claws flashing out and cutting the side of the guardsman’s wrist.

  For a moment, Mr. Scant and Mr. Hunter stood side by side, not sharing glances but aware of one another. I couldn’t know for certain, but I was sure they had done this many times before. And then they were rushing forward, coming to the aid of the less well-trained men Mr. Hunter had brought to this underworld deal. Claw and fist pushed the armored men back. Mr. de Soto wanted no more part of this. “Get me out of here,” he said to the nearest man. To the others, he snapped, “Kill them all!”

  The hired guards were capable fighters. I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance against them. Mr. Scant and Mr. Hunter were able to hold their own, but they were outnumbered. When Mr. Hunter tried to break through the line of men to pursue Mr. de Soto, he received a fist to the side of his ribs. Mr. Scant went to support him, but one of the men lashed out with a knife, cutting through Mr. Scant’s black jacket and perhaps into his shoulder. Mr. de Soto was out of sight, still yelling orders as he disappeared down a tunnel with his protector keeping Mr. Jackdaw at bay.

  Just as I resolved to throw myself into the fight, the Valkyrie made her appearance with a roar. She had found the base of a mine cart and had lifted the whole thing to use as a shield as she charged the five men. Some tried to stab through the wood and one even aimed for the Valkyrie’s fingers, but their attacks were nothing before this display of force. The Valkyrie simply flattened them all, then dropped the mine cart base beside her, where it sent up a cloud of dust.

  “Fine work!” Mr. Jackdaw said as he ran over. “Oh, you angel!”

  “Please stop calling me names like that,” said the Valkyrie. “I am not an angel, I am a Valkyrie, and I would have you to watch your tongue.”

  “Oh. Of course,” said Mr. Jackdaw, and set about helping the society men restrain the guards. Soon they were all subdued, and the mood quickly changed. Men were clapping one another on the back and cheering. They called out challenges and jeers in the direction Mr. de Soto had disappeared. One came to shake each of our hands in turn. This, I had to admit, was a Society quite unlike the one I’d encountered in England.

  Mr. Jackdaw, meanwhile, had gathered up all the diamonds, fake and real.

  “I want you to give those to me,” said Mr. Hunter. I couldn’t tell if his words contained a threat or not.

  “How will you know which one is real?” I said.

  “We’ll find a way.”

  “I think not,” said the Valkyrie, as she and Mr. Scant joined Mr. Jackdaw in a defensive posture.

  “This is finished, Hunter,” said Mr. Scant. “You’ll have to kill us to take the diamond back.”

  Mr. Hunter thought about that for a moment. Then he waved a dismissive hand at us. “I always hated admitting you were right. But it’s not worth endangering my men. We fought a good fight today. And there will be other ways for us to fight our battles here. There’s no deal. It was all a lie. I don’t even know for certain if the real diamond is there at all.”

  “Wait—what do you mean?” I asked. “What was a lie?”

  Mr. Hunter’s lip curled in distaste. “The buyer. It was the enemy all along. That man, de Soto, he was from the Union Corporation, Basil Fields’s company. Selling the diamond to men like that would have been bad enough. But if I’d given him our story that the one in London is fake, it would have allowed the Union Corporation to discredit the Premier Mine and probably buy them out. The end of the last great independent mine—we’d have been in an even worse situation than before. So I suppose . . . I should thank you.”

  His wife stepped up to join him. “Why do you need to do that?” she said. “Heck and his friends did nothing. You would have seen the eyeglass anyway and put a stop to the deal.”

  “Maybe,” Mr. Hunter said. “But maybe that poor excuse for a human being de Soto would never have taken out his eyeglass without the fakes. And the boy here stopped a man from shooting me, which I may have deserved for trusting Aurelian Binns. I’ve seen my folly there. Gray, on the other hand?” He flashed a grin at Mr. Scant. “Well, he caused a brief delay, at least.”

  “So what now?” I said. “Shouldn’t we go after Mr. de Soto? And put a stop to Mr. Fields?”

  “We don’t need your help fighting our battles. You got what you came for, your stolen diamond. The rest is nothing to do with you. The political system here won’t be brought down with a broken shovel. That struggle is for us, and trust me when I say we have heroes of our own. But tonight, you can at least enjoy our hospitality. We had a party planned for after this deal made our dreams come true. Well, the dreams are dashed, but the party is still on. Come along, won’t you?”

  “I don’t like parties,” said Mr. Scant. “But very we
ll.”

  XXV

  Fire, Drums, and Steam

  he party was very, very loud.

  Ten men played drums around the fire as others danced and ate meat cooked on grills over hot coals, the most incredible smells rising up into the air. Young men I had snatched guns from only hours earlier pulled me up to dance. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I hopped from foot to foot and hoped for the best. Mr. Scant, Mr. Hunter, and Mrs. Hunter sat at a table nearby, talking about old times. The Valkyrie had seen Mr. Jackdaw sitting alone and looking abashed, so she went over and invited him to dance. He eagerly accepted, and the two of them began an awkward waltz to the rhythm of the drums.

  After Mr. Hunter’s associates grew bored with my attempts to dance and left me alone, I went for some meat and took my plate to eat at the edge of the party ground. Not long after I sat down, someone came to sit beside me. In a shirt with an open collar and simple black pants, he looked different, but I still almost choked when I recognized that long hair and thin, serious face.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Aurelian said. “I thought it would be interesting to talk.”

  “What do you want?” I said as sharply as I could.

  “What do I want? A sale that could have fractured this country away from the Empire—that would have been a start. Between the Union Party finally getting complete control and these Society men getting enough money to fund an uprising, we could have seen a bloody revolution. Can you imagine it? Perhaps it will still happen. Aside from that, well, with my share I could have brought together a society of brothers and sisters such as the world has never seen. One that would embody everything my father wanted but failed to bring to life. I suppose I’m a poor excuse for a Frankenstein, just as he was.”

  I shifted away from the older boy, ready at any moment for him to strike. “I knew your father and I think you’re just like him.”

  “You mean to be cruel, but that’s something I’ve always wanted to hear,” said Aurelian. He seemed to be watching Mr. Scant, as though wary Mr. Scant would sense him from the other side of the dusty field. “One day I shall have my father back.”

  “Much good may it do you,” I snapped.

  “You realize your man over there isn’t telling you the whole truth, don’t you? About who he is?”

  “I realize that, Aurelian, yes. But when has Mr. Scant ever told the whole truth?”

  “Perhaps one day I’ll get my mother to explain it all to you,” Aurelian said. “Well, the woman I call my mother.”

  “What makes you think I want anything more to do with you?”

  “You don’t have a choice, Oliver Diplexito.” The fire in his eyes made me shudder when I met them. “You’re a thief more than I am, because you stole the life I was meant to have. You’re the reason we’re both here, at the other end of the world.”

  He raised a hand to my cheek in a callous imitation of affection. “I won’t stop until I’ve taken everything away from you.”

  I batted his hand away. “I’m not afraid of you. Whatever you try and do, I’ll be there to stop it happening.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he said, his cruel expression softening. “You and I are going to shape the world. And the beautiful thing is that you’ll have no idea how you’re doing it. Enjoy your food. And give my regards to your parents.”

  “I will do no such thing,” I said. He stood and walked away with a mocking bow, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  I didn’t mention the encounter to the others when the party ended. What could they have said to help me make sense of it? They would probably have wanted to know why I hadn’t called for help or tried to apprehend him or any other pointless thing that would only have made me feel weak. It stung a little—the only reason we had gone to the mine at the right time was that I assumed Aurelian would be one step ahead, and indeed he was.

  He occupied my thoughts even as I boarded the train that would eventually take us to a port where we could catch a steamer back home. Back to school and fencing club and probably visits from Mr. Jackdaw and Miss Cai to talk about the international police project that Aurelian so despised. The railway would take us on British land almost the whole way home, land claimed by explorers and bought or perhaps seized from the native peoples.

  We made no difference, I thought as I looked out of the window at the dry expanse we were passing. I had gone to Africa imagining we were going to save the day. And we’d recovered the stolen diamond, yes—somewhere among Mr. Jackdaw’s fakes, anyway. But I had to wonder what good that did. A diamond in a rod, locked up in the Tower for occasional guests to see, no way of knowing if it was real or a fake. I thought of Mr. Sam and wondered if that was a worthwhile exchange, his arms for pretty stones forever out of reach.

  The Empire was vast and unwieldy. To survive, it had to take control. If it showed weakness, another empire would simply take its place. The British would be replaced by the French or the Dutch or the Spanish or the Moors or the Japanese. But what did it mean to be a mighty empire? If the British had not taken diamonds and turned them into armies and guns, would we be the ones who had to form secret societies to stop our votes being taken away? And did that truly make any of it worthwhile?

  The Valkyrie came to sit opposite me. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Empire,” I said. “Is it fair? I understand that you either make an empire or you are made part of an empire. But . . . is it fair?”

  “Nothing is,” she said.

  “I suppose not,” I said. Outside our train, the miles of baked earth, shrubs, and skinny little trees were swallowed by the walls of a tunnel, and everything became a rushing black mass.

  Mr. Scant had overheard our conversation. “Empire is an expression of arrogance,” he said. “It starts in arrogance and can only exist through arrogance. An empire must begin with the idea that it will leave the world a better place than it finds it.”

  “But the arrogant man falls first,” I said. “What about an arrogant empire?”

  “It will fall, just the same,” said Mr. Scant.

  As we emerged from the tunnel, I could see a river far away. “And what about secret societies?”

  “There’s no more arrogant thing in all the world.”

  I let out a breath. “Mr. Scant?”

  “Yes, Master Oliver?”

  “I want to learn everything. Again. Everything we learned together, from the beginning. Will you go on being my teacher?”

  Mr. Scant smiled, just a little. “On one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Simple. This time, I’ll have you teach me too.”

  “I don’t know how much I have to teach. But I’ll do my very best.”

  Mr. Scant nodded. “Let’s go home.”

  About the Author

  Bryan Methods grew up in a tiny village south of London called Crowhurst. He studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has recently completed a PhD on First World War poets. He currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, where he loves playing in bands, fencing, and video games.