The Thief's Apprentice Read online

  “So nothing happens in Mrs. McBunty’s house?”

  “It is only an entrance. Though I suspect she is not wholly oblivious.”

  “Do they not think to put guards there?”

  “Perhaps the maids were the guards. But these passages are envisioned more as escape routes than guarded entrances.”

  It was true. The tunnel led to a sentry’s hut, but Mr. Scant walked up to it without a modicum of caution. As we drew close, I recognized the man posted there as the driver with the scarred face who had taken us to London. He must have been Mr. Scant’s contact inside the Woodhouselee Society.

  “You’re late,” said the scarred man, his voice as lacerated as his face. “The buyers are here.”

  “And the Valkyrie?” said Mr. Scant, in a voice low enough that I barely heard it.

  “She’s got the book. And yes, it’s the real one.” This earned the man a pat on the shoulder. As I passed, the scarred man’s eyes followed me, and even when I lost my nerve and looked away, I could feel them on my back.

  Soon, the tunnel gave way to a wide, open space. Gray winter light spilled in from a round hole above us, and I could hear running water. “Where are we?” I asked.

  “A kind of water palace. You will have drunk the water at the Pantiles, of course.”

  “I have.” The famous spring water of Tunbridge Wells, rich with minerals, drew more visitors to the town than any other attraction, and the place to drink it was the Pantiles.

  “What you may not know is that chalybeate water can be found in many other places, even within the town. This is another spring, discovered some years ago. A young entrepreneur intended to make a new attraction here, a spa of sorts. Only he decided to first jump off Beachy Head in what he claimed was a flying suit, so the project was never finished. Now it is all but forgotten—except amongst the Society, which makes good use of the grounds.”

  This explained the strange half-finished neo-classical design, all false pillars and empty alcoves. A number of iron grills let in the light from above, and underneath them, unpleasant brown patches of decayed leaves had piled up. This was a sad, forgotten place, and I couldn’t decide what would be worse—to be buried and forgotten, or to be appropriated by a merciless criminal organization.

  “This way,” said Mr. Scant, and we were moving again. We descended an elegant staircase, to a level darker than the last, and after making our way down several corridors, we came to a wide, open space filled with crates and boxes gathering dust. There, Mr. Scant stopped so abruptly that I almost walked into him. Then he grabbed me and pulled me behind one of the crates.

  Before I could demand an explanation, I heard voices, speaking in a language I couldn’t understand. The sounds vaguely resembled schoolyard imitations of Chinese, but I had never heard the real language spoken, so I couldn’t be sure. Mr. Scant remained still as a statue, his upheld hand a clear signal to keep silent, until the speakers were almost upon us—then, faster than a rabbit bolting for its warren, he surged through the door. By the time I had stepped out, he had already dealt with two of the men, who lay groaning on the floor now. I could tell that Mr. Scant had knocked their heads together, and remembered what he had told me in the National Portrait Gallery: a blow to the head will too often kill a man. I tried not to think about it.

  Two other men squared off against Mr. Scant with knives in their hands. I had seen numerous drawings of the Chinese on those old-fashioned plates and cabinets, but they were always merry, plump little fellows with smooth faces. These men were tall, rough, bearded, and fearsome. As one lunged forward with his blade, the other drew back and yelled something I presumed was in his own language. “Fee-fi!” he yelled, almost screaming. “Fee-fi!”

  Mr. Scant tutted in annoyance, grabbed the wrist of the man coming at him, and twisted it in such a way that the man fell to his knees, crying in pain. The old man then used his opponent’s shoulder as a springboard, which sent him crashing headfirst to the floor. From there, Mr. Scant rose up into the air with his claw spreading like an eagle’s talons, but rather than slash at his assailant, he swung his foot in a wide arc and caught the man on the side of the head. As Mr. Scant landed, he took a moment to make sure none of the four men were able to stand, then grabbed me by the arm.

  “She will be coming for us,” he said. “These men don’t have the book yet, so the exchange has not been made. Now, back the way we came. We need to get away from these men before they recover; if she gets here, I won’t be able to fight them all at once.”

  “Who is ‘she’?” I tried to ask, but we were already running.

  We nearly reached the staircase before a huge arm came out of the shadows to close the door ahead of us. Out stepped a huge woman, so tall that even Mr. Scant could have stood no higher than her shoulders. She was nearly as broad as she was high, almost square-shaped, but looked more muscular than obese: from where I stood half-hidden behind Mr. Scant, she appeared roughly as solid and imposing as the average town hall. The woman drew out two large meat cleavers and grinned a wicked grin. She wore a breastplate like the Valkyries from some silly opera, and over it hung a stained butcher’s apron.

  “Fo-fum,” she said, and licked her lips. Now I understood that the Chinese man had not yelled something in another language but rather a code word to summon this beast.

  “Do we dance this dance again, my dear?” Mr. Scant rumbled, pushing me back.

  “Well, old man, perhaps I want to dance with a new partner,” cooed the Valkyrie. I cringed as she widened her hungry eyes at me. “Pretty boy. Pretty clothes, pretty hair. Do you like dancing, boy, ha?”

  “He’s not yours to take. Don’t you know I punish those who steal?”

  “So says the famous thief!”

  She swung her cleaver up at Mr. Scant’s belly with a force that would have split him in two. Another attack forced us back down the corridor, and Mr. Scant shoved me into a side room. I hid behind one of the wooden crates inside and tried to convince my body to melt into the floor.

  For all her ursine shape, the Valkyrie did not fight like a bear but rather swayed lightly from foot to foot. Mr. Scant showed no fear, though: after a few moments’ contemplation, he went on the offensive. Rushing at the Valkyrie, he aimed his claw at her face.

  The giant woman’s grin made it clear she lived to fight. She used her cleavers almost lazily to deflect Mr. Scant’s attacks: he was striking with one hand, but she could defend with two. When Mr. Scant tried to trip her, she chopped downward—he had to twist away or lose a leg. He was faster than she, but the Valkyrie wasted no movement. Both combatants anticipated the other’s strikes, so that the fight really did look like a dance.

  Mr. Scant seemed to gain the upper hand with a clever feint, forcing the Valkyrie off-balance, but as he pressed her, she crouched a little—then jumped. Mr. Scant may as well have tried to overpower a locomotive: her metal chest piece knocked back his claw and sent him reeling.

  With a ferocious cry, the Valkyrie charged, and for a moment, I lost sight of them both. Then Mr. Scant came flying through the door into the room that was meant to be my refuge. He skidded across the dusty floor, managing to get back to his feet before he hit the far wall. The Valkyrie flowed in after him, and for the first time, I noticed a sack tied over one of her shoulders, which no doubt contained one very large book. But I could not dwell on that, because with a strange simper, she hacked both cleavers at Mr. Scant’s head.

  A loud clang rang out as Mr. Scant used the claw to protect himself. A rain of blows followed. “Stay back!” Mr. Scant yelled at me, and all thoughts of trying to help melted away. I was on the wrong side of the crate now, so I darted to a gap between two other boxes.

  The Valkyrie formed the solid center of a maelstrom of brutal attacks, fast as a spinning chariot wheel fixed with blades. Mr. Scant kept her at bay, finally managing to escape by launching one blade at the Valkyrie’s unarmored leg and forcing her to jump away. She cackled at that, waving one cleaver as though sc
olding a naughty child, while I was more concerned by the fact the blade had dug into the wooden crate mere inches from my face.

  The two fighters hurled themselves at one another again. Mr. Scant continued glancing at me, which meant he expected something. Then I understood: that spring-loaded claw had not come so close to hitting me by coincidence. Mr. Scant had conveyed it to me. With shaking fingers, I tugged the blade out of the crate. The skin of my hands looked oddly pale, and my face was no doubt as colorless as the clean laundry at a nunnery. Then Mr. Scant lunged forward and grabbed both of the Valkyrie’s wrists, holding her still.

  “Oho!” she exclaimed. “A test of strength, is it? Want to try to take my throne, ha?”

  Mr. Scant tried to stop her, but the Valkyrie began to raise her arms again. She brought her hands together, meaning to lift them above Mr. Scant’s head before smashing them down again. I knew I had to act. With a wordless yell, I leapt onto the titan’s back, brandishing the detached claw.

  With a bellow of surprise that reverberated through my whole person, the Valkyrie dropped down into a squat. This was about the last thing I had expected her to do, and before I knew it, my wrist had been seized by a hand big enough to envelop almost my entire forearm. Panicking, I began to yell, but quickly remembered that Mr. Scant’s identity was a secret, resulting in the regrettable exclamation, “Mr. Sclaw!”

  As I dropped the blade I was clutching, another appeared, pushing into the flesh of the Valkyrie’s hand. This blade was still attached to the others on Mr. Scant’s claw. He had stabbed the back of the Valkyrie’s hand, the first time I had seen him draw blood. The Valkyrie released me with a yell of pain. Using the moment of distraction, Mr. Scant cut open the Valkyrie’s bag and snatched the big book from inside. Then he dragged me by the wrist over to the doorway and pushed me into a run—so fast I nearly fell. As we made our escape, the Valkyrie’s voice boomed all around us. “Cowards! Two against one! Stop them!”

  When I tried to wrench free from Mr. Scant, he looked back at me with eyes ablaze. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “We can’t run away! We can’t let her call us cowards!”

  “There’s being brave and there’s being baited. If you want a chance to prove your bravery, plenty of people are coming to kill us in this direction.”

  He was right. Guards answering the Valkyrie’s call had spotted us on the stairs and were charging toward us—men dressed plainly, like gardeners or laborers. I was relieved to see that one of them was the scarred man, until he drew out a small pistol and made a very deliberate effort to shoot Mr. Scant in the face. I had no idea where the bullet went, but Mr. Scant did not stop running and neither did I.

  Men fell like a house of cards as we reached them, one tumbling clear off the staircase. Mr. Scant let go of my wrist to knock another man aside, then picked me up once again before sprinting up the stairs. Another shot rang out but did not find its mark. We soon reached the tunnel through which we had originally come, where Mr. Scant dropped one of his canisters that filled the air with smoke. To my surprise, however, we did not fly down the passage to freedom. Instead, Mr. Scant led me slowly toward a place against the wall, inside the smoke.

  We heard our pursuers—including the Valkyrie herself—yelling to one another as they ran through the smoke and down the tunnel we had turned away from, chasing our phantoms. When they disappeared, we hurried back the way they had come and toward a different tunnel altogether. I had a comical vision of our pursuers bursting out from underneath Mrs. McBunty and sending her cats flying, but dared not laugh.

  The new tunnel was dark, and much longer than the one we had come through. I thought for a moment that I saw light up ahead, four little circles in a row, like the light from a small candle reflecting on spectacles, but they vanished after a moment or two. Then, for a time, there was nothing in this whole world of darkness but me, my father’s valet, a metal claw, and an old book of magic.

  Finally, we came to a door, and when Mr. Scant opened it, light returned to the world. I let out a sigh of relief and smiled at Mr. Scant in triumph. To my alarm, he met my smile with a look of great and terrible fury.

  VII

  A Second Mr. Scant

  Scant was very unhappy with me.

  I wished I knew why, but our escape took priority over an explanation. The door at the end of the tunnel had opened onto what appeared to be the corridor of a girls’ school, and with the school entrance locked tight, we had to leave through a window on the first floor. When I couldn’t quite climb onto the windowsill, Mr. Scant defenestrated me. I landed in a bush, which did little to soften my landing, and wondered if Mr. Scant had known it was there or not.

  When we were back onto the road and the claw was safely hidden away, Mr. Scant no longer had any reason to hold back his anger. “Please explain to me, Master Oliver, what you were thinking when you attacked the Valkyrie.”

  Of course, it was not Mr. Scant’s way to express his anger by yelling and screaming. But his calm, sneering rage distressed me more than any outburst would have. I stopped dead.

  “When I . . . ?”

  “When you took it upon yourself to attack a woman capable of snapping your neck between finger and thumb? Hmm?”

  “I . . . thought you wanted me to distract her. Was that . . . not why you aimed your claw at me?”

  Mr. Scant’s lips pressed together not once, not twice, but three times before he found the words. “I conveyed one of the blades of my claw to you so that you could approach stealthily and cut the book from its sack. It would have been distraction enough to allow for a smooth escape. Jumping up like some rabid hound—you nearly killed us both! Even if had you managed to plunge the blade into her neck, you would very probably now be a murderer. Over something as trivial as an old book. This is why we must train your mind first, Master Oliver. This is when sharpness of the mind is paramount. To remove this idea that being brave matters more than being wise. To get away from empty-headed viciousness.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be like that!”

  “I will be as I see fit, Master Oliver. I assure you there is much worse I could say—and do.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, so the rest of our slow march home was underscored by a silence as frosty as the weather. Since Mr. Scant carried the old book, I held the pack with our scarves and the claw inside. Tempted as I was to throw the thing into the stream, I suspected that if I did, I would soon follow it.

  “I shall be asking Mr. Ibberts to begin extra observational tasks,” was Mr. Scant’s parting barb, which I ignored. I made a beeline for my room but found Meg there. She looked up from her dusting and asked me if I was feeling all right.

  “I’m just . . . cross that my eyes keep itching!” I snapped.

  Meg was tactful enough to nod and say, “I’ve had itching eyes enough times to know to excuse myself, Master Oliver. Please excuse me.”

  All of the next day, my foul mood persisted, and Chudley did nothing to help it. He had decided the captain of his big sister’s chess team was the most beautiful girl he had ever clapped eyes on, and he kept cooing about how he was going to marry her.

  “You were prattling on about this all lunchtime,” I said, when he brought it up yet again after school.

  “Well! Somebody got out of the wrong side of bed this morning!” said Chudley.

  “I’m just tired of hearing about it.”

  “How could anyone tire of such divinity?” A look of realization crossed his broad face. “Oh!” he said. “Well, well. Well, well, well. I see what happened here. I’m sorry you got your heart broken, Ollie, but you must put on a brave face. Stiff upper lip! What’s she like? Maybe I can help you get her back.”

  I blinked at him, but the earnest expression on his silly face made me bite my tongue. “It’s nothing like that. Sorry, I have a lot to think about at home.”

  “Your father’s not being a beast to you again, I hope?”

  “No! No, he’s . . . not real
ly anything to me these days.”

  “Well, you know you can talk to me if you need to.” Chudley’s arm landed heavily on my shoulder. “No need to hide in the library with all the dusty books!”

  “I like the books,” I said, but regarded Chudley thoughtfully. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit more like him. He always seemed to enjoy life, but it had never occurred to me to envy him before. “And you can, er . . . talk to me as well, if you need to.”

  “Well, in that case I will!” Chudley said triumphantly. “Let’s talk about the incomparable pleasure of gazing upon the radiance of Alicia, the Angel of the Chess Team! It takes an artist’s eye to see these things, you know. I tell you, Helen of Troy’s got nothing on her. And then she puts on her glasses, and all I can say is it’s a sad thing that those Trojans didn’t know the joy of a girl in spectacles . . .”

  After Chudley and I went our separate ways, I trudged home, thinking about Mr. Scant until the sound of horses jolted me from my reverie. Coming down the road toward me were two young women in matching hunting habits. Their horses made for fine-looking mounts, and the riders’ clothes were ostentatious; gusts of wind pulled at the folds of their skirts bunched up on the side of their respective saddles, which gave the strange impression of the riders traveling underwater. The oddest part—they held fashionable opera glasses up to their faces and peered through them at all they passed, waving hello and then laughing to one another. The riders were far from anywhere that anyone would go hunting, and their odd, unchaperoned excursion left me so bewildered that when they disappeared down the road, I wondered if I had fallen into a dream.

  I did not have long to ponder the enigma; a short time afterwards, I heard someone near the pond say in an exaggerated whisper, “Oi, you!”

  Peering behind the trunk of a dead tree, I saw that the voice belonged to an old man in a topcoat trimmed with white fur. “C’mere,” he said, in a decidedly rough tone. “Really, get y’self over here.”