The Thief's Apprentice Page 9

  “If it’s underground and secret, doesn’t that mean getting inside is really hard?” I asked. “If they lock us in, won’t we be trapped there forever?”

  “Not forever. Another king will need to be crowned some day.”

  Our carriage was the same growler as before, neatly repaired after our visit to the gallery. Once we reached the center of London, Dr. Mikolaitis stepped down from the driver’s seat and thumped me on the chest—his way of showing affection. “Good luck,” he said. In the dim light, I could hardly tell his scars from his mouth, but I was fairly sure he had given me an approving smirk.

  Unlike the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum stood in its own grounds, with high iron railings surrounding it. However, some gates had been replaced with wooden ones while construction works took place. Mr. Scant opened them as easily as if they were old broken-down garden fences: after getting us through, he even put the padlock and chain back just as we had found them.

  Though I had been to the museum before, I found myself completely disoriented. I would have recognized the main entrance’s Ionic columns and stone steps, but this construction site was wholly alien. Mr. Scant seemed to melt into the shadows of the walls, and before I knew it, he had forced open a window. Perched on its sill, he reached down a hand to haul me in from my place on the flagstones.

  We dropped into a room that—to my slight disappointment—was filled with coins and pots. Mr. Scant brought out two torches and handed me one before leading the way through the gloom. A few rooms later, as the beams began to fall on enormous dog-headed gods and great blank-eyed, square-bearded faces, I struggled to contain my excitement. The Egyptian collection, in the dark. I wondered if this was how the men who explored ancient tombs must have felt, soon to be cursed for taking what was not theirs. Mr. Scant, unsurprisingly, showed no sign of pleasure as he cut through the darkness, scarf up over his mouth and claws cycling like arachnid legs.

  Eventually, we came to a window that looked out onto the central court. The Reading Room stood alone there, a round island in the midst of neoclassical cliff-faces. Instead of leading me to it, though, Mr. Scant whispered, “We need to go up.”

  So up we went, taking a wide stone staircase at such a pace that I couldn’t help making a lot of noise, though Mr. Scant didn’t seem to mind. After a short search, we found a window that pleased him.

  “Wait for the rope,” he said, then climbed back outside and disappeared further upwards. For a few long moments, I waited alongside a small statue that might have been a lion or a dog, which watched me with rather a judgmental expression. I made an effort to be brave when the rope dropped down, but had the dog-lion been alive, it probably would have chuckled to itself about my hesitation on the window ledge before I stepped off.

  As I clung to the rope for dear life, preparing to follow Mr. Scant up to the roof of the building, I made the mistake of looking down to the paving slabs below, where a light mist was playing about the edges of the buildings. I knew that Mr. Scant wanted me to close the window behind me, but I wasn’t keen to take a hand off the rope to push it. After one failed attempt, Mr. Scant quite blatantly swung me so that my back did the closing. I wanted to shout at him, but it was too quiet for that. Besides, Mr. Scant then began hauling me up, which made me grateful enough that I made do with a sour expression.

  The sourness didn’t last long, because when I saw what Mr. Scant had prepared, my face couldn’t manage anything other than disbelief. Another length of rope ran from a sturdy-looking flagpole to the roof of the Reading Room. Mr. Scant was testing it to make sure it would take his weight. Though the Reading Room occupied most of the square court, like an ostrich egg in a sparrow’s nest, the prospect of crossing from roof to roof still made the gap resemble a yawning abyss.

  The way to cross, Mr. Scant explained as he took my torch from me, was to take another short loop of rope, secure it around my wrists, and then use that on the line rather than relying on gripping it by hand. Then I was to swing my ankles up over the line and make my way along like a caterpillar on a twig. It all seemed rather undignified. “Won’t your claw just cut the rope?”

  “I never cut what I do not mean to cut.”

  To demonstrate, he sliced down at the rope, and indeed, he may as well have hit it with his bare hand. “The true blade in each claw is actually hidden within two blunt slats,” he explained. “Too dangerous and impractical, otherwise. To bring out the blades, I must press my thumb to a catch on the side, like so.”

  The movement was surprisingly subtle—reminiscent of a cat’s claws appearing from under soft fur. Mr. Scant crossed first, and then it was my turn. The experience went by in something of a blur. Dangling upside-down meant that I could only see the tumult of the November sky, rather than the plunge of death and splattering that awaited me below. Safely across, I unhooked my feet and Mr. Scant eased me down onto a ledge. That was when I saw the end of the rope, attached to one of Mr. Scant’s claws, which was in turn lodged into a wooden window frame. I turned slightly green, thinking what could have happened had it come loose, but seeing Mr. Scant strain to work it free reassured me somewhat.

  To get rid of the rope we had left behind, Mr. Scant set it on fire. It must have been soaked in something flammable, because it burned quickly. As I stood and pondered our escape route, Mr. Scant was already circumnavigating the dome, peering closely at the walkway underfoot. After some minutes, he found what he was looking for: a barely discernable gap between the wooden boards of the walkway, one that could be pried open with a bit of razor-sharp persuasion. The opening between the boards was small and dark as the flue of a small house, with little ridges all down the edges. From the direction the chute ran, I could see that it followed the outside of the dome, inside the very walls of the Reading Room.

  “Climb down slowly and carefully, and make sure your feet have solid purchase at every step,” Mr. Scant said, removing his claw and putting it into its little bag. In a complex-looking procedure, he slipped all his long limbs into the tiny space, and then the chute swallowed him up. After a long, doubtful pause, I followed.

  It was probably much like what the chimney-sweep boys like the ones in Reverend Kingsley’s book used to experience. Darkness and suffocation. Grime coated each handhold; for the first minutes of my descent, I was careful about getting my clothes dirty, but soon I grew too tired. By the time my feet were back on solid ground, I was exhausted. We had descended far enough that we must have been in the foundations of the building, and then we reached a narrow passage leading toward the center of the dome.

  The passage widened again, and we emerged into an open space. Mr. Scant turned on his torch again, but I noticed he didn’t give me one this time. The torch’s beam ate away at a small portion of the darkness, so that we could see that the chamber was round, like the reading room above it; it was also full of books, but the similarities ended there.

  There were books in chains and thick sheaves of paper impaled on spikes, as well as several pits surrounded by what appeared to be ash. Unlike the grand, comforting dome above, this space resembled a torture chamber built by someone who really hated reading.

  Near the center of this strange and unpleasant place, we found several important-looking volumes on a reading desk. Mr. Scant gave me the torch as he drew the old book from under a strap across his chest. This tome was identical to the one on the desk in front of him, so after a moment’s contemplation, he swapped them. Examining the fake grimoire his brother had made, Mr. Scant looked back to me and reached for the torch—then stopped and ducked, just in time to avoid a huge hand wrapping around his neck.

  “Argh! I was sure I was quiet enough that time!” said a familiar voice. A voice that came from a set of lungs I suspected was bigger than my entire body. With a grin, the Valkyrie struck a match on the side of a bookshelf and lit a small lantern. “Let’s have a look at you,” she said, setting the lamp on the table and carelessly dropping the match. “Ah, brought the boy again, ha?
Remember, child, it’s dangerous to play with fire, especially with all this old, dry paper around.”

  The Valkyrie wiped her mouth with the back of a leather-gloved hand. Her cleaver was in her grip, and for a moment, it caught the light from my torch and shone like a clouded moon.

  “What do you stand to gain here?” Mr. Scant asked, laying the forged grimoire down at his feet. “We are only leaving the book.”

  “What do I gain? First, ask yourself what I lost. I lost face when I let you thieve that there book from under my nose. So this is about getting even. What I’m after is the blood price.”

  With that, she hooked her cleaver under an empty reading desk and heaved it toward Mr. Scant. As he pushed me back to safety, he said, “There must be another way in, one she could fit through. Find it. Go!”

  With that, he turned to hurl himself back toward the Valkyrie, who laughed at his efforts to force her back. “Silly little matchstick man,” she chuckled. “Coming to give me a hug, ha?”

  I wanted to stay, partly because I was worried about Mr. Scant, but mostly because I felt I was safer by his side. I still had the torch, so of course I would be easy to find if the Valkyrie won this fight. But I knew better than to disobey. As I nodded, Mr. Scant turned his hand upside-down: when the Valkyrie swung her cleaver, her forearm landed on the point of one claw. Her bellow of pain propelled me along as I scurried away.

  The big chamber was as dark as starless midnight, and the torchlight barely cut through it. As I tried to make haste, I made the mistake of looking back toward Mr. Scant and the Valkyrie, and fell into one of the pits. My landing sent a cloud of ash puffing upwards, and I coughed and sputtered as I crawled back out. Lucky that the pit was only a few feet deep. For a moment, my torch flickered, and when I shook it in a panic, the light reflected on something up ahead. I hit the torch until the beam became steady again, then loped forward like a caveman to investigate what I had seen glimmering. When I found it, I wondered if I had knocked my head in the fall and begun to see things.

  A large Egyptian sarcophagus loomed before me, stood upright like an ornate wardrobe. The placid look on the gilded face made me think of a motion picture about King Ramses being brought to life, making me hesitate to step closer. Only when I felt something solid underfoot did I realize the relic stood on a highly incongruous metal platform.

  There was nothing else for it: I stepped closer and pulled at the ancient casing. Someone had fitted hinges on the lid, so it opened in the manner of a heavy door, and I breathed a sigh of relief when nothing lurched out to grab me. Instead, a large and obvious lever protruded from amidst the hieroglyphs.

  Under the lever was another lamp like the one the Valkyrie had used. The sarcophagus was big enough to accommodate her, so I wondered if this had somehow been the way she had gained access to the chamber. I tried to shine my torch to the ceiling above, but it stretched high enough that the light failed to reach it. I was certain that I stood in the very center of the chamber, though, and between that, the metal platform, and the lever, I reasoned that sarcophagus was a kind of elevator. “That’s a bit silly,” I mumbled to myself, but with no time to lose, I hurried back to tell Mr. Scant.

  When I found him, two of his claws had been snapped clean off, but the Valkyrie wielded only one cleaver. I began to call out, but as I did, the Valkyrie’s arm shot out like a piston. She grabbed Mr. Scant by the top of his head. He slashed upwards with his claw, but the cleaver stopped his blades. The Valkyrie began to squeeze, but Mr. Scant stabbed upwards again, this time with the claws of his thumb and little finger. The cleaver deflected the thumb, but the smallest claw found its mark, and the Valkyrie screamed in pain again. Mr. Scant took the opportunity to scramble away.

  “Have you found it?” he asked, as though the raging giant behind him did not even exist.

  “I think so.”

  “Good, we should—” Mr. Scant began, but the Valkyrie threw a bookshelf at him. Only a small one, but it nonetheless sent him reeling. “Madam, I would thank you not to interrupt,” he said as he picked himself up and dusted himself down.

  “I’m going to scoop out your brains and use you as a vase for my geraniums,” was the Valkyrie’s answer.

  Mr. Scant tutted and picked up the Valkyrie’s lamp from the desk. As he unscrewed the top and grabbed a handful of scrolls from a nearby shelf, she held up her hand.

  “You wouldn’t burn someone else’s property. Come, now. It’s not your way.”

  “I’m disappointed you don’t know me better than that,” Mr. Scant said, and let the paper meet the flame. As the Valkyrie lunged forward, he threw the lamp at her, and she screeched as it burst on her breastplate. The oil in the lamp spilt out, and her apron caught fire. As she beat at the flames, Mr. Scant drew out his brother’s forgery from where he had strapped it to his chest and dropped it into the flaming oil. “Now, lead the way,” he told me.

  “Are you mad?” the Valkyrie bellowed as we ran. “The place will go up like tinder, ha! Claw! Get back here, Claw!”

  Mr. Scant showed no sign of concern. When I led him to the sarcophagus, he grasped its purpose instantly, ushering me in and pushing the lever upwards. With the sound of heavy machinery grinding into action, the platform began to rise. Mr. Scant went to the edge to watch for the Valkyrie, but it was soon apparent that the platform turned as it ascended, as though we stood atop a giant screw.

  After reaching a certain height, we began to catch a glimpse of the Valkyrie with each turn. She ranted and raved, telling us to get back down there, which of course we didn’t. She had torn away half of her apron and thrown it into one of the pits, along with everything else that had caught fire. A coarse smoke rose from the pit, parts of it green and parts red, whether from dyes or from old magic spells, I could not tell. With the fire contained, the Valkyrie went on yelling and even made little jumps, as though she hoped to fly up after us.

  “Lucky she got it all into that pit,” I said, waving the smoke away from my face. “It would have been terrible if everything burnt.”

  “It may surprise you, but of all the enemies I have fought, she is in all probability the most intelligent,” said Mr. Scant. “She would never have thrashed about, setting everything ablaze. I suppose trusting her not to do so is my sign of respect.”

  By now, the smoke was filling the air around us. Even Mr. Scant ducked a little when a sound like a firework popped below us; a colorful stream of sparks flowed from the fire pit. I heard the Valkyrie shouting about idiot magicians and stupid magic tricks.

  “Inside the sarcophagus, now,” said Mr. Scant. In the ceiling above, I could make out an opening not for the entire platform but only for the sarcophagus itself—and only with its door closed. “Quickly,” Mr. Scant added, and we crammed ourselves in. As Mr. Scant shut the door, his bony knees pushed me up against the very edges of the container, but if the Valkyrie fit inside, so could we. The thought of her squeezing in made me laugh.

  “Are you crying?” asked Mr. Scant.

  “No! I was laughing!”

  “What is there to laugh about?”

  “I imagined the Valkyrie wedging herself in here.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m not afraid of the dark, you know.”

  With a jolt, our ascent was complete, and Mr. Scant opened the door. We had arrived in the Reading Room, right in the center. Mr. Scant scanned the space, including the impressive domed ceiling. Finding it silent, he led me to the door, but returned to the sarcophagus and pushed the lever down. “Another mark of respect,” he said as the sarcophagus began to descend, a plume of smoke escaping past it through the hole in the ground.

  The Reading Room’s main door was not locked. Outside, Mr. Scant dashed across the open space of the courtyard and knelt to peer into the keyhole of the door that led to the museum entrance hall. To reach the main gates, we still had reach the other side of this building. “The key’s still in here,” he rumbled.

  “So you can’t pick it?”


  “This in fact allows us to proceed with celerity.”

  “With what?”

  “With speed.”

  Mr. Scant pushed the claw of his little finger into the keyhole, making the key drop to the floor on the other side of the door. He then used that same claw to sweep under the door, pulling the key back with it. In no time, we were through, and Mr. Scant of course took the time to lock the door behind him. To the main entrance we walked, checking all corners before unbarring the big heavy door and letting ourselves out.

  We came very close to a clean getaway. Down the stone steps we went, and then Mr. Scant lifted me over the main gates. But the moment Mr. Scant dropped beside me, I heard a youthful voice piping up, “Get it! Get it! Get it!”

  I had no time to react. All I knew was that Mr. Scant had grabbed my face and forced me down. A bright flash lit up the world, and then we were running, running fast away from the museum. Behind us, the youthful voice chirped, “It was really him! It was really the Claw! Told you there was smoke, didn’t I? And I was right! We got it! We got the picture!”

  X

  A Truth Revealed

  his was a different kind of anger for Mr. Scant: one he directed at himself.

  The entire drive home to Tunbridge Wells, he brooded, stroking his chin and looking at nothing. If I said anything to him, he pretended not to hear a word—or quite possibly didn’t have to pretend. I remembered what his brother had said about plans on top of plans, and I imagined he was thinking of dozens of new ones, depending on what that photograph revealed. Even back at the house, he said nothing but, “Be sure to wash all the ash away before sleeping, Master Oliver.”

  He remained inscrutable during breakfast the next day, as Father held up the newspaper with our story on its front page. Intrepid Photographer Duo Foil British Museum Theft, the headline proclaimed—with Naught Thieved This Time in Latest Ruminating Claw Strike running underneath. A large photograph accompanied the article—the one that had been taken last night.