Книга - The Darkening King

The Darkening King
Justin Fisher


Ned and the magical Circus of Marvels are back in a third rip-roaring, page-turning adventure!The Armstrongs are both predator and prey, hunting for clues to help them fight the Darkening-King, while constantly watching their backs. This time it’s not just the world of the Hidden searching for them: the Josser world is intent on capturing the family too. Leading the search is the curious Mr Fox and his agents in grey, and they’ve found an ally who knows Ned’s every move.As the world of the Hidden begins to fall apart, its horde of Demons and Darklings threatens to spill out of the shadows at any moment. With his trusty mouse and Familiar, Lucy and George, Ned must travel from the snow-swept forests of Siberia to the cliffs of Dover in a desperate attempt to rally allies for a final stand. Fearsome enemies will become allies and old allies enemies, as Ned prepares himself for the final battle.














First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018

Published in this ebook edition in 2018

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Text copyright © Justin Fisher 2018

Cover illustrations copyright © Marcus Šumberac 2018

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Justin Fisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008124588

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008124595

Version: 2018-06-29


For C Thank you again, and again and again. For always and for everything X


Contents

Cover (#u4d282ec8-ae8d-5cb6-8218-bee8fa951d11)

Title Page (#u1ead1db3-cbee-5de1-9d5a-7b4b027e2738)

Copyright (#u8ebfffa0-bae8-5313-8e70-6ff3f1af0717)

Dedication (#u4327e67b-0787-5697-a4bd-ae4523d8df43)

Prologue

1. Godshill

2. Afternoon Tea

3. The Door

4. Boiling

5. The Demon in the Tea Room

6. Grey-suits

7. Old Faces

8. The Butcher and the Hammer

9. The Nest

10. Tinks

11. Who? What? Why?

12. Little to Do about Nothing

13. Not Entirely Ideal

14. Not Entirely Alone

15. The Forest

16. We Have Company

17. Brother

18. The King in the Cave

19. Older than Old

20. The Stone Dragon

21. Trapped

22. Alliance

23. Brothers-in-arms

24. Headquarters

25. Mr Bear

26. A Brief Debrief

27. Father and Son

28. Clockwork Museum

29. Mr Cogsworth

30. A Decent Pub in Dublin

31. Tick-tock, the Mouse and the Clock

32. Trouble and Strife

33. Sharp Exit

34. No Exit

35. Dearly Departed

36. Best-made Plans

37. The Fey

38. The Liffey

39. Lemnus Gemfeather

40. The Glade Awakens

41. St Albertsburg

42. A Ball of Vines

43. Breaking and Entering

44. Magic Wakes

45. The Fallen

46. Boffins

47. Whiskers?

48. Mr Bear’s Insurance

49. Dad

50. Dinner for Two

51. Things That Go “Bump” in the Night

52. The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

53. Bananas

54. Past and Present

55. Ready?

56. The Forest Darkens

57. Really Real

58. Artificial Intelligence

59. Time’s Up

60. The Un-Hidden

61. Wild Horses

62. The Night Before the Darkness

63. Barbarossa

64. “Good Luck”

65. Mr Rook

66. The Wall of Wood

67. The Central Intelligence

68. Charging into Darkness

69. Tick, Tock

70. Into the Fray

71. Mr Spider and Mr Fox

72. Tricks and Traps

73. Whiskers and the Scientist

74. The Eastern Tower

75. Together

76. Barba and the King

77. The End of Everything

78. Light and Dark

79. Presents

80. Mr Fox

81. George and the Jungle

82. Toys

83. Everywhere

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Books by Justin Fisher

About the Publisher




PROLOGUE (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





he vast forests of the East Siberian taiga cover more than a million square miles, from impenetrable marshlands to unending carpets of ancient woodland teeming with bears, reindeer and other more secretive creatures not often seen by man. Of all of its villages, few are more forgotten or remote than Kazimir.

Captain Nikolai Volkov and his men had travelled all the way from Irkutsk. The city was home to the 24th Spetsnaz Brigade and the young captain had long been counted in their ranks as the man to “get things done”. He was not in a good mood. The stories he’d heard were not untypical for such remote parts of the region. Superstitions and old wives’ tales about “magic and monsters”, silly stories to keep their children from straying into the woods and a complete waste of Volkov and his specialist task force’s time. The cramped cabin of his DT-30 mobile base was at least warm, though its powerful diesel engine was interminably loud and smelt even worse than it sounded. Outside, the twenty-five-strong squad of men travelled on sledges behind harnessed reindeer. Each one carried GPRS tracking devices, night-vision goggles, grenade launchers, specialist automatic rifles and every other gadget and technological advancement that the mighty Russian Army provided. But their most valuable asset was the Siberian reindeer. Reindeer did not break down and a reindeer could travel through a forest’s thickest region where a twenty-tonne troop carrier could not.

The villagers of Kazimir had greeted them with teary eyes. Salvation had finally come after months of begging. It was only when officials from the local district had ventured into the woods and subsequently disappeared that the high-ups from Irkutsk had ordered Volkov to the area.

“Go, Nikolai, put these poor villagers’ minds at rest,” they had said. “We know it’s a bear, you know it’s a bear, but the denizens of Kazimir need proof.”

That had been days ago and here he was now, in the middle of a forest with the most highly trained pest control unit in the world.

“Magic and monsters,” he muttered, as the DT-30’s caterpillar tracks ground to an icy halt.

Bang, bang! came the pounding on the cabin’s hatch. “Captain Volkov, the transport can go no further.”

Volkov stepped out into an impossibly cold night. Even his gruelling training could not stop him from pausing to catch breath. It must have been -55°C at least. Surely not even a bear could withstand this cold? And anyway, didn’t bears hibernate in the winter months? In front and behind the forest lay black; their DT-30 had taken them as far as its tracks would allow.

“A curse on this cold, a curse on Siberia and a curse on this blasted mission!”

“Your orders, captain?”

His number two, though covered in extreme snow gear, was easy enough to recognise for the simple fact that he was the size of a bull. Galkin was younger by almost a decade but in Volkov’s opinion as able a leader as he was and Volkov was always glad of it.

“Take three men and scout the way forward; we’ll follow with the supplies.”

The bull saluted and paced on ahead.

Volkov never liked to walk through a forest at night. It made him feel as though the stars had been sucked out of the sky. After more than an hour, even the deep winter snow could no longer find its way through the taiga’s wooded canopy. There were no stars above and no snow below, just the ice-cold embrace of a pitch-black wood. As they trudged through the frozen mud and pines, Volkov’s gut started to twitch. His gut had never let him down. Like a dog sensing danger long before it arrives, Volkov’s gut always told him when trouble was brewing and the reindeer clearly agreed. The beasts came to a complete standstill, honking in their throats nervously, their hooves skittish on the ground.

“What’s got into them?” seethed the captain.

As a born and bred Siberian, no one knew more about reindeer than Volkov’s handler, not even the actual reindeer.

“I wish I knew, captain. I’ve never seen them like this, never.”

Volkov’s gut began to rumble more steadily. A quick gesture of his hand and his column of men pulled down their night-vision goggles. Everything turned to electric green and the reindeer stopped. As Yenotov and the other handlers pushed and prodded their now immobile animals, something through the trees moved with a flicker of dark green over black. Volkov raised his weapon and those not tending to the herd followed suit. The targeting dot from his laser slowed by a tree and something behind it moved.

“Six o’clock.”

“Eight.”

“Eleven.”

One by one his men called out movement in the trees, and seemingly from everywhere.

“Brace!” ordered Volkov.

The Spetsnaz dropped to one knee and prepared to fire.

All of a sudden, their supply column of reindeer broke free and fled from their handlers, all twelve animals with their heavy packs and Volkov’s much-needed supplies bolting as a feathered storm flew at the squad, a flapping of a hundred wings, magpies, pigeons, sparrows and hawks, swallows, barn owls, finches and crows, filling the air in a living squall, then just as suddenly parting.

Nothing.

Volkov and his bemused men got back to their feet and were trying to understand what had just happened when the first scream called through the darkness ahead of them.

Without a word, his men fanned out wide, running as best as they could through the undergrowth and straight to the sound of their screaming comrades. A little way forward something big was running towards them, crashing through branches with all the violent force of a crazed animal. It was Galkin, Volkov’s number two.

His helmet and scarf had come away, lost somewhere in his flight, and his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. The man was crazed with terror. Volkov had seen this before with new recruits, young soldiers that had no place with the Spetsnaz, but Galkin? The man was unbreakable, or at least had been until now.

“Galkin, calm yourself. What happened?”

“M-mmm–”

Volkov grabbed the man by the shoulders and shook him hard.

“What, man? What are you saying?”

“M-magic and … and m-monsters,” Galkin finally managed.

Two of the squadron stayed with their sobbing second in command, as Volkov led the others forward. Some way through the forest the trees began to thin till they came to a vast clearing. At its centre firepits bellowed and a great iron structure jutted out of the ground like an angry tooth. To Volkov it looked very much like the beginnings of some fortress. The Spetsnaz had grade one clearance – they would know of such a thing, surely? Why had he not been informed? And what had happened to the sky? At first he thought he was looking at a mirror, or that the world had turned upside down. The air was black with smoke from the firepits, and the stars – every one of them had fallen to the ground. They lay along the clearing, too many to count. A great wondrous carpet of yellow and white in all its shimmering glory. Volkov and his men removed their goggles.

And the stars roared.

What had looked like heaven quickly became hell. The stars were not stars at all but the eyes of a great horde, monsters from old wives’ tales suddenly made real. From the lick of orange light spewing out of the firepits, the Spetsnaz saw row upon row of hideous creatures, fanged, clawed, hoofed and winged, edging their way closer and preparing to strike.

Captain Nikolai Volkov let his rifle drop to the floor. As his end approached, he could think of only one thing to say. It fell from his lips with no particular recipient in mind and it was to be the last three words that he would ever speak.

“Magic and monsters.”







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Godshill (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





odshill on the Isle of Wight was as pretty a village as the Armstrongs could ever hope to find. Spring was finally rearing its head, bees buzzed along the thatched roofs of its ancient cottages, and a large medieval church at its centre could not have drawn a prettier picture. Ned and his little family had never found the time to go on holiday. He thought, as they walked down the road, how nice it might be to come back here one day, when they actually could. But here and now, like always, there was only the hunt, and the Armstrongs were in the unique position of being both predator and prey.

He’d lost count of the hotels and motels they’d stayed in. Never staying for more than a day at a time because of what they were searching for, and what – or rather who – was searching for them. As far as Ned could tell, everyone was looking for the Armstrongs, and on both sides of the Veil.

Backpacks, T-shirts, jeans and jumpers – holiday gear for the perfect “happy family”. Only, the Armstrongs hadn’t been truly happy for quite some time. “Happy” was for families that weren’t on the world’s most wanted list. “Happy” was for people who had the time to buy an ice cream and sit in the sun. And herein lay the problem – the Armstrongs and the world that they lived in had run out of time.

The Darkening King was on the brink of rising.

They now stood on a street corner outside Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, est. 2012. It was the sort you find dotted about the villages of England, particularly ones frequented by tourists. What was not known was that Mavis’s Tea Shoppe was in fact a safe house for the Hidden, especially those who had run out of places to hide. It was one of her rarer and more nocturnal patrons that the Armstrongs had arranged to come and see.

“Whiskers?” called out Ned’s dad.

There was a muffled squeak from somewhere in Ned’s backpack.

“Remember everyone on the other side knows about Ned and his mouse – that means you, furball. Not a squeak out of you till we get back to the caravan park, or you’ll blow our cover.”

The backpack remained deathly quiet.

“What’s he doing?”

“Err, I think he’s following orders, Dad.”

“Right. Good. Now, son, wait here. Me and your mum need to check the place out first.”

“Just a tick, darling, and don’t talk to any strangers,” added his mum.

Ned’s eyes rolled and his parents opened the door to the welcoming ding of a bell. “Don’t talk to strangers” was what you told a six-year-old – not someone who had saved the world. Twice. But it was always the same now, wherever they went. And the truth was – they had every right to worry. Ned’s ring no longer listened to him when he tried to use his powers, and his mum and dad had become so protective that he was barely allowed to do anything any more, except sit and wait with his shadow and his wind-up mouse.

He slumped on to the steps of the tea shop. Across the street he saw an old man in a tweed jacket, huffing and puffing with a Zimmer frame to steady his balance. He was tall and spider-leg thin, with barely any remaining white hair and a long reddish nose that seemed to be attached to the rest of his face with a criss-cross pattern of wrinkles.

He was struggling across the road towards Mavis’s and when he looked towards Ned he smiled between great rasping breaths. The poor old dear either thought that he knew Ned, or that Ned might be able to help him on his way, which of course Ned would. Stranger or not, the man needed help.

“Hello. Are you all right?” Ned asked.

Now almost on the other side, the old man grinned at Ned, revealing quite the most extraordinary set of teeth. They all pointed in different directions. Some were grey or brown, others chipped or missing, and one looked as though it would have been more at home in the mouth of a dog.

“I will be, young man, with a little assistance,” he rasped.

But Ned couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s teeth.

“Might I bend your ear for a moment?”

As he spoke, a small device in Ned’s pocket began to shake. It was the perometer that his great friend George had given him a few months earlier, when the Armstrongs had had to leave the Circus of Marvels and go on the run. The device could sense danger, and as it began to shake, Ned stumbled to his feet. The old man let go of his Zimmer frame, his bony fingers instead reaching into his jacket pocket. When they came out again he was holding a thin-bladed dagger, and his eyes shone black.

“Gor-balin!” spat Ned.

“Yes, boy! Been watching Mavis’s for weeks, I have. End of the road for you, my friend.”

Gor-balins were not uncommon amongst Darklings and were often sent on missions across the Veil’s borders, due to their more human size and shape. But as the creature’s glamour began to fade, Ned was reminded that that was where the similarities ended. The creature walked upright and easily now, the whites of his eyes turned black and his skin darkened to a wet, mottled grey. His nose grew more crooked, the tips of his ears longer, and his bony fingers now ended with claws.

“I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you,” stammered Ned.

“Why, what you gonna do about it?” jeered the gor-balin. “Not much, is what I heard …”

Ned raised his hand and focused on the band of metal at his finger – the same band of metal that had flattened a whole host of the creatures on the rooftops of St Clotilde’s. But that had been a different time and a very different Ned. He thought of ice and the air around his finger shimmered with intent. As he pictured the atoms in his mind coming together and growing still, he could feel the ring’s tendrils hum under the pores of his skin. And for a moment, just a fraction of a moment, he thought his powers had finally returned.

“Please,” he whispered.

The air crackled with the brief sparking of atoms and then, just as it had a hundred times before, his ring grew quiet and the air stilled.

“I said, don’t come any closer!” said Ned, trying to sound braver than he felt.

The dark hollows of the gob’s eyes shone and his lips broke into a smile. He walked forward, slowly now, relishing every second as Ned backed away further down the alleyway that ran alongside Mavis’s tea shop.

“So it’s true … Not the boy you was then, are you? You ain’t nothin’ without your mum and dad.”

The creature was right. But even now, powerless as he was, Ned wasn’t alone, not quite.

“To be fair, I did try and warn you. Gorrn?” he breathed.

Ned’s shadow – his slovenly familiar – did not make tea, or do the dishes. In fact, there were relatively few things the creature did well, except for fighting and biting.

“Arr,” said the shadow, and the smug grin on the gor-balin’s face was promptly removed as the darker recesses of the alley began to shift.

The shadow that was Gorrn raised himself up from the ground as a wall of toothy darkness, thickening and darkening as he stretched to fill the width of the alleyway between Ned and his assailant.

“Grak!” spat the gob.

And in a violent and silent second, Gorrn lunged, enveloping the Darkling in his folds before spitting him out like a mouthful of chewed food and into one of Mavis’s green recycling bins.

A shaken Ned closed the lid on the unconscious assassin, quickly and quietly.

“Thanks, Gorrn.”

His familiar oozed back to the ground before blending into the shadows.

“You there, Whiskers?”

“Scree.”

“I know Dad told you to be quiet and keep our cover, but next time someone comes at me with a knife can you assume the cover’s been blown and, you know, do something useful?”

The Debussy Mark Twelve remained silent.

Ned’s heart was pounding for more reasons than he could count. For one thing, Barbarossa’s minions were dangerously close, and not for the first time. Had it not been for Gorrn, the assassin would have ended him then and there. But that wasn’t what was really troubling him. What really scared him was that he still couldn’t work his Engine, no matter how hard he tried. How was he ever going to defeat the Darkening King if he had no powers? Not to mention the fact that if his parents found out about his face-off in the alley, they’d wrap him in so much protective cotton wool that he’d end up suffocating. He’d tell them later, after the tea room and in his own good time. He hid the gob’s Zimmer frame down the alleyway and out of sight, and paced back to the corner of Mavis’s tea shop.

“Not a word about this, from either of you. Not till we get back, OK?”

“Arr.”

“Scree.”

“I thought I told you – no talking to the mouse, Ned!”

Ned looked up to see that his dad had come back out of Mavis’s to get him.

“Sorry, Dad. I thought, erm … there was nobody about so …”

His dad cocked his head slightly.

“You OK, son? You look a bit ruffled.”

Gorrn shifted guiltily along the ground by Ned’s foot.

“I’m fine, Dad, just a bit nervous, you know? About who it is we’re going to see.”

“Well, keep your wits about you. Danger could be lurking anywhere.”

“Yes, Dad, anywhere …”







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Afternoon Tea (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





avis’s was in fact just as it should have been. Scones, cake, proper teapots with proper tea and lacy pink curtains to match the lacy pink tablecloths. It was also, much to Ned’s surprise, completely empty apart from an extremely overdressed and bejewelled lady – presumably Mavis, thought Ned. No doubt her business was going well, though you wouldn’t know it from the state of her empty premises. His dad walked up to the counter and spoke to her quietly, leaving Ned with his mum.

“Do you think he – it – will actually be there?” Ned asked his mum.

“I hope so, darling. I’m so tired of all the running and chasing. All the grinning and pretending we’re on holiday.”

“You know, we could lose the grinning? It’s not like everyone’s always happy when they’re on holiday. We could pretend we’ve come down with some sort of tummy bug – you know, from all the exotic hotel food?”

His mum chuckled. “Oh, Ned, we’re on the Isle of Wight, not Outer Mongolia. The food’s good but hardly exotic.”

“You’re right, Mongolia was last week,” smiled back Ned.

“Was it? Oh yes, that dreadful business with the cyclops. Do you know, I thought it was Spain for some reason.”

“That was the week before.”

Ned watched as his dad passed Mavis a brown envelope full of used notes. She peered in and nodded appreciatively, then returned the favour by passing something small over the counter and tipping her head towards a door at the rear of the shop in a way that said, “Over there but I didn’t tell you.”

The happy holidaymakers that were Ned and his family made their way down a cramped corridor, past a loo, towards the door at the back. They walked through and found themselves in a small windowless room with red velvet wallpaper and a pair of long-backed mahogany chairs arranged either side of a tall mirror.

Ned saw it and sighed. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” said his dad.

“I thought we agreed, no more mirrors!”

Olivia Armstrong managed to look quite sheepish, which was not something the ex Mother Superior and Circus of Marvels agent was prone to do.

“Ned, we have avoided mirrors at every possible turn. We have travelled in the cargo holds of freighter ships, aeroplanes, a military troop carrier … even strapped to the bottom of a horse-drawn cart. This is completely unavoidable. Where we’re going isn’t on any map – it’s in the mirror-verse.”

Ned’s few experiences of stepping through mirror-portals had not for the most part been pleasant.

“In it?!” he shrieked at a far higher pitch than he’d intended.

“Safest safe house in existence. Son, this is the closest we’ve come in months. The last three informants were murdered before we even got there and Spain … well, Spain was an unmitigated disaster.”

His dad was not wrong. The “informant” they’d gone to meet had turned out to be an agent for the BBB, and had it not been for some quick thinking from Olivia, and Gorrn providing cover for a speedy getaway, the Armstrongs’ mission would have come to an end. It had only been after the battle over At-lan that Ned and his family had discovered who the BBB actually were. A josser network of highly trained spies, seemingly with unending resources and a fascination with the Hidden in all their forms. Their goal? No one really knew. But the BBB were getting better, smarter and more cunning. Everywhere the Armstrongs turned the message was the same – they were after Ned and his family and would go to any lengths to find them.

“Yes, it was a disaster, Dad, and your sources could be wrong about this too. We don’t know what’s on the other side of that mirror.”

“Nor what’s behind us.”

For a moment Ned thought about Barbarossa’s assassin still lying unconscious in a wheelie bin outside. And there could be more on their way.

“Fine,” managed Ned.

“Right,” said his mum. “Let’s go and find ourselves some trouble, eh?”

Given that trouble was regularly finding them, maybe turning the tables wasn’t such a bad idea.

His dad held the sliver of glass that Mavis had given him, and the Armstrongs all joined hands. Then quietly and without fuss they proceeded to walk through the mirror.

That was the thing about trying to find a Demon – they always seemed to hide in the most awkward places.







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The Door (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





ed had only travelled by mirror a handful of times. Even so, he still had to adjust his brain as he pressed his nose to the glass. His reflection appeared to wrap around him somehow, and the glass had give. It was cold – somewhere between ice and water. Not slush exactly; slush was wet. But not dry either. More like jelly, only without its stickiness.

His reflection warped and blurred and joined with another until, quite seamlessly—

Shluup.

Ned popped out on the other side as though nothing had happened.

“This is it, son,” said his dad. “Mavis’s real tea shop.”

In front of them was a single carved door with images of fair-folk and Darklings all about its entrance. What was strange and very mildly terrifying was that it appeared to float on thin air, just above the red carpet they were standing on. Above and below was a starry sky with no moon to light it but what looked like the aurora borealis – a great dancing show of coloured light playing out around them.

“Wow,” said Ned. “Where are we?”

“Well, son, technically Mavis’s tea shop isn’t anywhere. Those stars out there are actually mirrors, just like the one we stepped through. This is somewhere in between the reflections, between the light. Geographically speaking, ‘here’ doesn’t really exist—”

“Now, Ned, I don’t need to spell out the dangers,” interrupted his mum.

“Yes, son, you’ve not been yourself for a while now, so if there’s trouble in there, you leave it to me and your mum, OK?”

Ned bristled, but he knew he was right. Ned was like a tiger without claws – no more capable of defending himself than the boy he’d been before discovering the Hidden and his powers. His mum saw the look on his face.

“Terrence Armstrong, sometimes your mouth gets in the way of your brain! Ned, darling, you’re finer than fine. It’s just a phase. I’m sure plenty of Engineers before you went through just the same sort of thing, and anyway, I don’t have any powers, do I? There’s nothing strong bones, a highly developed set of reflexes and quick thinking can’t get you out of!” said his mum, clearly trying to sound upbeat.

Ned knew she didn’t really believe it, just as surely as he knew she was wrong, but he smiled as best he could.

“That said, stay close,” urged his dad. “Now …”

They turned to the door. The entrance was completely silent, and Ned wondered whether the mirrored version of the tea shop was as empty as the one they had passed through to get there. A pink neon sign rearranged itself from a jumble of words till it read, MAVIS’S YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE, and then the sign changed again to: NO COFFEE DRINKERS ALLOWED.

Its oak door had the most lifelike carving at its front in detailed knots of intricately tooled wood. Ned had to blink – it looked very much like the Mavis they had seen back on the Isle of Wight, only “woody”, and both younger and a little less full in the face.

“Who are you?” croaked the wood.

Ned gawped – there was little he hadn’t seen behind the Veil, but this was definitely his first talking door.

Ned’s mum paused for a second, quickly recalling the cover story they had decided on before setting out.

“Ahem,” began Olivia in quite the regal tone, “I am the Lady de Laqua, with my warlock and nephew, Tarquin.”

The carving’s wooded eyes peered at them slowly, till the entire door started to shake, before breaking into creasy, knotted laughter.

“Ha ha ha! Come on, dear, no one ever tells me their real name here, but Tarquin?! Looks more like a Cecil to me.”

Ned’s mum scowled at Ned, as though he had somehow let them down by not looking “Tarquin-ish” enough.

“It matters not,” said the door. “Everyone is welcome here, just as long as you have coin. You do have coin, don’t you?”

“Yes – yes, we have coin,” replied Ned’s mum.

“ENTER!” croaked the door and flung itself wide.







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Boiling (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





hey were met by a wall of colour, sound and heat. Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe was bursting at the seams with its tea-drinking patrons and, to Ned’s amazement, there was not one but at least a dozen other Mavii all in the same heavy make-up and outfits as the one on the Isle of Wight. They moved through the crowd with all the skill and expertise of a lifetime pouring tea. Quick, amiable and with no time for nonsense.

“Doppelgängers,” whispered his mum. “Don’t stare.”

“Well, that’s one way to save on staff,” breathed his dad, his nerves finally settling into the mission at hand.

At its very centre Ned saw the real Mavis, who was at least in looks completely identical to her counterparts working the room, except for one amazing and inescapable difference. The real Mavis was a giant. Ned could only get a proper look at her from the waist up, but she must have been at least thirty feet in height and her great warbling voice shrilled with banter and laughter in equal measure, seemingly having several conversations at the same time. Around her was a great circular bar area arranged on three floors and the heavily bejewelled Mavis had teapots for rings on brown-stained fingers, pouring her cups ten at a time and on every floor. Her great earrings swung like chandeliers and she was coated in at least a gallon of make-up. Great rollers the size of tractors were in her hair and her shimmering dress was in gaudy, sequinned reds. It appeared that only an original outfit would do for the original Mavis. No matter how loud the raucous tea room got, her voice carried over all of it.

“My darlings, yes, of course!” she boomed to a boisterous gathering on the top floor. “Have you tried my new range in health teas? A little antioxidant? It’ll give you zip! We’ve Ener-tea, Strawber-tea and my absolute favourite, Zipi-tea. That’s trademarked, by the way, so don’t get any funny ideas.”

For a moment Ned felt on familiar ground, as if he was at a party at the Circus of Marvels. All the fear, all the worry from running and hiding finally ebbed away as he took in the splendour and fanfare of a Hidden get-together, with its bunting and pretty lanterns floating in mid-air. Soft music was being played by a band of nymphs on the second floor and all around them the air seemed to bubble. It was only when Ned’s eyes adjusted that he began to notice why, and he finally understood why it was so hot. Every wall had built-in glass kettles that were constantly boiling away, ready to create one of Mavis’s multicoloured concoctions. Every tea imaginable, catering to every taste, was on show. The smell of herbs and spices was dizzying. Saffron and cardamom, lily and sage, rose water, bluebell and forget-me-not. And further along into the darker corners of the tea room were pickled egg, carcass and swamp bile. Because as Mavis had explained to them – “everyone was welcome at Mavis’s”, even Darklings.

Ned’s mum put a heavy hand on his shoulder as they inched their way through the crowd. “Stay close,” she whispered.

Ned had no intention of doing anything else. They were deep now in the Hidden’s underbelly. From the dwarves to the dryads, each and every one was hiding from something. What astounded Ned was that they could share a room, let alone a table, with Darklings. Goblins, pirates and cut-throats, imps and a pair of nightmongers, who were creatures too foul to share a table with anyone. How it hadn’t erupted into outright violence was beyond Ned, till he walked past a table where a blue-painted dwarven berserker was in a heated debate with a knot-skinned mud-goblin, its hair and teeth a mess of rooty browns.

“You owe me for that cup, Guldrid – now pay up!”

“Want payin’, do ya?!”

The mud-gob threw his teacup at the dwarf, who barked in pain before smashing the table clear in half. No sooner had the sound of breaking china been heard than a giant arm came tearing through the room. The arm belonged to Mavis.

“NO FIGHTING IN MY TEA ROOM!” she bellowed.

The music, along with everything else in the room, suddenly stopped.

Realising what they’d done, the guilty parties pleaded in terror.

“Preease, we meant no ’arm,” begged the mud-goblin.

“RULES IS RULES!” warbled Mavis, and in one great sweep she grabbed both dwarf and goblin and hurled them out of a third-storey window.

There was no ugly splat outside, just their horrified cries as the two brawlers were launched into the mirror-verse, destined to float there long after they both had starved.

“Blimey,” whispered Ned.

“Shh,” replied his mum.

“WHAT IS RULES?” boomed the giantess now, with none of the cheeriness she’d shown only a moment ago. Her great eyes peered at the crowd defiantly, demanding a reply.

“Rules is rules!” warbled the crowd, no doubt with more than a pinch of fear-induced bravado.

“THAT’S MORE LIKE IT. MUSIC!”

The band started up again and seconds later the incident was seemingly forgotten.

Ned’s dad tapped one of the Mavii on the back. With all the commotion they were now running late for their appointment.

“Excuse me, madam?”

She turned with a blue-shadowed flutter.

“Yes, sir. Fancy a cuppa?”

“No, thank you.”

The mini Mavis scowled.

“I mean, yes, shortly. But, you see, we’re here to meet someone.” He whispered a name into her ear and the waitress’s face blanched.

“Are you sure?”

“The name’s quite correct. We were told that he had something for us.”

“No, I mean are you sure you want to meet him?”

Ned’s parents both nodded.

“I see. You had better follow me then.”

Past a throng of mercenaries and several other Mavii, their waitress took them to a dark corridor leading away from the main hall.

“This is the VIP area. If you need anything, feel free to scream.”

She knocked on an unmarked door.

“Enterrr.”

“I’ll leave you to it. Remember, scream if you need me – one of us will hear.”

The mini Mavis moved back down the corridor as fast as she could, making no secret of her desire to leave them to it. As soon as she was out of earshot there was an audible “Unt” from Ned’s shadow. Ned’s familiar and trusted bodyguard, bound to him as a servant to do his bidding at whatever cost, made his feelings quite clear. “Unt” meant a lot of things, but in most cases it meant “No”. Gorrn would not be entering the room with them.

“Oh, fine,” sighed Ned. “If you must stay out here, at least try to blend in.”

The undulating mystery that was Gorrn did just that and merged with a shadow by the door.

A room full of tapestries and Persian rugs was waiting for them. At its centre was a low, round table surrounded by luxurious silk cushions. It was all very dimly lit except for a small sprite-light that was presently dancing on the table. The little creature looked quite unhappy about the VIP she was dancing for and it was only when the creature leant out of the shadows that Ned could see why.

Some Demons, even in their human form, are not pretty.







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The Demon in the Tea Room (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)





s the Demon’s face came out of the shadows, Ned caught his breath. He was wearing a red velvet suit with black collars. In one hand was a ceramic cup full to the brim with a tarry, burning liquid. It flamed gently as he sipped from its edge, but it was his face that made Ned wince.

The Demon’s hair was immaculately groomed, slicked back with oil that smelt like coal. Its skin in contrast was as frail as old parchment and stretched across high cheekbones and a deeply lined brow. Black veins crept across its pores as though the creature carried some terrible disease, yet even in its weakened state it brimmed with quiet power, like some deposed king unseated from its throne but still sure of its rightful place.

“You are late,” he breathed.

“There was some commotion in the bar,” began Ned’s dad.

The Demon responded with a smile that wasn’t a smile.

“There is some commotion everywhere.”

And the expression he wore was between sorrow and something else, some deep trouble that refused to reveal itself. The Armstrongs took their places at the table, Ned’s mum making sure that her son was furthest away from the creature that they had come to meet. The little sprite-light was clearly happy to have less frightening visitors and proceeded to glow with more of a spark. To Ned’s amazement, the perometer in his pocket was quite still but all the same he drew it out subtly and laid it on the floor under the table, its lid open. There was a rustling from his backpack, which he promptly thumped before sheepishly laying it to one side.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” began Ned’s mum.

“Whether you thank Sur-jan later remains to be seen.”

The soft-spoken Demon they were talking to had never met Olivia Armstrong, which she was about to make quite clear.

“Demon, you are at a disadvantage. You see, I have come across your kind before yet this is the first time that you have come across me. I have always walked away in good health – those in my wake have been less fortunate. Do not mistake me or my family for cowering jossers. We know well how to deal with your kind.”

The hairs on Ned’s neck began to prickle uncomfortably. Picking a fight with a Demon was considered suicide no matter what his mum claimed. Coupled with the long arm of Mavis and her tea-stained fingers, a scrap of any kind at the tea room would not bode well.

The Demon’s eyes thinned and his cup rattled. Under the table the perometer’s needle turned briefly to Sur-jan before settling languidly again.

“I know well the Armstrong name wo-man. It is not I that would trouble you, but what I have to say.”

Terry Armstrong put his hand over his wife’s and she started to un-brittle.

“Sur-jan, many of your kind have fled the Demon strongholds at great risk, choosing to live amongst the jossers rather than remaining with their kin. If what I believe is true, you are not our enemy.”

The Demon’s face shifted angrily and Ned finally understood. In his eyes he saw something unique. It was fear. An emotion that Demons were supposedly unable to feel, yet there it was and Sur-jan did not wear it well. He sat at the table like a hot coal on ice, spitting and crackling, steaming and sparking with visible malcontent. All creatures, it seemed, no matter where they are from, become angry when frightened.

“I have risked much to be here. To be away from the earth in this nowhere-place. It has made me sick. But better to be sick than a slave.”

“I don’t understand – what are you saying?”

There was a rattling from under the table. Ned’s perometer had come alive quite suddenly, but not, as he had at first feared, because of the Demon. The needle was pointing away from the creature and towards the door.

“The Darkening King – it is not welcome by those of us that remember.”

And the more he spoke, the more the perometer’s needle twitched. First one way and then another, in quick jerks of frantic movement.

“If you feel this way then help us! Tell us where he is, how to defeat him.” Terry Armstrong was now more animated than Ned had seen him since they had started their mission, hope burning brightly in his eyes.

The needle spun now in all directions, faster and faster.

“Defeat him?”

“Dad?”

“Not now, son!” urged his father. “Go on, Sur-jan, what can you tell us?”

Down the corridor, Ned heard footsteps running at a pace and the needle was spinning so hard that the perometer started to rattle.

“DAD!”

“Ned, what’s got into you?” said his mum, and then her eyes fell to the floor and the Tinker’s device. “Oh, dear.”

Ned snatched it from the floor and slammed it on to the table, narrowly missing a now terrified sprite whose light crackled then dimmed. A spin of the perometer’s dial could mean any number of things. Barbarossa’s men? The BBB? What was left of the Twelve and its pinstripes was still after them too.

The Demon remained quite calm, his head turned to one side, and he closed his eyes as if listening to something that Ned couldn’t hear. Finally his skin began to glow a fiery red.

“Trouble is here – here for you.”

Ned and family were up on their feet in an instant.

“What trouble? What do you mean?!”

“Find the old one – he will give you what you seek. Now go. NOW. While there is still time.”

“The old …?” Ned began to ask, but a second later he was shoved out of the door by both Mum and Dad, with a fast-moving sprite at their heels, out into the corridor and back into the tea room, and that’s when Mavis made herself heard.

“HOW DARE YOU? THIS IS MY TEA ROOM!”







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Grey-suits (#ulink_e17843f7-8785-5a68-a41f-9aecd056c9a1)





avis’s tea room was eerily absent of any noise. But noise was clearly coming. The Armstrongs watched from the edge of the corridor they had just been led through. It was like looking at a stick of dynamite, its fuse lit and burning, waiting to explode.

The entire bar was still. Each and every one of its hardened criminal tea drinkers caught in mid sip. The reason stood at what was left of the entrance to Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe. The carved door lay broken on the ground, its breakers two men in light grey suits standing to one side of the wreckage.

“I thought this place was supposed to be safe?!” whispered Ned’s mum.

“It was till we got here!” spat Ned in far less of a whisper.

Two more grey-suits walked quietly and confidently into the room. One was built like a giant square brick, with the kind of face that never smiled. In front of him was a slighter man who Ned assumed was their leader. He had red-blond hair and despite their surroundings could not have looked more at ease. Something in Ned’s chest pulled – he recognised this man! It was the very same man who’d fought Benissimo the last time Ned had seen him, at the circus, before At-lan and their battle in the sky.

“I assure you, you are in no danger. We mean you absolutely no harm. My name is Mr Fox and I am searching for two adults and a child. The child is an unremarkable-looking boy usually accompanied by a mouse.”

“Unremarkable?!” fumed Ned. With his powers failing as they were, the intruder had hit a nerve.

“Shh!” ordered his mum.

As the fox-haired man spoke, “big” Mavis was removing the teapots from her fingers and flexing her mighty hands before curling them into fists. Knowing full well what was coming next, some of the patrons nearer the bar began to edge away.

“Don’t want no trouble? Do you know how long it took for my gnomes to carve that door? How much I had to pay for the magic what was woven into its wood?”

“Madam, we will recover your expenses. Unfortunately the door was not willing to open.”

“If you had half a brain you’d know why. You see, my tea room has been a safe house since before you was born. It’s the one place between everywhere that doesn’t get bothered by lawmen, or politicians, or taxmen, or anyone else. Once you step inside these walls my guarantee is that you are safe from all the nonsense out there – to enjoy my home-brewed wonders at your leisure. To that effect, there’s only one law here: Mavis’s law. And rule number one is: IF MY RUDDY DOOR DOESN’T WANT YOU IN, THEN YOU DON’T GET IN!”

And that was when the lit fuse blew.

Mavis’s gigantic right arm tore across the ground-floor bar. The fox-haired grey-suit and his number two ducked but the two door breakers behind them were not so lucky. Her fist connected with them both and there was a sickening crunch of bone on bone. They were flung to the walls violently before slumping to the floor in unconscious heaps. Their commander remained completely calm and nodded to the brick, who in return whispered something into his sleeve. A second later every window on every floor erupted in a shower of breaking glass and then—

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Smoking canisters were launched into the room, their great clouds of green gas instantly reducing those nearest to slumbering heaps. There were, however, some amongst the Darklings and Hidden who were immune to the effects, and for that lucky handful, the fox-haired man had soldiers. Heavily armoured men of a darker grey attire in riot gear and gas masks burst into the room. In place of sub-machine guns, they all carried long-poled electric batons and high-powered dart guns. This was nothing like the raid Ned had witnessed at the Circus of Marvels – the BBB worked the room with ease. With a jolt of their batons, a blast of their darts, one by one resistance was quashed. All, that was, except for Mavis, who launched blow after blow of her great arms at the mounting assault of grey.

One of the more heavily armoured intruders spotted Ned at the edge of the fighting and began to stride across the room towards him. Ned focused – focused with everything that he had – on the small band of ring at his finger. But just as before, the air shimmered in front of him as he tried to draw it together, then … nothing.

“Dad, over here!” he yelped.

Terry Armstrong, meanwhile, had no such problem when it came to his ring and was about to unleash a shower of hardened projectiles when one of the many Mavii reared up behind the man in grey and proceeded to break a teapot over his helmet. Reinforced alloys are lightweight and durable, the perfect material for special-forces armour. No match, however, for Mavis’s best china, and the man hit the floor hard.

“You lot – with me, before this gas gets the better of us!” she ordered and quickly led Ned and his family back down the corridor. “The door knew who you were the minute you knocked, it always does – the Lady de Laqua indeed!”

“I thought Mavis’s tea shop was neutral? Why are you helping us?” rasped an out-of-breath Ned.

“You have more friends than you know. From what I hear, what’s coming doesn’t care about neutral!”

“Thank you, Mavis – or what do I …?” started Terry.

“I’m Number Six, and you’re welcome.”

Heavy footsteps pounded after them and a quick glimpse over his shoulder had Ned witness the great ooze that was Gorrn surprise two of the dark-grey tanks by dropping on to them with a toothy and painful flup. The men screamed through their masks and the Armstrongs rounded the corner. Just as they did, they came face to face with Sur-jan, but not as they’d seen him before – reformed to his true flame-licked self. Sar-adin was the only Demon Ned had ever seen in his true Demonic form, but Sur-jan was quite different. His size and shape were similar, though his mouth was wider, and from it hung a snake-like tongue that forked at the end. A layer of fire crackled and spat over him like a sheet of armour and what little of the creature’s skin Ned could see through the flames was red and brittle, as though made of rough glass. Only his eyes remained as they were, and they were all the more unsettling for it, as though somehow through all that power and magic a part of him had remained human.

Sur-jan nodded to Number Six, who nodded back, and on the Armstrongs hurtled, down another corridor that ran behind the main tea room, Whiskers scurrying ahead like a wind-up rocket.

There were more screams behind them as the Demon dealt with the few men who had managed to get past Gorrn.

Finally Number Six ushered them into the last room in the corridor, inside which was a tall mirror framed by two high-backed chairs.

“Emergency exit. We’ve never had to use it before today – oh, the shame of it!”

She handed Terry a sliver of glass and the Armstrongs were just readying themselves to walk through when everything went a little bit wrong. From behind the wall they heard:

“YOU BRUTES! I’LL FEED YOU TO MY WYVERN FOR THIS!”

And in a last violent outburst, Mavis – the original and far larger Mavis – struck out at her assailants. Unfortunately for Ned and family, she struck out at the other side of the wall, on which hung the mirror, and instantly both wall and mirror were destroyed.

In a spray of plasterboard, splinters and mirrored glass, their emergency exit was turned to rubble. As the dust cleared, a dumbfounded Ned and family could only blink through the hole in the wall at the once again silent tea room.

Mavis lay sprawled over her counter. She’d been peppered with hundreds of darts and whatever liquid they’d carried to make her slumber had finally taken its hold. Every single one of her tea-drinking customers lay like Mavis, out cold on the floor, or sagging at their seats and tables.

Staring at Ned was the BBB’s fox-haired leader, behind him at least thirty armoured men, each and every one with a dart gun pointed at the Armstrongs. Tears of frustration began to well in Ned’s eyes even as he focused on his ring. Ned had no powers to call on, and his dad had no time as the grey-suits pulled their triggers.

Pfft, pfft, pfft.

A short blow of air, a sting at Ned’s neck and everything turned to black.







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Old Faces (#ulink_6d942686-1d7a-5f95-910b-0cffee9543b6)





ed was barely aware of the jolting motion of the transport, of the blindfold that had been placed over his eyes or of the muffled voices discussing “the boy” and his parents. We’re captives was all his bleary mind could muster, and everything was lost.

After more than an hour of travelling, they were led from the vehicle and into a building, then finally into a room of some sort, though where in the world they were now was anyone’s guess.

“Mr Fox will be with you shortly,” announced the grey-haired wall of an agent they had seen at Mavis’s as he took off the Armstrongs’ blindfolds and left them in what turned out to be a windowless concrete room.

“Ned, Terry, are you OK?” asked his mum just as soon as the door was closed. Red-eyed from the dart’s effects and clearly ruffled, Olivia Armstrong still managed to look beautiful as she ran round the room checking the walls for some hint of a weakness, some way in which they could escape.

“Fine, Mum,” managed Ned. “Still a bit groggy, though.”

His dad, on the other hand, looked beaten. For one thing, the clothes they’d had to buy him after their last run-in weren’t quite big enough and his hair was now completely on end, but it was the look of utter dejection that finished off the picture.

“We were so close!” he howled. “Months, months of looking, of hunting and being hunted – for nothing! Do those fools have any idea what they’ve done?”

“Don’t get worked up, Terry – you’re no use to us when you’re worked up, and I’m going to need your skills to break out of here.”

But Ned’s dad was “worked up” and in no hurry to un-work himself.

“That’s the fifth time they’ve caught up with us now. How are they doing it?”

Ned had to admit, the BBB had been impressive. He thought back to the way they’d taken out the tea drinkers, how deftly they’d worked their batons and guns.

“I was there when they raided the circus,” said Ned. “They were a hopeless bunch of jossers! But this time and the last few times they’ve caught up with us, they seemed to know exactly what they were doing. It’s like someone’s been teaching them.”

Olivia was now wrestling with the door handle to their room and, as she did so often, switched off to her two men’s ramblings.

“And anyway,” agreed Ned’s dad, “Mavis’s is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the entire Hidden underworld. If the Hidden can barely find it, how does a squad of suited jossers even know it exists in the first place?”

And then the door opened.

“With help, of course.”

Standing in the doorway was the grey-suited, fox-haired man Ned had seen at Mavis’s – the same man he had seen some months previously during the BBB’s raid on the circus. Just behind him was a gaunt, smallish agent who was again wearing a grey suit.

Ned’s mum was glaring at them angrily, clearly annoyed that they’d removed the one obstacle between her family and the building’s corridor with the simple turn of a handle.

“My name is Mr Fox. This is Mr Spider, my associate.”

Mr Spider’s eyes were wide and bulbous and he took in the Armstrongs carefully, eyeing each one with meticulous attention.

“I am very sorry about the darts but you have proved to be rather hard to talk to in the past.”

It was only then that Ned realised his backpack was missing, and much more importantly – there was no sign of Whiskers! His heart started to beat violently. Whiskers, his dear old Whiskers, who had seen him through more scrapes than he could count – where was he?

“What have you done with my mouse?!”

And as the words burned on his lips, a shadow by Mr Fox’s legs started to move. Mr Fox’s eyes flitted to the floor.

“Please ask your creature to stand down, Ned. I really am trying to be nice. Your ticker has been taken to our R and D department to check that he’s functioning properly.”

Ned’s dad formed a compact ball of ice by drawing in the air molecules around the room with an audible fwup. It was about the size of a walnut and Ned had seen the man blow holes through steel doors with far less. A second later and the ice had turned to hardened glass.

“Do you know, he said this might happen,” said Mr Fox with an air of resigned certainty.

“Who said? Who’s been helping you?” seethed Ned’s dad, the newly formed glass ball now hovering between them both with clear intent. “Was it one of the Shar’s men? Or Atticus and his tin-skins?”

“It was I,” said a voice, as Mr Fox’s informant appeared from behind him and walked slowly into the room.

There was a swagger to the way he walked, and a jolliness to the twitch of his moustache. He was wearing his signature striped trousers, a worn military jacket with broken braiding and tassels, and a severely beaten top hat. Aside from some deep shadows under his eyes, a clear sign that he’d had little sleep, he was the same wax-moustached Ringmaster as ever.

“Bene?” was all Ned could manage.

“Hello, pup,” said Benissimo with a smile.

Which promptly fell away when he saw the look on the face of Olivia Armstrong, who then proceeded to pummel the man’s arm. Ned and his father watched in awe, Terry’s ball of glass having landed on the floor with a clunk as his wife administered Mr Fox’s informant with swift and painful justice.

“Months, we looked, all of us!”

Whack!

“And all that time you were here with these men, these revolting men in grey?!”

Whack!

“Livvy, if you could just let me explain!” said Benissimo, who did little more than raise his arms in a useless and rather timid defence.

“Explain why you abandoned us?! Explain this!”

Whack!

“Madam, the man can heal, but he still feels pain – please refrain from hitting him,” tried Mr Fox.

Olivia Armstrong, nun and agent, stopped. Her eyes turned to Mr Fox.

“How did you do it?” she shouted. “How did you turn the greatest leader of all time into an informant?”

What was quite clear was that Ned’s mum had absolutely no interest in Mr Fox’s answer, nor for that matter did Ned’s dad, or the enlarging shadow that was Gorrn as he inflated to fill the rear of the room. The Armstrongs were about to blow when Benissimo decided to tell them what, exactly, was what.

“Livvy, you’ve got this all wrong. Mr Fox works for me.”







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The Butcher and the Hammer (#ulink_8d0d3c8f-9995-5266-a731-77a0d8b67815)





arbarossa sat at his stone table, glaring out of the window. In front of him lay the great sweeping carpet that was the Siberian taiga. Down below in his fortress’s iron belly the Darkening King stirred. The butcher could feel him, in the pores of his skin and the pit of his stomach. The Darkening King had a hunger that knew no bounds, a wish to devour, to rule, to reign. In that they were very much alike.

He looked down at the roasted pork that Sar-adin had so carefully prepared. It was, as always, just the way he liked it, its skin glazed to a perfect crackle, boiling fat oozing from its sides, and on a different day, in a different mood, he would have devoured it all till his chest was awash with grease and dripping. But Barbarossa had a different hunger and it would not be fed through his gut. Atticus Fife sat beside him drinking from a goblet of fine red wine. For some strange reason the man did not show fear in his company – if anything, he seemed to consider himself an equal.

Barbarossa supposed he had been a little vague about the arrangements between them. Perhaps Atticus believed himself to be important to him? A partner, even? He had been the second-in-command to the great Madame Oublier after all – the Circus of Marvels’ Prime, their one-time leader. Not that he’d done her any good. In fact, the tin-skin had betrayed her and the poison that had ended her life could not have done so without him. Well, Barba wouldn’t let the same happen to him. The man clearly needed some chivvying up, which was just as well, as Barbarossa was in the mood for a little “chivvying”.

“Walk with me, Atticus.”

Barbarossa led him away from the great hall down a set of spiral steps. Behind them Sar-adin followed quietly. The Central Intelligence had done exactly as ordered. He had built them a fortress that could not be taken. But something still troubled the butcher, even now. Until the Darkening King returned to his full power, they could, conceivably, still be undone no matter how many tin soldiers he had, or fanged and wicked creatures fought for him. Barbarossa did not like “odds”. So close to his prize, only certainties would do.

“The fair-folk will come, Atticus, and they will try to stop us.”

“What remains of them, yes.”

“And what does remain of them?”

“The pinstripes who still answer to me have heard word of a growing force in St Albertsburg.”

Barbarossa grimaced but continued leading the way.

“A growing force … Do you know how a force grows, Atticus?”

“We have banned all flights between the Veil, Barba, and my men are—”

Barba raised a hand and the tin-skin quietened.

“A force grows when there is hope. It is your job to remove that hope, Atticus.”

Barbarossa stopped by a heavy steel door and Sar-adin pulled out a set of keys.

“I am treading a fine line as it is, Barba. My men are beginning to suspect.”

Sar-adin opened the door to reveal a dimly lit cell. There were no windows, only a withered figure chained to the wall.

“This, Atticus, is Sur-jan. Once he swore to fight for me, yet only this morning he met with the Armstrongs. You promised me that you would take away the fair-folk’s hope and yet it grows.”

Atticus’s face dropped. The Demon looked to be in terrible pain. As cruel and as heartless as their kind was, he felt for it, knowing that whatever Barbarossa had done to the beast to reduce it so must have been unspeakable.

“Do you see hope in my captive’s eyes, Atticus?”

“I-I …”

“You will feed them lies upon lies. You will confuse and befuddle them, till they cannot tell friend from foe, till they cower in their beds calling for their mothers. You will feed them and feed them, till all their hope, strength and vigour is swallowed whole.”

“I will redouble my efforts.”

“No, Atticus, you will push them till you have nothing left to push with.”

And with that, Sar-adin shoved the tin-skin into the cell and locked the door.

“Barba?! Barbarossa, what is the meaning of this?”

“By the time they reach my forest, their spirits will already be broken. You will do the breaking, Atticus. You gave me your oath that you would. Your cellmate gave me such an oath once. A night with him should do plenty to remind you of what is at stake.”

Barbarossa turned his back and retraced his steps, even as Atticus pounded on the door.

“Tell me, Sar-adin, how much longer?” growled Barbarossa.

“He grows stronger.”

“But when will he rise, Sar-adin – WHEN?”

“Weeks.”

“And the boy, his parents? I fear while they walk free that the fair-folk will continue to have hope.”

“Sur-jan did not tell them about the stone.”

“Then we are still safe. Find them, Sar-adin. Use the clowns and whatever else you deem necessary. The Armstrongs must not stand in our way again.”

“Yes, master.”

The butcher slowed.

“And, Sar-adin – when you end them, make them suffer.”







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The Nest (#ulink_0023afd3-3936-55b7-92ff-8cc453ca545d)





enissimo and Mr Fox led Ned and his family through the labyrinth that was the BBB’s headquarters. Now somewhat over the initial shock of seeing their old comrade-in-arms, they followed with a keen eye on their surroundings, Gorrn clinging to Ned’s shadow in silence.

“I still don’t get it, Bene. How on earth have Mr Fox and the BBB wound up working for you?” asked Ned’s dad.

“The BBB was set up decades ago. In many ways their purpose was not so different to the Twelve’s or its circus. Our role was to protect the Hidden – theirs was to protect the jossers. The BBB knew about us fair-folk, though very little, and what you don’t know is always frightening. They have been investigating us for years, trying to find out more. I simply set them straight – told them who the bad guys were and what sort of danger they posed to all living creatures, on both sides of the Veil.”

“And then what?” asked Ned.

“Well, I think their brains rather melted – they went berserk. Had it not been for our red-headed friend here, they would have had me shot.”

Mr Fox smiled.

“Not that shooting him would have worked. But you see, Mr Bear, my boss, well … he doesn’t like surprises. I do think he mellowed after that first heart attack, though,” Benissimo continued. “It turns out what you do know can be far more frightening than what you don’t. But in any case, it’s worked out rather well. Seeing as I became their topmost informant on all things to do with our kind, they have put me in charge.”

Mr Fox promptly stopped smiling.

“A temporary measure, till we sort things out.”

“But a measure nonetheless, Foxy.”

An unmarked door slid open as they approached.

“Which, as you can see, has its benefits. This, my friends, is ‘the Nest’.”

Ned and family walked through the door and out on to a balcony, one of more than a dozen that circled several floors all looking down over a large indoor training ground. Far below, hundreds of grey-tracksuited men were being barked at by a severe-looking Frenchman and a rotund, slightly ageing Italian who had great curling horns protruding from his head.

“Special Forces, don’t give me no-a rubbish. You couldn’t climb your-a way out of a can!”

Several deflated-looking operatives were struggling their way up an admittedly treacherous wall that the ancient half-satyr was playfully skipping across. To one side the Frenchman was demonstrating the easiest way to neutralise a nightmonger. The terrifying creature was a blur of blade-like fingers, but was soon made quite harmless when the instructor launched two weighted nets from a gas-powered machine that looked very much as though it had been designed on this side of the Veil.

“Couteau and Grandpa Tortellini!” exclaimed Ned with the first truly genuine smile he’d given in months.

“The greys are coming along nicely under their tutelage and Tinks has been having a whale of a time mixing our tech with theirs – fascinating results.”

“Tinks?!” grinned Ned. “Where is he?”

“Looking after your mouse, I should think. About half of the old troupe has joined us. The rest are still MIA, I’m afraid.”

“MIA?”

“Missing in action, Ned. You know as well as I do how bad things are out there.”

A horrible thought struck Ned: What about Lucy and George? If they were here, Lucy would have sensed him by now and George would have been hot on her heels, knocking down any number of walls or grey-suits to see his old ward. He didn’t need to ask – Benissimo spotted the look on his face immediately.

“George and Lucy are with the Viceroy. They’ve been delivering one of the old troupe, and I can’t tell you more than that, I’m afraid. Don’t worry – word’s been sent and I should think they’ll have threatened the nearest pilot by now and demanded passage back to the Nest.”

“Delivering one of the troupe? Who?”

“All I can tell you is that he’s a vital part of the plan – as are you, of course, Ned. And we have been trying to bring you in for a while now, as we have new intel that you need to hear. I needn’t mince my words, especially not with you three. The Darkening King is growing stronger by the day. George, Lucy, all of us are scrambling to work with our allies, and telling friend from foe has never been harder. Come on, let’s go to see the boffin – he’ll explain our situation in more detail.”

***

The boffin, known to Benissimo’s old troupe as “Tinks”, had been given a new laboratory to work in and it was to there that Benissimo and Mr Fox led the Armstrongs now. As Ned and his dad entered, they both went a little misty-eyed at what they saw. Ned and his father, both being Engineers – who had the power (when it was working, that is) to bend and manipulate atoms – had a different relationship with all things mechanical than most other people. Their powers hinged on understanding the structure of things, how they came together and worked, so that they could reimagine them into another form. And within these brightly lit walls were the most advanced examples of what modern-day science and technology had to offer, fused together with just a pinch or two of the Hidden’s own magic.

The lab was big enough to house an entire circus troupe along with its cars and lorries. It was also teeming with smartly dressed scientists in matching grey lab coats. They were all building and testing equipment, and all of the equipment was designed, from the ground up, to fight Darklings.

Traps, snares, laser-guided harpoons, listening devices, scanning equipment … and data. Lots and lots of data, pouring out of printers, to be pointed at and argued over incessantly by teams of bespectacled analysts. They weren’t all jossers, either. A good number of them were waist-height minutians, just like the Tinker, and no doubt, Ned guessed, refugees from the ill-fated city of Gearnish, now under the control of Barbarossa’s ghastly machine-mind, the Central Intelligence.

Ned gawped in wonder at a man clicking a device on his belt that made him turn invisible and visible again, with varying results. At one point his head disappeared while the rest of him stayed visible; at another he appeared to be floating off the ground with no legs. His dad, meanwhile, was mesmerised by an aged minutian who was talking to a flea. He wore a large trumpet-ended device on his ear, while the flea responded by hopping up and down on a minuscule sensor at its feet.

Everything had the touch of the Tinker to it, but the Tinker himself was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” asked Ned’s mum, who, unlike her two “boys”, found the gadgets on display extraordinarily dull.

A contained explosion in a room off to the far corner was to be her clue. The closer they got, the less josser and more “Tinker” their surroundings became – reams of paper and blueprints stuck to the walls, shelves weighed down to breaking point, and a trail of spinning, whirring and bubbling devices on every single surface. Through a door they came to a great sprawling mess and at its centre was the genius who had made it.

“Well, bless my toolbox, if it isn’t the Armstrongs!”







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Tinks (#ulink_873b5505-2ef5-5b3b-8b6c-f2b1ceedcb7a)





e had the same unkempt whiskers, the same old lab coat heaving with screwdrivers, and he was the same old Tinker, though as far as Ned could tell he was in unusually high spirits, despite the burning something he was putting out on his desk.

“Hello, Tinks. Nice little set-up,” started Ned’s dad.

“Oh, indeed, Mr Armstrong, indeed. You never told me the jossers had such fantastic tech!”

“They’re a clever bunch, once you get used to them,” grinned Ned’s dad.

A now teary-eyed Tinker proceeded to shake Ned’s hand heartily and then gave his mum a rather elegant bow.

“The Armstrongs together – and here in our little home from home! You wait till the others hear about this. On second thoughts, I think I’ll tell them.”

Mr Fox patiently raised his eyes to the ceiling as the Tinker spoke into a watch on his wrist.

“Channel Alpha-niner, this is the big boff, over!” The little scientist was beaming now, though Ned sensed it had more to do with his watch than their arrival. “This thing is brilliant – so much quicker than a wind-modulator!”

“Big boff, over, this is the Beard. Can you please stop using this channel, Tinks. It’s for mission-only comms and Scraggs is fed up with being asked to bring you biscuits – OVER.”

Ned’s ears pricked excitedly. “The Beard” had to be Abigail, surely – the wonderful bearded lady of the old Circus of Marvels troupe. And if she was there, then her lump of a troll husband, Rocky, couldn’t be far away. How he’d missed them!

“This is a channel-wide announcement, over. That means you too, Tusky. The Arm—”

Before he could get to “strongs”, Benissimo clamped a hand over his mouth and brought down the full weight of a moustachioed twitch.

“Later, Tinks! They need to be brought up to speed.”

“Ah, right you are, boss.” Undeterred, the little man broke into another enthusiastic grin. “We’ll be wanting to fire up ‘Big Brother’ then.”

“Yes, gnome. Nowget on with it.”

“‘Blinking Incredible Gateway’, or ‘BIG’ brother (named it myself, as it happens), was devised to replace the Twelve’s ticker network that Barba stole.” Tinks was relishing the chance to show off to Ned and his dad, and pressed a button on his desk. A large monitor came down from the ceiling. “Live satellite feeds courtesy of Mr Fox here, and more than a hundred Farseers keep round-the-clock surveillance on just about everything. They’re neurologically, metaphysically and outright magically connected, through a network that spans the globe. We use ‘satter-light’ and the ‘interweb’ – josser tech, you know – to send and receive the data. It really is clever stuff. In some ways it’s an even better system, though I do miss the—”

“Hell’s teeth, Tinks! Just show them Russia, would you?”

A second later and they were greeted by a satellite image of Siberia in Russia, which was when Mr Fox took over.

“Our eyes in the sky monitor everything, and had been doing so for a good while before the Tinker’s ‘Hidden’ enhancements. We immediately noticed a sharp spike in activity around the same time your tickers went missing. Though of course back then we didn’t know what it was. The truth is …” At this Mr Fox paused, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to admit. “Well, the truth is, back then we didn’t really know anything.”

A few button presses later and they saw countless orange lines leading to Siberia with a web of dots at its centre that covered hundreds of miles.

“The Darklings – they’re converging in the Siberian reserve,” breathed Ned’s mum.

“Indeed, ma’am. But why? You have other reserves – in the Americas, Asia and as far off as Australia – so why here? Why this one place?”

At the centre of the map, deep in the Siberian forest, was a large circular spot in black.

“This one area, large as it is, is also completely impenetrable to both our cameras and your Farseers. Apparently the tickers that Barbarossa has obtained not only keep a watchful eye but also scramble our signals. Benissimo and I – well, all of us – believe that that is where the creature is gathering himself. We have you and Ned to thank for that.”

“Excuse me?” said Ned’s dad defensively.

“You hurt the Darkening King, Terry, you and your son – when you broke Barba’s machine,” rumbled Benissimo.

Ned had dared to believe, in all their months of searching, that the Darkening King was wounded, that in some way when they’d set it free they’d also managed to hurt it. If Benissimo and Mr Fox were right, maybe there was still a chance, still a way to undo what Ned and his dad had put into motion.

“If what we believe to be the case is true,” continued Mr Fox, “Barbarossa won’t need an army when the creature rises. And yet huge quantities of metal and machinery have been flooding into the area from Gearnish. A great part of those consignments has been the ticker soldiers we’ve heard reports of. Which means that we will be facing not one army but two.”

Mr Fox paused for effect and the Tinker’s face turned red. His people had unwittingly created a machine in the Central Intelligence that had not just strengthened Barbarossa and his Demons’ forces but also doubled their ranks. Ned had only had to face one at the circus encampment and he shuddered at the memory of it.

“In any case, the Darklings that have managed to break free from their own reservations have for the first time let the world sleep soundly. Sticking to the shadows and dark places, they’ve quietly, slowly made their way to Siberia and the dark zone you see now.”

“But why? Why any army at all? Surely Barba and that creature don’t need them?” puzzled Ned.

Benissimo’s face lit up.

“And that is exactly the point, pup! Why? Because they do need those armies, desperately – isn’t it obvious? Until the Darkening King is fully restored there is still a weakness, a chink, a nook, a cranny that we can use to burrow through and defeat him!”

“Well then, what are you waiting for?!” said Ned’s dad. “If he’s weak and you know where he is, why wait? Why give him the chance?”

“Tinks, dig up the reports,” ordered Benissimo.

The screen filled with a stream of photos – by the looks of it, of mostly military personnel.

“Andrei Galkin, thirty-two. Spetsnaz and best in class, only survivor of a mission into the Siberian taiga. Currently on leave due to emotional trauma,” explained Mr Fox. “When we questioned him, all he could mutter was ‘magic and monsters’. The poor man was scared out of his wits. Not long after, we sent in a team of our greys. This time there were no survivors, though one of our operative’s bodies was discovered some weeks later on the outskirts of the forest. This footage was retrieved from his headcam.”

Ned and his family watched in ashen-faced silence. Even in low light, the video was shocking. At the centre of a clearing and towering over the forest’s canopy was a fortress. At its foot and along its parapets and walkways were hundreds, if not thousands, of Darklings. As poor as the picture was, the multitude of creatures made the metal structure look as if it was alive, a living breathing “thing”, and when its main gate opened, they saw them, bright and shimmering with reflections – an army of metallic tickers, man-sized and cold, pouring out and into the forest.

“I could go on, but I think the images are clear enough. Barbarossa has built his creature a castle and surrounded himself with an army to protect it while it grows strong. There is no clear way in, not without incurring extreme casualties.”

“Bene, if there’s a battle to be fought, surely we must fight it?” urged Ned’s dad.

As horrific as the idea was, Ned couldn’t help but agree. Surely any price was worth paying if it could stop the creature from rising.

“The battle will be fought, Terry, but we aren’t ready,” explained Benissimo. “At-lan was originally devised to rid us of the Darkening King and, as involved as you were in the latter part of its construction, Terry, we haven’t the resources or time to rebuild it. Barba had been making its components in secret for months before he took you. We believe there are but weeks now till he rises.”

“H-how do you know?!” stammered Ned.

“Sur-jan, the Demon you went to see – he’s one of several. There are those amongst them that fear the creature’s return as much as we do, maybe more. After all, they know what he’s actually capable of.”

And at this Ned’s dad became visibly ruffled.

“Well, if your new pals here hadn’t stormed in when they did, we’d know a lot more than we do now!”

“Calm yourself, Terry. Another Demon of his kind has made contact with us. About two months ago messages started to arrive, though the informant won’t give us his name. We don’t know who he is or where he’s hiding, but he claims to be a Demon at any rate. If what he’s told us is true, there is a way to destroy the Darkening King but it must be done at the precise moment he forms.”

Mr Fox turned to the Armstrongs.

“The BBB represent just about every government body there is, whether said body knows it or not. We are preparing to launch a full-scale attack, with Benissimo and his allies’ help of course, but an outright assault is pointless unless we can actually destroy the creature once we get past its defences.”

“And how exactly, Mr Fox, do we do that?” asked Olivia Armstrong.

Mr Fox looked to the Tinker and then to Benissimo. Benissimo nodded.

“We have no idea, though if this informant is to be trusted, there is someone who might.”







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Who? What? Why? (#ulink_118d65b5-0e09-52d4-905b-4755f55b144e)





ell?” urged Ned’s mum.

“Yes, who? Who knows?” reiterated his dad.

Mr Fox looked rather awkward. It was clearly a state which he was not unaccustomed to being in.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

At this point both of Ned’s parents, and in truth Ned himself, became more than a little irate.

“You don’t trust us?!” said Olivia Armstrong in a dangerously quiet voice. “Well, of all the … First of all, you blow our mission moments before it comes good, then you kidnap us, then you lead us round your base and show us all this intel and now – if I’m hearing you right – you aren’t going to actually tell us anything USEFUL!”

Olivia Armstrong was seething and Ned had no doubt that she was about to fly into another arm-bashing tirade.

“Madam, first of all I would like to remind you that, though Benissimo is indeed in charge of this operation, you are standing in the base that I built, and I am not one for emotional outbursts, unless coming directly from my superiors in the BBB, of which there are only two. More importantly, however, I am unable to tell you who holds the knowledge, because your unkillable friend here has not actually told me.”

Ned’s mum quietened. “Oh.”

Benissimo signalled to Tinks and the network’s screen turned black.

“It’s not ideal, but the more people that are kept in the dark, the wider the chink in my brother’s armour. Atticus is still trying to manipulate the Twelve and its pinstripes, though they’re beginning to see through his lies, and the Hidden are more vulnerable than ever. We are on a knife edge – everything, and I do mean everything, depends on the secrecy of our operation. Barbarossa’s arrogance is our best weapon, and the weaker he believes us to be, the better our chances. The Hidden have split into untrusting pockets, barely threaded together by their leaders. I’ve spent months reaching out to them in secret and few of them know what the plan of attack will be once they’re called.”

“Then who actually does know?” asked Ned.

“Me,” said Benissimo.

At that Mr Fox looked slightly, if not openly, irritated.

Benissimo continued, “I leave tonight, and if this informant of ours is right, we will have ourselves a route to victory.”

“And what are we supposed to do till you come back?” asked Ned’s dad.

“Nothing, old friend, for now. When I return, if I return, I will – and not for the first time – be asking you all for everything.”







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Little to Do about Nothing (#ulink_53a91dfd-fa5d-59d0-baa6-7b74d24f7e38)





s a young man Terrence Armstrong had dedicated his life to fighting evil, always by Benissimo’s side and always in the thick of the fight. And though fatherhood changes a man and Terry’s one true focus was now the safety of his family, the bond between him and the ancient Ringmaster was still as strong as it was deep. His wife had proved to be an equally capable fighter and the consummate spy. She had managed over the course of nearly all of Ned’s life to remain completely hidden from the “Hidden” and to outwit both Barbarossa and every friendly operative working for the Twelve that had been tasked with finding her.

It was fitting then that Benissimo should need to talk to them. He did not, however, appear to want or need to talk to Ned, which as it turned out made Ned feel both furious and useless in equal measure.

He sat alone in a stark room; it had a bed and a sidelight, a sink at one end and no windows. It was far more like a cell than anything else. The Tinker had returned Whiskers to him, with a small but extremely useful upgrade. A tracking device had been welded into his casing. From now on, no matter where Ned was, as long as his trusty mouse was with him, the Tinker could use his network’s “eyes in the sky” to locate him, which had the dual effect of making Ned feel both safe and irritated. What if he didn’t want to be found?

Whiskers was staring up at him from the palm of his hand. Gorrn meanwhile was busying himself with Ned’s sheets. Ned could only put his new-found helpfulness down to their change in surroundings; the odd creature was folding away his covers and stuffing them into a small drawer.

“Gorrn, they were fine where they were.”

“Gru?”

“The sheets, Gorrn … Oh, never mind, I’ll deal with them later. And, err, thank you.”

“Arr.”

Whiskers was still staring.

“Just like old times, eh? You, me and the shadow.”

The Debussy Mark Twelve bobbed its head in a “yes”.

Only it wasn’t anything like old times, not really. He had his mum and dad, and nothing was more important than knowing they were safe. But for how much longer would any of them stay safe? They’d searched for answers for months, and now this informant had seemingly given Benissimo a route, however slim, of undoing Barbarossa’s beast. Ned should have felt happy about it, but how did the Ringmaster even know the informant could be trusted? What if it was just a trick? A trap?

The Darkening King would be rising soon. George and Lucy were on some mission and Ned had been relegated to … well, sitting. And that was when he admitted what was really eating away at him. He placed Whiskers on the bare mattress and looked at his ring. No matter how many times he’d tried, it remained dormant, and for all Ned knew it would stay that way forever. Ned had gone back to being the boy he was before he’d found the Hidden.

Completely and utterly average.

If only he could talk to Lucy. She was bound to have some idea of what was ailing him. Maybe she was even suffering from the same problem? He sat with his two mute sidekicks, feeling in nearly every possible way both powerless and pointless.

But that was the thing about the Hidden, and most particularly about his friends at the Circus of Marvels: they didn’t care what Ned could do – they just cared that he was there.

It came as a pounding of feet, a gabbling of whispers and excitable banter. By the time they’d reached Ned’s door, they were in such a frenzy that Rocky, the Russian mountain troll, put his fist straight through it.

“NIED! Why for you hide in here?!”

They burst into his room in an avalanche of colour and noise.

“Ned, love, it’s you! All this drab grey we’ve bin putting up with … Just this mornin’ I was sayin’ to Rocky how we needed a bit of colour, and here you are!” warbled Abi the Beard, and proceeded to hug him so hard he thought his eyes might burst.

With them were Grandpa Tortellini and a good half or so of his seven grandchildren, all whooping out a “Hey! How-a ya doin’?” and the occasional satyr-horned bleat. Scurrying along the ground were the three emperors, Julius, Nero and Caligula. The thieving pixies were far less jubilant when they realised there was nothing to steal, and decided instead to make up for it by harassing Gorrn, who hid in Ned’s shadow with an “Unt”. Monsieur Couteau managed a less than sneery salute from the doorway before excusing himself, and was barged rather gruffly out of the way by Scraggs the cook, carrying a large tray of doughnuts that he’d baked especially.

“Extra jammy, Ned, just like you like ’em!” rumbled Scraggs, who, to Ned’s wonder and despite their new pristine surroundings, had still not taken the time to wash his chef’s apron.

Finally there was a welcome trumpeting and Ned’s eyes lit up as Alice the elephant, who was too large to get into the room, popped at least part of her loving and leathery face through the doorway.

“Hello, girl!” he grinned and got up to pat her trunk.

“Arrooo!”

Breathlessly they launched a verbal assault of questions, to which Ned really had very few answers – mostly because of the speed at which they came.

“How are your ma and pa?”

“What’s going on, on the outside?”

“You been eatin’ properly, sonny?”

“Nedolino, and de-a training, tell us – how you-a doin’?”

“Once you rested, you come with Rocky, da? I show you base, very big, very interesting.”

It was only when the fourth doughnut was shoved into his face that Ned realised why they were quite so happy to see him. His beloved old troupe, at least the ones that were here, had not been out of the confines of their Nest for months. Keeping the travelling kind cooped up for too long was like trying to bottle frogs and they were positively jumping out of their skins.

“You met the spider yet?” asked Abi.

“Mr Spider? Only briefly.”

“Me no like ‘googly’ eyes. He always stick nose in business and always with de rules, Nied, so many rules.”

“They’re a serious ol’ bunch these greys, Ned. Keen, mind you, keen to learn our ways – but ol’ goggle-eyes is about as much fun as a wet rock.”

Through all the banter and jam, the jeering and grins, Ned saw something else. The fate of the world was hanging in the balance, unimaginable evil poised to spring up from the ground and devour them all, but their eyes had never looked as clear or bright. Whatever the world was about to throw at them, the diminished Circus of Marvels would see it head-on and together.

Ned might well have lost his powers, but he had most certainly found his “point”.







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Not Entirely Ideal (#ulink_57516aa7-f587-5463-84db-902f897948dd)





ed wasn’t quite sure what time it was when Benissimo woke him, or why the man was whispering. He was, however, quite certain that he was tired.

“Bene?”

“Yes, pup. Rise and shine – we’ve got a mission.”

“What? I thought you said—”

“I have to say a lot of things when it comes to your parents, Ned. Most of all, I have to not tell them when I ask you to do something dangerous.”

Ned rubbed at his eyes. “What kind of dangerous?”

“The informant’s lead I told you about earlier – its location is not entirely ideal.”

Something of an alarm bell sounded between Ned’s still-waking ears. “And by ‘not entirely’ you mean …?”

“Russia, Siberia, Ned. It’s in the reservation.”

There was a low and rumbling “Unt” from beneath Ned’s bed, followed closely by a “Scree” and some incredibly fast blinking from his mouse.

Ned, thankfully, was able to pick his words more eloquently. “Barking dogs, Bene! Have you lost your marbles?!”

“If we intend to beat this creature, it’s the only way.”

Ned would have gone in an instant but for one glaring factor that the Ringmaster had not taken into account. “Bene, it’s not that I don’t want to help you. The Darkening King is rising because of me and Dad. It’s just that I don’t know how much use I’ll be.”

“It’s not because of you, Ned. And by the way, I know about your Engine – your parents told me everything, just before I drugged them.”

Ned’s ring finger buzzed and there was a slight shimmering in the air, before it fizzled away to nothing. Not even real anger could spark the thing, not any more.

“You did what?!”

“They’d never let you go, with or without them, and our best chance is to sneak in unseen. I can’t say that your loss of power isn’t an issue, Ned, but we really don’t have any choice.”

Another bell dinged behind Ned’s eyes. “And why is that?”

“The creature we are going to see will only help you, not me. Word has spread of your deeds, pup – it wants an audience with you specifically.”

Ned wasn’t entirely sure that he liked the sound of that, and he dreaded the answer before he’d even asked the question. “And this creature … is it a Demon?”

“Oh no, Ned. It’s far, far worse than that.”

“And I suppose you’re not going to tell me what, because you aren’t telling anyone anything?”

“That’s the size of it, pup, but know this: if we do this right, if we get in and out of there without getting caught, and get the information we need, we will have ourselves the key to ending, once and for all, my brother and this monster he wants to unleash.”

Ned sighed. “Not much choice then?”

“Is there ever?”







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Not Entirely Alone (#ulink_a39fb173-3f77-5b03-80dc-7d267500d5eb)





urriedly and quietly, Benissimo led Ned along the base’s labyrinth of corridors. Apart from the low hum of electric doors and devices, everything was silent.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m not even sure I’ve forgiven you yet,” started Ned.

Benissimo flinched, very slightly, before flitting back to his old bravado. “Oh, come on, pup, you think I’m brilliant.”

“No, no, I don’t.”

Annoyingly Ned did think Benissimo was brilliant, completely and utterly, but he wasn’t about to let him know.

“You’ll see – you Armstrongs always come round in the end,” grinned Benissimo, which was quite possibly the worst thing he could have said.

“Bene, Mum and Dad had every right to be furious. It’s going to take a lot to gain their trust again and this isn’t the best way to do it. You broke a lot of hearts when you disappeared, mine included.”

“I regret that more than you know.”

Ned stopped. “Then help me understand. This isn’t your personal fight, Bene. You had no right abandoning us like that, not after everything Mum and Dad have had to go through.”

“But it is personal, Ned – extremely. When there’s time I’ll explain, I promise.”

It was then that Ned remembered what Barbarossa had told him on the Daedalus. According to the butcher, it was not just any Demon but the Darkening King himself that had cursed the two brothers and given them their immortality. What Ned still didn’t understand was why. Was that what the Ringmaster meant? Either way, their mission came first. There would be time to talk when they returned. Ned had had the foresight not only to bring his trusty sidekicks but also the Tinker’s perometer. From the look on the Ringmaster’s face, there was little doubt that they would need it where they were going. Finally, at the end of one of the corridors, they came to a staging room lined with several mirrors. Great, thought Ned as Benissimo passed him his gear – a fur-lined coat, goggles and what looked like a small metal stick.

“One of the Tinker’s modifications to BBB tech. It’s a retractable Taser. It’ll give whatever we run into enough of a shock for you to get away. Just twist the top to activate it. And make sure you button up the coat properly – it’s still freezing where we’re going this time of year.”

“Dangerous and cold; Mum and Dad are going to kill me for this.”

“I should think they’ll try me first. If we’re lucky, I’ll get us home before they wake up.”

“If we’re lucky? Bene, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Indeed, Mr B., are you sure?” said a voice from behind them.

They turned to see Mr Fox, dressed from head to toe in winter gear, sitting on a bench at the back of the room. Next to him was the bulbous-eyed Mr Spider, in his regular grey suit.

“Sneaking off in the dead of night without telling anyone? Well, it doesn’t exactly glow with team spirit, does it?”

“Where did you come from?!” spat Benissimo.

“Actually, we were just behind the door when you walked in. I thought it might be a good idea if I tagged along.”

“Mr Fox, you and I have done some great things in our short time together and I am very grateful to your organisation, but I think it might be better if you remained in the Nest.”

The wording was polite enough, the coiled whip unfurling in Benissimo’s hand far less so.

“Mr Spider, go and get some sleep,” said Mr Fox.

“Sir?” said the thin-limbed agent. “I’m fine, thank you, sir.”

Mr Fox’s eyes rolled very slightly but he remained completely calm. “You are many things, Mr Spider, none of which is ‘fine’.”

Mr Spider grinned thinly, before excusing himself.

“Mr Spider has taken it upon himself to follow me of late and I’m not sure that I enjoy it very much. Now trust me when I say this, Mr B – I reallydon’t want to come with you.”

Ned watched Benissimo’s whip closely. It was wavering to and fro and he was quite sure that it was almost ready to snap.

“You are a confoundingly difficult man to work with,” Mr Fox went on. “Hot-headed, obtuse and with no regard for protocol. I hope you’ll agree that I have tried to be accommodating. But here’s the thing: for this partnership to work, for this entire operation to work, I need some ‘certainties’. You can’t, it seems, be killed, and for that I am – ‘we’ are – relieved. You can, however, be captured and being that you’re the only one who knows ‘the plan’, well, if you’re captured then we lose. I am not going to demand you tell me everything, but I’m afraid I must insist on making sure you return.”

Mr Fox said all this with a calm, almost apologetic voice. He also seemed strangely certain that Benissimo would agree. The Ringmaster, however, got that stubborn look. His cheeks became flushed and his whip now rose threateningly between them.

“Mr Fox, I’m not sure that I like it when people ‘insist’.”

Mr Fox smiled, but remained seated and spoke into his wrist.

“Mr Badger, are you ready to wake Mum and Dad?”

“On your order, sir,” crackled back his wrist.

“You wouldn’t dare!” gasped Benissimo.

“Actually, it would be quite in character,” smiled Mr Fox.

Ned flinched. If his parents found out before they left there would be trouble – bags of the stuff. “Err, Bene, maybe we should hear him out?”

“Nonsense, pup, I won’t be blackmailed and I won’t delay our mission.”

“And besides –” Mr Fox pulled a sliver of mirrored glass from his sleeve – “you won’t get very far without this.”

It was a mirror key and no doubt the very one that they needed from the shelves to their left. Benissimo appeared to be in something of a checkmate, and all three of them knew it.

An angry twitch of a moustache later, and a powerless Ned made ready to step through the glass. He may well have lost his powers, but he had a mouse, a slovenly shadow, a Ringmaster and now a fox to help him on his way.

Ned pushed his face through the mirror and, a cool but clean tug later, found himself several thousand miles away, in a frozen and lightless wood.







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The Forest (#ulink_4f0f722e-cf55-5aa3-b808-0224788c051c)





he sun had yet to rise on a freezing Siberian morning. Benissimo got down on one knee and peered through the wood. Ned could feel the tiny hairs on his arms prickle and Mr Fox reached into his pocket.

“Soft mint, anyone?”

Despite where they were, the enigma that was Mr Fox seemed completely at ease.

“They’re not standard issue, but I do allow myself small luxuries from time to time.”

Benissimo’s moustache twitched. “Mr Fox, considering our circumstances, I would appreciate you enjoying the ‘small luxury’ of keeping ruddy quiet.”

Mr Fox stopped mid-chew. “I don’t take orders from you, Mr B. I’d remember that if I were you.”

“Actually, my unwelcome accomplice, right now I’m trying to forget you exist.”

Mr Fox put away his mints and squared up to Benissimo. In his own clipped way he looked rather intimidating and was not about to give an inch to the Ringmaster.

“Well, like it or not, here I am.”

“I think I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t—”

Ned’s eyes rolled. Clearly Benissimo and Mr Fox’s alliance was being tested.

“Will you two belt up! I don’t think any of us wants to be here, but being that we are and it’s freezing, can we just get on with it?!”

Both men suddenly looked quite sheepish.

“Zeus’s crown, you’re right, Ned. I’m sorry and so is Mr Fox.”

Mr Fox nodded reluctantly.

“Now, pup, would you be so kind as to summon your familiar?”

“Gorrn, sure, but what for?”

“Because between us and the folk I’m trying to get us to is the most dangerous stretch of forest anywhere on earth. Needless to say, I expect Gorrn will be about the only thing to keep us from being brutally savaged.”

The worst part of Benissimo’s explanation was that he wasn’t smiling and Ned still didn’t know what they were doing there.

“I’d feel a lot better about all this if I knew who we were trying to meet.”

Benissimo frowned. “If we’re separated and you or Mr Fox get caught, our contact must remain a secret no matter how long you’re tortured for.”

“Tortured? You didn’t say anything about being tortured!” spat Ned.

Ned eyed the mirror nervously. Between the two men’s face-off and the talk of torture, he was already regretting his decision to come.

“Keep your voice down! It won’t come to that if you follow my lead. Now would you please get on with it.”

Given their surroundings and the fact that he really had no choice, Ned did as he was told.

“Well, you heard him, Gorrn …”

Both of his sidekicks were uncommonly jittery at their surroundings and Gorrn at first pretended not to hear.

“Gorrn, you know I know you’re there. I can see you oozing behind my leg.” Which wasn’t actually true.

Nothing.

“Please, Gorrn, oh great and dear protector, would you kindly and in your own sweet time stop us from being brutally savaged or tortured, or even just a bit hurt?”

There was a tense moment when Ned thought Gorrn had actually fled, before he heard a low and unenthusiastic “Arr” from his foot. Inch by inch, the slovenly blob that was Gorrn began rising up from the cold forest floor, till their gloomy little spot became even gloomier.

“Thank you, Gorrn. Bene, Mr Fox, it works better if you’re ‘in’ him.”

Ned watched Mr Fox closely as he stepped into Gorrn’s ooze.

“Well, this will be different,” was all he said, though Ned noticed it was said with something of a tremor.

“We won’t be invisible exactly, but Gorrn will make us blend in. We’ll look more like a moving shadow than anything else.”

Whiskers was unnaturally quiet even for a mouse, and Ned popped the little bundle of furred metal in by his neck. Even with just his faint tick rather than a real heartbeat, his mostly faithful companion was still a comfort.

The going was painfully slow. They had to make completely sure that no part of them was outside Gorrn’s oozy embrace, which as well as making them look like a shadow, also made it harder to see. Benissimo led the strange group in total silence as Mr Fox covered their rear. The deeper into the forest they went, the more crooked and wild the trees grew. Their bark was as hard as stone and they rose up from the ground now, crowding and vast, like great armoured giants. Through the little light that made its way down here, Ned could see a wet blackness amongst the leaves and moss, as though some sickness was creeping into the forest or growing up from its roots. He had rarely visited a more foreboding place, made only worse because of its silence.

Slowly he began to notice, where long-dead trees had fallen and their bark had rotted, the telltale glint of slithering. Small creatures at first – worm, grub and beetle; then larger and more strange, black and scaly, or soft and with lidded eyes. He couldn’t see them clearly enough to tell whether they were Darklings or not, and only prayed that they couldn’t see him.

The ground began to slope downwards and Whiskers’ fur stiffened at his neck. The little rodent was worried.

“You all right, boy?” Ned whispered.

Tick.

“Whiskers?”

Tick.

Ned didn’t need to pull the perometer from his pocket. He could already feel its metal needle twitching.

Tick, tick, tick.

Finally he realised: the ticking did not just belong to his mouse.







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We Have Company (#ulink_bb2437ae-c000-57b0-a930-3f05a4aa83d9)





enissimo slowed and pointed above their heads to the branches. Ned could quite clearly see all manner of winged birds. Pigeons, eagles, hawks and owls – and each and every one was scouring the forest with their beady ticker eyes.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Tinks’s Big Brother was right – the Twelve’s eyes and ears had been plucked and now kept watch over Barbarossa’s forest.

“Grr.”

Ahead of them they heard several grunts and snarls, followed closely by a piercing howl. Gorrn’s oozing form wobbled nervously and Mr Fox pulled the silenced pistol from his side as Benissimo edged forward.

The trees began to thin out and through the twilight Ned could see that up ahead a small river crossed their path, and on its banks, a little upstream, sat a group of huddled, powerful creatures: four weirs, from the wolf-pack. Before the world had gone mad, their kind had been tasked with keeping the reserve’s borders, but it was well known now that they had sided with Barbarossa and his cabal. Ned had been chased by a weir on Benissimo’s flagship and had met others in St Albertsburg. They were gruff, violent creatures and their muscly torsos were covered in matted fur. Their combination of claws and fangs made them look terrifying, more so because their kind had quite forgotten what it was to be human. These were wolf-men and they lived for the hunt.

Benissimo put a finger to his lips and indicated in the opposite direction, downstream. Ned saw two more weirs coming to join the others. They were between both sets of creatures now and would be found before long unless they crossed the river. They had no choice. As quietly as they could, Ned and his party waded into the water.

Though the river wasn’t wide, it was ice-cold, waist-deep, and its rocks underfoot were slimy and loose. As the water rose around him, Ned breathed in painfully. Step by tentative step they moved, Ned’s heart and chest pounding, the river’s cold current biting at his skin. There was now less than twenty feet between them and the second group of wolf-men. There was a flap of wings above them and a small kestrel swooped down low, first one then another. Was it one of Barba’s tickers? Had they been spotted? One of the wolf-pack noticed, its keen ears pinned back and its slack jaw loose and wide as it sniffed at the air. The other three’s fur bristled and they growled deep and low, scanning the riverbank for movement.





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