The Fire King Page 11

  Corrigan liked the sound of that. It had a nice ring to it. Course, he wouldn’t tell Emily that. She could just carry on as normal, smug and happy in the mistaken knowledge that she had managed to make Corrigan a better piskie.

  Hah! Just shows what you know, my lass, thought Corrigan gleefully. I’m not helping you because it’s the right thing to do. I’m breaking the laws of Nature! Beat that, Spring-Heeled Jack.

  Now that he had wrestled his conscience to the ground and beaten it into submission, Corrigan checked his surroundings with renewed interest. He wondered where the nearest alley was that would take him through to the fey side of London. He felt like a tankard of real Faerie mead, and he still had a couple of hours till midnight came around and they headed out to the bridge.

  He wandered along the street, whistling softly to himself. He hadn’t gone far before he heard the click of a door latch.

  He turned around and saw the front door to Cavanagh’s house opening. Corrigan thought it must be Emily, coming to berate him about something, or lecture him about some crude comment he had made hours ago.

  But he was wrong. Because stepping through the doorway, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder, was Emily’s brother, William.

  “Hello,” mused Corrigan. “What have we here?”

  William closed the door softly and moved silently along the garden path. Corrigan trotted along the road and stopped directly in front of the gate, his arms folded across his chest.

  “You’re up to no good,” he said as the gate opened.

  William breathed in sharply and froze. Corrigan smiled to himself as William struggled to recover.

  “And please don’t insult me by denying it,” said the piskie. “I know the look. You can’t fool someone who’s … fooled … others.” Corrigan winced. “Sorry. That didn’t come out as dramatic as I thought it would. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing,” said William.

  “What did I just say, boy? I said, ‘don’t insult me.’ You want I should shout for your sister?” Corrigan nodded with satisfaction at the look of panic that flashed across William’s face. “Thought not. Now tell me what you’re doing. And if I think you’re lying, I shout. Got it?”

  William hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. “Emily’s fixed on finding Merlin,” he said. “I think she’s wrong. I think we should track down this Raven King.”

  “Ah, I see. Your plan is to track down the Raven King all by yourself? Showing your big sister that her little brother isn’t so little after all? That maybe she should listen to his opinion once in a while. Is that it?”

  “That’s it exactly,” said William quietly.

  Corrigan hesitated. “Oh,” he said. He had expected some sort of denial, some sort of argument. Truth to tell, he was rather taken aback by the determination in the boy’s voice. “And is there anything I can say that will talk you out of it?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “And do you have a plan? Or were you just thinking of wandering around aimlessly in the vain hope of bumping into this Raven King?”

  William held up a piece of paper. “I found this on Cavanagh’s desk. It has the address of the fey he was going to see. The one called Croth.” William then held up a small purse. It jingled. “This was sitting on top of the paper. I take it to be payment.”

  “Oh,” said Corrigan again. “That’s actually quite logical. Well done. And what do you think your sister will say about this?”

  William snorted, halfway between a laugh and a curse. “I’m not going to tell her. Why should I? She’s made her feelings clear enough. She doesn’t think I’m old enough to make my own decisions. She had her chance, Corrigan. She can look for Merlin, and I’ll look for the Raven King.”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, boy.Thousands of lives are at stake here. The fate of London, even.”

  “Exactly. And this way we double our chances. Emily looks for Merlin; I look for the Raven King. If we both succeed, great. If only one of us does, then that’s fine as well. But if we all just follow Emily, we’re ignoring another avenue. We’d be foolish to do so.”

  William stepped around Corrigan, then paused and crouched down so he was face-to-face with the piskie. “I hope we all see each other after this is finished. But if not … If something happens … then it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”

  William straightened up and hurried away into the night.

  Corrigan hesitated. He couldn’t just leave the boy to wander around London on his own, could he? He’d get himself captured. Or killed. Or both. And Corrigan just knew that Emily would blame him for that.

  And besides, thought Corrigan. The boy actually had a point. Why not double their chances by following two clues instead of one? He’d told Emily how to contact Beezle. She had brains. She’d been into fey London before.

  But William, no matter how sure he was that he could look after himself, needed someone to watch over him. Someone wise, someone knowledgeable in the ways of the world. Someone to teach the boy, to guide him, to pass on centuries of experience.

  Someone like Corrigan.

  The piskie broke into a run, a grin spreading across his pointed face. Besides, he reckoned William would be a lot more fun than his sister.

  A few moments later, the door to Cavanagh’s house opened again. Someone truly observant may have noticed that there was no sound of the latch clicking this time. Someone with a bit of intelligence may deduce that this was because the door hadn’t actually been closed. That it had remained slightly ajar so that whoever was hiding on the other side could hear the conversation taking place outside the gate.

  That someone would be right.

  A dark figure slipped out of Cavanagh’s house and followed after Corrigan. The figure kept to the shadows, but every now and then the moonlight would shine on the determined face of Katerina Francesca as she trailed the piskie and William through the streets of London.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In which Emily and Co. travel to London Bridge and learn some bad news about Beezle.

  Emily felt as though she had been dozing for only a few minutes before someone roughly shook her awake. She squinted into the lantern light to find Christopher Wren peering down at her, his face lined with worry.

  “Is it midnight already?” she asked, struggling into a sitting position.

  “Nearly. But that’s not why I woke you. It’s your brother, I’m afraid.”

  “Will?” Emily looked around the cellar. Jack was a dark shape curled up on the floor, but she couldn’t see Will anywhere. Or Katerina, for that matter. “Where is he?”

  “That’s the problem. He’s gone. And so has the girl.”

  “Gone?” Emily quickly stood up, wondering if Wren was playing a prank on her. “He can’t be gone.”

  Jack stirred and sat up. He looked around blearily. “What’s going on?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

  “Will’s gone, Jack. And so has Katerina.”

  Jack sprang to his feet and scanned the room. “If she’s done anything to him, I’ll kill her!”

  “Maybe he’s upstairs?” said Emily hopefully.

  Wren shook his head. “I’ve searched the entire house. Plus …” Wren hesitated. “He’s taken Cavanagh’s diary.”

  It was at that moment that Emily realized what Will had done. She locked gazes with Jack and saw him arrive at the same conclusion.

  “He’s gone to look for the Raven King,” said Emily flatly.

  “It would appear so,” agreed Wren.

  Emily could scarcely believe it. After all they had been through, after everything that had happened. For him to just … leave like that. It felt as though he had simply walked out of her life forever without even saying good-bye. That was how betrayed Emily felt. Didn’t he realize how important all this was? It had nothing to do with his needing to prove himself. It was about saving lives. For him to just … go off on his own like this was so incredibly irresponsible that Emily struggled to take it in.


  “Maybe he’s outside. Speaking to Corrigan,” suggested Jack, although there was no real conviction in his voice.

  They checked anyway. The street was silent and empty. Very empty.

  There was no sign of the piskie either.

  “Corrigan?” she called out, but there was no answer.

  “You think Katerina and Corrigan have gone with him?” asked Jack.

  “They must have.”

  “Do you think they planned this?” asked Wren.

  Emily shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Corrigan would have told me if he thought we should look for the Raven King. I think Will tried to slip away and Corrigan saw him.”

  “Then why didn’t he tell us? And what about Katerina?” Emily shrugged. “I don’t know.” Well, at least it meant that Will wasn’t alone. That he was with people who knew their way around, who knew the ins and outs of fey London.

  “We have to go after him,” Jack said. “Maybe there’s time—”

  “No,” said Emily heavily.

  Wren and Jack stared at her.

  “But he may not have gone far.”

  Emily shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. He made his choice. We carry on with our plan. We look for Merlin.”

  “But Snow—”

  “No, Jack. We don’t have time to run around searching for Will. And what if we do find him? What do we do? Tie him to a piece of rope and pull him along after us? He’s my brother, and I love him, but he’s made his choice. Let him look for the Raven King. Corrigan and Katerina will watch over him.”

  “And who’s going to watch over them?” asked Jack.

  Emily didn’t answer.

  “So what is our plan?” asked Wren.

  “Same as before,” said Emily. “We go to London Bridge.”

  In Emily’s time London Bridge was exactly that. A bridge people used to get from one side of the River Thames to the other.

  But here it was rather different.

  Here, the bridge was an extension of London. Shops and houses had been built along the massive structure as if it were a city street, the buildings on the edges actually hanging out over the fiercely churning river, held up by wooden struts that had been hammered against the bridge supports. A narrow lane about two meters across was all that was left for pedestrians and carts that wanted to actually cross the river, and even that was allowed grudgingly by those who lived on the bridge. The path was more like a tunnel cutting through the businesses and homes, a slowly eroding walkway that was being swallowed by structures the same way a forest path was gradually swallowed up by trees and weeds. It seemed to Emily that another bridge would soon have to be built so that those who actually wanted to cross the river would have a means of doing so.

  All the while, as Emily, Christopher Wren, and Jack made their way toward the bridge, she wondered if she had made the right decision. Maybe they should have gone looking for William. Maybe she should have listened to what he had to say about the Raven King. Was he right? Were they following the wrong course, searching for Merlin?

  She searched inside herself, trying to see past the guilt, the anger, the confusion of conflicting emotions she felt when she thought about her brother.

  Had she done the right thing?

  After her parents had vanished, one of the first things Emily realized was that being an adult meant making hard decisions that no one else would make. But she was constantly terrified that she was making the wrong choices. Emily was well aware she was only twelve years old. That there was every possibility she was doing everything wrong. But she knew that if she let that thought take hold, it would mean the end of both her and William, so she fought it off with bossiness and bluster. It was the only way she could keep the fear at bay.

  Emily stared up at the massive gates that led onto the bridge. She was feeling a lot of fear right now, but she still felt that her decision had been the correct one.

  William would have to find his own path.

  The gates were locked tight for the night. Emily could just make out small, roundish shapes mounted on spikes at the very top of the gates. She had an uneasy feeling that she knew what they were, but it was too dark to see for sure. Now, what was the word Corrigan had said would gain them entry? Annabalish? No, that wasn’t it. It sounded like a name of some kind. Anna Cru? That wasn’t it. It was longer. Ansible Cru. That was it.

  “Ansible Cru,” she said loudly.

  For a moment nothing happened. Emily wondered if she had maybe got the words wrong, but then a red glow shone from above the gate. To be more precise, the glow came from inside one of the roundish shapes mounted on spikes. Emily’s suspicions had been right. They were human skulls. The red glow shone through the empty eye sockets and nose hole, pulsing like a heartbeat, growing stronger and stronger, brighter and brighter, lighting the other skulls and the metal gates with a lurid, fiery glow.

  Emily, Jack, and Wren took a fearful step backward, wondering what Emily’s words had summoned.

  Then came a fit of coughing, which the red light kept pace with, growing frantically brighter, then subsiding, brighter, then subsiding, with each hacking splutter.

  The coughing stopped, and the light died with it.

  Emily glanced uncertainly at the others, but before they could do anything, the glow flared up again, and a tiny creature flew from one of the skull’s eye sockets and landed with a grunt on a ledge just above her head. It took Emily a moment to realize that the creature was a fairy, because he looked nothing like the ones she had seen when Corrigan had taken her beneath London. This faerie was male, he was old, and he was fat. He was wearing a leather jerkin that was too small for his body. His hairy stomach bulged out from beneath the stained material. The red glow coming from his rather tattered wings was sickly, pulsing with his heaving breath.

  “Sorry,” he said in a rough, gravelly voice. He pounded himself in the chest. “Heartburn. Can’t seem to shift it. Think it’s all the snails.” He looked at Emily, then glanced over her shoulder at the others. He closed one eye and leaned forward, squinting at them. “You’re humes,” he said.

  “If by ‘humes’ you mean humans, then yes, we are,” said Emily.

  “Then what you want? You can’t come here. Get out. Go away.”

  “No. I knew the password, didn’t I? You have to let us in.”

  “We’ll see about that. Where’d you hear it, anyways?”

  “Corrigan told me. He’s a friend.”

  “Corrigan? The piskie? The thief? The vagabond? The gambler?”

  “Uh … possibly.” Emily thought about it for a second. “Actually, that sounds about right. Yes.”

  “Why’d he give you the password?”

  “He wants us to get something for him. From Beezle.”

  “That a fact. From Beezle, eh?”

  “Yes, now are you going to let us in?”

  The faerie peered over Emily’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Emily turned around to find that Wren had crept forward and was staring at the faerie with a look of rapt fascination on his face. He reached out a trembling hand toward the suddenly nervous creature.

  “What’s he doin’? Get off. No touching.” The faerie flapped his wings and lifted into the air, his weight causing him to rise incredibly slowly. He glared suspiciously at Wren.

  Emily slapped the man’s hand down from where he was trying to reach up to the faerie, his finger held out as if trying to catch a bird.

  Wren snapped out of his reverie. “Oh. So sorry. Got a bit distracted by …” He looked up at the faerie again. “Fascinating,” he said. “Absolutely fascinating.”

  “Are you going to let us in or not?” demanded Jack.

  The faerie flew higher. He didn’t answer until he was perched on top of the skull again. “Aye, I suppose so,” he said. “But you’d better keep an eye on the tall one. Tell him not to prod anyone.”

  Wren bowed. “Of course. My most humblest apologies, good sir.”

&nbs
p; “Well … fine. Just don’t let it happen again.”

  There was a deep grinding sound, and a second, round door opened within the gates of London Bridge, a door that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Light and sounds spilled out: the hubbub of voices, raucous cries, the music of fiddles and flutes, laughter, shouting, crying. Emily could see figures moving on the other side of the door, figures that were not visible on the London Bridge she could see through the iron bars of the gates.

  Emily stepped forward. The others followed, and the small door slammed shut behind them. Emily glanced over her shoulder and saw a fey creature about the same size as her turning a heavy brass wheel that moved a series of cogs and gears, locking the door tight. Once she had finished, the fey stepped back. The wheels and gears and cogs flared white then vanished, leaving behind a blank wall.

  The bridge extended before them, and like the real version, it was lined with shops and buildings. But that was where the similarity ended. On the real London Bridge, there was some semblance of order, but here it seemed that every shop and house had simply been dropped from the sky and then left wherever it landed. Structures were piled haphazardly one atop the other, stilts and poles used to stop them from falling over. Emily was sure she could see some of them swaying in the warm night breeze. The buildings were painted every conceivable color. Red, purple, bright green, faded yellow. Everything combined to give the bridge the vibrancy of a carnival.

  Fey of all descriptions went about their business: tall, short, fat, thin, flying, or crawling. Three huge, shaggy men lumbered out of a building ahead of Emily, and judging by their raucous laughter and unsteady walking, Emily assumed the building was an inn. The door opened as another fey entered, and Emily was surprised to see a group of human men and women playing music. All but one had their eyes closed as if asleep, and the one who was awake looked desperately afraid as he played his fiddle, his eyes darting around as if searching for escape.