Pax Britannia: Human Nature (11 page)

He was both shorter and slighter than Ulysses. A scruffy mess of black hair hid much of his face, but he caught a glimpse, nonetheless of a nose as sharp as a knife. The villain's clothes don't seem to fit him either - just like those of his urchin-sons - a rag-cloak of grey, white, black and blue, making him look like his eponymous magpie! He patently had a taste for the theatrical, as had been evidenced by everything Ulysses had seen of him since entering his lair.

The tiny ape rolled onto the floor and lay limply where it landed, arms, legs and tail all at unnatural angles, blood staining the faded green waistcoat it wore.

Ulysses pressed home his advantage, hoping to wrong-foot the Magpie still further and bring him down. The knife flashed in the near dark. Ulysses yelped in pain as the serrated blade cut into the meat of his wrist. His fingers spasmed open, his gun clattering onto the bare boards at his feet.

Ulysses lurched backwards as the Magpie danced in below his guard with the knife again. He heard the rip and felt the snag as the tip of the blade caught the edge of a buttonhole on his coat and tore through the fabric.

He was dimly aware of the bouncing thuds and bangs of his gun as it continued to tumble down the staircase from the landing, and far out of reach. But for the time being he was more concerned about the dextrous knife-fighting abilities of the rogue in front of him.

As the Magpie bounded forwards again Ulysses took two steps back. The palm of his right hand was wet with blood now but the adrenalin of the moment helped him to put aside the pain in his wrist. Instead, focusing all his energies on the fight, he brought his rapier blade to bear again.

He sensed the Magpie hesitate and knew that he had already turned the tide of battle. Now it was his turn to lunge forward but the Magpie had already made his move. The felon flung himself at the ladder to the skylight and, displaying all the agility of a monkey, scampered up it, heading for the roof.

Ulysses pressed forward again, slashing his sword down onto the ladder, slicing splinters from the wooden rungs. And then his quarry was gone. Without a moment's hesitation Ulysses grabbed the ladder and was up it after the Magpie.

As he pulled himself through the open skylight, the felon's fleeing footfalls carried to him over the roofs of the rookery.

In an instant Ulysses was on his feet. As he took a swaying moment to gain his balance, he took in his surroundings. He was standing on the edge of the roof of the slum building. Only a few feet below him, the slanting lip of the roof dropped into a dark void, many storeys high. Above and to his left, at the apex of the roof, the Magpie was making a run for it, away over the rooftops. He looked like a prancing demon, given a hellish cast, as he was, by the fire and smoke rising up from the centre of the rookery, crackling hungrily in the cold November air. Beyond lay a sparse forest of chimney stacks, aerial masts and cast-iron escape fire escapes. And above it all loomed the might and magnificence of the Upper City, a spider's web of Overground lines twisting and turning between the towering edifices.

There was no time to lose. Sword still in hand, Ulysses scrambled up the sloping tiles towards the crest of the roof. Several times his feet slipped on the smooth shingle and once a tile came free beneath him as he kicked against it. But then he made the apex and, following the Magpie's example, rose cautiously to his feet. Then, arms outstretched, he began to scamper after the rogue again.

But where the Magpie's movements were like those of a dancer, almost balletic, Ulysses' pursuit of the fleeing felon was a clumsy, stumbling run, as he tried to make the next nearest chimney stack before he lost his balance and went sliding away down the steeply sloping roof to the drop beyond.

As he staggered after the Magpie, he found himself calling to mind his close-quarters combat with the reactionary Jago Kane atop the speeding Overground train, only seven months before. Although he was in a perilous position skittering over the rooftops now, at least they weren't rattling and rumbling beneath him.

He glanced up. Incredibly, he appeared to be closing on the Magpie, who seemed to be pausing for breath as he clung to a chimney stack not ten feet from Ulysses.

Ulysses threw himself towards the chimney, but before he slammed into the tottering brick structure, the Magpie was away again. Gasping for breath, heart racing, Ulysses watched as the man sprinted to the end of the roof and launched himself into space.

A second later, the Magpie landed with a crash of breaking tiles on top of the roof of the next slum tenement. It was only as he let out a pent-up lungful of air that Ulysses realised he'd been holding his breath. And then there was only one thing for it.

He couldn't think about what he was going to do, he simply had to do it. Relinquishing the security of the chimney stack, he sprinted for the gable-end of the building, the void between the slums seeming to widen with every bounding step. And then, with one almighty leap, he threw himself out over the vertiginous void, horrid images of plummeting airships and death-defying leaps from the top of speeding trains returning to haunt him.

The lip of the roof beyond loomed large before him, but then it was directly in his eye-line, and then all he could see before his face were crumbling bricks and mortar. He flung his arms out and up, felt them grab hold of the lip of the roof, braced himself as his body slammed into the wall, knocking the wind from him, and the flesh of the fingertips of his left hand tore as his own body weight pulled them across the rough surface, the skin of the knuckles of his right scraping red raw as he refused to relinquish his hold on his sword, barely managing to cling on. But cling on he did, like a limpet to a rock at low tide.

He hung there for a moment, gasping to get some air back into his empty lungs. But there was no time to delay; right at this moment, the Magpie was making his escape. The muscles of his back and arms straining, the toes of his shoes scuffing as he tried to get a purchase on the wall, Ulysses began to heave himself upwards.

There was the crunch of gravel above him and a face, like that of some leering gargoyle, peered out over the drop. He needn't have worried about his quarry getting away; the Magpie had come to him.

"Well, well, Mr Quicksilver. Not so quick now, are you? It would appear that you need a hand," the thief-lord gloated.

"No, I'm alright thanks," Ulysses managed through gritted teeth.

"Alright then. Here, let me give you a foot."

The felon's boot heel smashed down on Ulysses' sword hand. Bones ground.

With a cry of anguish, Ulysses pulled his hand away and let go of his precious sword at last. Through the agony of his broken fingers, only a second later, he heard the clattering jangle of metal ringing on metal below him. And despite the pain, that instinctive part of his brain that had seen him through so many scrapes before told him what he needed to do.

Before the Magpie could move his foot again, with all the strength he could muster, Ulysses jerked himself up enough with his left arm to release his hold on the parapet and grab hold of the Magpie's ankle instead. With all his weight hanging off the man's leg, he pulled.

With the Magpie already balanced precariously at the edge of the roof, and Ulysses the more heavily built of the two, it did not take much to gain the desired result. The felon lost his footing, falling heavily on his rump on the edge of the wall before the two men fell into the space between the tightly-packed buildings.

Only a matter of a few seconds later - that seemed more like minutes to Ulysses - he and the Magpie crashed down together on the narrow metal walkway of a fire escape bolted to the side of the building, still three storeys above the ground.

Lashing out, the Magpie quickly extricated himself from the tangle of Ulysses limbs, but Ulysses' hadn't been interested in restraining the rogue. In an instant he was on his feet, sword held tightly in his left hand now, the broken fingers of his right clamped tightly under his armpit, still gasping for breath.

The Magpie sprang cat-like to his feet, knife back in his hand, but where the master criminal was agile as a panther, Ulysses had pain and rage on his side.

Bellowing like some injured animal, he charged the Magpie, forcing the man back towards the railings at the end of the walkway, releasing his fury in an unstoppable assault. Their blades rang as the two traded blows but in no time, Ulysses had hacked his way through the best defence the Magpie could offer. With a final lunge he thrust the tip of his rapier blade at the man's eye; although Ulysses still needed the villain alive for interrogation, something small, like being blinded in one eye, seemed like a perfectly valid option, if it meant he could bring the Magpie in for questioning.

Still possessed of all the poise and grace of a puma, The Magpie sidestepped the blow, but Ulysses still felt the briefest resistance in his blade, as if he had made contact.

And then, with one hand on the railing behind him, the Magpie swung himself over the edge and dropped, body held straight as an arrow as he plummeted to the alley below.

Ulysses watched, transfixed by the man's daring, as his quarry escaped him again, landing in a feline crouch amidst the debris and detritus covering the cobbles below.

For a moment Ulysses was rooted to the spot, as he assessed the jump the Magpie had made. But if that felon could make it, then so could he, Ulysses realised. Snapping himself out of his momentary hiatus, the pain in his hand like a distant memory, Ulysses clambered over the railings and then, after a second or two, his pulse pounding in his ears, he took a deep breath, and jumped.

He landed awkwardly among the piles of rotting rubbish, a sack of something soft and mouldering breaking his fall, but he still ended up splayed on his hands and knees on the cold, wet, filthy cobbles.

Even as he picked himself up he knew that he was too late, that the Magpie had flown. He strained his ears, but all he could hear were the sounds of the unsettled city, the ever-present rattle of locomotives above, the crackle and roar of the fire rampaging through the rookeries and the distant wailing sirens of the approaching fire brigade.

What he couldn't hear were the tell-tale footfalls of the fleeing felon.

Ulysses looked around him, at the maze of side-streets, alleyways and dead-ends he now found himself in. This was the Magpie's territory. In the time it would take him to find his way back to a main thoroughfare - any thoroughfare that he could at least read the name of - his quarry would be long gone.

Yet despite the throbbing hurt of his hands and wrist, and all the other injuries he had sustained in his pursuit of the Magpie, a dark smile spread across Ulysses' face, as something clicked inside his head. The thrill of the chase was all, and the chase wasn't over yet.

Extracting his personal communicator from a coat pocket, he began to key in a number.

Chapter Eight

The Game is Afoot

The cab pulled up outside the Bloomsbury residence with a screech, tyres skidding on the wet leaves clogging the gutter. A door flew open and Ulysses Quicksilver bundled out of the vehicle, quickly followed by his manservant Nimrod.

The street lamps were dim at this late hour - or should it have been classed as early now, Ulysses wondered - and there was no one else around in this part of town, although not so far away the city was as alive and awake as ever.

Ulysses looked up at the imposing facade in front of him.
This is the place
, he thought as he read the name on the brass plate beside the grand columned entrance. And there was a light burning in one of the windows on the first floor.

It had taken him a good half an hour to find his way out of the maze of rookery rat-runs and be reunited with his manservant, who by that point had already managed to procure them a cab to carry them out of Whitechapel. The journey to Bloomsbury had not taken long, but had given Ulysses enough time to order his thoughts and decide on the best course of action to follow next. And that was to not waste time beating about the bush.

He felt for the reassuring presence of the sword-cane currently tucked into the belt of his trousers.

Taking the steps to the front door two at a time, Ulysses went to ring the door bell. He winced in pain, almost crying out, as he tried to close his ruined fingers around the bell-pull and withdrew his hand sharply.

"Let me, sir," Nimrod said stepping past Ulysses.

A bell clattered and jangled noisily somewhere within the dark house.

"Come on!" Ulysses hissed impatiently, his foot tapping on the step as he listened for any sign of someone coming to answer the door. "Ring it again," he ordered. "And if they don't answer this time, we're breaking the door down!"

Nimrod tugged sharply on the bell-pull again. A renewed jangling disturbed the peace of this exclusive address once more.

As the ringing died away, Ulysses heard the
tap-tap
-
tapping
of leather soles on floor tiles. A few seconds later the front door opened and a scowling face greeted them, peering gargoyle-like from the gloom beyond.

"Do you know what time it is, sir?" the face demanded crossly.

Ulysses made a show of taking out his pocket watch. "As it happens, I do," he said. "Half past one, as you're asking. And that is relevant, why?"