Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth (11 page)

The next stairway was wide enough for us to walk side by side. I was starting to relax when a wooden step sank just a little too far under Dead Boy's weight, followed by a slight but definite click, and I threw myself flat. A metal shaft shot out of a concealed hole in the wall, passed right over me, and speared Dead Boy through the left arm. He looked down at the spike transfixing his arm, sighed heavily, and carefully pulled his arm free. I got to my feet again, and we studied the metal spike.

"Why did this work when the others didn't?" said Dead Boy.

"Purely mechanical," I said. "Least there's no harm done."

"No harm? This is my good coat! Look at these two holes in the sleeve. Going to cost a small fortune to put those right. I've got this little fellow in Greek Street who does all my repairs (you'd be surprised how many outfits I go through), but they're never the same afterwards. He calls it invisible mending, but I can always see it…"

"Do you think you could perhaps lower your voice a tad?" I said, quietly but urgently. "We are supposed to be sneaking in, remember?"

He sniffed sulkily a few times, and we continued up the rickety stairway to the third floor, and along the shadowy passage at the top of the building. Every room we passed was a different business, sub-let presumably, and we caught glimpses of shabby people slaving away, working silently in appalling conditions for nothing remotely like minimum wage. Whole families packed so tightly round rough wooden tables there was hardly any room to move. Fathers and mothers and children, all working intently in dim light in rooms with windows that wouldn't open, making goods for pennies that would sell for pounds to their betters. None of them ever said anything, bent quietly over their work. The overseers might not be visible, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Trouble-makers didn't tend to last long in sweatshops.

I'd never seen such blatant misery before. Capitalism, red in tooth and claw. It was one thing to know that such things still went on and another to see it with your own eyes. I felt like tearing the building down with my bare hands… but the sweatshop workers wouldn't thank me for it. They needed the work, needed the lousy money and the protection that went with it, from whoever was looking for them… And I couldn't risk blowing Julien Advent's stakeout and getting him angry at me. I was going to need Julien.

Dead Boy really didn't like sneaking around. It wasn't his style. "When am I going to get to hit someone?" he kept asking.

"You'll get your chance," I said. "God, you're like a big kid. You'll be asking if we're nearly there, next."

We finally came to a closed door with a card tacked to it, saying Dingley Dell. I tried the door handle, slowly and very carefully, but it was locked. Dead Boy raised a boot to kick it in, and I pulled him away, shaking my head firmly. I listened, one ear pressed against the wood of the door, but I couldn't hear anything. I straightened up, wincing as my back creaked, and looked around. And there at the end of the corridor was a spiral stairway, leading even higher. I led the way up the curving steps, Dead Boy pressing close behind like an impatient dog, and we ended up in a disused gallery, looking down onto the open room that was Dingley Dell. And there, at the end of the gallery, was the Timeslipped Victorian Adventurer himself, Julien Advent.

He was actually wearing his old opera cloak, the heavy dark material blending him smoothly into the gallery shadows. Dead Boy and I padded forward as silently as we could, but he still heard us coming. He spun round, ready to fight, and only relaxed a little as he recognised us. He gestured sharply for us to crouch beside him. He was tall, and still lithely muscular despite his years, with jet-black hair and eyes, and a face handsome as any movie star's; only slightly undermined by his unswervingly serious gaze and grim smile.

Julien Advent was a hero, the real deal, and it showed. We'd worked together, on occasion. Sometimes he approved of me, and sometimes he didn't. It made for an interesting relationship.

"What the hell are you two doing here?" he said, his voice little more than a murmur. "I put a lot of effort into getting silently into place here, and remaining unobserved, and now you two clowns… How do you know you haven't tripped off every alarm in the place?"

"Because I saw them all," said Dead Boy. "There's not much you can hide from the dead."

I looked at the two ragged holes in his coat sleeve, and sniffed. "You don't half fancy yourself sometimes."

Julien shook his head despairingly, then we all looked down into the open room of Dingley Dell, while Julien filled us in as to what was happening, in a voice I had to strain to hear.

It seemed Dingley Dell was a sweatshop for manufacturing magical items. Wishing rings, cloaks of invisibility, talking mirrors, magic swords, and so on. The usual. I always wondered where they came from… Gathered around a long trestle table were dozens of small shivering forms like undernourished children, with big eyes and pointed ears. Wee faeries no bigger than two-year-olds, with bitter faces and crumpled wings, all of them looking half-starved and beaten down. They would pick up some everyday object with their tiny hands and stare at it with fierce concentration until the sweat ran down their pointed faces. They were pouring their own natural magic into the items, making them magical through sheer force of will. As the faeries gave up some of their magic, they became visibly duller and less special. Dying by inches.

Every single one of them was held in place by heavy leg irons, and chains led from the irons to steel rings embedded in the bare floor-boards.

The faeries were refugees from a war in some other dimension, said Mien, fleeing and hiding from something awful: the Hordes of the Adversary. They were desperate not to be found, by anyone. Looking more closely, I could see they all had old scars, and more recent cuts and bruises. They wore rough clothing made from old sacking, with slits cut in the back for their crumpled wings to poke through. Now and again, in a brief look or a movement, I could see a glimpse of how wild and beautiful and charming they had once been.

And even as we watched, one small winged figure gave up the last of its magic and just faded away to nothing. His clothing slowly collapsed in on itself, and the empty leg iron clanked dully against the floor.

I couldn't remember when I'd last been so angry. It burned within me, knotting my stomach and making it hard for me to breathe. "This is sick!" I said fiercely. I actually glared at Mien Advent. "Why are you just sitting here, watching? Why haven't you done something before this?"

"Because I've been considering how best to deal with that," said Mien. "That is their overseer—the Beadle."

Dead Boy and I were already looking where he pointed. Emerging from an adjoining kitchen was a huge, hulking figure. He was easily eight feet tall—his head brushing against the ceiling—and his shoulders were broader and more muscular than any human's had a right to be. He was a construct, a patchwork figure of stitched-together human pieces. His only clothing was a collection of broad leather straps, perhaps to help hold him together, or maybe just to give him a feeling of security. He carried a large empty sack in one hand and a roast chicken in the other. He took a great bite out of the chicken breast, and waved the greasy carcass at the faeries, tauntingly.

Two feral children prowled beside him, one to each side, their naked bodies caked in old dried blood and filth. A boy and a girl, they were only ten or eleven years old, but still big enough to scare and intimidate the wee faeries.

"That is one big Beadle," said Dead Boy.

"Quite," said Julien. "I could probably take him, but I didn't want to start something I wasn't sure I could finish. For the sake of the faeries."

The Beadle approached the table, and the faeries all tensed visibly. Some started crying, quietly, hopelessly.

"Now then, have Santa's little helpers been busy, making nice little presents, like they were told to?" said the Beadle, in a harsh, growling voice. "Ho-ho-ho! I see another of you has escaped… but not to worry, my little cherubs; there's always fresh meat to replace the old."

He grabbed a handful of the completed magical items piled up in the middle of the table, and started stuffing them carelessly into his sack. One of the faeries wept a little too loudly, and the Beadle turned on it savagely.

"You! What are you snivelling for, you little work-shy?"

"Please sir," said the faerie, in a small, chiming voice. "I'm thirsty, sir."

The Beadle cuffed the faerie lightly across the back of the head, but it was still hard enough to slam the small face onto the table.

"No water for anyone until you've all made your quotas ! And no food till the end of your shift. You know the rules." He broke off abruptly to examine a glowing dagger he'd just picked up. He sniffed dismissively and broke the blade in two with his bare hands, throwing the no-longer-glowing pieces aside. "Useless! Spoiled! All because someone wasn't concentrating! Don't think you can pass off inferior work on me! You all need to buck yourselves up, because the next one of you that doesn't measure up… gets fed to my little pets here!"

The feral children grunted and snarled, stamping their bare feet on the bare floor and making playful little darts at the nearest faeries, who cried out and cringed away as far as their leg irons and chains would let them. The feral children laughed soundlessly, like dogs.

"That's it," said Mien Advent, in a calm, quiet and very dangerous voice. "I have seen enough."

He dropped gracefully down from the high gallery, his open cloak spreading out like the dark wings of an avenging angel. He landed lightly before the astonished Beadle, who reared back. The feral children retreated, snarling. Dead Boy jumped down and landed heavily, the floor-boards cracking under the impact. He smiled easily at the Beadle, who threw aside his bag and his roast chicken so he could close his great hands into massive fists. I climbed down from the gallery, taking it one foot hold at a time. I knew my limitations. Mien Advent advanced on the scowling Beadle, and the giant construct actually backed away from the much smaller man, driven back by the incandescent rage in Mien's voice and eyes.

"I thought I'd left the evil of sweatshops behind me, in Victoria's reign. To see such cruelty still thriving in this modern age is an affront to all honourable men. To persecute such innocents, such helpless creatures, in the name of profit is an abomination! It stops now!"

The Beadle stopped backing away, and sneered down at Mien, his deep set eyes suddenly crafty as well as cruel. "I know you, Adamant. Crusading editor, bleeding heart, gentleman adventurer. Moves in all the best circles. But if I were to tell you the names of those who own this little business, and others just like them, I daresay you'd know them. Probably members in good standing of your precious gentlemen's clubs. They know the truth of the Nightside—that at the end of the day it's all about wealth and power. And what you can get away with."

"I'll deal with them, too, in time," said Julien.

"But you're here now," said the Beadle. "Far away from home, in my territory. And no-one plays by gentlemen's rules here. I am authorised to deal with any and all intruders in whatever way I see fit. So… let's see what I can get away with…"

He spoke a Word of Power, and the two feral children suddenly changed. Thick fur sprouted out of their bare skins, and their bones creaked loudly as they lengthened. Muzzles full of sharp teeth thrust out of their dirty faces, and in moments the two children were two wolves. The Beadle laughed and urged his pets forward. The faeries cried out hopelessly, cringing away from the slavering wolves, tugging piteously at the steel chains that held them in place. The wolves stalked slowly forward, and Dead Boy went to meet them, drawing two long silver daggers from the tops of his calfskin boots.

"No," I said sharply. "Don't kill them. I think they're as much victims here as the faeries."

Dead Boy glanced back at Julien, then shrugged and stepped back again. He didn't put the silver knives away. I confronted the two wolves, hoping I was right in my assumption. The Beadle had brought about their change with a Word of Power, which suggested the boy and girl weren't natural werewolves, that the change had been enforced upon them. So I fired up my gift and found the spell that controlled the change. Then it was the easiest thing in the world for me to rip the spell away, and just like that two wolves shrank back into two dazed children. Only a boy and a girl again, at last. They could feel they were free, and their feral instincts told them who was responsible. They charged towards me, and I made myself stand my ground. The boy and the girl pressed affectionately against my legs, nuzzling me with their heads and faces, pathetically grateful. The Beadle shouted orders at them, trying his Word again, and they turned and snarled defiantly back at him. I patted them comfortingly on their matted heads, and they settled down again.

Dead Boy and Julien Advent and I turned our full attention to the Beadle. He eyed the only door, but could tell it was too far away. He flexed his great muscles, showing off his size and strength. His fists were bigger than our heads. He sneered at us.

"This changes nothing! You're not big enough to bring me down. Not even together. I will eat your flesh, and crack your bones for the marrow, then I'll stick your severed heads on the railings outside, to show everyone what happens when you mess with the Beadle. And don't think your magics will help you against me. The owners made me proof against all magical attacks."

"Good thing I'm not magic then," said Dead Boy. "Just dead."

He went to meet the Beadle, daggers in hand, and the Beadle turned to run. He'd barely made two steps before Dead Boy was upon him, plunging both his daggers deep into the Beadle's kidneys. The giant cried out horribly and fell to his knees. And Dead Boy cut the Beadle up into his respective original pieces, undoing the work that had first put the huge construct together. The Beadle kicked and screamed for a long time. John and I watched in silence, while the two feral children grinned and stamped their feet approvingly, and the wee winged faeries clapped their tiny hands together in joy and relief.