Curse of the Midions Read online

  Scrambling to the edge of the roof, Jarvey judged the distance to the next one, backed away again, and took a long broad jump across to the roof on the far side of the alley. He hit hard on his heels and tumbled forward, catching himself on outthrust hands, and pushed himself back up. At the far side of the roof he looked down: a two-story drop, too far to leap. But a black iron drainpipe ran down the wall at the rear of the building.

  Jarvey swung himself over the edge of the roof and locked his legs around the drain where it slanted away from the roof and down toward the wall. With an effort, Jarvey got his hands on it and eased down. Climbing was hard, hanging at a backward forty-five-degree angle like a sloth, but then it got harder. The drain pipe had been fastened to the bricks with iron straps, and Jarvey couldn’t keep a grip all the way around it. He half slid and half fell twenty feet, landing on a squelchy, stinking mess around the foot of the drain, a mound of dirt, leaves, and garbage.

  He edged forward in the dark alley, wondering if the tippers’ wagon had caught up to him. No, he could hear the slow clop-clop of the horses from away to his left. The three tippers were probably still looking for other members of the gang. The wagon wouldn’t race. They had all the time in the world.

  Jarvey sank back into the shadows and watched the horses and wagon lumber past in a long streak of black and green, and then he chanced a look outside. His heart sank as he saw Betsy’s face up against the bars, and next to her little Puddler’s. He couldn’t make out who the third captive was.

  When the wagon turned right far down at the corner, Jarvey darted out of the alley and sprinted. If a Toff noticed him, he’d yell that he was an errand boy and couldn’t stop. If a tipper saw him, well, he’d worry about that when it happened.

  Around the corner, and he spotted the wagon standing still a block ahead. The driver had pulled over to the curb on a street of small stone homes with sharp-pitched roofs. Jarvey slunk along until he came to a rain barrel standing against the brick wall of the last warehouse. He hid behind the barrel and took everything in. The cobbled street sloped downhill to the edge of the river, but here the stream stretched shore to shore with no wharves or docks. A few small white triangular sails, sails of pleasure boats, glided far upstream, too distant to be a source of worry or help.

  “The others had to’ve come this way,” Jarvey heard one of the tippers grumble in a harsh voice. He peeked around the barrel and saw all three of the tippers, the driver and two guards, standing on the sidewalk next to the horses. “Four or five of’em at least.”

  “We looked in every alley and didn’t see no sign of ’em,” another one said. “They’ve scattered by now. Took too much time haulin’ old Saunders out of the river, the fool. I say we take these three in and forget about the others. We got ways of catchin’ rats, and we’ll nip ’em sooner or later, anyhow.”

  “No.” The third voice was the hard, stern voice of authority. Jarvey blinked. It belonged to a man who wore exactly the same uniform as the others. He wore no badge of office or mark of distinction, but the man’s face was cold, with a hawk’s bill of a nose, eyes that glared from deep caverns under straight, heavy black brows, and a long, sharp chin. Jarvey settled back on his heels as the tipper turned his head slowly, scanning the street. As he did, Jarvey saw a jagged scar across his right cheek. The man was blind in his right eye.

  For a moment the tipper’s baleful one-eyed gaze paused, and Jarvey tensed to run for his life, sure that he’d been spotted. But then the man’s head snapped around to his two comrades. “No,” he said again. “They must still be here somewhere, hiding. We’ll walk down the wharves. We’ll check every warehouse and every alley again from this side. Saunders and the others are on River Street by this time. They will make sure these rats don’t slip away from us and get out that way.”

  “You sure about that, Cap’n?” one of the others asked sarcastically. “Old Saunders took quite a duckin’ in the river, didn’t he? He was squallin’ about gettin’ to the lockup and changing clothes.”

  “If he’s not guarding the alleys, he’ll find himself in front of a loom tomorrow,” the leader said. “Come, you two. Tie up the horses and come.”

  He and one of the other tippers vanished, walking past the far end of the warehouse on the narrow drive on the riverside. The third, still grumbling, tied the horses to a lamppost, then followed.

  As soon as he was gone, Jarvey dashed to the wagon. “Betsy!” he whispered.

  “Jarvey?” Betsy’s face split into a grin. “Welcome sight you are! Quick, get us out of this.”

  Jarvey looked helplessly at the ponderous iron lock. “I don’t have the key!”

  Billis, a quiet boy about Betsy’s age, said hoarsely, “Look up front, Jarv. See if the driver’s seat raises up. Usually there’s a compartment underneath ’em, and sometimes they chucks the keys in there.”

  Jarvey tiptoed around the far side of the wagon and climbed up into the driver’s position. The two horses heard him, and both stamped their feet and whinnied. Jarvey tugged at the seat, swung it up, and found only a heavy wool coat in the compartment underneath it. He swung the seat back into place and started to jump down when—

  “Oi! Off from there!” It was one of the tippers, two hundred feet away, pointing and shouting.

  Jarvey had a split second to make a decision. He jumped down, untied the reins—they had just been loosely looped around the lamppost—and then scrambled back up in the driver’s seat, snatching the whip from its socket. “Come on!” Jarvey yelled. He didn’t know how to use the whip, but he flicked its length, and the tip of the wooden staff grazed the rear end of the horse on the left. The black horse flinched in surprise and then started to clop, and the other joined it, jerking the wagon ahead in a clattering roll toward the river.

  “Stop! Hey, you two, help me!” The tipper belatedly broke into a waddling run, waving his arms and bellowing.

  Jarvey hauled on the reins, and the horses obediently pulled the wagon in a wide U-turn, heading back up the hill. The fat tipper was getting close to them—

  “Get up!” Jarvey shouted, snapping the reins.

  The horses seemed to understand. Both of them broke into a fast walk, and with another flick of the reins, into something like a gallop. The wagon clunked and bumped over the cobblestones, jolting and lurching, and Jarvey fell backward in the seat. He struggled back up again. They were up the hill, leaving the shouting, red-faced tipper shaking his fist at the corner down near the river.

  The street leveled out, but still the horses did not slow. The wagon flashed past a garden party of Toffs playing croquet on a green lawn behind a black wrought-iron fence. The players straightened and stared at the wagon with round, startled eyes. Jarvey grimaced. How did you steer horses? The team was in a hurry to get somewhere, but he couldn’t control them. Jarvey hauled again on the reins with desperate strength until the horses got the message. They slowed, but then took an unexpected sharp left turn into a narrower street.

  Jarvey felt the wagon tilt up onto two wheels, and as it toppled he vaulted free, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling. With a splintering crash, the wagon smashed into the corner of a brick shop. Jarvey pushed himself up to see the horses tear themselves free of the wreck and go cantering away, still yoked together, their iron-shod hoofs striking sparks from the cobblestones. He scuttled to the rear of the wagon. “Are you okay?”

  Inside the cage the three captives struggled in a mass of arms and legs. Then Betsy got herself free. “Help me here! Come on, Jarvey, quick!”

  Betsy was struggling with the door. Jarvey reached for the lock and shook it in frustration.

  A young woman in a bonnet and a long gray dress had come out of the shop and stood with her hand clasped to her chest. “You frightened the life out of us! What is the meaning of this?” she snapped, her face red.

  “Ow!” Betsy had jerked her hands away from the bars and shook them as if she had touched a hot stove.

  In Jarvey’s hands the l
ock crawled with crackling silver sparks. He couldn’t let go of it. He clenched his teeth.

  Betsy, Puddler, and Billis shoved the door open, knocking Jarvey onto his seat as they struggled out. Betsy grabbed his hand and hauled him to his feet. “Run! Split and run to the Den. If I’m not there by dark, scatter and it’s everyone for himself. Tell the others, and run!”

  Already a loose group of men was jogging toward them—not tippers, but well-dressed men running from the shops and the markets. Jarvey fled from them, reached a row of humble-looking houses, and dived behind them, jumping fences and ducking through backyard gardens until he was out of the residential area.

  The factories began, and Jarvey felt a rush of relief. Charley had taught him how to hide in streets like these. He rushed into the first alley he reached, not even thinking that once he had been afraid of such narrow, dark places.

  “There’s one of ’em!”

  The alley lay straight between two streets. Two tippers stood at the far end, and they pounded toward him. Jarvey backpedaled.

  He was younger, but he was winded. They gained on him. He reached the end of the alley—

  A hand closed on his arm and jerked him to one side. Jarvey fought back, pummeling the man who had seized him—

  “Stand absolutely still and do not make a sound!”

  Jarvey gasped. Zoroaster! The man chanted something under his breath, something that Jarvey could not make out.

  The world plunged into darkness.

  “Still and quiet, for your life!” Zoroaster whispered.

  Jarvey obeyed.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Rat

  Jarvey felt as if he were suffocating. Everything had gone absolutely dark, darker than midnight. He felt Zoroaster’s hand shove him back against the brick building, and he stood gasping for air.

  A moment later, boots clapped on the cobblestones. “Which way did he go?” a hoarse voice demanded.

  “Can’t see ’im now,” the other tipper returned. “Must’ve cut across there and into Crooked Alley.”

  “You sure?”

  “No place on the street for ’im to hide, is there? Come on!”

  Running footsteps faded in the distance, died away. The hand on Jarvey’s arm dragged him sideways, and he stumbled, unable to see where they were going. Then he heard Zoroaster chant again, and in a blinding flood the brassy daylight returned.

  Zoroaster stood beside him, his left hand grasping Jarvey’s right arm, his right hand flat on the alley wall. The man had changed. His hair had been cropped short, and he wore ragged gray clothing, like a commoner. “It’s lucky I’ve been watching for you,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Wh-what did you do?” Jarvey asked.

  “I made us both invisible,” Zoroaster snapped. “We’ll have to move. Midion can detect magic. You did a bit a few minutes ago, and I just did considerably more.”

  “Invisible?” Jarvey gasped. “I couldn’t see!”

  “Of course not. If you are invisible, the retinas of your eyes are transparent. If that is so, no image can form upon them. That is a disadvantage of invisibility. Follow me.”

  They trotted down the alley, into another street, and then beneath a short arched bridge, where they paused. Jarvey hadn’t realized how out of breath the pursuit had made him. His legs felt as if the bones had become jelly. “What—what happened after that night?” he asked. “Why did you run away?”

  “I ran because Tantalus knew you had left with me, and because I had seen the Grimoire,” Zoroaster said. “He does not know it is here. He must not know. If he were close to capturing me, I would choose death rather than giving him the knowledge of the book’s whereabouts.” Zoroaster passed a hand across his face, as if he were terribly tired. “What did you do? I felt something of it, the energy, but not what kind of spell you performed.”

  “I—I unlocked a lock,” Jarvey said. “My friends had been caught, and I made the lock unfasten itself.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Jarvey confessed. “I was holding it, and I kept telling it to unlock. Not out loud, I just thought it. And sparks shot from it, and then it just opened.”

  “Extraordinary,” Zoroaster said. “Most beginners cannot focus without the discipline of a spoken spell.”

  “Then once before—” Jarvey hesitated, then told of how he had climbed up the narrow alley and how the tipper had looked straight at him without appearing to see him. “I thought I was invisible then,” he finished.

  “No,” Zoroaster said. “You were simply not noticed—that is not the same thing as being truly invisible. You may have caused the tipper to become inattentive, to ignore you. That is easy to do with one person, but almost impossible with two or more.”

  “Listen,” Jarvey said, “you were going to find my mom and dad. Have you—”

  “No.” The word was harsh and final. “No, Jarvey, I have not found them. Believe me, I have inquired every way I know how, and that includes some ways even Tantalus could not guess. Only one person can find them now.”

  “Who?”

  “You,” Zoroaster said. “I will have to ask you not to try, though. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “Because you will have to use the Grimoire.” Zoroaster had lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “And I do not know what opening that cursed volume would do, here, in the very land it shaped for Tantalus Midion. I have been in its presence five times, six counting the time I saw it in your hands. I lack the courage of some sorcerers, however. I have never had the courage to open the book. For in opening it, in reading the dire spells it contains, one’s will may be warped, one’s soul turned toward evil. The promise of power is a terrible temptation.”

  “I can’t open it,” Jarvey said. “I’ve tried.”

  “Don’t try again! Not unless I tell you to do so.”

  Jarvey stepped away from him, balling his fists at his sides. “If I can find my mom and dad by opening the book, I’ll open it!”

  “I’m not sure you can,” Zoroaster said. “Yet there seems to be no other way. Listen: Tantalus’s men have come close to me, far too close for my peace of mind. I may have to leave Lunnon, to go outside.”

  “Outside?”

  “Into the real world. Yes, I can move back and forth, though it is very dangerous. If I must, then Tantalus will know I have left, and he may work spells to block me from returning. Yet I know of no other way to find the essential spells that might allow you to open the Grimoire and survive. Do you know Green Park, at the corner of Broad and Brick streets?”

  “I could find it.”

  “At the center of the park is a fountain. If I can learn what I need to know, I will meet you there.”

  “How will I know when to meet you?”

  “You will know,” Zoroaster said. “I will get word to you. No matter where you are. You will know.”

  “But what if—” Jarvey broke off, his mouth hanging open. Zoroaster was gone. He had not exactly vanished, had not faded away. It was as if he had been only a projected picture, and someone had switched the projector off.

  Jarvey backed out from the shadows beneath the bridge. He wanted to be with someone he knew. He climbed the bank up to the bridge and set off for the Den. It was his only home now.

  “We’re movin’. Now,” Betsy said grimly. “This place is too hot for us.”

  Jarvey groaned. He was hungry and his muscles ached from fatigue and effort. Everyone had turned up at the Den by twilight, and now Betsy walked back and forth, speaking in an angry voice. “There was too many tippers on the wharves today. Something got their suspicions up, and if that’s happened, we’ve got to find another snug. I know one we can reach tonight, but we have to start now. Jarvey, get ready.”

  Jarvey took the Grimoire from its hiding place and tucked it inside his shirt.

  Someone nudged Jarvey from behind. “That was too close, mate.”

  Jarvey wrinkled his nose at the blast of bad
breath. It was Charley. “Yeah, it was,” Jarvey whispered back.

  “There’s a rat here, you know, Jarv.”

  “What?” Jarvey knew there were real rats in Lunnon—some of the kids had talked about hard times when they had hunted down rats for food—but somehow he didn’t think that was what Charley meant.

  “A rat. Somebody peached, told them tippers we was going to be workin’ the waterfront today. That’s why so many of them was there waitin’ for us. Didn’t you think that was strange, like?”

  “I didn’t know what to think,” Jarvey said. “I just wanted to get away from them.”

  “You watch Bets,” Charley said in a low voice. “I think this might have been a put-up job. Like maybe she’d get herself caught, and you’d swap the book for her, or something.”

  Jarvey felt even colder. His throat tightened. He had thought of trading the book for his friends’ freedom, but—Betsy?

  Charley jerked his head toward Betsy, who was busy with the other kids. “Keep an eye out, is all. If there’s a rat among us, just know you can never trust a rat.”

  “All right, then,” Betsy was saying. “We’ll split up. You leaders know where to take your groups. We’ll take it slow. Charley, you’ll take the first one, then Puddler will go, and last of all me. If it gets safe to join together again, I’ll get word to Charley, and he’ll see that Puddler hears. Ready to go, then?”

  “Come with me,” Charley suggested to Jarvey.

  “He’s with me,” Betsy said sharply. “Get on with you now.”

  “Don’t burst a blood vessel,” Charley said easily. “Hi, you lot—with me. Come along, then.”