The Gilded Scarab (41 page)

Hawkins pulled out the wire, cutting off Daniel in full flow. His hand closed over my shoulder and squeezed. I grinned at him, with a rush of sympathy and fellow feeling. He wasn’t Hawkins now, but Sam.

The Gallowglass straightened up and spoke quickly. “All right. We know that my son is alive and he’s in the storeroom with Meredith—”

“And one other,” I said. “At least one. Ned mentioned him. Perhaps the man from the coffeehouse.”

“Yes. That makes sense. So at least one other there with him. We don’t know how many more.”

“It may not matter,” Brennan said. “They weren’t prepared down there for the power blackout. It didn’t sound as though they have anything other than a couple of brimstones. We have the advantage now.”

God, yes. With the night goggles, we definitely were better off than they were.

The Gallowglass nodded, and Brennan went on. “We move fast and quiet, sir. Stocking feet. We can see better than they can, and we can maneuver better in the dark. We can outflank them.”

The Gallowglass didn’t hesitate. He bent to unlace his shoes, and after an instant in which, I suspect, the rest of us were still absorbing the relief that Ned was alive and were a little slow to catch on, we all followed suit. The marble floors were cold under my feet.

Sam didn’t take us down the stairs, but crossed the hall to another door. “These stairs are for the public and only go down to the first basement, to the water closets. The staff staircase is through here.” A substantial cupboard sat between the Catalogue Room and the Music Room. When Sam forced the door, it opened onto a narrow stone staircase. “This way. Down three flights.”

It was hard to hold back. My instinct was to run down the stairs as fast as I could do it, but of course I knew caution was our best friend. Overeager impetuosity could get Ned killed.

At the bottom of the stairs, Sam inched open a door and peered out. “Stay close, and stay quiet. Follow me.”

We filed after him obediently. Not that we went far. Only a few yards to a junction with a corridor running east-west. Sam stopped us again. He dropped to his knees and inched his face around the corner of the storeroom block, looking toward the other staircase.

After a moment he climbed to his feet and gathered us round him. “Caught a glimpse of a light down at the other end. Someone with a brimstone flashlight by the way it was moving about, but I don’t reckon it can reach us here. Not powerful enough, and all this end of the corridor is in shadow. I’m going to open up the first storeroom, across the junction; we can take a minute to plan our assault there. Door’s on the right. Two minutes, then come one by one. Keep your weapons covered to hide the aether tubes. If he looks this way I don’t want him to see anything. Keep it quiet. Make it quick. Got it?”

Counting down two minutes took a lifetime. I’d taken off my grandfather’s old hunter watch when I’d changed out of my evening jacket, and I was without a timepiece. It felt like aeons passed. All I could do was put my fingers over my wrist and use my own pulse, my own heartbeat, as the roughest of guides.

But then, I’d got through life using my heart as the roughest of guides. It had brought me this far and brought me to where I was with Ned. Too late to change now, even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.

The storeroom was dark. Cases and boxes loomed at us out of the murk as we gathered around Sam, who had set up his datascope on the top of a packing case. But before anyone could speak, Annabelle Somers’s voice sounded quietly in our earpieces. Nervous cats had nothing on me when it came to jumping.

“Can you hear me?” she said. “An autocar has arrived outside the main gates… I can’t see what type or who’s in it… it’s on sidelights only. Two men are in the museum courtyard. They’re opening the gate.”

The Gallowglass’s voice was as soft as hers. “Can you see how many are inside the autocar?”

I shivered. I was under one of the ceiling ventilation grilles, and the air was cold, blowing down over my hair and slithering down the back of my neck, sticking icy fingers under my collar.

“No. With no streetlights, everything’s in deep shadow. I can’t see how many in the autocar, in addition to the driver…. Sorry…. There’s a brimstone come on…. One of the men at the gate is talking to whoever is inside the car. The other one is standing guard, I think, looking up and down the street. I need to see better…. Hold. I’m going to try and get to the corner. I’ll have a better view.” A scrabbling noise came over the Marconi. She must be working herself into a different position.

Will bit off a curse. “Annabelle!” he said, warningly.

“I’m being careful.” Another scrabbling noise. “There. Stop worrying, Will. I’m still behind a chimney and out of sight. I think they’re still talking to the passenger in the new car… oh, one of them’s gone back inside the museum courtyard… I don’t… oh, I see. They’re bringing out another autocar from inside the yard, coming back out onto Great Russell Street. They’re following the car that just arrived.”

“Which way?” the Gallowglass demanded.

“Left. They’re going along Great… they’re turning! They turned left into Montague Street. I can’t see them now. One man at the gate here. He’s relocked it, and now he’s taken his brimstone away. I can’t see where he is. Inside the guard’s box, maybe? That’s all. It’s all quiet again.”

The Gallowglass said, his tone not much less anxious than Will’s, “Thank you, Mrs. Somers. Please stay safe.”

“You too, sir. All of you. Good luck.”

The Gallowglass looked at us. “Well?”

“Going around to the back doors, I’ll bet,” Will said. “Sam, you said it was the fastest way into the storeroom?”

“Yes. It is.”

In the gray world of the night goggles, the Gallowglass stood for an instant with his head bowed. But only for an instant. “Meredith’s client, perhaps?”

“You’d think he’d wait for Meredith to take the loot to him. Less chance of discovery,” I said. “It’s reinforcements, at any rate. We had better get moving.”

Hawkins gave me a tight grin. He tapped his datascope and pulled up a schematic of the museum. “All right. The storerooms are in blocks of five rooms, divided by corridors running north-south at each end of a block, from the back of the museum to the front, and east-west between the blocks. See? This block is where Ned has his things stored, in the end storeroom,”—Hawkins tapped on the storeroom on the extreme left of the block on the schematic—“here, beside the northwest stairs. It’s a mirror of this one, with a single door opening onto the north-south corridor. The three middle rooms on this block have doors on the east-west corridors, above and below them. I have no idea what’s in any of them or how secure they are.” He shrugged. “The layout’s simple enough.”

Brennan nodded, tracing the route with a broad forefinger. “Two groups. We’ll each take one of the cross corridors. We’ll aim to take out any guards on the northwest stairs, get into the storeroom, and retrieve the First Heir.”

Oh, and of course it was going to be that simple and easy!

“There’s only that one door in,” I protested. “One man there can hold off all of us. Pick us off one by one.”

And hurt Ned. We’d be helpless.

Brennan wasn’t unsympathetic. “There’s no other way in, Lancaster. It’s a risk, but one we have to take. We have the advantage in that we can see them before they see us, and they don’t know we’re here. We’ll aim to take any guards outside the room before the people inside realize it. It’s our best chance to get the Heir out unhurt.”

It was still a huge risk. A huge one.

Another little blast of air from above my head. I moved a foot to one side to get out from under the ventilation grille… I halted. A ceiling ventilation grille.

Ceiling. Ventilation. Grille.

I looked up at it. Two feet by one and a half, maybe.

Ceiling ventilation grilles had air shafts behind them.

Brennan’s tone was measured, calm. “This has to be fast and silent. Try and take them all down with neural disruptors, but if it comes to a clear threat to the Heir’s life, do not hesitate to kill. And don’t hesitate, either, if it’s you or them. The Gallowglass and I will lead one group. Sam, you and Lancaster take the other—”

“No,” I said.

Every face turned to me. Brennan, tightening his grip on the harquebus he held across his chest, took a step toward me. “What?”

“No.” I pointed up. “Sam, do you reckon every room down here has one of those? More to the point, do you think the room Ned’s in has one of those?”

Chapter 27

H
AWKINS
USED
his brimstone, directing the beam upward. The light bounced off the grille, casting odd little shadows, like the slats of a blind with the sun behind it. He took a step and landed up against me, shoulder to shoulder.

He played the light across the ceiling, searching. “Three of them.”

“One each, and one to spare.”

He and I exchanged looks, and he smiled. He actually smiled. “Let’s take a look.”

I glanced at the biggest of the guards, pointing to him and the one beside him. “You two, push one of those crates over here. Hurry!”

“Do it!” Brennan was fast to realize what we were after. “And under the other vents. Get them all open! Fast as we can do it!”

I scrambled up onto the crate and pushed up on the grille. It lifted with such ease, the Lancaster luck had to be smiling. I shoved it into the ventilation shaft, out of the way, put both hands on the edge of the hole where it had been, and pulled myself up for a second.

A five way junction. The shafts led east-west and north-south, parallel to the corridors outside, with another shaft rising vertically above my head. It’d be a tight squeeze, but I could do it.

I dropped back, struggling to get my gun belt unbuckled with overeager fingers, clumsy in my haste. It would be too tight a fit in there to wear it. “Hugh—”

“I’m coming along with you, sir,” said Hugh, stoutly. He gestured to the far vent, where the Gallowglass himself stood on a crate, pushing at the ventilation grille. Brennan stood beside him, arguing in a fiercely suppressed tone. Sam Hawkins was at the middle vent.

Brennan said something savage about the Gallowglass putting himself in danger. “Bad enough Mr. Ned’s in danger, sir. Think of those boys of his!”

“I’m thinking of that boy of mine,” said the Gallowglass, just as savagely. “I’m going, Joe.”

Brennan threw up his hands.

“You’d better let the Gallowglass take it, if that’s what he wants,” I said to Hugh. “You and Alan stick with Will, and look after one another. Don’t get killed.”

Hugh’s face twisted in a grimace.

“No time to argue.” I thought about how smooth the metal shaft was and took an instant to pull off my socks. I’d need every ounce of purchase I could manage to get, and the socks would slip too much. I scrambled back up onto the crate.

Brennan appeared to have stopped arguing. He handed the Gallowglass a pistol. He glanced at Sam and me. “Fast and quiet. Drop into the room only when we’re in place, all right? Be prepared to use lethal force to protect Ned and the Gallowglass. Is that understood, Lancaster? If you are not prepared to kill to protect them, whoever you have to take down, I’ll send someone else.”

I flicked the lever on my pistol to set the phlogiston particle projector to phased discharge. Kill mode. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary.”

“Very well.” Brennan put a hand on the Gallowglass’s arm. “Henry, you will allow Lancaster and Sam to go in first and clear the way for you, or God help me I’ll—” He broke off. It had to be hard for him to let the Gallowglass take such risks.

“Yes,” the Gallowglass said. No one believed him. Not if Ned were in mortal danger.

“Too much talking,” Sam Hawkins grumbled. He jumped for the shaft and hauled himself in, kicking his legs.

“Stay with Will and Alan.” I tucked the pistol into the back of my waistband and grasped Hugh’s hand. “Be careful, all of you.”

Will appeared beside him. “You too. We’ll give you a boost up.”

He and Hugh grabbed my legs and pushed me up as I pulled with my arms. A kick, a grunt of pain from one of them, and I was in. I wriggled in a yard or two, brushing against the roof.

I inched my way forward as fast as I could do it. I lay full length, with walls, roof, and floor fitting around me with only an inch or two to spare. The only way to advance was to pull with my hands, bend my knees until my feet were flat on the roof, and straighten my legs with a jerk, pushing with my heels, jackknifing my way along like a caterpillar. I couldn’t flex my legs very much, but enough to let me get going. Barefoot and with nothing to bang against the metal walls of the shaft, I could move with the quiet Brennan had impressed upon us. Relative quiet, at any rate.

At the next junction, I glanced to my right. Sam Hawkins turned to look at me at the same instant, and I saw his teeth gleam.

It was a good smile, that one. It promised death and destruction to the men who’d taken Ned. My Ned. And Sam’s.

We’d finally discovered we had something in common.

I grinned back, turned to face forward again, and reached out to pull myself another few inches. My hands were already raw and hurting. But it was a good hurt.