John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

But the noise unnerved me, and I did not hurry. Instead, I put one cautious hand in front of another. And I was glad I did, for my forward hand suddenly felt nothing.

Was I poised over a brink? I felt around in the air, and encountered a wooden step a few inches below, and another below that.

We were at the top of a stairway. I squirmed around so that I could go down feet first and, keeping my other hand on the stone overhead, I found that the ceiling did not drop as the stairs did but drew away as the stair descended. The ticking now was very loud; it seemed to come from directly ahead.

The stairway was only five stairs long, dropping just enough so that, by the last step, Vanity could stand upright, and I had to stoop.

There was a surface before me. In the dark, I could not tell what material it was, except that it was smoother than stone. It could have been wood, but it was so cold it felt like metal.

“Now what?” I whispered.

“There’s a switch, I suppose,” she said.

“You suppose? How did you get out this way before?”

“I suppose I found a switch.” And she crowded up against me in that little space, tighter than a phone booth. I could hear the soft noise of her hand fumbling along the panel.

“You don’t remember?”

“I think I wasn’t exactly awake last time I did this. You have to be in the right state of mind. Sometimes it’s hard to remember nighttime thoughts during the day.”

“You think? What do you mean you think you weren’t awake?”

“Well, how else do you explain the fact that you never saw me searching for the panel with a ten-foot pole in my hand every night before we went to bed? Now, hush!”

“This is ridiculous—!”

“Just be quiet! Don’t think you are too old to be spanked!”

“I’m taller and stronger than you, and I don’t fight like a girl.”

“I’ll get Colin to do it. You’d like that.”

I was so shocked that I actually did shut up. I was glad it was dark; I could feel my face burning.

A crack of light appeared. Vanity pushed the panel aside.

This was about four feet tall and a little over a foot wide. A metal blade, tipped with a weight, swung past, inches from our faces.

I tried to shrink back, but Vanity and I were pressed up together too closely. She made an annoyed noise in her throat. I blinked and looked again. Blade? We were looking out at a pendulum, swinging back and forth, back and forth.

Beyond that was a pane of dusty glass, blurred with age. On the other side of the glass, moonlight fell across carpet, heavy chairs, two mannequins in Norman helm and mail carrying pikes.

This was the Main Hall. We were in the grandfather clock, looking out.

Vanity whispered, very quietly, “The watchers will notice if the ticking stops. We have to slip past the pendulum without touching it, and get to the main doors and outside. Ready?”

I would have pointed out to her that, as a matter of mathematics controlling such things as volumes, moving bodies, and areas swept out by pendulums, that two girls (four-and-a-half and five-and-a-half feet tall, respectively), cannot turn sideways, and climb out of a one-foot-wide box, open the inner latch of a rusted antique clock, and get clear in the time it takes for a three-foot pendulum to swing back and forth once. Not to mention that there were weights and chains hanging in front of us as well.

But I did not get the chance. Vanity was already thrusting herself through the narrow opening. The pendulum jarred against her arm, of course, while she was yanking the latch free to open the glass panel of the clock.

The ticking stopped. The silence was enormous.

“Quick!” she hissed.

But we were not quick. We had to move the now-still pendulum aside, squeeze her out, squeeze the somewhat taller me out, and fumble with the pendulum to see if we could get it into motion again…

Tick tock. We could. The noise started up again.

“Yeah!” cheered Vanity.

I closed the cabinet door. “Quiet! We’re trying to be quiet!”

“Well, you’re making all the noise saying ‘quiet’!”

We both heard Mr. Glum’s voice, in the distance, querulous. And footsteps.

There was a drapery that hung before the alcove of a window opposite, between the two mail-wearing mannequins. We scampered over to it, quick as mice. Inside, in the angle between three windows, was a little table holding one of Mrs. Wren’s potted plants. Vanity stood on the table. I put my heels on the window casement but the ledge was precarious, so I put my hands against the window opposite to support my weight. This required Vanity to crouch into a ball so that I could lean across her.

There were actually two sets of men’s footsteps, and a clattering of dog’s nails on the floorboards.

“Who’s there?” growled Mr. Glum. His boots made little creaking noises on the carpet and the floorboards. We could hear the deep, slow breathing of his great mastiff dog, the rattle of its neck chain. We saw the splash of light from an electric torch pass back and forth. There was an inch or two of clearance beneath the drapes; the light shone clear.

The other set of footsteps was sharp and crisp. They clattered as if steel soles had been affixed to the bottom of the boots, click-clack, in time with the clockwork.

“Eyah, ’tis you, Doctor. You give a body a fright, walking along without no light, in the dark. What would you be doing a-stirring at this hour, sir?”

Dr. Fell’s precisely measured nasal tones answered him: “All things must be in order before the Visitors and Governors manifest tomorrow, Grendel. An Envoy from the Pretender will be in attendance, and no doubt the True Heir will force the Visitors to make a final disposition of our charges.”

“I want the redhead. She were capering and flaunting at me today at the breakfas’ hour, and giving me the eye. Ever since she were twelve year old, I’ve set my cap for her. She’s to be mine. I have the skull of a preacher I kill’t set on a post at the bottom of my well, and he can do the service. I kill’t him clean, so that makes him still a holy man, right?”

“The disposition of our charges is not a matter within our discretion, my dear Grendel. I, for one, can only operate within the latitude allowed by my maker’s instruction. Had I free will in the matter, certainly there are interesting experiments I would perform on all of them. It is a crime against science that such specimens will escape from the anatomy scalpel!”

“Nonetheless, sir, the redhead were promised me. I heard a voice in the wood.”

“Did you recognize this voice?”

“Naw, not at all, sir.”

“Then, on what grounds do you conclude that this person or persons had authority to treat with the matter, may I ask?”

“A damn fine question, Doctor, and one where’s I got a set and goodly answer.”

“Please share it, my dear Grendel.”

“I figger that if’n it were someone trying to trick me, he would’f em-personated some voice what was known to me. As this were no voice known to me, then it were no one trying to trick me. Asides, I were dead drunk at the time, it being Sunday morning, when what’s I’m off duty.”

“That is, perhaps, not the most reliable and cogent test of authenticity. Have you approached the Headmaster? He has given us all strict orders to communicate with him immediately if any of our original principals attempt to contact us.”

“Brrr! I ain’t going no damn where near that one, if’n I can help it. You talk to the Headmaster. He respekt you, he does. You ain’t show no fear of his kind.”

“It is not an emotion I have been instructed to suffer.”