Chapter Eighteen

A Right Pickle

 

 

It was not the first time Ol’ Tom had given Christopher a swift kick to the head. Gin could be a fickle bitch. He swam back towards the light knowing it was going to hurt. The dry mouth, the horrid taste on his tongue, and the aches all awaited. It was always a hard start to the morning feeling that way.

When he found he could not move either his hands or his feet, though, he surmised this morning’s due to Ol’ Tom would be particularly bad. As he cracked his eyes open, it was to see Liam’s unimpressed face staring back at him, as well as finding himself tied up quite soundly.

“You rotter,” the younger lad grumbled with a frown communicating his darkest thoughts. “You go arfarfan’arf, and I got no one watching me back.”

“He’s got a point.” A boot inserted into his side told Christopher they were not alone.

Tiny loomed over them, and his smile was not reassuring. “You look right fishy around the gills there, lad. No puking on my nice rug.”

While Christopher worked his mouth, Tiny perched his huge form on a chair and leaned back. Judging from the crates and barrels all around them and the raucous sound of laughter, they were still in the pub, just a quiet backroom where underhand business could be conducted.

“Now then, boys,” Tiny said, cracking his knuckles slowly as he looked each of them over. “Why don’t I show you how to run an interrogation?”

“No mates then?” Christopher fired off his first round.

Tiny chuckled. “Unlike you, I don’t need no mates. They left me here to deal with you lot, seeing as you…”

“Made you look like a soft git?” Liam broke in.

Christopher shot him a look. Liam’s dander was up and he was ready for a good scrap. It was just hard to figure out if he wanted to deal with Tiny, or have a row with him. Regardless of who would be on the receiving end of Liam’s ire, Christopher had to make it clear what Agent Thorne would always say: Let cooler heads prevail. They had to remain alive long enough to figure a way out of this scrape.

Wriggling to a seated position, he tried his best to look as defenceless as possible. “Nah, Liam, Tiny here, he ain’t daft, or they wouldn’t have left him alone like this.” Tiny rubbed his beard, giving both boys a sideways glare. Christopher ventured to add a little more sauce to the goose. “In Usher that’s how we do it. Bet our friend here knows everything that toff Sir Mallory does.”

Tiny’s eyebrows drew together, his smile turning quite wry. “I know plenty. For one thing, you lot are not Usher.”

Christopher kept his face as if it were a mill pond in the morning. “What are you on about?”

“This,” Tiny said, lifting up the ring Christopher should have been wearing but evidently was not. Rubbing his thumb against the inside of his own fingers confirmed his fear. “This ring is not up to Usher technology unless the clankertons there have made some amazing progress. I wager you kids are working with Her Majesty’s government. Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, eh wot?”

“Now come along, Tiny, you really think some posh—”

“Just stop, Chrissy,” Liam said, his temper near its end from the crack in his voice. “He figured it out. Figured it out before Mallory, he did.”

“So, lad, you are correct. I am not some plonker stuck in the cogs, as our Usher counterparts employ. As part of the Brotherhood, as part of the all-seeing eye, I know quite a bit. Such as our person on the inside. I know her name.”

Christopher nodded. “You’re right about that. He wouldn’t.” His tongue was still dry and sticky from the gin, but he could not afford to fumble again. It was time to spin a yarn. Despite the dangers of this man and what he knew of him and Liam, Christopher had to get him on the line. “I know plenty too.”

“Like you did back at the farmhouse?” he asked, unsheathing a knife.

His throat burned. This was the problem with Ol’ Tom. He was such a fine gentleman when in his company, but the following day he was a right bastard in making you wish he would have never left you.

“I told you I was going to show you how to run an interrogation,” he said, flipping the knife around his hand.

Christopher recognised this intimidation game, usually played between the other street urchins. Granted, this bloke was the size of three children, but this was hardly the first time Christopher had been threatened with a blade. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“No,” Tiny uttered just before dragging the knife across Liam’s arm.

Christopher thought Liam was going to scream the roof off the inn, but Tiny stuffed a large wad of cloth into his mouth. He set the knife aside and slipped on a single leather glove. Across the outside of the fingers and knuckles, Christopher could just make out a texture. His hand shifted into the afternoon light streaming in from the window and the gleam caught his eye. Tiny tightened his gloved hand into a fist, and that was when Christopher made out the jagged texture of rocks and shards of glass.

“Not yet,” Tiny said to Christopher, tightening his fist just enough to make the leather glove creak softly.

His punch to Liam’s open wound made the young boy’s entire body jerk so hard, he nearly knocked Christopher over. On the second punch to his arm, Liam sent trails of snot out of his nose which splattered across the floorboards. The boy was struggling for breath as he tried to draw air, but with the gag filling his mouth and his nose as it was, he was turning slightly red.

“Now, you should be afraid.” He waved a finger at him as he said in barely a whisper, “See, you look like a tough lad. Been in a few scrapes, I bet. But this nipper here? Bet you’ve spent some time protectin’ him from bad people in the streets. People worse than you and him, I mean.”

Tiny stepped away and then punched Liam in the wound again. Liam screamed into his gag. Christopher could still see in the corner of his eye the boy’s body trembling as Tiny got in close again. Christopher dared to glance down at the single gloved hand, and he could see Liam’s blood slowly dripping from the glass and rock there.

“Christopher, mate,” and Tiny lightly slapped him with his other hand, forcing his eyes up to his own. “Need your attention, because this is important.” He leaned his head towards Liam and nodded on hearing the child’s gagged whimpers. “This — is how — you interrogate someone. You find their weakness, and exploit it. Ya follow?”

Christopher nodded.

“Good lad. Now, see, I am very good at this. You agree with that, yes?”

Christopher nodded, trying to ignore Liam’s moaning—at least he tried.

“So, I’m going to start askin’ you questions. You don’t have to answer them, but for little Liam’s sake, I think you should.”

“Yes, sir,” Christopher stammered.

Tiny leaned forward, making the floorboards underfoot creak. “You got friends in the school. How about you tell me about them?”

Christopher had to tread careful like. He didn’t have to tell the truth, but he couldn’t lead him too far off the path. He had to give him just enough to keep his interest, and in turn keep him off Liam.

“So, we got friends in the Academy, we do. They are smart, too. That’s why they are at the school an’ not us...”

“Christopher,” Tiny said, his tone unmistaken for anything other than a warning, “after what you just saw, are you really going to try and toy with me?”

He blinked. “Wot?”

“That really is disappointing,” he sighed as he stepped away from Christopher.

“No, Tiny, please, don’t…”

Tiny cocked back and gave another swift punch to Liam’s wound. Then another. Christopher felt a few choice insults on the tip of his tongue for this Illuminati bastard, but he ground his teeth together.

“In all my years of hurting people, whether it was like this or through a sniper scope, I learned a few things.” He turned away from them both and picked up the knife. “One thing is you can feel so much pain in one part of your body that eventually you lose feelin’ there.” He drove the point of his knife into one of the wooden floor planks next to Christopher. “This just means I find another part of little Liam, and I start working on that.” He tipped his head a fraction lower to look into Christopher’s eyes. “Do you want to try this again?”

Christopher nodded quickly.

“Tell me about your mates at the Delancy Academy.”

Her name was on his lips when the rock came sailing through the window, shattering the glass. Tiny rolled towards the window before springing back up to his feet and peering through the shattered panes. The smooth stone rapped against the door, then bounced and rattled across the floor.

When it came to a stop by Christopher’s leg, he saw the writing across the tagger’s stone surface:

 

GET DOWN

 

Christopher shoved himself into Liam and both of them toppled to the floor. He heard Liam scream into his gag, but it was only for a moment. Tiny turned towards them just as the door exploded. The Illuminati sniper stumbled just as the remnants of the door were kicked open and their room lit up with white-blue light. For a moment all was confusing shadow, even after the spots stopped dancing in Christopher’s eyes. When he finally got his vision back, the sniper was falling as if he were a great tree being cut down. Tiny died with his knife in his hand and a foot-wide smouldering hole burned in chest.

Colin and Jeremy emerged from the hallway outside, followed by the plump, pleasant farmhouse lady, Agatha Summerson. Her weapon was an oscillator as long as she was tall and firmly strapped across her back. All the working in the fields really gave the old bird some strength.

She smiled at him once they untied him and Liam. “A simple thanks will suffice,” she said, embracing him. “Pretty easy to track you down to a gin house after what Colin told me.”

Christopher was not about to get upset or distracted by his mates talking out of turn.

Her smile melted on seeing the other two gingerly handling Liam. “Oh my poor boy, let’s look at that…”

Jeremy whispered to Colin. “Liam isn’t one for surgeons or doctors, miss,” Colin stated.

“Then Jeremy, fetch me some alcohol from the pub. Be quick…and creative…in getting it.” Jeremy disappeared from where he came as Summerson said to Colin, “Look around here for anything we can use as rags. I may have to stitch him up when we return to the farm.”

“Bugger me,” Christopher snapped. “I almost forgot…”

“Language, young man,” scolded Summerson.

“Pardon the colourful expression,” he returned, “but there’s a bleedin’ attack ship headed for the Delancy Academy.”

“Bloody hell!” Summerson said, then clapped a hand to her mouth.

Christopher chuckled. Maybe this old bird had a bit of spirit in her after all. “No truer word spoken, luv.”

“We need to call in Agent Thorne straight away,” she said just as Jeremy appeared with something that looked like gin. Christopher felt no loss whatsoever on seeing it spill on the floor as Summerson soaked a rag in the drink.

“Colin,” he asked, “you care to have the honours?”

“Right-o, chuckaboo!” he said cheerily, raising his ring in the air and then driving his fist into the floorboards. After about three strikes, the stone was crushed into nothing but smaller shards.

“Now we better leg it quick smart back to your farmhouse,” Christopher said as Summerson gently wrapped Liam’s ravaged arm in rags. “We can let Thorne hear about all this while you stitch him up.”

As they lifted Liam to his feet and girded themselves for what would be quite a wild ride back to the farmhouse, Christopher hoped they would be able to tag along with the Ministry reinforcements. It had been a long time since he’d seen fireworks, after all, and Agent Thorne and his Ministry lot certainly did know how to put on a show.