… St Mark’s Square in Venice bustled with activity. Locals and tourists criss-crossed the piazza in happy, animated groups as preparations continued for the Carnivale. Lively children skipped beside their parents below the Campanile. Joyful couples held hands and peered into the cloudless blue sky. From their tall granite pedestals beside the waterway of the lagoon, Saint Theodore and a prancing unicorn gazed benevolently back down on them across the Piazzetta. Whichever way you turned, there were people full of love and energy and enthusiasm.
Missy hated them all.
She navigated a path between the granite pillars, studiously avoiding the pedestrian waves of excitement that lapped around her. If she didn’t make eye contact, she could restrain her natural instincts, so long as they kept their necks out of breaking distance.
A human in a jaunty hat tested her patience with his eager tone as he foisted a printed flyer into her hand. There was a certain musicality about the Italian language that softened her reaction, so she accepted it instead of pushing him into the canal. The handbill was for an exhibition at the museum, with a photo of an item on display. Well, she was older than any of the exhibits, and much better preserved.
Tesori della laguna it read: Treasures of the lagoon. Missy considered dropping the handbill into the water behind her, and imagined it floating across the calm surface, then out into the 200-square-mile expanse of the lagoon itself. It would evade the gondolas and water taxis that ferried between the many Venetian islands, until it slipped past ocean-going liners and onward into the choppy waters of the Adriatic Sea.
Instead she crumpled it into her pocket, and took a brisk walk across the piazza. At least she could enjoy the crisp, clear air. Ahead of her, the Cathedral’s Byzantine façade was masked by scaffolding, erected to enable renovations. Beneath one row of metal poles and wooden planks, there was an angry kerfuffle in the crowd.
‘Gerald! My purse!’ An English tourist wailed at her husband that someone had raided her handbag.
‘Calm down, Felicity.’ Gerald had an iPhone in one hand and a Hasselblad camera in the other. You couldn’t tell whether he was more annoyed by the theft or that his attention had been wrenched away from photographing every square inch of the piazza.
Missy had already spotted the culprits – a tatty pair of children. The boy implored tourists to sign a petition, while the girl dipped into the victim’s bag or pocket under cover of her conspirator’s outstretched clipboard.
The boy now skulked in the gloom below the scaffolding, the clipboard clutched to his chest in feigned insouciance. The girl stood apart, and sucked on a nervous cigarette.
‘Smoking is such a filthy habit,’ declared Missy as she trotted up to them. ‘It’ll be the death of you. Unless furious Felicity –’ here, she raised her voice and angled her head towards the sobbing victim – ‘has Gerald beat you amateurs to death with his long and, let’s be honest, over-compensatory lens.’
Felicity heard her own name, but took a moment to make the connection. Gerald hesitated with his Hasselblad.
The boy with the clipboard reacted faster. ‘Antonia!’ he yelled at his friend, and they scarpered before the tourists could react.
As she fled, Antonia had dropped a fat purse – evidently, the item she’d stolen from Felicity. Missy picked it up and put it in her own pocket.
‘Where did they go? Gerald? Gerald!’ Felicity’s voice faded into the crowd as Missy walked towards the cathedral doors.
Fly-posted to a board on the scaffolding was an advert for the museum. Tesori della laguna, again – a collection of discoveries from lagoon excavation work beneath Venice. Like the handbill she’d stuffed into her pocket, the poster had a photo of an old candlestick, caked in mud and barnacles.
Missy squeaked a little laugh; if she wanted to see ancient history, she could travel there herself.
Well, she could if she managed to repair her TARDIS.
The calm darkness of the basilica’s interior embraced her as she entered through the huge bronze doors. Adjacent signs declared that access to the cathedral was restricted during the renovation. Missy’s heels rapped out an echoing announcement of her journey down the nave.
The huge gilded space was almost empty. As her eyes adjusted, Missy identified the two thieves at the far end of a row of chairs. They cowered, their heads down – asking for deliverance, or forgiveness, perhaps.
She strode past them until she reached the wood-panelled confessional further down the aisle. A soft glow suffused the area beyond it, a fluctuating rhythm of light that rippled across the dark space.
Missy turned to look at the grubby kids. ‘Your prayers have been answered. Gerald’s not the religious type. I’d wait here until he gets fed up. Maybe consider your sins.’
They scowled back at her.
‘I’m just popping in here.’ Missy tugged at the carved door of the confessional. ‘May be a while. I’ve been a very naughty girl.’
And with a kick of her heel, she stepped through the door into her TARDIS.
Its landing in the basilica had been abrupt, and certainly unexpected, when …
… she’d been escaping from a Gryphon combat unit.
That hadn’t been the intention. Her fiendishly clever plan to elude the Daleks had incorporated a teleport, a flight of stairs, three bald lies, and a classical ballet routine. The subsequent leap into the Time Vortex should have been simply dazzling, but her grand jeté had ended up as more of a pas de chat.
How was she to know the Gryphon timeship was going to be there? Honestly, it had come out of nowhere. She hadn’t seen a thing.
The TARDIS and the Gryphon ship shimmered and shuddered together in a ghastly temporal embrace. Well, that’s what you’d expect if you tried to occupy the same physical space simultaneously at every point throughout eternity.
An incoming transmission sparkled into life as a holographic Gryphon made the introductions. They weren’t polite. The creature had the body of a lioness, but with the wings of an eagle neatly folded across her back.
‘Release this Gryphon vessel at once!’
It amused Missy to adjust the hologram so that it moved under her control across the TARDIS. She manipulated the image until the creature had a vase balanced on her head. It was the ugly green urn that Missy hated but still displayed, because she’d stolen it on the day that Versailles opened, after Louis XIV had offended her with some now-forgotten slight.
‘Do you have a name? I can’t simply call you “Gryphon”, now can I?’
The creature made a gruff sound low in her throat.
‘I mean, it’s like saying “Time Lord” or “human” or “Sontaran” or “mongoose” when you’re talking to someone. And let me tell you, mongooses are dull company – always giggling away at their own private jokes.’
‘Silence! I am the captain of this Gryphon ship—’
‘Shall I call you Hermione?’ Missy smiled as the vase seemed to wobble angrily. ‘I’m more of a Slytherin girl myself. Always attracted to the bad boys. I can see a lot of Severus Snape in me.’
The Gryphon raised her paw to signal to someone out of shot. ‘Charge the laser cannon.’
Missy wagged her finger, alarmed at this turn of events. ‘Not such a smart move! We’re in the Time Vortex. We need to back out of this with great care, not use firepower in the forever.’
The Gryphon ignored her, too busy acknowledging some response from her left. ‘Very well. Fire at will.’
‘You don’t want to mess with me.’ Missy scuttled around the TARDIS, flicking switches and checking gauges. ‘I beat the Daleks.’
‘I have no knowledge of these Daleks.’
Missy boggled. ‘How can you not know about the Daleks? They’re the most …’ She considered the rising indicators across her controls. ‘Oh, never mind.’
The first shot shuddered the whole room. Missy gasped at the force of it. ‘I did warn you!’
The Gryphon captain gave a howl of surprise and rage. The ugly vase toppled off the hologram’s head and smashed on the floor.
The second strike severed the communications channel. The hologram Gryphon fizzed out of existence.
The final blast scalded a hot trail of destruction that jounced and ricocheted down the timelines until it wrenched the two vessels out of their clumsy temporal grip.
Missy clasped her controls helplessly. They sizzled and sparked. Greasy smoke curled into the air and began to fill the room.
The TARDIS wheeled and whirled, and gouged a chaotic path out of the Vortex to crash-land in the basilica of St Mark’s, Venice, where …
… Missy surveyed the damaged equipment across her control panels. The choking smoke had long dissipated, so it was safe to return. A slight fug still permeated the room, and there was an acrid aftertaste at the back of her throat.
She hitched up her skirt so she could crouch down below the control panels – inspecting, tweaking, disconnecting. A little heap of charred components piled up on the floor beside her. This could take some time …
All the lights went out.
Missy groaned. She knew what had caused that. The primary power had leached out into the Vortex. The TARDIS couldn’t dematerialise now – the pilot light had gone out, leaving no way to ignite the main energy source.
She scooped up the charred components from beside her, made a careful pile of them in her hat, and crawled on all fours through the dark to the exit.
Outside, the air was clearer, with the aromatic background note of incense. Light glimmered from the other side of the confessional box.
Missy straightened, and carried her hat full of components through to a side chapel. She propped her parasol by the altar, plonked the hat on its linen cloth, and began to examine the damaged items. A statue of Saint Michael peered down from beside her. The afternoon light that filtered from the stained-glass windows seemed to make his wings flutter in faint disapproval.
She studied her handiwork with satisfaction. Her repair of the dematerialisation circuit was fiddly, but ultimately successful. It stood on the altar, a delicate tetrahedron of complex equipment small enough to fit in her palm. Essential for operating the TARDIS. Much good that would do if the power wasn’t restored.
‘Excuse me, can I help you?’
A cross old woman squinted up from the altar rail. The nun’s hands were fluttering in disapproval, too. Her black habit reached the floor. Missy was reminded of an agitated Dalek.
‘Maintenance work.’ Missy ushered her away, to distract from the smudges on the linen altar cloth. ‘I’ll be done soon.’
The nun shied from her touch. ‘I will check with the procurator.’
Missy watched her shuffle off. ‘Bless you!’
A clatter nearby made her whirl round. The two young thieves had sneaked up to the altar, and were rummaging through her equipment with a hungry look. The boy held his clipboard in one hand, and in the other was the dematerialisation circuit.
The girl noticed that she’d spotted them, and shouted her friend’s name. The boy jumped one way, and the girl skirted in an arc around Missy in the opposite direction.
Missy snarled, and lunged for the boy, but he slipped past her and around the corner. She snatched up her parasol and ran after him, her heels tapping an angry staccato on the cathedral floor.
He’d got as far as the confessional when the nun stepped into the aisle, and the boy staggered to a halt. The old woman clucked furiously, and hobbled away.
Missy had caught up now, and pointed her parasol’s ferrule at the quivering boy. His back pressed against the confessional, and he edged sideways in search of an escape route.
‘I said, consider your sins,’ she admonished him, ‘not commit more. Your friend called you Mario. Is your papà a plumber?’
A shake of the head. ‘No papà. Mario like Mario Balotelli.’
Missy stared blankly.
‘The footballer. People say I look like him.’ Mario clutched his clipboard like a protective shield. ‘Don’t hurt me.’
Missy gave a hoot of laughter. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to kill you, either, though that’s usually much more fun.’
The ragged boy flinched, and his eyes widened. He hadn’t even considered this possibility.
Missy clucked her tongue. ‘I said that out loud, didn’t I? Sor-reeee.’
She lowered the parasol and put it in the crook of her arm. Couldn’t use it, in case she damaged the dematerialisation circuit.
Mario saw his chance. He pushed himself away from the confessional, and jumped around the corner, where that brightness suffused the area.
Missy leapt sideways to follow him. But the brightness had flared more brilliantly now, and made Mario into a stark silhouette. He flailed in desperation, and was abruptly jerked backwards into the light with a shriek and a series of slowly diminishing curses.
Ah, the musicality of the Italian language.
Missy was surprised to hear a hum from the confessional. The TARDIS had obtained a power boost from a Vortex void. How had she not noticed that before?
She seized a nearby candlestick and tossed it into the abyss. It was swallowed up at once. The light flared and the TARDIS hummed again.
A temporal rift!
Missy cast round for other items to jettison into the void. Hymnals, cushions, several chairs. Each vanished and generated a short pulse of energy. If it was to recharge the TARDIS, she’d need to push an enormous amount of stuff into it.
The old nun had seen what was happening, and shambled back to remonstrate.
Missy had no time to argue. She seized the front of the nun’s habit and shoved hard. The old woman squeaked a little cry of dismay and tumbled into the void.
There was a horrified gasp from behind Missy. Antonia was staring in appalled disbelief. Missy snapped a hand out and seized the girl’s wrist.
Antonia gasped. ‘Please, signora!’
‘Signorina, if you don’t mind.’
Missy’s mind was awhirl. How could she recover the dematerialisation circuit? ‘That brat took it with him through the void, and who knows if that’s survivable. When the TARDIS crash-landed out of the Time Vortex, it weakened the fabric of reality close to it. A glitch in time. A temporal portal …’
Antonia stared at her.
‘Talking out loud again, wasn’t I? Interior monologue. Must try to avoid that.’
A flutter of whispers echoed from the middle distance. Down in the apse, in front of the main altar, a huddle of nuns pointed in her direction. Too many to push into the Vortex void, that was for sure.
Missy tightened her grip on Antonia’s wrist. ‘I can’t have you blabbing about temporal portals now, can I dear?’
‘Don’t hurt me! I’m just a little child.’
‘In my experience,’ said Missy, ‘that makes it easier to hide the body.’
She yanked open the confessional, propelled Antonia into the gap, and slammed the door shut.
The nuns waddled down the aisle. At this rate, they’d be right next to her within a week and a half. Missy glanced at the TARDIS. She could leave, but perhaps the nuns would have an urge to confess something.
Missy hunted through her pockets, pulled out the museum handbill, and scribbled GUASTO on the back for an out-of-order sign. She was attaching it to the confessional when she noticed the crumpled image on the front.
She couldn’t believe it.
Missy launched into a run. Her heels clacked all the way down the aisle, through the huge entrance doors, and into the piazza.
Outside, a street cleaner was attempting to remove the fly-poster from the scaffolding. She batted him away with her parasol, to get a better look.
The Tesori della laguna poster had changed too. The object in the photo was still caked in mud and barnacles. But it wasn’t a candlestick any more.
It was her dematerialisation circuit.
*
… Missy was looking at the real thing with a growing sense of despair. All that fiddly work to repair it, and now here it was encased in centuries of grime, behind glass, presented for gawking mediocrities in a museum exhibit of grimy bric-a-brac. Fat chance of that ever working again.
It had survived its journey into the past – and perhaps so had Mario. But even assuming she tracked it down and retrieved it, that was pointless unless she could power up the TARDIS pilot system.
A nearby tour guide was particularly keen to get himself murdered. The young man interrupted her train of thought with a tiresome monologue about where all the treasures on display had come from. Her interest perked up when he mentioned the dematerialisation circuit.
‘… unusual decorative jewellery, possibly of North European origin—’
‘A bit further than that,’ she snorted.
‘Signora?’ His badge said he was Gabriele.
‘Signorina,’ she replied. ‘Are you an expert on this jewellery?’
‘I am but a humble guide.’ Gabriele furrowed his pretty brow. ‘You should ask the curator here. A dottorato di ricerca, who knows far more than me.’ He gestured around the room. ‘All these treasures were unearthed during tests and excavations being done beneath Venice.’
‘What’s the use?’ said Missy. ‘There’ll be no saving Venice after the ice caps melt in … oooh, not long from now as the crow flies.’
Gabriele looked puzzled. ‘We have a barrier now. Thanks to Ugo Esposito, the Venice Tidal Barrier protects our whole lagoon. Otherwise, at times like this, with the convergence of the aqua alta and a strong sirocco wind, the rising water would slowly drown Venice.’
Missy smiled. ‘What if the water didn’t rise slowly?’
Gabriele’s loveable frown deepened. ‘But it is rising.’
‘I didn’t say it isn’t rising,’ said Missy. ‘I said, what if it didn’t rise slowly?’
… she was on the water.
Missy had set out to where the lagoon met the Adriatic in a stolen speedboat, trilling operatically and thrilling at her long hair’s battle with the wind and spray.
She visited each section of the barrier, left her calling cards, and then moved on to the next. It was obvious that she could feed the Vortex void next to the TARDIS with every last chair in the cathedral, or all the nuns she could lay her hands on, and it would never be sufficient to reboot her ship.
But a relentless rush of water coursing unchecked through the church and into the rift would certainly float her boat. The final thing that stood in her way, literally, was the Tidal Barrier. Remove that, and the water would surge in an unstoppable torrent from the Adriatic right across the entire lagoon.
Venice would be submerged, of course. But that wasn’t a problem. There’s a reason that TARDISes are watertight.
Missy sat primly on a seat in Ugo Esposito’s office, and eyed him up. The chief engineer thought she’d come to inspect his accounts.
‘Be a pet,’ she said, ‘fetch me an espresso. One part hot water to seven parts gravel. I’ve been gadding about all day, and I need a bit of a kicker.’
While Esposito was away, she placed her final device beneath the barrier’s control suite, right behind his desk. Like the others, it was a cunning contrivance of her own design that used Time Lord tech – though she’d stopped using sentient validium connections, after too many of her contraptions criticised her wiring.
‘I like that.’ She indicated the framed Tesori della laguna poster on Esposito’s wall as he returned with her drink. It was the photo of her encrusted dimensional stabiliser. ‘D’you know what it is?’
‘No idea,’ he said. ‘We recovered it encased in fourteenth-century sediment when we excavated Venice. The curator at the museum would know. Something of an expert, I’m told.’ He paused. ‘Would you like a water with your espresso?’
‘No.’ Missy took the cup from him and swigged it in one gulp. ‘I think I’ll be seeing quite enough water, thanks all the same.’
… the museum was about to close, but Missy was still able to squeeze in an appointment.
The curator’s office was an odd jumble of papers and artefacts. Bulging ring binders jostled with sculptures and goblets. A plague doctor’s medico della peste mask hung from a peg. A triptych painting showed a view of Venice. Old and new books mingled on the shelves.
Missy closed the door. ‘You took your time.’
‘I’m a busy woman,’ said the curator. ‘Didn’t my assistant tell you?’
Missy thought about the charred heap of ashes she’d kicked under the desk in the outer office. ‘He wasn’t chatty.’
‘So, what d’you find so fascinating about …’ The curator checked her paperwork. ‘… stolen goods in fourteenth-century Venice?’
‘I’m writing a short story.’ Missy affected a knowing look. ‘It has a backdrop of illegal trade. I need to know where thieves did their deals,’ she said. To track down my stolen goods, she didn’t add.
‘There are a lot of things to consider there,’ said the curator. ‘A buoyant economy sees Venice awash with money. That coincides with a surge in demand and the market is flooded with stolen items flowing through the city.’
Missy scowled. ‘Can you help?’
The curator handed her a printout. ‘Old school.’
Missy unfolded the paper. It showed a historical chart of Venice, with streets emphasised in highlighter pen. ‘It certainly is. GPS coordinates would have been fine.’
‘No, the thieves met in an old school. Or the Venetian equivalent of a school in that period, according to museum records. I’ve indicated the building for you on that map.’
The curator stood, as though to indicate their own meeting was now concluded, studying Missy as she might one of her exhibits. ‘Good luck, signorina. I do enjoy this kind of research myself. It’s a real trip into the past.’
Missy’s hand was already on the door handle. ‘You have no idea.’
The smell was what Missy noticed first as she re-entered the cathedral. Behind the musky aroma of church incense there was now a stink of decay.
The place was busier. Ragged vagrants shambled around the dark building. Missy avoided them as she returned to the confessional. Beside it, the Vortex void was larger. Its soft light swirled and coalesced and split again into luminous soft colours.
As soon as she opened the confessional door and stepped into the TARDIS, Missy detected another distinctive odour.
‘Have you been smoking in here?’
Antonia shuffled across the darkened TARDIS, her frightened face pale in the half-light that spilled in from behind Missy. ‘I thought you were never coming back. Please let me out.’
‘All right.’ Missy beckoned her through the confessional door and out into the aisle of the basilica.
Antonia’s nose wrinkled at the smell. Missy swiftly hooked her around the elbow with the curved handle of her furled parasol, before pushing her around the corner of the confessional and into the Vortex void.
The girl uttered a dismayed little scream, and vanished into the whorl of soft colours.
Missy studied the nails on her free hand. Counted to ten. Then tugged on the parasol.
Antonia burst back into the aisle, and bumped into Missy. She hugged her, until she felt Missy tense up.
‘Seems to be safe.’ Missy detached herself from the girl.
Antonia was blinking with disbelief. ‘I saw light and water and people! Is that where Mario is? We have to find him!’
The girl was interrupted as a grubby figure stepped out of the void behind her. His clothes were torn scraps, and beneath a filthy face his neck bulged with ugly blisters. Well, that explained what was wrong with all these other people in the cathedral: the Black Death. Fourteenth-century bubonic plague.
Missy stepped smartly aside as he passed. ‘Two-way traffic! Come on, dear. Let’s find your boyfriend.’
… welcomed them with a bump. The other side of the void wasn’t in the cathedral. Instead, it swirled and roiled in an alleyway that ran alongside a small canal.
Scattered candles and a wooden chair floated near the surface of the water. And was that a discarded wimple?
If anything, the stench from the canal was worse than in the cathedral. Despite the clear blue skies, Missy heard approaching thunder.
She unfolded her printout, and realised she hadn’t got a clue where she was. ‘No street signs in fourteenth-century Venice,’ she told Antonia.
They cut across a small bridge into a main thoroughfare. A stream of people – men, women, beggars, merchants, nobles – ran in a panic towards them, stumbling, knocking each other over. Some went down and didn’t get up again.
A spear of laser light seared down the thoroughfare, and Missy realised it wasn’t thunder she’d heard. The light cut down the slower Venetians and showered the street with debris from buildings.
Two grotesque, leonine figures trotted along the opposite bank, and stopped to stare straight across at them.
‘Lions.’ Antonia’s incredulous voice was barely a whisper. ‘Lions with lightning.’
‘Gryphon warriors,’ snapped Missy. ‘Big game hunt. And I’m the prey.’
Antonia clutched Missy’s arm. ‘They can’t reach us from there.’
One of the Gryphons shook its long mane, flexed its shoulders, opened its wings, and took off towards them over the canal.
Missy shoved Antonia aside. ‘Run!’ she hissed. With any luck, the Gryphon would be drawn to the fleeing girl first, and she could avoid any personal unpleasantness. What did she have at hand to defend herself? Nothing that would stop this flapping feline. Not like that time she’d used her brooch to escape from a lecherous lungfish on Pomfret IV, where she’d deflated both his ego and his swim bladder.
Missy shrank back into the cover of a doorway. The Gryphon had shown no interest in her. A device in its paw scanned for a time signature.
With a rustle of soft wings, a female Gryphon landed beside him.
‘Hermione!’ breathed Missy.
‘The time signature is near,’ the warrior reported.
The Gryphon captain gave a curt nod. ‘Then we shall soon have the technology to repair our timeship.’
Around the corner from Missy, Antonia unsuccessfully attempted to stifle loud sobs of fear. Too late to strangle her into silence, and the Gryphons were getting nearer …
In the distance, Missy spotted a cohort of Venetian soldiers making stealthy progress in the shadow of buildings alongside the canal. Missy raised her parasol, and sent a sonic pulse the length of the street that made the nearest soldier yelp in alarm and pain.
The Gryphons wheeled around at the noise, and rose into the air for a better look. With their position revealed, the soldiers yelled and charged. The Gryphons responded, raining down a withering series of killing shots.
Missy beat a swift retreat in the opposite direction, and bumped into Antonia at the corner.
The girl dried her tears. ‘Will those soldiers be OK?’
‘Unlikely. They brought swords to a laser fight.’
‘We must find Mario, before he gets hurt, too.’
Missy unfolded her printout. ‘If we can work out where we are …’
Antonia uttered a cry of dismay. ‘Never mind your stupid map. We should just ask people!’
Missy’s glare was as withering as a Gryphon attack. ‘Excuse me, have you seen a boy who’ll look like a famous footballer 700 years from now?’
‘Oh, come on, signorina!’ In any other circumstances, Antonia’s contemptuous look would have got her killed. ‘This is fourteenth-century Venice. He’s black. He’s wearing Reeboks and a Nice football shirt.’
They steered clear of the sporadic fighting and, between them, asked a succession of well-dressed merchants, ragged beggars, and armed soldiers if they’d seen an unusual-looking child. Missy’s frustration built into a cold fury at the slow progress of having to ask idiot human strangers for help.
At last, as the freezing night closed in, a priest helped them narrow their search to a battered construction in the west of the city. An old school building. Finally, the curator’s stupid map made sense.
‘I’ll check inside. Shout if any of those creatures appear.’
Missy strode down the street and in through a dilapidated doorway. It was a fleapit off a tired, forgotten square. She pulled on her gloves and negotiated broken wooden stairs that led up to an uncurtained room of exposed boards with a cramped row of single beds.
Mario was sprawled on one of the bare frames. His dead eyes stared at the ceiling, and his body was a mass of sores. On the floor beside him sat a lamp that contained an unlit, half-burnt candle.
Next to that, a sheet of paper on his battered clipboard was annotated in biro. A futile list of names of those who might be interested in his stolen goods. Before he’d got to any of them, the plague had got to him.
And standing on that scribbled sheet was the dematerialisation circuit.
As she descended the rickety stairs, Missy nearly collided with a dark-robed figure in a beaked mask. The plague doctor paused, and the mask’s nose pointed at her as if in accusation.
‘You’re a bit late.’ She scribbled a brief note on the clipboard as the doctor pushed past. Missy completed a more cautious descent of the staircase. ‘Unless you’re peddling miracle cures …’
At the end of the street, Antonia was waiting. Missy saw the girl take a drag on a sneaky cigarette, drawing unwelcome attention from passers-by. She snatched it from the girl’s lips, took a hungry drag herself, then spat out smoke and threw the thing in the filthy gutter.
Missy tugged her jacket straight. She could feel the reassuring shape of the dematerialisation circuit in the inner pocket. ‘Come on. It’s getting dark.’ She lifted Mario’s lamp, and lit the scrap of candle with Antonia’s cigarette lighter.
‘Didn’t you find him?’
‘He’s gone.’ Missy flourished the clipboard. ‘But look! He left a wee note. Vado all’altro mondo.’
‘The other world,’ repeated Antonia. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight. ‘He must have gone back home through that … temporal portal!’
‘And so must we.’ Missy looked at the paper. ‘Such neat handwriting.’
‘He’s the educated one, out of the two of us.’
Missy dropped the clipboard to the ground. ‘You’re telling me.’ She set off down the dark street at a brisk pace. ‘Hurry up, now. Long journey ahead. Hundreds of years, in fact.’
… they stepped out of the Vortex void. It had expanded to dominate the confessional, and cast its eerie colours across the whole basilica.
Missy dropped Mario’s extinguished lamp by the TARDIS door, and trod a wary path to the opposite aisle. In the dappled light, the statue of Saint Michael seemed to wave his wings in an unfelt breeze. Slumped in chairs or sprawled in the nave, accidental escapees from fourteenth-century Venice had found their final rest seven centuries after their own time.
Venetian escapees weren’t the only new arrivals. Because it wasn’t the statue of Saint Michael that loomed into view from the side chapel. A Gryphon warrior had traversed the void ahead of them.
The warrior surged forward, his wings whipping up a fierce squall of air as he swooped across at them. He batted Antonia to one side, and spun to face Missy, blocking her access to her TARDIS. He pulled back his lips to reveal ferocious teeth, and his shattering roar reverberated around the whole basilica.
The Gryphon raised one massive paw, and for a moment Missy thought he would strike her down where she stood. But instead, he had lifted a comms device to his savage mouth. ‘She’s here, Captain.’
‘I want her alive. But not necessarily unharmed.’ Hermione’s electronic voice crackled in the still air. ‘I’m on my way.’
Muscles flexed under the warrior’s fur as he bore down on Missy.
She brandished her parasol. ‘What are you staring at, Aslan?’
He swatted it from her, and it rattled off into the distance.
Missy smiled her fiercest smile. ‘C’mon. You’re a bit of a pussycat, aren’t you? Well, mostly pussycat, with a bit of budgie mixed in.’
The warrior reared back as a lit candle struck his head from behind, and the hair of his mane crinkled and burned. He spun around in a furious attempt to extinguish it.
Missy felt herself pushed forward. Antonia was steering them down the aisle to the exit in a frantic flight through the darkness, ‘Come on!’ She shoved the parasol back into Missy’s hand, grabbed another offertory candle, and flung it at the warrior. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
The recovering Gryphon pounded through the cathedral. He caught up with them at the exit, intimidatingly large even as he folded his wings to pursue them outside.
Missy and Antonia heaved at the huge, ornate cathedral doors, and managed to close them on the warrior. Feathers scattered as one delicate wing crunched and crumpled between the carved doors. The Gryphon bellowed a shattering roar of pain and anger, and fell back inside.
Missy hurried into the main square. ‘That’s why I never let my daughter have pets. Once they outgrow the house, you just have to put them down.’
Antonia wasn’t listening. She stared in horror across the piazza.
Venice was in flames. Broken remnants of the Carnivale had scattered over the devastated space, bright clothes and masks trampled into damp ground and stained with blood. Ragged corpses slumped against the cracked columns of the Biblioteca. The bricks of the Campanile were scorched.
‘Those lions aren’t the only things that came through the rift,’ gasped Antonia.
‘People and plague.’ Missy paused for breath. Running was so not her style. ‘Time has moved on ahead of us here. And the big cats have been on safari.’
Around the corner she surveyed the Piazzetta. At the far end, the shattered combs of sunken gondolas jutted from the soiled lagoon. From his granite column, Saint Theodore looked down on the devastation. And above the other column, swooping over the unicorn statue and towards them out of the smoky sky, came Hermione.
Missy turned on her heel, and fled back into the square, desperate for cover. She flinched at the sudden, brutal chatter of automatic weapons – then laughed in delight when she saw a brace of Italian troops. They emerged from the cover of the Biblioteca to fire at Hermione, who banked left to retaliate.
Missy and Antonia reached the piazza again. The cathedral doorway was now blocked by the Gryphon warrior, nursing his broken wing and an enormous grudge.
‘No way back in.’ Missy stamped her foot.
Antonia tugged her sleeve. ‘Let’s try something else.’ She led them around the side of the cathedral, taking careful steps to avoid the scattered debris – abandoned bags, a staring corpse, the smashed remnants of a Hasselblad. Torn flaps of a museum fly-poster on the scaffolding featured a corroded candlestick.
Antonia grasped the rungs of a propped ladder. ‘Up we go.’
‘Up the scaffolding, you mean?’ Missy bridled. ‘Do I look like I’m dressed for mountaineering?’
‘Do I look like I care?’ Antonia held out her hand, and together they climbed the scaffolding.
The platform at the top ran alongside a large stained-glass window. Supplicant women knelt piously, and gazed up in their glazed adoration of an indulgent deity with a halo. Missy clucked her tongue.
Antonia ran her hands along the frame. ‘It doesn’t open.’
Missy wielded her parasol, and the lower window shattered in a rainbow spray of broken glass. ‘It does now.’
Fragments tinkled onto the floor far below. It was a vertiginous drop into the dark. Missy stood on the parapet, popped open her parasol, and hopped through the gap.
‘Wait for me!’ squeaked Antonia, and jumped after her.
Missy tensed involuntarily as Antonia clung on. The parasol descent was somewhat faster than she’d have liked, and they landed on the basilica floor with quite a jolt.
‘It’s designed for one person.’ Missy shrugged off her embrace.
Antonia’s eyes narrowed in the gloom. ‘You didn’t think to use that to climb up the scaffolding?’
‘Only does down, dear.’ Missy snapped the parasol shut. ‘It’s a work in progress.’
A guttural growl echoed through the quietened cathedral. Far down the aisle, the Gryphon warrior struggled painfully in their direction. He loosed off a wild laser shot. The pulpit beside them exploded into flames, and its ornamentation melted into a pool of brass on the floor.
They scuttled across to the confessional, wrenched open the door, and threw themselves into the darkened TARDIS.
‘Safe,’ breathed Antonia.
‘Trapped.’ Missy attempted to drop her parasol into the umbrella stand, but a clattering noise told her she’d missed. ‘Hey, this is no time for a cigarette!’ Antonia had sparked up her lighter. ‘Oh my?God, is this what human parenthood is like?’
Antonia’s exasperated sigh almost blew out her lighter flame. She lit the old lamp she’d retrieved from outside. ‘Human. You said that earlier, too. Like …’
‘Like I’m not? Oh, come on! Flying lions. Holes in time. Big space in a little box. Impossibly good-looking woman in couture clothing. Do keep up.’
Antonia considered this. ‘At least it’s brighter in this thing than when you locked me up.’
‘Well, all those smellies coming through the tear generate Vortex energy, and the TARDIS just soaks that up. Ooh … Maybe not trapped, after all.’ Missy looked at the control gauges. ‘Could you flick that switch, dear?’
Antonia reached across the panel and did so – then shrieked as a lightning spark of blue-white energy illuminated the whole room and made her leap a foot into the air.
‘Yes,’ noted Missy. ‘It does seem like power has got through. That should be enough.’
Antonia sucked her burned finger. ‘Enough for what?’
‘Remote activator. Wireless.’ Missy waggled a control box in the air. ‘It’s all the rage.’
She pressed the button.
The transmat packs that Missy had placed earlier all activated simultaneously. In the blink of an eye, whole sections of Ugo Esposito’s Tidal Barrier flipped out of existence and reappeared at random a mile and a half away.
The waiting water of the Adriatic saw its opportunity, and surged through the abrupt breaches in the barrier in a catastrophic failure of the defence system.
Klaxons hooted a futile warning in the chief engineer’s control suite. The facility quivered and rattled around Esposito as the water approached. His framed museum poster, showing an encrusted candlestick, dropped off the wall. That was the last thing Esposito saw before Missy’s bomb went off under his desk.
The aqua alta gushed unchecked in a tsunami that raced across the lagoon. Speed boats were thrown into the air like scraps. A cruise ship took a violent lurch to one side, throwing deckchairs and occupants overboard. Vaporetti vanished as if vaporised.
The raging sea reached Venice. It streamed across St Mark’s Square, and engulfed everything in its way – plague victims, soldiers, Gryphon warriors, street furniture from restaurants, the detritus of the Carnivale. The scaffolding around the cathedral collapsed into a cacophonous chiming heap of tangled metal.
The tide carried its grim cargo through the main entrance and across the basilica. Pews and prayer books, candles and corpses washed down the nave towards the confessionals.
The glowing maw of the Vortex void expanded to swallow it all, glowing brighter and fiercer.
The TARDIS lights flickered on. Missy watched Antonia’s reaction as the shadows melted away to provide her first proper look at the cavernous interior. The girl blinked into the light that spilled down from the arched roof’s recesses, higher even than the basilica outside. Was that astonishment or fear in her eyes?
‘This place … What’s happening?’
‘Hush, dear, mamma is working.’ Missy retrieved a small mechanical item from her pocket and blew fluff from it. ‘Dimensional stabiliser. Let’s pop that into place. You know, I really should get a spare.’
Antonia wasn’t really listening. She stared open-mouthed at a succession of images displayed on the screen. Venice was awash. Buildings and vessels and people alike were being consumed by a merciless torrent of filthy ocean water. Now, that was fear in her eyes.
Missy focused on the controls. ‘I have enough power to enter the Vortex. But the Gryphons can follow through that rift as easily as I can, and that leads them straight to me.’
‘What about Venice? Don’t you care that …’
‘I’ve burned through whole star systems faster than you can light a cigarette!’ spat Missy. ‘Now, the photo on that poster changed back to a candlestick … Proof that changes through the void can correct. So I’m going back into the Vortex so I can time-ram my TARDIS. Bump it out of the way, and prevent its original collision with the Gryphon ship. Now, hold on tight. This is dangerous.’ She seized the console. ‘Dangerous is English for pericoloso.’
The display screen showed vessels converging in the swirling chaos of the Time Vortex … the TARDIS … the Gryphon timeship … and the TARDIS again …
The discordant shriek of the engines filled the air around them. Missy committed the coordinates, and hung on for dear life.
*
A beady eye glittered disapprovingly from the other side of the TARDIS. But it was only the stuffed raven she’d once crudely stapled to the arm of a Queen Anne chair.
Missy got up from the floor and straightened her hat. The control gauges confirmed that the time-ram had worked.
‘No original collision with the Gryphon timeship means the TARDIS never crash-landed. No crash-landing, no Vortex void. And evanesco for Hermione!’
Antonia hauled herself onto the chair, her eyes red from weeping. ‘Venice is destroyed. It’s all gone.’
‘It never happened. Everything’s back in its right time zone.’
Antonia calmed down a little. ‘Mario! His note said he was coming home. Let’s find him!’
Missy frowned. ‘Don’t you feel some things are best left in the past? Old boyfriends. The Black Death. Mr Blobby?’
‘Where is he?’
‘Give him a him a couple of weeks, and look him up on Facebook.’
Antonia jumped to her feet in anger, and gestured around her. ‘You must be able to find him, with all … this. I want to see him!’
Missy tutted sympathetically, her eyes glittering. ‘I can arrange that, my pet.’
… was not what Antonia had expected to see when the signorina ushered her out. She stepped through the doors, and from behind a tapestry too gaudy for the room in which she now found herself.
A commotion outside drew her to the window. She wiped grime from the cracked pane with her sleeve, and peered into the street.
At the far end, she was astonished to see … herself in conversation with the signorina. But surely the signorina was in that large, bright room behind the tapestry?
Antonia started back across to it, but stumbled over a dilapidated bedframe that protruded from the darkened corner. In the half-light, she could make out a sprawled figure on the bed. Hot bile rose in her throat, and she stumbled away from the broken body.
Mario. Vado all’altro mondo.
A commotion across the room startled her. She watched in bewilderment as the tapestry rippled and faded away, revealing a bare wall.
She rushed to the window. The dark street was empty.
Antonia collapsed to the filthy floorboards and burst into bitter, hopeless tears.
… St Mark’s Square in Venice bustled with activity. Locals and tourists criss-crossed the piazza in happy, animated groups as preparations continued for the Carnivale.
Time had reset itself. The Gryphon timeship never crashed in fourteenth-century Venice. The catastrophic twenty-first-century flood never happened. None of the tourists or waiters or police who scuttled about the city would remember it, Missy realised; they’d not been in contact with active TARDIS technology the way she had. Her and that girl, whatever she’d been called.
Saint Theodore looked down at Missy from his granite column. On the adjacent pillar, the stone statue of a winged lion stared at the horizon.
The TARDIS looked like a bookcase when it landed in the museum library.
Missy spent a while reading through historical accounts, to confirm that there was no record of Gryphons in Venice’s past. Just an echo of them in the image of a winged lion. She was safe from the wretched things now.
She left the dusty volumes and manuscripts on the library desk, and went back to the TARDIS. A scrawny figure was studying the contents of the bookcase. Missy was startled to see that it was that girl again … Antonia, that was her name.
‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again, dear.’
Antonia glared. ‘If it wasn’t for her, no one would ever have seen me again. And Mario …’ Further words choked her. She stuffed a note into Missy’s hand and stalked away.
The note was from the museum curator. Missy skimmed it: two short paragraphs of neat handwriting chastised Missy for her lack of caution, and told her that she would need to try much harder.
Outrageous nerve, thought Missy. Who did the little insect think she was?
Filled with fresh indignation, Missy found her way to the curator’s office. She breezed through the outer room, ignored the assistant, and burst through the door without knocking.
The office was empty. No books, no binders, no curios. A single carnival outfit hung on the hat stand: a plague doctor’s beaked costume.
In the outer office, the assistant glanced up from his desk. The rollback of reality had restored him to life, but Missy was perfectly prepared to make him a powdery pile of cinders again if necessary. ‘All right. Where is she, your boss?’
‘I really couldn’t say,’ he smiled. ‘As you can see, she has gone.’
It was clear he had no more information, and could only repeat to Missy: ‘La dottoressa non funziona più qui … The doctor doesn’t work here any more.’