r Fox’s room was completely bare. Operatives of the BBB had no knick-knacks or family photos with which to decorate their rooms. There was only the work. After a shower, Mr Fox had laid curled up in a ball for more than two hours. He had not slept. Of all the memories he had to have kept from “before”, why this one? Why one that filled him with so much fear?
His laptop was dinging and had been for more than ten minutes. He sat up, shook his head and pressed the green button to “accept”.
“Fox?!”
The man in the window of his screen was a ruddy-cheeked man, with a bulbous nose, huge greying eyebrows and hair that was as wild as it was thick. In the time that Mr Fox had known Mr Bear, he had never seen him in any state other than unrelenting anger. It was as if he was quite incapable of any other emotion.
“Bear, I’m sorry, I was in the shower. You’ve read my report?”
“Of course I’ve read your blasted report – that’s why I want to talk to you! A dragon, for pity’s sake?! And f-f—”
“Fairies, sir?”
“Yes, blasted fairies!”
“Well, it is a lead, sir. If Benissimo can get his hands on this stone, we may yet have a way of stopping this thing.”
Mr Bear calmed. “You’ve done well, Fox. Keep at it and report everything you see. If you miss anything, Mr Spider will, I’m sure, fill in the gaps.”
Mr Fox did not like being reminded of the ever-watchful Mr Spider, but he let it go. There were more important matters to discuss.
“Bear?”
“What?”
“This stone, sir … if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we finish things the old-fashioned way.”
Mr Fox said nothing.
“Do you have a problem, Fox?”
“No, sir. It’s just … so extreme.”
“There are always casualties, Fox, always.”
Mr Fox looked away from the screen and began to hum, very softly.
***
Ned, Lucy and George sat in the corridor outside the briefing room on a grey plastic bench.
The corridor was like all the corridors in the BBB’s base. Grey for the most part, immaculately clean to the point of being sterile and with the kind of peaceful lighting and orderly layout you might expect from a futuristic base hidden hundreds of feet underground. Doors here opened and closed with airtight silence, and the walls were thick and well insulated – but not, it seemed, quite thick enough to completely mask out sound. There was little in the world more formidable than an angered Armstrong parent, except perhaps for two. Olivia’s furious outburst when they had discovered that Benissimo was working with the BBB now felt like a mere warm-up.
“Oww! That hurts! Terrence, can you please ask your wife to calm down?”
“Calm down?! I’ll show you calm, you snake!” roared Ned’s dad.
Crash!
Something on the other side of the wall broke.
“Do you think we should do something?” laughed Lucy.
“Honestly, dear girl, I should think if I go in there now it’ll be like throwing petrol on a lit match,” said George.
Crunch!
“That sounded like filing cabinets,” grinned back Lucy.
Smash!
“Glass; that was definitely glass.”
Ned felt dreadful. He was still reeling after what Benissimo had told him. The poor man quite literally carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lucy and George and the others knew of his curse, of course, but they had no idea of the extent of it; that it came from the Darkening King himself, the very creature they were all so desperate to defeat.
“Terry, we’ve been friends a long time … If you’d just let me explain!” pleaded Benissimo.
“Wow, he sounds genuinely frightened!” said the ape. “Benissimo, fearless leader of the Circus of Marvels, ageless, unkillable and—”
“Olivia Armstrong, I’d like to remind you that besides being a deft hand with a blade, you are also—”
“You kidnapped MY SON!”
“He came of his own accord!”
CRUNCH!
The briefing room went eerily quiet. Suddenly panicked that his parents might actually have gone too far, Ned stood up and went for the door handle.
“Don’t worry – they’re not actually going to kill him, Ned,” said a smiling Lucy. “They know they can’t anyway, and he’s not really frightened. I think they’re just going through the motions because they sort of should.”
“Are you sure?” asked George, who was still loving every minute of it.
“I’m a Farseer, remember? If it was really going to end in tears, I’d know by now.”
Ned sat back down again and looked at his friends. “It’s good to see you both. It’s been rough out there these past few months.”
“I know, it’s been rough on all of us. It’s like the rules have changed and no one knows what the new rules are,” said Lucy.
“I think, and not for the first time, that our illustrious leader is making them up as he goes.”
“At least someone’s trying, George,” snapped Ned.
“I’m only teasing, old bean. I love Bene as much as any of us.”
Lucy sighed, all the good humour gone from her voice for a moment. “I know he’s doing his best, but he’s so alone, in every possible way. He’s lost Kitty, Madame Oublier and half the troupe – and he’s too afraid of failing to let anyone else near.”
If only they knew, thought Ned, and as much as he felt a true friend would tell them Benissimo’s secret, he also knew that if he really cared for the man, he couldn’t and wouldn’t.
“At least he’s got us,” was all he managed.
“LIAR!” shouted Ned’s dad through the wall.
“I think he’s going to need a bit more than ‘us’,” smirked George. “Your dear old mum and dad are going to give him the walloping of a lifetime.”
But Ned wasn’t smiling. Aside from Benissimo and his parents, what was really troubling him was what the dragon had told him. Despite his fluke on the mountain, he had tried his ring continuously on their return journey and as before it had remained completely dormant. Ned simply wasn’t the boy that Tiamat thought he was – not any more.
“Lucy, George, please keep it to yourselves but I’m—”
“Worried about your powers, about the ring,” cut in Lucy.
“Yes! Ever since At-lan, since we sparked the weapon—”
“You haven’t been able to use it, at least not until just now. It starts but drops the connection and you have no idea if or when it will work again.”
Ned’s eyes crossed. In the past Lucy had finished his sentences as though she was reading his mind. This was different: Lucy actually was reading his mind.
“Lucy, I—”
“I know, I know, we’re friends and I shouldn’t be using my gifts on you, Ned, but in a few seconds this wall is going to break and we really don’t have a lot of time.”
“What? Lucy, I—”
“I know, you’re a bit annoyed with me right now, and you’re right. I can help you, Ned, and no, I haven’t heard the voice either.”
Ned gave up talking and simply gawped like a startled goldfish.
“It’s all right, Ned,” said Lucy with a smile. “I’ve got you, and so has this big lump of fur.” George grinned. “Oh, and by the way, DUCK!”
Lucy pulled Ned to the floor suddenly, when – BOOM! – the wall right by their bench broke apart before turning to shards of ruptured steelwork, its plastic and plasterboard vaporised to dust. Ned’s dad had let his ring run wild.
The lighting in the now silent corridor flickered on and off erratically and there was a faint smell of burnt wiring coming from the newly made gash. Through the hole and its fizzing atoms, Ned heard his mum.
“Terrence, dear, I think we’ve made our point. Now, what’s all this about a Heart Stone, you old goat?”