Shenanigan woke at four in the morning, when sleep grips the tightest and you have to really wriggle to get out of its grasp. She might have decided to go on a hunger strike, but her stomach had not agreed. She lay in the dark for several minutes arguing with it, but a stomach is incapable of listening to reason. She got up, intending to head to the kitchen for an early breakfast.
It was still dark, but Shenanigan didn’t turn on any lights. When you have lived in a building for long enough, it becomes an extension of your own body. You can sense movement within its boundaries the same way you might feel an insect crawling over a tiny patch of skin, or a breath ruffling a stray hair. Which meant that by the time Shenanigan reached the third-floor corridor she knew something was wrong by the way the back of her neck had started prickling.
She stopped next to the charred door of the EEK’s room, listening. She could hear the machine humming—Phenomena must have left it on—and at first she thought that was what had unsettled her. But her neck prickled all the way along the corridor and down the stairs until she looked out over the Great Hall and saw the intruders.
There were five of them, clad in mismatched black and masked by balaclavas. One was bent over a small object on the floor. Another was shaking out an immense length of fabric, and one was holding a flat, square object under one arm. They worked quickly and silently by the light of camping lanterns.
They saw her the same moment she saw them, and paused in the middle of their tasks.
People respond in odd ways when they are surprised. They don’t always scream, or run. Often the brain takes a holiday, and the body does something embarrassing, like flail wildly and drop things. The sight of five uninvited people in her home was so unexpected that Shenanigan didn’t bother to panic, and her stomach, which was still upset about the hunger strike, reached up to take control of the situation.
“Good morning,” Shenanigan found herself saying. “D’you want some breakfast? I was thinking of making eggs.”
The intruders sprang into action. One of them, a whip-thin person with spiked hair sticking out of their mask, dropped the fabric they were holding. Another darted to the side, glasses flashing, and flicked a switch. There was the whine of a motor starting up, and the intruders sprinted away through the open front door.
“Oi!” Shenanigan shouted, snatching a helmet off a nearby suit of armor and throwing it down the stairs with a crash loud enough to wake the whole House. She leapt onto the banister. Someone was running, and that meant she had to chase them. Her stomach was still in control of her mouth, and she bellowed, “DO YOU PREFER YOUR EGGS FRIED OR SCRAMBLED?” as she slid downstairs. At least this sounded like a threat.
She hit the ground, and almost tripped over something shining dimly in the light of an abandoned lantern. Liquid sloshed over her shoe. Behind her, she heard the door to the kitchen slam open as Cook burst in, wearing fuzzy socks and brandishing a barbell.
“JUST YOU TRY IT, YOU LICKSPITTLE— My word, what is that?”
The whine of the motor rose in pitch, and Shenanigan turned to see something moving on the floor between herself and Cook. It was a huge dark shape, misshapen and monstrous, heaving itself upright like a giant struggling to rise.
Light blazed. Cook had hit the wall switch, and Shenanigan winced in the sudden glare. In the center of the Great Hall was a vast puddle of fabric, twitching and jerking as it filled with air. A withered limb, brown and curved backwards, shot out and knocked a painting off one wall. A second later its pair emerged with a faint thwump, knocking over something metallic and full of water.
“Some kind of balloon?” Shenanigan heard Cook say, almost to herself. “And are these…kettles?”
Shenanigan looked about her. In fact, the Great Hall was full of kettles; kettles on hot plates, kettles on portable stoves, kettles set over Bunsen burners and balanced on radiators. The scene was so absurd and unexpected that Shenanigan felt a laugh bubbling in her throat, a laugh that became a scream as the shape in front of her abruptly doubled in size. It was recognizable as a bird now, wings spread, though its deflated head still lolled over its breast as though its neck was broken. Then, as if it was suddenly awake, it snapped upright, bobbing in place and fixing her with one golden, glaring eye.
Shenanigan took a step backwards. She heard Cook swear. Several of the kettles were beginning to boil.
It was then, as the ridiculousness of the situation reached a peak, that she heard a squeal of brakes, a bang of a car backfiring, and a bush sped past the front door at around forty miles an hour.
Shenanigan ran outside to see the bush turn a corner at speed, losing a couple of branches to unforgiving physics. Underneath the foliage was a van, blocky and old-fashioned, with a thickset figure in a sparkling black leotard clinging to the roof. A person with a long black plait hung out the passenger window, looking to see if they were being followed.
“Oi!” Shenanigan shouted again, but she already knew she couldn’t catch up. With smooth, sinuous grace, the figure in the leotard swung themself off the roof and through the open back doors of the van. The last member of the group reached out to haul the doors closed, and for a second, their eyes met Shenanigan’s. That one second seemed to stretch on for an hour, until Shenanigan felt as if a whole conversation had passed between them—though one she couldn’t have recounted if asked.
Then the burglar gave her a small ironic salute and shut the doors. The van flung itself round another bend in the drive, and then it was gone.
Inside, the kettles were beginning to whistle. The bird’s wings squeaked as they pressed against the walls of the Great Hall. Its eyes bulged. Shenanigan could just see Maelstrom and Fauna at the top of the stairs, each face echoing the other’s bafflement.
“Blow me down! Is anyone hurt?” Maelstrom shouted.
“I’m fine!” cried Shenanigan.
“Where’s Phenomena? And Schadenfreude?”
“I’m here,” creaked Schadenfreude, lurching down the stairs, beating back one of the inflatable wings with her stick where it pressed against the banister. “For goodness’ sake,” she shouted to Cook, “help me get this thing down!”
Shenanigan could see white stitching on the bird’s swollen belly. It strained and puckered, threatening to split. The whistling of kettles became a scream as the built-up pressure became one multi-pitched shriek, the enormous bird’s demented, wailing song, and then—
Shenanigan felt the explosion in her spine and stomach. Where there had been a huge bird, there suddenly wasn’t. In its absence, a shower of gold confetti rained down over the Great Hall. It settled in her hair, and in the pools of spilled water. It settled on Cook and Aunt Schadenfreude, who were bent over a rattling electric air pump. Aunt Schadenfreude was hitting it with her stick.
Shenanigan picked up one of the pieces of confetti, a round disk of gold, like a paper doubloon. She looked up. Tattered strips of fabric from the bird’s body had caught on the chandelier, reminding Shenanigan unpleasantly of chicken skin.
Heavy footsteps announced Maelstrom. “Shenanigan, where’s your sister?” he panted.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s not here. The intruders—did they take her? Did you see?” Maelstrom looked on the verge of panic.
“No. At least, I don’t think so—”
“Think! We—”
There was a loud sneeze.
A disheveled Phenomena appeared at the top of the stairs, blinking and yawning.
“What’s all the noise about?” She wiped her glasses on the hem of her lab coat, replaced them, and squinted down at the Great Hall. “Oh, have we redecorated?”
“Tell us again,” said Fauna, pushing a cup into Shenanigan’s hands.
They were sitting on the grand staircase. There were so many kettles about that Cook had simply ducked down to the kitchen to get some teabags. Maelstrom was not yet convinced they were alone, and was patrolling the House with an ornamental sword, checking every room “for stowaways.” Aunt Schadenfreude was poking at the fabric from the bird with her stick, though it wasn’t clear what that was supposed to accomplish.
“I dunno what else you want me to tell you,” Shenanigan grumbled. “I was hungry. I came down to make breakfast—which I still haven’t had, by the way—and I found the five of them setting up…whatever that bird thing was.”
“You’re sure there were five?”
“Yes.” Shenanigan closed her eyes, picturing them. “One of them was fat and graceful, in a sparkly leotard. One of them was very pointy at the elbows. One of them had their hair in a long plait, one had glasses, and one of them saluted.” She shook her head in outrage. “They were all in black. I can’t tell you much more. I’ll find them, though,” she said darkly. The surprise was wearing off, and she was getting angry. “No one breaks into my House, leaves behind an inflatable bird, and gets away with it.”
“Yes, what was the point of that?” complained Schadenfreude.
“Maybe they were sending us a message,” said Cook.
“A threatening letter would have been clearer. And it wouldn’t have taken them as long to set up.”
“They got in and out pretty quickly,” said Phenomena. “Though I suppose they could have been in the House all night, waiting for us to fall asleep.”
Fauna looked ill. “We need to go over our security,” she said. “Is this my fault? Is this because I took the chains off the gates?”
“Of course not,” said Maelstrom, returning from upstairs and patting her arm. “There’s no point blaming yourself. The important thing is that no one was hurt, and nothing has been taken.”
“Other than the painting, you mean,” said Fauna.
“What?”
Fauna pointed. As a Family, the Swifts did not have what could be called “taste,” rather a sort of morbid delight in ugly paintings. None of them took much notice of what their deceased relatives had decided to hang up over the years. But there was a rectangle of empty space on the wall of the Great Hall, glaringly obvious among the chaos of mismatched frames, muddy landscapes, and badly drawn horses.
“One painting?” snorted Aunt Schadenfreude. “All that trouble for one painting?”
Fauna stared at her incredulously. “Are you serious, Auntie? They took the most valuable thing in the House!”
In the House, maybe, thought Shenanigan, thinking about what was lying at the bottom of the lake.
“Well, it can’t be that valuable,” said Aunt Schadenfreude, staring at the empty space. “I don’t even know what’s gone. Cook?”
“Not a clue.”
“They’ve taken A Clown Laments His Lot in Life,” said Fauna, wringing her hands. “Just after I moved it in here, as well.”
“That ugly old thing?” scoffed Aunt Schadenfreude. “We won that from the Martinets in a card game decades ago. I always meant to throw it out. What on earth did you put it in here for?”
Fauna’s mouth dropped open. “You realize it’s a genuine Pierrot?”
The rest of the Swifts looked at her blankly.
“Pierrot?” tried Fauna, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. “One of the most famous Surrealist painters? Known for exclusively painting and sculpting—well, Pierrots, actually. They’re a sort of sad, silent clown—”
“I have a terrible affliction with my hearing,” said Aunt Schadenfreude. “Whenever people talk about art, I just hear a sort of gurgling noise, like a clogged drain.”
Shenanigan remembered the painting, which used to hang in the Coral Bedroom. It wasn’t that ugly, by Swift standards. It was a portrait of a clown in a baggy white shirt and trousers, with an enormous black-and-white ruff round his neck and a tight black cap. He wasn’t wearing a big red nose or anything, just white greasepaint, so Shenanigan had always assumed he hadn’t finished putting his makeup on.
Fauna took a deep breath. “It’s not important,” she said. “What’s important, other than its immeasurable artistic value, is how much it’s worth.”
“How much is it worth?” asked Shenanigan.
Fauna told them. Then it was Aunt Schadenfreude’s mouth that dropped open.
“All this time,” she wheezed, leaning on her stick. “All this time, struggling for money, putting off repairs, searching for Vile’s treasure to pay the bills, and I could have just sold that old clown.” She looked at Fauna almost desperately. “You’re sure it’s not a fake?”
Fauna shook her head. “I checked. His signature is on the back of the canvas. He always wrote in forget-me-not-blue ink; it’s very distinctive.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Cook, staring at the blank space on the wall. “A famous artwork is stolen. A strange, elaborate tableau is left behind. Is this not reminding you of something?”
It didn’t remind Shenanigan of anything, but one by one, the adults gasped as if each was being pricked with a needle.
“Surely it can’t be them,” scoffed Aunt Schadenfreude.
“Why would they target us?” asked Maelstrom.
“I have an idea,” said Fauna grimly. She was staring at the tatters of fabric on the chandelier, and her gaze was steely. “Aunt Schadenfreude, how did you say we acquired that painting?”
“Swindle won it in a card game, oh, years ago now.”
“And—let me put this delicately—did Swindle play fair, in this card game?”
“His name was Swindle,” said Schadenfreude. “What do you think?”
Fauna nodded. “I thought so. Girls, Maelstrom—pack your things. Making peace with the Martinets may be more urgent than we thought.”
“What? You mean we’re going to Paris?” Shenanigan leapt up, her heart pounding. “But why?”
“Because those thieves don’t think we’re the rightful owners of that painting. They’re probably returning it to the Martinets as we speak. If we want it back, we must find a way to end the feud. We’ve been robbed by Ouvolpo.”
Shenanigan had five questions…ten…twenty. But the one that muscled its way to the front of the queue was this:
“Who are Ouvolpo?”