The Gold Thief

New Recruit

“All right, all right, I think the boy’s had enough hair-ruffling for one day.” It was Benissimo, the circus’s Ringmaster and leader. Behind him, hanging back, was a man Ned had not seen before. He seemed at odds with the rest of the troupe. He wasn’t wearing any of the more flamboyant circus garb. He had short cropped dreadlocks, wore a black evening jacket, worn Adidas trainers and a faded green and yellow “I LOVE JAMAICA” T-shirt. He smiled at Ned but said nothing.

“So this is him and here he is,” said Benissimo, squaring up to Ned. “Let’s get a proper look at you. Still not particularly tall, face not outwardly bright – hello, pup.”

“Hello, goat-face.”

Benissimo gave him something between a smirk and a scowl.

“As good as it is to see you, I shouldn’t wonder it spells trouble for my troupe and their tents.”

Ned looked around him, at the gathering of weathered faces. “You seem to have found enough of that without me.”

“You know me and my Marvels, Ned, we like to keep ‘busy’. Tell me, is what I’m hearing right, about the intruder in your house?”

“Yes, and he would have got me if it wasn’t for the mirror.”

“Whoever he was, he must have been skilled. From what we heard from the Olswangs before they went off-radar, he subdued your parents in moments.”

“I think he got the Olswangs too,” said Ned. “Their door was broken.”

“We suspected as much.”

“And the man? Do you know who he is?”

“No,” said Benissimo, before seeing the look on Ned’s face – and on Lucy’s too. “But fear not, I’ll have every friendly eyeball on both sides of the Veil looking for him before the day’s out. We will find them.”

Somehow, hearing that from Benissimo eased Ned’s mind. When Benissimo put his mind and troupe to a problem, the problem, no matter the odds, was always solved.

The circus’s newest addition gave a fake cough and looked at the Ringmaster expectantly. If anything, the man in the “I LOVE JAMAICA” T-shirt looked rather lived-in, but had the sort of broad smile that put you instantly at ease.

“Ned, I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine, Jonny Magik. Jonny, this is the ‘Hero of Annapurna’ … well, the other one,” he added, with a nod to Lucy.

Ned cringed at hearing his nickname.

“Hi,” he said. “It’s just Ned, actually.”

“You’ll get used to it,” chuckled Jonny. “You know, some people call me a conjuror, others a shaman, but in the end they just settle on ‘Magik’.”

“Names aside, Jonny,” Benissimo declared, “the boy’s parents are missing and we need to find them. There’s not one of us here today that don’t owe the Armstrongs a debt.”

There were agreeable rumblings from the troupe, but at the mention of Ned’s parents, Jonny Magik’s easy manner slid from his face. If Ned didn’t know any better, he’d think the man was visibly sweating, and as Ned drew nearer, peering at him, the shaman recoiled. It was a slight enough movement to go unnoticed by most, but it was there nonetheless and Benissimo had spotted it too.

“That indigestion still bothering you, Jonny?” asked the Ringmaster.

“Oh, you know, Bene, it comes and goes,” he winced, now seemingly quite unable to meet Ned’s eyes.

“Why don’t you go and have one of your rests, eh? The two of you can catch up later,” said a concerned Benissimo, before ushering the man away.

As soon as he was gone, the Ringmaster turned his attention to the troupe.

“Right, you lot, back to work – there’s tents need pitching and Darklings that need feeding.”

“But, Ned, boss, we just got him back,” they murmured.

“Well, he’s not going anywhere, is he? Now go on – hop to it!”

Reluctantly the gathered troupe disbanded. Even Alice finally did as she was told, leaving Ned with Benissimo, George and Lucy.

“Ned, we need to talk, alone,” said Benissimo.

Lucy frowned, then pursed her lips into an expression that clearly said, “I don’t think so.” George, on the other hand, let his face fall into a wrinkly plea, albeit a silent one.

The Ringmaster’s moustache twitched. It was a thinking twitch and only a little irritated. He looked to Lucy, then George, then back to Lucy again before settling on Ned.

“Oh, very well. The three of you – my quarters in ten minutes.”

Whatever had just happened with the new guy, Ned was quite sure that it had little to do with indigestion. It had felt and looked much more to him like Jonny Magik was uneasy with the mention of his parents. But why?

Before he could ask anyone about it, they were interrupted by the pattering of two very small feet. Ned turned to see an out-of-breath gnome who had come running over from the Glimmerman’s tent.

“Your friends, sir, the jossers,” he breathed. “They’re awake and I think they would appreciate your company.”

Farewell

The rest of the Glimmerman’s mirrors had now been covered up with intricately decorated tapestries, giving the whole dimly lit scene the feeling of being inside a giant Persian rug. Had either of the two jossers the eyes to notice, they would have seen that the patterns in the tapestries were moving, in hypnotic calm-inducing rhythms of colours and shapes.

“Trig-ono-metry, is it, dear?” nodded Abi patiently.

“Yeah, there’s probably loads of stuff you lot don’t know about, like pistachio ice-cream, do you have pistachio ice-cream?!”

“Oh, I think so, dear, yes, I think we’ve got plenty of pistachio ice-cream.” Which was when Abigail turned to Ned and Lucy. “Poor lad, his mind is completely frazzled, haven’t seen a josser this bad since, well, you, Master Ned.”

Her words seemed to have no effect on Archie at all and as soon as he spotted Ned he broke into a manic, over-enthusiastic smile.

“Hello, Ned! I knew you were a wizard. You’re all wizards here, aren’t you? You know, we always knew you were a bit different, brilliant but different. Imagine that, our friend Ned, a wizard.”

“You all right, Arch?”

“All right? Couldn’t be better! Everyone’s been so nice and, and the food’s amazing. Is it magic too?”

“Arch, this is Lucy, she’s a good friend of mine.”

At this point Archie was smiling so much that it looked as though it might actually hurt.

“Hello, Lucy! Are you a wizard?”

Lucy was about to laugh when Ned kicked her ankle. Despite his amusing condition, he was still Ned’s friend.

“Err, no, Arch. I’d probably be more of a witch than anything else, or at least something like that.”

Whilst the two of them spoke, an increasingly concerned Ned turned to Abigail. “Are they going to be all right?” he asked.

“Course they are, dear. Seen this lots of times. The Tinker’s sent over a de-rememberer. I think you should do the honours, Ned, they’re your pals after all.”

She handed him a long thin silver device that looked a lot like a flute, which of course it wasn’t.

“Me?! Can’t Tinks do it?”

“He’s in a bit of a state, love, what with all the trouble we’ve been having. Besides, it’s you they need to forget.”

Ned swallowed. Of course it was. The less they remembered of Ned, the safer they would be back amongst the jossers. By now there was probably a squad of pinstripes doing the exact same thing to Gummy’s parents. He looked at the Tinker’s device. He’d never actually used one before; on its side was a series of numbers from one to ten.

“How does it work?”

“Well, dear, you blow through it, and they fall asleep for just a little while, and when they wake up they’ve forgotten you, and anything that happened with you. Like, say, encountering a bargeist and the Circus of Marvels. A ten’s a total wipe. They’d never even recognise you, not never. After that it gets a bit muddy. If you set it to seven, say, they’d probably only forget you for a year, maybe longer. Just till everything quietens down.”

“But they’re … they’re my friends.”

Abigail put her arm round his shoulders.

“Yes, dear, I know they are, and you need to love them right now, enough to keep ’em safe.”

Archie was still prattling on manically and Gummy was looking more and more like a goldfish by the minute. They were the two best things about his life as a josser. And now, like his mum and dad, he was going to lose them, if only for a year or so. What if they found a new Ned? New Ned or not, though, there were more important things at stake.

“A real friend would want them safe forever,” he said. “Maybe I should just set it to ten and be done with it?”

Ned clicked the dial. He did love them enough to keep them safe, but far too much, he realised, to let them go forever.

“Seven will have to do.” He gently pulled Lucy to one side and got down on his knees in front of Archie. “Arch?”

“Yes, my wizard friend?” answered Archie proudly.

“Arch, I’m going to say goodbye now. This machine is going to make you forget me, but I’m never going to forget you. When all this is over, I’ll come and find you and we’ll start over, OK?”

“Whatever you say, wizard. I think you’re magic!” saluted his excitable friend.

“I think you’re magic too,” said Ned sadly, and blew very softly through the de-rememberer.

Archie closed his eyes and began to snore.

Heart heavy, Ned turned to his other friend and made ready to say goodbye.

A World of Trouble

“You two need to tell me what’s going on, right now.”

Lucy and George gave each other a look, as though they weren’t entirely sure what to say.

“Mum and Dad are missing, I’ve just said goodbye to my two best friends, quite possibly forever, and everyone here looks like they’ve either been beaten senseless or scared out of their wits. So you two had better start talking. For starters, what was all that about with Jonny Magik? I thought he was going to be sick when he met me.”

George cleared his throat.

“Our new arrival often takes to his bed with ‘ailments’. Unfortunate considering he’s our new head of security. He’s a funny chap, keeps to himself mostly, and the troupe are still a bit wary of him, as am I.”

“You just haven’t got to know him yet, George. He’s a sin-eater, Ned,” cut in Lucy. “Benissimo brought him in from Jamaica to help us deal with the Darklings. He gets rid of the bad ones for us – sin-eating’s heavy magic.”

“The bad ones? I thought they were all bad.”

“Well, the boss’ll explain things properly,” said George. “But we’re in a bind, old bean. Something’s going on, only we’re not exactly sure who’s behind it. The Tinker hasn’t had a word from any of his relatives in weeks, and no one knows why. It’s as if Gearnish, the entire city and all its inhabitants, has simply fallen off the grid. But that’s not the worst of it. There has been an uncommonly large number of Darklings getting out and we’ve been stretched to capacity trying to contain them all. Things got really out of hand a few weeks ago, which is when Bene sent for Jonny Magik. So far he’s been very ‘effective’ at getting rid of them.”

“How does he do it?”

“We don’t know, he just takes whatever needs removing and the next day it’s gone,” explained Lucy.

“Probably feeds them to Finn’s lions,” grinned the ape.

“Oh, George, that’s disgusting! Jonny’s far too nice for that, and Left and Right have been vegetarian for ages,” scolded Lucy. “Besides, you heard Bene, they’re old friends. I’m sure whatever Jonny does and how he does it is above board.”

“You always look to the good in Folk, Lucy, and I commend you for it. If I’m honest, I think you spend too much time with him.”

“George, you know why, he’s been helping me with …” and for a moment Lucy’s voice trailed off.

“Lucy? Helping you with what?” asked Ned.

“Her gifts, old bean.” And at that George went a little misty-eyed. “She’ll never replace old Kitty – forgive me, dear. But she’s now not only running our infirmary and serving as just about everyone’s favourite agony aunt, she’s also becoming quite the promising Farseer. It’s Lucy who had the mirror moved from the safe house to the Glimmerman’s tent – she sensed you might be in trouble, long before we heard from the Olswangs.”

Ned looked at Lucy. The two of them were bonded through their rings in ways that neither of them truly understood. They both wore Amplification Engines – he was an Engineer and she a Medic – but to hear that she’d taken on the gift of “sight” was a genuine shock. And that’s when he noticed it, just as it had been the last time he’d seen her. She was wearing one of Kitty’s pink and white Hello Kitty hair-clips.

“But how, how’s that even possible?”

Lucy shrugged. “Nobody knows. Whether Kitty somehow passed on her powers to me when she died, or if the change started when we connected to the Source. All I know is I’m starting to sense things, lots of things that haven’t happened yet.”

“And she’ll be our greatest asset once she gets past a few teething problems.”

“Teething problems?” asked Ned, who was still reeling from the revelation about his friend.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” said Lucy.

All of a sudden the night sky looked as if it were being swallowed by darkness. The moon and every star above them disappeared, blocked out by a fast-approaching silhouette, and the roar of powerful engines.

Ned, Lucy and George looked up, George tensed and ready to fight.

A gust of wind, a blast of horns, and Ned saw two blue and cream striped zeppelin balloons coming in to land. They were tethered together and carrying a large gold-plated gondola. An intricate crest with the letter “O” had been carved in its side.

George lowered his hands and his shoulders dropped. But he was still frowning, his forehead deeply furrowed.

“Who is that?” yelled Ned over the airship’s engines.

George turned to him. “The Mirabelle’s the only ship that carries the ‘O’ of Oublier. And if the Prime of the Twelve is making an unscheduled visit – I shouldn’t wonder that trouble is close behind.”

“I know who she is,” said Ned. “She runs the Twelve, right?”

“And every circus and pinstripe in its ranks.”

“But why turn up without warning?”

“I expect she’s just found out about you, dear boy,” said George. “Either you’re in a world of trouble, or the world’s in a world of trouble.”

Madame O

“What’s got into him?” whispered Ned to Lucy.

As well as having one of the filthiest cooking aprons Ned had ever seen, the clearly agitated cook also had a large set of tusks, the nose of a pig, and the hearing of a bat.

“Madame Oublier – met her, have you?” Scraggs snarled back.

“No,” smirked Ned.

“For starters she’s French. Imagine Monsieur Couteau, the finest blade in Europe; now make him more serious and a witch that has issues with dust.”

Behind him, Julius, Nero and Caligula, the circus’s resident pixies, were attempting to lay out a collection of biscuits for their important visitor. To the rest of the world they looked like performing monkeys in matching bellboy outfits and caps, but – without their glamours – to Ned and the troupe they were mischievous blue-skinned terrors. For every carefully laid out biscuit, they swallowed at least three others.

“Scraggs, old bean, calm down. She is perfectly amiable as long as everything’s clean,” chuckled George, who seemed to be enjoying the chaos enormously – and despite his troubled heart, so was Ned.

Scraggs looked down at his apron and started to sweat profusely, at which point Ned saw Caligula – or was it Nero? – dropping a full tray of chocolate eclairs on the sawdust by their feet. Scraggs responded by pulling a rolling-pin from his belt, and the three emperors bolted for the exit.

“All right, all right, that’s quite enough. Get back to the kitchen before you have a heart attack, and take your gnomes with you,” ordered Benissimo, who had finally stopped pacing the floor of the tent, though his moustache was still in full twitch.

A very relieved cook and his diminutive accomplices did as they were told. No sooner had they left the tent than Ned heard a loud gong being struck outside. Madame Oublier had arrived.

Ned leant across to Whiskers, who was still perching happily on Lucy’s shoulder.

“Not a squeak out of you. Madame O is a VIP. And if you’re there, Gorrn, that means you too.”

Something on the floor undulated and Whiskers gave Ned a short but courteous blink.

Madame Oublier entered the tent with little fuss. She was without doubt the most heavily tattooed person Ned had ever seen, in either the known world or the Hidden. She was elderly and silver-haired, much like Kitty, the troupe’s old Farseer, though with none of her pink and white garb or eccentric charm. The Twelve’s Prime was dressed from head to toe in unapologetic black. For a moment Ned felt a pang – how he wished dear Kitty was still with them and especially now.

The elderly Farseer was also slight, calm and quiet, because she did not need to be anything else. To the travelling kind, Madame Oublier’s word was law.