Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt Read online

  “Did you...?” I can’t complete the sentence.

  “I did what a famous poet once said each man does to the thing he loves,” Winston says, and when I stare at him blankly, he puts his hands over his head, buries his face between his knees, and groans, “I killed him.”

  5

  I don’t return to the rooms with Winston. I’m pretty sure he wants to be alone right now, because of the painful and guilty memories I stirred up. Stefan was one of only two Diamond royals. The other was the frail King Lloyd. By killing Stefan, Winston robbed the realm of its best chance of survival.

  I wish I was older and wiser. There must be things I could say to ease Winston’s pain. But I can’t for the life of me think what they might be.

  It’s getting late and I should head for home, but I feel troubled. I can normally forget about the Merge when I depart Big Ben, but tonight it haunts my every step. Since I can’t escape it, I return to Seven Dials, hoping that the face-shaped lock will provide a welcome distraction.

  Lots of men and women are standing in front of the pillar, sipping drinks and talking about shows — Seven Dials is part of the Theatre District. I push through, in no mood to wait for them to move. There are some startled grunts and angry looks, but the magic of the Merge weaves its charms and nobody sees me.

  I kneel in front of the lock and dig my fingers into the eyes, throwing levers and spinning tumblers wildly. Usually I take this slowly, in case I trip any traps, but this time I let my fingers fly.

  I’ve no idea what the treacherous Stefan looked like, so I pretend it’s his face in front of me, and picture him laughing at Winston as he writhed and screamed at a torturer’s hands.

  “He treated you like a son,” I growl, fingers a blur inside the eye sockets. I pull out my right hand and slap the face, almost crying with rage. “I wish Winston hadn’t killed you. I’d track you down and make you pay if you were alive, put you through some of what Winston had to endure, let you see what it feels like.”

  Except I wouldn’t. I don’t have that much venom in me. I could no more torture someone than I could cut off my own tongue, batter and fry it, and eat it with a big plate of chips.

  I drag my nails across the face, wanting to scar it the way Winston was scarred. This lock has nothing to do with what happened to him, but it’s part of the Merge, and I’m trying (stupidly) to punish that sphere, because if it didn’t exist, Winston could never have been hurt so deeply.

  My fingernails do nothing to the stone, so I search in my pockets for a coin or key. What I find is the pick that I was using on the cuckoo clock earlier.

  “Perfect,” I snarl, digging out the thin tool and holding it up to the face. I move the pick to the left nostril, to drag it across from there.

  Then I pause.

  Because of the face’s elongation, the nostrils are tiny. I’ve never paid attention to them. The first time I came here, I focused on the eyes, and they’re what I’ve worked on ever since, certain that I needed to start with them. But what if I was wrong and have been struggling on through the dark ever since?

  Most locks have a natural pattern. There are assumptions that an experienced Lox can make about them. But a sly deviser can use those assumptions to catch you out. The natural way isn’t always the right way. Sometimes you have to think outside the box — or, in this case, outside the eyes.

  Adjusting my position, I stare into the nostrils. I can’t see anything. In fact they don’t even seem to be real holes, just shallow impressions in the stone. I don’t think any locksmith would have spared these pinpricks a second glance, but maybe that’s what its deviser banked on. Sometimes the solution to a riddle can be as clear as...

  “...the nose on your face,” I murmur, and slide the head of the pick forward, into the left nostril, and twist it a few times.

  There’s a soft click. I remove the pick, then prod it into the right nostril and twist again. There’s another soft click, but this time something else happens. As I watch, the face starts to unelongate.

  Before, it was as if the face was being stretched by invisible wires attached to the forehead and jaw. Now it’s like those wires have been relaxed. The face assumes a regular aspect. The gaping eye sockets narrow, the bridge of the nose bulges out, the cheeks grow more rounded, and the ears...

  The ear canals weren’t visible before, but now they rotate into view, and when I look inside them, I see tumblers, levers and pins, similar to those inside the eyes.

  “Eureka,” I breathe. The eyes weren’t the right place to start. I’ll have to circle back to them at some point, but they’re not the beginning of the journey. The nostrils were the first stepping stone, and the ears are next.

  “Winston knew,” I grin, holding up the pick to admire it, before returning it to my pocket. “That’s why he set me to work on the cuckoo clocks and told me to take the pick. He didn’t want to say, in case he disturbed that Balance he believes in, but he knew. The wily old fox.”

  Shaking my head, both impressed by Winston’s knowledge and annoyed that he didn’t save me time by just telling me what I needed to do, I move my hands to the sides of the face and the work begins for real.

  For a glorious minute I think it’s going to be simple from this point on, but... no. This is still a ferociously intricate contraption, all the trickier to unpick because of the damage that’s been inflicted on it. I have my foot in the door, but forcing it open may prove beyond me. There’s a long way yet to go.

  I beaver away at the lock for an hour before quitting, then continue to work on it over the coming days, sneaking away to Seven Dials whenever I can, to poke about inside the ears.

  As complex as the lock is, and although the pieces have been badly damaged, I’m starting to figure things out. The rough shape of a code is slowly revealing itself, and while later levels will no doubt prove even harder to crack, I’m confident that I’m going to be able to solve the mystery of the ears at least.

  I haven’t been back to see Winston, and I’m thinking about him one afternoon as I’m chipping away at the lock, hands immersed in the ears up to my wrists. He’s been on my mind a lot, and not just because of what he told me about Stefan. I’ll have to repair parts of the lock before I can pick it. I’ve been able to skirt the damage in many places, but there are areas where that isn’t an option, where levers and tumblers will have to be fixed or replaced.

  I’ve never tried to build my own lock or repair one. I think I can figure out most of it myself. I’ve been mapping the broken parts as I go along, calculating where repairs need to be effected, and I’m fairly sure I can mend most of the broken pieces, even without any guidance.

  The issue will be getting my hands on the replacement parts, pins, tumblers, and tools to fix them in place. I can find everything I need on Winston’s tables, but I don’t want to ask for them, as I’ve decided I’m going to do this myself if I can, and surprise Winston.

  “How are you getting on with that lock in Seven Dials?” I imagine him asking me one day.

  “Oh, that?” I’ll reply casually. “I opened that old thing months ago. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “I’ll take a few pieces at a time,” I mutter as I work on the lock. “Sneak them out without telling him. It’ll take longer that way, but I think –”

  “Speaking to yourself is a worrying sign,” someone says behind me.

  “Perhaps you spent too much time with King Lloyd,” someone else says.

  I was startled by the first speaker – I’ve been invisible to people in Seven Dials while working on the lock, so nobody’s ever addressed me directly – but the second really throws me, with his mention of King Lloyd.

  “How do you know...?” I gasp, withdrawing my hands and turning sharply. My thigh strikes the mobile phone, which, as usual, I’d set beside me before I started work, and sends it skittering across the ground, where it’s sure to be stamped on by someone in the crowd. But when I see the two men standing behind me, I know I have a hell of a lot mor
e to worry about than a broken phone.

  Both are dressed in white suits, with matching shoes and ties. They’re bald, but each has a crescent moon of white hair curving across his forehead, the tips pointing towards the rear of his head. One of the men is white and carries a long, thin knife, known as a stiletto. The other is black and armed with an axe.

  “Hello again, Archibald,” the darker man says.

  “We have business with you,” the white man adds.

  The strength leaves my legs and my stomach turns. These men are Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe, two of the most feared killers in the Merge, and if they’re here for me, then my minutes on this planet are numbered.

  We might even be talking seconds.

  TWO — THE BOREHOLES

  6

  The first time I saw Orlan Stiletto and Argate Axe, they were chasing a girl across a bridge not far from here. She opened a borehole and escaped. They thought I could see them and debated whether or not to kill me. I managed to convince them that I was unaware of their presence and they let me live. But it looks like they’ve returned to finish the job.

  “Wh... wh... what do you want?” I wheeze, back pressed against the face in the pillar, feeling the nose jab into my flesh.

  Orlan points at me with his knife, and I fear the worst, but then he lowers the blade. “You made quite an impression at the vote,” he says, referring to the last time we met, when I helped Inez sneak Princess Ghita into the palace in Cornan.

  “Pitina shouldn’t have stopped us from killing you,” Argate growls.

  “We didn’t stop because of the queen,” Orlan reminds his partner. “We stopped because Duke Edward told us to.”

  “But she forced him to call us off,” Argate sulks, then smiles begrudgingly. “You have to admire her, don’t you? A formidable woman.”

  “A worthy queen,” Orlan nods. “She saved you, boy. Without her interference, I would have slit your throat.”

  “Not if I’d chopped his head off first,” Argate laughs.

  I gulp, picturing my head rolling across the floor of the throne room. I look for help, but nobody’s aware of the killers. Orlan and Argate are invisible to the Born, the same way I am at the moment. But if I hit a few people, I could break the spell of the Merge and make them aware of us...

  “We’ll kill the Born if you drag them into this,” Orlan says, reading my mind.

  “The more the merrier,” Argate grunts, nostrils flaring.

  “Please,” I moan. “What’s this about? Are you angry because I helped Inez?”

  Argate frowns. “Why would we care about that?”

  “We respect good work,” Orlan says.

  “That chapter of our story is closed,” Argate says. “You triumphed, and for that we salute you.”

  “There aren’t many who get the better of us,” Orlan says. “If circumstances were different, we’d share a drink and toast your success.”

  “But our story’s forever evolving,” Argate says. “We’ve started a new chapter, and unluckily for you, you’re part of it.”

  “We’ve been hired to take you to Ruby,” Orlan says, and whatever blood was left in my face drains away. Ruby’s the home of the SubMerged.

  “What for?” I gasp.

  Argate shrugs. “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  “Who wants me?” I ask.

  “That will be revealed too,” Orlan says.

  The killers could have taken me while my back was turned, but they seem very relaxed about this, and still haven’t closed the gap on me. I get the impression they’re in no rush, either because they don’t see me as a threat, or because they want to toy with me. I’ve got to try and make that work to my advantage. First, keep them talking. Then make a break for freedom.

  “How did you find me?” I ask, willing strength into my legs, flexing my fingers behind my back to get the blood flowing, trying to formulate a plan.

  “Our employer told us to search the streets of London around the area where we’d seen you before,” Orlan says.

  “He had a feeling you’d return to the city,” Argate says. “He’s good at predicting the movements of his enemies.”

  “We’ve been looking for you for months,” Orlan says, “circling the streets, day after day, in the hope that our paths would eventually cross.”

  “They often do in a situation like this,” Argate says. “As the Born like to say, it’s a small world.”

  “That’s why I like to hunt here,” Orlan says.

  Argate sniffs. “I prefer the challenge of hunting in the Merge. But it matters not. We’ve found you and it’s time to take you to our master. So, if you’re finished with whatever you were doing...”

  Argate hangs his axe from a clip on his belt and steps towards me.

  “You don’t know what it is?” I ask, seeing my chance to distract them.

  “We neither know nor care,” Orlan says, stepping up beside his partner.

  “But this is what the hunt’s all about,” I lie, moving aside.

  The killers pause, eyebrows furrowing as they stare uncertainly at the face-shaped lock in the pillar.

  “A lock?” Argate says.

  “What of it?” Orlan asks.

  “This isn’t an ordinary lock,” I whisper (and that much at least is true). “Lean in close and listen.”

  “It talks?” Argate asks, instinctively leaning forward. Orlan leans in too.

  “Oh yes,” I breathe, taking a slow step aside and reaching into a pocket as I lower my voice even further. “And what it says is... boom!” I scream, tearing out the pick and hurling it at the stone face.

  It’s a crude, childish trick, but the killers weren’t expecting such a clumsy move. They jerk away, covering their faces with their hands as the pick bounces harmlessly off the pillar and pings to the floor. I buy myself a few seconds and race down one of the seven connected streets, weaving in and out of the crowd.

  Behind me, I hear Orlan and Argate chuckling.

  “This is what we hoped for,” Orlan says.

  “We love it when they run,” Argate says.

  “Sometimes they get away,” Orlan says with a self-admonishing tut.

  “But more often they don’t,” Argate says, his voice vibrating menacingly.

  Then the killers give chase.

  7

  At first I tear through the streets, panting and wild-eyed, hoping to outpace my pursuers. I take turns randomly and dart across busy roads when I spot a gap in the traffic. But then I pause on the edge of a pavement, having just narrowly avoided being mown down by a black cab. The driver’s furious and honks on the horn as he drifts out of sight.

  Clinging to a set of traffic lights, gasping for breath, I look back and spot the killers on the other side of the road, calmly waiting for the lights to turn. They haven’t broken a sweat, and when they spot me staring, they smile and wave.

  Any hope I had of outrunning them disappears, and as I study the smirking assassins, I understand that they’re enjoying this. They want to watch me sweat and shiver and stumble through the streets, working myself into a blind panic, so they can sweep me up when I’m a weeping, broken wreck.

  “No,” I whisper, controlling my breath and straightening my back. I won’t be taken that way.

  The lights change and Orlan raises an eyebrow as he steps forward, expecting me to shudder and run. Instead I sniff and take another couple of deep breaths as they draw closer. That throws them and they share a bemused glance, smiles slipping. I take one more breath, then jog down the street, more relaxed than before.

  “You’re trying to play it cool,” Orlan calls after me.

  “But we can smell the fear inside you,” Argate shouts.

  They’re right – my sense of terror hasn’t lessened – but I’m no longer a prisoner to that fear. My brain clicks in as I jog, and I start thinking of ways out of this mess. Like the killers, I’ve been patrolling these streets the past several months, but while they were looking for me
, I was looking at locks.

  Although I decided not to return to the Merge, I was thinking about it all the time, spotting locks and boreholes everywhere. Many were mysterious, and I would have had to explore them to find out where they led, but others were familiar. For instance, I could sense if a borehole led to Cornan or Sakkara, and one day I spotted one that I instinctively knew led to an island of stone pineapples.

  I realised I could confirm a borehole’s destination if it connected to a place in the Merge where I’d been. I must have subconsciously soaked up impressions of the zones I passed through, and could now find my way back to them if I saw any connecting boreholes in the Born.

  I had no idea if that ability was common to all the Merged, or if it was a Lox thing, but as I run, I find myself leaning towards the second probability, because if Orlan and Argate knew that I could escape to a place of my choosing, they wouldn’t be taking the chase so lightly.

  I consider a borehole to Canadu. There’d be lots of armed guards in the palace, but I’m reluctant to lead Orlan and Argate there. They almost started a war with the guards the last time, and the impression I got was that the killers would have been the favourites in a battle to the death. I don’t want people to die for my sake.

  I swing past a church, onto a dark, quiet street. As I pad along, I think about the church. I’ve passed it before. I don’t know its name, or even what this street is, but I know there’s a borehole in the door of an old building a couple of turns from here, leading to one of the first zones I ever visited in the Merge.

  There’s no apparent reason for me to return there. It’s in Diamond, and like most of the zones in that doomed realm, it’s been abandoned. There’ll be nobody to help me escape the killers who are hot on my heels.

  Despite all that, my gut urges me to head for the building, and since I’ve no better plan, I take the turn for the borehole.

  I try to get everything straight in my head while I’m running. I think it’s a simple lock and will open swiftly to my touch. I hope I’m right, because Orlan and Argate will surely make a dash for me when they see what I’m doing.