Imperial Clock

CHAPTER Twelve

Solo Endeavours



“But you didn’t get a close look at the pin?” Meredith wiped a few drops of spit off the polished black mouthpiece with her handkerchief, and held the receiver less than half an inch from her ear. She wanted to handle her sister’s vexation carefully. Sonja and Derek were at a fragile point in their relationship, with nothing yet concrete between them. And as much as she hated—loathed to her bitter core—the fact that she’d never known love like Sonja did now, Meredith hated even more the idea of anyone breaking her sister’s heart.

“No, I had to keep an appreciable distance, and it was dark.” The telephone line rendered Sonja’s voice flat and tinny, but it couldn’t dampen the note of concern.

“Damned odd time and place for a meeting.”

“I know. And the way she sped off like that, in such a spiffy-looking racer, makes me think she isn’t from around here.”

“No, probably not.”

“And how brief the meeting was, and how little Derek said—it was all her, her, the tramp—has me pretty sure it was all her idea as well. She lured him there to tell him something, or ask him something. He hadn’t been himself that day, behaved like a rotten ghost with me and Aunt Lily at lunch, so I’m assuming this mystery meeting was weighing on him. Poor man was exhausted, evidently hadn’t slept a wink. Now, what could be a) so troubling to distract him like that on such a big day for us, b) so secretive that it had to take place at night in such a lonely place, and c) the likeliest explanation so soon after his induction into the Leviacrum?”

“I see where you’re going with this.”

“He’s just been recruited into the Atlas Club. I’m almost certain.” Important that Sonja said that first. The last thing Meredith wanted was to put words in her mouth, words that might incriminate the man her little sister thought could do no wrong.

“It’s certainly sounding that way, but why should he lose sleep over it?”

“Because Derek hates taking sides in politics. When you make friends like those, you inherit those friends’ enemies.”

“True. But maybe it’s just an honorary thing, and he’ll be able to keep his head down, under the crossfire.” Meredith was glad she’d said that. It might help Sonja trust him that bit more readily, even if her own instinct was to give the man a wide berth. He’d clearly thrown in with this esoteric society that fuelled the most dangerous dictatorial power of the modern age. He should not be trusted. “But be careful, Sonja, just in case. If he is Atlas, he’s putting you squarely in the mire.”

Sonja’s sigh blustered through the receiver. “I feel like throwing up. What should I do? Ask him outright? Pretend I don’t know anything and just let it lie, wait until he approaches me with it, if he ever does? If not, it will always be there between us, and you know how combative I get when I sniff a conspiracy.”

“Yes, you should be here with me. We’d solve this whole mystery in no time.”

“Love to, if only I could think straight for two minutes. How is your investigation coming along, by the way? Any news?”

“Perhaps. I hired a private detective, a bloke called Donnelly. Cathy—Lady Catarina—isn’t too keen on him, thinks he’s a waste of space, but he’s been working ‘round the clock for days now and apparently he’s turned up some interesting titbits. He’s actually in the other room as we speak.”

“Oh? Would I like him?” The sudden joviality in Sonja’s tone blared out with New Year’s cheer.

“I think you would. He’s in his early thirties, fairly handsome, actually more so when he lets his whiskers grow, a bit slovenly as a rule—which is probably why Cathy thumbs her nose—and it takes him all his time to speak properly. He’s sort of the opposite of William Elgin in that he’d much rather curse and keep his Cockney-Irish brogue than put on airs.”

“I like him already.” Sonja seemed to wait for Meredith’s reply, which didn’t come. “So...will it be a double wedding?”

“Ha! That would be one heck of a heck followed by one heck of a no. He’s already married with two daughters.”

“Shame. Will I get to meet him, though?”

“We’ll swap. You get cursing Cockney, I get Atlas Auric.” The cheap attempt at humour received the crackling silence it deserved. They weren’t sisters for nothing; Meredith knew when they had nothing more to say to each other. It was like the rest at the end of a laboured piano duet that had outstayed its welcome. “Right, I have to go now. Cathy will be here any moment, and Donnelly’s waiting. But I want you to call me when you’ve seen Derek again, tell me what happens.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n. And you let me know where the sleuthing goes. Leave some for me.”

“Will do. Bye.”

“Bye, Merry.”

She hovered the receiver over its hook for a moment—every time she hung it up felt like severing her umbilical to home—and then set it down with fond reverence. Her heart ached at its primitive roots. Now that the perceived gulf between them had become reality, a reality spanning a full airship ride, she missed Sonja more with each passing day. It was the nature of magnetism: if you pressed two like poles together they repelled one another; if you held opposing poles too far apart there was no attraction. Somewhere between the two, then, lay the secret of sisters parallel: that happy medium between push, pull, and forever.

But would they ever find it, the way things were heading?

“Miss Meredith, can I have a word, before Swanny (Donnelly’s nickname for Cathy, referencing both her elegant swan-like beauty and her sometimes prissy, virginal attitude) tells me to wipe my bleedin’ feet or som’int?”

“Yes. What have you got for me?”

He’d arrived not a minute before Sonja’s call, and had had plenty of time to arrange his documents while waiting on the settee. “Well, I can tell you your man, Westerfeld, is being paid by one Claudette Clochefort, widow of—”

“Armand Clochefort.” She sat beside him.

“Right you are, and my man who used to work in the Deuxieme Bureau says it’s not for peanuts either. Madame Clochefort wanted the goods on your dad, to dish all the dirt she could on him, so she commissioned this fellow Westerfeld, a raker-for-hire, who has connections all over. None you’d brag about in public, though, if you get my drift.” She nodded. “Anyhoo, he was at it for some time, and was largely responsible for discrediting your dad in the public’s eye these past couple of years. But when things went arse up’ards—‘scuse me, all to pot—with his spying in Norway, he convinced Madame Clochefort he’d done all he could as a raker. It was never going to be enough to avenge her husband’s death. When she heard the professor was setting out on another underground journey, she must have seen it as an egregious insult to her old man’s memory. So she crossed the line, flipped. And Westerfeld was given permission to use his...other skills. To make sure your dad never reached Africa alive.”

Meredith swallowed. “Fat chance. Father cracks on like nobody’s business once he’s started out. They’ll never catch him.”

“No, I don’t think so either. Your dad is protected by powerful friends. I found that out too.” He gauged her reaction, gave a little nod, must have seen what he wanted to see. Calmness? Lack of surprise? “And that’s that. It’s nothing but a vendetta, Miss Meredith. Far as I can tell, you’re not in any danger on that front. Madame Clochefort has the knife in your dad, but that’s where it stays.”

“The evil bitch. Wait till she hears the news that Father’s conquered Subterranea a third time, peeing all over her husband’s lies. I hope she chokes on it, the Frog whore.” Donnelly pretended to squirm under her abusive language, to not know where to look. It made her laugh. “But you’ve done splendidly, Donnelly. I knew I was right to hire you.”

“Tell that to your Swanny, eh? She might not chew on me quite so hard in future.”

“I’ll put her straight. Now, what’s all this?” She indicated the documents he’d fanned out on the settee next to him. “Looks interesting.”

“Very. And I think you’ll like what I’ve found. That book you gave me, the Shadow Players, was on the right lines all along. The Rule of Eight, dead on. The author, Villiers, also published verse in his spare time, and he included a rather strange poem at the end of the last collection he printed, untitled and unsigned, eight stanzas long. An old colleague of mine who’s worked in used books since his teens assures me unsigned verses like these have been a part of literary lore for the past fifty years or so. No one talks about ‘em publicly, but that’s no surprise, right? Apparently it was an insider’s way of communicating, of smuggling out Atlas secrets. Say, do you happen to have the pocket watch you found?”

“The verse tells us how to open it?” She practically tore it from her dress pocket, offered it to him.

“You keep it for now. See what you can make of this first.” He read scribbled lines from a tatty sheet he’d folded many times:

“The tower skyward trends; hold true—

Within abideth precious few.

Attraction beats the iron gait,

So tend the field from twelve till eight.’

“I never was much cop at riddles.” He scratched his stubbly chin. “How about you?”

“Sadly lacking. My sister was always the game player. I wonder if I should ring her.” Then she went over the last couplet in her head—something in the ostentatious word play sat up and piqued her intuition. “Come now, we can make a go of this. The clues are like cherries on cream.”

“What?”

“They stick out a mile.”

“Oh? Let’s see.” Donnelly flapped the sheet of paper taut, then traced his finger over the scrawled text. “Well, we can assume the ‘tower trending skyward’ refers to the engraving on the front of the case, the Leviacrum tower. ‘Hold true’ might mean we should do that literally?”

“I see where you’re going. We should hold the case upright, so the tower really does point skyward.” She did that, waited, then when nothing happened, shook it, even held it against her ear to listen for something minutely awry inside, a click, a slosh of liquid, anything. “Read those last two lines again, carefully. My sister said something once about puns being the chinks in a riddler’s armour.”

“Attraction beats the iron gait,

So tend the field from twelve till eight.”

“Whoever wrote that made no attempt to tie it to the previous couplet thematically, at least none that I can see. It’s calling attention to itself. Let’s see—” She counted with her fingers, “—attraction, iron, field—they all pertain to magnetism, do they not?”

“I reckon so. But magnetism in what sense? Literal? Figurative? And what does that have to do with a clock?”

“How do you mean—oh, oh, the twelve till eight! Well, now we’re getting somewhere.”

“We are?”

Meredith closed her eyes in order to focus. “The clock face is this casing: they have the same shape. So...‘Tend the field’ might be telling us to tend, as in to move something around the clock face...something with a magnetic field...from the top of the tower, twelve o’clock, all the way around to eight o’clock.” She opened her eyes. Donnelly was frowning. “Don’t you agree?”

“It’s clever. And if we’re talking about opening a mechanism, then a magnet makes as much sense as anything. Look, we’ve already tilted the thing upright. If that moves something into position at the top—a weighted iron needle, say—then we might be able to use a magnet to shift it around the circumference...”

“To eight o’clock.”

“Exactly.”

“Brilliant. Bear with me two seconds.” Meredith dashed into the kitchen, where she rummaged through the worktop drawer full of practical odds and ends. Cathy’s previous tenant had been a hoarder, and no one had bothered to clear this drawer after the old woman had left. She found the small bar magnet she’d spied a few days before, and dashed back to the settee.

It worked. The magnet clung to the top of the casing exactly as they’d supposed, and when she pulled it free and tried it at any other point, it would not stick. The attraction was at that point only.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said. “Now give us a slow turn to eight o’clock. Here, I’ll hold the case while you move the magnet clockwise. Easy now.”

Despite her fingers trembling with excitement, Meredith kept the bar firmly on the rim and circumnavigated the invisible dial with remarkable steadiness. She gasped when the tiniest clink greeted eight o’clock, almost three quarters of the way around. Still the magnet held.

“See if you can move the little winder,” he whispered.

She daren’t breathe. Not that sharing air with Donnelly was unpleasant—far from it—but the immensity of what she might find inside, what it alluded to, the history, the hierarchy of this fearsome cult—it was all hers for the taking. After dozens of attempts to budge the tiny winder wheel these past weeks, would this be the moment it finally gave up its secret?

One full turn to the left was all it took. The two halves of the case sprang apart, and Donnelly caught the item that tumbled out before it hit the floor.

It was a monocle. Tinted red.

“Give.”

He grinned and peeked through it—“You’re looking in the pink,”—then handed it over.

Heavy for its size, the monocle had an ornate silver rim and a thick lens, maybe half an inch, that didn’t appear convex. Its red hue was the only thing distinguishing it from— “Wait, what was that?”

Donnelly leaned in, scrutinized it. “The colour’s deepened?”

“Yes. With the heat from my breath, I think. I’ll try again.” Sure enough, it changed from crimson to puce and back again in moments, and when she held it away the original red tint returned, as though that were its default colour at room temperature.

“Fascinating.”

“It’s amazing.” She opened a window and held the monocle in the breeze outside, smiled at Donnelly when the lens gradually shifted to a yellowish green. “A temperature-sensitive glass. Those people really do know how to keep a secret. Are you impressed yet?”

“Very.”

“Just call me an honorary Atlas master.” Meredith crept around the room, spying on her world anew through the rose filter. Everything lilted intimately. It was the colour of cool heat. A Martian might see things this way.

“Okay, Master, what is thy bidding? Seeing as you’ve got something to look through, shouldn’t we figure out what you’re suppose to look at? Apart from me.”

“Why, Mr. Donnelly, no need to be so embarrassed.”

He shrugged. “It’d take more than that, sweetheart.”

“I’ve seen paler beetroots.”

“Try a mirror instead of a spyglass and you’ll see who’s the beetroot, darlin’.”

She swallowed, felt her cheeks burn. But the excitement of discovery—the monocle, flirting with a grown man whom she fancied—trumped her shame on this occasion. What was his question again? The sound of a key fiddling in the lock downstairs snapped her from her fantasy. “Cathy’s back. Quick, give me the case. Hide your paperwork.”

“You don’t want Swanny knowing what you’re up to, eh?”

“She’d tell Aunt Lily, and they’d try and put a stop to it. So no.”

“Well, you’ve just joined the right club, by the sounds of it. Already a good ‘un at keeping secrets.”

“Sshh. Remember, you’re investigating Westerfeld for me. Nothing more.”

“Yes, Master.”

She heard Cathy’s boots creak the floorboards outside. “Offer you a cup of tea, Mr. Donnelly?” asked Meredith.

“Be delighted, Miss McEwan.”



The taxi arrived at five-thirty on the dot to take Meredith and Cathy to their first official social function together, a farewell party for the daughter of an immensely wealthy metalwork tycoon, a Mr. J L Pocock, who had supplied materials for the last several upward extensions on the Leviacrum tower itself. Jenny Pocock had recently won a prestigious commission in the British Air Corps based on the Barbary Coast, and was set to leave in a few days. It was therefore an engagement not to be missed, with all manner of influential military men, government and Leviacrum officials, and titled personages vying to impress the estimable Mr. Pocock and his daughter, who was by all accounts an ebony-haired hellcat with a reputation for possessing zero tact. She’d be a bloody airship captain, no question, fond of flogging to get her own way, but wealth was honey and she was the queen bee of the week—for eligible males with a sweet enough tooth, her marriage bed was worth all the grief that would undoubtedly follow it.

One queen bee, many suitors: rich pickings for any young woman yet to debut. Cathy had said tonight was the perfect opportunity for Meredith to display her charms. Grace and good humour could be spotted from across the room. It was a performance, then, to please everyone who might cast an eye in her direction, not just the person she was speaking to. Cynical conversation was a death knell if you had breasts in a place like this. Men of money liked women to be light and bubbly and elegant...and beautiful of course.

Hmm, Meredith fancied she’d rather be Queen Bee Pocock and dispense with tact altogether. If a man was honestly interested in her, he should be pleased to hear what she had to say on more than fashion, the weather, inane gossip; he should either welcome her opinion or be sent packing.

But no, she would be on her best behaviour tonight, if only for Cathy, who was risking her own reputation by vouching for the daughter of a vilified scientist. A social gamble, then, and one Meredith was obliged to buttress. And if no ideal suitor could be found, at least she’d have this opportunity to see firsthand the faces of those she’d read about, the real villains of the British Empire, who hid in plain sight and bore dangerous numbers from one to eight. She would keep a sharp eye for those numbers on pocket watches that told only one time.

Over two hundred and fifty guests mingled in quite spectacular fashion in the ballroom on the second floor. Envious gazes galore arrested Cathy and Meredith as they sauntered out in sapphire gowns cut low (but not too low) and pinched within an inch of their diaphragms. Silk leg-of-mutton sleeves, turquoise, with elbow-length lace gloves, and matching gilt-edged sapphire necklaces provided all the extra elegance they required to draw attention. A girl of weaker constitution might be tempted to run and hide, but not Meredith.

“Don’t they know it’s bad manners to stare?” Meredith stitched on a smile for the crowd, following Cathy’s example.

“Not when you’re to the manor born.”

They looked at each, groaned, and laughed. To Meredith’s surprise, one man joined in from the buffet to their right with a thoroughly over-egged belly chuckle. He was on her before she had a chance to swat him with her enormous sleeve. His hook nose, manic bulging eyes and bared teeth recalled the mid-cackle male half of Punch and Judy.

“What a delightful wit.” He sipped his glass of sherry, which was the same colour as his cheeks, then bared his teeth again. If Meredith could only throw a small coconut at that grin, she might win some sort of prize. “I love a good pun,” he said. How about a good-bye? “Chester Slocombe. Miss Jenny’s best friend since childhood. Always knew she’d rise to the occasion if only she—oh, ha, ha, ha! Did you hear that? Rise to the occasion...in an airship. Ha, ha, ha! Do you smoke it?”

“We’d rather not,” Meredith replied with an eye-roll, “if it’s full of hydrogen.”

“Hydrogen? Hydrogen. Oh, ha, ha, ha! My word, that is positively genius, Miss...”

“Singh.” With that Meredith made her escape, dragging Cathy by the arm and leaving the tipsy Mr. Slocombe to ponder why Miss Singh was suddenly absent, and whether there was another pun somewhere in that name, and why it wasn’t as funny as the others. “Please God, tell me they’re not all like him.”

Cathy mashed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. It was all she could do to bottle the hilarity.

“Laugh it up, Lady Muck. That was very nearly traumatic.”

“I’m sorry, but you handled it well. Very...curt.”

“I’ll never pun again as long as I live, I swear.”

“Come on.” Cathy composed herself and after a long questing glance around the room, sighted their first quarry and led the way. “It can only get better.”

“No, it had best get better.”

“O, ye of little faith.”

Three unsuccessful introductions later, one to an incredibly shy banker’s son, one to Essex’s highest-scoring batsman of the professional cricket season, and one to the drop dead handsome son of a prizewinning inventor—all of whom made their excuses and moved on shortly after hearing the name McEwan—Meredith’s anger began to bite, as it had that week in school when rumours of Father’s betrayal of his partner Clochefort had first made all the papers. The invisible albatross was hanging around her neck once more, and it made her want to slap faces, kick crotches, generally wreak vengeance on these unthinkably misinformed peacocks.

Cathy, on the other hand, even though she’d likely never been ostracised in her life before, took it well on the chin, the odd shrug or playful pout the only concessions to her disappointment. And Meredith didn’t want to disappoint her. Cathy should be the focal point of any gathering, not made to feel like a wallflower by dint of the dubious company she kept. But what could be done? They were jammed by contempt, that was all.

Then Cathy prevailed upon her older cousin’s friend, who was coach of the England Under 21s cricket team, to suggest an introduction. The young man he took them to was named Thurston Kingsley, a floppy-haired but very congenial, rather easy-on-the-eyes Oxford freshman who—thank God—didn’t react in any way to her surname. Cathy seized on this opportunity and slyly coaxed the old coach away, leaving Meredith and Thurston to chat alone near the resting orchestra.

“Nice dress—really suits you,” he said without a shred of irony or guile. And she was looking for both out of habit; many a time man and boy had troweled on the compliments with her imminent bed in mind—it was not hard to spot. Could this be the only agenda-less lad of her age group?

“Thank you. I like your tuxedo, very swish. Where can I get one?”

His quiet laugh and warm smile were relaxing to be around.

“Do you know the Pococks at all, Mr. Kingsley?”

“A little. Our families share several of the same friends, so naturally...”

“You’re not here to chase after Jenny Pocock then?”

“Good Lord, no.” He checked to make sure no one was listening in. “No, I’ll not say what I was going to say.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know you well enough, for starters, and we are her guests after all.”

“Be as a frank as you like, Mr. Kingsley. In fact, that can be your name from now on—Frank—if you say what you were going to say.”

He shook his head in amusement. “These society balls are normally the pits, such dreary affairs, and then you showed up. That was a compliment, by the way.”

“Thank you for clearing that up,” she teased.

“Very well, what I was going to say—” He checked behind them once more, “—is that I find Jenny Pocock insufferable. On one note the whole time, and a screechy one at that. She’ll nag the life out of the poor sap she chooses. A lot of the blokes feel the same about her.”

“Then why are they here? Why are you here?”

“How else could I have got to meet you, Miss McEwan?”

She straightened his bowtie for him. “Frank, I like you. Will you do me a favour?”

“Of course.”

“Keep me to yourself this evening. I’m not feeling gregarious, and there are altogether too many slimy customers I’d really rather not meet. This is much more my style. Let’s have our own little party in the corner, by invitation only. What do you say?”

“Be delighted. That would be my notion as well, if I’m being honest. Never did care for parading about these places.”

“I’m glad. It’s settled then. What shall we have to drink?”

No sooner did she start for the somewhat reduced pyramid of champagne glasses across the hall when a boisterous set of young men jumped Kingsley from behind. One of them put him in a playful headlock, while another pretended to knee him in the face in slow motion. All very high-spirited and loutish and good fun; Meredith rather enjoyed the aghast expressions on the faces of snooty guests nearby. Yes, these strapping, high-born hoodlums were definitely more her cup of coffee this evening, provided they had some of Kingsley’s easygoingness as well.

“I say—Thurs—who’s this you’ve managed to tuck away from the rest of us? For shame. Denying us the best-looking girl here.” The speaker had a neck thicker than his head, and sported a black eye. Probably a rugby player.

“Hear! Hear! Why if it isn’t just like Thurs, hogging the crease like some peevish tail-ender.” Meredith couldn’t quite decipher his cricket-speak, but the new, Eurasian-looking speaker had his arms over the shoulders of two of his mates. He gazed approvingly at her. “New to London, miss?”

Kingsley broke out of the headlock, cocked his arm for a mock punch at the posse, then laughed hard when they all put up their dukes. “Gentlemen and reprobates of the Oxford Cricket First Eleven, allow me to introduce Miss Meredith McEwan.”

“How do you do?—Pleasure, miss—Hello there, darling.” Their overlapped greetings were noticeably politer than their entrance had been, and she curtsied.

“Gentlemen...and reprobates. Tell me, which is which?”

They thrust fingers at each other, jockeying for position. A few cries of “Oi” went up. One or two slapped the backs of rivals’ heads. “No gentlemen here,” the Eurasian man said, “not unless the umpire’s watching,” and promptly had his jacket collar upturned. In his whiplash attempt to fold it back his lapels flung wide open, revealing a pocket watch hanging free by its chain from his waistcoat.

She recognised the case instantly—identical to the one she possessed—and even managed to glimpse the engraved number, 219. A member of the second sect? They met on the second of the month at two o’clock.

“What is your name, sir?”

The man’s eyes lit up, despite the others’ cajoling. “Alan Nickson, miss, at your service.”

“You’re nicked,” someone else quipped, flipping Nickson’s collar up again.

Then it hit her—such good friends likely shared more than headlocks and bad puns. If one was an indentured Atlas man, might the others be as well? Maybe not all of them; that was too much to ask with so few members permitted in total. But it was worth finding out what she could. And now that she had six adoring cricketers to keep her amused and away from hostile society, the evening promised to pass very agreeably indeed. It would also satisfy Cathy, seeing Meredith surrounded by so many Oxford boys. But perhaps not the method of bonding with them she had in mind. For only one thing would ensure a sportsman’s company over the course of an evening.

“Tell me, gentlemen, do you gamble?”

They did, and how! One carried twin packs of cards, though he hadn’t meant to reveal both packs, one being, rather embarrassingly for him, what was known as a rigged deck. He received merciless flack for that from his fellows, who promised he would never live it down. So cards was out, and a good thing, too; Meredith’s entire repertoire consisted of Gin Rummy and Snap.

Nickson had a pair of dice, but with no flat surface to use save the floor—no thank you, even Meredith’s liberal sense of propriety balked at that—they were stumped. The only game she could think of to play, and that she was tolerably good at, was perhaps a tad childish; yet it never failed to cheer her and Sonja up.

“Who knows roshambo?” Blank gazes. “It’s an Asian game my father taught me, also known as scissors-paper-stone?” More blank gazes. She rubbed her gloved hands together, then explained the rules to her six fascinated new boyfriends, using poor Frank, whose evening alone with Meredith had been denied, as the guinea pig. “And that’s all there is to it. Scissors cuts paper, stone blunts scissors, and paper wraps stone. Go on, practice in pairs for a minute, then let the games begin.”

They took it more seriously than she expected, though she shouldn’t really be surprised given their sporting backgrounds. Frank was the best of the lot and seemed to cotton on to the game’s secret: to beat your opponent, you had to become your opponent. To know his patterns, his capacity for randomness, which in most cases was surprisingly low—people generally struggled with spontaneity—and stay one step ahead. A battle of wits, then, more sophisticated than its childish appearance suggested, and darned addictive to boot.

While they were practicing, she put her spectrometer goggles on and briefly studied the other partygoers at maximum magnification, to see who else might be an Atlas member. Very tough to determine, for while watch chains and Atlas pins were ubiquitous, unless a man wanted to read the time he would not retrieve his watch, and in any event those who did possess an Atlas case would never wittingly reveal it in public. Today’s date was the eighth. Perhaps some time after seven, any members of the eighth sect would make their exits? Not much to go on, but leaving a party that early was unusual and the crème de la crème of London society was here tonight. Odds favoured at least a few of the eighth sect being in attendance, and they would shortly be leaving this party for their secret rendezvous.

“Frank—I mean Mr. Kingsley—can you please give me the time?”

“It’s a little after six-thirty,” one of the others, Fraser, beat him to the punch, no doubt trying to impress her. His watch was authentic, non-Atlas.

“Thank you. Are you ready, gents?”

They shuffled into a semicircle around her, focused and entertained. “What do we play for?” asked the man with the black eye, Saunders.

“How about a shilling a round? A round is the best of five hands,” she replied.

“That’s for starters,” said Nickson, the Eurasian, and he went on to organize an ingenious Round Robin tournament in no time at all, the stakes increasing with each round up to a guinea per round for the final winning pair. “And one last thing. The winner gets a kiss from Miss McEwan.”

Cheers went up, and Meredith actually enjoyed her sustained blush when Saunders and Frank fought the others aside to offer her their arms. The orchestra fired up its rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker, so the gamblers headed to the opposite corner of the hall where it was a tad quieter.

“But what if I win, gentlemen?” she asked.

“Then you choose who gets the kiss.” Nickson’s first slip-up, because Meredith had already decided who that would be. She guessed Frank knew it too; his special sheepish grin was just for her. Despite the boisterous interference, his every word and gesture had remained on her wavelength. He was the laid-back one. The quiet centre of the team. Yes, she wouldn’t mind seeing Thurston Kingsley again, spending more time alone with him.

“Agreed.” She pretended to roll up her sleeves. “All right, Saunders, prepare for a thrashing.”

By the last match, her purse jingled with coins. The men had concentrated, tried their best to be unpredictable, but the male tendency toward bloodshed was clearly a factor in their reactive play—scissors and stone were used far, far more than paper. Another player, Donzelot, had accidentally revealed an Atlas pin on his waistcoat when he removed his jacket. Did he belong to a sect, or was he simply a familiar, awaiting an opening?

As she’d expected, Frank faced her in the final. By now a group of younger spectators had assembled around them, clapping the winner of each round. He put up a brave fight, blindsiding her twice with paper when she’d predicted scissors, but her final flourish of three stones in a row bamboozled him.

She leaned in and kissed his cheek before the others had a chance to nominate themselves for the honour.

Groans and boos from the cricketers turned to general laughter. Frank kissed her cheek in reply, earning himself another headlock from Saunders for unchivalrous conduct and being the object of unwarranted favouritism. In the ensuing tussle she glimpsed Atlas pins attached to...both men’s waistcoats?

She stepped away.

No, not him. Anyone but him.

The Leviacrum’s legacy had clearly infected and conquered the majority of the upper class. Meredith now gazed for the first time upon the wraith-like nature of that ideology: Thurston Kingsley, freshman at Oxford, member of the Cricket 1 XI and the England Under 21s, a sweet, guileless and reluctant partygoer, was its personification, the method by which that unholy organisation had risen to power in the first place. He made friends easily. He was non-threatening. He hid his ambition well. Very well.

A dose of salt in what had been a sweet dessert, it ended the evening bitterly. All she wanted was to find Cathy and take a taxi home, forget she’d ever met the Gambling Six. The whole rotten country was honeycombed with deceit. No wonder Father spent his life searching for another world.

“I’m really very sorry, Miss McEwan. I clean forgot I’ve an urgent piece of coursework that needs finishing. I’m afraid I have to leave early.” Frank, a.k.a. Thurston Jekyll. “Will you forgive me? But I’d very much like to call on you sometime, if I have your permission, that is.”

“Very well.” She didn’t quite know how those words came out—frustration perhaps? Things had been going so well. Did a part of her refuse to believe his Atlas allegiance was anything other than mere lip-service, a family tradition, and he honestly was who he seemed to be? “Goodbye, Frank. Best of luck with your coursework.”

He bowed, then dashed off to the buffet table, where he met up with—ugh, no—the oafish Chester Slocombe, who’d slimed her upon arrival and tainted her appreciation of puns forevermore.

Meredith crept away from the pack, put her spectrometer goggles back on, watched Frank confiscate Slocombe’s glass of punch and take him to one side for a lively reprimand. Interesting. A glimpse of the other Frank, a.k.a. Thurston Hyde? Slocombe reached into his waistcoat pocket and retrieved...Ah, so there you are!

The number on his pocket watch was 814. Another member of the eighth sect.

But that halfwit? Hell, he could always pun the Coalition to death. She found herself following them, step after grim, determined step, through a forest of resplendent twirling mannequins.

Kingsley ushered his obscene friend outside, where they jumped into a carriage and sped away eastwards. She asked the doorman for the time. “Seven-twenty, miss. Would you like a taxi?”

“Yes, please. Quick as you can now.” She’d won enough to pay for any fare, any distance tonight. “If Lady Catarina Fairchild asks if you’ve seen Meredith McEwan, tell her I’ll be home presently.”

“Yes, miss. I’ve got that.” He helped her up onto the post-chaise. “Good night, miss.”

“Good night.” And to the driver, “The two gentlemen who just left?”

“Aye, miss?”

“Trail them...at a distance now. I don’t want them to see me.”

“Anything the matter?”

“No, no.” She handed him a five pound note. “Paper always beats stone. Isn’t that right, driver?”

He snapped the reins in agreement.



A damp, pearly mist, kept aglow by the odd streetlamp, hung low over everything in this unpopulated part of the city. Cobbles gave way to a dirt road twenty feet wide between raised pavements. Its slick mud glistened amber under the lamps’ glow, while a line of arrowheads pointed skyward above the mist on either side. A tall black fence of some kind. The area had the desolate feel of an abandoned village in the aftermath of a natural disaster—a tense energy, an absence of the souls that created it, held dominion. She could no longer see Frank’s carriage ahead, but the occasional neighing of its horses told her it was still there, ahead of them in the mist.

“Driver, what is this place?” she whispered.

“The old Yew Bank cemetery, miss, either side of us. One of my great uncles is buried ‘ere someplace. No one comes ‘ere now’days, not since them disappearances when I were a boy. Dozens, there was, all in the space of a few months. Shortly after that they pulled the old church down and fenced the throughway from Friar’s Bridge. Folks have seen and heard all sorts of strange things ‘ere: things it don’t do no good to mention out loud at this time of night. Now I’m not normally one for superstition, miss, but this place is something else. Says it all that there’s however many thousands of graves yet you can count the visitors who still come ‘ere on one hand. You sure you want to go on, miss?”

“I am. It must have a caretaker, a custodian of some sort to tend the graves, the paths, see to the general upkeep?”

“I guess so. Though whether that’s any living caretaker is up for debate.” He winked, managed a nervous lopsided smile. She nodded her appreciation for his attempt to lighten the mood.

“Where does this road lead exactly?” she asked.

“Well, the lane we’re on is a dead end. If you’re still after followin’ those men but don’t want ‘em to know it, I’d suggest goin’ on foot from ‘ere. Gates are right ahead, if I remember correct, an ‘undred yards or so.”

“Thank you, driver. I’m indebted to you.”

“Weren’t nothin’, miss. Would you like for me to wait ‘ere? It’d be no trouble. And I’d feel better if you was to have a ride home after, just in case you see something you’d rather not.”

“Such as?”

He shrugged. “Beats me, miss. It ain’t quite a full moon, but it’s moon enough for what’s been heard hereabouts before now.”

“No, thank you anyway. I appreciate your concern, but I might be some time.”

He helped her down, then tipped his hat. “If I was you, I wouldn’t come back this way, miss. It’s about the loneliest place around. On the far side of the cemetery to where we’re facin’, there used to be another cut-through across a stream; course that was when I was little. Just stick to the main path an’ you’ll find it if it’s there. It’ll lead you out to a row of riverbank cottages and a pub, the Queen Christina. Should be able to get a ride home from there without trouble.”

Meredith thanked him with an extra five pound note, waited for him to leave, then selected the night-time lens on her goggles. The pearly mist now glowed with a wishy-washy emerald hue. From the pavement she saw wild tall grass and leathery creepers girdling the fence, some almost reaching the arrowheads, which were about fifteen feet high. She took her shoes off and crept in her stocking feet until the pavement ended and a crescent of red gravel, recently laid, formed a semicircle in front the massive iron cemetery gates.

Frank’s carriage was nowhere to be seen. He must have opened the gates and driven through. But they were locked, and the lock, if it even qualified as such, presented no keyhole or aperture of any kind. Instead, an oval brass plaque jutted out from the fence at about chest height to the left of the gate. Its inscription read, In Memory of the many persons who disappeared from Yew Bank in that fateful summer of... The rest was covered by a layer of grime. The plaque’s lid was hinged, so she lifted it.

Raised silver buttons bearing all the letters of the alphabet and two numbers, nine and zero, formed a concentric oval in the middle of the plate inside. But there was a conspicuous amount of grid-patterned space around the oval. A small, collapsible steel bracket attached to one corner of the plate was in the shape of a hangman’s post. Several grooved copper pipes fed from the underside of the plate and converged into the ground on the other side of the fence. When she touched them, her fingertips buzzed.

An electrified puzzle.

No sooner did she run her fingers along the plate than a heavy clanking sound erupted behind her, from some way up the road, inside the mist. It repeated, drawing closer and closer.

An automobile.

It had to belong to another sectarian running late for the eight o’clock confab.

Meredith spun around but she had nowhere to hide. On either hand the fence was impassable. The gates were even higher still. She darted onto the pavement, crouched against the darkest, thickest tangle of overgrowth she could find, and prayed the mist did the rest. Her dark blue cloak might help camouflage her, but damn it, one attentive glance in her direction and the game would be up.

The clattering heap squealed to a halt before the gravel, and the driver, an elderly, moustached man wearing a flying jacket and a flat cap, leapt out muttering obscenities. He grasped a pocket watch by its chain. Never once looked anywhere but where he was going. As soon as he’d unlocked the gate—by way of the brass plate puzzle—it crept open on its own, but too slowly for him, as he shook his steering wheel impatiently from the driver’s seat and then hurled his hat at the fence in frustration when the car took its good time accelerating. He drove into the cemetery without looking back. The gate closed behind him.

Meredith fetched the flat cap, thinking to use it as an excuse for following the man through the gates if she was caught—an attempt to return it to him. The time he’d spent besting the puzzle, no more than twenty seconds, encouraged her. He’d carried his Atlas pocket watch, too, so he had to have used the monocle. To read something perhaps? Something ordinary light would not reveal?

Hmm, it all seemed to fit. The steel hangman’s post with a magnet on the end, to undo the case. The oval of raised buttons one could press till doomsday and not find the right sequence to unlock the gates, unless one had a correct code on the correct day? And the monocle, given to read the real buttons which...yes, yes...appeared in the empty grid squares around the oval. Flat, square buttons numbering from zero to nine that only revealed themselves when viewed through a pinkish-red lens. She had to breathe on the glass to achieve the right hue.

But what’s the combination? The Atlas entry code?

The unique number engraved on her case—eight-two-six—was the only one she could think of. If this didn’t work, she might have to go—

It did.

As the imperious iron gates inched apart, a growing queasiness turned her stomach and the gravel path before her and this whole misadventure to quicksand. Uncertain ground. Beyond, danger most certain. It was the momentous moment of her life away from home, a point of no return, and that it drew her toward it rather than repulsed her satisfied Meredith deep inside. This she could do. This she would do. This...she was born to do.

The gates whined closed behind her, and she scurried off the path, flitting from yew to yew a whisper away from an eternity of moonlit headstones.



Wheel tracks grooved the soggy path of compacted wood chippings until she could no longer see the gates behind her through the mist. A pungent smell of wet soil accompanied her off-road, while the occasional ship’s horn from the Thames provided the only sound. At first.

Heavy footsteps disturbed the gravel ahead. She ran behind the nearest tree. The steps continued toward her, first at a slow walk, than at a trot—not a run, the thing now had more than two legs. It had started off with two, now it had four? Or perhaps there were two people and their steps had been in sync at first.

Raspy breaths, almost snarls, ricocheted quietly around the cemetery. Closer. Now farther away. But where? What was it? She peeked around the tree but there was nothing there.

A wolf-like howl erupted, goosing her spine. Still nothing to see. Then a series of vicious snarls, as though the wolf was fighting with its prey. They couldn’t be...phantom animals, could they? She shook the idea from her head. The fool driver had planted that superstitious seed with his hinting at the full moon.

But what is making those noises?

If Sonja were here she’d tell Meredith to think this through with logic, deduction, a dispassionate mind. All sound had a source. And if she couldn’t see the source then it must be hidden. But why? Who would want to create this illusion? Someone intending to frighten people away. And who would do that?

Someone protecting a secret.

She crept by the second row of overgrown headstones until she was certain the raspy breaths and the snarls and the footsteps were emerging from the grass at her feet. Sure enough, a little rummaging among the weeds dislodged a metal speaker attached to a wire that fed into the ground, into the grave.

How utterly ghoulish.

But the charade was clear—a cheap but effective gimmick to repel visitors from a place already conducive to people’s worst fears and superstitions. The cemetery. An ideal place to hide secrets.

Somewhere off to her left, an undead groan. A long way up ahead, a ball and chain being dragged over the shale. They might scare the Dickens out of unsuspecting visitors—yes, they were straight out of A Christmas Carol—but Meredith merely shook her head. Then swallowed.

They’d best all be fake.

The line of yews ended and still the wheel tracks went on, dozens of them. They veered right at a cobblestone crossroads, into an imposing section of the cemetery where simple headstones gave way to ever larger, more elaborate and overgrown gothic crypts, some made of limestone, others of marble.

Partway along this row, dense grass had completely covered the cobblestone. Here the tracks seemed to disappear altogether. An unnatural archway of ribbed wooden beams decorated with moss and fake bark seemed odd. From a distance it resembled trees bowing over the road. Perhaps that was the intent. Meredith backtracked to make sure she hadn’t missed a turning anywhere between crypts. No, and it didn’t make a jot of sense. How could vehicles and horses up and vanish without a clue in the middle of a lane? Unless...

She kicked at the edge of the grass, bent low to inspect the ground where stone met vegetation. Hmm, it appeared normal, natural, but something had to be amiss. The crypt buildings opposite were very old, partially thatched by the tangles of dead brown creepers. Outside the one on the left stood a discoloured brass plaque on a stone pedestal. Again, to the unsuspecting eye it didn’t seem unusual, but Meredith was starting to think like an Atlas agent.

If a vehicle can’t disappear from thin air, then it has to have been moved.

After lifting the plaque lid as she had at the gate—the latch on this one was disguised as a gilded octagon—she re-entered her code on the identical buttons, using the tinted monocle to read the hidden digits. A distant ratcheting of metallic cogs and gears made her step back from the cobbles. A vibration underfoot tickled her soles and shins.

The entire road ahead began to slide away. The thick grass was merely camouflage on the roof of some sort of underground vault. This roof was moved by means of two huge iron chains attached to a steam-powered crank. The hot vapour cloud billowed out of an exhaust grid in the ground near the left hand crypt.

A shallow concrete slope led down inside the vault, and here she saw the continuation of damp wheel tracks leading far, far below the graveyard.

So here we go...

A McEwan ventures underground.

The purpose of the artificial archway was now clear, too—it hid this operation from spying airships.

If it had been more cramped inside she might not have risked it, yet there was room enough for horses and carriages and great big clunking cars: hopefully more than enough room for her to hide in.

After removing her shoes (again) she gripped the Atlas case in her gloved hand, said a prayer, and stole inside the vault.

At the foot of the slope, gas lamps stood equidistantly along the walls of an enormous concrete sanctum, not home lights but full-sized streetlamps. A lever next to the first lamp recovered the roof. Meredith hoped no one was close enough to hear it.

All right, now what?

A doorway in the left hand wall beside the ramp led to a staircase, presumably accessed from the crypt up top by those who came on foot. She followed the faint muddy boot prints and wheel tracks downhill until they turned left into a vast tunnel at least sixty feet wide, fifteen high. She couldn’t see its end. It seemed to dip and then rise concavely for half a mile or so. Dozens of broad white portcullises barred regular entry points into either wall of the corridor. Each was lit by a streetlamp, and all appeared to be closed. So where had the vehicles gone? All the way up the corridor?

Eight thick, raised, parallel metallic lines ran along the floor of the passage, four on the left, four on the right. There was a walk space in the centre, and another on either flank. The lines started after the second portcullis. They gleamed, appeared to be brand new. Electric cables fed from the lines up the wall on either side. They attached to curved apparatuses resembling broad, upside-down periscopes in the ceiling. These measured the width of each set of four lines. The same set-up repeated at regular intervals along the tunnel on both sides, the periscopes on the right hand side facing the opposite way.

It behoved her to be extra cautious from here on as there was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to retreat to, should she brave this enormous passage. The flat cap might be a decent disguise if only she weren’t dressed like a tsarina.

She backed up. Beyond the turn into this central corridor, shadowy alcoves surrounded a large, empty rectangular space with a low ceiling. Two or three sets of footprints headed in that direction. It had the feel of a utility area, and might provide her with a way to orient herself, to learn more about this underground sanctum.

In the first alcove she found a dark, musty room about the size of a work shed. Strange metallic sleds of various sizes, some twice as big as her, hung on padded wooden racks from floor to ceiling. The smaller sleds weighed almost nothing but seemed firm enough; she could neither warp nor press the metal. The bottoms were lined with a curious layer of something thin and grey.

A sign on the wall said, Undersides Made of Pyrolytic Graphite. Handle With Care.

Whatever that was.

Workmen had left overalls and mining helmets on hooks in one corner. A few pairs of Wellingtons stood underneath. They all smelled like underpants in summer but she’d come too far to quit now, and a disguise—any disguise—was essential if she wanted to go further. Relief from her constricting dress and stays left her a little giddy, energised. She imagined Sonja beside her, egging her on, rattling off nautical terms a mile a minute to frame all this as an adventure, something they should be doing as McEwans. It was in their blood, didn’t she know?

The overalls were too big so she turned up the sleeves and legs and hoped no one would notice how loose the Wellingtons were. If it came to a foot race, she might as well be wearing clown shoes crossing a bog. The mining helmets were uncomfortable as well as cumbersome, so she opted for the flat cap instead, taking care to tie her hair up as tightly as she could. Lastly, she used saliva to wet the mud on the underside of the Wellingtons, and smeared it over her face.

It wasn’t exactly what Cathy had had in mind for wooing London, but it would have to do.

She grabbed a sled from the rack and determined to figure out its use. If this was the preferred mode of transportation down here, it would only aid her disguise. How, then, did it work?

The other alcoves in this utility area were either empty or filled with trolleys, broken sleds, crates of empty milk bottles and cans of fruit, wooden beams, dustbins, horseshoes, assorted automobile parts, and endless stacks of metallic tracks, identical to those laid down on the middle of the corridor.

Attraction beats the iron gait,

So tend the field from twelve till eight.

She ran those lines from Donnelly’s verse over and over in her mind. Magnetism: the key to unlocking her Atlas case; also, she was now quite certain, the means by which the sled would be whisked down the passageway. For while science had never been her forte at school, inklings and intuition had; they’d seen her through several subjects she hadn’t expected to pass. They were the hidden reminders of one’s experiences, however unconsciously one soaked them up in the first place. Metal tracks and electric cables and metallic sleds?

Some kind of magnetic locomotion.

The main corridor remained still, empty. Behind the first portcullis on the left, a brass sphere supported by decorative steel spider legs sat in the centre of a room that pulsed ultraviolet and yellow alternately. A bizarre fungal growth covered the top third of the sphere, while tables filled with potted plants, glass tubes, beakers, and bottles of coloured liquids stood away to one side.

What the deuce is that all about?

The second and third portcullises faced one another. A lever was attached to the wall outside each. Beneath the lever, the wheels of a five-digit combination lock made her think twice. She only had three numbers, those engraved on the case. If she were faced with this type of lock further on...

Automobiles of every shape and size were parked in the left hand room. Horses and carriages waited in the other. Meredith heard voices coming from the latter, so she slung the sled over her shoulder and made for the metal tracks.

A notice on the wall next to the start of the four metal strips on the left read, Caution! Diamagnetic levitation uses powerful electromagnets. No heavy metallic items allowed. High setting for freight sleds ONLY. Single passengers use low setting. When light is green, pump lever twice. For smoothest ride, maintain centre of balance.

The light was indeed green, so she pumped the black-handled lever back and forth in the ground. Over the tracks, a heavy whuh-whuh-whuh began and seemed to cushion the air from underneath. As she lowered the sled, it rested just above the metal tracks on an invisible bed of air. When she let go for a moment it began to accelerate, perhaps pulled by the periscope overhead. Halting its progress took a considerable effort. But even then pulling the sled back was impossible, so she had to tilt it sideways to free it, then start again at the beginning. As she did, the butterflies in her stomach swarmed electrically to her fingers and toes in a vision-whitening pulse, making her gasp. It was a pleasant sensation, though, and left a prickly tickle all over her body.

She sat on the sled. It lowered ever so slightly and immediately picked up speed. Meredith found that the steadier she kept it, the more the egg-shaped whuh-whuh-whuh sensation flattened to a cockle-warming whir. Approaching each new periscope hanging from the ceiling produced another gentle spurt of acceleration, and there were hundreds. The periscopes on the opposite side of the tunnel faced the opposite way, so the right hand track had to be for travelling in that direction.

How far she’d have to travel she didn’t know, but none of the portcullis rooms seemed apt for a meeting place. They were laboratories and storage rooms, and she’d give anything to be able to explore them at her leisure.

Maybe later in the month, when the eight sects aren’t meeting?

The periscopes became more frequent as she began to climb. Several between portcullises. They dragged her uphill at a constant speed, a gentle ten miles an hour.

If all this was under the city of London, how many more tunnels had they built? Perhaps even the Leviacrum tower, despite its constant upward expansion, was simply not big enough to house the scientific ambition of its masters, and the only alternative was to spread downward, splay outward where none could gain access. She did her best to identify the experimentations she could only glimpse as she passed; some didn’t mean a thing to her, and she wished again that Sonja were here beside her to provide a little insight.

In one, an emerald light beam was suspended between two trees. Swarms of living fluorescent particles inside it appeared to give off flashes of electricity. These flashes struck a shiny metal orb mounted on a rotating light-sensitive wheel below. Glowing symbols then appeared on the wheel, as if the orb had translated the flashes into pictorial language. These symbols were then recorded, like photographs, onto a never-ending roll of film, before they disappeared and the wheel spun to record the next message. Communicating with intelligent microscopic life forms? Whatever next?

More than one laboratory was sealed with glass doors behind its portcullis. These contained human bodies afloat in large glass jars full of bubbling water. Alternating currents flash-crackled between silver globes above each jar, zapping the water repeatedly. It reminded her of the heinous science the characters in Sonja’s penny dreadful comics often practiced, twisted experiments inspired by Dr. Frankenstein’s. But what where they up to?

Another room boasted an iron vault door behind its portcullis, with no window. A notice on the door read, Caution! Live ammunition used inside. The next warned of explosive chemicals, while the one after that contained highly flammable liquid. Meredith kept thinking of the recent cataclysmic explosions, first off Norway, then in the South Pacific, many had blamed on this institution. Were these research laboratories linked to those acts of destruction? If only she had a camera with her. If only she had access to the records detailing what went on here. If only the rest of the world knew about this place!

A junction up ahead signalled the end of her current ride. She alighted from the sled just before a corridor leading to the left. The sign said, Automata 8, Anti-Gravity 3, Elevators 15 & 16.

But elevators to where? Straying from this central tunnel probably wasn’t a smart move but Meredith’s curiosity was now insatiable, sugar-rich—the more she saw, the more she wanted to know. It coursed through her arteries with fizzy urgency. She might be the only outsider to have ever reached this far. It might be her only chance to go all the way.

Carrying the sled under her arm, she soon arrived at a gridiron bridge over an acre of glass-ceiled laboratory cubicles. The only lights were on the underside of the bridge. They revealed just enough of the sleeping mechanisms in the cubicles to tell her this was experimental automaton technology. And obscene. Half-man, half-horse machines. Then a hideous centipede-like mechanism made up of a dozen small man-shaped automata joined by flexible piping. Then a slender automaton dressed up like a prostitute. Lastly, disembodied metal arms and oversized heads protruding from a kitchen wall, the former for cooking, the latter for God-knew-what. If this was Automata 8, what the hell were they making in the first seven?

Beyond the bridge she found the elevators. She hurried past those because the one on the right was grumbling—in use? A couple of trolleys had been left outside a storage room nearby.

Fifty yards on she reached what had to be Anti-Gravity 3, a stupendous cavern over five hundred feet deep and about a quarter of a mile square. Reinforced glass shielded it from her current level, while there were umpteen observation levels on the far side. She used the high magnification on her goggles to look around. Nine concrete craters dotted across the cavern floor appeared to be the hubs, with equipment and boxes strewn around them. Miniature rockets were hung by scaffolding over four of them. Exactly what the propulsion might be she couldn’t guess. Anti-gravity? A new one on Meredith.

Large copper pipes emerged from the roof, lined the walls, and appeared to feed these crater hubs. What did they bring? Oil? Gas? Psammeticum?

Figures appeared in one of the observation windows opposite. She ducked out of sight, clamped a hand over her thumping heart. There were several well-dressed men and women toting pens and clipboards. No sense in dawdling here—she’d seen all she came to see. Meredith dashed past the elevators and across the bridge and back to the central corridor, her mind spooling theories.

Luckily the corridor was still empty. The sect members all had to be engaged elsewhere. Were they evaluating the various experiments? Maybe some of them. What about the others?

She decided to press on a little, to see as much as she possibly could before heading back to the cemetery. Ahead on the left, a locked wooden door was marked Southwest Administration. Directly facing the end of the magnetic track stood a green octagonal building. Lights were on inside, and through one of its porthole windows she spied a plush, oak-panelled conference room.

Four people sat around the octagonal table in the centre. A further two men and a woman stood apart from the table, scrutinizing a wall map of Great Britain; they smoked cigars and cheroots and sipped brandy as they listened to the only speaker at the table, a scowling old woman who was reading a sheet of paper through her Atlas monocle.

Of the others, she recognised Frank, aka Thurston Kingsley, pensively biting his nails, the boorish Mr. Slocombe, who glared at the old woman as though she was reading his worst school report out loud, and the impatient elderly driver who’d thrown away his flat cap at the front gate. While it appeared official and all—identical letters and paraphernalia had been left for each of them at their places at the table—it somehow didn’t strike Meredith as particularly...intimidating. Only two of the members were over thirty years of age, fully three of the seven were women, and in a society replete with veteran scientists, businessmen, politicians and warmongers, these did not seem to represent the power elite of such a monumental organisation.

Heck, Slocombe was more than enough proof. These were second, maybe third-tier Atlases at best. Maybe even familiars granted access but awaiting promotion to the premium ranks of their particular sect.

Meredith crept around the left side of the octagon, to see what lay on the other side. There she found another corridor, half as wide as the previous and much shorter, less than a hundred yards to a bare brick wall and a steel gate on the far side. Kingsley and his cronies couldn’t see her. She hung her sled on a rack next to a few dozen others and continued on.

“...Ethel Dockery and those pesky unionists, damn their hides,” a disgruntled voice emerged from the first open doorway ahead. Meredith froze. She thought about squirming away as fast as her boots would flap.

No, you couldn’t outrun a corpse from one of those jars.

She caught sight of the brim of a large touring hat, then turned on a sixpence and slumped back the way she’d come—if her disguise worked at all it would have to be now, while they couldn’t see her face. Her sister knew how to walk like a boy; Meredith only had to copy that and she might be all right.

“Come, let’s to the lounge,” a woman said. “We’ve barely said hello. It’s been all business, business, boo and bye.”

“Ha! D’you hear that, Denton? The lady and I are in agreement at long last. It’s what I’ve been saying for months: we need to pace these meetings so that one doesn’t sneeze and miss half the docket.”

“We’ll have to see about that.”

When Meredith heard their footsteps grow fainter, she loitered at the sled rack until the group had exited through the steel gate. Then she made her way to the room they’d emerged from. They’d left the light on inside, but the door was locked. She moved on to the next, hoping to find an office, a filing room, anywhere she could slip inside and retrieve some proof that this place existed, proof that she’d been here, in the heart of Atlas, and that there was more going on here than mere rumours and whispers.

No luck with the next door, nor the next. Strangely, the steel door at the end of the passage had been left slightly agape. She frowned, took her hands out of her deep overall pockets. The one gate in the entire complex left open—and the farthest gate at that? Nah, not a chance. Not unless they’d left someone else...

“Oi, fella, what are you doing this far in?” Oh, God. She shrugged without meaning to. The hoarse male voice sounded as though it belonged at a derby race, vocal chords worn to gravel by incessant yelling. “Won’t turn around, eh? You’re either lost or you’re about to be...from this earth. Who are the devil are you?”

Meredith shut her eyes, mashed her lips together. He would be upon her any moment, and she would never see daylight again. See Sonja again. The echoing click-click of his heels on the concrete belonged to a giant, Atlas himself, rearing up behind her. Size was all that mattered, and she had none.

Size?

Her right foot pressed onto the side of her left Wellington before her brain had fully comprehended. The boots were far too big for her, easy to step out of. The left peeled off with a single tug.

“Oi, what are you up to? Stop that.”

Not likely. She kicked the right boot off and, without even turning to see his face, bolted for the steel gate. The click-click was right behind, growing quicker and closer. He could reach out and snag her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t? Meredith dodged through the open gate and tore up the winding steps behind it, watching the ground and only the ground, its slippery, depressed-by-wear stone increments leading her...where exactly? Hot on her heels, demonic clicks. Above, demonic laughter. She either had a quick way out at the top of these stairs or she had to make up a story, a plausible story, for the real eight of the Eighth.

She clattered into upside-down wooden chairs stacked on a circular wooden table before she realised the staircase had ended. A soft carpet broke her fall. She rolled aside, hid her face with the flat cap so the people sitting on barstools couldn’t identify her. Gasping, she snatched up a chair and hurled it with all her might through the nearest stained-glass window. It smashed. A strong gust threw biting smithereens at her, so she shielded her face with the baggy sleeves of her overall.

“Quick, someone grab her!”

Her, yes. Without the flat cap she was a woman again. The smoky taste of night air beckoned. Meredith was in mid-vault over the jagged shards when strong arms lashed around her midriff and yanked her back inside.

“Get off, bastard. Let go, you son of a—”

A slap to her face stung like crazy, smarted as the group manhandled her across the lounge.

Anxious voices overlapped: “Who is she?—Let me see!—How on earth did a little girl?—Girl my foot, she’s a Coalition minx, come to bury us—That right, Minx? You aim to do away with the Eighth, do you? Well, you’re ours now, and you’ve no more hours left. Ha! Ha! Hours—do you smoke it?”

“If you morons plot as badly as you pun, the rest of the world has nothing to worry about.” She spat. Another stinging slap made her cry out, and she had to blink twice as hard and twice as fast to demist her vision.

“As chairman, it’s your decision, Denton. How do we do away with—”

Meredith head-butted behind her, caught her captor square on the chin. He yelled and let go. She fled for the open window, this time managing the leap outside, where she instantly collapsed under the gouging pain of her soles being cut to ribbons on shattered glass. She crawled on her knees and sleeve-covered hands—the turn-ups had unravelled to full length—out into a cloistered courtyard on a blustery night. A measure of how far she’d travelled since the cemetery, where it had been misty and still.

Rough hands picked her up again. This time she trembled, balled her feet to lighten the agony—it only compounded the multiple wounds, as many of the shards were still embedded. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. Everything she was and had ever been did not permit it, not tonight, not in the face of bullies.

“Slit her throat and have done with it,” said Denton, a slight, very short man well past retirement age, whose Slavic face was framed by enormous mutton chops. “I don’t have the stomach to torture any more young girls. They can endure the devil’s own punishment, and you get nothing from them.”

“Let me try, then,” replied a hawkish-looking woman of about forty-five. Her smooth husky skin and lifeless dark eyes belonged at the prow of a barge on the River Styx. “Maybe you’ve been missing a woman’s touch.”

“Come now, Cybil, that isn’t your game,” said Denton.

“No, but I have a feeling this one knows more than we suppose. What say we take her to one of the new labs, see if we can’t get her to...open up a little. Cathy, Lily, it’s time you got your hands dirty as well. There are dark times ahead, and wars are not won by parlour games.”

Cathy? Lily?

“I’ve seen her before. I believe I know her,” said the taller of the two.

Meredith blinked twice. Bitterly. Twice more. She backtracked in her mind, trying to remember where she was—not at home in Southsea, nor in her house near Vincey Park in London. But—but Lady Catarina and Aunt Lily were here in the flesh, not ten feet away, gazing at her with such disdain, such contemptible contempt, she might as well be nothing more than an insolent tweenie maid from their long-forgotten past.

This had to be a bad dream. Cathy and Aunt Lily...Atlas members? Sonja would laugh herself silly...or spontaneously combust in horror.

“No, I must have been mistaken,” Aunt Lily corrected herself. “The girl has gumption, though, twenty-four carats of the stuff, whoever she is.”

“Gumption or not, we should find out what she knows,” Cathy replied.

“Cathy? Aunt Lily?” Even speaking their names out loud could not pierce the unreality of them being here.

“She does seem to know you.” Denton pinched Meredith’s cheeks together, shook her head until her teeth rattled. “You mean to say you’re this woman’s niece?”

“No!” Meredith replied instinctively.

“So why the ‘aunt’?” demanded Cybil.

“Why the ugly face?”

“You’ll answer me, or by God you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

“How many guesses do I have?”

Cybil dropped her shawl from her shoulders. “Smythe, hand me one of your pistols.”

“With pleasure.”

“You’re not interrogating her after all?” The Right Honourable Denton sounded a little put-out.

Cybil leaned forward, pistol in hand, and gave a hateful ugh noise, as though the very thought of Meredith being alive any longer in her presence made her retch. She leaned closer, her French perfume invading Meredith’s nostrils. Her bosom swelled in the centre, between her breasts. The fabric of her dress continued to bulge, to tent outward, almost as if...

The blade tore through her dress from behind at the same moment blood ran from the corner of her mouth. The same ugh noise sank deep, more prolonged, a heavenward scream trapped in a bileful bubble on its way to hell.

“Traitors!” Denton yelled, and his throat opened wide, gushed crimson at the slash of a blade. Blood slapped the floor before he did.

A flurry of deadly action erupted around Meredith. Cathy wielded the blade—unsheathed from her parasol—like a vengeful Valkyrie, felling Smythe before turning to spar with a large man who swung a barstool at her. It was an uneven fight, as Cathy’s agility and footwork had him swinging at air.

Meanwhile, Aunt Lily hitched her skirt and petticoats up and pulled a derringer from her garter belt. One shot, right through his forehead, freed the desperate hold of Meredith’s captor. He flopped onto the shards of broken glass at her feet.

The man swinging the barstool got lucky, clipped the hilt of Cathy’s blade, knocking it from her hand. In ducking his next swipe, she tripped backward over the fallen bodies of Cybil and Denton, and lay spreadeagled on the ground, at his mercy.

Furious, Meredith snatched up the pistol Smythe had given Cybil and shot Barstool Man through the chest. Twice. Three times. Four. She wouldn’t give up the gun to Aunt Lily, not even when blood blossomed as a dark rose on the ground around him. Aunt Lily had to prise it free.

Unfortunately, one of the group had escaped. He’d been injured during the fight but now limped away across the courtyard, screaming for help. Meredith had no idea whereabouts in London they were, but any assistance he managed to procure here, in this vicinity, would not be to their benefit.

“Finish him,” Aunt Lily said to Cathy—one tigress to another.

My Aunt Lily? My Cathy?

The only thing Meredith knew for certain was that she’d brought this on herself. Curiosity hadn’t killed the cat tonight, but it had certainly skinned it, left it doubting even its closest kin. Aunt Lily draped Cybil’s shawl over Meredith, held her tight, not saying a word.

Under a gibbous moon, on the far edge of the gothic quadrangle, Lady Catarina ran down the last member of the eighth sect. There was a glimmer of steel above her head. The man screamed and wailed and screamed.

Then he didn’t.