The current picked up speed in the tube, and soon they were sailing down the center, their green bacterial lights casting flying rings along the bricks ahead and behind, making for a strange and beautiful ride. Gwen gave Jack a smile and a wink. He nodded and did his best to relax, watching the show. He was almost enjoying himself, until he felt the cold touch of frigid water seeping through his sneakers.
“Gwen! The floor!”
It took only a moment to identify the leak. With their attention focused out the bubble at the front, neither of them had bothered to check the door. A flat stream shot up through the seal at the base of the hatch. And the water was deeper on the bench side of the car. Jack glanced out the forward bubble. The bioluminescent glow reflecting off the bricks was a hair brighter on the lower left, the wall a hair closer. Their ancient aquatic Tube car had abandoned the exact center of the line. “We’re listing.” Jack took his seat and buckled up. “And we’re losing altitude.”
Gwen sat down next to him, her calm not so pronounced as before. “It’s a short trip. The flow around the cylinder will act as a cushion, keep us off the bottom.” She chewed her lower lip, staring down at the leak.
“Sure it will.”
Jack and Gwen both tilted their heads as they watched the car list farther off-center. Up ahead, Jack could see a disk of light blue, the end of the tunnel.
“We’re almost there,” said Gwen, tightening her belt. “These cars use drop weights for surfacing. Once we’re through the exit, we’ll lose the weights and float right to the surface.”
Jack wasn’t so sure. “Assuming we’re not too heavy, thanks to all this water.” He felt the cold of it creeping up his ankles. “We should drop them now.”
“No. If we drop them too soon, we’ll grind along the top of the passage and get—”
Both children lurched sideways. The aquatic car had hit bottom. There was a horrendous grind of steel on wet brick as it slowed to a crawl, green lights dimming. The front end passed through the exit and the bottom slammed down on the edge, leaving them less than halfway out into open water. A rivet popped. A new spring bubbled up from the floor. Jack started to unbuckle.
Gwen grabbed his shoulder. “Not yet. Once we’re free, the trip to the top might be . . . exhilarating.”
Jack glared at her. “You know how I feel about exhilarating!”
“And that’s why you should stay strapped in.” She pointed at Jack’s knees. “The weight release lever is in the bench between your legs. Pull it now.”
He crunched forward in his seat and found the T-handle, recessed into the steel face of the bench. He pulled. Nothing happened. The water continued to rise, freezing his calves. If they didn’t get out soon, the weight of it was sure to hold them down, drop weights or not.
“Come on, Jack. Pull!”
Jack counted to three in his head, mustered up all his strength, and jerked.
The T-handle broke free.
Two resounding clanks echoed through the car as the weights dropped off from either end. The front, free of the tunnel, slowly pitched upward, sending all the water to the back. They inched forward, back end screeching along the bricks, until the roof of the cylinder banged into the upper lip of the tunnel. The car stopped, wedged there.
Chapter 32
“WE HAVE TO make it move.” Gwen rocked violently side to side in her seat.
Jack joined in, synchronizing with her movements, but the car remained wedged halfway out of the tunnel, tipped upward and canted several degrees to one side. Through the bubble at the front, he could see the shimmering ripples at the surface, twenty feet above at the most. They might easily swim for it, except the tunnel was still blocking the hatch.
“Wait!” Gwen grabbed Jack’s shoulder, stopping his movement. “This is getting us nowhere.” She stared down at the water flowing to the back for several seconds, then snapped her fingers. “Right. Got it. To the front, quick as we can.” She unbuckled, motioning wildly for Jack to do the same.
At first, Jack didn’t get it, but the car tipped forward as soon as he followed the clerk to the front. The floor bounced against the lip of the tunnel and started up again, inching them forward.
“Again!” shouted Gwen, pulling him backward.
They scrambled downhill into the cold water, then up again, and again the car pitched down and bounced. It screeched forward along the bricks and wedged itself at an even higher angle. Water kept flowing in. The rear bubble was entirely full.
“It’s not enough!” shouted Jack on their way downhill.
“Yes it is. Once more!”
Down into the frigid water and back up again. This time the screeching continued long after the front end had tipped back up. The car inched forward. Then the screeching stopped and it snapped to vertical. Jack grabbed the top edge of the bench, throwing an arm around Gwen as they shot for the surface. The forward bubble—and most of the car—burst out into soft daylight.
When the car splashed down, it rolled back and forth, water sloshing all around the children as if they were mismatched socks in a giant washing machine. Finally, they settled, bounced off an unseen obstacle, and came to rest against a hard shore. Gwen pulled herself up and yanked down on a release lever, sending the hatch crashing down, and Jack followed her out onto a dock made entirely of red granite. He hunched over, fighting nausea and struggling to find his land legs. When he finally looked up, he almost lost them again.
An old sailing ship towered high above them, dwarfing their cylindrical transport. Two rows of cannon poked out from the sides, and the tallest of the three masts rose more than a hundred feet in the air. For a moment, Jack wondered if he had accidentally sparked again, back to the age of pirates and privateers, until he felt Gwen take his arm and pull him along. “The Red Dragon,” she whispered. “First flagship of the Honorable East India Company. Don’t gawk, Jack. It’s so utterly American.”
They were not on an outside dock as Jack originally supposed, thanks to the ship and the daylight. Beyond the broad pool where the tall ship rested stretched a massive hall. Statues of all makes and materials lined the walls. Granite columns rose like giant redwoods, branches joining across the ceiling to form a lattice of red stone and frosted white glass.
“A network of shafts bring daylight in through the panes,” whispered Gwen, pulling Jack’s chin down so he would stop staring upward as they walked. “The array captures light from all angles to give the illusion we’re on the surface.”
“We’re still underground?”
“Sort of. We’re above the level of the Thames, but we’re inside the northeast face of Ludgate Hill, west of the public Guildhall and underneath the London Stock Exchange. This is the real Guildhall, Jack, the headquarters of the Ministry of Guilds.”
They passed the edge of the Red Dragon’s pool, leaving wet footprints in their wake, and Jack noticed small gatherings of toppers dispersed throughout the hall, turning to look in their direction. The sheen as each man moved in the light showed lines of color in his otherwise black suit. It seemed the toppers flocked according to their colored patterns. “Are they on teams or something?”
Gwen wrinkled her nose at him. “Guilds, Jack. Each colored pattern represents a guild. We also call them liveries. London has loads of them. If you ask the toppers, every skill, every service—everything, actually—has a price. And they’re always there beneath the surface to steer the money, making sure that at least some of it gets steered into their own coffers.”
Jack nodded sagely, as if he were actually keeping up with her explanation. “Are all of the guilds represented here?”
“Not remotely. The Thieves’ Guild is banned from the hall, for obvious reasons. A few of the others, like the Magicians’ Guild, are too secretive to come here. The Tinkers’ Guild, in particular, wish to be left to their own devices.”
Jack gave her a sidelong glance.
Gwen gave him a freckle bounce.
Throughout the hall, the looks from the topper
s were turning from curious to hostile. “Um . . . do they know I’m a thirteen? Are trackers even allowed to come here?”
“I told you, they don’t care which John Buckles you are. And it’s not as if we’re staying for tea.” Gwen glanced down at her watch. “Though it is about that time.” She nodded toward the other end of the hall. “The Archive of the Elder Ministries happens to be next door, with a Ministry Express maglev station on the other side. We’ve taken the back route, that’s all. The toppers will tolerate it. They owe us.”
Given the evil stares they were getting, Jack wasn’t so sure. “Um . . . how, exactly, do they owe us?”
“Well, they owe the trackers, anyway.” Gwen inclined her head back toward the Red Dragon. “That thing was at the bottom of the ocean for two hundred years. Who do you think found it for them?”
Despite her claim, Gwen kept up a pace that told Jack she wanted out of there quickly. He wished they didn’t have to rush. The giant statues were too incredible to pass without a longer look—epic figures in stone or metal, engaged in everything from shipbuilding to basket weaving.
One in particular caught Jack’s attention. He felt drawn to it, perhaps because it was the only one with moving parts. A mass of copper gears in the pedestal drove hands around a central dial that rested between the feet of a giant golden statue of Father Time. There was something else drawing him as well. Moving letters appeared in Jack’s mind, adding up to a phrase he couldn’t quite put together. As they passed the sculpture, he lingered. He grabbed the clerk’s scarf, pulling her back like a dog at the end of its chain.
“Hey!” Gwen whipped around and scowled. “Yes, I nearly drowned us, Jack, but that’s no reason for a hanging.”
He pressed his lips together and made two quick head tilts toward the statue. The turning gears were about to bring a jumble of silver letters into alignment. Gwen turned to look just as they clicked into place. She read the words aloud, her tone shifting from an annoyed whisper to utter disbelief. “The Worshipful Company of the . . . Clockmakers.”
Chapter 33
“IT’S A COINCIDENCE. Has to be.” Gwen turned to leave. “Our Clockmaker is French.”
Jack didn’t move. There was more. Bloodworth. The name flashed in his mind. It had to be there somewhere. The pedestal was a study in clockwork—moons drifted across the stars, ships bucked on copper waves, a cat chased a mouse down a set of stairs. As the cat reached the bottom, the stairs split and a lens came down between the two halves, magnifying a column of names. Jack recognized not one but two of them. He pulled Gwen back by her scarf again.
Her eyes widened with frustration. “Okay, now you’re just being mean.”
“What does EIC LC mean?”
She frowned at him, readjusting her scarf, then nodded toward the ship at the other end of the hall. “EIC is the East India Company, the same group that sailed the Red Dragon. And LC is the Levant Company. One sent ships to Asia, while the other traded in the Mediterranean, but they shared a list of investors—the same investors that funded a good many of the guilds.”
Behind them, Jack sensed a murmur of whisperings. He didn’t have to look back to know that the angry toppers were creeping closer. He ignored them, pointing out the column of names to Gwen as the magnifying glass made another pass. “It looks like those investors included our two prime suspects for starting the fire: the Duke of York and Lord Bloodworth.”
“Really?” The clerk looked genuinely surprised. She leaned in, reading the heading above the names. “ ‘EIC LC Sponsors of Foreign Masters.’ ” She gasped, straightening. “Oh, well done, Jack.”
He shrugged. “What? What do those two have to do with the Clockmaker?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.” She chewed her lip for a long second, glancing back at the converging toppers. Then she pulled him into motion. “Time to go. We’ve overstayed our welcome.”
Gwen rushed Jack to a set of brushed nickel doors, which looked like every set of elevator doors in every office building he had ever seen. She took the platinum card from his pocket and passed it over a disk on the wall before handing it back to him. A red LED bulb lit up above the door.
“What about the names?” whispered Jack. “You figured something out, didn’t you?”
“Later.” Gwen shot another glance at the toppers, who were neither advancing nor retreating. “Right now you need to know about the Archive. This place we’re about to enter is very old, Jack—ancient in the purest sense of the word. The Archive was once a drago stronghold, and they didn’t build it so much as carve into it. The rules are different in there.”
“Rules? Like the silence-is-golden rule in the Ministry Express?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, not those rules.”
With a soft ding, the LED changed to green and the doors slid open. Still looking at Gwen, Jack stepped forward, only to discover there was no elevator—and no floor, either. He reeled on the brink of a giant well formed entirely of bookshelves, at least fifty feet across.
Gwen yanked him back by the collar before he fell. “Must you always do that?”
Before Jack could think of a retort, soft yellow lights descended into view—lanterns hanging from the open gondola of a spherical hot air balloon. Fire flared from a burner to arrest the balloon’s descent, and the deck kissed the floor right at Jack’s feet. A blond woman in dark glasses, seated at the gondola controls, pushed off with a high-heeled boot, sending her stool gliding around the rail to the children, skirt flowing in her wake.
“Mind the gap, please.” The woman opened the gate and withdrew a pair of gold-wrapped bars from her waistcoat, holding them up for Gwen. “Something to eat as we go?”
“Yes, thank you.” Gwen took the bars and handed one to Jack as they stepped on board. He tore into it, suddenly realizing how hungry he was. But he was disappointed to find the same choco-nutty-shellfish concoction Gwen had offered him on the Ministry Express.
“To the Tracker Collection? Joining your friend, I presume?” The blond woman pushed off again, gliding back to her original spot, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead the whole time. A long-haired calico, lounging atop a pile of books, took a lazy swipe at her as she passed.
“Friend?” Gwen gave Jack a questioning look.
He shrugged. He was standing on a hot air balloon in an impossible well of books. How was he supposed to know anything at the moment?
Gwen turned back to the blond woman. “Um . . . no. Not just yet. First, we need the list of master candidates from the Clockmakers’ Guild. The 1600s, please.”
“Clockmakers’ Guild.” The woman pulled one of several gold ropes that hung above her head. “Down it is, then.”
A jet of gas escaped the side of the balloon, sending them drifting across the well in a slow descent. Try as he might, Jack could not see the bottom. The only light came from the lanterns hanging from the gondola itself, and there were no balconies or walkways—only endless stone bookshelves broken by the occasional door.
“Are you enjoying your first visit to the Archive, John Buckles?”
His eyes whipped up to the blond woman. “How did you—? But you’re blind.”
Gwen dropped her forehead into her palm. “Oh, Jack.”
“Jack, is it?” One eyebrow rose behind the round glasses. “That’s new. Just because one is blind, Jack, does not mean that one cannot see. You of all people should know that.”
“Then you’re a tracker.”
“No. Nor am I a spook, a topper, or a drago. I am the Archivist of the Elder Ministries, so I cannot play loyalties.” She smiled. “Although, I sometimes play favorites.”
The calico cat let out a discontented browl as the gondola bumped against the shelves. The Archivist pulled down a thick volume, feeling the cover with her fingers. “Worshipful Company of the Clockmakers, 1601 to 1700.” She hefted the book in her hand before passing it to Gwen. “Busy century.”
Jack hardly heard her. He had left his seat to examine t
he strange stone of the well, his nose inches from a decorative half column carved between the shelves. He thought he could see depth behind the polished surface, chasms of dark gray and midnight blue. Deep within, rivers of opalescent red flashed back at him, changing course as he shifted his head from side to side.
“Go ahead,” said Gwen, opening the book across her lap. “You can try. We call it dragonite. No tracker has ever managed the tiniest spark from that stuff.”
Whether Gwen had given him permission or not, Jack would have touched the stone. He had to. He laid a hand on a half column that divided the shelves, closing his eyes and willing the dragonite to tell him its secrets. He tried pushing, pulling, everything he had learned so far, but he could not spark. All he got was an odd warming sensation passing up his arm. When he let go, he caught the Archivist looking at him, dark glasses turned in his direction for the first time. “That is new,” she said, turning her sightless gaze forward again.
The Archivist gave her pedal a quick punch and the balloon ascended a few feet, where she pulled another volume from the shelves. “Jack’s father requested the same Clockmakers’ Guild records four days ago.” She handed the second book to Jack. “He also requested this.”
“Shipping Manifests of the Honorable Levant Company: 1661 to 1670.” Jack looked up at the Archivist. “What did Dad want with shipping manifests?”
“He didn’t say. Your father and Percy kept a tight lip about this case.”
“Oh.” Jack stayed there, looking at her. He wanted to ask her something else, but he wasn’t sure if he should. Finally, he lowered his eyes. “Did . . . did he say anything about me?”
“No, Jack. I’m sorry.” The Archivist pulled one of her gold ropes, simultaneously flaring the burner, and the balloon began a slow climb through the well, inching toward the opposite side. “I’m afraid your father was tight-lipped about you, as well. Always was.”