For a moment it was almost too bright for Siren to
keep her eyes open, then the whiteness began to fade, revealing a room hewn out
of bare rock which was surprisingly dark, but there was no time to take in
details. Immediately Siren scanned the
room to take in all who were there.
Ellis still held her hand, though he dropped it when she glanced at
him. Gulliver and Rockspark were
there. Miss Barkcastle lay on the floor,
still wounded and the Former Baron was leaning over her, but he was staring at
Siren and more importantly, at the figures standing behind her.
There were no more Spectres, no more Knights and
this deep underground would be tough even for the tentacles of Lakhma to
reach. What there was, however, was one
tall, golden-haired Fallen, his skin glowing gently, a handsome pirate and a
pale little girl who looked like she had seen better times, but then, who
hadn't? All three looked worried.
"Miss Barkcastle has been injured," Siren
said, turning to face the Fallen, "can you heal her?"
"With the Ember I can do pretty much
anything," he replied calmly, holding out his hand.
Siren took the bright orange gemstone she still
clasped in her pocket and handed it over, then watched as the Fallen knelt down
beside Miss Barkcastle, touched her wounded chest and her broken limbs and, one
by one, made them whole again.
"What happened?" Harker asked, stepping
forward, "I thought we'd agreed to rely on Ember only in the most dire
emergency!"
"I'm afraid that is what happened. We were trapped with no escape and, if I
hadn't called him, Miss Barkcastle would have died. I doubt we'd have lasted much longer."
"She's lookin' better already," Gulliver
said, coming over to join her and his brother.
The two stared at each other in sullen silence for a moment before
Harker returned his gaze to Siren.
"Annabella's been behaving even more oddly than
usual today," he said softly.
"I wondered... I wondered if it was something to do with what's
been going on upstairs."
Siren nodded.
They had worked out the truth of who Annabella really was over the three
months they had had her, first as captive spy, then as unlikely companion and,
since the moment everything started to go wrong, she had been keeping an extra
close eye on the girl, looking for anything that might help her with
Ellis. Having seen how he had been
post-tentacular apocalypse, she could only wonder more. But now was not the time.
The Fallen stood, bringing a suddenly revitalised
Miss Barkcastle up with him.
"Thank you, Broken-Hope," Franck said, his
voice actually catching, "I..." he didn't seem to be able to
continue.
"Yes, thank you," Miss Barkcastle added.
"It was not a problem," the Fallen
replied, "but I am no longer Broken-Hope, not since Irfan restored me with
the Ember during the arrival. His efforts,
and yours, have rekindled something I thought I had lost forever, so I took a
new name from this gemstone." He
held the Ember out before him. "We
are joined now, the stone and I, but it seemed that I may dare to hope once
more."
"Very glad to hear it," Franck replied,
regaining his composure somewhat.
"How much longer do we have, Ember?" Siren
asked, her voice cutting over all the little confused conversations that seemed
to be going on around them.
"About half an hour, no more, certainly."
"Then we had better start clearing everything
up and taking what we can." She
turned back to Harker, "do we have a back-up plan?"
"The crew have been searching for an alternative
hiding place for a few days, scouring the catacombs beneath the city. Some of them have never returned,” he added
darkly, “but of those that have, one place they visited sounds promising. It’s an old Vampire crypt just a few miles
away."
“Are you sure it’s empty?” Franck asked.
“As sure as we can be,” Harker replied, though the
irony in his tone suggested that he thought it was a ridiculous question in the
first place. Everyone knew that all the
Vampires had died out centuries ago.
“It will have to do,” Siren decided. She scanned the room and took in her once
again diminished crew and all the supplies and materials they had taken, been
given or had acquired through less legal means on their journey from
Shadedstreams. There was a lot to do,
but she was sure that Franck and her other companions would help where they
could.
Then she saw Ellis, staring off towards a wall. He seemed to have lost whatever alertness he
had gained on the run from the Spectres and that worried her. A lump started to form in the back of her
throat.
She took a deep breath and swallowed, then turned
back to Harker. “Can you take charge of
things here for a moment?” she asked, “There’s something I need to see too
first.”
Harker glanced in Ellis’ direction and his
expression darkened, but there was no sign of that when he turned back to face
his captain and replied, “sure!”
“Thanks,” she said, then turned aside and made her
way towards Ellis.
Ellis Graves.
The Boy from the Other World.
Only none of that was true. They
had discovered that quite by accident when Ellis had fallen ill, just after the
night when they had shared a kiss on the landing of 7 Tentacle Lane. She had been confused after that, unsure what
she felt, and Doctor Gristfinkel’s revelation that Ellis was really a construct
had been almost too much to bear, especially when Ellis showed no sign of
knowing the truth himself.
Then had come her weeks at sea, commanding the Ebon Crest with Harker at her side as
they hunted the elusive Mr. Marveille and his submersible. She and Harker had been together once and it
was true that there was still a part of her that found him very attractive. Why wouldn’t she? He was beautiful and adventurous and
everything a pirate girl could want in a man.
But distance and the sea air helped to bring clarity and she realised
that she missed Ellis more than anything else on dry land. Harker might have been handsome and suave,
but he didn’t have any of the sweet innocence she liked most about Ellis.
When Siren had been captured in Fracture and Doctor
Barkham had confirmed her suspicions that she had created Ellis as part of her
plan to recreate the Breakthrough and take control of Earth it had actually
helped to make things clearer. Ellis
might have been created for malign purposes, but he showed none of that in how
he responded to the world, nor in his motivations for his actions. He really was innocent. After that she had been more keen than ever
to get back to him.
And now here he was, only it was as if he wasn’t
there at all. It had to have something
to do with his construct nature, or with Lakhma’s return, but before she dealt
with the Philosophy of it all – and for that she would surely need to seek
Franck’s help – she needed to speak to him.
“Ellis?” she asked, taking a step closer, “Ellis can
you hear me?”
He glanced her way for a moment, his eyes piercing hers with a glimmer of intelligence,
before they seemed to slide off her and look at the point where the floor met
the wall. He was thinner than she remembered
and paler too. He no longer wore the
medallion that had been sustaining him after his illness. Franck had given that to Broken-Hope before
he had left for Shadedstreams and now it lay in a crate somewhere.
I need to find
that, she thought, it might bring him
back a little. There was no time now, however, so she tried talking again.
“Ellis, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I
want you to know something…”
He looked at her suddenly, his gaze focused.
“Yes,” she said, “look at me, listen to me, because
what I have to tell you… it’s really important.”
He didn’t respond, didn’t nod or flinch, didn’t so
much as blink, but she felt that he must have been listening to her. His gaze felt so very intense.
“I’ve learnt a lot about who you really are since we
first met in my mother’s kitchen all those weeks and months ago. I don’t know how much you’ve learnt about me,
or even about yourself, in the same amount of time, but, whatever you know, or
understand right now I need to tell you this: I don’t care what you are, Ellis,
only who you are and that you are special to me and that I have missed you oh
so much more than you would probably have imagined.”
She felt a tear begin to form in her eye and quickly
wiped it away before continuing.
“We’re going to get through all this. The Noble Society, Lakhma, the end of the
world: none of that matters in the long run, because we’ll see it through, and
we’ll see you feeling better again and then… and then maybe we can continue
where we left off on that landing, okay?”
She smiled and felt the tears landing on her cheeks now, too late to be
stopped. She leaned in and kissed him on
the forehead. Her lips only touched him
for a moment and then he was turning away to glance at the wall once more, no
sign of his comprehending any of it.
“I just needed to tell you that,” she said in a
whisper, as if to justify herself, then she took a step back and looked for
a job to do.
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