Garth Nix - Newt’s Emerald

“Stephen!” hissed a familiar voice close to her ear. “What are you doing! You mustn’t be seen here dressed like that!”

Truthful turned around, the grip lessening, and came face to face with Major Harnett. Not the ink-stained writer of Paternoster Row, nor the elegant gentleman of White’s. Not even the sodden survivor of his bowsprit experience. This was Harnett as a common labourer, his face dirty, his coat of some cloth a close cousin to a sack, and his trousers truly unmentionable.

“By God!” he said, his grip once again tightening. “No!”

“Unhand me!” croaked Truthful, struggling against his grip.

Surprisingly, Harnett let go. Even more surprisingly, he truckled low and tugged his forelock, at the same time speaking urgently in a whisper.

“Tru . . . damn it, you are in great danger! Follow me, I beg you!”

Truthful hesitated for a moment. Harnett looked up at her, and she saw fear in his eyes. Fear for her, she realised with a pang. Nodding her head, she indicated she would follow. Harnett immediately led her down the narrow lane, around a corner and into the doorway of a modest tea merchant’s shop. The door opened at once, Harnett rushed in, and Truthful followed.

A man in a shopkeeper’s garb slid a pistol back into the front pocket of his green apron and stood aside. Harnett nodded to him, took Truthful by the elbow and led her upstairs. Passing the doorway of a chamber on the second floor, Truthful saw a man looking out between the curtains of the window there into the laneway, down at the front entrance of the Black Lion.

“Anything?” asked Harnett, pausing.

The man shook his head. Harnett nodded and led Truthful up to an empty chamber on the third floor, which also overlooked the lane, the curtains similarly drawn to create a narrow viewing aperture. A chair set by it indicated the position of another watcher, though it was currently not occupied.

As soon as they were in this room, and the door shut, Harnett exploded.

“I will break Ruggins for this! You could have been killed! What were you thinking!”

“I thought I was merely to be in danger of kidnapping,” sniffed Truthful. “In which case I would hope you to rescue me.”

“Not if you are presumed to be Stephen,” said Harnett, his face set. “Plathenden doesn’t need him, and she knows he is working with me.”

“Oh,” said Truthful. She hadn’t thought of that. “I just wanted . . . you were taking so long, and I must recover the Emerald!”

“Can you not leave well enough alone?” asked Harnett in exasperated tones. “If you had gone into that tavern . . . a knife in your back . . .”

“Well, I did not go in,” said Truthful. “And I have not got a knife in my back. Is Lady Plathenden in there?”

“Not yet,” said Harnett. “But we have proven she owns the place, and she has been seen in Brighton. That is why we are ‘taking so long’! We must watch and wait, here and two other houses where she may turn up. One such watch is by your cousins, in the guise of clay-diggers, which is why I had the terrible shock of seeing Stephen Newington-Lacy attired as a gentleman, expressly against my orders and not only that, simply strolling up to the Black Lion as if he had not a care in the world!”

“I am sorry,” said Truthful. “But if you simply told me what was going on I wouldn’t need to investigate for myself!”

“I will have to send for Sergeant Ruggins to escort you to your lodgings, as soon as I may,” said Harnett heavily. “We are devilishly shorthanded. But once home, I trust you will assume your . . . your feminine identity and stay safe!”

“I don’t wish to stay safe,” said Truthful. She strode over to the chair and sat down, twitching the curtain aside. “I can watch too!”

Harnett clenched his fists, but did not immediately answer. Truthful snatched one glance at him, then set her face towards the lane below.

“Truthful, I know I have been angry with you, unwarrantably so. We have been at odds and misunderstood each other,” said Harnett, speaking slowly and with obvious effort to stay calm. “But please hear me. Lady Plathenden is a very dangerous woman, of great resources. She leads a large number of men, and women too, who will stop at nothing to do her bidding. She is a malignant sorcerer, and you are at great risk from her. If she has not yet mastered the Emerald then she will want you to help further her aims. If she has, then she will want you dead in order to have no rival for its powers. So you must go where you will be safe!”

Truthful showed no sign of hearing his words. She was staring intently out the window at a caped figure, a short woman with her hood up and a hatbox on her hip, who had emerged from the doorway of the Black Lion. She couldn’t see her face, but there was something about the way she walked . . .

“It’s her!” she exclaimed, pointing so hard her fingernail scratched against the glass.

“Plathenden!” exclaimed Harnett, leaping forward to see.

“No,” said Truthful. “My maid! Agatha!”

“I must go after her,” said Harnett. “Stay here!”

Truthful waited for two seconds then disobeyed, following him as he went clattering down the stairs in a rush, calling out to his men.

“Keep watch for Plathenden!”

Harnett didn’t even notice Truthful until he was outside and the door shut behind them both. He was craning on tip-toe to see over the heads of the crowd and staggered as Truthful ran into him.

“Can you never do as you are told!” he snapped. “Stay by me!”

With that, he slid between two large meat carriers and slipped past a woman carrying a bag of potatoes almost her own size. Truthful followed as closely as she could at his heels, ducking and weaving, jumping up whenever opportunity allowed to catch sight of Agatha, always some twenty or thirty bobbing heads in front of them.

Finally the lane joined a somewhat broader street that ran up the hill and down to the seafront. Harnett paused by the corner of a house there, his head turning swiftly from left to right. Obviously he had lost their quarry. Truthful was just catching up to him when she saw the air shimmer behind him and to his side, and Agatha appeared out of the whitewashed wall, a stone knife in her hand.

“Charles!” screamed Truthful, in her true voice. At the same time she reached for a pistol, but the lock caught on the edge of the pocket of her coat, and she could not get it free.

Harnett whirled about and caught Agatha’s wrist, turning the knife aside so it scraped across his shoulder rather than plunging in his heart. He twisted harder and Agatha dropped the knife. But she did not surrender, instead raking at Harnett’s face with her left hand, the nails there suddenly grown long and sharp. He grabbed that wrist also, and the two of them struggled violently from side to side, Harnett shocked at finding his strength matched by a lady’s maid, Agatha’s face twisted in fury.

Truthful finally got her pistol free. Cocking the lock, she levelled it at Agatha’s back and after the briefest moment of consideration, pulled the trigger. There was a resounding crack, a great plume of white smoke, and then much to Truthful’s surprise, something whizzed past her own ear with a whistling cry.

The ball had somehow ricocheted off Agatha’s back!

“The bracelet!” shouted Harnett. “Touch her with the bracelet!”

Truthful had forgotten she was wearing the gold and silver wire bracelet, it was so slim. Dropping the empty pistol, she slid back her coat cuff and struck Agatha hard in the middle of her back.

“It’s not touching!” roared Harnett, who was slowly being overborn by the unnatural strength of the ferocious Agatha. “Pull your shirt-sleeves up as well!”

Truthful struggled to push her shirt cuff back and bring the bracelet forward, unfortunately tangling immediately with her cuff-links.

“Hurry!” gasped Harnett. He was down on one knee and Agatha’s talons were almost plucking at his eyes, “Hurry!”

“I am hurrying!” shrieked Truthful. At last she got the bracelet clear and pressed her wrist hard against Agatha’s back. She didn’t know what would happen, but the last thing she expected was for the woman to utter an unearthly scream and collapse at her feet, quite dead.

“Part-fay,” gasped Harnett, struggling to his feet. “Stone nymph, I suppose.”

“I didn’t know,” said Truthful slowly. She stared down at her former maid’s body. Agatha’s skin was already darkening to a stony grey. For some reason her eyes found it hard to focus. “I never really knew anything about her . . .”

Harnett picked up the empty pistol and looked about them. The crowd was silent now, everyone stopped, all business halted. All eyes were upon Harnett and Truthful and the body on the ground, still leaking the hideous, tarry substance. Harnett bent down, picked up the hatbox Agatha had been carrying and thrust it into Truthful’s hands.

“You must go! Take this with you. Fast as you can. I will wait for the constables, and will follow when I may. Please this once, do as I ask!”

He pushed her in the middle of her back. With a start, Truthful set off down the street. A great murmur rose up behind her, and she heard someone cry, “Murder!” and then Harnett calling out in clear, commanding tones.

“I am a government officer! Someone send for the constable, and be about your business!”

Truthful kept walking. The street zig-zagged so that when she glanced over her shoulder she could no longer see Harnett, but could only hear the roar of the crowd, and gauge its feeling from that sound. She felt desperately frightened, but not for herself. If the mob took it upon itself to have a lynching, there was Harnett alone . . .

Help must be dispatched, Truthful thought. At once! Still clutching the hatbox, she began to run as she had never run before, not even stopping when her hat blew off as she rounded the corner to the seafront and emerged into the south-westerly breeze.

A scant six minutes later, one of Harnett’s men on guard outside the Otterbrook’s right-hand front door saw a young gentleman carrying a hatbox come charging towards him, his driving coat flying open and no hat on his head.

“Halt or I shoot!” he shouted, drawing his pistol.

Truthful slowed, fell to one knee and dropped the hatbox. The lid came off and rolled against the lower step.

“Call Sergeant Ruggins!” she gasped. “At once!”

“You stay where you are,” ordered the nervous guard, looking down at the red hair of this strange, but also strangely familiar young gentleman. He backed up the steps and knocked upon the door. The porter inside, already alert to some peculiar circumstance, opened it a crack.

“Thank . . . you,” said Truthful, just managing to get the words out between great gulps of air. “I am . . . Chevalier de Vienne . . . Lady Truthful’s cousin. Please tell . . . Lady Badgery I am here.”

The guard and the porter exchanged a swift look.

“Better call Sergeant Ruggins from the stables,” said the guard. “And tell Mr Dworkin.”

The porter frowned, but disappeared back inside.

The guard kept his eye on Truthful, and the pistol was still in his hand. That hand twitched as she dragged the hatbox closer and looked inside.

There was a hat in it, which she didn’t expect. Or not exactly a hat, but a kind of helmet designed to completely enclose the head, a papier-mâché thing of sea-green with silver scales and fishy appendages at the side in place of ears.

“Chevalier?”

Truthful looked up. Sergeant Ruggins was at the door. He too had his pistol by his side.

“Sergeant Ruggins! Major Harnett may be in danger from a mob,” exclaimed Truthful, only at the last second remembering to pitch her voice low, so her first words came out as a squeak. “He is where a lane comes out on Ship Street, near a butcher’s. Please, you must send help!”

“Stay where you are,” ordered Sergeant Ruggins. His tone was not at all like it was when he usually spoke to Truthful.

“You must send help!” demanded Truthful.

“We’ll look into it,” said Ruggins. He moved down a step to let someone else look out the door, glancing back over his shoulder. “Ah, milady. Is that who I think it is?”

“Yes, it is my cousin, Henri de Vienne,” said Lady Badgery calmly. “You should have told us you were planning to visit, my boy. Come inside.”