Dead Boy really didn’t like sneaking around. It wasn’t his style. “When am I going to get to hit someone?” he kept asking.
“You’ll get your chance,” I said. “God, you’re like a big kid. You’ll be asking if we’re nearly there, next.”
We finally came to a closed door with a card tacked to it, saying Dingley Dell. I tried the door handle, slowly and very carefully, but it was locked. Dead Boy raised a boot to kick it in, and I pulled him away, shaking my head firmly. I listened, one ear pressed against the wood of the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. I straightened up, wincing as my back creaked, and looked around. And there at the end of the corridor was a spiral stairway, leading even higher. I led the way up the curving steps, Dead Boy pressing close behind like an impatient dog, and we ended up in a disused gallery, looking down onto the open room that was Dingley Dell. And there, at the end of the gallery, was the Timeslipped Victorian Adventurer himself, Julien Advent.
He was actually wearing his old opera cloak, the heavy dark material blending him smoothly into the gallery shadows. Dead Boy and I padded forward as silently as we could, but he still heard us coming. He spun round, ready to fight, and only relaxed a little as he recognised us. He gestured sharply for us to crouch beside him. He was tall, and still lithely muscular despite his years, with jet-black hair and eyes, and a face handsome as any movie star’s; only slightly undermined by his unswervingly serious gaze and grim smile.
Julien Advent was a hero, the real deal, and it showed. We’d worked together, on occasion. Sometimes he approved of me, and sometimes he didn’t. It made for an interesting relationship.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” he said, his voice little more than a murmur. “I put a lot of effort into getting silently into place here, and remaining unobserved, and now you two clowns… How do you know you haven’t tripped off every alarm in the place?”
“Because I saw them all,” said Dead Boy. “There’s not much you can hide from the dead.”
I looked at the two ragged holes in his coat sleeve, and sniffed. “You don’t half fancy yourself sometimes.”
Julien shook his head despairingly, then we all looked down into the open room of Dingley Dell, while Julien filled us in as to what was happening, in a voice I had to strain to hear.
It seemed Dingley Dell was a sweatshop for manufacturing magical items. Wishing rings, cloaks of invisibility, talking mirrors, magic swords, and so on. The usual. I always wondered where they came from… Gathered around a long trestle table were dozens of small shivering forms like undernourished children, with big eyes and pointed ears. Wee faeries no bigger than two-year-olds, with bitter faces and crumpled wings, all of them looking half-starved and beaten down. They would pick up some everyday object with their tiny hands and stare at it with fierce concentration until the sweat ran down their pointed faces. They were pouring their own natural magic into the items, making them magical through sheer force of will. As the faeries gave up some of their magic, they became visibly duller and less special. Dying by inches.
Every single one of them was held in place by heavy leg irons, and chains led from the irons to steel rings embedded in the bare floor-boards.
The faeries were refugees from a war in some other dimension, said Julien, fleeing and hiding from something awfuclass="underline" the Hordes of the Adversary. They were desperate not to be found, by anyone. Looking more closely, I could see they all had old scars, and more recent cuts and bruises. They wore rough clothing made from old sacking, with slits cut in the back for their crumpled wings to poke through. Now and again, in a brief look or a movement, I could see a glimpse of how wild and beautiful and charming they had once been.
And even as we watched, one small winged figure gave up the last of its magic and just faded away to nothing. His clothing slowly collapsed in on itself, and the empty leg iron clanked dully against the floor.
I couldn’t remember when I’d last been so angry. It burned within me, knotting my stomach and making it hard for me to breathe. “This is sick!” I said fiercely. I actually glared at Julien Advent. “Why are you just sitting here, watching? Why haven’t you done something before this?”
“Because I’ve been considering how best to deal with that,” said Julien. “That is their overseer—the Beadle.”
Dead Boy and I were already looking where he pointed. Emerging from an adjoining kitchen was a huge, hulking figure. He was easily eight feet tall—his head brushing against the ceiling—and his shoulders were broader and more muscular than any human’s had a right to be. He was a construct, a patchwork figure of stitched-together human pieces. His only clothing was a collection of broad leather straps, perhaps to help hold him together, or maybe just to give him a feeling of security. He carried a large empty sack in one hand and a roast chicken in the other. He took a great bite out of the chicken breast, and waved the greasy carcass at the faeries, tauntingly.
Two feral children prowled beside him, one to each side, their naked bodies caked in old dried blood and filth. A boy and a girl, they were only ten or eleven years old, but still big enough to scare and intimidate the wee faeries.
“That is one big Beadle,” said Dead Boy.
“Quite,” said Julien. “I could probably take him, but I didn’t want to start something I wasn’t sure I could finish. For the sake of the faeries.”
The Beadle approached the table, and the faeries all tensed visibly. Some started crying, quietly, hopelessly.
“Now then, have Santa’s little helpers been busy, making nice little presents, like they were told to?” said the Beadle, in a harsh, growling voice. “Ho-ho-ho! I see another of you has escaped… but not to worry, my little cherubs; there’s always fresh meat to replace the old.”
He grabbed a handful of the completed magical items piled up in the middle of the table, and started stuffing them carelessly into his sack. One of the faeries wept a little too loudly, and the Beadle turned on it savagely.
“You! What are you snivelling for, you little work-shy?”
“Please sir,” said the faerie, in a small, chiming voice. “I’m thirsty, sir.”
The Beadle cuffed the faerie lightly across the back of the head, but it was still hard enough to slam the small face onto the table.
“No water for anyone until you’ve all made your quotas! And no food till the end of your shift. You know the rules.” He broke off abruptly to examine a glowing dagger he’d just picked up. He sniffed dismissively and broke the blade in two with his bare hands, throwing the no-longer-glowing pieces aside. “Useless! Spoiled! All because someone wasn’t concentrating! Don’t think you can pass off inferior work on me! You all need to buck yourselves up, because the next one of you that doesn’t measure up… gets fed to my little pets here!”
The feral children grunted and snarled, stamping their bare feet on the bare floor and making playful little darts at the nearest faeries, who cried out and cringed away as far as their leg irons and chains would let them. The feral children laughed soundlessly, like dogs.
“That’s it,” said Julien Advent, in a calm, quiet and very dangerous voice. “I have seen enough.”
He dropped gracefully down from the high gallery, his open cloak spreading out like the dark wings of an avenging angel. He landed lightly before the astonished Beadle, who reared back. The feral children retreated, snarling. Dead Boy jumped down and landed heavily, the floor-boards cracking under the impact. He smiled easily at the Beadle, who threw aside his bag and his roast chicken so he could close his great hands into massive fists. I climbed down from the gallery, taking it one foot hold at a time. I knew my limitations. Julien Advent advanced on the scowling Beadle, and the giant construct actually backed away from the much smaller man, driven back by the incandescent rage in Julien’s voice and eyes.