Deck the Cogs by Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris

Author:Pip Ballantine & Tee Morris [Ballantine, Pip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ImagineThat! Studios

Merry Christmas, Verity Fitzroy

By Pip Ballantine

Christmas Eve, 1891

If there was anything that Verity Fitzroy of the Ministry Seven disliked it was snow and sitting still. So having to endure both was a little bit beyond the pale—especially on Christmas Eve. Presently sitting outside a small house in Hampstead, she was getting quite wet with snow falling on her head and thinking longingly of the summer.

Four of her fellow urchins were inside the house, rifling around for the evidence that Agent Harrison Thorne needed to have their owner arrested. It was one of the little duties that kept the orphans solvent and busy. Verity knew full well the problems she would have if the children were not kept entertained.

They had watched the man leave his house, and then scampered across the slowly whitening garden. The only window that wasn’t secure was a tiny one that the younger children, Jonathan, Jeremy and Colin could get through—but not Verity. It wasn’t that she had gained any girth, but she had grown. Fifteen years old and she might still have some growing left in her.

Verity preferred not to think about it, but her mind did drift to the other issue that was constantly calling to her. It was a question of her past…and quite possibly her future.

The fact that Uncle Octavius, the man her father had held in such high regard, and Verity had thought dead for so many years, had actually become a murderer had proved quite the distraction in her life.

She’d told no one—not even Harrison Thorne of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences—what she had seen while perched on a crate outside a Shoreditch boarding house.

Verity replayed the scene over and over again in her head as she sat under the trees, concealed by shadows, to watch for the return of the owner of the house. She had a small tin whistle in her cold fingers. When blown the sound would not be heard by any human ear, but the tiny drum in Colin’s pocket would vibrate.

As she sat watching the road, in her other pocket her hand was wrapped around the circular device that she had recovered from her thought-dead uncle’s rooms. Its ticking had stopped, but somehow she felt better touching it—complete some how. It stilled her thoughts.

The lights of the city were distant and twinkling in the chill of the night. From this distance London looked like a fairytale kingdom. Verity smiled bitterly to herself, thinking how that fairytales often contained the darkest shadows and the vilest monsters.

She was so engrossed in her brooding that it took her a long moment to comprehend the faintest ticking in the back of her head. Immediately Verity knew that it was not from the device in her pocket. It came from a far more distant source. To her practiced ear it was the slow rattle of mechanism that had not been wound for a long time. She felt it had to be an old machine somewhere, and it was almost calling for help.

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