continued, “I leave tonight, and if this informant of ours is right, we will have ourselves a route to victory.”
“And what are we supposed to do till you come back?” asked Ned’s dad.
“Nothing, old friend, for now. When I return, if I return, I will – and not for the first time – be asking you all for everything.”
It was fitting then that Benissimo should need to talk to them. He did not, however, appear to want or need to talk to Ned, which as it turned out made Ned feel both furious and useless in equal measure.
He sat alone in a stark room; it had a bed and a sidelight, a sink at one end and no windows. It was far more like a cell than anything else. The Tinker had returned Whiskers to him, with a small but extremely useful upgrade. A tracking device had been welded into his casing. From now on, no matter where Ned was, as long as his trusty mouse was with him, the Tinker could use his network’s “eyes in the sky” to locate him, which had the dual effect of making Ned feel both safe and irritated. What if he didn’t want to be found?
Whiskers was staring up at him from the palm of his hand. Gorrn meanwhile was busying himself with Ned’s sheets. Ned could only put his new-found helpfulness down to their change in surroundings; the odd creature was folding away his covers and stuffing them into a small drawer.
“Gorrn, they were fine where they were.”
“Gru?”
“The sheets, Gorrn … Oh, never mind, I’ll deal with them later. And, err, thank you.”
“Arr.”
Whiskers was still staring.
“Just like old times, eh? You, me and the shadow.”
The Debussy Mark Twelve bobbed its head in a “yes”.
Only it wasn’t anything like old times, not really. He had his mum and dad, and nothing was more important than knowing they were safe. But for how much longer would any of them stay safe? They’d searched for answers for months, and now this informant had seemingly given Benissimo a route, however slim, of undoing Barbarossa’s beast. Ned should have felt happy about it, but how did the Ringmaster even know the informant could be trusted? What if it was just a trick? A trap?
The Darkening King would be rising soon. George and Lucy were on some mission and Ned had been relegated to … well, sitting. And that was when he admitted what was really eating away at him. He placed Whiskers on the bare mattress and looked at his ring. No matter how many times he’d tried, it remained dormant, and for all Ned knew it would stay that way forever. Ned had gone back to being the boy he was before he’d found the Hidden.
Completely and utterly average.
If only he could talk to Lucy. She was bound to have some idea of what was ailing him. Maybe she was even suffering from the same problem? He sat with his two mute sidekicks, feeling in nearly every possible way both powerless and pointless.
But that was the thing about the Hidden, and most particularly about his friends at the Circus of Marvels: they didn’t care what Ned could do – they just cared that he was there.
It came as a pounding of feet, a gabbling of whispers and excitable banter. By the time they’d reached Ned’s door, they were in such a frenzy that Rocky, the Russian mountain troll, put his fist straight through it.
“NIED! Why for you hide in here?!”
They burst into his room in an avalanche of colour and noise.
“Ned, love, it’s you! All this drab grey we’ve bin putting up with … Just this mornin’ I was sayin’ to Rocky how we needed a bit of colour, and here you are!” warbled Abi the Beard, and proceeded to hug him so hard he thought his eyes might burst.
With them were Grandpa Tortellini and a good half or so of his seven grandchildren, all whooping out a “Hey! How-a ya doin’?” and the occasional satyr-horned bleat. Scurrying along the ground were the three emperors, Julius, Nero and Caligula. The thieving pixies were far less jubilant when they realised there was nothing to steal, and decided instead to make up for it by harassing Gorrn, who hid in Ned’s shadow with an “Unt”. Monsieur Couteau managed a less than sneery salute from the doorway before excusing himself, and was barged rather gruffly out of the way by Scraggs the cook, carrying a large tray of doughnuts that he’d baked especially.
“Extra jammy, Ned, just like you like ’em!” rumbled Scraggs, who, to Ned’s wonder and despite their new pristine surroundings, had still not taken the time to wash his chef’s apron.
Finally there was a welcome trumpeting and Ned’s eyes lit up as Alice the elephant, who was too large to get into the room, popped at least part of her loving and leathery face through the doorway.
“Hello, girl!” he grinned and got up to pat her trunk.
“Arrooo!”
Breathlessly they launched a verbal assault of questions, to which Ned really had very few answers – mostly because of the speed at which they came.
“How are your ma and pa?”
“What’s going on, on the outside?”
“You been eatin’ properly, sonny?”
“Nedolino, and de-a training, tell us – how you-a doin’?”
“Once you rested, you come with Rocky, da? I show you base, very big, very interesting.”
It was only when the fourth doughnut was shoved into his face that Ned realised why they were quite so happy to see him. His beloved old troupe, at least the ones that were here, had not been out of the confines of their Nest for months. Keeping the travelling kind cooped up for too long was like trying to bottle frogs and they were positively jumping out of their skins.
“You met the spider yet?” asked Abi.
“Mr Spider? Only briefly.”
“Me no like ‘googly’ eyes. He always stick nose in business and always with de rules, Nied, so many rules.”
“They’re
