Shadows of Valderia: An Urban Fantasy Detective Noir

Ahab’s hallway was almost pitch black. The cave in had blocked out the last vestiges of natural light, leaving them to navigate by the flickering oil lamps set in braziers at sporadic intervals. Thick black smoke coiled from the braziers creating a sooty fog that rolled across the low ceiling of the hallway.

“Right,” Jimmy said, keeping his voice low. “We should be running into the Wildman’s walk. Stay five steps behind us and follow our lead. Make sure you step exactly where we step! Could be Brookhouse forgot one of the traps or something new has been laid since.”

Barney led them, his neck craned downwards as he scanned the floor in front of them. After a dozen more steps he found what he was looking for. He shot out his hand for them to stop and then knelt down. Almost entirely imperceptible, except for a sporadic gleam in the firelight, was a razor thin pair of trip wires. Barney signalled for Jimmy to hold the other end of the wire. With a gentle sawing motion, Barney cut the first wire, and then the second, holding on to them. Mouthing a silent countdown to Jimmy, they both dropped their wires on three and leapt back in unison, their arms raised defensively. The oil lamps continued to flicker while they held their breaths. Nothing happened. Sighing deeply, Jimmy looked back at them and nodded for them to follow. They walked slowly, measuring each step carefully, especially Cripper. For the first time in their heist, the big man looked nervous. His every footstep elicited a creak from the floorboards that set their hearts racing.

Ahab’s hallway was airless. The temperature slowly ratcheted up the deeper they went. Sweat poured down the small of Nairo’s back. Whether it was the fear of losing a limb to some misbegotten trap or just the lack of air in the place, Nairo found herself struggling for breath. It felt like they were traversing deeper and deeper underground, buried under thousands of tonnes of rock and earth. Jimmy held up a hand for them to stop. Using the dancing light of an oil lamp, he flicked sweat out of his eyes, and peered at the map.

“Wildman’s walk,” he whispered to them and pointed at the stretch of hall in front of them. “We need to get in single file and I mean single file. There is literally only one floorboard we can walk safely across without setting it off.”

“Setting off what?” Ridley asked.

“Dunno. Could be anything with these lot,” Jimmy answered.

“I once saw a rig designed to drop a bookshelf on a man if he lifted a teapot,” Barney said.

“You know, talking to you is like asking the mud where the puddle is,” Ridley grumbled.

“Gosh! What a charming colloquialism! You are a treat Master Ridley,” Barney beamed brightly at Ridley.

“Not enough people say so,” Ridley said.

“More fool them.”

“Can we get on?” Nairo asked. “Which floorboard is safe.”

“Oh they always mark these things, dead forgetful some of our lot.” Barney dropped to a knee and slid his finger across the carpet. “Here we go! X marks the spot!” He pointed to a crude X that had been carved into the thick carpet.

“Who would have thought politicians and pirates would have so much in common,” Ridley said with a roll of his eyes.

“Can’t see it myself,” Barney said. “The eyepatch would come off as a tad ostentatious, don’t you think?”

“What?” Ridley said, nonplussed.

“Right, Barney you first.” Jimmy interrupted.

“Good man! Leading the charge is where an Archibald-Sterling feels most comfortable!”

With a grace to be expected of one as elegant as Barnabus Archibald-Sterling, he tiptoed his way across the board, never wavering in the slightest. As he made his way, Jimmy turned and nodded to Nairo.

“You’re up next, Sarge.”

Nairo nodded and held out her arms to stay balanced. Following Barney’s footsteps she made it across with only a few nerve wracking stumbles. Jimmy crossed next. Ridley, about to step on the board, was stopped by Cripper.

“I don’t want to go last,” he said. “And I don’t want to go alone.”

“Understandable,” Ridley said when he saw the anxiety in Cripper’s eyes. “After you then.”

With a shaky foot, Cripper stepped onto the safe floorboard. Nairo realised now why he was so nervous: his foot was as wide as the floorboard. As he stepped forward and the floorboard took his whole weight, it creaked awfully and sagged.

“Come on Cripper! You’re fine!” Jimmy called to him.

Cripper shuffled forward on the board. His legs were so thick and muscled, he was having to swing them in a wide arc around each other, wobbling and teetering with every step.

“You behind me, spy?” he said.

“Errr yeah,” Ridley lied. He was still tentatively toeing at the floorboard, put off by how it vibrated under Cripper’s weight.

“Is he on?” Cripper cried to the others, panic in his voice.

“He’s on! He’s on, Cripper! Don’t turn around, you'll lose balance!” Jimmy shouted back.

“Get on the damn floorboard, Ridley!” Nairo hissed.

Cursing, Ridley stepped onto the floor board.

“Don’t leave me, spy!” Cripper moaned over his shoulder to Ridley.

“I’m here,” Ridley said, sensing the anxiety coming from the big man. “Just put one foot in front of the other, no rush.”

“Okay. Okay.” Cripper said. “I’m scared of heights.”

“We’re on the floor.”

“But feels like I’ll fall off.”

“I mean… yeah technically. But you just gotta walk in a straight line.”

“I can't look!” Cripper cried.

“No, don't do that!”

Cripper squeezed his eyes shut and took another step forward and then another. His foot slid from the safe board. There was the sound of a ping and then a snap.

“Shit! Get down!” Ridley shoved at Cripper and threw himself forward.

With another tremendous leap, Ridley landed hard, his elbows and face grazed across the carpet. He squeezed his hands over his head and braced. There was a tremendous metallic clang and crash from behind him and he felt pieces of something hard rain down over his back.

“Ridley are you alright?”

Ridley rolled over and looked at Nairo, who was crouching over him.

“What the hell was that?”

“That, my friend, was the Wildman’s Walk, admin edition,” Barney said, offering Ridley a hand up.

Ridley looked back at where he and Cripper had been standing. Six heavy duty typewriters, hanging from wires, twirled and bumped against each other, smashed and broken, their keys littering the hallway.

“Good job our lads are more imaginative than practical,” Barney said. “The mechanism must have jammed for a second before releasing the typewriters.”

Ridley leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.

“Nope… I got nothing,” he said after a few moments.

“Good. That will speed things up,” Jimmy said as he dusted down Cripper. “You good mate?”

Cripper nodded dejectedly.

“Sorry spy,” he said.

“Ahh… don’t worry about it. Not your fault a bunch of batshit crazy Politicians are fighting a guerilla war in the hallways of the Houses of Parliament.”

“I s’pose,” Cripper agreed.

“Let’s keep moving.” Jimmy led the way forward and all of them stepped even more cautiously than before.

Before too long, he came to another stop and peered at the map. This stretch of Ahab’s hallway seemed no different than the rest at first glance. But after looking for a few seconds, Nairo realises that one of the braziers was missing, leaving a large patch of pitch black shadow before them. The carpet had also been torn away here, exposing the creaking floorboards below.

“D’you think that’s the Sauce n Chutney?” Jimmy asked Barney.

“Could be… if it is then there should be a pile of…” Barney knelt down and peered into the darkness. “No one move,” he instructed. “Could be another trip wire or pressure pad situation.”

Barney gently felt around with the tips of his fingers. The darkness somehow made the heat more oppressive. Sweat dripped from Barney’s forehead as he blindly swept his fingertips back and forth.

“There it is!” He felt his fingers brush along another imperceptible tripwire.

With bated breath he followed it back to its source and felt his fingers run through a little pile of something. He scooped up a handful and brought it back to the light.

“Pepper salt,” he explained to them, holding up the black and white powder. “Dump a cup of water on this and it would blind everyone in a five metre radius.”

“Blind them!” Nairo exclaimed.

“Only temporarily, of course.”

“Interesting,” Ridley said as he inspected the pile.

Jimmy reached up above the pile, into the shadows, and carefully picked up a small pail of stale water. He then tapped his foot on a thin metal plate that had been camouflaged with the wall at shin height. The little platform the pail had rested on dropped with thud.

“And that would have been us blind,” Jimmy said.

“Smashing bit of subterfuge that,” Barney said, clearly impressed.

“Surprised it’s not explosive,” Ridley mused.

“Oh no… use of explosive powders was banned after the Fire of Barren Hall… and the Great Canteen Fire,” Barney said. “Oh and the Tea Room explosion. So much broken china that day. I get chills just thinking about it.”

“Sounds prudent,” Ridley replied.

“Well, even the Houses must modernise in modern times.”

“Wait, what about the pipebomb?” Ridley asked.

“In the johnson?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that’s fine.”

“What? Why?”

“Come on, we’re halfway… and watch out for the lances,” Jimmy interjected.

“Lances?” Nairo said.

“You’ll see.”

When they rounded the curve of the hallway she did see. There was no subterfuge or subtlety with this trap. About two metres ahead of them was an array of lances set up to skewer anyone fleeing around the corner.

“So you get blinded by the Pepper Salt and then you come barreling round the corner in a panic…” Nairo mused.

“And get turned into a shish kebab,” Jimmy finished for her.

Nairo looked at him with a mixture of fascination and horror.

“Politics really is a dirty game, isn’t it?”

“You got no idea.”

“Straight to point… I like it,” Ridley said with a nod of approval at the lances.

“Straight to point, I see what you did there!” Barney chortled. “I must write some of these down!”

“Just don’t get cut,” Jimmy said to them. “These things have been around longer than we have, they’re bound to be rusted.”

With their bellies sucked in, the party skirted round and under the lances. The sounds of their grunting and shuffling feet filled the airless hallways. Sweat dripped down their brows, mixing with the oil lamp soot in the air, coating their faces in grime. Cripper, the last of the group through, looked so miserable even Ridley tried to comfort him.

“It’s alright big guy,” he said. “Just a little bit more and I mean… can't get worse right?”

“Why would you say that again,” Nairo sighed.

“I’m an optimist,” Ridley said.

“Since when?”

“I don’t like small spaces,” Cripper moaned.

“Ermmm, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger?” Ridley offered instead. “The rain makes you appreciate the sun?”

“I miss the sun,” Nairo said sullenly as they trudged forward.

Jimmy looked back over his shoulder at his despondent teammates.

“Cheer up, this is the end of the hallway,” he called to them. “And Cripper, it’s fish and chip Friday!”

Cripper suddenly brightened up and gave a wonky tooth smile.

“That’s the spirit ol’ chum!” Barney laughed. “You’ll be dipping a hunk of haddock into some fresh tartar before you can say… Watch out!” Barney cried. He lunged forward and yanked Jimmy backwards.

Inches from where Jimmy’s nose had been, a heavy metal blade flew by. It was on some sort of pendulum. It swooshed by and clanged off the wall opposite, sending a shower of bright sparks and knocking one of the braziers off the wall. Shadows danced wildly as the blade swung back the other way. Barney and Jimmy stumbled backwards into Nairo and Ridley. Their panic drove them all to the ground and Cripper’s feet.

“That wasn’t on the map,” Jimmy said breathlessly as he sat up.

There was an ominous creak from below them.

“Oh shi…” Before Ridley could finish, the floor gave way beneath them. There was a thunderous crash and a pall of smoke and dust exploded around them.

Silence, punctuated by a few groans wafted out of the hole.

“We dead now?” Cripper whimpered.

“You may wish you were,” said a voice from above them.

Looking through the dust, Nairo could make out several figures standing at the edge of the hole looking down on them.

“You’ve found yourself in the Rabbit’s den!”

The figures surrounded the mouth of the hole and cackled.