The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [266]
I bit my lip. This was one of the biggest chances I was ever likely to take. I would try and capitalize on Lavoisier’s apparent dislike of Goliath—after all, the ChronoGuard had no interest in Landen or Jack Schitt—and there was more than one way to trap my father. I was going to have to risk it.
“I need more than just your promise, Schitt-Hawse.”
“It’s not my promise, Next—it’s a Goliath Guarantee. Believe me, it’s riveted iron.”
“So was the Titanic,” I replied. “In my experience a Goliath Guarantee guarantees nothing.”
He stared at me and I stared back.
“Then what do you want?” he asked.
“One: I want Landen reactualized as he was. Two: I want my travelbook back and safe conduct from here. Three: I want a signed confession admitting that you employed Lavoisier to eradicate Landen.”
I gazed at him steadily, hoping my audacity would strike a positive nerve.
“One: Agreed. Two: You get the book back afterwards. You used it to vanish in Osaka, and I’m not having that again. Three: I can’t do.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Bring Landen back and the confession is irrelevant, because it never happened—but I can use it if you ever try anything like this again.”
“Perhaps,” put in Lavoisier, “you would accept this as a token of my intent.”
He handed me a brown hard-back envelope. I opened it and pulled out a picture of Landen and me at our wedding.
“I have nothing to gain from your husband’s eradication and everything to lose, Miss Next. Your father, well, I’ll get to him eventually. But you have the word of a commander in the ChronoGuard—if that’s good enough.”
I looked at Lavoisier, then at Schitt-Hawse, then at the photo. It was the one that used to sit on the mantelpiece at my mother’s house.
“Where did you get this?”
“In another time, another place,” replied Lavoisier. “And at considerable personal risk to myself, I assure you. Landen is nothing to us, Miss Next—I am only here to help Goliath. Once done I can leave them to their nefarious activities—and not before time.”
Schitt-Hawse shuffled slightly and glared at Lavoisier. It was clear they mistrusted each other deeply; it could only work to my advantage.
“Then let’s do it,” I said finally. “But I need a sheet of paper.”
“Why?” asked Schitt-Hawse.
“Because I have to write a detailed description of this charming dungeon to be able to get back, that’s why.”
Schitt-Hawse nodded to Chalk, who gave me a pen and paper, and I sat down and wrote the most detailed description that I could. The travelbook said that five hundred words was adequate for a solo jump, a thousand words if you were to bring anyone with you, so I wrote fifteen hundred just in case. Schitt-Hawse looked over my shoulder as I wrote, checking I wasn’t writing another destination.
“I’ll take that back, Next,” said Schitt-Hawse, retrieving the pen as soon as I had finished. “Not that I don’t trust you or anything.”
I took a deep breath, opened the copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and read the first verse to myself:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
O’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next—
This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising,
Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text.
“Get me out!” I said, advising, “Pluck me from this jail of text—
or I swear I’ll wring your neck!”
He was still pissed off, make no mistake about that. I read on:
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in my bleak September
when that loathsome SpecOps member tricked me through “The Raven’s” door.
Eagerly I wished the morrow would release me from this sorrow,
then a weapon I will borrow, Sorrow her turn to explore—
I declare that obnoxious maiden who is little but a whore—
darkness hers—for evermore!
“Still the same old Jack Schitt,” I murmured.
“I won’t let him lay a finger on you, Miss Next,” assured Schitt-Hawse. “He’ll be arrested before you can say ketchup.”
So, gathering my thoughts, I offered my apologies to Miss Havisham for being an impetuous