I strolled through the labs, keeping an eye out for the
Armourer. Doorways opened in midair, giving brief glimpses of faraway places,
and a test animal imploded. A desperate young intern chased through the labs,
flailing away with a butterfly net, trying to catch an oversized eyeball with
its own fluttering bat wings. I’m sure it had looked perfectly reasonable at the
drafting stage. No one paid any attention to these little disruptions, except to
jump just a little, absentmindedly, at the latest bang. Just another day, in the
armoury. When you’re working at the cutting edges of devious thinking, you have
to expect and allow for the occasional setback, along with regular stinks,
spatial inversions, and the odd unexpected transformation. Everyone who worked
in the armoury was a volunteer drawn from a long list of applications, carefully
selected from those in the family who had clearly demonstrated they had far more
brains than was good for them. (Often accompanied by an unhealthy curiosity and
a complete lack of self-preservation instincts.)
(The really dangerous thinkers were either rapidly promoted to
purely theoretical projects or sent to alternate dimensions and told not to come
back till they’d calmed down.)
The current crop of interns looked like science nerds
everywhere, all heavy spectacles and plastic pocket protectors, except that some
of them wore pointy wizard’s hats as well. A lot of them were wearing T-shirts
under their lab coats, bearing the legend I Blow Things Up, Therefore I Am, Even
If Someone Else Suddenly Isn’t. Science nerd humour. They all looked very
earnest and very committed, and if they survived long enough would eventually be
promoted to the somewhat safer environs of the research and development labs. It
did seem to me though, as I wandered through the chaos in search of the
Armourer, that the old place held a lot more people and projects, along with a
greater general sense of urgency, than I remembered from my last visit, ten
years ago.
Two of the more brawny types were sparring with electrified
brass knuckles, sparks crackling and spitting fiercely on the air as they swung
and parried. One girl had her head stuck deep in a fish tank, proving she could
now breathe underwater. Impressive, but I couldn’t help thinking the gaping rows
of gills on her neck would be a bit of a giveaway in polite society. Not far
away, an unfortunate young man had stopped proving he could now breathe fire,
because it had given him hiccoughs. Unpredictable and highly inflammable
hiccoughs. Someone led him away to put an asbestos bag over his head. I didn’t
see why they couldn’t just stick his head in the fish tank, next to the girl.
And someone had blown up the firing range again. There’s always
someone trying to break the record for biggest and most powerful handgun.
I finally spotted the Armourer up ahead, striding back and forth
through the caverns, keeping a stern eye on everyone and everything. He paused
here and there to dispense advice, encouragement, and the occasional clip on the
ear, where necessary. The Armourer was strict but fair. I waited until he came
back and settled at his usual testing bench, and then I slipped in beside him.
He glanced briefly at me, sniffed loudly, and went back to what he was working
on. It takes a lot to surprise the Armourer.
A tall, middle-aged man with far too much nervous energy, he
wore a permanently stained white lab coat over a T-shirt saying Guns Don’t Kill
People; I Kill People. Two shocks of tufty white hair jutted out over his ears
below a bulging bald pate, and under bushy white eyebrows his eyes were a steely
gray. His expression rarely changed from an habitual scowl, and while he had
once been tall and imposing, he was now bent over by a pronounced stoop, legacy
of so many years spent leaning over workbenches and lab projects that always
needed fixing in a hurry. Or maybe just from ducking a lot. I sat beside him for
a while, waiting for him to say something, but as always it was up to me to tear
his attention away from his latest project.
"Hello, Armourer. Good to see you again. The old place seems
very busy, just at the moment. Are we preparing for a war?"
He sniffed loudly again. "Always, boy. Always."
He plugged a thick electrical cable into a socket, tripped half
a dozen switches, and then looked expectantly at a computer monitor wrapped in
mistletoe and strings of garlic. Nothing happened. The Armourer hit the computer
with a hammer, and I quickly took it away from him.
"Give that back!" he said, scowling fiercely. "That’s my lucky
hammer!"
"Lucky?" I said, holding it carefully out of reach.
"I’m still here, aren’t I?"
I put the hammer down at the opposite end of the bench. "What’s
the problem, Armourer?"
He sighed as he realised he was going to have to talk to me
after all.
"Seems like everyone in the Hall is trying to draw power from
the Heart, all at the same time. Every damned department at once. I’m supposed
to have priority, but it’s all I can do to elbow my way into the queue. If I
have to go upstairs and complain, there’ll be tear gas and shrapnel flying
through the common rooms…"
"Why is there so much demand for power?"
"Don’t ask me. Ask bloody Alistair!"
I recognised the tone. "All right; what’s Alistair done now?"
The Armourer gave me his best put-upon expression. "First the
Matriarch increases my budget, and my workload, and tells me my projects have
top priority until further notice; and then bloody Alistair comes poncing in
here and announces he’s chosen the armoury as the best place to start his latest
efficiency drive. So now not only has my workload gone through the roof, but I
have to account for everything we do and use, in triplicate! If I’d wanted to
spend half my life up to my elbows in paperwork, I’d have shot myself in the
head. Better yet, I’d have shot bloody Alistair in the head, and it may yet come
to that. So far I’ve taken to just ignoring the paperwork and using his
increasingly distraught memos as toilet paper. And then sending them back to
him."
I couldn’t help smiling and nodding. Typical Alistair: penny
wise and pound foolish. Always trying to be useful in the worst possible way.
Someone once suggested, well out of Grandmother’s hearing, that the best way to
bring down our enemies would be to send them Alistair as a gift. I suddenly
stopped smiling. Someone in the family was a traitor…and what better way to
handicap the family than by undermining and disrupting the work in the armoury?
I shook my head reluctantly. I really liked the idea of nailing Alistair as the
traitor, but I knew for a fact he’d had to go through all kinds of security
checks before the family would allow Martha to marry him. If there’d been even a
hint of anything suspicious about him, they’d have found it. I looked around
abruptly as the Armourer jabbed me warningly in the ribs, and there was
Alexandra Drood, bearing down on me like a heat-seeking missile.
"What the hell are you doing down here, Eddie?"
"Hello, Alex," I said easily. "Good to see you again too. You’re
looking deliciously stern, but then you usually do. Especially in certain dreams
I’ve been having, involving you in leathers in a dungeon…Don’t look at me like
that. I’m here to pick up something in the small but deadly line, for my next
mission. What are you doing down here?"
She stood squarely before me, fists planted on her hips. "I run
this place now. I’m in training to take over from the Armourer, when he
retires."
I looked at the Armourer. "Retiring? You? Really?"
He shrugged uncomfortably. "Comes to us all, Eddie. I’m not
getting any younger, despite all my experimenting in that area, and the family
depends on the armoury for new ideas and new approaches, as well as new weapons.
Maybe it is time for a change. I just oversee things, these days. Paperwork,
remember? Alexandra takes care of all the day-to-day business. And does it very
well."
He actually managed a real smile for her, which she ignored, her
fierce glare fixed on me. I considered Alexandra thoughtfully. She was a cousin
of mine, from the same year as me. We’d attended a lot of classes together, and
she always was teacher’s pet. A first-class student, and the first to tell you
so. Alexandra was tall and blond, with a balcony you could do Shakespeare from.
Every inch the Aryan ideal, and twice as scary. Her lab coat had been starched
to within an inch of its life and was dazzlingly white. She was pretty enough,
in a totally intimidating sort of way, but she always gave the impression that
she was about to lunge forward and bite you. And not necessarily in a good way.
She glared at me with more than her usual ferocity, and I instinctively looked
around for some raw meat to throw her. She prodded me hard in the chest with a
forefinger.
"Careful, dear," I said. "In some cultures, that means we’re
engaged."
"I am not your dear!"
"You have no idea how safe and secure that makes me feel, Alex."
She took a few deep breaths to steady herself, which did very
interesting things to her balcony. I had to look away for a moment. When
Alexandra spoke again, her voice was icily calm and controlled.
"I’d heard you were back, Eddie. I don’t know how you have the
nerve to show your face in the Hall. You turned your back on the family, after
everything they did for you."
"Because of everything they did to me. I still serve, but in my
own way."
"There can be only one way! You betrayed the family trust; the
old traditions of duty and responsibility. You ran away from the Hall. Away from
me."
"I’d have died by inches if I stayed here, Alex. You know that."
"You should have stayed away. You have no place here any more.
No one in the family wants you here. No one. Now get the hell out of my armoury
before I have security throw you out."
"Ah, Alex; it’s good to see position and authority hasn’t
mellowed you. How’s the work here going? Bitten the heads off any more white
mice recently?"
"That was just the once! And it was a perfectly reasonable
scientific experiment!"
"Of course it was, dear. You still cried like a girly when I had
to give you all those rabies shots afterwards."
I couldn’t say I was all that surprised to discover Alexandra
was the new Armourer in training. She always was ambitious. Not to mention
almost viciously focused and driven to excel. Alexandra was hard-core family,
utterly dedicated to the good fight, with no time at all for people on the edge,
like me.
"I’m here to pick up some new weapons for my mission," I said,
putting on my best let’s-all-be-calm-and-reasonable face. "I have a chitty, from
the Matriarch."
Alexandra gave me a look that plainly said she didn’t believe a
word of it, and stuck out a hand for the paperwork. I handed it over, and she
made a point of scrutinising it very thoroughly, line by line, looking for some
subclause she could use to turn me down. I favoured her with my most confident
and beneficent smile, which made her scowl ever harder. She’d give herself a
headache soon, if she wasn’t careful. In the end, she had no choice but to
approve my chitty. It came direct from the Matriarch, with her seal and
signature. Alexandra reluctantly put her initials in the space provided, and
then thrust the papers ungraciously back at me.
"It all seems valid enough," she growled. "But I don’t want you
in my armoury one moment longer than necessary, Eddie. You’re a troublemaker.
You breed dissent, and you undermine proper authority. You stand for everything
I disapprove of in the family. We should have eliminated you years ago. You’re a
security risk, and you always will be."
I had to smile. "And to think I sent you a Valentine’s Day card,
when we were both fourteen."
Her mouth twitched briefly. "So it was you. I did wonder."
At which interesting point, we were interrupted by the arrival
of another field agent. It was Matthew Drood, and Alexandra was suddenly all
smiles for him. Matthew was another cousin from my year, and everything the
family had wanted me to be. He’d grown up to be everything I’d always thought he
would: very slick, very smart, very smooth. And not half as good in the field as
he liked to make out. I’d worked a few cases with him in London, and somehow he
ended up with all the credit after I’d done all the real work. He stood casually
before me in his expensively cut suit, everything a field agent shouldn’t be:
tall, dark, and handsome, and effortlessly charming when he chose to be. Good
luck trying to hide him in a crowd. (All right, Uncle James was all those things
too, but James had style.)
Matthew worked mainly in business circles, keeping the City…if
not actually honest, at least a lot more cautious. He also tended towards
scorched-earth solutions to most problems, in which there was no such thing as
an innocent bystander. Hard-core family, of course, which was why he and
Alexandra got on so famously together. Matthew finally broke off being charming
to her long enough to notice me.
"Ah, Eddie…Super to see you again, old thing. You’re looking
very…urban. Back from exile so soon? What happened, old boy? Run into something
you couldn’t handle? You should have called me; you know I’m always ready to
sail in and save the day."
"Yeah," I said. "That’ll happen. Actually, the Matriarch
summoned me back here to personally brief me on my next mission." I don’t
normally stoop to one-upmanship, but Matthew always did bring out the worst in
me. His pleasant smile started to look a bit forced, so I pushed things a little
further. "I’m surprised you didn’t hear, Matthew. I always thought you were
cleared for top-level discussions."
"Really?" he murmured. "A secret mission, you say? Do tell…I’m
just dying to know what kind of top-level mission would demand someone of
your…particular talents."
"Sorry," I said. "But it would appear you don’t have high enough
clearance."