The Armourer frowned. “The more of you there are, the harder it will be for you to keep track of yourselves and think clearly. Over-extend yourself, spread yourself too thinly . . . and at best, all your selves will slam back into one. Which will hurt, big-time.”
“And at worst?”
“You’d end up lost in the crowd. Unable to reintegrate yourself.”
“Got it,” I said. “Stick to two. Could add a whole new dimension to a threesome, mind.”
The Armourer sighed heavily. “Now, the new Colt Repeater. I’ve made a few improvements. Not only does the gun still aim itself and have an infinite number of bullets to call on; now it can draw on wooden, silver, and holy-water-tipped ammunition, as well! If one of those doesn’t kill your opponent, you’re probably better off running anyway.”
He handed over the heavy silver gun and its standard-issue shoulder holster, and then looked away so he wouldn’t have to watch me struggle to get the damn thing on.
“No reverse watch for you, this time. No one’s been able to make the damn thing work since you burnt out the last one.” He sniffed loudly but couldn’t stay mad at me for long, not while he still had so many new toys to impress me with. He handed me a small black box with a flourish. I accepted it, just a bit gingerly, and opened the lid with great care. The box held two very nice silver cuff links.
“Very nice,” I said innocently. “Solid silver, are they?”
“They are the Chameleon Codex,” the Armourer said sternly. “Programmed to pick up trace DNA from anyone you just happen to brush up against, and then store the information so that at a later date you can transform yourself into an exact duplicate of the original. Doesn’t last long, admittedly, but the opportunities for spycraft, deceit, and general mischief should be obvious.”
“Male and female?” I said hopefully.
He glared at me. “Can’t keep your mind out of the gutter for one minute, can you? Yes, male and female. Thanks to some rather exhaustive testing by one of my lab techs . . . Don’t put the cuff links on till you leave the Hall. Things are confused enough around here as it is. Finally, this is a skeleton key, made from human bone, and if you’re wise you won’t ask whose. Opens any physical lock. Almost as good as a Hand of Glory and a damn sight less obvious. Never liked the Hands anyway; nasty, smelly things. Try to get by with the skeleton key; we’re running low on Hands at the moment. We need to hang some more enemies . . .”
I made the box and the bone disappear into my pockets, and then looked thoughtfully at the Armourer. “What do you know about the Independent Agent, Uncle Jack?”
He smiled coldly then, as though he’d just been waiting for me to ask. “Your uncle James knew him better than I did, though we both worked with Alexander on occasion. We were a bit overawed at first, two young Droods out in the field for the first time, working with such a living legend. He was all that was grand and glamorous about spying, and we both learnt a hell of a lot from him. James and I took all kinds of damn fool risks, trying to impress him, but in the end it was James who Alexander took under his wing. I was killingly jealous, for a time . . .
“Alexander trained James: encouraged him, taught him discipline and determination. Helped make James into a spying legend in his own right: the Gray Fox. Whether that was a good thing in the end . . . I couldn’t say. But if anyone made James the man he was, determined to win at any price and to hell with what or who it cost . . . it was Alexander King.”
The Armourer looked at me steadily. “If you get the chance, Eddie, kill him. The whole world will rest easier for knowing that bloody-handed old sinner is dead and finally paying for his many crimes.”
I went outside to retrieve the Merlin Glass from my Rover 25 . . . and found my car just where it had been but now crushed and compacted into a metal ball some six feet in diameter. I stood there, looking at it, and only slowly realised that the new Serjeant-at-Arms was standing beside me, waiting for me to notice him.
“You were right, Eddie,” he said easily. “I couldn’t move your car. So I thought of something else to do to it. Here’s your Merlin Glass. I made a point of removing it first. The Matriarch said you’d need it, on your mission.”
I took the Glass from him, and for once, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. The new Serjeant-at-Arms leaned in close.
“I’m not my predecessor. I’m sneakier. Welcome home, Eddie.”
I have my own room in the Hall, even though I have a very nice little flat in Knightsbridge. The Merlin Glass allows me to commute back and forth. The centuries-old hand mirror can function as a doorway to anywhere. I made a point of studying my reflection carefully. William had spooked me more than a bit with his suggestion there might be someone or something trapped inside the Glass. Watching, and waiting. But everything seemed as it should be, so . . . I said the activating Words, concentrated on a destination, and the Glass leapt out of my hand, growing in size to become a doorway between the Hall and the place where Molly Metcalf lived.
The wood between the worlds.
Through the doorway I could see tall trees, and rich green vegetation, and long golden shafts of sunlight. The oldest wood, the first wood, blazing with all the bright primary colours of spring. The trees seemed to stretch away forever, and there were glades and waterfalls, rolling hills and rocky promontories. I’d spent a lot of time exploring the wood with Molly. The wild wood was her home, where she belonged, and the only place where she and I could be together and still have a little privacy. Apart from all the local wildlife, of course, who seemed to find Molly and me endlessly fascinating.
The wood between the worlds is an ancient place, untouched by civilisation, and never entirely a comfortable place to be. I was welcome there only because Molly vouched for me. The animals were always easy in Molly’s company, but they accepted me only because she did, and many remained cautious and watchful. This was where the really wild things ran free, including many species that had long since vanished from the earth. There were huge boars with great teeth and ragged tusks. There were dire wolves and black bears, and older, stranger, more mythical creatures too. Some I knew only as glowing eyes in the gloom between the trees. Molly treated them all with equal ease and affection, just slapping them away if they crowded her. The first time she did that with a twelve-foot bear, I nearly had a coronary. There were all kinds of birds too, filling the scent-rich air with their songs, and whole clouds of multicoloured butterflies.
There were other insects too, and lots of flies, but none of them ever bothered us. When I asked Molly why, she just said,
They wouldn’t dare.
She came running to greet me as I stepped through the Merlin Glass and into her world. My Molly Metcalf, the wild witch, the laughter in the woods, glorious and free. A gorgeous, wonderful woman just a few years younger than me, with pale skin and jet black hair, like a delicate china doll with big bosoms. She had eyes deep enough to drown in, more dark eyeliner than a panda on the pull, and a bright red rosebud mouth made for sin and laughter. She was wearing a long pastel green gown with a golden belt and half a dozen flowers pushed haphazardly into her hair. She threw herself at me, almost knocking me off my feet, and I held her like I’d never let her go.
Love came to me late in life, and unexpected. The Droods believe in marriage rather than love. Marriage binds you to the family; love just gets in the way. The family never wants anything in your life more important than your duty to the family. Everyone has to know their place. Molly, bless her contrary heart, has never known her place, and that’s just one of the reasons I love her so much.
She ground her breasts against my chest as we kissed. She knows I like that. Butterflies fluttered joyously all about us as we ripped the clothes off each other.
Some time later, we lay side by side on a grassy bank, the sweat slowly drying on our cooling bodies, snuggled happily together. I’d brought Molly up to date on my latest mission, and now she was sulking just a bit because she couldn’t go with me.
“You know we work best as a team, Eddie. Who’s going to watch your back if I’m not there?”
“I did survive as a Drood field agent for years, before we became an item,” I said, amused.
“It’s a constant wonder to me you lasted even one year. You’re far too trusting.”
“The invitation from the Independent Agent is for me alone,” I said patiently. “It’s his game, so he gets to set the rules.”
“Why choose you anyway? I mean, I’m sorry, sweetie, no offence and all that, but why you, out of all the Droods? Why not someone with more experience and closer to his generation, like your uncle Jack, perhaps?”
“Because I saved the world from the Hungry Gods, apparently. You do remember that, don’t you? I mean, you were there. Helping.”
“Don’t pout, Eddie; it doesn’t become you. Of course you deserve this honour; I just can’t help wondering if this is all some kind of trick or trap. Not necessarily just aimed at you. What if . . . What if this is all just an opportunity to get the six best spies in the world together in one place, and then kill them all off? One final coup for the Independent Agent: to prove he’s still the best, after all these years.”
“What a wonderfully suspicious mind you have,” I said fondly. “You’re quite right, of course. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if this turned out to be some kind of devious plot or scheme. But I still have to go. The price he’s offering is worth the risk.”
“Is it?” Molly rose up on one elbow to consider me, frowning worriedly. “I mean, what information could this man have that the amazing Drood family doesn’t already have? Secrets don’t stay secrets long.”
“Some do,” I said. “And Alexander King has been around . . . He might not have made history, but he certainly helped shape it from behind the scenes. There’s no telling what a man like that might know. In the hidden world of spies, there are often secrets within secrets. If anyone might know what we don’t, it would be Alexander King.”
“So, you have to go.” Molly sat upright, hugging her knees to her bare chest, deliberately looking straight ahead so she wouldn’t have to look at me. “All right; I get it. Duty calls, even after all you’ve done for your family, and all it’s done to you. You always were far too loyal for your own good.” She turned abruptly to fix me with her huge dark eyes, and then reached out and tweaked my left nipple hard, to make sure she had my full attention. “You stay sharp, Eddie, and do whatever you have to to win this bloody game. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to some of my friends and allies. People who wouldn’t talk to the infamous Droods. See what they have to say about Alexander bloody King.”
“Of course, Molly. You can let go of my nipple now. Please.”
She let go and looked away again. “I may be out of touch for a while. I have some family business to take care of.”
“It’s not your uncle Harvey again, is it?” I said. “The one who thinks he’s a giant rabbit?”
“No, it’s my sister, Isabella. She says she has news. She says she might, just might, have a lead on why my parents were killed by your family. The real reason, not the rubbish they fobbed you off with.”
“I have been trying to get at the truth,” I said.
“I know you have, sweetie.”
“In a family business the size of the Droods’, there’s often a lot of stuff going on where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Things are done because they need to be done and are only officially authorised afterwards. If at all. A lot of the records from that period are a mess, thanks to interference by the Zero Tolerance faction.”
“There’s more,” said Molly. Her voice was very serious. She still didn’t look at me. “Isabella says the death of my parents is linked to the death of your parents. That they were killed for the same reason: because of something they both knew.”
I didn’t know what to say. My parents were Drood field agents, killed in action in the Basque area, largely due to insufficient advance planning and unreliable intelligence. Or that was what my family told me. But like so many other things where my family was concerned, that might or might not be true.
“You be careful,” I said to Molly finally. “If my family finds out that you’re digging into Drood history, into secrets so awful they’re still hiding them from me . . . You be really careful, Molly. You have no idea what my family is capable of when it comes to protecting itself. What makes your sister so sure about this? Who’s she been talking to?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” said Molly. “You wouldn’t approve.”
“Molly . . .”
“Eddie, trust me; you don’t want to know. Now leave this to me. You concentrate on the Independent Agent and winning his stupid game. When it’s all over, come back here to me, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out. And then we’ll decide together what to do. To avenge the murder of our parents.”
“Yes,” I said. “We will do that. The guilty will be punished. Whoever they turn out to be.”
We lay back down on the green grass, side by side. The birds were singing, and a pleasant cool breeze gusted across our naked bodies. The air was rich with the scents of grass and earth and living things. I stared up at the sky and thought of many things.
“If, by some foul treachery, you don’t win,” said Molly Metcalf. “If you don’t come back . . . I will kill Alexander King for you.”
“Yes,” I said. “You do that.”
CHAPTER THREE
In the Court of the Cryptic King
F
og, fog, everywhere, and not a bit of it real. When I stepped through the Merlin Glass, the world disappeared, replaced by thick gray walls of slowly swirling mists. Endless shades of gray, cold and damp, diffusing the light and deadening all the sounds. I glanced behind me, but the Glass had already shut itself down back in the Hall. I was on my own.
I could feel a hard surface beneath my feet and the bitter cold searing my bare skin. The air was thin but bracing, so it seemed I was probably in the right place at least, somewhere deep in the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t see a damned thing. The fog churned around me, thick and deep, like water at the bottom of a great gray ocean, and I had a strong feeling there was something else there in the fog with me. It wasn’t real fog; I could tell by the way it glowed. This was flux fog: the pearly shades that mark where the barriers of the world have grown thin and possibilities are everything.