He does not spare the rod with the children.
The new Serjeant-at-Arms’ name, never used anymore in public, was Cedric. There’s something about certain names that pretty much ensures that particular child will be teased and bullied by his peers all through childhood. Sometimes I think the parents do it on purpose, to ensure their precious progeny will grow up tough and hard. With a name like Cedric, the guy was destined to be Serjeant-at-Arms someday. That, or a serial killer.
He stood firmly in the doorway, deliberately blocking my way. He glowered at me, his arms folded tightly across his impressive chest. I considered him thoughtfully. While I was running the family I was exempt from family discipline, but now I was just a field agent again . . . I was still exempt, as far as I was concerned. I’ve never got on with authority figures. Even when I was one. I’m a firm believer in rules and discipline within the family, as long as they don’t apply to me. I was tempted to hit the Serjeant with my one remaining mellow bomb, just to see what would happen. I quite liked the idea of seeing Cedric sitting naked on the lawns, hugging the gryphons and singing show tunes to them. But . . . I had promised myself I’d be good, at least until I’d found out just what was so important I had to be summoned back so urgently.
And how deep I was in it.
“Hello, Cedric,” I said. “Getting much?”
“Move the car,” he said. His voice was little more than a whisper and all the more menacing for it. His cold, unwavering gaze would have reduced a lesser man to tears.
“You move it,” I said cheerfully. “Really; I’d love to see you try. Anyone who tries to shift that motor against its will, dear Serjeant, will almost certainly find bits of themselves raining down all over the lawns, covering a wide area.”
“Parking in front of the Hall is against the rules,” said the Serjeant. He really did have a very impressive stare. Probably would have worked on anyone else.
“So am I,” I said. “Now shift your incredible bulk out of my way, or I’ll tell the Matriarch you were mean to me. I’m here to meet with her and the council.”
“I know,” said the Serjeant. “And you’re late.” He leaned forward slightly, his great form towering over me. “I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done; you mess with me and I’ll make you permanently late. You’ll be the late Edwin Drood.”
“See, there you had to go and spoil it,” I said. “Never hammer a threat into the ground, Cedric.”
His expression didn’t change, but he stepped back to allow me to pass. I strode in with my nose in the air, back into the Hall that was my home, like it or not. Back into the cold embrace and dangerous entanglements of my beloved family.
I made my way unhurriedly through the long corridors and passageways, the great open chambers and galleries, surrounded on all sides by the acquired loot of ages. To the victor goes the spoils, and we have spoiled ourselves. The Hall is stuffed full of accumulated treasures, including masterpieces of art and famous statues by immortal names. Gifts from grateful governments, and others. Or perhaps tribute to the secret masters of the world. Presented just as prominently were suits of armour and weapons from centuries past, and not a few from the future, all with their own legends and histories, all of them bright and gleaming and ready for use at a moment’s notice. There were fabulous carpets and rich hanging drapes, and long shafts of sunlight poured like slow time through tall stained-glass windows.
They were waiting for me in what used to be called the Sanctity: a great cavernous chamber that once contained the Heart that gave the family its armour and its power. A single massive diamond as big as a bus, with a million gleaming facets, the Heart turned out to be an other-dimensional fugitive from justice that fed on pain and horror and death, until I destroyed it. These days the Sanctity is empty, and the family’s armour and power derives from another extradimensional creature with rather more friendly motives. She insists on being called Ethel, though God knows I’ve tried to talk her out of it. Ethel manifests in the Sanctity as a soothing shade of red, suffusing the whole chamber with its happy presence and the scent of roses.
The council were waiting impatiently at an ancient oak table set in the middle of the chamber. It would have looked small and even insignificant in such a setting if not for the importance of the people sitting around it. I strolled across the chamber, head held high, maintaining an ostentatious serenity under the accusing weight of their stares. My footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet. I sat down, and smiled easily around me.
“So, who’s got the cards?”
They didn’t smile. Not all the council were there; just the Matriarch and the Armourer. Martha Drood sat straight-backed in her chair, tall and elegant and more regal than any queen. She had been a famous beauty once, and you could still see the force of it in her strong bone structure. She wore country tweeds, twin set, and pearls, and her long gray hair was piled up on top of her head in the style of times past. My grandmother, though she’d never let that get in the way of doing whatever needed to be done. She’d tried to have me killed, but we’d got over that . . . mostly. She had to be in her early seventies now, but there wasn’t an ounce of weakness in her. She studied me with calm, calculating gray eyes, waiting for me to acknowledge her, so I deliberately nodded cheerfully to the Armourer.
A bald, middle-aged man with thick tufty white eyebrows and a permanent scowl, Uncle Jack looked sulky and put-upon, as he always did when called away from his beloved Armoury. Devilishly talented when it came to creating dangerous and devious devices, but he just couldn’t be bothered with people skills anymore. He used to be a field agent, and a great one in his day, but he rarely left the Armoury now.
I prefer things to people,
he once told me.
You can fix things when they go wrong.
The long lab coat wrapped around his spindly frame had presumably been white once, but it was now disfigured with rips and tears, chemical stains and burns, and the occasional splash of someone else’s blood. And what might have been mustard. Under the lab coat, the Armourer was wearing a grubby T-shirt with the legend
Weapons of Mass Destruction R Us.
He had large, bony, engineer’s hands and kind eyes.
“Hi there, hi there, hi there!” said Ethel, her words seeming to burst out of everywhere at once. “Welcome home, Eddie! Great to have you back; everyone else here is so stuffy! They just don’t know how to have fun, the great bunch of stiffs. The Hall is always so much more lively when you’re around. How was London? How was the Tower? Did you bring me back a present?”
“I never know what to get you,” I said. “You’re so hard to buy for, but then I find that’s true for most immaterial other-dimensional entities.” I ignored Ethel’s giggles and looked at the Matriarch. “Where’s the rest of the council? Are we waiting for them?”
“No,” said Martha, her voice calm and even and utterly devoid of any kind of warmth. “For the time being, we are the council. Your cousin Harry is out in the field with his partner Roger Morningstar, infiltrating one of the more dubious Paris nightclubs in pursuit of the notorious Fantom. I can’t believe that madman’s on the loose again so soon after we put him away. If the French authorities can’t build a prison strong enough to hold their most notorious and appalling criminal, I shall have the Armourer build them something special. And make them pay through the nose for it.”
“I thought we blew the Fantom up last year,” said the Armourer, frowning.
“We did,” said the Matriarch. “It didn’t take. Harry and Roger will be back when they can.”
“And William?” I said.
“The Librarian is hard at work, in the old library,” said the Armourer. “Hardly ever leaves the place. Got a cot set up in there, and a chemical toilet, and has all his meals sent in.”
“Normally I wouldn’t allow such behaviour,” said the Matriarch. “But we need him.”
“It’s not healthy,” the Armourer said firmly. “I mean, I love my Armoury, but at the end of the day I lock the door behind me and go home.”
“William is doing good and necessary work,” the Matriarch said. “And that is all that matters.”
“To us,” said the Armourer. “But what about him?”
“Hush, Jack.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I nodded glumly. “I did hope he’d improve, after I got him out of that asylum for the criminally insane and brought him home, but . . . the Heart really did a number on his head. Give him time; he’ll bounce back. He’s a tough old stick.”
“Of course,” said Martha. “He’s a Drood.”
“And we’re never more dangerous than when we’re crazy!” said the Armourer, waggling his bushy eyebrows.
“Jack . . .”
“Sorry, Mother.”
“So,” I said thoughtfully. “Just the three of us. How cosy.”
“Four!” said the crimson glow reproachfully.
“Sorry, Ethel,” I said. “Four. Now . . . just what is so important that I have to be dragged all the way back here, with absolutely no advance warning? And why did I have to drive down? Why couldn’t I just transport myself directly here through the Merlin Glass, like I normally do?”
“We can’t risk word of this getting out,” the Matriarch said steadily. “I’ve never entirely trusted the Merlin Glass. I mean, look who made it. You did bring it with you?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s safely locked in the boot of my car.”
“Good,” said the Armourer. “That means no one can listen in through it.”
“I see the family’s paranoia is well and thriving,” I said. “Look, either someone gives me a really good reason for my being here, or I am driving my nice little car straight back to the more civilised comforts of London. I am not in charge of the family anymore, and only a member of the council when I absolutely have to be; I am a field agent again, and I like it that way. I have just saved the Crown Jewels from being stolen and protected the whole of England from a terrible disaster, and I am owed some serious downtime.”
Give the Matriarch credit, she didn’t so much as blink an eye at my tirade, even though no one else in the family would have dared talk to her in such a way. “Have you finished?” she said calmly.
“Get to the point or I’ll set fire to your shoes,” I said.
She smiled thinly. “So I’m only in charge of running this family when it suits you, Edwin? I don’t think so. You accepted the result of the election. You stepped down in my favour. You gave up overall duty and responsibility, in return for your . . . independence. You agreed to accept my authority as Matriarch; or do you now intend to remove me by force? Again?”
“Depends,” I said darkly. “Why am I here?”
“First, there is urgent council business that must be discussed,” said the Matriarch just a bit triumphantly, and I could have wept. She was going to do this her way, and all I could do was go along. Because she was in charge now, and because she really wouldn’t have summoned me back so urgently unless it was important. She didn’t want me back, undermining her authority and setting a bad example, any more than I wanted to be here.
The Matriarch nodded to the Armourer, and he sat up straight in his chair and launched into a prepared speech. “There are a great many questions left over from the Hungry Gods War,” he said, scowling more deeply than ever. “We never did find out who the traitor and damned fool in the family was who first summoned the Loathly Ones into our reality and opened a door for the Many-Angled Ones, the Hungry Gods. We’re sure now it wasn’t any accident. The traitor insisted on bringing the Loathly Ones through to use as weapons during World War Two, when there were many other, and far safer, options. So why did he do it?”
“There is . . . some evidence suggesting the traitor may still be alive and a part of this family,” said the Matriarch. Her voice was very cold now. “He would have to be over a hundred years old and extending his life through unnatural means. It seems . . . he has killed another member of the family and taken over their identity.”
“How is that
possible
?” I said, actually shocked. “When we’re all crammed together in this place, how the hell could he do it without being noticed? One of the reasons I was so glad to get out of the Hall was because of how closely we all live on top of each other.”
“No clues, no hard evidence, not even any real theories,” the Armourer said grimly. “Nothing definite, just . . . whispers. But whoever he is, he’s still making trouble. We’re pretty sure he started the Zero Tolerance faction in the family and founded and manipulated the Manifest Destiny group outside it. That faction still has its supporters in the family, muttering that we should be more proactive against our many enemies. Don’t look at me like that, Eddie. I know better than to believe such nonsense, but it’s what some people are saying.”
“Fools,” said the Matriarch. “We protect humanity by keeping its enemies off balance, playing one against another. We stick to the old ways because they work and have done for centuries.”
“Still,” I said, thinking hard. “A traitor, very old and very powerful, embedded deep inside the family. Like we don’t have enough problems . . . Are there any family members left who were active during the thirties and forties? They might be able to help us.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Martha. “I was but a child in those days. William is currently searching through family records in search of . . . gaps or anomalies.”
“Droods don’t tend to live long lives,” said the Armourer. “We live hard, we carry heavy responsibilities, and we burn out early. Which is why I’ve been thinking about a new kind of device: a whole new way to call up the recently dead and ask them questions.”
“No, Armourer,” said the Matriarch very firmly.
“All right, my last try was a bit of a disaster, but this one would work! I’m almost certain we could reach departed Droods from the thirties—”
“I said no, Jack!” The Matriarch glared at him until he lapsed into rebellious silence. “It is against family policy to encourage ghosts, or we’d be hip deep in revenants by now. You know very well that even the most dearly departed cannot be trusted. The dead always have their own agenda.”