From a Drood to A Kill: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  “I’m sure I can keep busy,” Molly said innocently. “I might go visit with my sisters. Isabella and Louisa are off on vacation together at the moment. I do need to talk to them. You’re not the only one with unfinished family business, you know.”

  “Where are they?” I said. “Or shouldn’t I ask, because the answer would only upset me?”

  “It’s usually best not to when the two of them get together,” Molly conceded. “They always do so much more damage when they’re together. But just now they’re relaxing, on a grand tour of darkest Africa: holidaying in a hidden world packed with dinosaurs and weird shit; visiting with the fabled Lord of the Crater.”

  “I met him once,” I said. “Years ago, when he came to London in hot pursuit of one of his dinosaurs that had been kidnapped. A charming fellow, I thought—for a heavily armed barbarian in a loincloth.” I stopped abruptly, and Molly stopped with me. We looked at each other for a long moment. “Molly, have you told Isabella and Louisa that your parents were killed by my grandfather, the Regent of Shadows? On orders from somewhere inside the Drood family?”

  “Yes,” said Molly. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, like you do. Well, yes, of course we do; we’re sisters. But not the things that really matter. So, yes, they know, but we haven’t had time to sit down and discuss it properly as yet.”

  “The Regent is dead,” I said. “And the chances of finding out whoever gave my grandfather his orders . . . are remote. It was a long time ago, Molly. Let the past stay in the past.”

  “How can I,” said Molly, “when it will insist on intruding into the present?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  You Do What You Can for People. But It’s Never Going to Be Enough.

  I went down to the Armoury. The family keeps it safely tucked away in a great stone cavern carved out of the bedrock deep under the Hall’s West Wing. So that when things go wrong, as they inevitably will, usually in a loud, messy, and horribly destructive way, the damage it does to the Hall above can be strictly limited. The Armourer, along with his merry crew of highly intelligent and only slightly disturbed lab assistants, is responsible for researching and producing all the weapons, gadgets, sneaky items, and mean tricks that make it possible for those of us out in the field to do our job. The family armour is good; hell, the armour’s amazing . . . but it can’t do everything.

  The Armoury is one of the few places in the Hall that actually feels like home to me. Everywhere else just reminds me of the harsh discipline, brutal schooling, and endless authority of Drood family life. Everything I ran away from, first chance I got. The Armoury, on the other hand, is where I used to hide out when I was supposed to be properly busy somewhere else; hanging out with the only member of the family who really had time for me. The Armourer—my uncle Jack.

  When I finally passed through the heavy blast-proof doors and emerged into the long series of connected stone chambers that make up the Armoury, I was immediately struck by how unusually quiet and well organized everything seemed, compared to the barely controlled chaos I was used to encountering. Sudden lights still flared brightly, and chemical stinks hung heavily on the air. Lightning crawled across one wall like sparking ivy, and black smoke drifted quietly over what remained of a workstation after the latest unfortunate incident. But no one was paying me any attention. I could usually rely on the odd smile and nod, and even a cheerful wave or two, from the lab assistants in their charred and chemical-stained lab coats. They approved of me, mostly, seeing in me the same rebellious attitude they all cultivated as a matter of pride. But today, no one even looked up as I passed them by, all of them conspicuously intent on their work. There was none of the usual standing around in groups, discussing things at the top of their voices and inevitably coming to blows, none of the usual trying things out on each other. It was all very . . . calm, and disciplined. I hardly recognised the place.

  Of course there are always going to be a few rogue elements. Two assistants were having a Drood-off, standing facing each other in their armour and trying to outdo each other as they shaped and reshaped their golden strange matter through an effort of will. Experimenting beyond the usual basic humanoid form, seeing just how extreme and grotesque they could become while still holding things together. Golden demons became gleaming angels, switching quickly from horrible propensities to amazing proportions, rocking back and forth as they added extra limbs or shaped exotic weapons out of their armour. But the new shapes inevitably faltered and fell apart, as the wearer’s concentration wavered. The more outré the form, the harder it was for the occupant to hold all the various elements in his mind at one time. One assistant became suddenly top-heavy and fell over. I left them to it.

  Farther in, a small group of lab assistants was forming a search party to locate another assistant who’d finally perfected his new invisibility field but had suddenly stopped answering their questions. They moved through the Armoury with outstretched arms, trying to find him. Of course, there was always the possibility that he’d just sneaked out of the Armoury and was hiding somewhere else, giggling a lot. It was what I would have done.

  Two female assistants were fighting it out in the battle circle, with depleted-uranium knuckle-dusters, and shimmering force shields on their arms, while a small group of onlookers took careful notes and made a series of quiet bets. Not far away, two young male assistants were playing sock-me-rock-me with two giant stone golems. I’m almost sure there was a practical purpose in there somewhere.

  And down at the firing range, one assistant had armoured up and transformed one golden arm into something very like a bazooka. While everyone else hid behind things, he aimed carefully and fired off a strange matter projectile. The far end of the firing range disappeared in smoke and fire, while the recoil blasted the assistant right off his feet and sent him flying backwards half the length of the Armoury, crashing through a whole bunch of things along the way. Some people just won’t be told. There was general merriment from those watching, and some applause.

  I found my uncle Jack sitting slumped in his favourite chair, before his usual work-bench. Which seemed a lot less crowded than usual, though his computer was still wrapped in long strings of mistletoe and garlic, for no obvious reason. The back of the Armourer’s chair bore the legend Sudden Experiments Make God Jump. He didn’t seem to be working on anything in particular, which was unusual for him. The Armourer lived for his work. But now Uncle Jack was just sitting there, staring at nothing, his gaze far away. I said his name a few times, and he slowly turned his head to look at me. He seemed older, tired. A stick-thin man with a pronounced stoop, a bald head, and harsh features. The bushy white eyebrows were still the same, but his normally steely grey eyes seemed oddly vague. His lab coat was sparkling clean and freshly starched, without any of the chemical burns or bullet holes that he usually wore as badges of honour. He looked at me for a long moment, and then seemed suddenly to recognise me. He smiled broadly, his gaze snapping into focus as his head came up, and just like that he wasn’t some tired old man any more. He looked like my uncle Jack again.

  He shook my hand firmly, mine almost disappearing inside his oversized engineer’s hand, and he sat up straight in his chair. He was wearing a blank white T-shirt under his coat, with none of his usual disturbing messages on it, and that worried me, obscurely. The Armourer liked his T-shirts to make a statement, usually something offensive and wildly inappropriate. His own small rebellion against authority. I sat down on the edge of his work-bench, because I knew that always annoyed him. I waited for him to tell me off, and when he didn’t, I was so shocked that I immediately got up again. I found a spare chair and pulled it over so I could sit opposite him, while wondering how I could tactfully ask what the hell was the matter with him.

  “Welcome back, Eddie,” said the Armourer. “Good to see you again. You don’t come home nearly often enough. This is your home, you know. You belong here. Not gallivanting about with well-meaning
second-raters like the Department of Uncanny. Yes, yes, I know, your grandfather did good work there. But they were only ever a Government Department. We Droods have the whole world as our responsibility. More and more, it seems you only ever come home when you want something from us. Why are you here now, boy? What do you want from me this time?”

  “Didn’t the Matriarch tell you?” I said carefully.

  “What? Oh yes . . .” He leaned forward and scrabbled through a few desk drawers, before finally coming up with a packet of assorted papers that he thrust carelessly into my waiting hand. He settled back in his chair and smiled easily at me.

  “There you go, boy. Standard all-purpose legend; all the paperwork and IDs you’ll need to properly impress everyone at the Big Ear. Just fill in whatever username you decide to go with in all the appropriate places, and add whatever authorizing signatures you feel necessary. Just scrawl something—they never check. All pretty generic stuff. Just flash it around and glare at people a lot, and you’ll be fine.”

  A really loud bang echoed from the far end of the Armoury. The multicoloured spaghetti of tacked-up electrical wiring danced on the walls, the lights flickered, and the floor shook. No one looked up. In the Armoury, explosions and worryingly loud noises were just business as usual. So I was genuinely surprised, and actually a bit worried, to see the Armourer jump and flinch, just a little.

  I retrieved the Merlin Glass from my pocket dimension and handed it to the Armourer; he just took it from me absently and put it on his work-bench without even looking at it.

  “That’s the Merlin Glass, Uncle Jack!” I said.

  “I know!” he said. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “The damned thing’s been acting up so much recently, I’m not sure I trust it any more,” I said. “It seems to be developing a mind of its own. Which is never a good thing in a device you need to depend on in the field. I thought you might be able to do . . . something with it.”

  “I’ll look into it,” he said solemnly, and then raised a bushy eyebrow at me. “I have to say, I’m surprised you’re handing it over so casually, after you made such a fuss about not giving it up the last time you were here.”

  “I’m giving it to you,” I said. “Not to the family. I trust you.”

  “Well,” said the Armourer, “that’s nice . . .”

  I looked at him thoughtfully. “Uncle Jack. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Merlin Glass’ origins just recently. The last time I saw the Independent Agent, Alexander King, he said he gave you the Merlin Glass. In return for a device he could use to turn off Drood armour by remote control.”

  The Armourer snorted loudly. “As if I’d ever give him anything he could use against the family. King lied. He did that a lot.”

  “So where did you get the Merlin Glass?”

  “From the London Knights.”

  “Well, where did they get it from? How did they get their hands on something given to our family by Merlin Satanspawn himself? And why did they give it back to you?”

  The Armourer smiled briefly. “You should ask them. Ah! Look who’s here! Good boy . . .”

  There was a loud clattering of steel paws on the hard stone floor as a large metal dog came padding forward to join us. A good five feet tall at the shoulder, it was all gleaming Art Deco steel curves, with a sculpted metal hound’s face and glowing red eyes. It looked sleek and powerful, and strong enough to crash through any wall that had the nerve to get in its way. I’d seen something very like it before; in fact, I’d destroyed the original. Back when it was a robot attack dog, defending Area 52 in the Antarctic. I’d brought the pieces home as a present for Uncle Jack. I knew he liked jigsaws. It seemed he’d finally found time to put the dog back together again; along with his own improvements. The Armourer did so love to tinker. He made a fuss of the robot dog as it sat down heavily before him, its long steel tail hammering loudly against the stone floor as it raised its metal head to be scratched. I wasn’t sure which of them was humouring which. The Armourer grinned at me.

  “Eddie, this is Scraps.2. Much better than a real dog. I haven’t been able to have a real pet for years and years. Not since the first Scraps exploded. It’s not safe down here for real animals. For any number of reasons. Scraps.2 is much more . . . hard-wearing.” He grinned nastily. “He gives the assistants a good run for their money and helps keep them on their toes. Don’t you, boy? Eh? Who’s a good dog!”

  Scraps.2 was looking at me thoughtfully. He appeared to have a great many sharp metal teeth set into his powerful jaws, and a definite sense of barely restrained menace about him. I sat very still.

  “Don’t worry,” the Armourer said cheerfully. “I scrubbed his memory cells really thoroughly before I rebooted his AI. Just in case.”

  “Then why is he looking at me like that?” I said. “If he doesn’t remember what happened to the old him?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Armourer. “Instinct?”

  “What does he do here, exactly?”

  “He keeps me company! He’s very intelligent . . . though for a first-class robot dog AI, he does seem to be having remarkable difficulty with the simple concept of Fetch!”

  “Perhaps he’s just too smart to,” I said.

  The sound of loudly disagreeing lab assistants rose suddenly in the background. Followed almost immediately by the sound of energy weapons discharging, followed by explosions, muffled screams, and really bad language. Scraps.2 lurched abruptly to his feet, his eyes glowing brightly as his metal ears pricked up, and then he padded determinedly off to investigate.

  “That’s right, boy!” said the Armourer. “Off you go! You sort them out! Don’t take any nonsense from them . . .”

  “So!” I said. “What are you working on at the moment, Uncle Jack?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” he said. “Just sitting here. Thinking . . .”

  “But you’re always working on something!”

  “I’ve been making a list,” said the Armourer, looking vaguely at the papers scattered across his work-bench. “Of all the things I created for this family, down through the years. How many have become standard, useful items—like the Colt Repeater, or the portable door. And how many just worked for a while, then developed problems. And how many turned out to be something that just seemed like a good idea at the time. And you know what, Eddie? In the end . . . I don’t think any of them really mattered. A well-trained agent is what makes all the difference out in the field. The man, not the weapons.”

  “I couldn’t do the job without your help, Armourer,” I said. And I meant it.

  And then I got distracted, as a large eyeball fitted out with membranous batwings went fluttering past, pursued by a determined-looking young woman with a large butterfly net. Everyone else ignored them.

  “Why do you encourage your assistants to work on such weird stuff, Uncle Jack?” I said.

  “Because you never know what might come in handy someday,” said the Armourer. “And it encourages them to think outside the box. Some of them are so far outside the box they can’t even see the box from where they are.” He stopped, and looked at me for a long moment. “They’re a good bunch, Eddie. They do good work. But I’m still worried because I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement among them. Someone to take over from me, so I can retire. The assistants come and go, all the good boys and girls . . . excellent minds, but never anyone special. They mean well, and they turn out impressive work, sometimes, but . . . none of them seem to have that special spark.”

  He gestured with an only slightly shaky hand at two figures standing really close together, leafing through a thick file of reports. I recognised them immediately. Maxwell and Victoria, the Armourer’s two most impressive and most irritating students. First-class scientific minds, and so in love with each other they couldn’t help but get on everyone else’s nerves. They would insist on sharing t
heir happiness with the whole world, whether the world wanted to know or not. They were both almost indecently young for such senior assistants—barely into their twenties. The Armourer sighed loudly.

  “Look at them! Love’s young dream, and masters of mass destruction. Brilliant weaponeers, when they can stop cooing at each other. And they’re the best I’ve got. I brought them in to help carry the load. To keep things running, while I’m . . . busy, thinking. I’m feeling old, Eddie. I get tired. I take naps. Maxwell and Victoria are good organizers—but have they got that special something that makes them Armourer material? They’d better have. There’s no one else . . .”

  “You’ve never complained of feeling old before,” I said.

  “Yes, I have. You just didn’t want to hear it. Like everyone else in this family. Oh, the Armourer’s good for a few more years yet, so let’s pile on even more work, and more responsibilities . . . But I think I’ve done enough. It’s time for me to put down the load and walk away. Well past time, in fact. My best years are behind me, Eddie; that gets clearer every day. It’s . . . difficult, to look back at the kind of work I used to be capable of and know I’m just not up to it any longer. I can repair things, even improve on them sometimes. Like Scraps. But I can’t innovate any more. I don’t have the spark these days . . . But I can’t stand down, can’t let the family down, until I’m sure I’ve found a suitable replacement.”

  “Come on, Uncle Jack,” I said uncomfortably, struggling to find the right thing to say. He was scaring me now, talking like that, but I didn’t want him to see how worried I was. “You’ve got years of good work in you yet.”

  “Not many,” said the Armourer. His large engineer’s hands came together in his lap and held on to each other, as though for comfort. “I’m older than I look, Eddie. I’m wearing out, at last. Worn thin . . .”

  He looked slowly round the Armoury, at his quietly hardworking assistants. “I used to know every inch of this place. Had a hand in everything that was going on. Knew who everyone was and what they were working on. Who needed encouraging and who’d profit most from a good kick in the arse . . . Now, I don’t even recognise half of them. All the assistants from my generation are gone. And most of the generations in between. Which is as it should be; no one is ever supposed to stay a lab assistant. One way or another, they move on, hopefully to better things, in the family. You need to be young just to stand the pace here. I can’t help feeling . . . I’ve outstayed my welcome.”