Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  Eventually portraits gave way to photographs, as the more modern generations appeared. And it was only when I got to the very end of the hallway that I spotted the small gap on one wall, where the photo of my parents used to be.

  I remembered that photo. When I was a child growing up in Drood Hall, it was all I had to remember my father and mother by. The two of them together, not much older than I am now, smiling happily . . . And now the photo was gone, and they were gone, airbrushed out of Drood history.

  I stood before the empty gap on the wall, staring at nothing, feeling like I’d just been punched in the heart. I had no other photo of my mother and my father. It had been allowed to hang there as long as the family thought they were honourably dead, lost in action in the field. But now we all knew they were alive, and working for the Department of Uncanny, the family had turned its back on them. Made them non-persons. Because no one is allowed to walk away from the family. After a while, Molly squeezed my arm reassuringly, and we walked on.

  People started to appear, in the corridors and open spaces, as we made our way deeper into the Hall. Men and women hurried back and forth on family business, all of them far too busy to stop and chat. Some actually jumped skittishly when I looked at them. Some faces I recognised, and some I didn’t. We’re a big family. So big we have our own monthly in-Hall magazine, Drood Times. A big glossy thing, distributed only within the family. In fact, all copies are programmed to self-destruct if they’re touched by anyone without Drood DNA. The magazine is full of family doings, always bright and cheerful, and packed with the latest gossip—and it depresses me beyond words. I don’t tend to appear in it much, except as a Bad Example.

  Of course I read it every month. Know thy enemy . . .

  I smiled and nodded to one and all, and kept going. Some smiled and nodded back; some didn’t. Molly doesn’t really do the smiling and nodding thing, even under the best of circumstances. She just scowled around her, and the Droods who recognised her put on a really impressive burst of speed.

  I kept a cautious eye on Molly, just in case she decided she’d been insulted, but she seemed far more interested in the many rare and expensive works of art that pop up everywhere in the Hall. Paintings and statues by world Masters, all of which have never seen the inside of a museum or gallery, and whose existence here explains certain gaps in the Masters’ official output. Tribute, from a grateful world and its governments. Or placations, to please leave them alone. Depends on how you look at it. I didn’t like the thoughtful way Molly was looking at some of the more easily moveable pieces, or the frankly larcenous look in her eye. So I hurried her along, just a little, in case her fingers started itching.

  • • •

  Finally, we came to the heart of Drood Hall, the great open chamber called the Sanctity. Off-limits to pretty much all the family, these days, except for the ruling Council. The Sanctity, where all the things that really matter are decided. Two large and muscular young Droods were standing guard in front of the closed double doors, and they both slammed to attention as Molly and I approached. They were trying hard to look brave and bold and officious, and not at all terribly worried. For all their size and bulk, they both looked like they really didn’t want to be there. Doing what they were doing. Whatever that turned out to be. They stood their ground as Molly and I walked right up to them, determined to do their duty. They were Droods, after all.

  “Edwin Drood, we recognise you!” the guard on the left said loudly. “We acknowledge your right to enter the Sanctity!”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s nice. But then, I’ve always had that right. Really didn’t need you to tell me that. Why are you guarding the Sanctity? Has someone tried to steal it?”

  The guard swallowed hard, and pressed on with his carefully rehearsed speech, in an only slightly strangulated tone of voice.

  “However, it is my duty to inform you, it has been decided by the Council that while you may enter for the reading of the Matriarch’s will, Molly Metcalf may not. We have been given specific instructions that she is not to be allowed into the Sanctity.”

  “I hope there’s a good reason for that,” I said, in an only slightly dangerous tone of voice.

  The guard looked like he wanted to whine piteously and wet himself, possibly simultaneously, but he pressed on. “It is a condition of the will that only those mentioned or directly affected by the terms of the will may be present during its reading. These are the words of the Council and nothing at all to do with me, so please don’t let the witch turn me or my brother into something squishy.”

  I was getting ready to make a fuss, just on general principles, when Molly surprised me by nodding her head understandingly. She slipped her arm free of mine, stepped back, and smiled easily at me.

  “It’s all right, Eddie. I get it. Wills are always going to be private family things. You go on. Take your time. I’m sure I can find some trouble to get into.”

  I grinned back at her. “I’ll listen for the bang.”

  Molly kissed me hard, just to scandalise the guards, and then swayed casually off down the corridor. Almost certainly with theft, abuse, and extensive property damage in mind. Serve my family right, for upsetting her. The guards seemed happy to see her go. So I gave them my best hard stare, and they immediately snapped to attention again, on either side of the doors. There was no real fun to be had in intimidating them; it was like bullying puppies. The double doors to the Sanctity swung slowly open on their own. I gave them a long, thoughtful look and walked in.

  • • •

  I entered the Sanctity with my head held high, and then relaxed despite myself as the warm rosy glow of the place fell on me like a benediction. The Sanctity isn’t just the main meeting place of Drood pomp and power; it’s also home to Ethel. Our strange visitor from another dimension, or reality. Or somewhere else. We don’t know, and frankly, most of us are too scared to ask. She looks after us, supplies the strange matter of our armour, and baffles us all on a daily basis. She does seem to be genuinely fond of the family, but I can’t shake the feeling that our other-dimensional patron really thinks she’s raising Droods as pets.

  The constant red glow is the only sure sign of her presence in this world, and all we’ve ever seen of her. Given that she claims to have downloaded herself into our material reality from a higher dimension, I suppose it’s always possible that the red glow might be all there is of her. Certainly, just standing in the glow for any length of time makes you feel loved, cared for, and appreciated. Still doesn’t do much to keep major arguments from breaking out during Council meetings, though. The Droods are just that kind of family.

  Sitting around the single bare wooden table before me were the current members of the Drood ruling Council. My uncle Jack, the Armourer. William, the Librarian. The Serjeant-at-Arms. And, somewhat to my surprise, the landscape gardener, Capability Maggie. Who was hardly ever seen inside the Hall, because she much preferred to be outside, looking after the gardens and grounds. If anything, she looked even less happy to be there than I was.

  They all looked at me in much the same way, as though I was late, untidy and unwelcome, and let in only on tolerance. I was used to that from my family.

  “Eddie!” said a loud, happy, and entirely disembodied female voice. “Hello hello hello! Welcome back! How was the Vatican? Did you bring me back a present?”

  “Hello, Ethel,” I said, to the chamber at large. “Yes, the mission was successful, and no, I didn’t bring anything back for you. I had to leave in something of a hurry, with hellhounds on my trail, and the Gift Shop was closed. Besides, they didn’t have anything there you would have liked.”

  “You don’t know that,” Ethel said immediately. “They might have. You could have looked.”

  “You’re very hard to buy for,” I said. “What do you get for the other-dimensional entity who is everything?”

  She giggled, which is an eerie thing in a disembodied voice.

  I looked around the table, nodding bri
efly to each member of the Council in turn. I can be polite and civilised when I have to. The Armourer, my uncle Jack, was a tall man in late middle age, full of far too much nervous energy for his own good. Or, given his job, everyone else’s. He was tapping the fingers of one hand on the table, and frowning hard as he concentrated on some new awful thing to throw at the family’s enemies. Or someone he’d just seen on the television news who’d upset him. He wore a long lab coat that might have been white a long time before, but was now covered with chemical stains, acid burns, and what looked worryingly like teeth marks. Underneath the lab coat, the Armourer was wearing a grubby T-shirt bearing the legend Yes I do hear voices, and they all know your name. Two fluffy tufts of white hair peeked out above his ears—all that was left of a once impressive head of hair that had jumped ship many years earlier. He looked hard done by, but still hard enough to cope.

  Back in his day, my uncle Jack had been one of the family’s leading field agents, rushing around Cold War Europe stamping out super-science and supernatural bush-fires. He still looked like he could punch his weight, but years of working in the Armoury had bent him over in a permanent stoop. Either from constant hard work at the design table, or just from the strain of putting up with generations of genius lab assistants who were often as much a threat to each other as they were to the family’s enemies. In my experience, they didn’t seem to feel a day was complete if they hadn’t shot, blown up, or mutated each other several times before lunch.

  My uncle Jack had large engineer’s hands and an enquiring mind without nearly enough limits. And he was quite possibly the only real ally I had in the family.

  The Librarian, William, looked a lot more together than usual. He’d come a long way from the fragile, broken soul I’d rescued from an asylum for the more than usually criminally insane, where he’d been hiding out for so long he’d gone native. One of our enemies broke his mind quite thoroughly, and he was still putting himself back together. With a little help from his friends. His recent marriage to the telepath Ammonia Vom Acht had clearly done him a lot of good, though I understood this was still an ongoing process. He was sitting up straight, his eyes were focused, and he was paying attention to what was going on. All of which were quite definite improvements.

  He wore a smart blue three-piece suit and fluffy white bunny slippers. He had a great mane of silver grey hair, and a face with rather more character than I was used to seeing. His pale eyes still had a tendency to drift off on some private matter of his own, as though he was thinking of something far more important. And for all I knew, he was.

  An excellent Librarian, mind. He knew where every book in the huge family Library was, and what was in it. He just often had trouble remembering why he’d wanted the book in the first place. A kind soul, with far more problems than one man should have to cope with.

  I moved forward and stood right in front of him, so I could be sure he knew I was there, and then I produced a small black leather-bound book and laid it on the table before him. There was a title on the cover, but I can’t read Aramaic.

  “There you go, William,” I said. “Straight from the shelves of the deepest darkest part of the Vatican’s Very Secret Library. They now have the duplicate copy you provided, not containing the bits we don’t want them to know about.”

  William smiled happily, if just a bit vaguely. He patted the book fondly with one hand, like a wandering pet that had found its way home.

  “Thank you, Eddie. How this little devil went missing from our Library and ended up so far away has yet to be determined, but it’s good to have it back. The Vatican wouldn’t have approved of what’s in it, anyway; never have been famous for their sense of humour, the Vatican.”

  “See! See!” Ethel said loudly. “He got a present! Why don’t I get a present? Why didn’t you bring me back a book, Eddie?”

  “What did you have in mind?” I said. “John the Baptist’s Desert Cookbook: A Hundred and One Things to Do with Locusts and Honey?”

  “Actually,” said Ethel, “that does sound interesting . . .”

  The Sarjeant-at-Arms stirred impatiently in his chair. He could be patient, when he had to, but essentially he was a man built for action. Not sitting around while other people whittered on about things that didn’t matter. Big and brutal and permanently angry, the Sarjeant was in charge of family discipline, and he enjoyed every punishing moment of it. He was a thug and a bully, by choice, and always went out of his way to appear dangerous and threatening. Especially at Council meetings. As though he was only ever one moment away from a violent outburst. Or perhaps, just so he wouldn’t be taken for granted.

  He wore the stark black-and-white formal outfit of a Victorian butler, right down to the starched high collar, just like his predecessor, because that was the custom for the family Sarjeant-at-Arms. Even if no one still living remembered why. The Sarjeant liked the outfit. He thought it gave him presence and authority. Everyone else thought it made him look like a dick. He had a shaved head, brutal features, a cold gaze, and an unforgiving scowl. If he’d ever had a good side, he’d had it surgically removed ages ago. He didn’t like me, or approve of me, but he put up with me because I could do things for the family that no one else could.

  And because I killed his predecessor. Or at least, got him killed.

  I smiled coldly at him, and he nodded coldly back.

  “We need to talk,” I said, to the table in general. “I just teleported directly onto the grounds through a door supplied by the Wulfshead Club management.”

  The Sarjeant immediately sat up straight in his chair. “That’s not supposed to be possible! It’s a blatant invasion of family security!”

  “Exactly,” I said. “The management did it to let us know it was possible. And, as they pointed out, if they have a door that can do that, where did they get it? And who else might have one? They didn’t feel like volunteering the information, of course . . .”

  “We improved the main shields after the Accelerated Men got in,” said the Sarjeant, scowling thoughtfully. “The new ones were supposed to be one hundred per cent unbreakable . . .”

  “Probably were, then,” said the Armourer. “But the first rule of science and engineering is nothing lasts. There is a place in the Nightside where you can buy inter-dimensional Doors that will take you anywhere. Run by the Doormouse . . . fascinating little fellow. He knows Drood property is strictly off-limits . . . but I’d better put in a call.”

  “Anyone who comes here uninvited deserves every appalling thing that happens to them,” said the Sarjeant. “I’ll increase the security patrols.”

  “Kill them all,” said the Librarian, just a bit unexpectedly.

  “But who would dare?” said the Sarjeant. “And even, who’s left? I thought we’d wiped out most of the Major Players in recent years . . .”

  “That is a subject for another time,” the Armourer said firmly. “We have to deal with the business at hand.”

  “Right!” said Capability Maggie. “Starting with, What the hell am I doing here?”

  She glared at everyone impartially. As far as Capability Maggie was concerned, nothing we’d just discussed meant anything to her. And I was just someone else keeping her from her beloved gardens and grounds. A short, stocky blonde, Maggie wore her hair so close-cropped it was almost military, along with basic fatigues and heavy boots. I’d never known her to wear anything else. In fact, I’d never seen her inside the Hall before. I usually just glimpsed her in passing, off in the distance somewhere, doing something useful with compost. Up close, she had a sulky mouth, fierce grey eyes, and a general air of barely suppressed fury. She sat stiff-backed in her chair, arms folded defiantly, and looked very much as though she’d like to bite someone.

  I pulled up the only empty chair, and sat down at the table. “All right, I’m here. Can we please get this over with, so I can get on with my life?”

  “Damn right!” said Maggie.

  “I want to know why my Ammonia can’t attend
the reading!” William said abruptly. “If I’ve got to leave the Library, I want her here with me. So I can be sure at least one person here is on my side. And to help me find my way back to the Library afterwards. Don’t you all look at me like that. You know very well it moves around once you take your eye off it.”

  “Calm down, William,” the Armourer said patiently. “You know very well that only those directly concerned with the will can be present during the reading. I’ve explained it to you enough times . . .”

  “Besides,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms, “she’s not family. And, she’s a telepath.”

  “She’s my wife now!” snapped the Librarian, matching the Sarjeant glare for glare. “That means she’s one of us now!”

  “You know better than that,” said the Sarjeant, not unkindly. “It takes more than just marriage to make someone a Drood. Especially when the newcomer has a mind powerful enough to smash through all our security screens. It’s a good thing she doesn’t live here full-time.”

  “She has to live most of her life in that remote cottage on the coast,” said the Armourer. “It’s the only way she can keep everyone else’s thoughts outside her head.”

  “So she says,” said the Sarjeant darkly.

  “I always feel better when she’s around,” said William. “More focused . . . I trust her implicitly!”

  “Yes,” said the Sarjeant. “But you’re still not the most stable member of the family, are you?”

  William started to say something, and then stopped. “Actually . . . you have a point there, Cedric.”

  “But why do I have to be here?” demanded Maggie, very loudly. “None of this is anything to do with me! I do digging, and weeding, and general upkeep among flowery things, and I have never given a wet slap for anything the rest of the family does! Or its stupid secret world. So why have I been brought here, against my will, when there are so many more important things I should be doing? Flowers don’t just grow themselves, you know!”