Druids Sword (9 page)

“It has spread far further than just central London,” Jack said. “Long fingers.”

“Long fingers?” Weyland said, the instant before I asked the same question.

Jack waved a hand in the air, a gesture of utter frustration.

Weyland and I shared a look—one of utter dread.

“Is it Catling?” I asked softly.

He took a long time to answer. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t think so. It doesn’t have the feel of the Troy Game about it, although this difference, this wrongness, somehow is connected to the
Game. I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t trust my judgement on this.” He took a sip of his drink. “It is all so…so…shadowy.”

Grace made a move then, just a slight one, a turn of her head, but given she was normally so still it attracted everyone’s attention.

“Grace?” Jack said again. “Is there anything you know? Anything you
feel?
”

“I can’t be of any help to you. I’m sorry.”

“Grace,” Jack said, and I swear before all the gods I have ever known I have never heard his voice so gentle, “I value your opinion as much as anyone’s in this room. More, in fact,” his voice now became a little teasing, “as you have not yet given me the chance to distrust you.”

My face flamed. Was that a barb aimed for me?

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I can’t help you.”

Jack gave a nod of his head, then sighed. “I have never felt anything like this before. Not as a man, not as a Kingman, not as Ringwalker.”

“But it
is
threatening,” Weyland said. “Yes?” He stood, and was now freshening everyone’s drinks.

“I don’t even know that,” said Jack. “It is just there, it is huge, and it is unknowable. So
I
find it threatening, but,” he gave a disarming smile, which made my heart lurch uncomfortably, “it could, of course, be an early Christmas present left by…well, by whomever.”

“It could be a trap,” Grace said in a voice almost a whisper. Her gaze had returned to her lap.

Jack regarded her thoughtfully. “Sure, it could be a trap.” He paused. “Ah, certainly it is a trap! When has anything good ever happened for us, eh?”

I was looking at Grace, but then caught Weyland looking at me. Grace was supposed to have been a gift for us, but then
she
had been trapped, and all of us with her.

“I can’t sort it out tonight, or even tomorrow or the month after, I think,” Jack said. “I need to think about it…explore it. Run the forests.”

A peculiar sense came over him then, a wildness, and I knew he was longing for the dark secret spaces of the trees.

“I have ordered a meal from the restaurant,” I said. “It should be here within the hour. Perhaps Weyland can take Jack down to the garage and sort out the car before then?”

I was babbling, but to be frank, right at this moment I was both so scared and unnerved I didn’t know what to say.

“No,” said Jack. “I can pick up the car later. For now, I think, I want to have a look at Grace’s wrists.”

J
ack was glad of his earlier promise to see if he could untangle Catling’s hex, because now it gave him the perfect excuse to sit close to Grace and observe her. He’d been unsettled ever since arriving in London—everything had been such a strain—but since this afternoon’s walk about London his anxiety had increased tenfold.

Something wrong. Something undefinable. Something unexplainable. Something shadowy.

And now Jack was certain that Grace knew something about it. He wasn’t sure if she was deliberately withholding information from him, or whether, whatever she knew, she believed it was so trivial as to be of no importance.

As he sat down next to her, gently taking her wrists between his hands so that she was forced to turn a little to face him, Jack wondered at what she had said earlier. Grace had known instinctively something was wrong.

Everything has been wrong for a very long time.

Was it just the Troy Game? What
else
had been wrong for a very long time…Jack certainly hadn’t felt anything when he’d been in London during the 1660s.

Or had that remark been nothing but a grab for sympathy? No, he thought not. There had been
nothing pathetic or piteous about it. Merely a bland statement of fact, and of resignation.

He put his thoughts of the “wrongness” aside for the moment, and concentrated on Grace.

Dear gods, she was thin! Not just her wrists, but all of her. She was close enough to him that he could feel her warmth and see the rise and fall of her body with each breath, and with both warmth and breath Jack could sense her essential fragility. Under his fingers he felt the fluttering of her pulse—she was very nervous having him so close.

She was so afraid.

The room was silent, everyone staring at Jack, save for Grace, who had her eyes downcast.

Jack had her wrists enclosed within each of his hands, and now he ran his thumbs very slowly along the raised scars that twisted about her wrists, and then ran up her arms, curling over and about, almost to her elbows.

What he sensed there stunned him, and his eyes flew to Grace’s face.

She was staring directly at him now, but he could not work out if she was frightened or just…simply didn’t realise.

Jack opened his mouth, intending to say something, but Grace’s face closed over, shutting him out completely, and she averted her face.

“Jack?” Noah said.

“Nothing,” he muttered, sliding his fingers back down Grace’s arms to her forearms and wrists, trying to drag his disordered thoughts back to Catling’s hex around Grace’s wrists.

He had to have a quiet word with Noah, and soon.

Jack took a deep breath, and finally managed to concentrate on the hex. He ran his thumbs over the scars around her wrists and forearms, feeling them,
discovering their nature. He understood that every time Catling struck, then these wounds opened anew.

Finally Jack raised his eyes to her. “Grace?”

She still had her face averted from his, and made no sound or movement.

“Grace, look at me.”

Reluctantly, she turned her face to his.

“I am going to do something now that will cause you some discomfort. Not real pain, but it will be uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

She gave a jerk of her head.

I’m sorry, Grace.
Jack moved his thumbs again, this time shifting them so that they both lay beside the largest line of scarring on each wrist. His hands tightened very slightly, then he slid his thumbs under the lines of red scarring, and lifted the scars away from Grace’s flesh as if they were silken ribbons.

Grace gasped, and tried to jerk herself back, but Jack had a firm grasp of her wrists, and she could not move.

Behind her, Weyland put his hands on her shoulders, either to keep her in place or to comfort her.

“Take your hands away, Weyland,” Jack said quietly, not looking up, and, very reluctantly, Weyland lifted his hands away from his daughter.

Hello, Jack. Welcome home!

Jack froze, and he jerked his eyes upward.

Grace had heard that as well, but no one else had reacted.

Isn’t she lovely, Jack? Don’t you want to save her?

Grace started to tremble under his fingers, and he used his fingertips under her wrists and lower arm to stroke once or twice; gently, reassuringly.

Don’t think you can work out the knots binding these sweet little ribbons, Jack. It’ll kill her, and you, if you try.

“It’s all right, Grace,” he whispered. His thumbs had moved further up under the scarring onto her lower arms, and Grace moaned very softly.

No. It is not “all right”, Jack. Poor Grace suffers. You haven’t seen
how
badly she can suffer, yet. Would you like to now?

Abruptly Jack pulled his hands away from Grace.

“I’m sorry, Grace,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

Her blue eyes went almost black with emotion, and to Jack’s horror he realised it was despair. He reached forward again, and took one of her hands. “It is not because of what was just said—”
not because of Catling’s threats
“—but because this hex is so intricate, so powerful, it has literally bound your life to the twists of the labyrinth. I can’t help you. And I
am
sorry about that.”

“Grace,” said Noah, who had risen and now leaned over her daughter, “perhaps you need to rest.”

“I don’t need to rest,” Grace said.

“She doesn’t need rest,” Jack said at precisely the same moment. Then, as an awkward silence descended, he said, “I wish I could help you, but I don’t know how.”

Grace turned her head away, and Jack had the feeling that it wasn’t in dismissal, but once again, as he’d felt in the car, that she was withdrawing because she didn’t want to be a nuisance.

Somehow they got through dinner. It was a generally silent affair, punctuated only with some self-conscious conversation, and the sound of plates being pushed away, their contents barely touched.

It had been a bad day for eating, Jack thought, and was torn between wanting desperately to make his excuses and return to Copt Hall and needing to have a quiet word with Noah. She was visibly upset, and
Jack knew she’d allowed herself to believe that Jack could help her daughter.

Eventually the meal was over, and Harry said diplomatically that he and Jack were tired, that it had been an emotional day for everyone, and that if Weyland was still willing to hand a car over to Jack, perhaps he, Harry and Jack could repair to the garage?

The sound of chairs scraping back from the table was indecently loud. Before Grace had a chance to bolt for her room, Jack managed a quick moment with her.

“I am sorry,” he said again.

She looked at him with emotionless eyes, then turned her back and walked away.

What do you know?
Jack thought, watching her, remembering what he’d felt from her arms.
And what are you?

Friend, or foe?

Victim, or trap?

“Jack?” said Weyland, jangling a set of car keys in his hand.

Jack finally managed to have a hurried conversation with Noah as she helped him on with his coat.

“Noah, how did the four kingship bands make it into the Faerie?”

“Why do you want to—”

“Noah, please, just answer.”

“I turned them into golden ribbons and tied them about Grace’s arms and legs. Then the Lord of the Faerie carried Grace, and the bands, into the Faerie. Why?”

Jack stared at her, but before he could answer Weyland walked up.

“Jack? Are you coming, or not?”

The Savoy’s garage was situated within the basement of the hotel. It was filled with such an array of luxury vehicles that Weyland’s Daimler appeared almost ordinary. Weyland led Jack and Harry to a spot partway down the garage. Here was his Daimler, and beside it a pale grey-green Austin convertible, its cloth hood folded back.

Jack stepped close, running his hand admiringly over the soft leather of its seats.

“You would trust me with this?”

Weyland tossed him the keys, and Jack had to twist quickly in order to catch them.

“If it means you are gone from here,” Weyland said, “then, yes, I will trust you with it.”

He turned, walking away a few steps before halting and again addressing Jack. “I don’t know what you did to Grace this afternoon, Jack, but I can’t help feeling that she’d have been better off without you.”

W
eyland didn’t go back up to Noah and Grace once Jack and Harry had left. Instead he stood, staring blankly at the space where the Austin had been parked, before cursing under his breath and opening the driver’s door of the Daimler.

He drove to a narrow, sad side street running off High Street in Clapham. Empty crates and overflowing rubbish bins lined the footpaths, most of the windows on the buildings had been boarded up, a small, thin dog lay curled up, shivering, in a doorway, and puddles of something thick and vile lay glinting on the road surface.

Weyland had never been here before, but he had long known of the street’s most shadowy residents. Having locked the Daimler, Weyland walked up to a door and knocked softly.

Someone had tacked a wooden plaque to the wall by the door, and Weyland glanced at it as he waited.

Philpot Investigations
James Philpot and William Philpot,
Proprietors

Footsteps crept cautiously towards the door, and Weyland tensed slightly.

“Come on, come on,” Weyland muttered.

The footsteps halted on the other side of the door.

Weyland banged his fist on the door.

“We’re closed,” came a whisper.

“You’re bloody not closed to me,” Weyland said. “Open up!”

“We don’t work for you any more, Weyland,” the voice whispered.

“Do you work for money?”

The voice hesitated. “Yes,” it whispered eventually, the word riddled with caution.

“Then you’re working for me,” Weyland said. “Now open up, damn you!”

There was a long silence on the other side, then, just as Weyland raised his hand to bang on the door again, he heard the rattle of keys.

A lock was turned, then another, and then one more, and, achingly slowly, the door creaked open an inch.

“I haven’t got all night,” Weyland said, and pushed at the door with his shoulder.

There was a startled yelp on the other side as whoever had crouched behind the door was pushed onto the floor, then Weyland was in a dark corridor. He groped along the wall, hoping that the fools had at least had their establishment electrified, found a switch, and flicked it down.

Light flooded the corridor from a bare bulb hung high.

A thin man dressed in drab clothes was slowly rising from the floor, his hands fluttering at his trousers as if to brush from them the dust collected during his fall, his bright black eyes wide with fright and fixed on Weyland. His dark hair was slicked back against his skull, his face was swarthy and marked with old acne scars, and his mouth curled as if wondering whether or not to snarl.

“So this is what you look like all grown up,” said Weyland to the imp. “Which one are you, then?”

“Jim,” said the imp, now fully risen, “and quite independent, thank you.”

Weyland regarded him. He’d first created the imps almost a thousand years ago as a means to control Noah and Stella—Caela and Swanne as they had then been. But during the last life Weyland had come to love Noah, and had set the imps free in London, tired of them and the agony they’d inflicted. This was a decision Weyland had regretted when the imps became the servants of Catling, draping her hex about Grace’s wrists. Every so often over the past three hundred years Weyland had occasionally sent his senses out scrying for the imps, seeing what mischief they were about, but he hadn’t bothered himself with them otherwise. They’d simply faded into London’s turgid underworld after the Great Fire, where no doubt they had created some limited mayhem, but not any major troubles, so far as Weyland could make out.

“Private investigators, moreover,” he said. “What do you investigate, Jim? Gutters? Sadnesses? Despair?”

A muscle twitched in Jim’s throat, and he edged past Weyland. “We’re entirely respectable.”

Weyland sneered.

“If you’ll come through,” Jim Philpot said, nodding to a doorway at the end of the corridor.

The other imp sitting at a wooden table in the back room had just picked up a bread-and-dripping sandwich from a plate. There was another plate with a half-eaten sandwich pushed to one side; evidently, Weyland had interrupted their evening meal. As Weyland entered, the imp put his sandwich down and stood warily.

“You must be William,” said Weyland, noting that the imp was identical to his brother, save that his
face was slightly rounder and even more pockmarked.

“Bill,” said the imp, wiping his hands on his stained vest and then holding one out to shake hands.

Weyland ignored it. “I need you to do something for me.”

Jim and Bill shared a glance.

“He said he’d pay,” Jim said.

“Money?” said Bill.

Weyland, who had been inspecting the contents of a filing cabinet, turned around. “I’ll pay you in violence, if you like.”

“We’d prefer money,” said the imps together.

“Well, if you insist. What are your rates?”

Bill told him, and Weyland raised his eyebrows. “I’ll pay you half that. You’re worth no more.”

“We’re
very
good,” said Jim.

“We can creep anywhere,” said Bill.

“Discover anything for you,” said Jim.

Weyland grunted. “I need you to display some manner of delicacy. Think you can manage it?”

The imps grinned, showing unexpectedly white, good teeth.

“Has Noah a lover?” said Bill.

“Do you need photographs?” said Jim.

“No!
Not
Noah,” Weyland said, and the imps glanced knowingly at each other.

“Jack’s back,” said Bill.

“We can take photographs,” said Jim. “Dig out receipts. Bribe hotel clerks. Present you with the evidence.”

“
Not Noah!
”

“Of course not,” said the imps as one. “Not Noah. Never Noah.”

“Jack,” Weyland said, his voice grating.

“Jack,” the imps said, their eyes gleaming. “Now
there’s
an interesting fellow.”

Weyland’s eyes narrowed. “And what do
you
know about Jack?”

“Absolutely nothing,” said Jim.

“Never heard of him,” said Bill.

Weyland drew in an irritated breath. “Jack thinks there’s something ‘different’ about London. Something that is possibly…malign.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Jim.

“Sounds like our kind of job,” said Bill. “We can take photographs of the malign, if you like. Lots of them.”

“
Shut up
,” Weyland said. “Just listen! Jack is all over my wife and my daughter, and I don’t like it.”

Jim opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and closed it again.

“Everything has…changed…since he’s come back,” Weyland said. “Grown unsettled. I don’t like it. Like as not Jack will destroy us all. Destroy Grace.”

“Sweet Grace,” whispered Bill, and Weyland snarled at him.

“I
said not to speak!
Can’t you just
listen?
”

The imps both nodded vigorously.

“I don’t like not knowing what he is doing. Not knowing what he’s about. Discover it. Follow him. If he is seeing…”

The imps raised their eyebrows.

“Just follow him,” Weyland finished. “And see if you can’t find out what Jack is babbling on about when he talks about this difference…this wrongness.”

“We can do that,” said Bill.

“Be careful,” said Weyland. “Don’t reveal yourselves.”

“We’re very, very good,” said Bill. “He won’t know we’re following him. We can cloak ourselves from Jack—and Ringwalker too, come to that.”

There was a silence, then Jim spoke. “You don’t trust Jack, do you?”

“Would
you?
”

“Not if we had a daughter like Grace to protect, no,” said Bill, and for once there wasn’t a hint of cupidity in his voice at all.

When Weyland had gone, the imps sat down at the table and finished off their dripping sandwiches.

“So Jack has discovered the dancing,” said Bill. “What a good boy he is.”

“He hasn’t discovered all of it,” said Jim, and both imps giggled about their mouthfuls.

“What do you think we should tell Weyland?”

“Not all of it,” said Jim, and both spluttered with laughter.

And within a breath, fell silent.

“It needs to feed again,” whispered Jim.

“Soon,” whispered Bill. “Soon.”