Tales of the Hidden World (5 page)

“Yes,” said the Armourer.

Timothy considered the point. “Well, all right, yes; you’ve got me there. I always enjoy punishing things that get in my way. But I promise you, I’d enjoy kicking the crap out of whoever had the key to the Lion’s Jaws. Don’t take this personally, Daddy.”

“You sure you want to pass through the Jaws?” said the Armourer. Slowly, painfully. “You must know the legend, that only the pure in heart and pure in purpose can pass safely through to the Codex. Anything else, and the Jaws will slam down. And eat you.”

“Oh, please,” said Timothy. “That’s just family fairy tales, to keep the weak of spirit from trying to do something like this. I am not so easily put off. I want the weapons from the Armageddon Codex, Daddy. I want the Time Hammer and the Juggernaut Jumpsuit. I want Oathbreaker, and Sunwrack, and Winter’s Sorrow. I want to walk up and down in the world and make it dance to my tune.”

“Why?” said the Armourer.

“I just want to have some fun,” said Timothy.

“But these weapons are powerful enough to destroy the whole world!”

“What could be more fun?” said Timothy. “Oh, the things I will do . . .”

Except he didn’t, in the end, because the Gray Fox appeared out of nowhere to save the day. As he so often did. He saved the Armourer’s life, that day, although he let Timothy get away. Because the Armourer asked him to. That small piece of kindness had come back to haunt him many times, down the years. As he heard of some new slaughter, with his son’s name attached to it. As Timothy Drood turned himself into Tiger Tim, slowly and deliberately, one cruel decision at a time. Spreading his evil like a plague, laughing delightedly as he walked through rivers of blood. Until finally, he went up against Eddie Drood, and Eddie killed him. Far and far away from home, in the icy wastes of the Antarctic. Eddie said afterward that Tiger Tim had died well, and the Armourer had pretended to believe him.

Timothy wasn’t there anymore, and neither was the chair he’d been sitting on. The Armourer was surprised to find he was crying. For places and people lost. For things that might have been. He hauled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his face. His hand shook.

“I always tried to do my best for the family,” he said. “I tried. . . . Doesn’t that count, for something?”

“Of course it does,” said James.

The Armourer looked up, and there was the Gray Fox, standing before him, smiling broadly. James Drood, in his prime. Tall and darkly handsome, effortlessly elegant in his expertly tailored tuxedo, wearing his usual sardonic expression. He looked every inch his legend.

“Come along, Jack,” said James. “No time to be lounging around when there’s important work that needs doing.”

“Oh James,” said Jack. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Of course you have,” said the Gray Fox. “But now, we’re back together. The old team! And we’ll never be parted again.”

The Armourer looked at him and nodded slowly. “It’s over here, isn’t it?”

James smiled. “You’ve done all you can, here. Time to go. You didn’t think I’d leave you to make the last great journey on your own, did you?”

“Do I get to rest at last?” said the Armourer.

“Where would be the fun in that?” said James. “We have better and far more important work waiting for us now! And far more fun than you’ve ever known. . . . Come along, James. It’s time to do things that really matter.”

He put out a hand to the Armourer, who clasped it with his own. And just like that Jack and James stood together, both of them young and in their prime again. They laughed out loud and hugged each other fiercely.

“Good work?” said Jack. “Work that really matters? Lead me to it!”

And then he paused, and looked at his brother.

“What is it?” said James.

“Can you answer the question?” said James. “Did I do more important work as a field agent, or working here in the Armory?”

“You already know the answer,” said James, kindly. “Anything, for the family. You always did good work, Jack, and everything you did was designed to save people’s lives, in the long run. And that is all that matters.”

The two young men walked forward through the Armory, and lab assistants came forward from all sides to form two great crowds for them to walk through. Ranks and ranks of faces, smiling and waving to the Armourer as he passed. And he knew all their faces, and all their names, even the ones who’d left the Armory long ago. They were all there to say good-bye to him. The Armourer hadn’t realized how many lives he’d touched.

A dog ran forward to greet them and danced eagerly in front of Jack.

“Is that you, Scraps?” said Jack.

“Of course,” said James. “Everyone you ever lost is waiting to meet you again.”

Jack and James Drood, reunited at last, walked on together and never looked back once.

Maxwell and Victoria found the Armourer sitting slumped in his chair at his desk. Quite dead. Maxwell checked for life signs, didn’t find any, and sent the nearest lab assistant hurrying off to inform the Matriarch. Maxwell and Victoria looked at the dead man.

“At least he died still working,” said Maxwell.

“He gave his life to the Armory,” said Victoria.

It must have seemed like a nice thing to say.

W
hat better way to start off a collection of stories than with an upbeat piece about death? The Armourer, Jack Drood, is a long-standing character from my Secret Histories novels first introduced some ten years ago, in The Man with the Golden Torque. He was an old man even then and has grown increasingly frail ever since, and it just seemed the right time to let him go. Jack Drood never really got the same respect as his more famous brother, James Drood, the Gray Fox, but he was a major player in the Cold War and a great secret agent in his own right. I wanted to show him at the end of his life, looking back and trying to decide whether he did more good for his family, and Humanity, as a field agent fighting the bad guys, or as an Armourer producing weapons and devices to keep other agents alive. I wanted to give him one last big adventure.

Street Wizard

I
believe in magic
. It’s my job.

I’m a street wizard, and I work for the London City Council. I don’t wear a pointy hat, I don’t live in a castle, and no one in my line of work has used a wand since tights went out of fashion. I’m paid the same money as a traffic warden, and I don’t even get a free uniform. I just get to clean up other people’s messes and prevent trouble when I can. It’s a magical job, but someone’s got to do it.

My alarm goes off at nine o’clock sharp every evening, and that’s when my day begins. When the sun’s already sliding down the sky toward evening, with night pressing close on its heels. I do all the usual things everyone else does at the start of their day, and then I check I have all my bits and pieces, before I go out. The tools of my trade: salt, holy water, crucifix, silver dagger, and wooden stake. No guns. Guns get you noticed.

I live in a comfortable enough flat, over an off license, right on the edge of Soho. Good people, mostly. But when the sun goes down and the night takes over, a whole new kind of people move in: the tourists and the punters and every other eager little soul with more money than sense. Looking for a good time, the fools. They fill up the streets, with stars in their eyes and avarice in their hearts, all looking for a little something to take the edge off, to satisfy their various longings.

Someone has to watch their backs to protect them from the dangers they don’t even know are out there.

By the time I’m ready to leave, two drunken drag queens are arguing shrilly under my window, caught up in a slanging match. It’ll all end in tears and wig pulling. I leave them to it and head out into the tangle of narrow streets that make up Soho. Bars and restaurants, nightclubs and clip joints, hot neon and cold hard cash. The streets are packed with furtive-eyed people, hot on the trail of everything that’s bad for them. It’s my job to see they get home safely, or at least, that they only fall prey to the everyday perils of Soho.

I never set out to be a street wizard. Don’t suppose anyone does. But, like music and mathematics, with magic it all comes down to talent. All the hard work in the world will only get you so far, to be a Major Player, you have to be born to the Craft. The rest of us play the cards we’re dealt. And do the jobs that need doing.

I start my working day at a greasy spoon café called Dingley Dell. There must have been a time when I found that funny, but I can’t remember when. The café is the agreed meeting place for all the local street wizards, a stopping-off place for information, gossip, and a hot cup of tea, before we have to face the cold of the night. It’s not much of a place; all steamed-up windows, Formica-covered tables, plastic chairs, and a full greasy breakfast if you can stomach it. There’s only ever thirteen of us, to cover all the hot spots in Soho. There used to be more, but the budget’s not what it was.

We sit around patiently, sipping blistering tea from chipped china, while the Supervisor drones on, telling us things he thinks we need to know. We hunch our shoulders and pretend to listen. He’s not one of us. He’s just a necessary intermediary, between us and the Council. We only put up with him because he’s responsible for overtime payments. A long, miserable streak of piss, and mean with it, Bernie Drake likes to think he runs a tight ship. Which basically means he moans a lot, and we call him Gladys behind his back.

“All right! Listen up! Pay attention and you might just get through tonight with all your fingers, and your soul still attached!” That’s Drake. If a fart stood upright and wore an ill-fitting suit, it could replace our supervisor and we wouldn’t even notice. “We’ve had complaints! Serious complaints! Seems a whole bunch of booze demons have been possessing the more vulnerable tourists, having their fun and then abandoning their victims at the end of the night, with really bad hangovers and no idea how they got them. So watch out for the signs, and make sure you’ve got an exorcist on speed dial for the stubborn ones. We’ve also had complaints about magic shops—that are there one day and gone the next, before the suckers can come running back to complain the goods don’t work. So if you see a shop front you don’t recognize, call it in! And Jones, stay away from the wishing wells! I won’t tell you again. And Padgett,
leave the witches alone!
They’ve got a living to make, same as the rest of us.

“And, if anybody cares, apparently something’s been eating traffic cops. All right, all right! That’s enough hanging around! Get out there and do good. Remember: you’ve a quota to meet.”

We’re already up and on our feet and heading out, muttering comments just quietly enough that the supervisor can pretend he doesn’t hear them. It’s the little victories that keep you going. We all take our time about leaving, just to show we won’t be hurried. I take a moment to nod politely to the contingent of local working girls, soaking up what warmth they can from the café, before a long night out on the cold, cold streets. We know them, and they know us, because we all walk the same streets and share the same hours. All decked out in bright colors and industrial-strength makeup, they chatter together like gaudy birds of paradise, putting off the moment when they have to go out to work.

Rachel looks across at me and winks. I’m probably the only one there who knows her real name. Everyone else just calls her Red, after her hair. Not much room for subtlety in the meat market. Not yet thirty, and already too old for the better locations, Red wears a heavy coat with hardly anything underneath it, and stilettos with heels long enough to qualify as deadly weapons. She crushes a cigarette in an ashtray, blows smoke into the steamy air, and gets up to join me. Just casually, in passing.

“Hello, Charlie boy. How’s tricks?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

We both smile. She thinks she knows what I do, but she doesn’t. Not really.

“Watch yourself out there, Charlie boy. Lot of bad people around these days.”

I pay attention. Prossies hear a lot. “Anyone special in mind, Red?”

But she’s already moving away. Working girls never let themselves got close to anyone. “Let me just check I’ve got all my things: straight razor, brass knuckles, pepper spray, condoms, and lube. There, ready for anything.”

“Be good, Red.”

“I’m always good, Charlie boy.”

I hold the door open for her, and we go out into the night.

I walk my beat alone, up and down and back and forth, covering the streets of Soho in a regular pattern. Dark now, only artificial light standing between us and everything the night holds. The streets are packed with tourists and johns, in search of just the right place to be properly fleeced, and then sent on their way with empty pockets and maybe a few nice memories to keep them going till next time. Neon blazes and temptation calls, but that’s just the Soho everyone sees. I see a hell of a sight more, because I’m a street wizard. And I have the Sight.

When I raise my Sight, I can See the world as it really is, and not as most people think it is. I get to See all the wonders and marvels, the terrors and the nightmares, the glamour and magic and general weird shit most people never even know exists. I raise my Sight and look on the world with fresh eyes, and the night comes alive, bursting with hidden glories and miracles, gods and monsters. And I get to See it all.

Gog and Magog, the giants, go fist fighting through the back streets of Soho; bigger than buildings, their huge misty forms smash through shops and businesses without even touching them. Less than ghosts, more than memories, Gog and Magog fight a fight that will never end till history itself comes stumbling to a halt. They were here before London, and there are those who say they’ll still be here long after London is gone.

Wee-winged fairies come slamming down the street like living shooting stars, darting in and out of the lampposts in a gleeful game of tag, leaving long, shimmering trails behind them. Angels go line dancing on the roof of Saint Giles’s Church. And a handful of Men in Black check the details of parked vehicles, because not everything that looks like a car is a car. Remember the missing traffic cops?

If everyone could See the world as it really is, and not as we would have it, if they could See everything and everyone they share the world with, they’d shit themselves. They’d go stark staring mad. They couldn’t cope. It’s a much bigger world than people imagine, bigger and stranger than most of them can imagine. It’s my job to see the hidden world stays hidden, and that none of it spills over into the safe and sane everyday world.

I walk up and down the streets, pacing myself, covering my patch. I have a lot of ground to cover every night, and it has to be done the traditional way, on foot. They did try cars, for a while. Didn’t work out. You miss far too much, from a car. You need good heavy shoes for this job, strong legs, and a straight back. And you can’t let your concentration slip, even for a moment. There’s always so much you have to keep an eye out for.

Those roaming gangs of Goths, for example, all dark clothes and pale faces. Half of them are teenage vampires, on the nod and on the prowl, looking for kicks and easy blood. What better disguise? You can always spot the real leeches, though. They wear ankhs instead of crucifixes. Long as they don’t get too greedy, I let them be. All part of the atmosphere of Soho.

And you have to keep a watchful eye on the prossies, the hard-faced working girls on their street corners. Opening their heavy coats to flash the passing trade, showing red, red smiles that mean nothing at all. You have to watch out for new faces, strange faces, because not everything that looks like a woman is a woman. Some are sirens, some are succubae, and some are the alien equivalents of the praying mantises. All of it hidden behind a pleasing glamour until they’ve got their dazzled prey somewhere nice and private, and then they take a lot more than money from their victims.

I pick them out and send them packing. When I can. Bloody diplomatic immunity.

Seems to me there’s a lot more homeless out and about on the streets than there used to be. The lost souls and broken men, gentlemen of the road, and care in the community. But some have fallen further than most. They used to be Somebody, or Something, living proof that the wheel turns for all of us, and if you’re wise, you’ll drop the odd coin in a cap, here and there. Because karma has teeth, all it takes is one really bad day, and we can all fall off the edge.

But the really dangerous ones lurk inside their cardboard boxes like tunnel spiders, ready to leap out and batten onto some unsuspecting passerby in a moment, and drag them back inside their box, before anyone even notices what’s happened. Nothing like hiding in plain sight. Whenever I find a lurker, I set fire to its box and jam a stake through whatever comes running out. Vermin control, all part of the job.

From time to time, I stop to take a breath and look wistfully at the more famous bars and nightclubs, that would never admit the likes of me through their upmarket, uptight doors. A friend of mine, who’s rather higher up the magical food chain, told me she once saw a well-known sit-com star stuck halfway up the stairs, because he was so drunk he couldn’t remember whether he was going up or coming down. For all I know, he’s still there. But that’s Soho for you, a gangster in every club bar and a celebrity on every street corner doing something unwise.

I stoop down over a sewer grating, to have chat with the undine who lives in the underground water system. She controls pollution levels by letting it all flow through her watery form, consuming the really bad stuff and filtering out the grosser impurities. She’s been down there since Victorian times and seems happy enough. Though like everyone else, she’s got something to complain about; apparently, she’s not happy that people have stopped flushing baby alligators down their toilets. She misses them.

“Company?” I ask.

“Crunchy,” she says.

I laugh, and move on.

Some time later, I stop off at a tea stall, doing steady business in the chilly night. The local hard-luck cases come shuffling out of the dark, drawn like shabby moths to the stall’s cheerful light. They line up politely for a cup of tea or a bowl of soup, courtesy of the Salvation Army. The God-botherers don’t approve of me any more than I approve of them, but we both know we both serve a purpose. I always make a point to listen in to what the street people have to say. You’d be amazed what even the biggest villains will say in front of the homeless, as though they’re not really there.

I check the grubby crowd for curses, bad luck spells, and the like, and defuse them. I do what I can.

Red turns up at the stall, just as I’m leaving. Striding out of the night like a ship under full sail, she crashes to a halt before the tea stall and demands a black coffee, no sugar. Her face is flushed, and she’s already got a bruised cheek and a shiner, and dried blood clogging one nostril.

“This john got a bit frisky,” she says dismissively. “I told him that’s extra, darling. And when he wouldn’t take the hint, I hit him in the nads with my brass knuckles. One of life’s little pleasures. Then when he was down I kicked him in the head, just for wasting my time. Me and a few of the girls rolled him for all he had, and then left him to it. Never touch the credit cards, though. The filth investigate credit cards. God, this is bad coffee. How’s your night going, Charlie boy?”

“Quiet,” I say, and work a simple spell to heal her face. “You ever think of giving this up, Red?”

“What?” she says. “And leave show business?”

More and more drunks on the street now, stumbling and staggering this way and that, thrown out of the clubs and bars once they run out of money. I work simple spells from a safe distance. To sober them up, or help them find a safe taxi, or the nearest Underground station. I work other protections, too, that they never know of. Quietly removing weapons from the pockets of would-be muggers; driving off minicab drivers with bad intent, by giving them the runs; or breaking up the bigger street gangs with basic paranoia spells, so they turn on one another instead. Always better to defuse a situation, than risk it all going bad, with blood and teeth on the pavement. A push here and a prod there, a subtle influence and a crafty bit of misdirection, and most of the night’s trouble is over, before it’s even started.