Simon Green - From Hell with love

I thought about it for a moment, before answering. "I was very young when they were killed. I'm not sure how much of what I remember of them is actual memory, and how much is what I want to remember. When I think of them, I see their official family portrait, rather than any real image, because I've seen the portrait far more often than I ever saw them."

"We never turned up any evidence it was anything other than a series of stupid mistakes. Bad advance information, insufficient preparation, a mission that went wrong every way it could from the moment they hit the ground. It does happen. Do you really think I'd still be working for the family if I thought they were responsible for the death of my sister? We all loved Emily. She would have been the next Matriarch, if she'd lived."

"Could that have been a motive?" I said. "Could she have been murdered because someone didn't want her taking control of the most powerful family in the world?"

"We looked," said the Armourer. "We never found anything. Not even a suggestion of anything out of place. But now, I wonder; if there really are enemy agents hidden inside the family, posing as Droods… I really hoped we'd put this paranoia behind us, with the destruction of Zero Tolerance. Now we have to worry about the Immortals? The men who could be anyone? If it's true… then we can't trust anyone anymore."

"It could give us an answer to an old mystery," I said. "Who was responsible for bringing the Loathly Ones into this world? Maybe it wasn't our fault after all; it was theirs."

"And they could have killed Sebastian," said the Armourer. "I always said only one of the family could have got to him, locked securely away in the isolation wards."

"That would simplify things," I said. "God forbid there should be two sets of traitors within the family."

"I'll drink to that," said the Armourer, producing a hip flask of brandy and liberally lacing what was left of his tea.

My throat was feeling a lot better. The Armourer must have put something in my tea too.

"There is something else I wanted to talk to you about," I said carefully. "Something I was wondering about even before all that's happened. Uncle James once had a gun he said could fire bullets made of strange matter, that could pierce Drood armour."

"Yes…" said the Armourer. "I remember that. James asked me to make it for him. A very difficult project… quite a challenge, ac tually. I had it destroyed, after he died. It was just too dangerous to have around. I wanted it gone, and no threat to the family."

"But why did you make it in the first place?" I said. "Why create a gun specifically designed to kill Droods?"

"Because he asked me to," said the Armourer. "He was the legendary Grey Fox, after all, and if he said it was necessary, who was I to doubt him? I just assumed he had a good reason. Now, I have to wonder… did he suspect there were enemies hidden among us, even back then? He never said anything. He always kept things close to his chest. Even from me…"

The Armourer sighed heavily, and made a clear effort to pull himself together. "Come along, boy. If you've been declared a target by the Immortals, it's my responsibility to see you properly armed and prepared. Look at this: a new Colt Repeater, because you wore out the last one. The new and improved version holds every kind of ammunition mortal mind could conceive of: hollow points, dumdums, silver, wood, blessed and cursed. Just say aloud what kind of ammo you need, and the Colt will have it. Even you couldn't miss the target with this version, and you'll never run out of ammo. Just try not to get it wet. Ruins the finish."

"Where does all the ammunition come from?" I said, accepting the new Colt from him. "Is it held in a subspace locker, of some kind?"

"Oh please," said the Armourer, choosing not to watch as I struggled to fit the Colt into my battered old shoulder holster. "Subspace is so last season. And don't pretend you'd understand the physics, even if I did try to explain it to you. You never were any good at maths, Eddie. Now, what new gadgets have I got for you… Oh! Yes!" He glared at me. "I remember now. You're on my special list. No more new toys for you, because you didn't use the last lot I gave you."

"Oh, come on!" I said. "You're not still sulking over that, are you? I was busy! There was a lot going on! I just… never got around to using them."

"You aren't getting anything new until you've proved to me you can handle the last batch properly," the Armourer said firmly.

I sighed quietly. Some arguments you just know you're never going to win. "All right, talk me through how to use them again. You know that always cheers you up. And it's been so long I've probably forgotten something important anyway."

"Wouldn't surprise me in the least," the Armourer said darkly. "Here we are. I had them put out specially, when I heard you were coming home. This… is the Gemini Duplicator. Looks like a simple gold signet ring. You activate it by pressing hard against it with the adjoining fingers. Put it on, put it on… Yes. You now have the option of bilocation. And please, I have already heard every possible variation of every joke involving the word bi, and not one of them was worth the breath it took to tell them. Your generation thinks it invented sex. In this case, bilocation means the ability to be in more than one place at the same time. Means you can get twice as much work done, whilst at the same time providing an unbreakable alibi. Sort of like multitasking, only more so. And yes, I am way ahead of you as always, you can make more than two of yourself at the same time, but the more duplicates you call up, the harder it will become to concentrate, to control you all. Make too many of yourself, and you could end up lost in the crowd, and unable to find your way back."

He handed me a small black box, containing a pair of silver cuff links.

"Ah," I said. "I remember those. The Chameleon Codex. They pick up trace DNA from people I come into contact with, so I can make myself into an exact duplicate of them. Oh, I can see endless possibilities for fun here. I can do women as well as men, can't I?"

"You have no shame," said the Armourer. "Now, this is a skeleton key, made from real human bone. Don't ask who it came from; you really don't want to know. Opens any lock, physical or electronic, and in an emergency, will even open a bottle of wine. Right. That's it. I expect a full report on all of them as soon as this is over, detailing every way you made use of them, complete with problems and recommendations. And then I'll let you see some of the really fun stuff I've been working on."

I slipped the cuff links into place, popped the skeleton key in my pocket, and then looked thoughtfully at the Armourer.

"Uncle Jack… There's something I never told you. When the Blue Fairy was killed last year, during the great spy game, I went to take the stolen torc off his body. But when I touched it with my armoured fingertip, the armour… absorbed the Blue Fairy's torc. Just sucked it right in. I kept quiet about it, because the implications worried me. There's still a lot we don't understand about this new armour Ethel's given us. But now I have to wonder… Could the Matriarch's killer have taken her torc in the same way? And if he did, would that make his armour twice as strong? You read my report on what happened when I encountered the old monster, Grendel Rex, the Unforgiven God, in Tunguska last year. He absorbed the torcs of others, to make himself a living god. Until the family took him down, and imprisoned him under the permafrost. Could something like that happen again?"

"You do enjoy giving me things to worry about, don't you?" said the Armourer. He scowled thoughtfully. "We still don't know enough about the properties and limitations of the new armour. We treat it like the old armour because that's what we're used to, but it's potentially very different. It is strange matter, after all. Not of this earth… Ethel? Are you listening?"