Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

“Now,” said the Armourer, “nice to see you again, Eddie. Where’s Molly?”

“Off with the dragon,” I said. “She has to be close, to keep the illusion going. You did know it was . . . Of course you did.”

“How about a nice cup of tea?” said the Armourer. “Maybe a few Jaffa Cakes? No? Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you’ve turned up here again, so soon after stomping out on the family? And please tell me you have Mother’s little black box. Everyone else was going crazy looking for it, when they weren’t accusing each other of taking it.”

“I’ve put it somewhere safe,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

I felt the need to choose my words carefully, so I sat back in my chair and looked around. The Armourer’s desk was covered with assorted scraps of unnatural technology, where he was working on a dozen different things at once, as usual. His computer was wrapped in mistletoe and long strings of garlic; I’ve never liked to ask why. And there were papers all over the place, designs and lists and results, all covered with the Armourer’s usual unreadable scrawl. I looked back at my uncle Jack. He was still sitting patiently, but I wasn’t ready, so I looked round at the Armoury.

It hadn’t changed much, but then, it never did. For all the destructive and appallingly dangerous things that happened all over the place on a regular basis, the Armoury itself was extremely resilient. A massive stone cavern, it was set deep in the bedrock under the West Wing. Originally the family’s wine cellars, it was all bare plaster walls now, decorated with multicoloured spaghetti of electrical wiring, tacked up all over the place. Some of it hung down from the high stone ceiling, in tangled masses that no one had dared tackle in years. The fluorescent lighting was almost brutally bright, so anything that escaped would have a hard time finding a shadow to hide in, and the air-conditioning grumbled to itself and worked when it felt like it.

Harsh chemical stinks fought it out with the cloying aromas of freshly pressed herbs, along with the lingering smell of cordite that always hung around the firing range. Everywhere you looked, there was always bound to be something interesting and unusual and deeply worrying.

I couldn’t put it off any longer, so I looked back at the Armourer.

“I need your help, Uncle Jack,” I said steadily. “I can’t tell you why, and you can’t tell anyone I was here, or what we talked about. I can only talk to you now because I’m putting all my faith in the Armoury’s shields, to keep out unfriendly eyes and ears.”

“Business as usual,” said the Armourer. “You only ever come to see your old uncle when you want something. What is it this time, Eddie?”

“I need you to tell me all you know about the Regent of Shadows and the Lazarus Stone.”

“Oh bloody hell!” said the Armourer, quite loudly. He glared at me, his mouth a flat, angry line, but I could tell he wasn’t mad at me. He breathed deeply a few times, and thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets. “I always knew that bloody thing would come back to bite us all on the arse, some day. What do you want with that, Eddie? I mean, bringing back people who are supposed to be safely dead and gone . . . as if we didn’t have enough problems already.”

“Isn’t there anyone you’d bring back, if you could?” I said.

He met my gaze coldly. “No. You should know better than to ask that, Eddie. There’s a reason why we don’t allow ghosts to hang around Drood Hall. A reason why we respect our fallen dead, but we don’t listen to them. You can’t look back if you want to keep moving on. We’ve known that in the family for generations. You have to let people go. No matter how much you might miss them.”

“Is that why you told me my parents were dead, for all those years, when you knew they weren’t?” I said.

“That was different,” said the Armourer. “I had to protect you, and them.”

“I know,” I said.

“So many burdens,” said the Armourer. “No wonder I feel tired all the time. But Anything, for the family. ”

He looked at me, as though waiting for me to repeat the family creed, and when I didn’t he moved on.

“Now, where was I . . . Oh yes! Yes . . . The Lazarus Stone.” His mouth compressed again, as though nursing a bitter taste. “Certain elements within this family acquired the Stone years ago, almost certainly from some highly disreputable source in the Nightside. And yes, Eddie, I know Droods are banned from that awful place by ancient pacts and agreements. If these members of our family had been found out, there would have been all kinds of repercussions. And there’s no telling where the fallout might have ended. There’s never been any shortage of people in this family who would welcome a chance to go to war against the Nightside. Wipe it out completely, once and for all.”

“Why haven’t we?” I said. “I visited the place once, and I loathed everything about it.”

“The Nightside is allowed to maintain its unsavoury existence because it is necessary,” the Armourer said firmly. “It serves a purpose.”

I waited for a while, but he had nothing else to say.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s enough,” said the Armourer. “Now, moving on . . . These people, inside the family, went on to form the Zero Tolerance faction, and Manifest Destiny. And I don’t need to remind you how close they came to subverting and taking over the whole damned family. They weren’t above breaking mere rules in the name of a greater cause. They wanted to use the Lazarus Stone to bring back some of our greatest and most successful Droods, from out of the Past. Create an army of heroes and warriors and assassins, to tip the balance in the ongoing war between the Droods and all our many enemies.

“They wanted to win the war forever. No more compromise, no more agreements; they were going to put an end to the war by killing everyone on the other side. And anyone who sided with them. And anyone who just got in the way. The Droods would rule, and to hell with the collateral damage . . .” The Armourer laughed harshly. “Like that was a new idea. If it had really been that simple, the family would have done it long ago. And these people didn’t care about all the changes such disturbances in Time would make to History, because they didn’t like where History had brought them anyway. I have to say, Eddie, I’m not actually convinced any of this is actually possible . . .”

“It could be,” I said. “I have seen History rewritten . . .”

I remembered the Red King, and the Sceneshifters. I was the only person still living who could, because I was there when the severed head of the Red King, preserved and controlled against his wishes, finally woke from his dreaming. The Sceneshifters had been this really secret group who moved things around in the background when people weren’t looking. Rewriting History in small telling ways, to achieve their own ends. But small changes accumulate, and the Sceneshifters weren’t always in control of what happened. Apparently, there used to be pyramids in Scotland. A major tourist attraction. But no one remembers them any more.

The Droods knew about the Sceneshifters, but didn’t believe they were important enough or powerful enough to worry about. I met the Sceneshifters when I was on the run from my family, and I was so appalled at what they were up to that I put a bullet through the Red King’s severed head. He woke up from his long dreaming and he woke up mad, and made the Sceneshifters never happened. I was lucky to get out of there alive. And still real. A cautionary tale . . .

The Armourer waited until he realised I had nothing more to say on the subject, and then he continued with his story.