Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

I stuck the comm unit in my ear, and immediately a rush of overlapping conversations filled my head as everyone tried to talk to me at once, asking why I’d gone quiet for so long. Apparently they were used to being micro-managed. I growled something about maintaining security, and told them all to shut the hell up until I told them they could talk again. Everyone went quiet. Clearly the Head of Security ran a tight ship. I rummaged through my new pockets and came up with a small laminated ID pass, labeled Burke Tallman . I had to smirk. With a name like that, he pretty much had to go into the security business, if only in self-defence. I lowered my voice again, and growled into the comm unit.

“I want this channel kept clear until further notice, for emergency purposes. No one says anything until I say otherwise. Got it?”

There was a quick rush of hurried agreements, and then the earpiece went quiet. I shook my head. What kind of security force didn’t even recognise their own Head’s voice? They just assumed it had to be Tallman, because I was speaking on his channel. You’d never get away with that at Drood Hall. Still, it was good to know Tallman’s staff was used to obeying orders they didn’t necessarily understand. I should be able to take advantage of that.

I stepped out of the cupboard and closed the door carefully behind me. A few people walking down the side corridor looked at me curiously. I glared right back at them, and they hurried past. I went strolling through the corridors of the Winter Palace, and people fell back on all sides to give me plenty of room. No one messes with a Head of Security, be they guests or staff. The odds were that few of them knew Tallman by sight; they were just reacting to the uniform and the attitude. So long as I played the part and barked out orders with confidence, no one short of the Lady Faire was going to challenge me. I stopped the next security man I met, stuck my mask into his, and demanded directions to the Ball. He looked at me hesitantly.

“But don’t you know? Sir?”

“Of course I know,” I growled. “I’m just checking that you do! Now give me the directions, and be succinct! And do up those buttons!”

He quickly did so, then gave me detailed instructions on how to get to the Ballroom. I dismissed him with a look, and he hurried off, not looking back, eager to escape before I decided to quiz him on something he might not know. I smiled behind my mask. And went to the Ball.

• • •

The Ballroom of the Winter Palace turned out to be absolutely huge, overwhelmingly impressive, and almost obscenely opulent. It had been fitted out to look like a massive ice cavern, gleaming and shimmering, complete with stalactites hanging down from the arching ceiling and stalagmites rising up from the mirrored floor. Even the various fixtures and fittings gave every appearance of being made from snow and ice. All of it entirely artificial, of course. It might look convincing, but the whole place was more than comfortably warm, from some hidden heating system. And nothing was melting.

There were long tables with every kind of sophisticated buffet food, and tall towers of champagne glasses, the booze running down them like bubbling waterfalls. What looked like entirely authentic furs had been scattered across the floor, mostly polar bears and pandas. King-sized penguins waddled back and forth like miniature waiters, only revealing themselves to be automatons when they spoke to the guests. And there were guests everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, crowding the Ballroom and filling it from wall to wall. Who knew the Lady Faire had . . . got about so much? I moved easily among the packed guests, and no one challenged my right to be there. Just having the Head of Security present made everyone feel that much safer, and protected.

It was hard to believe one person could have had this many lovers in one lifetime. Even if she wasn’t, strictly speaking, a person at all, being a ladything. There were men and women, gods and monsters, and at least three aliens. Plus a whole bunch of famous names and faces, from all across the world. Politicians and celebrities, movers and shakers, and not a few Names that wouldn’t have meant anything to anyone outside the hidden world. If they really were all past lovers of the Lady Faire, she must have been very busy down her extended lifetime.

Everyone seemed to be getting on well enough, chatting politely and even pleasantly with one another. Drinking fine wines and comparing party nibbles, acquired absently from waiters and waitresses carrying them around on silver platters. The waiters looked like butlers, and the waitresses looked like French maids.

The Ball boasted a wide and varied selection of Very Important Personages, who would have been at each other’s throats anywhere else. But they all came together companionably enough to discuss the one thing they had in common. Their memories of the Lady Faire.

Music came from a small orchestra on a raised stage at the far end of the Ballroom. Fronted by a French singing sensation so famous even I’d heard of her-the inimitable Rossignol. She was singing some obscure French torch song, leaning heavily on the vowels and hitting the r sounds for all they were worth when I entered. But she broke off abruptly as a member of the hotel staff hurried onto the raised stage and murmured in her ear. She had a quick conference with the musicians, and then they launched into the old Petula Clark hit “Downtown.” Followed by “Always Something There to Remind Me.” Either it was Sixties Night at the Winter Palace or these were some of the Lady Faire’s favourites. Nothing comforts an old soul like the popular music of one’s youth. I knew the songs because Uncle Jack was always playing Sixties compilations in the Armoury.

I moved off to one side and put my back to a wall, the better to observe the guests. Some of them I knew immediately, because they knew me. As Shaman Bond, or Eddie Drood, or both.

Dead Boy was there, of course, imposing his appalling personality on anyone foolish enough to come within reach and not run away fast enough. He lurked beside a much-depleted buffet table, standing tall and Byronically dissolute in his deep purple greatcoat, with the usual black rose at the lapel. He always left the greatcoat hanging open at the front, so he could show off his autopsy scar. Apparently he saw it as a conversation piece.

For a returned soul possessing his own dead body, Dead Boy was a cheerful enough sort. And for a quite definitely deceased person, he was putting away a hell of a lot of party food, stuffing his mouth with one hand, and stuffing his coat pockets with the other, for later. A waitress passed by, bearing a tray of champagne glasses. Dead Boy took the tray away from her and drank the lot, one glass at a time.

Not far enough away, the Vodyanoi Brothers were putting on their usual obnoxious show. Two very large Russian gentlemen, in matching expensive black leather jackets and trousers, with shaven heads and nasty grins. Kicked out of the Moscow Mafiosi, for crimes far too unpleasant to discuss in civilised company, they travelled the world, hiring themselves out as shock troops and enforcers. They were werewolves, and complete arseholes. People stared at them in open disgust and repulsion, as the Vodyanoi Brothers did their best to command everyone’s attention.

“Greetings, everybody!” said Gregor, the older brother. “We are being Vodyanoi Brothers! Pirates and adventurers, and very dangerous people! Oh yes! Show them how dangerous, Sergei!”

The younger Vodyanoi Brother turned abruptly into a huge humanoid wolf, with silver grey fur and massive muscles bulging under his thick pelt. Guests fell back, coughing at the sudden rank, musky scent on the air. The wolf grinned widely, the better to show off his vicious yellow fangs.