Mike Shevdon - The Eighth Court

“Can I help you?” The voice came from a young woman in a doorway I had passed. I let my hand drop from the door.

“I was looking for Claire Radisson,” I explained. “This is her office, isn’t it?”

“Claire isn’t here today,” said the woman. “If you’d like to make an appointment I’m sure reception can help you.”

“She asked me to come and see her,” I explained.

“She’s not there,” the woman said, bluntly.

The woman was telling the truth as she saw it. “May I leave a message for her?” I asked.

“I’m sure reception could help you with that.” She had emerged from the office and was now standing in the corridor.

“Perhaps I’ll go and ask them,” I said.

“I think that would be best,” she said.

She watched me head back towards the stairway. I took three steps down and waited out of sight for a count of thirty. Then I leaned back around the top of the stairway, finding that the woman had retreated to her office. Wrapping myself in glamour I re-entered the corridor and ghosted past her door to Claire’s office. Placing my hand on the door I felt the lock tumble. I pushed the door open and slipped inside. Being careful not to touch the inside door handle, I leaned against the door and pushed it shut with my foot.

Some time ago, Blackbird and I had returned to Claire’s office to find it booby-trapped with darkspore, the mould used by female wraithkin to consume the flesh of the unwary — at least it looked like mould. It was actually part of them, a living remnant which could consume organic material, feeding the host. If Claire said they had been here then I had every reason to be cautious.

Taking shallow breaths, I tested the air for the heavy scent of rot and decay. Edging into the room, I could see that the outer office had changed little since I’d been here last. There was a picture — modern art — that had not been here before. Claire had acquired a new office chair with a flexible mesh back, and a chrome coat-stand. The doors to the Queen’s Remembrancer’s office were closed, but I suspected that even if there were small changes in the outer office, the inner sanctum would remain as it had always been.

I glanced across Claire’s desk and that’s when I noticed the open cupboard. There was an empty square on the floor of the cupboard. The indentation was rectangular. It was where the safe containing the knives and the horseshoes for the Quit Rents ceremony was kept. The safe had gone. There were marks in the plasterwork where the plaster and bricks had been chipped away to expose the bolts that anchored it, and dust on the floor where the anchors securing the safe to the wall had been levered out. Someone had taken their time and neatly removed the safe, which must have taken a while and caused a fair amount of noise, but no one had raised an alarm.

Scanning the room, I noted the scuff marks in the carpet. Checking the door handles to the Queen’s Remembrancer’s office, I opened it and scanned the room from the doorway. There was no one there and the room hadn’t changed at all. Even so, there was no sign of the safe or the people who’d taken it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice came from the outer door. The woman from the other office was standing there looking severe.

I turned to face her. “The safe, where is it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing in here, but if you do not leave right away I am calling security,” she threatened.

“This is not a game,” I told her. “Claire asked me here. Now where’s the safe?”

She went to shut the door on me, but I moved too quickly. Wrenching the door from her, I propelled her backwards. As she staggered back I caught her by the lapels of her jacket and lifted her up the wall with one hand. She squeaked in surprise, the seams in her jacket crackling as they took the strain. She tried to kick me but I pressed in close so our breath mingled, allowing her only limited movement.

I spread my glamour around us, deadening sound. “You can scream, no one will hear you.” She took that as an invitation, screaming her head off. True to my word, though, we remained alone.

I waited until she realised it too, and her screams petered out. “Earlier, you asked if you could help me. Now’s your chance. Where’s the safe?”

“Fuck you,” she said, through gritted teeth. You had to admire her. A foot off the ground, pinned to the wall and she was still spitting abuse.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I risked my life for the contents of that safe. I know damned well that Claire wouldn’t let it out of her sight, so where is it?”

She glared at me.

“I’d play these games if it weren’t so fucking serious,” I said. “I’ll ask you once more.”

She shook her head, clamping her lips tight.

The air shifted in the corridor. The light faded, and dappled moonlight grew and shifted across the wall. Her eyes went wide, the whites around them stark in the pale light. My hand was outlined against her jacket, the purest black. Looking into her eyes I knew she was seeing me as a lightless hole in the world. A song hummed in my veins, a long note, low and loud, calling to me. I could feel tendrils of darkness, spreading from my hand under her clothes. Her eyes went wide. She screamed again, uninhibited, kicking and thrashing in my grip. “They came and took it! Some men. From a company. They took it away!”

I held back the tide rushing into me, gritting my own teeth against the flood that pressed for release. “When?”

“A little while ago. For pity’s sake!” she squeaked.

“Who took it?”

“Some men. They’re replacing it with a newer one.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes. Twenty maybe?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. Tears were running down her face. There was the certain knowledge in her eyes that I would kill her. A small part of me believed her. A small part of me wanted to, but she was telling the truth.

I released her and she collapsed like a sack of sand onto the floor. Her head lolled to one side. I forced back the wave of power and let the magic fade. Looking down at her, I wondered what was becoming of me. There were some things ordinary people weren’t meant to see and she’d just come very close to dying. Looking at her made me think of the stories that Claire had told us when we first met. She’d said that not everyone who dealt with the Feyre walked away unscathed, and I was beginning to see why. I needed to get better control of myself. I had almost killed her for no other reason than she wouldn’t give me what I wanted. That was what Raffmir would do, and I would not let myself sink to his level.

I squatted down in front of her. Her eyes were not focusing. She was in shock. Fifteen or twenty minutes maximum, she’d said. They’d only just gone — for a moment I wondered what would have happened if I’d walked in on them while they were cutting the safe loose.

If I left her where she was, someone would soon notice her. Perhaps they would call an ambulance or a doctor. It was more than I could do for her. I’d already done too much. Whoever had been here, they had a heavy safe containing the horseshoes, the nails and the two knives from the ceremony. Fifteen minutes with a heavy safe in this warren of a building.

There was every chance they were still here.

I jogged down the corridor, swerving round someone emerging from an office with a pile of folders, nearly knocking them off their feet. “Don’t run!” they called after me.

Ignoring them, I paused only to look through the windows into the courts along the hall. They had a safe, now where would they take it? Not into court. Out the front door? No, I would have encountered them already. They could cloak themselves in glamour but the safe would remain as it was. The iron inside it would protect it — that was why it was there. The iron in it should prevent them carrying it, so where were they? They must have found a way to counter it, to mask the nature of it.