Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

I didn’t know what to say. My parents were Drood field agents, killed in action in the Basque area, largely due to insufficient advance planning and unreliable intelligence. Or that was what my family told me. But like so many other things where my family was concerned, that might or might not be true.

“You be careful,” I said to Molly finally. “If my family finds out that you’re digging into Drood history, into secrets so awful they’re still hiding them from me . . . You be really careful, Molly. You have no idea what my family is capable of when it comes to protecting itself. What makes your sister so sure about this? Who’s she been talking to?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” said Molly. “You wouldn’t approve.”

“Molly . . .”

“Eddie, trust me; you don’t want to know. Now leave this to me. You concentrate on the Independent Agent and winning his stupid game. When it’s all over, come back here to me, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out. And then we’ll decide together what to do. To avenge the murder of our parents.”

“Yes,” I said. “We will do that. The guilty will be punished. Whoever they turn out to be.”

We lay back down on the green grass, side by side. The birds were singing, and a pleasant cool breeze gusted across our naked bodies. The air was rich with the scents of grass and earth and living things. I stared up at the sky and thought of many things.

“If, by some foul treachery, you don’t win,” said Molly Metcalf. “If you don’t come back . . . I will kill Alexander King for you.”

“Yes,” I said. “You do that.”

Fog, fog, everywhere, and not a bit of it real. When I stepped through the Merlin Glass, the world disappeared, replaced by thick gray walls of slowly swirling mists. Endless shades of gray, cold and damp, diffusing the light and deadening all the sounds. I glanced behind me, but the Glass had already shut itself down back in the Hall. I was on my own.

I could feel a hard surface beneath my feet and the bitter cold searing my bare skin. The air was thin but bracing, so it seemed I was probably in the right place at least, somewhere deep in the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t see a damned thing. The fog churned around me, thick and deep, like water at the bottom of a great gray ocean, and I had a strong feeling there was something else there in the fog with me. It wasn’t real fog; I could tell by the way it glowed. This was flux fog: the pearly shades that mark where the barriers of the world have grown thin and possibilities are everything.

I definitely wasn’t alone. There were dim, dark shapes moving in the mists around me, circling unhurriedly like sharks hoping for the taste of blood in the water. There were faraway voices, like the echoes of old friends and enemies talking in forgotten rooms, and a constant sense of something important about to happen. I stood still, refusing to be tempted or intimidated into unwise action, while slow heavy footsteps sounded all around me and dark shapes drifted in and out of focus as though struggling to become firm and fixed. In a flux fog, the harsh and solid places of the world become soft and malleable, and all kinds of things become possible. I stood my ground, holding my calm before me like a shield. Make a sudden move in a flux fog, and you could end up someone else before you knew it.

Besides, I still wasn’t entirely sure where I’d arrived. I’d given the Merlin Glass the exact coordinates for Alexander King’s retreat at Place Gloria, but all I knew for certain was that it was somewhere in the Swiss mountains. For all I knew, there could be one hell of a long drop in any direction.

And then a great wind blew up out of nowhere, a soundless blast of bitter cold air that blew all the fog away in a moment, and just like that I was standing on a deserted helicopter landing pad on the top of an artificially levelled-off mountain. The pale yellow marking lines were faded and broken, and the slumping half-rotten control tower clearly hadn’t been used in years. There were five other people on the landing pad with me, as far away as they could get and not actually fall off the mountain. None of them appeared immediately dangerous, so I struck a nonchalant pose and looked around me, taking in the view.

I was high enough up to take my breath away in more ways than one. Place Gloria was set right in the heart of the Swiss Alps, and the long broken-backed range of mountain ridges stretched away in every direction. Snow-covered peaks lay below me to every side, each with their own collars of drifting clouds under a sky so blue and pure it almost hurt to look at. The air was thin and bitter cold, burning in my lungs as I tried for deeper breaths.

I was standing on top of the world, a long way from anywhere at all.

The sound of approaching footsteps turned my head around, and I growled deep in my throat as I recognised who it was. He must have seen the cold rage in my face, but he didn’t slow his approach. The Blue Fairy might have been many things, but he never lacked for balls. He stopped a polite and safe distance away and waited to see what I would do. He looked . . . watchful but not especially worried. I did consider killing him, right there, on general principles, but it seemed likely we were both here as guests of Alexander King, personally selected for his great game, and I couldn’t afford to upset the legendary Independent Agent. Besides, it wouldn’t look good, to be seen to lose control so easily, so early on in the proceedings. There would be other times. I fixed the Blue Fairy with a cold stare and bowed my head to him very slightly.

“That’s better,” said the Blue Fairy in an infuriatingly calm and drawling voice. “Let us all play at being civilised, for the time being at least. No squabbling, no accusing, no fighting in the playground. This contest is too important to all of us to risk being thrown out for bad behaviour.”

“You’d know all about bad behaviour,” I said, and there was something in my voice that made him flinch and actually fall back a step. “You betrayed my trust. Stole a torc. Spat in the face of my family. There will be a reckoning, Blue. But . . . not yet. There will be time for many things, once I’ve kicked your nasty arse right out of the game.”

He tried to smile haughtily, but his heart wasn’t in it. I looked him over. The Blue Fairy looked a lot better than the last few times I’d seen him. He looked healthier, even younger, and while he still looked every one of his years, he carried them more easily. He’d lost some weight, his back was straight, and there was a new confidence about him. He was dressed in the height of Elizabethan fashion, all tights and padded jerkin and silk ruff. The ruff had been pulled low, to show off the stolen torc around his throat. The new style presumably came from his time at the Fae Court. The elves still affected the fashions of old England from when they’d last walked our earth. Partly because they’re stubborn, partly because they like to pretend humanity hadn’t changed since those days. Made it easier for them to look down on us. The Blue Fairy also wore a ceremonial breastplate of silver and brass, chased and pointed and curlicued to within an inch of its life and no doubt crawling with defensive magics and protections. I had to smile. Blue might think he was protected, but his armour was no match for mine.

Still, he looked . . . proud, arrogant, aristocratic. Very . . . elven.

“Being a thief and a traitor seems to agree with you,” I said finally. “You’re looking well, Blue. I’m pleased. Really. After all, where’s the fun in kicking the crap out of a sick old man?”

“How unkind,” said the Blue Fairy, fixing me with his best supercilious stare. “And I’m not a man; not anymore. I have put aside my humanity and embraced my elven heritage. It’s taken me many years to realise, but I was never cut out to be a man. To be just a man. I feel much more . . . me, as an elf.”