Noriko sat on the sofa opposite, serenely cleaning her blade with a cloth. Her expression was as calm as if she were a statue made of jade. Her weapon—she must have gone straight for it after Gabriela’s warning—was a little like the Japanese swords he’d once seen, but much straighter; the sheath lay beside her on the sofa. The sword went from blood-smeared to silvery clean in a couple of minutes, and Harris could see the care Noriko took not to touch its blade. Then she returned it to its sheath and gave him a calm stare. He looked away.
“You did very well,” she said.
“I want to throw up.”
“Reasonable.” She gestured at a small door in the corner. “That is the water closet.”
But he didn’t really feel the need, not quite yet.
Doc and Alastair came clattering in from the hallway. The doctor walked over to Harris and Noriko: “The room just downstairs, where they launched that device, is all clear. Smoke all over the room from the rocket. They sapped Leith in the elevator, but he’ll recover.”
“The thing that came through the floor was a rocket?” Harris asked.
“I fear so.” Alastair looked disturbed. “Not an explosive one. But then, these floors have wards to protect us against explosive attacks from outside. They must have known that.”
Doc knelt beside the spike in the floor, studying it without touching it, then moved off a few feet to examine what looked like streaks of black paint on the floor. He gave a whistle that sounded appreciative to Harris. “Very clever,” he said. “Alastair, look at this.”
The moon-faced doctor wandered over. Doc continued, “This projectile shoots paint out in all directions, very precisely. The paint is so carefully oriented that it forms a continuous circle.”
Alastair looked up at him, startled. “A conjuring circle.”
“Yes. See here, a few shunts sprayed other patches of paint in recognizable patterns. The required symbols of transference.”
Alastair looked at the symbols, and Harris did, too. They appeared to be smeared blobs on the wood, meaningless paint-squiggles. Alastair said, “They’re very sloppy, but correct in form. But you have all four floors warded against devisements of transference like that . . . ”
Doc nodded, smiling, encouraging him to continue, and Alastair got it. “But they fired the projectile through the wards, got past them physically. I understand. Damned clever.”
Doc’s smile turned grim. “Which means all my wards are effectively useless. I wonder if they can adapt this device for longer-range attacks. Get through any set of wards. I’ll have to prepare some new types. All of this means that whoever they are—I assume the Changeling—have a deviser working with them.”
“Hey,” said Harris. They all looked at him. “Don’t you think it’s about time you called the police?”
“The . . . police,” Alastair echoed.
“You know. Whoever you call when people break into your house, try to kill you, and get killed. They come, they arrest people, there are trials . . . Police.”
Doc nodded and stood. “I have a commission with the Novimagos Guard by special order of the King. By extension, so do my associates. So in a sense, we are the . . . police. Proper forms are being observed.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
“Everyone, change for the street. Alastair, get Harris some appropriate clothes. We need to find the place where Harris arrived.”
Alastair took Harris up two floors by back stairways to a small, bare bedroom. The room was dusty and had a fan mounted on a swivel bracket on the wall. The anonymity of the furnishings gave the place the feel of a hotel room. However, its closet was stuffed full of men’s and women’s garments in various sizes, and in a few minutes Alastair had found him an outfit to replace his torn, smoke-stained clothes.
Harris looked dubiously at the black leather shoes, long-sleeved white shirt, silk boxer shorts, and gray two-piece suit with a lace-edged handkerchief in the breast pocket. The clothing was dated, with the jacket’s wide lapels and trousers’ high waistline, but not too garish, if you overlooked the two-tone red-and-green suspenders and matching tie.
In the attached bathroom, Harris shucked the baggy brown pants they’d given him minutes ago, then stooped to pull on the new pair. He moved carefully; it wouldn’t do to make his injury any worse.
Wait a second. He’d kicked the guts out of the man with the submachine gun and hadn’t even felt the wound pull. Adrenaline and painkillers could only mask so much; he’d have felt additional injury after he started to wind down. Curious, he unwrapped Alastair’s bandage from his thigh.
His wound was gone.
Where Adonis’ claws had torn open his flesh, angry red marks remained, like scars left from an injury that had been healing for days. They hurt when he pressed hard on them, but gave him no trouble otherwise.
He sighed. It really was no use getting upset over strange things anymore, so he pulled on his new underwear and trousers. “Alastair?”
The doctor called through the door, “Yes?”
“What exactly did you do to me?”
Alastair’s chuckle was faint but unmistakable. “Thatched you, of course. A good mending. You took to it well. Which reminds me, you’ll be ravenous in a bell or two. How does it look?”
“Great. Like it’s been weeks since I scrapped with something with teeth and claws.”
“Good. Don’t strain that leg for a few days unless you absolutely have to. Though if you decide you have to ‘scrap’ again with Jean-Pierre, I’ll allow it . . . provided you let me watch. Oh, and something else.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t bring any silver against that wound. You’d hate to see it spring open again.”
They returned to the lab just as brown-clothed workmen carried out the last of the dead assassins on a stretcher. The living attackers were already gone, and more men were at work with mops on the bloody patches of floor.
Doc stood in the center of the room, the lead assassin’s volt-meter in his hand, and looked up as Harris and Alastair entered. He indicated the volt-meter. “Harris, it’s you they wanted. This little device let me follow your movements to within a few paces.”
“Oh, great. Does that mean I have a radio on me?” Seeing Doc’s blank look, he explained, “Am I carrying some gizmo that this thing can trace?”
“No. It follows you. Probably the charge of energy Alastair sees as an aura around you.” He closed his right eye and widened his left to look at Harris. “I can see it a little, too. We’ll have to subject you to some tests when we return.”
“How do you know Gaby?”
Doc hesitated. “I’ve actually never met her in the flesh. A few years ago, she started calling me on the talk-box. Always with hints and clues. News about what the crime gangs were doing. Sometimes things they were planning to do to me. She never told me how she learned them. She’s never told me about herself.” He shrugged. “And now you come with her cameo in your pack . . . and she seems not to recognize you.”
“I can’t explain that part.”
“We’ll think on it later. For now, we need to begin our search.”
Noriko, a yellow topcoat thrown over her clothes, straightened up from the television set. “Not so. Harris appeared at Six Heinzlin Corners, Brambleton South.”