It took a while for one to come down, but when it did, he had it to himself. The ride to the third floor took perhaps fifty seconds. He stepped out into the Newton-Sorsen company reception and said hello to Muriel who told him his wife had just called and was waiting for him in his office. He wasn't expecting Martha, but sometimes she popped in when she was shopping. Anais would tell her he was out until five of course – he hadn't bothered to phone in to say the meeting had been cancelled – but maybe he'd catch her before she left again.
He walked down the carpeted corridor to his office. Jim Handley came out of a door and collared him about the new presentation. By the time he'd finished with Jim and walked the rest of the way, it was seven minutes after three.
To reach his own office, he had to walk through the smaller office of Anais Ward, who guarded him the way most secretaries did their bosses. He was a little surprised to find Anais wasn't at her desk, but only a little – there was a coffee machine down the corridor or she might have slipped off to the loo. He was more surprised that Martha wasn't there either. He'd have thought he would have bumped into her if she'd left in the lift. But maybe she'd gone down the back stairs: she did that sometimes for the exercise.
He locked his office when he wasn't in it – some important documents in there – so he pulled his keys from his pocket as he walked across Anais room. He had the key in the lock and the door open in maybe a second, two at the most. His wife and his secretary were both inside. They were startled, breaking apart at the sound of the door. They'd been kissing.
'Maybe it was just… you know, a friendly thing,' Henry suggested, sick to his stomach. 'Women kiss each other all the time.'
'It wasn't just a friendly thing,' his father told him firmly.
After a while, Henry said, 'You only found out yesterday?'
They were bound to divorce. He couldn't see any way out of it after what his father had told him. The funny thing was Dad never said a word about divorce. Or leaving. Or separating or anything like that. But that could change tonight after he had his talk with Mum. Obviously he couldn't just ignore what had happened. Unless, of course, he was hoping Mum would get over it. Did you get over being a lesbian? Henry was so far out of his depth he felt he was drowning.
For once Mr Fogarty opened the door so fast you'd have thought he was standing behind it. 'You're late,' he said. 'And you look like shit.'
'Sorry,' Henry mumbled. 'I had to do something for my dad.'
'You want to talk or you want to get started?' Mr Fogarty had a wiry, old man's frame, no hair at all and on wet days his right hip hurt like hell. But his face looked as if it was cut from granite and his eyes were so sharp they were almost scary.
Henry'd had enough talk for one morning. 'I'd like to get started,' he said. 'Seeing as I'm late.'
'Suits me,' Fogarty said. 'I can't get into the garden shed any more. Bin the crap and tidy up the rest. But don't touch the mower.'
Mr Fogarty's garden was a stretch of dusty-looking lawn with a tired buddleia bush and little else, all surrounded by a high stone wall. The shed was a ramshackle wooden affair that had seen better days. The old boy had pushed three empty wheelie bins outside. It looked as if he was expecting Henry to throw out a lot of rubbish.
Henry straightened his back. It was going to be heavy, dirty work, but he wasn't sorry. Heavy dirty work would take his mind off things for a while. As he pressed the latch of the shed door, a small brown butterfly detached itself from the buddleia bush and fluttered briefly on to the ledge of the tiny window before dropping to the ground. Mr Fogarty's fat tomcat Hodge appeared out of nowhere to grab it.
'Oh, come on, Hodge!' Henry exclaimed. 'Don't eat butterflies!' He liked cats, even Hodge, but hated it when they killed birds and pretty insects. The trouble was, once they got hold of something like a butterfly, you couldn't take it from them without killing it yourself. 'Drop it, Hodge!' he shouted firmly, but without much hope.
Then he saw the thing struggling in Hodge's mouth wasn't a butterfly.
Three
What Pyrgus Malvae valued most in all the world was his Halek knife. Since the fight with his father, he'd had to work for every little thing and the crystal blade had cost him six months' pay on a bet.
The hideous expense was the fault of the Halek. They refused to make more than ten knives a year, and eight of those were replacements for old blades broken or beyond their use. The new blades were cut from cold spires of rock crystal in the Halek homeland, then polished to a blue, translucent sheen. Blood grooves were sanded down each side and the blade bonded to an inlaid handle. Then the knife was charged and dedicated by a Halek wizard.
The result was a weapon guaranteed to kill.
There was no such thing as a minor wound from a Halek blade. Once it entered a living body – and it would pierce any known skin, hide or armour – fierce energies coursed through the victim, stopping his heart. There was nothing it wouldn't kill, neither man nor beast. But there was a chance the blade would shatter. When that happened, the energies flowed backwards to kill the man who held it. Thus Halek blades were more often used in threat than anger, but they were always comforting to have when times got tough.
Pyrgus fingered the handle of his now. He had a feeling there was someone nasty watching him.
It was a weird place to get that sort of feeling. He was on Loman Bridge, the vast, creaking structure with its ancient shops and houses that spanned the river north of Highgrove. Day or night, the bridge was always thronged. It attracted bumpkins like a lode-stone. They wandered slack-jawed past the shops and houses, waylaid by trulls, thieves, cutpurses, pickpockets, huggers, muggers, card sharps, thimble-riggers and assorted lowlife, not to mention the packs of greedy merchants who were the worst of the lot. Goods of every description were on sale, but you had to learn to haggle – and recognise rubbish. Each merchant was as expert at extracting gold from a purse as any thief.
"Ware!' someone shouted from above. Pyrgus stepped nimbly sideways to avoid the curdled contents of a chamber-pot slopped out from a high window. The move took him underneath the awning of an apothecary's cart and the feeling of being watched grew stronger. Pyrgus glanced cautiously around. He was surrounded by a thousand faces, most unwashed and none familiar.
'A little chaos horn?' the apothecary stallholder whispered.
Pyrgus glared at him so fiercely he took a step backwards. 'Sorree,' the stallholder said. 'Pardon me for breathing.' Greed caught hold again and his expression softened. 'Something else then? Gold attractors? A purple humunculus?'
Pyrgus ignored him and stepped back into the heaving throng. His instincts were screaming at him now and he trusted them. He quickened his pace, elbowing his way through the crowd. A burly man with a shaven head cursed and tried to grab his jerkin, but Pyrgus dodged aside. He pushed and shoved and shouldered, ignoring all the protests, until he reached the far side of the bridge and left the river. There were fewer people here, but he still felt he was being watched. He headed towards Cheapside, neck hairs crawling as he waited for the hand on his shoulder.
He knew what it was about, of course. Pyrgus had been caught leaving Lord Hairstreak's manor at an unsociable hour. Well, not caught exactly, but certainly spotted. The fact he was leaving by an upstairs window was probably what made the guards suspicious. Or it could have been that he was carrying Black Hairstreak's golden phoenix. Hairstreak wasn't the type to let anybody get away with that. He wasn't the type to go to court about it either. If his men caught up with Pyrgus now, he'd pay for the phoenix in broken bones and blood.
Pyrgus wasn't sure if he was safer among people or alone. The trouble with crowds was that you could never tell friend from foe. Not until it was too late. And Hairstreak's men could leave him pulped before anybody found the courage to intervene. Cheapside was crowded – it was a warren of stews and music dens that attracted the best and the worst of the city – and his instinct told him he'd be better somewhere he could see an attacker coming. He moved like a crab into Seething Lane, which was nearly always empty now on account of the smell. He hurried down the narrow street, then stepped quickly into the shelter of a doorway and waited.