I stopped, some distance down the hall, and looked thoughtfully about me. It had just occurred to me that everything in the hall was perfectly clean, polished, and waxed . . . For all the Gothic look, there wasn’t a cobweb in sight. And I had to wonder about that. Surely the Immortals wouldn’t allow humble cleaning staff to enter their secret sanctorum? Who could they trust, to come in and do for them? They couldn’t employ the local townspeople as servants; like everyone else, the locals had been programmed to see Castle Frankenstein as nothing more than ancient ruins. And surely the great and secret masters of the world wouldn’t lower themselves to get out the bucket and mop and do it themselves?
A quiet, subtle sound caught my attention, and I looked sharply round. And there behind me was a short, squat creature, almost as broad as it was tall, wearing simple blue overalls, with a bucket and mop . . . slowly but thoroughly cleaning up the trail of scuffed muddy footprints I’d left behind me. (I couldn’t believe I’d done that. Footprints? I was far too used to my armour looking after me.) I recognised what the cleaner was; I’d seen his people at work, in and around London. This was a kobold, one of the underfolk, from under the ground. Ancient inhabitants of the Hidden World, like Pixies, Brownies, Trolls. Mostly gone now, to other more hospitable realities, like the Elves. But the kobolds I’d encountered before had been proud, hardworking creatures, always paid the best rates because they were the only ones brave enough to do the really hard work. So what was a kobold doing here, working as a cleaner for the Immortals?
I strolled back to the creature, smiling on it in what I hoped was a friendly and not at all threatening way. It looked up from its work, but didn’t stop, slowly and methodically removing all traces of my presence. Up close, it looked more like a Neanderthal than anything else: brutal but still basically humanoid, heavy browed and heavy boned, with a wide face, no chin, and sharp crafty eyes. It nodded briefly to me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” it said, in a low growling voice. “Come to take on the Immortals, in their own place of power, have you? Be welcome, fool. Try to die well, with honour.”
“I’m a Drood,” I said calmly. “Other people do the dying.”
The kobold looked at me sharply. “Then you should know better than to be here. You might stand a better chance than most, but you’re still a damned fool to break into Castle Frankenstein. And a doomed one. Doomed . . . No one can beat the Immortals. They go on forever, because they can.”
“Everything comes to an end eventually,” I said, with a confidence I wasn’t entirely sure I felt. “You’re a kobold, aren’t you? What are you doing here, working for the Immortals?”
“Kobold. Yes. Very old people. We were here before the Immortals. Before this Castle. We were miners, then. Digging deep, deep under the earth. Left to ourselves, and liked it that way. We stayed on after so many of the other underfolk left, because no one bothered us, down in the depths of the earth. There was still a lot of gold left, and we like gold. They built a Castle above us, and we didn’t care. Until he came. The one everyone talks about. The Frankenstein, the living god of the scalpel. He discovered us, brought us up into the light, made us his servants. And after he left the Immortals moved in, and they made us their slaves. Put these yokes upon us.”
He lifted his head to show me the cold iron collar around his throat, etched with runes. He was careful not to touch it.
“The Immortals own us now. Generations of kobolds have been born in this cold stone tomb, never to know the comforts of the dark, and the earth, the mines and the gold. Once there were thousands of us, then hundreds, now less than one hundred. We do not belong in this world. And we were never meant to be slaves.”
“I can rip that yoke right off you,” I said. “If you want.”
“No you can’t. The yoke will kill me, rather than let me go. The Immortals never let go of anything they own.”
“Then I will bring down the Immortals,” I said. “And make them free you. All of you.”
“Why should you?” said the kobold. “Why should you give a damn about the underfolk? You’re human.”
“Because I’m a Drood,” I said. “And that’s what Droods do.”
The kobold leaned forward, fixing me with its cold, bright eyes. “Kill them all, Drood. They’ve earned it.”
I walked the whole length of the hall, looking vaguely around for a map of some kind, or a floor plan of the Castle. Preferably something set out neatly on a wall, with YOU ARE HERE, and all the important areas clearly marked. But of course, there was nothing like that. The people who lived here didn’t need a map, and they actively discouraged tourists. I had no idea of what I was looking for, and where I should be going; that’s what happens when you plan a mission in a hurry. All my thoughts had centred around how I was going to get in, and not enough about what I’d do afterwards. We should have got more specific information out of Rafe, but I was too impatient. Now I was here, I wanted information, which meant records, which meant computers. While I was standing at the foot of a long sweeping set of stairs, at the end of the hall, looking vaguely around in search of inspiration, a side door opened, and out came a teenager with long floppy hair, in sweatshirt, jeans and trainers. He stopped abruptly, and looked at me.
I smiled and nodded easily, secure behind my Rafe face. The teenager glared at me, and opened his mouth to shout a warning. I sprinted forward, crossing the space between us in a few moments, and hit the teenager a savage straight finger jab under his sternum. All the air shot out of his lungs before he could shout a single word, and the force of the blow sent him staggering backwards. All the colour dropped out of his face as he struggled to get his breath. I hustled him quickly backwards into the room he’d just left, checked it was empty and then closed the door behind us. The teenager reached out to me with a shaking hand, perhaps to grab me, maybe just to ask for help. I hit him once, expertly, and he slumped forward into my arms, unconscious. The whole scuffle was over in a few moments, hardly long enough to qualify as a fight. I dropped him into the nearest chair, and considered him thoughtfully.
Why hadn’t my disguise worked? Why hadn’t he accepted me as an Immortal? Maybe . . . they didn’t keep track of all the people they replaced. He was young, maybe he didn’t have access to information like that. I arranged him in his chair so he looked like he was just dozing, and then paused as another thought struck me. Rafe’s face might not be familiar here, but this teenager’s had to be . . . So I used the Chameleon Codex again, and suffered the shudders that ran through my flesh, as I became him.
I did consider changing clothes with the teenager—but there are limits.
With all the changes I was putting myself through, I was in danger of suffering a real identity crisis, but that’s business as usual for an agent in the field. I considered the unconscious teenager in his chair. He looked so young, to be part of such a family of monsters. Given how hard I’d hit him, he shouldn’t wake up for ages, but who knew what his shape-changing flesh was capable of? He could wake up any time, and sound the alarm. The sensible and prudent thing to do was kill him, and put an end to the problem. Part of me wanted to kill him. For what his people had done to me, to Molly, and Rafe, and all the Droods who’d fallen to the Accelerated Men. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill him in cold blood. I’d executed Rafe without a second thought, but this was different.
I am an agent, not an assassin.
So I left him, apparently sleeping in his comfortable chair, and went back out into the hall, shutting the door carefully behind me.
I trotted up the long sweeping staircase, which gave out onto the next floor, and strolled down the wide passage. And almost immediately I started bumping into people, Immortals coming and going, and every single one of them was a teenager. They were dressed in a curious mixture of fashions and styles, from the past to the present: everything from Elizabethan ruffs and tights to Edwardian dandies to seventies punk. A little thought suggested that this was because they were all most comfortable in the periods they grew up in. They all had the same arrogant poise, the same aristocratic ease, an almost palpable sense of entitlement. And they were all teenagers because . . . that was when the Immortal genetic inheritance kicked in, and they stopped aging. No wonder the one downstairs hadn’t accepted me. Rafe was too old.