Can you override the torc? said Molly. Make the armour withdraw so we can see who this was?
No, I said. Only the wearer has control over his torc. Basic security measure, in case of capture.
Is there any chance he might be alive in there? Trapped, unconscious, maybe? The armour s damaged but it s still in one piece. It might have protected the wearer, preserved him.
No, I said. Thanks for the thought, but no. To damage the armour this thoroughly, the sheer force involved must have been horrific. The impact alone would have I don t even want to think about the condition of the body inside this armour. I leaned in close to stare at my own distorted reflection in the featureless golden mask. Who were you? Did I know you? Did you die bravely? Of course you did. You were a Drood.
We went back inside and I tried another direction. Still looking for something I couldn t put a name to. I knew only that I d know it when I saw it. We rounded a corner and found ourselves facing a tall and very solid-looking door. Somehow still intact, somehow still standing firm and upright in its frame. The walls on either side were gone. Reduced to piles of rubble. I put one hand to the door and it just fell apart, crumbling and falling away, collapsing into sawdust. The doorframe still held its shape. I walked through it, into the room beyond. Most of the outer wall was missing, giving an almost uninterrupted view of the grounds outside. But there was still enough of the room left to stir an unexpected memory. The left-hand wall had shelves full of books with charred and fire-blacked spines. When I touched one, the whole row of books fell in on themselves, disintegrating and falling to the floor.
Eddie, look at this.
I moved over to join Molly. She d found a tall mirror on the right-hand wall. Completely untouched by the destruction all around it. In the mirror I hardly recognised the man standing beside Molly. I ve been trained to be a field agent, trained to blend in anywhere and not be noticed, to look like no one in particular. The man before me looked damaged and angry and dangerous. Anyone sensible would run a mile from such a man. Molly was still a delicate china doll of a woman, with big bosoms, bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes and a mouth as red as sin itself. She looked as beautiful as ever to me, in her own eerie, threatening and subtly disturbing way. Right now she was looking at me as though wondering where I d come from.
I turned away from the reflection to look at Molly. I did my best to smile normally. I know, I said. But it s still me, Molly. You can have your Eddie back when this is all over.
When will it be over, Eddie?
When everyone who had any hand in this is dead, I said.
I looked around the room. Something about it troubled me.
I think I remember being here before when I was just a child. If this is the room I think it is. I would have been very small, maybe four or five years old. I d been brought here to meet my grandfather Arthur. Martha s first husband. I can t remember who brought me here, though. Isn t that odd? I m pretty sure it wasn t Martha. I can remember being brought into this room and meeting Grandfather Arthur, but not who brought me here or why.
Arthur Drood he seemed very old to me then, though he couldn t have been more than fifty or sixty. I remember he poured himself a cup of tea but it was too hot to drink, so he poured some of it into the saucer to cool it and sipped his tea from the saucer. Yes. I thought that was a great trick, and demanded to be allowed to try some. He smiled and offered me the saucer, and I took a sip, but I didn t like it. I pulled a face, and everyone laughed. Who laughed? Who else was in the room with me? Why can t I remember them? As though I m not supposed to, not allowed to
Wait a minute, said Molly. Hold everything. Go previous. I thought you said your grandfather Arthur died back in the fifties. You weren t even born then.
That s right, I said, frowning. He died in 1957, in the Kiev Conspiracy.
What was that? said Molly. Some old Cold War thing? Well before my time. And yours.
I don t know, I said. I was frowning so hard it hurt my forehead. There was something I couldn t quite remember, something just out of my reach. Something important.
I don t know the details of how he died. No one ever told me. It was just 1957, and the Kiev Conspiracy. Why did I never ask more about that? Why did I just accept it? I never used to accept anything they just told me. But I am sure I ve been here, in this room, before.
And then the ceiling came crashing down on us. No warning, not a sound; the ceiling just bulged suddenly out above us and then broke apart, everything coming down on our heads at once. I subvocalised my activating Words and called for my armour, but nothing happened. The armour didn t come. I froze where I was. I couldn t believe it. Molly threw an arm around me and thrust her other hand up at the descending ceiling. She said a very bad Word, and a shimmering protective shield appeared around us. The broken ceiling fell down, hit the shield and fell away, unable to touch us. The whole room shook as the entire ceiling came down in heavy chunks and pieces, followed by parts of the compressed floors above. Molly grabbed my arm and hauled me through the doorframe and out into the corridor. The shield came with us, still protecting us. Safely outside the room, Molly held me close as smoke and dust billowed out of the room after us. The room was filling up with wreckage from above, hammering loudly together as though annoyed it had missed its chance at us.
Molly dismissed the shimmering shield with an impatient wave of her hand and looked at me anxiously.
Eddie? Are you okay? What happened in there?
I raised a trembling hand to the golden torc at my throat. It was still there. It felt warm and alive, just like always. So why hadn t my armour come when I called it?
How long? I said numbly to Molly. How long have I been walking around with a useless torc at my throat? How long have I been naked and defenceless in the face of my enemies?
Eddie, take it easy.
You don t understand! I shouted at her.
I ve never been separated from my armour! It s been with me my whole life, in one form or another. First from the Heart and then from Ethel How can I be a Drood if I don t have my armour?
And just like that I was off and running, ignoring Molly as she called out behind me. I sprinted down rubble-strewn corridors, jumped over piles of collapsed brickwork, ignoring the angry sounds of shifting stonework all around me and heading for the one place in the Hall where I thought I might still find some answers. The one room you could always count on. The Sanctity. The heart of the Hall and of the family. I raced down broken corridors that were little more than death traps of holed floors and collapsed walls, staring straight ahead, thinking of nothing but where I needed to be. Running so hard my leg muscles ached, so fast I could barely get my breath. I could hear Molly running behind me, calling after me, but I didn t look back once. After a while she just concentrated on running and keeping up with me. I like to think it was because she trusted me to know what I was doing.
I ran on, and sometimes I ran through corridors that were there, and sometimes down corridors I remembered that were whole and undamaged. Sometimes I ran through memories of places and people, with ghosts of old friends and enemies. And sometimes I think I ran through rooms and corridors that weren t there anymore. Until finally I came to the Sanctity.