"Me too," I said. "Delicious."
"Barbarian! Are those peacocks over there?"
"Yes. Try not to set them off. They can make more noise than the alarms."
"I always figured you guys lived well, but this is incredible. I know some landed gentry who don’t have it as good as this!"
"Welcome to my home," I said. "One day, absolutely none of this will be mine."
Molly looked at me. "Why drop us off here, so far from the Hall? Why not arrive somewhere useful, inside the house?"
"Because that would have set off alarms," I said. "Even the Confusulum couldn’t handle the kind of security my family has set up throughout the Hall. The kind of alarms primed to go off if they’re even suspicious or just have a bad dream. The defences out here are more straightforward: on/off, kill/don’t kill, that sort of thing. Child’s play for the Confusulum."
Molly grinned cheerfully. "If I’d known burgling the Hall was this easy, I’d have done it years ago."
We moved cautiously forward across the lawns, towards the house. We stayed off the gravel path, far too noisy, and we gave the peacocks plenty of room. A few sounded off, but no one in the house would give their plaintive cries any attention. Molly and I actually covered quite a distance before half a dozen robot guns rose suddenly out of the ground from their hidden silos. Big, ugly, brutal weapons, they swivelled back and forth as their fire computers struggled to target the intruders whose proximity had set them off. Molly and I stood very still while I rested one hand on the badge at my lapel. The Confusulum did its thing, and the guns swivelled jerkily back and forth, increasingly confused and upset by conflicting impulses. So in the end the stupid things decided that since they were the only things moving, they must be the intruders. And they shot the hell out of each other. Muzzles roared, bullets flew, and one by one the robot guns exploded messily in bursts of fire and smoke. None of the bullets came anywhere near Molly or me.
"So much for sneaking in," said Molly as the last echoes of gunfire died away.
"Shut up and run," I said.
We sprinted forward across the lawns. Lights were coming on inside the Hall. I had no doubt people would be crowding around their security monitors, trying to figure out what was happening. Hopefully the Confusulum would keep them guessing for a while. The robot guns had been known to malfunction before; they were one of Alistair’s ideas.
"Up ahead," said Molly. "What are those ugly-looking things?"
"Oh, shit," I said.
"I really hate it when you say that."
"Just stick really close to me, okay?"
Two of the gryphons came lumbering across the grass towards us, great lumpy things with gray scaly bodies and long, morose faces. They were the only ones who looked forward to intruders, because they got to eat them. The Confusulum had to be having some effect on them, or they would have foreseen our coming and warned the house. But this close, the simple creatures believed what their senses were telling them, no matter how confused they might feel. I waited till they were almost upon us, and then sank down onto my haunches and spoke easily to them, calm and friendly, letting them remember my voice as they got my scent. They approached me slowly, gave me a good sniff all over, and then nuzzled my hands with their soft mouths. They blinked suspiciously at Molly, but I just kept talking soothingly to them, keeping their attention on me. They sat down and leaned their great weight against me, making happy snuffling sounds.
"Those things smell really horrible," said Molly.
"Hush," I said. "You’ll hurt their feelings. They’re gryphons. Better than guard dogs because they can actually see the near future. Usually. But because they never met a piece of carrion they didn’t want to roll in, they’re never allowed inside the house. I always felt sorry for them when I was just a kid; left out here alone, in all weathers. So I used to sneak out at night and feed them bits of offal and stuff from the kitchens. It seems they remember me…"
"You soppy old softy, you," said Molly. She reached cautiously over and scratched one of the gryphons behind its long pointed ear, and it snuffled loudly in gratitude.
"Down!" I said suddenly.
Molly and I crouched down with the gryphons, just a gray silhouette in the growing dusk, while I watched the Sarjeant-at-Arms stalk out of the Hall’s main front entrance. He looked around the grounds, taking his time, but his gaze swept over Molly and me and the gryphons without slowing. Of course he wouldn’t believe the guns blowing each other up was just a malfunction. He lived to defend the Hall. More members of the family poured out of the entrance behind him, and the Sarjeant directed them this way and that with curt instructions. They swarmed around the exterior of the house, looking for signs of an attack or a break-in, while others fanned out across the grounds. A few even took off from the landing pads on the roof, in those clumsy old da Vinci helicopter chairs that the Armourer’s been trying to get the bugs out of for years. Rather them than me. They roared by overhead, spotlights stabbing down through the gathering gloom. I hadn’t expected such a dramatic response to a single incident. Presumably everyone was still on edge after the attack on the Heart. Or perhaps it was because I’d phoned and told them I was coming home…I liked to think so.
"You had to tell them you were coming," said Molly.
"The grounds defences have all been activated," I said to avoid answering her. "But as long as the Confusulum’s operating, they shouldn’t be able to lock on to us."
"Why are they all carrying weapons?" Molly said suddenly. "I thought you people mostly relied on your armour."
"Mostly, yes. But just recently there’ve been some serious attacks on the Hall. Really nasty ones. No one feels like taking chances anymore."
"Attacks?" said Molly. "By anyone I might know?"
"We don’t know who’s behind them," I said. "And if my family doesn’t know, no one knows. But that’s why they’re pulling out all the stops. The very thing I’d hoped to avoid, by sneaking in. Bloody Alistair and his stupid bloody robot guns."
"Should we leave?" said Molly. "Maybe come back some other time?"
"We don’t have the time," I said. "For better or worse, this is the only chance we’ll get. You still game?"
"Always," she said, grinning. "Let’s go start some trouble."
"Let’s," I said, grinning back at her.
We gave the gryphons a few last pats, and then pushed them firmly away and sprinted across the open lawns towards the house. In the growing dusk, we should look like just two more moving figures. If the family were bracing themselves for an attack by the kind of thing that had broken into the Sanctity, they shouldn’t be looking for merely human targets. I could feel the grounds’ defences trying to kick in: all the hidden trapdoors and deadly weapons, all the scientific and magical devices in their underground silos, but none of them could lock on to Molly or me as long as we were protected by the Confusulum. Force shields snapped on and off all around us, magical energies manifested and dispersed in a moment, and none of them could touch us. The grounds’ defences were baffled. But there were still far too many people around, too many Droods between us and the Hall. Someone would be bound to challenge us soon.
"We need a diversion," I said to Molly. "Something big and dramatic, to draw people away from the front of the house."
"No problem," said Molly, breathing just a little hard from the running. "Watch this."
She muttered under her breath and gestured sharply, and suddenly a huge dragon was hovering over the Hall. A massive creature, with a long golden-scaled body and vast, flapping membranous wings. It shrieked horribly as it descended on the Hall, a horrid horned head thrusting forward on the end of a snakelike neck. It was impossibly big, half the size of the house, and it tore great holes in the outer wall of the east wing with casual blows from its clawed hands. It breathed fire across the landing pads on the roof, sweeping away all the vehicles there in one great blast of flames. It screamed in triumph and slammed into the Hall with one great shoulder so hard that the whole building shook.