I charged forward and slammed the young Drood out of my way with a single backhand that lifted him up off his feet and sent him flying across the room. The other Droods hesitated, frozen where they were by uncertainty and shock, and then I was in and among them. Even house Droods have to go through basic training when they’re kids, but most never raise a hand in anger in their lives, in armour or out of it. They never stood a chance. I knocked them down and kicked them away, picked them up and threw them this way and that. They couldn’t be hurt inside their armour, but it knocked all the pepper out of them. A few tried to make a fight out of it, coming at me with wildly swinging fists. I picked them up and threw them at walls, and they crashed right through the woodwork. Molly used her magic to collapse the walls on top of them, pinning them down with the weight of the wreckage. They’d dig themselves out eventually, but by then we’d be long gone.
I smashed through the opposite wall and into the next room, and then the next wall and the next room, or the next corridor, on and on, heading always in a straight line through the structure of the Hall. At least the Sanctity was in the central building, and not one of the other wings, or it could have taken me hours. Walls that had stood for centuries fell under my armoured strength and cold, cold anger, and though more Droods came to meet me, in armour and out, and with all kinds of weapons, none of them came close to stopping me.
Occasionally the odds would get a bit heavy, as family members filled a room before me, but still none of them had field experience, and it was child’s play to outthink and outmanoeuvre them. I could have killed so many of them, but I didn’t. It wasn’t necessary. Sometimes I fooled them into fighting each other; one golden form looks much like another. Sometimes I buried them under piles of furniture or wrapped them in precious tapestries they didn’t dare tear. Once Molly stopped an entire crowd by threatening to overturn a glass display case full of delicate china, and a dozen voices cried out in horrified protest.
"Those pieces are irreplaceable!" cried an anguished voice as Molly tilted the case slowly so the china pieces slid jerkily across the shelves.
"They’re priceless! Historical treasures!"
"Then why are you hoarding them for yourselves?" snapped Molly.
"Why aren’t they in a museum so everyone can enjoy them? Back the hell off, or I’ll create a china jigsaw like you’ve never seen!"
"We’re backing, we’re backing!" cried the Droods. "Barbarian! Philistine!"
They all got out of our way in a hurry. Molly and I picked up the display case and carried it across the room, and the Droods scattered before us, crying out piteously for us to be more careful. I smashed a hole in the wall and stepped through, and Molly dragged the case into position to block the hole. We laughed, secure in the knowledge that the Droods would spend ages carefully moving the case aside so as not to risk damaging the contents.
More Droods in the corridor beyond. And these at least had seen some training. They held themselves well, all ten of them, fanning out so as not to bunch up and make an easy target. I didn’t waste time talking to them. I concentrated, applying what I’d learned from James, and grew supernaturally sharp claws on my golden hands. First thing a field agent learns is that any trick is a fair trick if it means you win and they lose. I took them down, one by one, fighting hand to hand, up close and personal. My claws ripped through their armour, and they cried out in shock as well as pain. Their flesh was torn, and they bled inside their armour, and that had never happened before. Some just turned and ran. The rest fell back, scattering, and Molly and I went straight through them.
A few saw Molly as an easier target. They went for her, reaching out with their golden hands, and she laughed in their featureless faces. She conjured up a howling storm wind that bellowed down the narrow corridor, picking them up and carrying them away, tumbling helplessly end over end like discarded toys the whole length of the corridor.
The remaining Droods all tackled me at once, knocking me off balance, and then piling on top of me as I crashed to the floor, trying to pin me down with the sheer weight of armoured bodies. Good tactic. Probably would have worked against anyone who wasn’t field trained and used to thinking around corners. I cracked open the floor beneath us with one sharp blow from a golden elbow, and our combined weight collapsed the floor. A great hole opened up and we all fell through, the other Droods kicking and screaming and grabbing at each other all the way down into the room below. I of course just grabbed the side of the hole with one hand and pulled myself up and out. The Droods below were so inexperienced it probably wouldn’t even occur to them that they could use the armoured power of their legs to jump back up again. Or at least not until Molly and I had already moved on.
The next room was a trap.
I recognised the place the moment I entered it. The room was called Time Out, and it was full of ornate clocks and timepieces from across the centuries, covering all four walls with everything from water clocks to atomic devices. I never did like Time Out; always struck me as a sinister place, when I was young. Full of the ticking of a million mad clocks. In this room time itself could be slowed down, extended. A day could pass in here between the tick and tock of a clock outside. Time Out was originally put together back in the nineteenth century to make possible the observation of certain delicate scientific and magical experiments, but these days it was mostly used by students reviewing and cramming for an imminent exam.
I knew something was wrong before I was halfway across the room. All the heavy ticks and tocks around me had taken on a strange dying fall, and the air was thick as syrup. I looked back at Molly, still stuck in the hole in the wall I’d made, her movements little more than a snail’s pace. There was nothing wrong with her. It was the room. Time was slowing down, trapping me in the room like an insect in amber. Like a prisoner in a cell with invisible, intangible bars. I could cross the room in a few seconds only to find that days had passed outside it, and the whole family waiting to meet me.
I raised my Sight, and the air seemed to shimmer around me, thick with slowly congealing forces. It wasn’t something I could fight with my armour. All its strength and speed meant nothing next to the inexorable power of time. From all around me came the slowing remorseless ticking of the million mad clocks, nailing me down, pinning me in place like an insect on display, transfixed on a spike.
I lashed out at the grandfather clock next to me, and the heavy wooden case exploded under the impact. I ripped out the chains and the pendulum and threw them aside, and the great old clock was silenced. And time’s growing hold on me seemed to hesitate…I grabbed up a seventeenth century carriage clock and crushed it in my golden hand, and cogs and pinwheels flew out of it. Time’s hold slipped away from me just a little. I could feel it. I laughed aloud and rampaged round the room, smashing all the clocks, destroying everything I could lay my hands on, until Molly was suddenly striding across the room towards me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. She hadn’t noticed anything. I stopped, breathing hard, and looked around me. The room was a mess. And time moved normally on its way, ticking and tocking along as though nothing had happened. I shook my head at Molly and headed for the far wall. No point in trying to explain. There wasn’t enough time.
I smashed through the wall as though it was cardboard and stepped through into the corridor beyond. My feet shot out from under me, and suddenly I was plummeting the length of the hallway, scrabbling frantically for handholds on the walls as they rushed past me. Someone had changed the direction of gravity so that the wall at the far end of the long hallway was now the floor, and the two walls just the sides of a really long drop. I fell all the way to the bottom, tumbling helplessly, until the far wall came flying up towards me like a flyswatter. I tucked myself up into a ball, got my feet underneath me, and used my armoured legs to soak up the impact as I hit.