I thought about that. “All my sins? Even the sins of omission? Things I should have done but didn’t?”
“Oh, I think those most of all,” said the Armourer.
I turned then, to look at him steadily. “Why have you brought me here?”
“I’m the Armourer. An engineer. I fix things that need fixing. It’s what I do. And it’s the last thing I can do for you.”
We both looked round sharply, as a voice emerged from somewhere deep in the right-hand tunnel mouth, mournfully singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A long, narrow barge drifted slowly out of the tunnel mouth, old-fashioned and basic, made from dark cedar wood, propelled by no obvious engine or action. It glided silently through the dark waters towards us, and I made the connection immediately. The barge of ancient legend that transported the living to the land of the dead. But instead of Charon at the helm, it was Dead Boy. In his long deep purple greatcoat, still hanging defiantly open to show off the ragged stitching on his autopsy scar. He looked up, saw Jack and me, stopped singing, and brightened up. He pushed his floppy wide-brimmed hat onto the back of his head, and I saw that his corpse-pale face looked even worse than usual in the uncertain light. His eyes were dark and fever-bright, but his smile was marvellously uncomplicated.
“Hello, Eddie! Jack!” he said loudly. “Hey, you wouldn’t believe who I had in the back of my barge just the other day! So, two tickets to Tartarus, is it? One way or a return trip?”
“Do I need to give you a coin?” I said, just to show I was keeping up. “That is traditional, isn’t it? A coin to pay the ferryman?”
“Your uncle Jack already paid in full,” said Dead Boy. “Climb aboard! Sit anywhere you like. Don’t trail a hand in the waters if you like having fingers, and if things should get a bit choppy try to get some of it in the bags provided.”
I stepped aboard the barge, followed by Jack, and we arranged ourselves as comfortably as we could on the bare wooden bottom of the boat. The barge didn’t rock even a little under our weight. Dead Boy produced a gondolier’s pole from out of nowhere, thrust it down into the dark waters with a dramatic gesture, and started the barge moving. We headed steadily towards the left-hand tunnel mouth, while Dead Boy sang “Let It Be.”
We passed through the dark, gaping mouth and on into a new tunnel, whose walls shone with a pearly gleam. The dark waters dropped away before us, sloping sharply, carrying us deeper and deeper into the earth. Going down, all the way down. I looked back over my shoulder, and already there was no sign of the tunnel mouth. Clouds of birds fluttered silently overhead, black bunches of feathers slamming into one another and off the tunnel roof.
“Crows,” Dead Boy said wisely. “Indentured security for the place of the dead. They can sometimes be persuaded to carry messages out of the underworld.”
I looked at him. “If this is . . . the place of the dead, have you seen my parents? Charles and Emily Drood?”
“Like you,” said the Armourer, “their future has yet to be determined. Concentrate on what’s in front of you, Eddie.” He paused. “How do you feel?”
I considered the question. To my surprise, I discovered that I felt pretty good. No pain, no weakness, everything working perfectly. I looked at the Armourer.
“I feel great. Now tell me the truth, Uncle Jack. Am I dead?”
“Not necessarily,” said the Armourer. “You’re feeling better because you’ve left your earthly cares and woes behind to come to this place in search of judgement and forgiveness and renewal. A new chance at life. You do want to return to the world above, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have to. Molly is depending on me.”
The Armourer grinned. “You always were very single-minded. I approve of Molly. She’s good for you. Don’t ever tell her I said that. She’d hate to think she was a good influence on anyone.”
The dark waters suddenly levelled out, and our descent slowed and stopped. The barge eased to a halt beside a new platform that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Dead Boy grounded his long pole and leaned on it, nodding to me companionably.
“Okay, this is it. Even I can’t go any farther. See you around, Eddie. Hopefully.” He nodded to Jack. “Good seeing you again. I enjoyed your wake. Oh, sorry . . .”
“That’s all right,” said the Armourer. “I was there, in spirit.”
I stepped carefully up out of the barge and onto the platform, and the Armourer quickly joined me. Everything looked . . . perfectly ordinary, but once again there was no one around. The long, empty platform was bathed in a flat, characterless light, and the Destinations board consisted of just two arrows—one pointing up and the other pointing down. Some symbols are so obvious they’re not even really symbols. More like a slap round the back of the head. I turned to Jack and did my best to sound off-handed and confident.
“Okay, what are we doing here?”
“You’re here to face the Arbiter,” said Jack. “To tell the truth, at last; because nothing less can save and redeem you. It’s judgement night.”
I really didn’t like the sound of that. Particularly when I became aware that the flat light was fading steadily all around us. I looked back at the black river, but Dead Boy and his barge were already gone. Gloom closed in on Jack and me from all sides, until finally there was just a spotlight, sharp and clear and concentrated, falling out of nowhere onto me and Jack. Pinning us in place, like specimens mounted on a board.
“I’m on trial, aren’t I?” I said.
“Yes,” said the Armourer.
“By this . . . Arbiter? Who put him in charge? Who gave him authority over me?”
Jack smiled. “You did, Eddie.”
I sniffed loudly. “I’ve never liked authority figures. Even when I was one.”
A second spotlight stabbed down, abruptly illuminating a dark human silhouette sitting on a bar-stool not far away, facing me. A bar-stool that looked just like the one I’d been sitting on, not so long ago, at Jack’s wake in the Wulfshead Club. The dark figure leaned forward suddenly, and his face came into the light. It was, of course, me. Smiling.
“Yes,” said the Arbiter. “The one person you know you can’t lie to.”
I looked to my uncle Jack. “Is it too late to request a change in venue?”
“It was too late for that before we even came down here,” said the Armourer. “Some things just have to be faced, Eddie.”
“Who knows you better than me?” said the Arbiter. “Who can you trust to give you fair judgement, if not me? There can be no lies between us, no prevarications, no justifications. Just the truth. At last.”
“You must confess your sins, Eddie,” said Jack. “If you want to be forgiven. If you want to survive this. You were dying, up there, but this . . . is your chance to be reborn. If you’re worthy of it.”
I thought hard. This mattered; I could tell. I’d been hurt bad, by the London Knights. It was quite possible my broken body was lying huddled somewhere on Oxford Street, quietly bleeding out, while people just stepped over me and kept going. While my soul was . . . here. Wherever or whatever here was. I looked to Jack. He seemed realer than anything else. And if I was going to die, I couldn’t think of better company to do it in.
“All right,” I said. “For you, Uncle Jack.”
I turned to face myself, to face the Arbiter, and began my confession of sins. I talked about my career as a Drood field agent. Of the man I’d been, and the man I’d wanted to be; and the man my family had tried and failed to make me into. About the things I was ordered to do that sometimes I agreed with and sometimes didn’t, until finally the family turned on me, for all my loyalty. I talked about how I ended up running the family, to save its soul, to save it from itself; and how I stepped down because I honestly believed I was getting good people killed, because I wasn’t up to the job.
“I know all this,” said the Arbiter coldly
. “I’m you, remember?”
“It’s important to me to talk it through,” I said just as coldly. “To be clear about it all. To understand the context . . . You want sins, and confessions of guilt, and mea culpa? Then let’s start with Charles and Emily. My father and my mother. I understand what they did, and why they did it, a lot better now . . . But still, I can’t forget how they made me feel. By going away and leaving me. Leaving me to the family. That’s why I’ve been so desperate to find them. So I could talk with them, and get the truth out of them. But really . . . facts won’t help. Won’t make any difference. Inside, I’m still the small boy abandoned by his parents. All I can do is understand that they did what they thought was best under the circumstances. So I forgive them.”
“Good start,” said the Arbiter. “Continue.”
I scowled at him. “I’m really not very good at all this head-shrinking, touchy-feely crap.”
“Of course not,” said the Arbiter. “You’re a Drood. Continue.”
“I never forgave my grandmother Martha, for not loving me. Or at least, not loving me the way I thought she should. She tried to have me killed! But she had pressures and responsibilities I couldn’t understand until I tried to do the job myself. And in the end I took everything away from her. I changed the family until she couldn’t recognise it. I caused her husband, Alistair, to die horribly. We came to a meeting of minds, at the end . . . but it could be said I blamed her not for what she was but for not being what I wanted her to be. And that, again, is a child’s viewpoint. So I forgive her too.”
“Not bad,” said the Arbiter. “Continue.”
I talked about all the people I thought I’d let down, from all my various cases and missions. The people I tried to save, and couldn’t. The people who trusted me, and died still trusting me. I remembered all the bodies, all the dead Droods coming home from my failed attack on the Hungry Gods. I remembered the CIA agent Honey Lake, dying in my arms. I remembered . . . so many names, so many faces. And I forgave myself—because looking back, I realised I really had done my best.
I finally ground to a halt. Exhausted. Like I’d just run an emotional marathon. I honestly hadn’t realised I’d thought so much about my past, or blamed myself for so much. I was shaking, worn down and worn out, from the strain of remembering so many old emotions.
“Continue,” said the Arbiter.
“What?” I said. I looked at him angrily. “What else is there? That’s it!”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Why don’t you want to live, Eddie? Your injuries are bad, but you’ve come back from worse. Why do you think you don’t deserve to live? Why have you decided you’re not going to kill ever again?”
“Because it shouldn’t be that easy!” I shouted at him. “I just decided that little shit at Uncanny deserved to die, and he did! All right, he probably wanted to die. Suicide by Drood. But . . . I should have found some way to save him. He was Arthur’s grandson, just like me. He was family.”
“Good,” said the Arbiter. “You didn’t kill him; he killed himself, using you as the weapon.”
“I still don’t want to kill again.”
“That’s the future. That’s between you and your conscience. We’re dealing with the past here. With forgiveness and absolution. Continue.”
“There’s nothing else!”
“Yes there is. Continue.”
“No!”
“Say it. Speak the truth at last. What’s the one thing left, that you can’t, won’t, forgive yourself for?”
“No!”
“Say it! Say you’re sorry!”
I spun round to face the Armourer. “I’m sorry, Uncle Jack! I’m so sorry! I went away and left you to die alone! I wasn’t there when you needed me! I should have been there with you!”
“I know,” he said. “I know, Eddie.”
He opened his arms, and I stumbled over to him, and hugged him hard. He held me in his strong engineer’s arms, held me close, while I buried my face in his lab-suited shoulder and cried like a child. Hot tears streamed down my face so hard I could barely breathe. He patted me comfortingly on the back, with his big engineer’s hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . .”
“Hush, hush,” he said. “It’s all right, Eddie. Really it is. Forgive yourself, Eddie. For being a man, and fallible. Not even a Drood can be everywhere at once, be everywhere he’s needed. You did the best you could. So forgive yourself; and then go save Molly. And Charles and Emily. As for me . . . Do you really think I wanted you there to watch me die? Why would I want to put you through something like that?”
I stepped back from him, sniffing back the tears. He was smiling kindly.
“But you died alone, Uncle Jack.”
“We all die alone, boy. But . . . there was someone there with me, at the end. So forgive yourself. So we can get this over and done with and move on.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “But I couldn’t have done anything else. So, yes, I forgive myself.”
“Good man,” said the Armourer.
He hugged me again, one last time. And put his mouth right next to my ear.
“I have always been so proud of you, Eddie. You are the son I should have had.”
He let me go, and I let him go, and we stood apart. I mopped the drying tears from my face with a handkerchief, and turned to the Arbiter; but he and his bar-stool were already gone. The trial was over. Guilty, but human; and forgiven. It felt . . . like a bright new morning after a very long night.
* * *
Jack led me up, out of the underground. Just a simple stairway this time. Didn’t seem to take nearly as long. The need for symbols was over. I stepped out of the Underground Station and onto the street; but Jack didn’t come with me. I stopped, and looked back.
“Uncle Jack?”
“I’ve done all I can, Eddie. The rest is up to you now.”
“Good-bye, Uncle Jack,” I said. “It was so good to see you again.”
He smiled, and turned away, and walked back into the dark, back down into the underworld.
I looked around, and found I was standing outside the Green Door—access to Castle Inconnu. Right back where I’d started from. Had any of it really happened? Had any of it been real? I flexed my left arm, and then my side, increasingly vigorously, until people passing by in the street looked at me curiously. I didn’t hurt any more. I felt good; I felt better than good. I felt . . . healed, inside and out. One last gift from my uncle Jack.
And now it was time to go find whoever had taken Molly. And make them sorry they’d ever heard of her, or me. I might have given up killing, but I hadn’t given up protecting those I cared about. I strode off down Oxford Street, and people took one look at my face and hurried to get out of my way.
CHAPTER NINE
No One Ever Comes Back
to Complain
I made contact with my handler, Kate, through my torc and was pleasantly surprised when she answered me promptly. I could still remember the chill in my heart and my soul when I had reached out to Kate and my family and no one answered. But this time Kate’s cheerful voice sounded in my ear immediately.
“Hello, Eddie! Yes, of course I’m here; why, is anything wrong? You sound a bit . . . concerned.”
“I just thought I should apologise for being out of contact for so long,” I said.
“Okay, this isn’t like you,” said Kate. “It’s an improvement, but it isn’t like you. It’s been hardly any time at all since we talked. You’d have to be off the air and off the grid for a lot longer than this before I even started getting worried about you. Though . . . apparently, we are just starting to get complaints coming into the Hall, about your conduct at . . . Castle Inconnu? What the hell were you doing there? Eddie, why have you upset the London Knights?”
“It needed doing,” I said.
; “Good for you,” said Kate. “Stuck-up bunch of prigs. Don’t snigger, Eddie. You know very well I said ‘prigs.’ Oh, Eddie, please tell me you haven’t killed any of them!”
“Of course I haven’t killed any of them! I keep telling you, I don’t do that any more.”
“Just checking,” Kate said airily. “You do have a reputation, you know . . . Not that any of us here gives a damn about the London Knights, you understand. If they want, they can make an official complaint about you to the family. And then we can have the fun of officially ignoring it.”
I filled Kate in on everything that had happened during my visit to Castle Inconnu. Including my conversations with Sir Perryvale and the Lady Gaea. Even including the things that might have made me look a bit bad. Kate immediately went all swoony at the very thought of talking with Mother Earth in person. She pressed me for details on exactly what was said, what the Lady looked like, and what she was wearing. But I was already forgetting most of what had passed between us. Which was probably just as well. Mortals aren’t supposed to get used to talking with living goddesses. I did explain to Kate why I had to fight my way out of the Castle, and then I stopped. She didn’t need to know how badly I’d been injured. And she really didn’t need to know about Uncle Jack and the underworld. That was nobody’s business but mine. And Jack’s.
So instead I told Kate about my lead on finding Molly through the Travel Bureau and its infamous Departure Lounge.
“I can have armoured backup on the spot to assist you in under an hour,” said Kate.
“No,” I said quickly. “I can’t wait, and we can’t risk word getting out that I’m heading their way. The Travel Bureau must have their own ear to the ground, to be able to run an operation like theirs, and it would only take a whisper that the Droods were involved to put the wind up them. They might shut everything down and do a runner, or destroy all their records—and there goes my only lead to Molly. No, Kate, I think it’s safer I do this alone, as Shaman Bond. That is what he’s for, after all.”
From a Drood to A Kill: A Secret Histories Novel Page 27
