The Creature in the Case

by Garth Nix

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Nick.

  ‘Within reason,’ Lackridge added hastily. ‘I mean, nothing too drastic. Do him good.’

  ‘I think he needs to get on a train north and go back to the Old Kingdom,’ said Nick firmly. He liked Lackridge less and less with every passing minute, and the whole Department Thirteen setup seemed very dubious. It was all very well for his uncle Edward to talk about having extralegal entities to do things the government could not, but the line had to be drawn somewhere, and Nick didn’t think Dorrance or Lackridge knew where to draw it—or if they did, when not to step over it.

  ‘I’ll just see how he is,’ added Nick. An idea started to rise from the recesses of his mind as he walked down the corridor toward the crouched and shivering man pressed against the door. ‘Perhaps we can walk out together.’

  ‘Mr. Dorrance was most insistent—’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t mind if you tell him that I insisted on escorting Malthan on his way.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I am insisting, you know,’ Nick cut in forcefully. ‘As it is, I shall have a few words to say about this place to my uncle.’

  ‘If you’re going to be like that, I don’t think I have any choice,’ said Lackridge petulantly. ‘We were assured that you would cooperate fully with our research.’

  ‘I will cooperate, but I don’t think Malthan needs to do any more for Department Thirteen,’ said Nick. He bent down and helped the Old Kingdom trader up. He was surprised by how much the smaller man was shaking. He seemed totally in the grip of panic, though he calmed a little when Nick took his arm above the elbow. ‘Now, please show us out. And you can organise someone to take Malthan to the railway station.’

  ‘You don’t understand the importance of our work,’ said Lackridge. ‘Or our methods. Observing the superstitious reactions of northerners and our own people delivers legitimate and potentially useful information.’

  This was clearly only a pro forma protest, because as Lackridge spoke, he unlocked the door and led them quickly through the corridors. After a few minutes, Nick found that he didn’t need to half carry Malthan anymore, but could just point him in the right direction.

  Eventually, after numerous turns and more doors that required laborious unlocking, they came to a double-width steel door with two spy holes. Lackridge knocked, and after a brief inspection, they were admitted to a guardroom inhabited by five policeman types. Four were sitting around a linoleum-topped table under a single suspended lightbulb, drinking tea and eating doorstop-size sandwiches. Hodgeman was the fifth, and clearly still on duty, as unlike the others he had not removed his coat.

  ‘Sergeant Hodgeman,’ Lackridge called out rather too loudly. ‘Please escort Mr Sayre upstairs and have one of your other officers take Malthan to Dorrance Halt and see he gets on the next northbound train.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ replied Hodgeman. He hesitated for a moment, then with a curiously unpleasant emphasis, which Nick would have missed if he hadn’t been paying careful attention, he said, ‘Constable Ripton, you see to Malthan.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve had a thought. Malthan can take a message from me over to my uncle, the Chief Minister, at the Golden Sheaf. Then someone from his staff can take Malthan to the nearest station.’

  ‘One of my men would happily take a message for you, sir,’ said Sergeant Hodgeman. ‘And Dorrance Halt is much closer than the Golden Sheaf. That’s all of twenty miles away.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nick. ‘But I want the Chief Minister to hear Malthan directly about some matters relating to the Old Kingdom. That won’t be a problem, will it? Malthan, I’ll just write something out for you to take to Garran, my uncle’s principal secretary.’

  Nick took out his notebook and gold propelling pencil and casually leaned against the wall. They all watched him, the five policeman with studied disinterest masking hostility, Lackridge with more open aggression, and Malthan with the sad eyes of the doomed.

  Nick began to whistle tunelessly through his teeth, pretending to be oblivious to the pent-up institutional aggression focused upon him. He wrote quickly, sighed and pretended to cross out what he’d written, then ripped out the page, palmed it, and started to write again.

  ‘Very hard to concentrate the mind in these underground chambers of yours,’ Nick said to Lackridge. ‘I don’t know how you get anything done. Expect you’ve got cockroaches too … maybe rats … I mean, what’s that?’

  He pointed with the pencil. Only Malthan and Lackridge turned to look. The policemen kept up their steady stare. Nick stared back, but he felt a slight fear begin to swim about his stomach. Surely they wouldn’t risk doing anything to Edward Sayre’s nephew? And yet … they were clearly planning to imprison Malthan at the least, or perhaps something worse. Nick wasn’t going to let that happen.

  ‘Only a shadow, but I bet you do have rats. Stands to reason. Underground. Tea and biscuits about,’ Nick said as he ripped out the second page. He folded it, wrote ‘Mr Edmund Garran’ on the outside, and handed it to Malthan, at the same time stepping across to shield his next action from everyone except Lackridge, whom he stumbled against.

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ he exclaimed, and in that moment of apparently lost balance, he slid the palmed first note into Malthan’s still open hand.

  ‘I … ah … still not quite recovered from the events at Forwin Mill,’ Nick mumbled, as Lackridge suppressed an oath and jumped back.

  The policemen had stepped forward, apparently only to catch him if he fell. Sergeant Hodgeman had seen him stumble before. They were clearly suspicious but didn’t know what he had done. He hoped.

  ‘Bit unsteady on my pins,’ continued Nick. ‘Nothing to do with drink, unfortunately. That might make it seem worthwhile. Now I must get on upstairs and dress for dinner. Who’s taking Malthan over to the Golden Sheaf?’

  ‘I am, sir. Constable Ripton.’

  ‘Very good, Constable. I trust you’ll have a pleasant evening drive. I’ll telephone ahead to make sure that my uncle’s staff are expecting you and have dinner laid on.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Ripton woodenly. Again, if Nick hadn’t been paying careful attention, he might have missed the young constable flicking his eyes up and down and then twice toward Sergeant Hodgeman—a twitch Nick interpreted as a call for help from the junior police officer, looking for Hodgeman to tell him how to satisfy his immediate masters as well as insure himself against the interference of any greater authority.

  ‘Get on with it then, Constable,’ said Hodgeman, his words as ambiguous as his expression.

  ‘Let’s all get upstairs,’ Nick said with false cheer he dredged up from somewhere. ‘After you, Sergeant. Malthan, if you wouldn’t mind walking with me, I’ll see you to your car. Got a couple of questions about the Old Kingdom I’m sure you can answer.’

  ‘Anything, anything,’ babbled Malthan. He came so close, Nick thought the little trader was going to hug him. ‘Let us get out from under the earth. With that—’

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ interrupted Nick. He gestured toward the door and met Sergeant Hodgeman’s stare. All the policemen moved closer. Casual steps. A foot slid forward here, a diagonal pace toward Nick.

  Lackridge coughed something that might have been ‘Dorrance,’ scuttled to the door leading back to the tunnels, opened it just wide enough to admit his bulk, and squeezed through. Nick thought about calling him back but instantly dismissed the idea. He didn’t want to show any weakness.

  But with Lackridge gone, there was no longer a witness. Nick knew Malthan didn’t count, not to anyone in Department Thirteen.

  Sergeant Hodgeman pushed one heavy-booted foot forward and advanced on Nick and Malthan till his face was inches away from Nick’s. It was an intimidating posture, long beloved of sergeants, and Nick knew it well from his days in the school cadets.

  Hodgeman didn’t say anything. He just stared, a fierce stare that Nick realized hid a mind calculating how far he could go to keep Maltha
n captive, and what he might be able to do to Nicholas Sayre without causing trouble.

  ‘My uncle is the Chief Minister,’ Nick whispered very softly. ‘My father a member of the Moot. Marshal Harngorm is my mother’s uncle. My second cousin is the Hereditary Arbiter himself.’

  ‘As you say, sir,’ said Hodgeman loudly. He stepped back, the sound of his heel on the concrete snapping through the tension that had risen in the room. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing.’

  That was a warning of consequences to come, Nick knew. But he didn’t care. He wanted to save Malthan, but most of all at that moment he wanted to get out under the sun again. He wanted to stand aboveground and put as much earth and concrete and as many locked doors as possible between himself and the creature in the case.

  Yet even when the afternoon sunlight was softly warming his face, Nick wasn’t much comforted. He watched Constable Ripton and Malthan leave in a small green van that looked exactly like the sort of vehicle that would be used to dispose of a body in a moving picture about the fictional Department Thirteen. Then, while lurking near the footmen’s side door, he saw several gleaming, expensive cars drive up to disgorge their gleaming, expensive passengers. He recognised most of the guests. None were friends. They were all people he would formerly have described as frivolous and now just didn’t care about at all. Even the beautiful young women failed to make more than a momentary impact. His mind was elsewhere.

  Nick was thinking about Malthan and the two messages he carried. One, the obvious one, was addressed to Thomas Garran, Uncle Edward’s principal private secretary. It said:

  The other, more hastily scrawled, said:

  There was every possibility neither message would get through, Nick thought. It would all depend on what Dorrance and his minions thought they could get away with. And that depended on what they thought they could do to one Nicholas Sayre before he caused them too much trouble.

  Nick shivered and went back inside. As he expected, when he asked to use a telephone, the footman referred him to the butler, who was very apologetic and bowed several times while regretting that the line was down and probably would not be fixed for several days, the telegraph company being notoriously slow in the country.

  With that avenue cut off, Nick retreated to his room, ostensibly to dress for dinner. In practice he spent most of the time writing a report to his uncle and another telegram to the Magistrix at Wyverley College. He hid the report in the lining of his suitcase and went in search of a particular valet who he knew would be accompanying one of the guests he had seen arrive, the aging dandy Hericourt Danjers. The permanent staff of Dorrance Hall would all really be Department Thirteen agents, or informants at the least, but it was much less likely the guests’ servants would be.

  Danjers’s valet was famous among servants for his ability with shoe polish, champagne, and a secret oil. So neither he nor anyone else in the belowstairs parlor was much surprised when the Chief Minister’s nephew sought him out with a pair of shoes in hand. The valet was a little more surprised to find a note inside the shoes asking him to go out to the village and secretly send a telegram, but as the note was wrapped around four double-guinea pieces, he was happy to do so. When he’d finished his duties, of course.

  Back in his room, Nick dressed hastily. As he tied his bow tie, his hands moved automatically while he wondered what else he should be doing. All kinds of plans raced through his head, only to be abandoned as impractical, or foolish, or likely to make matters worse.

  With his tie finally done, Nick went to his case and took out a large leather wallet. There were three things inside. Two were letters, both written neatly on thick, linen-rich handmade paper, but in markedly different hands.

  The first letter was from Nick’s old friend Prince Sameth. It was concerned primarily with Sam’s current projects and was illustrated in the margins with small diagrams. Judging from the letter, Sam’s time was being spent almost entirely on the fabrication and enchantment of a replacement hand for Lirael, and the planning and design of a fishing hut on an island in the Ratterlin Delta. Sam did not explain why he wanted to build a fishing hut, and Nick had not had a reply to his most recent letter seeking enlightenment. This was not unusual. Sam was an infrequent correspondent, and there was no regular mail service of any kind between Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom.

  Nick didn’t bother to read Sam’s letter again. He put it aside, carefully unfolded the second letter, and read it for the hundredth or two hundredth time, hoping that this time he would uncover some hidden meaning in the innocuous words.

  This letter was from Lirael, and it was quite short. The writing was so regular, so perfectly spaced, and so free of ink splotches that Nick wondered if it had been copied from a rough version. If it had, what did that mean? Did Lirael always make fine copies of her letters? Or had she done it just for him?

  Nick stared at the letter for several minutes after he finished reading it, then gently folded it and returned it to the wallet. He drew out the third thing, which had come in a package with the letters three weeks ago, though it had apparently left the Old Kingdom at least a month before that. It was a small, very plain dagger, the blade and hilt blued steel, with brass wire wound around the grip, the pommel just a big teardrop of metal.

  Nick held it up to the light. He could see faint etched symbols upon the blade, but that was all they were. Faint etched symbols. Not living, moving Charter Marks, bright and flowing, all gold and sunshine. That’s what Charter-spelled swords normally looked like, the marks leaping and splashing across the metal.

  Nick knew he ought to be comforted. If the Charter Marks on his dagger were still and dead, then the thing beneath the house should be as well. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d seen its eyes flicker.

  There was a knock on the door. Nick hastily put the dagger back in its sheath.

  ‘Yes!’ he called. The sheathed dagger was still in his hand. For a moment he considered exchanging it for the slim .32 automatic pistol in his suitcase’s outer pocket. But he decided against it when the person at the door called out to him.

  ‘Nicholas Sayre?’

  It was a woman’s voice. A young woman’s voice, with the hint of a laugh in it. Not a servant. Perhaps one of the beautiful young women he’d seen arrive. Probably a not very successful actor or singer, the usual adornments of typical country house parties.

  ‘Yes. Who is it?’

  ‘Tesrya. Don’t say you don’t remember me. Perhaps a glimpse will remind you. Let me in. I’ve got a bottle of champagne. I thought we might have a drink before dinner.’

  Nick didn’t remember her, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew she would have singled him out from the seating plan for dinner, homing in on the surname Sayre. He supposed he should at least tell her to go away to her face. Courtesy to women, even fortune hunters, had been drummed into him all his life.

  ‘Just one drink?’

  Nick hesitated, then tucked the sheathed dagger down the inside of his trousers, at the hip. He held his foot against the door in case he needed to shut it in a hurry; then he turned the key and opened it a fraction.

  He had the promised glimpse. Pale, melancholy eyes in a very white face, a forced smile from too-red lips. But there were also two hooded men there. One threw his shoulder against the door to keep it open. The other grabbed Nick by the hair and pushed a pad the size of a small pillow against his face.

  Nick tried not to breathe as he threw himself backward, losing some hair in the process, but the sickly-sweet smell of chloroform was already in his mouth and nose. The two men gave him no time to recover his balance. One pushed him back to the foot of the bed, while the other got his right arm in a wrestling hold. Nick struck out with his left, but his fist wouldn’t go where he wanted it to. His arm felt like a rubbery length of pipe, the elbow gone soft.

  Nick kept flailing, but the pad was back on his mouth and nose, and all his senses started to shatter into little pieces like a broken mosaic. He couldn’t m
ake sense of what he saw and heard and felt, and all he could smell was a sickly scent like a cheap perfume badly imitating the scent of flowers.

  In another few seconds, he was unconscious.

  Nicholas Sayre returned to his senses very slowly. It was like waking up drunk after a party, his mind still clouded and a hangover building in his head and stomach. It was dark, and he was disoriented. He tried to move and for a frightened instant thought he was paralysed. Then he felt restraints at his wrists and thighs and ankles and a hard surface under his head and back. He was tied to a table, or perhaps a hard bench.

  ‘Ah, the mind wakes,’ said a voice in the darkness. Nick thought for a second, his clouded mind slowly processing the sound. He knew that voice. Dorrance.

  ‘Would you like to see what is happening?’ asked Dorrance. Nick heard him take a few steps, heard the click of a rotary electric switch. Harsh light came with the click, so bright that Nick had to screw his eyes shut, tears instantly welling up in the corners.

  ‘Look, Mr. Sayre. Look at your most useful work.’

  Nick slowly opened his eyes. At first all he could see was a naked, very bright electric globe swinging directly above his head. Blinking to clear the tears, he looked to one side. Dorrance was there, leaning against a concrete wall. He smiled and pointed to the other side, his hand held close against his chest, fist clenched, index finger extended.

  Nick rolled his head and then recoiled, straining against the ropes that bound his ankles, thighs, and wrists to a steel operating table with raised rails.

  The creature from the case was right next to him. No longer in the case, but stretched out on an adjacent table ten inches lower than Nick’s. It was not tied up. There was a red rubber tube running from one of Nick’s wrists to a metal stand next to the creature’s head. The tube ended an inch above the monster’s slightly open mouth. Blood was dripping from the tube, small dark blobs falling in between its jet black teeth.

  Nick’s blood.