by Peter McLean
“Um, yeah, sure,” I said, and coughed. “Sorry. It was just a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
She smiled at me again.
“Of course I love you, we fought a Dominion together,” she said. “You slew Bianakith to save me, and you damned yourself to do it. And we’re both in this together with Menhit.”
Well, we certainly seemed to be in it together with Menhit, but her other two points gave me pause. Adam had fought the Dominion with her too, and got himself sent back to Hell for his troubles. I had always thought she was a little bit in love with Adam, so I wasn’t sure where that left him in this weird little triangle we seemed to have going on. And… I had damned myself, she said. That was exactly what I had been afraid of.
Diabolists go to Hell, Don.
I remembered Adam saying that to me all too well, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? Trixie made it sound like a certainty, like a foregone conclusion, and that was without her knowing that the Burned Man was slowly eating my soul as well. Maybe I still hadn’t fully grasped just how much shit I had got myself into, and how hard it was going to be to climb out of it again.
I got up and walked over to the window, suddenly embarrassed that I was still only wearing a towel. I stared out at the wide street below, at the elegant Georgian terrace across the road that was probably a mirror image of the one we were in at the moment. I was feeling horribly shut in all of a sudden. I could feel Trixie watching me.
“Are you all right?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m going to get dressed.”
“I’ll make coffee,” she said.
She left the room and shut the door behind her, and I rested my forehead against the armoured glass of the window with a weary sigh. Nothing ever got simpler, did it?
Chapter Eight
By the time I’d got some clothes on and wandered through to the kitchen Trixie had made coffee and was sitting at the table smoking one of her long black cigarettes. Mazin was with her, and he got up and bowed when I entered the room.
“Lord Keeper,” he said.
“Mazin, mate,” I said. “Enough with the bowing, all right? It’s a bit weird and it’s starting to get on my tits now.”
“I apologize, Lord Keeper,” he said.
He stood there looking awkward for a moment, then sat down again.
I took a third chair and pulled a cup of steaming black coffee gratefully towards me.
“Ta,” I said.
Trixie shrugged and tapped the end of her cigarette into a heavy crystal ashtray.
Oh great, we were all being awkward. Every time Trixie and I tried to have any sort of heart-to-heart we ended up awkward instead. Why did this have to keep happening?
Fuck it. The atmosphere was uncomfortable now and not just on account of Trixie’s smoke. I needed to talk about something. Anything.
“Look,” I said after a moment, “who the bloody hell is paying for all this?”
“All what?” Trixie asked.
“Everything,” I said, waving a hand vaguely at the apartment. “This place. The Mercedes. Menhit’s fucking private plane. Even Papa Armand isn’t that rich.”
“No of course he isn’t,” Trixie said, “and no one would expect him to pay for this apartment anyway. This is for your benefit, Don.”
“Well I know I’m not sodding paying for it,” I said. “I haven’t got a brass farthing.”
Mazin cleared his throat as though asking permission to speak. I glanced at him and he inclined his head with a smile.
“My Lord, your predecessor founded my order in part to look after the financial interests of the Keeper. We have a long history as merchant traders and bankers, and these days we administer a modest hedge fund and have a wide portfolio of diversified investments whilst also maintaining a lively trade in commodity futures and–”
I waved him to silence. He might as well have started talking in Arabic for all I understood what any of those things even were.
“So we’ve got money?” I asked him.
His smile widened. “Yes, Lord Keeper, we have money.”
“How much money, exactly?”
“It is, ah, hard to say at any given moment,” he said. “The market fluctuates and futures especially have a largely speculative element, so–”
I waved again. The whole stockmarket thing had a largely bullshit element as far as I had ever been able to tell, but there we were. It seemed to work, after a fashion anyway, so what did I know?
“Are we in the realm of ‘lots’?”
“At the last quarterly accounting the Order of the Keeper had a net worth of seven hundred and eighty-four million American dollars,” he said. “We are, if the Madam Guardian will pardon me, in the realm of ‘shitloads’.”
I gaped at him.
Wow.
I started to chuckle. I had to admit I rather liked Mazin, and the fact that he seemed to have just told me I was a multi-millionaire was making me like him a whole hell of a lot more.
Hang on a minute Don, I cautioned myself. Your job is a multi-millionaire, not you. Don’t get carried away. I was right of course, and that brought me right back around to thinking about what this fucking job even was.
I may have need of you soon, Menhit had said. Await my summons.
Need of us for what, exactly? I dreaded to bloody think. She was a war goddess after all. Anything she needed us for was unlikely to be to do with flower arranging and kittens, that was for fucking sure.
“Mazin,” I said, “what exactly do we do? The Order of the Keeper, I mean. What’s it for?”
“You should read the book,” Trixie said.
I remembered Mazin giving her this mysterious book just before Adam had shown up and spoiled everything and I had had to run away. I’d never even had the chance to open it, of course, but I knew Trixie would have read it cover to cover several times by now.
“Yeah I really should,” I said. “Have you got it with you?”
“No,” she said, and it seemed that was all she was going to say on the subject.
“Right, OK,” I said, rubbing my temples with my fingertips. “That’s helpful. Mazin, you have a go. Simple question – what do we do?”
He shrugged. “Anything the Mother asks us to,” he said. “I don’t really know any more, other than that. For as long as our written history goes back, the order has assisted your predecessor the Lord Rashid in maintaining his work and keeping it secure, to keep the Mother safe beyond her Veil. Since your predecessor’s sudden demise and the Mother’s decision to rejoin us on this plane we have been at, ah, something of a loss. I look to you for direction now, Lord Keeper.”
Oh fucking hell, do you?
“Right,” I said.
I wondered how much Mazin actually knew about my predecessor’s “sudden demise”, and whether he had the faintest idea that Menhit had murdered Rashid herself. Or that Menhit’s supposed “decision” to come back to Earth had been nothing of the sort, and that she had actually been forcibly dragged here by the schemes of a fallen Dominion. I looked Mazin in the eye and decided that no, no he hadn’t got a fucking clue.
Of course he hasn’t, I thought. That would have made this easier, and nothing’s ever fucking easy is it?
“Right,” I said again. “Direction, right. Well all right then, first thing – giving Menhit whatever she wants sounds like a bloody good idea. So long as she doesn’t want to buy a fucking aircraft carrier we can probably afford it.”
“Yes,” Mazin said, and from the earnest look on his face I could see that the poor bastard was being completely serious.
“I doubt she wants an aircraft carrier, mate,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t think she even knows what one is.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Trixie said. “She has had six months to become accustomed to the modern world, and she’s no fool.”
“No, no of course she’s not,” I said.
That made me think, of course. I had actually
only met Menhit a couple of times before today, both times very shortly after her return to Earth. She had been scary as fuck and a royal pain in the arse even then, but she had also still been half dead from culture shock. Things didn’t work like they had in bronze age Nubia any more, to put it bloody mildly. Still, if she had really had enough time to adjust, and by now I supposed she probably had, then that meant she was going to be even more of a walking nightmare than before. Poor Trixie had probably had one hell of a six months with her.
“Do we actually know what she wants?” I asked. “I mean, why is she even still here?”
“I have no idea,” Trixie said. “Menhit has never really confided in me, I’m afraid. I don’t think I’m worthy of her confidence, in her eyes anyway. She didn’t even see fit to tell me that she intended to come here in person.”
In a private fucking plane no less, the Burned Man thought at me. Her ladyship doesn’t do things by halves, does she?
I almost jumped out of my seat. It hadn’t said a word since I had returned from my involuntary astral projection and I had almost managed to forget the bloody thing was there.
Doesn’t look like it, no, I replied.
Who the fuck charters a private plane just to get from London to bloody Edinburgh?
A goddess does, I thought.
It was silent for a moment.
Fair point, it conceded.
“She, um…” I said, darting a sideways look at Mazin, “she seemed to bring some opinions with her, too.”
“Yes,” Trixie said, and I noticed how her fingertips brushed her cheek as she said it.
The mark was almost gone now but she obviously hadn’t forgotten about it.
She belted Blondie, didn’t she? the Burned Man sniggered. I like her already.
No you don’t, I reminded it, and I could feel it mentally shrug.
She’s growing on me, it said.
I sighed. I supposed she probably was, at that. The Burned Man was a contrary little bastard at the best of times. It wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that Menhit was exactly its type.
“Right, well,” I said, and scrubbed my hands back through my horrible long hair. “What about that barber? I’m sick of looking like a bloody tramp.”
“I can arrange to have someone suitable visit here, Lord Keeper,” Mazin said at once, as though he’d been prepped for the question.
He probably had been, knowing Trixie.
“Ta,” I said.
I wanted to get out of the apartment really, but only because I was feeling shut in and the whole place stank of Russian tobacco. No air conditioning system could cope with the amount of fags Trixie smoked when she was bored. No other reason. I wasn’t looking to score or anything.
I wasn’t.
You sure about that? the Burned Man asked me.
Fucking positive, I said. I knew the Burned Man wasn’t at all keen on me doing smack, and I also knew it hadn’t enjoyed Menhit’s idea of healing any more than I had. I considered my options for a moment, and made a decision.
I’ll make a deal with you, I said. If you catch me trying to buy any more of that shit, stop me. Hurt me if you have to.
Can I? it asked, a little bit too eagerly for my liking.
Yes, I said. Just don’t let me do it.
I could almost feel it smile.
Deal, it said.
Right, good. That was that then. I knew damn well the Burned Man would keep up its end of that deal if only out of spite. I told myself it was worth it in the long run and swallowed the end of my cooling coffee.
Trixie stood up and stretched.
“I’m going to take a bath,” she announced, and strode from the room.
I waited for her to retire to her own bedroom before I leaned towards Mazin across the table.
“I need you to do something for me,” I said quietly.
Trixie had hearing like a bloody bat, and I didn’t want her hearing this.
“Of course, Lord Keeper,” he said. “I will telephone for a barber at once.”
“Not that,” I said. “Well yeah, do that as well. This fucking beard is driving me nuts. There’s something else though. I need you and your boys to find someone for me. Can you do that?”
He smiled and spread his hands.
“Of course,” he said again.
* * *
When I had had something to eat and the barber had been and gone I had another long hot shower just because I could, then stood and admired myself in the mirror. Well I say admired but I suppose there was little enough to take pride in really. I’ve always been a fairly ordinary looking bloke but I must have lost at least thirty pounds while I had been living rough, and I hadn’t exactly been fat to start with. I could see every one of my bloody ribs, and my left arm was a mess of needle tracks. I could only hope they would heal up with time, or I wouldn’t be wearing T-shirts in public again.
At least I looked like myself now and not like some horrible homeless junkie. I was clean shaven and my hair had been cut so that I was able to comb it into some semblance of tidiness for once. I have this awful habit of pushing my hands back through it when I’m thinking so it never stayed tidy for very long but at least it was out of my eyes now. I’d take that.
“God, that’s better,” I said to myself.
“Yes, it is,” Trixie said from behind me. “A lot better.”
I was stark bollock naked, and suddenly finding her in the bathroom with me was something of a shock.
“Um,” I said, keeping my back to her. “I, um, did you need something?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said, and turned and strolled out of the room again.
Well that was bloody embarrassing. I just wished I knew where I stood with her. She loved me but she didn’t want to shag me, apparently. Did that just mean she was chaste or did she mean she loved me like a brother? Like a son? Or, given that she was well over two thousand years old, like a great-great-great-God-knows-how-many-times-over-grandson? I really had no fucking idea.
Trixie was weird, there was no other way of putting it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved her and I bloody well wanted to shag her, but then I always had done. Fat lot of good that had done me so far.
Do you reckon Adam’s had her? the Burned Man asked.
No he fucking hasn’t, I snapped at it without thinking.
I mean, in all honesty I had no idea, but I doubted it somehow. I just really couldn’t see Trixie going in for sex, however sexy she might be. The Burned Man sniggered in my head and I realized the bloody thing was winding me up. It must be getting bored.
Stop taking the piss and make yourself useful, I told it. What the bloody hell is Menhit up to? She killed the Dominion so why hasn’t she fucked off home again if she likes it there so much?
Who killed a Dominion? the Burned Man asked. That’d be quite some fucking achievement, believe you me. No, it fell and when she defeated it in combat she cast it down into Hell the same way that it cast down Adam, but no one’s been killing any Dominions around here. I don’t even know if that can be done on this plane, and even if it can be she hasn’t fucking done it.
I blinked. Well, that was interesting. If by “interesting” I meant bloody horrifying, I supposed. So that awful fucking thing was still alive down there somewhere in Hell?
Oh joy.
This just kept on getting better. I sighed and pushed my hands back through my hair, messing it up already. Oh what the hell did it matter what my sodding hair looked like? I padded naked into the bedroom and put some clean clothes on, then wandered through to the living room. Trixie was standing by the windows smoking, and she looked lost in thought. I tiptoed back out of the room to the kitchen where Mazin was talking quietly on his phone.
“Put everyone on it,” he was saying. “The Lord Keeper’s express request. Yes, spend money you fool, that’s what it’s there for. I don’t care what it costs, grease some palms. Don’t disappoint me.”
He touched the screen to hang up an
d put the phone back in his pocket, and bowed to me.
“It is in progress, Lord Keeper,” he said.
I nodded. “Ta,” I said.
I was going to pull him up on the bowing again but I just couldn’t be arsed. If it made him happy then I supposed it wasn’t hurting anyone.
You’re getting to like it, aren’t you? the Burned Man said.
I ignored it and put the kettle on. If I wasn’t too up myself to make my own coffee then I wasn’t going to let some bowing go to my head.
“There is coffee in the machine, Lord Keeper,” Mazin said.
I blinked and realized that the filter machine had a jug full of fresh black coffee sitting in it waiting for me. It stank of Trixie’s fags so badly in there I hadn’t even smelled it.
“Right, thanks,” I said, turning the kettle off again.
No, you’re not too up yourself to make your own coffee but then you don’t have to when you’ve got bowing flunkies to do it for you, the Burned Man sniggered.
Sometimes I really couldn’t figure the Burned Man out. I remembered it complaining about how we were still poor and stuck in South London when in its opinion we should have been living in Monte Carlo, but now that we actually were rich all it seemed to want to do was take the piss.
What is your problem? I thought at it. You do realize we’ve finally got everything you’ve been bitching at me to get for all these years, yeah?
Have we? it said. Go on then, go out and buy a fucking Bentley if you think you can actually get your hands on any of that cash. You liked that one you nicked off Gold Steevie, didn’t you? So why not get one for yourself?
I looked at Mazin, and paused for a moment. The Order of the Keeper was seriously minted by the sounds of things, but I still didn’t even really know what that was, never mind how to actually get at any of the money. Mazin obviously held the purse strings, and for all that he technically worked for me I somehow couldn’t see him giving me two hundred grand to go out and blow on a motor. Maybe it was time to start testing the waters.
“I could do with some new clothes,” I said. “There’s a Harvey Nicks round here somewhere, that’ll do. Do I get a credit card or something?”
