Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series

by Catherine Webb

  At King’s Cross Sam changed buses. The station was a scruffy building, made shabbier beneath its huge wrought-iron roof by a plaza full of McDonald’s and the like, and notices declaring that this train was also delayed. It was horribly dwarfed by St Pancras next door, with its fairy-tale towers and gothic majesty, even though the people going through King’s Cross quite outnumbered those in the sister station.

  Down the Euston Road in the next bus at walking speed, turning now towards Tavistock Square and an area of hotels, offices and underground car parks. At Russell Square there was the shade of great trees, and university buildings whose offices had spilled over into the tall Georgian terraces. Sam leapt off at a traffic light and made his way towards Holborn, where a third bus took him down to the river. Walking along the Embankment he was careful to take his time. He was still alert for pursuers, magical or mundane, however confident that he didn’t have any.

  Besides, he had to work out what he was going to say. ‘Hi, you used to be a spy and had access to a network that I need. Where is it?’

  To which the obvious answer would be, ‘But that was sixty years ago and it was you who decided to close down the Moondance network.’

  Why had he done that? Had he convinced himself he didn’t need it, and could live a nice peaceful life without its help? To say the least, a rash thought.

  Not so rash, though, that he’d left every door closed. You left her a back way in, in case she ever needed Moondance again. And because she has a back door, so do you. Maybe you haven’t been so naïve.

  The river was at high tide, and a tracery of sea breeze blew away the fumes of the Embankment; it was even possible to shut out the roar of traffic edging towards Westminster. At a small park near one of the grand hotels claiming much of this part of London as its own, Sam cut inland and took a flight of stairs two at a time between giant buildings full of civil servants. The steps came out on a back street, empty of traffic except for a postal van. Glancing back, he saw that no one had followed. He moved faster now, his destination in sight, slipping through more small streets where sunlight rarely peeped over the high buildings, until any traffic was a distant roar, a world away and little more than a minute from where he stood.

  The building he was looking for had two brass plaques by the door. One declared that the bottom floor was the property of Noble and Transton, lawyers to the very rich and trivial, no tradesmen please. A much smaller one, weatherworn, and green around the edges, announced the residence of Mrs Annette Wilson.

  He rang the bell, and a curt voice declared from the speakers in a slight French accent, ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Luc.’

  There was a long silence, in which he imagined what she was doing. Probably staring in shock at the speaker, trying to convince herself that her failing ears hadn’t heard what she had, rubbing her withered little hands together and straining her bent back as she reached for the open button. Didn’t she keep a nurse? he remembered. A watery-eyed girl who hardly spoke a word of English and looked after Annette as punishment for a sin from some other lifetime?

  Finally the door buzzed, and he pushed. Inside, the hall was marbled and cold. He jogged up the stairs, trying to get a little warmth into his system after the chill of the February streets. A heavy panelled door opened and this same sinner peered down at him, and asked with a heavy accent, ‘Mr Luc?’

  He nodded, and without another word she showed him in.

  The carpet was so thick Sam felt he’d be engulfed. He had forgotten what a taste for luxury Annette had. She was not by any means a poor woman – the French government had rewarded her well for her work in the Resistance and she’d gone through a collection of rich husbands as a child consumes his favourite sweets. Sculptures, strange things of twisted wood, adorned the room’s corners, and bent lights illuminated numerous paintings, some of them her own. As an artist Annette had been good. At least one shelf was full of books on her favourite occupation – weaving. Poor Annette. Can your hands hold anything, these days?

  And there she was, bent over in a huge chair bursting with pillows. Even now her ancient, wrinkled face bore signs of how pretty she’d once been. Her eyes, still horribly, accusingly bright with intelligence, looked him up and down as she vaguely waved the sinner from the room. Finally she spoke.

  ‘It’s true. You don’t age, do you? Why couldn’t you have grown old, Luc? Why couldn’t you have been like my husbands? As soon as I married them I forgot why, because they were old and lifeless suddenly. Why couldn’t you be like that?’

  ‘How are you?’ he asked, squatting at her feet and taking her hand, her cold frail hand. She smiled with contentment at his touch.

  ‘You never grow old,’ she murmured wearily. ‘How many hearts have you broken by refusing to die like the rest of us?’

  ‘I need help. I need to get in contact with some old friends, very old. I know we closed the network down when the war was over, but now I need access again.’

  ‘Which network?’ she asked feebly. ‘There were so many.’ Annette had been parachuted behind enemy lines, then moved around a lot.

  ‘Our network. The one nobody else knew about. The network that helped you, if you helped it. Our network.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ she said, as if just remembering. ‘The Moondance network, founded nineteen forty-one, headed by Luc Satise. Purpose…’ her voice trailed off again, as she tried to recall the unwritten files that no one had dared to record… ‘to employ aid of a non-mundane nature against occupying forces. Magic. Can you still do your tricks, Luc? Can you still light a fire with a sigh and make the wind sing?’

  ‘The Moondance network,’ he repeated. ‘You were a special operations executive behind enemy lines. I approached you, told you I could give you access to a group of untraceable saboteurs willing to help.’

  ‘Moondance,’ she said dreamily. ‘You were our luck. Whenever the Resistance tried something that went wrong, but everyone got out alive, or whenever we were being chased and a fog fell, or whenever the charge didn’t explode and we thought we’d failed, only to have it explode when we were miles away – we called it luck. But it wasn’t, was it? All those extraordinary Moondance operators.’ She frowned. ‘But it was broken up. The world wasn’t ready for magic, you said. And peace was the ultimate good luck.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Moondance was broken up, it was no longer needed. But I kept on deploying some of the sources; for my own use, you understand. Remember Adamarus?’

  ‘Ah yes. He was the one who heard what people said as a kind of song. If someone lied, he heard discord. Or was that the other one…?’

  ‘Yes – Adamarus was the truthkeeper. I was the ringleader. And you were our link with the “real” world; you told us what was wanted when and where. Remember Whisperer?’

  ‘The one who called the fog. The emergency backup,’ she murmured, her mind far away in another time, another place. ‘The one I was supposed to call, if something went wrong.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s him. What was the procedure he gave you for contact? How were you supposed to summon him?’

  But she’d already lost hold. ‘Are your family still warring?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hum. And you?’

  ‘In a shit-load of trouble, thank you for asking. My prime contact is blown and I’ve got an angry relative trying to find me with intent pertaining to violence.’

  ‘Ah.’ This didn’t seem to worry her in the slightest. ‘You broke up the network when the Allies turned the tables. You said after four years fighting on the losing side, you couldn’t break the habit and went to Berlin to dig out Germans from the rubble they’d brought collapsing on themselves. You danced between causes like a troublesome child between tired friends.’

  ‘I fought for the French when they were dying. When they began killing I fought for the new sufferers. Any doctor would have done the same.’

  ‘But if you change sides you merely prolong the agony.’

  ‘If I
don’t help I will be what they want me to be,’ he replied softly.

  ‘You and your pride.’ She sighed, tossing back her head as if posing for an unseen artist. ‘And why do you want to find Whisperer?’

  ‘Because even without the Moondance network officially functioning, they all hear something. I want to know what they’ve heard about who killed my sister.’

  This still didn’t arouse any interest. He might as well have said, ‘I want to hear who put sugar on the table instead of salt.’

  ‘Why don’t you ever grow old, Luc?’

  ‘What’s the procedure?’

  She began to hum. He held her hand tighter, willing her frail old mind to come up with the answer. She stopped singing and muttered, ‘Tell the man in the bookshop you’re looking for a first-edition copy of The Whispering Game and wait in the park.’

  ‘Which bookshop?’

  ‘River Bookshop,’ she said in French. ‘Paris. By the church.’

  ‘Is it still there? The bookshop, same owner? Is it still functioning?’

  ‘The owner was one of them,’ she replied, switching back to English with such ease that Sam wondered if she’d even noticed the change in language. ‘He’ll never die. Never, ever, ever die.’ She whispered the address.

  He realised she was nearly in tears, so rose and wrapped an arm round her shoulders, letting her head droop against his side.

  ‘Why don’t you just die?’ she whispered.

  ‘I can’t. Not yet.’

  ‘I hate you, Luc. I hate you.’

  ‘And I still love you too.’

  She sniffed. ‘Oh Luc. Why couldn’t you have been someone else?’

  ‘Because then I wouldn’t be me.’

  ‘Tell me again. When we die we all go to Heaven. Not to Hell. To Heaven. Tell me that, Luc.’

  He stared down at her guiltily, feeling the horrible truth press against his tongue, demanding to be spoken. No, he wanted to say. This is your great chance. This is your life, and Heaven or Hell is merely what you’ve made of it. Real Heaven, the place on the other side of the Portal, is somewhere neither you nor I can go.

  ‘Everyone goes to Heaven,’ he said softly, shamed at how easily the lie slid up his throat. ‘Everyone.’

  SEVEN

  Moondance

  T

  he difficulty was getting to Paris. Fortunately he knew how rigorous Dover passport control would be on a freezing night when the rain came from all directions at once, and the white cliffs hurled the gale straight back at the ferry port below them.

  Otherwise he would have been inclined to Waywalk again. But no. It would probably take no longer to catch the ferry, and thence the train to Paris. There’d been times when he’d had to walk miles across Paris, so low was the city’s ratio of Portals. Unlike London, a lot of its Portals had been built over. Sometimes he wished Paris was dirtier, darker than it was. That way he could use a Portal without worrying about whether he’d come out in the middle of some well-kept public park or children’s playground.

  The bus from Dover Priory station swung towards the entrance to the ferry port, and Sam mentally began practising his German accent. If he was going out under Sebastian Teufel, he’d better sound the part. The result made him resemble the villain in a James Bond movie, but it was the best he could manage. If anyone asked him to speak in German, that was another matter. Hopefully no one would demand what he carried slung across his back with the rucksack. ‘Golf clubs,’ he said in his German accent, experimentally rolling the words around.

  ‘Uhuh. Have a good trip.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he told the woman in passport control, playing the polite German tourist to the full. She’d hardly glanced up to check his passport photo. His own senses were at full stretch, listening, feeling for any sign of Thor or his minions. I’m the only one with the really good networks, he thought fervently. The others have been so busy in Heaven, the systems they’ve got down here are ramshackle, to say the least.

  Still, the valkyries.

  The Pride of Calais was unusually full for an evening crossing. On a rough sea, and in such rain, everyone avoided going on deck, preferring to cower inside among arcade machines and shops. Impossibly, irrationally, as the ferry pulled away from the docks, and the lights of Dover were lost in foul weather, Sam realised he might just have made it. Thor was in England. The police were in England. He was going to find the Moondance network, undetected. They would know where Andrew had gone, and Andrew would explain everything. It seemed so simple.

  He knew in his heart it couldn’t be.

  Sitting in one of the many bars, sipping a beer, Sam felt something, and knew it was in response to his probes. He froze, looking around in sudden panic. A slumbering lorry driver, a tired woman trying to read The Times, a couple of businessmen talking. A lot of casually dressed people failing to sleep as the ship heaved up and down. Outside, on deck, it was dark.

  ‘Where are you going, then?’

  ‘Pardon?’ he asked, remembering his German accent just in time.

  The barman, practically the only person on the boat not upset by its constant motion, was polishing a glass. ‘Oh, you’re German… Why are you going to Calais?’

  ‘I’m meeting my family. I’ve finished work, and now we’re going on holiday.’ He gave a nervous smile, made doubly so by the alarm now blazing across his sixth sense. Danger. Danger is near. ‘I love golf, you know.’

  ‘Really? Those your clubs?’ he asked, nodding at the bundle across Sam’s knees.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh… You got kids?’

  ‘Two girls, little terrors,’ he lied with the embarrassed laugh of the fond father trying not to boast.

  ‘Really? I’ve got a girl myself. Birthday next week. Loves the Teletubbies, Lord help us.’

  Sam gave another uneasy laugh, not sure if the Germans had Teletubbies or if they’d been spared. Something moved in the darkness outside, on the deck. His head snapped round like a snake, but there was no one there.

  ‘Rough night, isn’t it?’ said the barman, indifferently.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go and get a breath of fresh air. It’s a little hot, you know.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not nice out there.’

  Sam ignored him. ‘Would you see no one takes my bag, please?’

  Sliding open the glass door that led on deck, Sam was hit in the face by the slicing rain. His stomach lurched violently. He heaved the door shut behind him and edged along the darkened deck, choosing his footing carefully. I can feel you. I know you’re here.

  Above him, something moved. He burst into a run, swinging round a corner with his feet nearly going out beneath him on the soaking deck. Slipping and scrambling up a flight of metal stairs, turning to clamber up another staircase and peering through the darkness.

  It was the top deck, the most exposed. Rain tore at him from everywhere at once, and the huge funnels of the ferry rumbled loud. Looking wildly round, he felt the movement in the air behind him. A valkyrie, soaked from her climb on to the deck, sprang over a railing, spun and thrust at him. He saw the gleam of a blade and ducked, bringing his hands up and locking them round her arm, before swinging his body into hers.

  Centuries of surviving had given Sam his own method of fighting, requiring perfect coordination and never-ending practice. No part of his body stopped moving; as his elbows thrust back against her, one foot locked around her ankle, pulling forward to topple her. She fell – and he was already away, stepping behind her and pulling her arms so taut it seemed every bone might break. The dagger clattered from her fingers. With a look of disgust he picked it up.

  ‘Steel?’ he yelled in her ear. His pin had her locked on the soaking deck, teeth gritted in pain. ‘You are badly prepared!’

  She tried to scream, not calling for help so much as in defiance. But he’d already braced a knee against her back in order to lock his hand across her mouth. Shouting straight into her ear over the storm he said, ‘Thor sent you
, didn’t he? Nod.’

  She didn’t.

  ‘Look, lady, I’m darkness incarnate, the bastard Son of Time. And I’m perfectly prepared to break your arms if I don’t get a good answer. I know Thor sent you, so just nod!’

  She nodded, furious with herself. Struggling in his grasp, she strove to bite his hand.

  ‘How did he know I would leave by Dover?’ He removed his hand, and she began to scream. Immediately he covered her mouth again, and savagely twisted her arm. ‘Tell me! Or I’ll kill you!’ He removed his hand again, gave a sharp flick of his wrist and the silver dagger was in his hand, the point dangerously near her eye.

  ‘He knows you don’t like using Portals! He called in the valkyries to watch ferry ports and hired mercenaries to watch the airports!’