Strangeness and Charm cotf-3

by Mike Shevdon

  "We're not. They're a distraction, not the main event. The idea is that Chipper and Sparky keep the guards busy while we focus on the main targets."

  "Like what?" Alex stared around.

  "One of those." Eve nodded towards an enclosure at the far end of the courtyard.

  "A crow? What are you going to do with a crow?"

  "They're not crows, stupid. They're ravens. As in Nevermore?" said Eve.

  "'Quoth the raven, nevermore'. Yeah we did that in English. He was a funny guy, Poe," said Alex.

  "The ravens are symbolic. It's said that when the ravens leave the Tower of London, the monarch and the country will fall."

  "Is that what you're planning?" asked Alex

  "No, that's just superstition. Besides, we don't want a whole raven, just a feather. A pinion of the raven's wing."

  "This gets better with every moment," said Alex. "Have you seen the beaks on those things?"

  "We need a feather Alex. And once this goes off, security here is going to go berserk. We won't be able to attempt it again this year."

  "Why don't you go and get it?"

  "It's time for you to earn your keep," said Eve. "We looked after you. We found you new clothes and sorted you out after you got in a mess. You wanted in, Alex. Either you can get me a feather, or you can't."

  "Yeah, well you hold onto the bird while I get the feather out. How's that for a plan?" Alex's chin was up.

  "I'll be otherwise engaged."

  "Doing what?" challenged Alex.

  "It's all a matter of timing. We could take a crack at the jewels now, and the feather is easy — you'll be fine. The other thing we've come for is harder. It's only exposed for a limited window, and we need to get in and out before the place is locked down."

  "What are you after?"

  "A key," said Eve.

  "What's so special about a key?"

  "This key opens more than just locks. It's kept in the wardroom near those houses just near the main gate. Every night they have a ceremony where they lock up the tower and set all the security up."

  "So we're coming back tonight?" said Alex.

  "No. We're not leaving. That's why we sneaked in in here in the first place. They count all the tourists in and then out again to make sure they all leave, except we weren't counted."

  "So they won't know we're here," smiled Alex. "If it's all locked up, how do we get out?"

  "We wait until the sun goes down. Most of the guards will change out of their Yeoman Warder gear into military uniforms. As soon as that happens it gets serious. There's a group of guards who will go up to the gate to escort the tourists through the ceremony of the keys."

  "I thought you said the tourists went home?"

  "There's a small party led through the ceremony. I checked and there are no spare places for tonight. We should have a full party. They're led through to the tower, it all gets locked up, and then they're escorted out."

  "What about us?"

  "We hit them just as they start to lock up. Sparky sets the alarm off at the jewels, you get the feather, and for a brief few moments the key will be unattended. I grab the key, we meet down there by the gate. They'll want the tourists off site as fast as possible. We just merge in with the party as it leaves. In the confusion, they'll never know they escorted us out as well."

  "You make it sound easy."

  "No magic until after the alarms are triggered and then only glamour so they don't notice us. We don't know what they have set up. They may have infrared, night-vision, all sorts of stuff. I told you, it's state of the art. They may look like toy soldiers but they have real weapons with real bullets."

  "What if we get caught?" asked Alex.

  "Don't. It's not theft, it's treason."

  • • • •

  Borough market is a great place to shop, but not an easy place to find someone. It's crowded, noisy, and there are lots of ways in and out, so that you can't just watch the entrance and wait. You have to wander.

  It's also smelly. Not in an odorous, noxious way, but it's filled with smells. The cloying scent of frying onions mixes with the ripe pong of French cheese. Sticks of broken celery stalks compete with the sickly sweet of overripe strawberries. There are spices and herbs, complex high-notes from the flower stalls overpowered by the meaty wafts from the butchers' stalls and the fishmongers. All of this is laid on the faint odour of river water and mud from the Thames, only a few hundred yards away.

  The smell is distracting, and so is the noise, but I was here on business and tried to focus. This was the haunt of one of the escapees, Andrew Warner — Andy to his friends. He'd been picked up here originally and taken to Porton Down, and he'd been under surveillance for some time before that.

  His file indicated that he was classified low-risk, high potential, and talked of fragmented personality disorder, and morphological instability, whatever that might mean. I was hoping it meant he wouldn't try to kill me.

  It also said that he'd tried to bring together the inmates at Porton Down into some sort of community support group, to help them help each other. The idea hadn't been popular with the leadership and there was much discussion of crosscontamination and the introduction of combined effects into experimental data, plus concerns about collaboration from the security people where there was any kind of gathering.

  The idea had been scrapped, but not before Andy had managed to pull together an initial meeting and put the idea before some of the other inmates. The doctor responsible for that meeting had been sacked, and the report roundly condemned his actions, but a first meeting had already taken place. If Andy had met some of the other inmates, there was a strong chance he would know more about them, and might even be able to communicate with some of them.

  The chance to open up a dialogue and offer them sanctuary in the courts, while at the same time being able to negotiate with the courts as a group rather than on an individual case-by-case basis had brought me here. If I could pull people together, then maybe we could make this work. Otherwise there was a strong chance that Garvin would lose patience and send in the dogs, and then there would be blood.

  Of course, I had Andy's photograph from the file, but I wasn't sure that would help me. Appearance is flexible among the fey, and if he really didn't want to be identified then he had every chance to change his appearance and disappear. At the same time I'd noticed that the fey had a habit of returning to certain ways of looking. It was as if changing your image too much, too often, left you looking like everyone and no one. I had felt this myself, and although I looked younger than I used to, most of the time I still looked like me.

  Blackbird was one of the few fey I knew who could switch her appearance between multiple personalities without slipping back to her usual appearance after a while. She could stay an old lady, or a young girl, for an indefinite period. I'd asked her about this after the baby was born and she got her glamour back. I knew what she looked like without glamour, and I'd got used to it while she was pregnant, so I asked her why she switched her appearance as soon as her power returned.

  "Habit," she told me.

  It didn't seem like much of an answer, so I pressed her on it.

  "When you've looked one way for long enough, you don't forget," she said. "Before I met you I was Veronica for what, forty years? Before that, I was someone else. And before that too. I can be any of those people if I want to."

  "Why can't you be you?"

  It was the wrong question to ask, I could see that from the crinkle at the edge of her lips, but having asked it, I couldn't let it drop.

  "This is me," She gestured at herself. "When I lost my power, I would look in the mirror and see a face I didn't recognise. I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. It was one of the things I didn't like about being pregnant. It made me feel exposed — almost naked."

  It was a moment of rare vulnerability, and I held her close for a long while after, switching the conversation to safer subjects, such as what she would wean the baby on
and whether Garvin was going to get me killed.

  On that subject, I'd let my mind drift from the task at hand while I wandered through the stalls, which was not a good way of ensuring survival.

  My eyes drifted to a guy in a long coat. He was holding out a rounded jar of amber liquid to one of the stall-holders. It caught the light, somehow absorbing stray rays of sunshine and magnifying them so it looked like he held a pot of shining gold. The stall-holder was shaking his head and holding up his hands but the guy was persistent.

  There was a brief exchange of words and the guy's shoulders dropped. He turned towards me, tucking the jar back into a rucksack, searching the stalls for new opportunities and our eyes met. It wasn't his face I recognised. He'd grown a stubbly beard and his hair was longer than it had been in the photo. It was the look in his eyes, the look of someone who's been hunted, imprisoned, and tortured.

  He turned away and then casually walked back towards the stall he'd visited as if he'd just thought of another reason why the guy should take the jar from him, but when he reached it he kept going, accelerating along the aisle. I jolted myself into motion, hurrying after him, trying to keep track of the long brown coat in the crowd. If I lost sight of him he could change appearance and I would never find him. I had to keep him in view.

  He swerved around a lady with a shopping trolley and diverted sideways down a passage between the stalls. I took a risk and dipped into the next row and managed to catch a glimpse of him as he crossed between stalls and carried on towards the edge of the market. I sprinted down a parallel aisle, half expecting to find no sign of him as I emerged, but he was there, running down the edge of the stalls, scanning behind for any sign of me.

  I carried on, exiting onto the lane that ran alongside the edge of the market and then swerved back in to intercept him. As I did I caught sight of a brown coat as it billowed out and half-caught on a pillar as the owner ran out into the lane I'd just left.

  The next gap was yards ahead and I sprinted, closing the gap while he couldn't see me, striving to keep my momentum as I veered out through the exit on the lane after him. As I did he was at the end of the lane, looking back. As he saw me he bolted down a side road towards the railway arches and I followed.

  "Wait," I shouted after him, "I only want to talk."

  I couldn't tell if he'd heard me. I ran after him anyway, coming out onto the side road and finding an empty street. It was too long for him to have reached the far end so quickly, so I slowed my pace, scanning alley's and arches for signs of life. If he was hiding he could have switched his appearance as soon as he was out of sight — he could look like anyone by now.

  The entrances to the arches were dimly lit and boarded up, with most barred and bolted with substantial padlocks which, while they wouldn't be much of a barrier to someone with fey ability, would be difficult to lock again from inside, so I looked for a loose lock or an unbarred doorway. The alleys were more of a problem as they had side doors and big commercial bins — the rear access to commercial properties on the main street on the other side of this row.

  It was at the opening to such an alley that I found the brown coat, stuffed between a drainpipe and a wall beside a large black bin. The alley was shaded by tall brick buildings on either side — the only obvious access into the buildings was a door that looked like no one had opened it in the last decade. Around the door, the mortar between the bricks was crumbing leaving the ground sandy underfoot.

  Down the alley I could see vague shapes huddled in the corner. I drew my sword, conscious that as I moved into the alley my eyes would take a moment to adjust. A sword would make anyone intending to jump me hesitate.

  "Andy? The sword is only for protection," I called into the dimness. "This doesn't need to be a fight. I just want to talk to you."

  I moved carefully into the shade between the buildings. The alley opened out again further in. Drainpipes ran down the walls and high letter-box windows set on either side. I checked the windows to see if anyone could have squeezed through, but the soot and grime in the cracks showed they had been painted shut long ago.

  At the back of the alley was a roller shutter door, set a few feet off the floor for loading and unloading into vehicles. Piled high in the corner next to it was a mound of black binbags, big enough for a person to hide in. I edged towards it and used the end of my scabbard to poke into the pile. A cloud of flies erupted from the bags, buzzing around my head and face before settling back on the bags. The base of one of the bags had ruptured spilling rotting vegetables and split tomatoes. There was no one hiding there.

  I looked at the roller shutter. Had there been time for Andy to open it enough to crawl through and close it again after him? I didn't think so. I pulled the base of it upwards. It was locked, but that didn't mean much. What could be locked could be unlocked, but it would be heavy to lift and slow to move; those things make a tremendous racket. I would have heard it, wouldn't I?

  I moved cautiously back to the opening of the alley, collecting the coat from the drainpipe on the way. It was a good coat with a wool lining, and the inner was still warm. He had abandoned it in a hurry. I went through the pockets looking for clues and came up with a roll of five pound notes and plastic bag of pound coins tucked into the inside pocket.

  I scanned the walls up the skyline above me, half expecting to see someone peeking over the parapet above. No one did. Still, I couldn't help feeling that I was observed. I let my heartbeat slow after the chase, and then extended my senses into the alley. It was not like the hallway at the courts — there was no underlying magic laid layer upon layer to bind and confuse. This was clean, though filaments of power hung in the air like trails of smoke. Someone had used power here, but whatever they'd done, it was dissipating fast.

  Glancing up again at the high walls, I could see that with the loose mortar, something with sharp claws might have scaled those walls, though they would have had to climb pretty quickly to avoid being caught. It made me momentarily glad I hadn't apprehended him in the market. Dealing with such a creature in a crowded place would not have been easy.

  I stuffed the notes into the bag with the coins and put them in my pocket, then rolled the coat into a bundle. Now I had something of value to him. If I couldn't catch him, maybe I could tempt him to reclaim his possessions.

  I walked back to the market, checking behind me frequently. No one followed. I found the rucksack tossed behind a waste bin along the path he'd used to run. Inside were more jars of the viscous amber liquid. It looked like honey.

  Making my way to a coffee shop I ordered a cappuccino and took it to a stool by the window placing the coat on the counter beside me, and looking out over the stalls. I took my time drinking it, looking for people who didn't move with the crowd or who lingered too long in the wrong places. Eventually I had to concede that he wasn't going to reappear. If he was here then he was hanging back, concealed by glamour and unwilling to show himself.

  I drained the cup and took the bundled coat, stuffing the money into an inside pocket. At the counter I asked for a biro and wrote on a napkin.

  Andy, I only want to talk. Here's your coat and money back as a sign of good faith. Be here tomorrow and I'll buy you a coffee. I have an interesting proposition for you — more money than you have here. Meet me tomorrow, at midday.

  I tucked the note in with the money and buttoned closed the pocket, then went back to the stall where I'd originally seen him. The stallholder looked hopeful for a moment until I showed the coat.

  "Do you know Andy, the guy selling honey?"

  He shook his head at me. "He wants too much money for it. He's gotta appreciate we're talking trade prices, not retail."

  "I'm not negotiating on his behalf," I said. "But I found his coat and rucksack. He must have left it behind."

  "What d'you want me to do about it?"

  "If I leave it with you, can you make sure he gets it, next time you see him? It's got his float in it. You'll make sure he gets it, won't you?"


  "What do I look like, Salvation Army?" he protested.

  "Oh come on, someone will pinch it otherwise — it's his stock, and it's a good coat."

  "Yeah, well. Give it over then." He took them from me and tucked it down behind the counter. "If he don't come back for them, I'll give 'em into one of them charity shops. They'll take it."

  "Don't worry. I'm sure he'll stop by. Thanks, you're a gent."

  "Too bleedin' kind-hearted is what I am. Yeesh."

  I walked out of the market down the main aisle, making sure I was visible long after I left. I would return tomorrow and see what happened.

  Alex wasn't good at waiting, and the time between fivethirty when the tower closed to the public and nine o'clock when they shut the tower up for the night was spent in increasing impatience and irritation. She wanted to get on with it, to get what they came for and leave, but Eve was insistent. They had to wait for the key.

  Cloaked in glamour, they clustered up on the wall near the Water Gate, watching the Yeoman Warders pace through their duties, checking each building and arming the alarm systems that protected the crown jewels and the tower. As the light faded the shadows became deeper and the activity ramped down. Patrols still walked the yards and checked the doors, but their frequency diminished as the human guards transferred their trust to electronic surveillance and security systems. There was joking among the guardsmen and a degree of ribald humour that was reserved for when the public had left.

  "Right," said Eve. "Chipper, Sparky — you've got the difficult job. You have to get close enough to the jewels to make them think it's a real raid, but not so close you get caught."

  Sparky grinned in the twilight. "Don't worry, we're cool."

  "I do worry," said Eve. "I worry that your arrogance and hubris will bring disaster down on our heads. These are some of the most sophisticated systems known to man, but their weakness is that they are aimed against other men, and they are protecting the jewels, not our true targets. By creating a distraction you will draw their attention, and that is both good and bad. They have automatic weapons, infrared vision — for all we know they have a satellite trained on us right now, or the ability to co-opt one for their use. Don't take chances. Take out everything you can see but be prepared for things you can't. Infrared lasers, x-ray scanners, we just don't know. All you have to do is draw their attention. Give us five minutes. That's all we need to get in and out. Stay out of sight and keep concealed until it's time. Once the operation begins we will be out of contact and hidden, even from each other. There's no going back and we'll get one chance, so don't bottle it."