There was a pause while it sank in and then we both started giggling. Bastard! We bent our heads down like we were praying and hissed and spluttered. I waited until we'd almost recovered and then I hissed back, 'All stiff, too…' and we were off again. It was so sick! People were looking at us. Had was nudging us to be quiet. Some of Conor's people were scowling at us so we had to bite our cheeks and shut up quick. Then I looked across and Signy was scowling at me too – as if she was one of them. And the awful thing was, she was one of them, too. One night with Conor and she was all his. Kapow! Gone to the other side… Although I know that isn't quite fair.
I'd seen her earlier. I was… I tell you, I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about her stuck up there with him. The next morning I'd arranged to meet her in her old room. She kept me waiting hours; I was half dead with fright by the time she got there. She could have been… Well. Anything could have happened!
Then she burst in through the door and looked at me. I said, 'Well? Well? What happened?' And she… she just burst out laughing, and winked at me.
'Nothing for noses,' she smirked. But then she looked serious and said, 'He was… gentle.'
I couldn't believe it. I'd been sick about it all night and here she was all smiles and rosy cheeked. She looked pleased with herself. 'You let him do it?' I asked.
'I do believe he loves me, Sigs.'
Love! So now it was love, already! She had no idea how ludicrous it was, that she should be in love after spending one night with this…
'Don't be stupid,' I told her.
Then she started to go on about how he was different from what people said, and how his father had been the bad one and how he was really tender and sweet. Tender and sweet! How could she forget so soon? This was the guy who strung people up for coughing at the wrong time! Tender? Conor?
It was so obvious what was going on. In love? He was using her, I knew it at once. He was spinning her a line. But she just swallowed it all down. And Val did, too. I went straight to him to tell him what was going on, but when he heard that she said he loved her, he was pleased. Pleased! My father wouldn't trust a saint if it came down to trade, but he'd believe Conor had fallen in love with his own daughter, just because it suited him.
But… It was done and, Hell, it was her day. What could I do? I couldn't change a second of it. I sat in my place and I peered across at her, past the faces, and the cutlery, and I gave her the thumbs-up to say – I'm sorry. You're still my sis. Even though I didn't feel that she was any more. Signy smiled back and waved, but she didn't look all that happy about me, either.
11
Further down the same table, Had was watching Ben anxiously. His brother had stopped joking and was getting anxious. He was staring angrily at the Conor men who were twisting round to look at the spy, the big man hanging in the glass tube.
They know him! They know him, see? He
Had shook his head and leaned forward. 'Ssssh, Ben. It doesn't mean anything. Who wouldn't goggle at that lot? Calm down. Nothing's going to happen. It's just a meal.'
But Ben was not alone in his fears. The banquet was a tense affair. Every single guest had been searched. Every nest and nook in the high walls of the hall had been peered at, scraped clean and checked and double checked. You can forbid guns, but you can't search out and remove the venom and suspicion of a hundred years of war. In the end the best security was the way everyone was mixed up together. Whoever opened fire was as likely to kill their brother as their enemy.
Siggy waved down at the huge array of cutlery spread in front of every guest There was everything from grapefruit knives to steak knives.
'I don't know why they bothered clearing out the guns,' he said, rattling his finger along the display. 'We don't need guns. We could have a cutlery massacre.'
'Could we? Could they? Do you think so?' Ben turned paler still; he was in a mess. Had banged Siggy with his elbow.
'Bloody shut up,' he hissed.
'Sorry,' muttered Siggy. He sighed and leaned back, watched the diners carefully eating the expensive food as if it were poison. Nobody could be sure it wasn't.
Around the top table stood big men in black suits – the bodyguards, guardian angels over immediate family members. Behind Conor stood the halfman bodyguard who had opened his car door when he arrived. He wasn't dressed in a black suit He didn't need it, he was covered in sleek, close black fur. It was a safe bet there was a firearm under some of those well-pressed suits, but the halfman didn't need a weapon. He was there only to inspire fear. Look! King Conor is guarded by halfmen!
Each side hated the other, but the human hatred of the halfmen went far beyond that. Half bred, half manufactured, they had been designed to keep the Londoners trapped in their city. It was as much the prospect of wiping out the halfmen as escaping the city that had led Val to try to join forces with Conor.
Had leaned across and whispered to his brothers, 'The word is, Conor didn't capture it – he brewed it. He has a glass womb from Ragnor.'
And what was the recipe? Steel bones, the teeth of a wolf? How much hatred, how much fear? You could make anything if you had the technology. But there were many there that day who believed it was not possible to make a halfman loyal to a human, especially to Conor, who was known to cross the Wall and hunt the things for sport.
Siggy stared at the creature. Its great head must have weighed a hundredweight, but it sat on the huge, thick neck like a little rubber ball. There was quite a bit of dog in the brewing of this one, judging by the thin waist and huge barrel chest and narrow shoulders.
The halfman looked right back at him, loosened a great, long, pink tongue and began to pant.
As course followed course and glass followed glass, things livened up. It was after all the feast of a lifetime.
Val had handed the whole thing over to Al Karr, a smuggler – trader they called it by then – through the halfman lands from the wide world beyond. Val came from the old days. When he was a boy they were still fighting the halfmen, there was no trading. He'd worked his way up from nothing, and it was only thirty years ago he didn't know what a bottle of wine looked like. The idea of having money to waste – he couldn't get his head around it. Spend the stuff on weapons, buildings, schools – fine, sure. But he still winced at the thought of paying for smuggled wine.
Al did his job well. There was everything you could have dreamed about, as far as food and drink went. The chefs had been making edible works of art for days – lizards made of stuffed chickens, prawn and lobster dragons, sculptures of moulded rice, peacocks, little buildings made of chops, pictures of Val and Conor and their victories past and present, made out of sliced meat and salads. Every time a new dish made an entrance, there was a round of applause. But Val himself was scandalised, even though he knew it would be like this. His head was twisting about on his neck like a top as he tried to add up the cost and failed.
Al had even somehow managed to get his hands on a camel, which he'd had roasted, humps and all. It was curled up with its legs underneath it and its head held up as in life. It was decorated with some sort of jelly piped on in about twenty different colours. The camel looked as if it was on drugs. It was glorious, ridiculous and hilarious. The waiters wheeled it round the hall on a trolley before it got carved up. You could hear the roars of laughter as it went round the hall.
At the end came the ringing of the bell.
Val's men were trying to keep their faces straight – those of them who weren't scared for their ears. Conor and his people knew it was going to happen; it was just too dangerous with the nervous bodyguard to suddenly let off something that looked so much like a disaster. It had been explained – how, what, why, where. But Conor's men had no idea, really. No one could. Even if you'd heard it before it still made your hair stand on end. It wasn't just the noise. The sight of it was terrifying on its own.
A vast steel girder had been salvaged from one of the city's skyscrapers. It weighed well over a hundred tons and it hung like a whale in the ocean of the great hall, high in the air, three hundred feet up above the heads of the
