small rocks that currently had Dansk written through them like bacon.
The warmth of Turpin’s trust had supported Hamilton against his old weakness. He’d taken on the language and got into the carriage to cross stormy waters, feeling not prayed for enough, yet unwilling to ask for it, fated and ready to die.
And so here she was. Or was she?
Was she a grown homunculus, with enough passing memory to recognise him? And speak Enochian too? No, surely that was beyond what could be stuffed into such a foul little brain. And assigning such personhood to such an object was beneath even the depths to which the Heeresnachrichtenamt would sink. Was she a real person with grown features to suggest young Lustre? That was entirely possible. But what was the point, when she’d be suspected immediately? Why not make her look the age she was supposed to be?
“Yes,” he said in Enochian. “It’s me.”
“Then… it’s true, God’s-seen-it. What’s been obvious since I… since I got back.”
“Back from where?”
“They said someone with authority was coming to see me. Is that you?”
“Yes.”
She looked as if she could hardly believe it. “I need protection. Once we’re back in Britain—”
“Not until I know—”
“You know as well as I do that this room, this building—!”
“On the way in, when this was a hallway, why didn’t you let yourself be observed?”
She took a breath and her mouth formed into a thin line. And suddenly they were back fighting again. Fools. Still. With so much at stake.
He should have told them. They should have sent someone else.
“Listen,” she said, “how long has it been since you last saw me?”
“Decade and a half, give or take.”
He saw the shock on her face again. It was like she kept getting hurt by the same thing. By the echoes of it. “I saw the dates when I got out. I couldn’t believe it. For me it’s been… four years… or… no time at all, really.”
Hamilton was certain there was nothing that could do this. He shook his head, putting the mystery aside for a moment. “Is the package safe?”
“Typical you, to gallop round. Yes! That’s why I didn’t take the observer machine! Those things have a reputation, particularly one here. It might have set me babbling.”
But that was also what a homunculus or a cover would say. He found he was scowling at her. “Tell me what happened. Everything.”
But then a small sound came from beside them. Where a sound couldn’t be. It was like a heavy item of furniture being thumped against the wall.
Lustre startled, turned to look—
Hamilton leapt at her.
He felt the sudden fire flare behind him.
And then he was falling upwards, sideways, back down again!
He landed and threw himself sidelong to grab Lustre as she was falling up out of her chair, as it was crashing away from her. The room was battering at his eyes, milky fire, arcing rainbows! Two impact holes, half the chamber billowing from each. An explosion was rushing around the walls towards them!
A shaped charge, Hamilton thought in the part of his mind that was fitted to take apart such things and turn them round, with a fold in the cone to demolish artificially curved space.
Whoever they were, they wanted Lustre or both of them alive.
Hamilton grabbed her round the shoulders and threw her at the door.
She burst it open and stumbled into the sudden gravity of the corridor beyond. He kicked his heels on the spinning chair, and dived through after her.
He fell onto the ground, hard on his shoulder, rolled to his feet, and jumped to slam the door behind them. It did its duty and completed the fold seconds before the explosion rolled straight at it.
There was nobody waiting for them in the hallway.
So they’d been about to enter the fold through the holes they’d blown? They might have found their corpses. It was a mistake, and Hamilton didn’t like to feel that his enemy made mistakes. He’d rather assume he was missing something.
He had no gun.
Alarms started up in distant parts of the building. The corridor, he realised, was filling with smoke from above.
There came the sound of running feet, coming down the stairs from above them.
Friend or foe? No way to tell.
The attack had come from outside, but there might have been inside help, might now be combatants pouring in. The front door had held, but then it had been folded to distraction. If they knew enough to use that charge, they might not have even tried it.
Lustre was looking at the only door they could reach before the running feet reached them. It had a sign on it which Hamilton’s Danish notations read as “cellar.”
He threw himself back at the wall, then charged it with his foot. Non-grown wood burst around the lock. He kicked it out. The damage would be seen. He was betting on it not mattering. He swung open the door and found steps beyond. Lustre ran inside, and he closed the door behind them.
He tried a couple of shadowy objects and found something he could lift and put against the door. A tool box. They were in a room of ancient boilers, presumably a backup if the fuel cells failed.
“They’ll find—!” Lustre began. But she immediately quieted herself.
He quickly found what he had suspected might be down here, a communications station on the wall. Sometimes when he was out of uniform he carried a small link to the embroidery, usually disguised as a watch to stop anyone from wondering what sort of person would have something like that. But he would never be allowed to bring such kit into a supposedly friendly country. The link on the wall was an internal system. He could only hope it connected to the link on the roof. He could and should have called the FLV. But he couldn’t afford to trust the locals now. He couldn’t have their systems register an honest call to Buckingham Palace or the building off Horseguards Parade. That would be a sin against the balance. So there was now only one person he could call. If she wasn’t in her boudoir, he was dead and Lustre was back in the bag.
He tapped on the connector and blew the right notes into the receiver, hopefully letting the intelligent sound he was connecting to push past any listening ears.
To his relief, Cushion McKenzie came straight on the line, sounding urgent. Someone in the Palace might have tipped her off as to where he was tonight. “Johnny, what can I do for you?” Her voice came from the roof, the direction reserved for officers.
“Social call for papa.” He could hear the running feet coming along the corridor towards the door. Would they miss the damage in the gathering smoke?
“Extract, package or kill?”
Kill meant him, a stroke that would take his life and erase what he knew, painlessly, he was assured. It was the only way an out-of-uniform officer could choose to die, self-murder being an option denied to the kit stowed in their heads. Cushion represented herself on the wider shores of the public embroidery as a salonist, but she was also thoroughly job. She’d once walked Hamilton out of Lisbon and into a public carriage with an armed driver, keeping up a stream of chatter that had kept him awake despite the sucking wound in his chest. He’d wanted to send her flowers afterwards, but he couldn’t find anything in the
“Extract,” he said.
“Right. Looking.”
She was silent for a moment that bore hard on Hamilton’s nerves. Whoever was seeking them was now fumbling around like amateurs in front of that door. Perhaps that was why they’d botched the explosives. Hamilton
