forehead tiredly. He was sitting slumped in his chair, as though he’d taken a hit. “He couldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t! He must be working undercover, trying to bring them down from inside. . . .”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” I said, and I really was. “I don’t think so.”
“You never liked him!” Harry yelled at me, his face flushed with anger and something else. “You were one of those who wanted to split us up because . . . just because he was what he was. . . .”
He stopped, on the edge of tears he refused to shed in front of us. No one said anything. In the end, surprisingly, it was Molly who tried to comfort him.
“I cared for him, too, once. He did have . . . admirable qualities. But we always knew what he was, what he really was. . . .”
“Once a hellspawn,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
“Shut up!” said Harry. “I don’t want to hear it! You didn’t know him! You never even tried to understand him!”
He jumped to his feet, turned his back on us all and stormed out of the Sanctity, slamming the door behind him. We all looked at one another, but there was nothing we could usefully say, so we returned to the more pressing business at hand. Harry would come around. Or he wouldn’t. Either way, we’d deal with it.
“The truly disturbing part of all this is how far and how deep the conspiracy’s control goes,” said the Sarjeant. “All the governments, all the leaders in the world? Not one holdout? How long has this been going on? How could we have missed this?”
“In our defence, we have been rather busy of late,” said the Armourer. “And it is the nature of conspiracies to go unnoticed.”
“The question we have to consider,” said the Sarjeant, scowling harshly, “is how far does the corruption go?”
“Anyone can be bought,” said William, in a surprisingly reasonable voice. “Anyone can be persuaded, bribed, threatened. Even possessed, I suppose, in this case. We are facing an enemy with no restraint and no moral convictions, who will do absolutely anything to get what they want. You can’t trust anyone anymore. . . .”
“Am I going to have to scan the whole family again?” said the Armourer.
“I think we can see Roger as a separate case,” I said. “Given who and what his mother was. And anyway, how could you scan a mind for evil intentions?”
“Hmmm. Yes,” said the Armourer. “Tricky. Not impossible, necessarily, but definitely tricky . . .” And he sat back to think about it.
Sometimes I think my uncle Jack is the scariest Drood of all.
“Roger mentioned a new machine that could directly influence people’s thoughts,” I said. “Apparently they’ve already carried out basic testing, with encouraging results. Roger implied this new machine could quite definitely give people’s minds a good solid nudge in the wanted direction. On a worldwide basis. Do we have anything like that, Uncle Jack?”
“Of course not,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “Or we’d be using it on a daily basis.”
“Can I mention free will and individual freedom?” said William.
“Of course,” said the Sarjeant. “Feel free to mention it, and I’ll feel free to use anything that would prevent a horror like the Great Sacrifice.”
“If the machine really doesn’t exist,” I said, “Roger could have been blowing smoke up their arses to impress the faithful. But if it does . . . could we perhaps come up with something to block the effect: some kind of counterbroadcast?”
“Without knowing what this machine is?” said the Armourer. “Without knowing how it works, or how it does what it does? You want me to set up a counterbroadcast that would cover the whole world? Hmmm. Tricky. I’ll have to think about it.”
I raised my voice to address the rosy red glow suffusing the Sanctity. “Ethel?”
“I’m here, Eddie. I’m glad you got back safely. I could see what was happening in Under Parliament, but I couldn’t reach you. Such a tacky gathering, confusing bad taste with spiritual evil.”
“Can you do anything to stop this?” I said bluntly. “Could you prevent this Great Sacrifice from taking place?”
“You’re asking me to intervene directly?” said Ethel.
“I don’t like to,” I said. “But with so much at stake . . .”
“The children,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms. “We have to save the children. We can’t let our pride get in the way of that. I’ll beg if I have to.”
“Right,” said William. “This is more important than us.”
“And that’s precisely why I can’t intervene,” said Ethel. “I’m your guardian angel, not your god. This is your world, your reality. I have given you weapons with which to fight evil. But I won’t fight your fights for you. Or that would be the end of free will for your whole species. I have made a great effort to stay out of your affairs, to be an observer and adviser, for fear of upsetting the natural balance of your reality. I will not save you. You must save yourselves.”
“And if we fail?” said William.
There was a long pause, and then Ethel said, “I will mourn your passing.”
Everyone at the table looked at everyone else, but no one felt like saying anything. I cleared my throat.
“So, how can we best take the fight to these bastards? I’ve had enough of tiptoeing around the conspiracy, gathering information. We know all we need to know. We have to hit these evil little shits hard, before they can set up the necessary conditions for the Great Sacrifice!”
“Know thy enemy,” said William.
“Fine,” I said. “Go do your research in the Old Library. Find out things we can use against them. Sarjeant, how can we hurt them?”
“Give me a target,” said the Sarjeant, “and I’ll throw Droods at them till every single member of the conspiracy is dead. The problem with Satanists is that they can be anyone, anywhere, hiding within respectable institutions, using innocents as human shields.”
“Isabella did a lot of thinking about that,” said Molly. “She said . . . she thought she knew someone who might be able to at least point her in the direction of the conspiracy’s headquarters.”
“Did she mention a name?” I said.
“No. But then, Iz has contacts everywhere.”
“Call her,” I said. “Contact her. Now.”
But before any of us could do anything, Isabella was suddenly right there in the room with us, standing at the end of the table. She was a mental sending, not a physical presence. Her image was vague and unstable, semitransparent, trembling as though bothered by some harsh-blowing aetheric wind.
The Sarjeant slammed his fist on the table again and looked seriously upset.
“How the hell do you keep appearing inside Drood Hall, despite all the defences and protections I have put in place precisely to keep out persons like you?”
Isabella looked at me. “Haven’t you told him yet?”
The Sarjeant looked at me suspiciously. “Told me? Told me
“Later,” I said. “Iz, where have you been?”
“Going back and forth in the world, and walking up and down in it,” Isabella said calmly. “Talking to people. Making them talk to me. I found a certain person who was only too willing to tell me what I wanted to hear, after a certain amount of physical persuasion. A charming little rogue called Charlatan Joe.”
“I know him,” I said immediately. “Not sure I’d agree with the description. Joe’s a city slicker, a confidence trickster. A sleazy adventurer who never met a mark he couldn’t shaft. But it’s surprising how often he’s in the right place to overhear things that matter. . . .”
“Exactly,” said Isabella. Her sending shifted and trembled, as seethrough as any ghost for a moment, and her mouth moved with no sound reaching us, until she suddenly snapped back into focus again. “By being somewhere he really shouldn’t have been, while doing something anyone could have told him was a bad idea, dear Joe overheard something so big, so important and so shocking that it scared the crap out of him. So he dropped into a deep hole and pulled it in after him, determined to disappear until what he knew wouldn’t matter anymore. Except I can find anyone when I put my mind to it. And I know more about the darker magics than he ever dreamed of. I found him and made him cry, and after I’d wiped his nose for him he couldn’t wait to tell me everything he knew. To
