Flay!’
It was Vexford, the rangy old soak who had taken a fancy to Jez. He gave Crake a poisonous glare as they made their greetings. He’d not forgotten his recent embarrassment at Crake’s hands. It hadn’t embarrassed him enough to keep him from trying to steal his adversary’s sweetheart, apparently.
‘Air Marshal Vexford!’ Jez declared, with false and excessive enthusiasm. ‘How good to see you again!’
Vexford puffed up with pleasure. ‘I was wondering if I might have the honour of this dance?’
Jez glanced uncertainly at Crake, but Crake wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on the sounds in his ear. Grephen and Thade were exchanging greetings with people as they passed through the ballroom towards a doorway at one end. The greetings were getting fainter and fainter as they moved out of range.
‘Damen?’ Jez enquired. He noticed her again. ‘Air Marshal Vexford wishes to dance with me.’ Her eyes were urgent: Save me!
Crake smiled broadly at the Air Marshal. ‘That would be fine, sir. Just fine,’ he said. ‘Excuse me, I must attend to something.’ He slipped away with rude haste, to spare himself Jez’s gaze of horrified betrayal.
He made his way towards the doorway Grephen and Thade were heading for, glancing around nervously as he went. He was searching for a sign of Fredger Cordwain, the man who worked for the Shacklemores. Crake hadn’t spotted him since their conversation earlier, and it worried him deeply.
When he was a child, he’d been afraid of spiders. They seemed to like his bedroom, and no matter how the maids chased them out they always came back. But frightened as he was, he found their presence easier to bear if he could see them, hiding in a corner or motionless on the ceiling. It was when he looked away, when the spider disappeared, that the fear came. A spider safely on the far side of the room was one thing; a spider that might already be crawling over the pillow towards his face was quite another. Crake wanted Cordwain where he could see him.
The sound of Thade’s voice strengthened in his ear as he drew closer to them. They passed through the grand doorway at the end of the ballroom and away. Crake followed at a distance.
Beyond was a corridor, leading through the manor to other areas: smoking rooms, galleries, halls. Guests were scattered about in groups, admiring sculptures or laughing among themselves. Crake was sweating, and not only because of the heat. He felt like a criminal. The casual glances of the doormen and servants seemed suddenly suspicious and knowing. He sipped his wine and tried to look purposeful.
‘Where are we going?’ Grephen said quietly to Thade, looking around. ‘Somewhere more private than this, I hope.’
‘My study is off-limits to guests,’ Thade replied. He halted at a heavy wooden door with vines carved into its surface, and unlocked it with a key. Crake stopped a little way up the corridor, pretending to admire a painting of some grotesque aunt of the Thade dynasty. Thade and Grephen stepped inside and closed the door behind them.
He waited for them to speak again. They didn’t. Wait: was that a murmur in his ear? Perhaps, but it was too faint to make out. The study evidently went back some distance into the manor, and they were right at the limit of his range.
Spit and blood! I knew I should have made these things more powerful, he thought, fingering his earcuff in agitation.
He looked both ways up the corridor, but nobody was paying attention to him. He walked across to the door that led to the study. If anyone asked, he could just say he got lost.
He tried the door. It didn’t open. He tried again, more forcefully. Locked.
‘I don’t think you can go in there,’ said a portly, middle-aged man who had spotted his plight.
