'I have had dealings with the Droods, down the centuries,' said the Waking Beauty. 'Perhaps mostly because they're almost as old as I am. It's good to have someone to talk to… But I never worked for the Immortals. At least, not knowingly. They use people, that's all. But you can't live as long as I have, and not hear things… And one of the things I've heard is that your parents and Eddie's parents knew each other. They met in battle, and ended up as allies. Very secret allies. They found out something, you see, discovered something they couldn't be allowed to tell anyone else. So a decision was made, to kill them and make it look like unfortunate accidents. The Immortals decided this, but the orders came from inside the Droods.
'The Immortals infiltrated the Droods long ago, and they've been steering policy, sabotaging missions, and leading them around by the nose for their own purposes, for centuries. So, go back to the Droods. Find the hidden traitors, and make them tell you what you need to know. And tell Eddie… to watch his back. Now go. I'm tired…'
We left her, sitting alone, staring into the depths of the snow globe.
I held Molly close to me, trying to make sense of everything she'd told me. Traitors, inside the Droods? Inside the Hall? People in my family, who weren't family? Malevolent eyes watching me from behind trusted faces? And… if the Apocalypse Door was everything Molly said it was, then Doctor Delirium really was a Major Player at last, and a clear and present danger to the whole world.
'I shouldn't have blown up at the Matriarch like that,' said Molly, cuddling up against me. 'It's hard being angry all the time. Sometimes, I just want to hold and be held. I'm glad you're here, Eddie.'
'Hush,' I said. 'Sleep. Everything will seem clearer, in the morning.'
It seemed only moments later when we were both awakened by a thunderous knocking on my bedroom door. The room was dark. I looked at the glowing face of the clock beside the bed; it was a little short of four in the morning. Someone was still pounding on my door, and yelling my name. I turned on the light, pulled a dressing gown around me, and went to the door. It wasn't locked, but even in an emergency a Drood's room and privacy were sacrosanct. I pulled the door open, and there was Howard, Head of Operations. His face was grey with shock, and his eyes were wide. He looked like he'd been hit.
'What is it?' I said.
'You have to come with me, Eddie, you have to come now!' he said. 'The Matriarch's been murdered.'
CHAPTER THREE
Sudden Death at Drood Hall Molly and I threw on some clothes while Howard waited impatiently outside in the corridor. I could hear him shuffling heavily from foot to foot. And all the time I was thinking, He has to be wrong. It has to be some kind of mistake. She can't be dead. Not her. I reached out to Ethel with my mind.
'Ethel, what the hell is going on? Is the Matriarch really dead? Has she been murdered?'
I don't know! said Ethel. I can't tell! I can't tell anything! The entire Hall is awake, thousands of minds, all of them yelling at once!
'Are we under attack? Has someone broken into the Hall?'
No, Ethel said immediately. All defences are in place, all protections are in order. We're the only ones here.
By now, Molly and I were dressed and out the door, following Howard down the corridor to the Matriarch's suite. The corridor looked dim and unfamiliar in this early hour of the morning, and my head was still half full of sleep. I kept throwing questions at Howard, and he kept trying to answer, but couldn't, because he was fighting back tears. All I could get out of him was that the Sarjeant-at-Arms had told him the Matriarch was dead, murdered, and that he should come and get me.? I was still having trouble believing it. My grandmother couldn't be dead. How could someone as important, as powerful as her, be dead? Martha was the longest serving and surviving Matriarch the family had ever known. Most living Droods had never known another. To so many of us, she was the family.
I was still too numb, too confused, to feel anything. She tried to have me killed, and then supported me when I led the family against the Hungry Gods. She was always the authority figure I hated, with good reason, and the grandmother I loved, for no good reason. She'd always been there, my whole life, for good and bad. I could always depend on her… to be her. I couldn't imagine life without her. Molly moved silently along beside me, clinging tightly to my arm, trying to support and comfort me with her presence.
When we finally got to the Matriarch's suite, the door was standing open. That was enough to make me stumble to a halt. The Matriarch's door was never open. You always had to knock, politely, and then wait to be summoned in. The open door was a slap in the face-a sign that things would never be the same again. Howard stopped in the doorway, looking back at me inquiringly. So I took a deep breath and went in, Molly pressed close at my side. We passed through the antechamber into her bedroom, and there was the Sarjeant-at-Arms, standing at the foot of the bed, scowling fiercely, looking at nothing, his arms folded tightly across his chest as though to keep him from flying apart. The Armourer was sitting on a chair pulled up to the side of the bed, holding one of the Matriarch's hands in his. He looked old and tired, and broken.
Martha Drood lay in bed, on her back, her nightdress and the sheets around her soaked in blood. She was utterly still. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. Her long blond hair, of which she was always secretly proud, stretched shapelessly across the pillows, in a state she would never have allowed herself to be seen, in life. And then, finally, I believed it.
'About time, Edwin,' said the Sarjeant. His voice was unusu ally harsh, even for him, but somehow unfocused. 'Our Matriarch has been murdered.' He looked at Molly. 'What is the witch doing here? She's not family.'
'Not now, Sarjeant,' I said. I made myself walk past him, to the side of the bed. Made myself look closely at the body. 'What happened here? How was she… murdered?'
'Stabbed,' said the Sarjeant. 'A single thrust, from the front, through the heart. I knew it, the moment it happened. One of the little secrets of my position-I'm linked to the Hall, and everyone in it. It is necessary for me to know exactly where everyone in the family is, so that they can always be found, and disciplined. So I always know, when one of us dies. The Matriarch's sudden death brought me right up out of a deep sleep. For a moment, I tried to tell myself it was just a bad dream, but I knew it wasn't. So I came straight here, found the door open… and found her dead in her bed.'
'Ethel's quite positive the Hall is still secure,' I said. 'No one's broken in, or out. No intruders means… this wasn't the work of any of our enemies. This was an inside job. The killer is one of us.'
'One of the family?' said Howard, still just inside the doorway. He couldn't look at the body. 'How could one of us do something like this? It's not possible! She's… she's the Matriarch!'
But I was looking at Molly, and we were remembering what she had said to me earlier about Immortals infiltrating the family. Our deadliest enemies, hidden behind familiar faces. And I suddenly had to wonder about the timing of the Matriarch's death. Could we have been overheard? Had the Matriarch been killed just to send me a message? Was this my fault? Molly started to say something, and I stopped her with a quick gesture. We couldn't talk here. Not when there was no telling who might be listening.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms saw the look, and the gesture. He started to say something, so I cut quickly across him.
'Stabbed right through the heart,' I said, bending over the body and examining the wound closely. 'A practised, professional blow. And no defensive wounds on the arms… No signs of any struggle, the bedclothes are hardly disturbed. All of which suggests the attacker was someone she knew, and trusted, right up to the last moment. He must have just knocked on the door, and been invited in. She sat up in bed, he walked up to her, and… He must have been quick. She was a teacher of unarmed combat for thirty years. No one could have overpowered her, if she felt threatened. She could have held off even the most determined assassin long enough to summon up her armour. But a face she trusted, with a knife she never saw until it was far too late…'
'But how could the killer just walk in here?' said Molly. 'Didn't she have any guards outside her door?'
'Inside the Hall?' said Howard, shocked. 'We don't have guards here. We're safe, here. Danger always comes from outside.'
'There are… protections in place, to prevent any outsider from doing harm inside the Hall,' said the Sarjeant. 'But they wouldn't affect any member of the family, or a really powerful magic-user…'
