rule: Never ever compromise your identity.
But if he didn’t do something… people were going to die.
Sorry, Sir Alec. I don’t have a choice.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
But as he took a deep breath and stepped into the open doorway Errol and Rottlezinder hurled grotesque hexes in a desperate attempt to vanquish each other. Colliding, the hexes ignited in an eye-searing thaumic explosion.
The etheretic wave trembled the factory on its foundations. Tossed him into the corridor’s far wall. His head thwacked the rotting plaster so hard he saw stars. Teeth rattling in their sockets, he dropped to his hands and knees. Dazed, giddy, he looked up-and choked on a shout.
Errol and Rottlezinder lay crumpled on the room’s filthy floor. On a rough workbench near its shuttered window sat a clear crystal container, and inside the container-pulsing malevolently-was Rottlezinder’s next portal hex: activated and close to discharge.
“Oh, no.”
He could feel the hex’s matrixes coalescing… constricting… drawing in a deep thaumic breath before exhaling annihilation.
This wasn’t like Stuttley’s. He wouldn’t survive this explosion. He had to get out. He had to get Errol and Rottlezinder out. But there wasn’t time-there wasn’t time-he could save one man, but not both. So who? Rottlezinder, the saboteur, who could unmask his employer? Or Errol, who wasn’t guilty. Not of this crime, anyway.
Inside its crystal prison the wicked hex began to shudder. The ill-lit room washed with red light, and all around him the ether started to scream.
Gerald threw himself into the room, grabbed hold of Errol’s ankles and dragged him into the corridor. Haythwaite was insensible, blood trickling from his nostrils, his face sweaty and chalk-white. Bending over him, Gerald grabbed Errol’s wrists, hauled him upright then let him topple over his shoulder. Staggering like an inebriate he made for the staircase at the end of the corridor.
Not having to hide any more, he panted out the illuminato incant, his spine buckling under the strain of running with Errol on his back. He could feel the ether torquing, feel Rottlezinder’s hex warping and distorting its delicate fabric.
Down the stairs, three treads at a time, sobbing for air, sobbing for speed, punishing his bones and muscles, knowing he had scant moments… knowing he might die. That Rottlezinder would die. Another death at his door. How many more before he’d not be able to open it?
A scream was building in his chest and throat, terror and pain and despair throttling him. Blinding him. He skidded down the final staircase, almost fell as he hit the floor, blundered across the refusescattered factory entrance towards its partially-boarded front door. He had enough wit and strength left to smash the door with a demolishing incant, then staggered through the rain of splinters into the chill night air. The illuminato floated with him like a tethered balloon.
Five steps closer to the deserted street, Haf Rottlezinder’s portal hex exploded. Gerald felt the unravelling in the ether as the malevolence of the hex reached its destructive peak. He let his knees fold. Let himself and Errol crash to the stony, brick-strewn ground, bright lights of pain bursting behind his closed eyes. Trapped air escaped his lungs in an agonised grunt. He managed to reach for a warding incant, managed to raise it partway…
… and then the shock wave from Rottlezinder’s detonated hex rolled over them. Gerald folded himself across Errol, wrapped his arms round his head and held his breath.
Going to die now. We’re going to die.
Great booming echoes of sound, loud enough to hurt his eardrums. A silent shrieking of thaumic energies, released. The thud and clatter and deadly rainfall of debris, plaster and brickwork and tiles and tin. The retching stink of overheated thaumicles, of scorched ether, of burning wood. The grinding, groaning collapse of the ruined boot factory.
After a little while, Gerald sat up. Everything hurt, but he wasn’t dead. Errol wasn’t dead either, he was twitching and moaning. He had cuts on his face and a swelling bruise on his forehead. His shamelessly expensive black cashmere overcoat was ruined.
Faintly, in the distance, the sound of sirens, wailing.
“Right,” he said, and was surprised to hear that his voice still worked. “Probably it’d be a good idea to make ourselves scarce.”
Groaning, Errol opened his eyes. Blinked into the illuminato ’s faint light. “What the hell? Dunwoody, is that you?”
Bugger. “No, Errol, it’s your fairy godfather. Can you stand? We’ve got to leave before the authorities arrive.”
“Dunwoody, what are you doing here?” said Errol, sounding querulous. “I was-I was-” His confused expression cleared, and he wrenched himself upright on a sharp gasp of pain. “Haf. I came to see Haf-where the hell is he, we were fighting, he-”
Gerald grabbed Errol’s shoulder. “Haf Rottlezinder’s dead, Errol. He went up with the factory. Now come on. We have to go.”
Shrugging free, Errol got his feet under him and managed to stand. Swaying, he looked at the charred and smoking remains of the abandoned boot factory, then turned. “What the hell? Did you do this, Dun-woody? Did you kill Haf?”
Oh lord. Painfully Gerald pushed to his feet. “No. He killed himself. Errol-”
Errol took a step back. “How did you get here? Did you follow me? What’s going on? What are you-”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. The sirens were inconveniently close now. “Errol, listen, there’s no time, we have to-”
Stepping back again, Errol nearly tripped on a twisted section of guttering. “You get the hell away from me, Dunwoody. I don’t know what you’re up to but I’ve had more than enough of you. I’ll see you’re decertified for this. I’ll see you back in your family tailor shop by the end of the week. That’s if I don’t see you in prison first-and if I can, I will. You’re a bloody menace. You always were. You must’ve bribed someone to get your Third Grade credentials, and I promise you this, too-I’ll find out who it was. I’ll see them in a prison cell beside you, I’ll-”
Gerald let Errol’s ravings wash over him. Took a deep breath, feeling his battered flesh and bones protest.
He’ll never be reasonable. He won’t let me explain. And anyway, I can’t. Not without telling him the truth.
“ Errol,” he said quietly.
Errol ignored him, still ranting.
“ Errol!” he said, and snapped his fingers in Errol’s face. Recited a new incant under his breath. One word to trigger it. Just one word. The incant itself was a little more… complicated. A lot more treacherous. In anyone else’s hands, internationally illegal. Gleaned, he’d been told, from an obscure proscribed text. Turned out it was closely related to the hex Lional had used on him to ensure his obedience. But that was all right, apparently. He was a janitor so he could be trusted with it. They only had to worry about bad people using that kind of thaumaturgy.
He hadn’t wanted to learn the incant. Hated knowing it existed. Couldn’t stand the idea of one day having to use it. Not after his first-hand experience with its effects.
“ For emergencies only,” said Sir Alec. “ Most agents never have to resort to the docilianti. I understand your concerns, Mister Dunwoody, but you are going to learn it. After all, isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?”
“Yeah? Well now I’m both,” Gerald muttered to the still-agitated ether. “And for the record, Sir Alec? I think this is wrong. ”
His free will thaumaturgically suspended, hexed from man to compliant puppet, Errol Haythwaite smiled a vacant smile.
