“You’re an idiot,” said Alan, relaxing enough to smile at him. “But you’re not pathetic.”
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Nick’s eye. He looked around sharply, dropping Alan’s hand, and saw Jamie and Mae sitting on the flip-down leather seats opposite them. He realized properly for the first time that they really were in a cab. He looked beyond the clouded glass to see the tired profile of the cab driver and the black fall of Mum’s hair in the passenger seat.
“How are you feeling, Nick?” Jamie inquired, shifting uneasily on his seat. He and Mae looked rather alike just now, both staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. He recognized with a shock the fact that they both looked worried.
“Can you walk?” asked Mae, being more practical. “We’re here.”
He nodded, and Mae opened the car door. Nick got out, straightened, and did not know what was keeping him up. When he looked down, it was his legs and feet as usual.
There was a high stone wall in front of them and an ornate gate. The stones in the wall glittered with mica. The iron of the gate was shaped into trees and snakes and women. The whole purpose of the walls and gate seemed to be decoration, but this was simply a distraction from the fact that the walls were very high and there were wicked-looking spikes on the gate. There was jagged glass gleaming on top of the walls, almost hidden by the leaves of trees behind them. It reminded Nick of Liannan, with her curtain of hair and sharp teeth.
He had to lean against the cab. He should not have stood up so soon; he tried to move and Alan was beside him. Nick must have been sagging, because he was eye level with the first button on Alan’s shirt.
“Mae, help me,” Alan ordered, and Mae was suddenly at Nick’s side.
Nick dimly approved of Alan’s choice. Mae was certainly better able to bear his weight than Jamie, and as for Mum, who was taller and stronger than either of them, she would not have touched Nick no matter who asked. Then his head lolled forward, his neck feeling like a thick tube of spaghetti. He was not going to be sick again; he just wanted to lie down until he remembered how to work his own body.
“Jamie,” Alan said, his voice soothing for Nick’s benefit, even though he was speaking to someone else. “Go and press the intercom button. Say ‘My name is one.’”
“One?” Jamie asked, blinking. “One what?”
“Jamie! Nick is going to fall over!”
“Right. I’m sorry,” said Jamie, shaking his head and stepping backward, almost walking into the tree and turning to scurry toward the gate. Nick heard his voice, seeming much farther away than it should have, saying that his name was one.< { wary div height='0 %'>
The gate swung open stiffly, as if it did not open often. Beyond was a garden with trees weighed down by their late-May green burdens, and crazy paving that stretched on until it was lost from view.
They went slowly down the garden path, Nick’s awareness of what was going on ebbing and fading with every step. The garden was a wild tangle that had clearly been left to decay for years; briars formed nightmare patterns against Nick’s eyelids as his eyes closed. Alan’s voice cut across his consciousness, saying his name, and Nick opened his eyes again with an effort.
In front of them now was a large white house, rising above them like a sheer white cliff. It was so large that it seemed to demand decoration, the decency of pillars and balconies, but here behind the gates there was no such pretense. There was only the severe white building, stretching up five floors. Above the large door were letters raised in gold.
The words swam before Nick’s eyes, gleaming fish that wanted to escape and would not form a coherent pattern, and then they stilled. Nick could feel his body now and it felt heavy, so heavy that he could not hold himself up.
The gold letters stayed for a moment, pinned up against the blackness, when his eyelids dropped and he fell forward.
THE HOUSE OF MEZENTIUS, the shining words read, and below that: THEIR NAME IS LEGION.
Nick woke in darkness to the sound of screams.
The darkness he solved by reaching out and turning on the lamp on the table beside his bed, but the screams were different. He sat up, noting with relief that his muscles and sinews now remembered they were his and obeyed him. He slipped out of the tangled embrace of sheets to have a look around. The room had a high ceiling, and little scalloped bits at the corners of said ceiling. His bed was big, with a carved oak headboard.
The screams were faint. Nick judged that they were muffled by thick walls, rather than all that far away.
The heavy door, also polished oak, slid open. Nick reached for a sword that was not there and was glad to see Alan. He was also glad to see that Alan had his sword.
Alan smiled, laugh lines leaping out from the corners of his eyes. “I see you’re feeling better.” He threw Nick a little heap of fabric, which Nick unfolded and saw was a shirt, the crisp buttoned kind you should wear with a suit. He was about to refuse it when he glanced down at his T-shirt and saw that it was stained with vomit and blood. He didn’t want to know if he’d hacked up blood. He just changed shirts.
Once he had done so, he gestured around at the room. “All this is very posh.”
“It’s Merris Cromwell’s house.”
Nick supposed that made sense. Everybody knew Merris had money, even though he hadn’t known she had this much.
“Where are the others?”
Alan looked pleased that he’d asked. “Nearby. Mum’s asleep, Merris gave her something to calm her down, but the others are wondering how you are. We’ve all been put in the north wing, so we’re pretty close to {ret dogether. Do you want to go see them?”
Nick shrugged, and Alan led the way. The north wing seemed to be mostly corridors so wide they almost qualified as rooms, the walls sleek and white and the wooden floors all dark from years and polish. They found Mae and Jamie in a room reminiscent of Nick’s, with the same solemn-looking bed and crenulated ceiling. Jamie was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Mae was pacing across a fluffy white rug that looked like a decapitated polar bear.
“We should go check on him,” she said as Nick opened the door.
Jamie nodded in his direction. “I think he’s probably all right.”
Mae looked around and did not blush. Nick liked that, the way she felt no need to pretend either indifference or exaggerated concern. She just nodded at him.
He was not used to big houses like this. He was used to small, shabby houses and flats, places with so few rooms and such thin walls that he always knew where Alan was. Now he was in wide open spaces under vaulted ceilings, and he was noticing too many things about this girl. The strangeness of it all made him feel irritated and uncomfortable. He slouched against the wall and looked deliberately through Mae. After a few moments she moved away from the coldness of his fixed gaze, toward Alan.
It didn’t make Nick feel any better. He felt restless suddenly, and as he tuned out the others’ voices and wished for something to do, he registered again the sound that had woken him. Coming to him through heavy doors and solid walls, through all the expensive privacy of this house, were faint but unmistakable screams.
It was obvious that the rest of them couldn’t hear it. He should probably tell Alan.
“There is someone being tortured in this house.”
Alan gave a guilty start, and it was clear to Nick that he at least already knew.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said hastily.
“Tortured?” exclaimed Jamie.
Nick shrugged. “Sounds like that to me.”
“Alan,” Mae said, in a tone of command rather than appeal. “Where are we?”
Alan looked defeated already, as if some terrible fate was rushing upon them, something as impossible to reason with or escape from as a storm spilling darkness across the sky.
“This is the House of Mezentius,” he said.
“That’s what it said above the door,” Nick agreed. “Who’s Mezentius?”
Alan seemed to be having trouble with the words. “He was an Etruscan king in a legend,” he said slowly. “He had living people bound face-to-face with dead bodies and left to starve.”
“He sounds a charming host,” said Nick. “I thought you said this was Merris Cromwell’s house.”
“Merris runs the house,” Alan answered in a low voice. “It’s her job to organize everything here, to keep
