won’t give a damn about manifesting their unnatural abilities in the normal world and freaking out the natives. I don’t want that. First rule of our kind: don’t let the innocent bystanders get caught up in our battles.”
“Your concern does you credit, Eddie,” said Jack, “but we haven’t been a part of the ordinary world for some time now. That’s how I’m able to be here.”
I looked around me. It did seem to me that the people passing by were subtly altered, out of focus. And the roar from the passing traffic seemed strangely muted, distanced. I looked back at the Armourer.
“How did you get here? I mean . . .”
“Because you needed me,” said Jack. “Come along, Eddie. You can’t put it off any longer. We have miles to go before we can sleep; and one of us has promises to keep.”
* * *
He started off again. I walked along beside him. It took me only a few moments to realise I was feeling a lot better. As though all my pains and injuries and weakness had been . . . moved away. Not gone, as such, but not troubling me any longer. Jack turned suddenly and strode briskly out into the open road, plunging straight into the oncoming traffic. I hesitated at the curb, automatically, and then just thought What the hell, six impossible things before breakfast just to give you an appetite . . . before striding defiantly out into the busy traffic myself.
Jack and I walked straight through the speeding vehicles, passing through cars and taxis and buses as though they were all insubstantial, nothing more than mist. We reached the other side of the street, untouched and unharmed, and I couldn’t resist a loud whoop of delight.
“That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
“Maybe later, Eddie,” said Jack, in that voice uncles use when dealing with the young and easily distracted. “We have somewhere we need to be.”
He strode off, and I hurried to catch up with him. The people on this side of the road were still giving us both plenty of room.
“Is the traffic really insubstantial?” I said after a while. “Or is it us?”
“Does it make any difference?” said the Armourer.
I considered the matter. “It might . . .”
Jack chuckled. “You see? You’re learning . . .”
He finally brought me to an Underground Station. One I didn’t know—though before today I would have sworn I’d at least heard of all of them. It looked old, maybe even Victorian in its style. Lots of grimy bare stone and polished metal. The sign above the entrance simply read ARBITER. No one else was going in, or out, which was . . . odd. Jack marched straight in and started down the bare stone steps. I wandered along behind him, taking my time so I could have a good look around me. The moment we were away from the roar and clamour of the traffic, an eerie silence took hold. Our feet didn’t make the smallest sound on the bare stone steps. I stamped one foot hard, experimentally, and I heard nothing. Not a whisper of sound, not even a hint of an echo. The steps still felt entirely real and solid under my feet, though.
Are they insubstantial? Or is it us?
At the bottom of the steps we moved forward into a deserted vestibule, and the ticket barriers opened obligingly before us, even though neither I nor Uncle Jack had a ticket, or an Oyster card. Normally, I would have used my armour to fool the system, but here I didn’t need to. Jack and I seemed to be operating under new rules. As though we were expected, invited. A moving stairway took us smoothly down into the station’s depths. In fact, the ride was so completely smooth, without the slightest bump or jolt, that this more than anything convinced me we were no longer in the world I knew. We reached the bottom, and moved on through featureless tunnels of a dull grey stone. No posters or ads on the walls, anywhere.
We passed through a tunnel mouth and out onto a platform, and suddenly there were people everywhere, crowds of them, all around us. Well, I say people . . . There were men with the heads of birds and animals. Women with no faces. Egyptian mummies with clay-baked features, wrapped in yards and yards of rotting gauze. Young men and women clinging together, weeping hot, bitter tears. And men and women standing alone, with