a grand tour of darkest Africa: holidaying in a hidden world packed with dinosaurs and weird shit; visiting with the fabled Lord of the Crater.”
“I met him once,” I said. “Years ago, when he came to London in hot pursuit of one of his dinosaurs that had been kidnapped. A charming fellow, I thought—for a heavily armed barbarian in a loincloth.” I stopped abruptly, and Molly stopped with me. We looked at each other for a long moment. “Molly, have you told Isabella and Louisa that your parents were killed by my grandfather, the Regent of Shadows? On orders from somewhere inside the Drood family?”
“Yes,” said Molly. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, like you do. Well, yes, of course we do; we’re sisters. But not the things that really matter. So, yes, they know, but we haven’t had time to sit down and discuss it properly as yet.”
“The Regent is dead,” I said. “And the chances of finding out whoever gave my grandfather his orders . . . are remote. It was a long time ago, Molly. Let the past stay in the past.”
“How can I,” said Molly, “when it will insist on intruding into the present?”
CHAPTER TWO
You Do What You Can for People. But It’s Never Going to Be Enough.
I went down to the Armoury. The family keeps it safely tucked away in a great stone cavern carved out of the bedrock deep under the Hall’s West Wing. So that when things go wrong, as they inevitably will, usually in a loud, messy, and horribly destructive way, the damage it does to the Hall above can be strictly limited. The Armourer, along with his merry crew of highly intelligent and only slightly disturbed lab assistants, is responsible for researching and producing all the weapons, gadgets, sneaky items, and mean tricks that make it possible for those of us out in the field to do our job. The family armour is good; hell, the armour’s amazing . . . but it can’t do everything.
The Armoury is one of the few places in the Hall that actually feels like home to me. Everywhere else just reminds me of the harsh discipline, brutal schooling, and endless authority of Drood family life. Everything I ran away from, first chance I got. The Armoury, on the other hand, is where I used to hide out when I was supposed to be properly busy somewhere else; hanging out with the only member of the family who really had time for me. The Armourer—my uncle Jack.
When I finally passed through the heavy blast-proof doors and emerged into the long series of connected stone chambers that make up the Armoury, I was immediately struck by how unusually quiet and well organized everything seemed, compared to the barely controlled chaos I was used to encountering. Sudden lights still flared brightly, and chemical stinks hung heavily on the air. Lightning crawled across one wall like sparking ivy, and black smoke drifted quietly over what remained of a workstation after the latest unfortunate incident. But no one was paying me any attention. I could usually rely on the odd smile and nod, and even a cheerful wave or two, from the lab assistants in their charred and chemical-stained lab coats. They approved of me, mostly, seeing in me the same rebellious attitude they all cultivated as a matter of pride. But today, no one even looked up as I passed them by, all of them conspicuously intent on their work. There was none of the usual standing around in groups, discussing things at the top of their voices and inevitably coming to blows, none of the usual trying things out on each other. It was all very . . . calm, and disciplined. I hardly recognised the place.
Of course there are always going to be a few rogue elements. Two assistants were having a Drood-off, standing facing each other in their armour and trying to outdo each other as they shaped and reshaped their golden strange matter through an effort of will. Experimenting beyond the usual basic humanoid form, seeing just how extreme and grotesque they could become while still holding things together. Golden demons became gleaming angels, switching quickly from horrible propensities to amazing proportions, rocking back and forth as they added extra limbs or shaped exotic weapons out of their armour. But the new shapes inevitably faltered and fell apart, as the wearer’s concentration wavered. The more outré the form, the harder it was for the