From a Drood to a Kill - Simon R. Green Page 0,112
close, while I buried my face in his lab-suited shoulder and cried like a child. Hot tears streamed down my face so hard I could barely breathe. He patted me comfortingly on the back, with his big engineer’s hands.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . .”
“Hush, hush,” he said. “It’s all right, Eddie. Really it is. Forgive yourself, Eddie. For being a man, and fallible. Not even a Drood can be everywhere at once, be everywhere he’s needed. You did the best you could. So forgive yourself; and then go save Molly. And Charles and Emily. As for me . . . Do you really think I wanted you there to watch me die? Why would I want to put you through something like that?”
I stepped back from him, sniffing back the tears. He was smiling kindly.
“But you died alone, Uncle Jack.”
“We all die alone, boy. But . . . there was someone there with me, at the end. So forgive yourself. So we can get this over and done with and move on.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “But I couldn’t have done anything else. So, yes, I forgive myself.”
“Good man,” said the Armourer.
He hugged me again, one last time. And put his mouth right next to my ear.
“I have always been so proud of you, Eddie. You are the son I should have had.”
He let me go, and I let him go, and we stood apart. I mopped the drying tears from my face with a handkerchief, and turned to the Arbiter; but he and his bar-stool were already gone. The trial was over. Guilty, but human; and forgiven. It felt . . . like a bright new morning after a very long night.
* * *
Jack led me up, out of the underground. Just a simple stairway this time. Didn’t seem to take nearly as long. The need for symbols was over. I stepped out of the Underground Station and onto the street; but Jack didn’t come with me. I stopped, and looked back.
“Uncle Jack?”
“I’ve done all I can, Eddie. The rest is up to you now.”
“Good-bye, Uncle Jack,” I said. “It was so good to see you again.”
He smiled, and turned away, and walked back into the dark, back down into the underworld.
I looked around, and found I was standing outside the Green Door—access to Castle Inconnu. Right back where I’d started from. Had any of it really happened? Had any of it been real? I flexed my left arm, and then my side, increasingly vigorously, until people passing by in the street looked at me curiously. I didn’t hurt any more. I felt good; I felt better than good. I felt . . . healed, inside and out. One last gift from my uncle Jack.
And now it was time to go find whoever had taken Molly. And make them sorry they’d ever heard of her, or me. I might have given up killing, but I hadn’t given up protecting those I cared about. I strode off down Oxford Street, and people took one look at my face and hurried to get out of my way.
CHAPTER NINE
No One Ever Comes Back
to Complain
I made contact with my handler, Kate, through my torc and was pleasantly surprised when she answered me promptly. I could still remember the chill in my heart and my soul when I had reached out to Kate and my family and no one answered. But this time Kate’s cheerful voice sounded in my ear immediately.
“Hello, Eddie! Yes, of course I’m here; why, is anything wrong? You sound a bit . . . concerned.”
“I just thought I should apologise for being out of contact for so long,” I said.
“Okay, this isn’t like you,” said Kate. “It’s an improvement, but it isn’t like you. It’s been hardly any time at all since we talked. You’d have to be off the air and off the grid for a lot longer than this before I even started getting worried about you. Though . . . apparently, we are just starting to get complaints coming into the Hall, about your conduct at . . . Castle Inconnu? What the hell were you doing there? Eddie, why have you upset the London Knights?”
“It needed doing,” I said.
“Good for you,” said Kate. “Stuck-up bunch of prigs. Don’t snigger, Eddie. You know very well I said ‘prigs.’ Oh, Eddie, please tell me you haven’t killed any of them!”
“Of course I haven’t killed any of them! I keep telling you, I don’t do