I headed out onto the great open lawns stretching away before the Hall, with Molly close beside me. She locked one arm through mine, so that even when I wasn’t looking at her I’d know she was still there. The lawns were covered with people, rank upon rank, row upon row. It seemed to me I’d never seen so many of my family assembled in one place before. It looked like every Drood in the Hall had turned out for the occasion. To pay their respects to the memory of the family Armourer. No one was wearing black, though. We don’t do traditional mourning. We follow our own traditions in death, as in everything else.
And it was only then that I understood why Melanie Blaze had let me go so abruptly from the subtle realms. The elf she sent to make contact with my family must have returned with the news that Jack was dead. Time moves differently in the subtle realms . . . So there was no point in Melanie holding on to me any longer. No Jack meant no Time machine. Her last chance to be reunited with James, gone forever. She could still have killed me or held me captive, but she let me go, sent me home. Perhaps as one last gesture to a man she respected.
I joined the crowd and people fell back, making room for me and Molly to walk through to the front row. Where the Matriarch was waiting. She nodded courteously to both of us, then stepped forward and patted me on the arm with surprising gentleness.
“Thank you for returning so quickly, Eddie. Sorry to rush you, but you know we couldn’t put this off.”
“Why not?” Molly said truculently. “Why did you have to drag Eddie back here in such a rush?”
“It’s the Drood way,” said the Matriarch, still looking at me.
“What happened?” I said. “I still can’t believe he’s dead. I was just talking to him in the Armoury, before I left. He seemed fine.”
“Did he?” said the Matriarch. “Are you sure?”
“Well . . .” I stopped, and thought back, and things I hadn’t understood at the time began to make a kind of sense. “He did seem . . . tired. And not entirely himself.”
“Talk to Maxwell and Victoria,” said the Matriarch. “They found him.”
She summoned them forward. They nodded quickly, to me and to Molly. They both looked pale and drawn, shocked—and so much younger outside of the Armoury. They were hanging on to each other in the same way Molly and I were. And probably for the same reason.
“We found him sitting at his work-bench,” said Maxwell. “Quite dead. He looked . . .”
“Very peaceful,” said Victoria. “No sign of any distress.”
They were trying to be kind. I let them.
“The doctors are quite sure it was a massive heart attack,” said Maxwell. “Very sudden. With any luck, he didn’t know anything about it.”
“No signs of foul play,” said Victoria. “The doctors checked very thoroughly. At the autopsy.”
“There had to be an autopsy,” said Maxwell, glancing at Molly. “Because a man like Jack Drood makes a great many enemies. As a field agent, and as Armourer. We wanted to be sure . . . But there was nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Then why are you rushing into his funeral so quickly?” said Molly. “If there’s nothing to hide?”
“Because things have to move forward when a Drood dies,” said the Matriarch. “I have already appointed Maxwell and Victoria as the new family Armourer. Because the work must go on.”
“You must know we didn’t want the job,” Maxwell said to me earnestly. “Vikki and I have never been . . . ambitious.”
“We were perfectly happy, just keeping things running,” said Victoria. “But we are ready to take over. It’s what we’ve been training for.”
“And it’s our duty,” said Maxwell.
“Anything, for the family,” said Victoria.
And I remembered the last thing my uncle Jack said to me before I left. Anything, for the family, Eddie. Because the family goes on, when we can’t. And I had to wonder whether Jack had been trying to tell me something . . .
“It was a heart attack,” said the Matriarch. “He was a lot older than he looked, you know. He . . . did things, to himself. Down through the years. Most of them entirely unauthorized. So he could carry on as Armourer. Long after anyone else would have retired.”
Molly kept a tight hold on my arm through all of this. Pressing it so tight