The Eighth Court (The Courts of the Feyr - By Mike Shevdon Page 0,16
my hand to my face, feeling the crusty trails of dried blood. I probed it with my fingers. Dry was a good sign: at least I’d stopped bleeding.
I pushed myself up from the hard stone, listening in the darkness for any signs of habitation around me. It was mercifully quiet. Tentatively I reached inside myself and let my power spill out, illuminating what turned out to be a small cellar with a shifting milky light. Rolling into a position where I could prop myself up on an elbow I swallowed several times before trying to sit. I sat like that, hands on knees, while I gathered my thoughts and figured out what to do next.
Exiting via St Clement’s Dane with a posse of do-gooders in pursuit hadn’t been too clever. In my confused state I’d just staggered in there and thrown myself down the Ways. I was lucky I hadn’t become lost there. I might never have found a way out.
My fingers traced a pattern of wheals and blisters on my face where the iron gates had hit me. No wonder I’d been disorientated. Being hit by half a ton of swinging iron, I was probably lucky to be alive. It’d happened so quickly. I explored the rest of my body gingerly, finding no breaks, but numerous bruises. The worst of it was the oblique cut across my forehead which still felt sticky when I probed it. At least the feeling of dislocation and nausea had passed. Standing slowly, using a broken and seatless chair-frame for support, I had a moment of dizziness, but nothing like the swimming vertigo from before. I took that as a positive sign.
I was going to be in deep trouble. Part of being a Warder was maintaining a low profile, which I had singularly failed to do. The other part was getting the job done. I didn’t even want to think about that. I couldn’t go back empty-handed. The safe in Claire’s office was long gone. It wasn’t my fault, but it would look like it. Perhaps that was the intention. It was not beyond Raffmir to achieve the twin aims of stealing the means to maintain the barrier and discredit me in the process.
Get the job done. That was in the job description.
At least I should find out what happened to Claire.
I let the milky light fade and then stepped gently onto the Way-node, letting it carry me and ignoring its usually exuberant ride, sliding over nodes to loop back on myself and turn back into London without passing back through St Clement’s Dane. I’d caused enough excitement there for one day.
The journey left me aching, but brought me out in one of the smaller parks, into the gathering dark – the day had slipped past without me. I shifted my glamour to conceal my blood-stained clothes and the cut on my forehead and hailed a taxi, keeping to myself, sitting huddled in the back while we navigated the streets of West London. We cruised to a halt in front of a row of townhouses converted into flats on a side street and I paid the cab-driver, watching him rumble away as I stood beside the road, suddenly chilled by the freezing wind.
Claire Radisson’s mansion flat was rear-facing, but I figured that welcome guests didn’t sneak around the back, they knocked at the front door like civilised people. I laid my hand on the street door and felt the lock tumble and click open. Inside, the smell of disinfectant floor-cleaner was overpowering, but at least the hall was warm. I took the stairway up to the flat, listening to the sound of early evening behind closed doors. At Claire’s door all was silent, but I couldn’t really imagine her watching TV, other than serious current affairs, maybe. I rang the bell, standing back from the door so that she would be able to see me through the security peep. I didn’t imagine she had that many visitors. Her role as Chief Clerk to the Queen’s Remembrancer and the secrecy about the more esoteric aspects of her role did not invite confidences. I knew that she and Sam Veldon had once been together, but my understanding was that was all in the past. I stood in the hallway while the door remained resolutely unanswered. Perhaps she was out buying groceries, or had gone to dinner with a friend. I re-opened the letter from my pocket, scanning her words. I hope to God this reaches you.