Grindhelm's Key Read online

  ‘Hello Trev!’ said Ruby. ‘Did Feargal send you down to visit?’

  ‘Yeah, he did,’ Trev replied. ‘Sorry I haven’t been to see you in a while.’

  Ruby and Franz were among the few Custodians that Trev both liked and trusted. On his first visit they’d put him through some tests to determine the strength of his Sight, and Trev had scored quite highly. He’d been encouraged to drop in any time if he had questions, which he’d made a point of doing on subsequent visits; mostly for the simple reason that he liked their company. Unlike the majority of people working at Custodian HQ, they didn’t treat Trev as either a hero to be admired or a resource to be used.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Ruby, waving a dismissive hand. ‘Tea?’

  ‘I could murder a cup, thanks,’ said Trev. He parked himself on a stool.

  Ruby produced some mugs and a kettle from a cupboard and set about making the drinks. After they had been handed out – including a saucer of milk for Oscar – and pleasantries exchanged, Trev moved the conversation along to the subject of Jack Smith.

  ‘Feargal told me you’d been looking into ways to, er, “neutralise” our old friend with the lantern,’ Trev said. ‘Any luck?’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘Well we haven’t got much data to work with at the moment,’ she said. ‘But it’s obvious where his weak spot has to be.’

  ‘The lantern,’ said Trev.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Franz. His accent was vaguely Eastern European but Trev had never been able to pin it down. ‘The lantern holds his soul. Without it, the soul will have no course other than to return to his body.’

  ‘And that’ll kill him, we believe,’ said Ruby. ‘There’s no way a body that old could cope with having a soul rush back into it. Everything would break down at once.’

  ‘Kill him?’ said Trev, looking up. ‘Isn’t the plan to arrest him?’

  ‘In a perfect world, we would,’ said Franz. ‘The problem with Jack Smith is he couldn’t be incarcerated without first neutralising the power of his lantern. And neutralising the lantern will kill him. So our options are limited.’

  ‘We’re talking about an assassination here?’

  Ruby winced. ‘You could call it that, I suppose. I prefer to think of it as putting a rabid animal out of its misery.’

  Oscar snorted.

  ‘Deacon signed off on this?’ Trev persisted.

  ‘Jeannette Nicklin herself did,’ said Franz, referring to the head of the Custodians. ‘Such a thing isn’t considered often, and only when there is no other choice.’

  Trev puffed out his cheeks. ‘Right. So the plan is to smash the lantern, then?’

  ‘If it were that easy, someone would’ve done it long before now,’ said Oscar. ‘He’d probably have broken it himself by accident.’

  ‘If it was an ordinary, off-the-shelf lantern, yes,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Ah yes, the “magic lantern” angle. How could I forget?’ said Trev. ‘Is it indestructible or something?’

  ‘It’s demon-made,’ said Franz. ‘I would not use the word indestructible, but it will be highly resistant to damage.’

  ‘Have a look at this,’ said Ruby. She picked up a flat wooden case from a nearby bench and brought it over. It was perhaps two feet long and looked ancient. Ruby opened it and reached inside, retrieving an ornate knife with a strange, wavy blade. Trev recoiled from it, almost spilling his tea.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.

  ‘You obviously know what it is, then,’ said Ruby.

  ‘It’s a kris knife,’ said Trev. ‘Is it a man-made one, or..?’

  ‘Oh, it’s demon-made.’ Ruby placed the knife on the workbench with care. ‘The Custodians have had it for centuries. The story is that a demon gave it to a brave warrior who defeated him, as a token of respect. Nobody seems to know the name of either the warrior or the demon, though.’

  ‘Then how do you know it really is demon-made?’ Overcoming his discomfort, Trev peered at the knife. It certainly carried an air of great age, although the metal of the blade wasn’t scarred, notched or pitted. The handle was made of a smooth white material that might’ve been bone. Both blade and handle were covered in flowing, intricate designs that hurt Trev’s eyes if he stared at them for more than a few seconds. There was something otherworldly about the weapon. Which wasn’t surprising if you considered that it was made by demons in order to extract and trap its victims’ souls. On one (painfully) memorable occasion, Trev had come very close to losing his own soul to just such a weapon.

  ‘How do we know it’s demon-made? Like this,’ said Ruby, picking up a hammer and smashing it down on the knife four or five times.

  Trev nearly fell off his stool. His immediate thought was that Ruby had lost it. The kris, as alien and creepy as it was, had to be priceless. But Franz hadn’t reacted, and nor had Oscar. Trev swivelled his gaze away from Ruby’s calm and cheerful face and back to the knife.

  It was undamaged, although the same couldn’t be said for the workbench, which had acquired a few new dents. Trev squinted at the blade. The squirming designs weren’t even scuffed.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Trev. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘These knives exist simultaneously in the demons’ realm and ours,’ Franz explained. ‘What you see here is not the true knife, but a projection of it, albeit a three-dimensional one that we, with our feeble senses, interpret as being real. The genuine article exists in the demons’ realm, and only that can be damaged. Hitting this one is as pointless as trying to hurt someone by attacking a photograph of them.’

  ‘None of that made any sense at all,’ said Trev.

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ replied Oscar.

  ‘The truth is, we don’t entirely understand it ourselves,’ Ruby said. ‘The relationships between the different planes of existence aren’t easy to study on a Custodian budget.’

  ‘How many different “planes” are there?’ Trev asked.

  Franz spread his arms. ‘Who knows? There could be dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions… an infinity. Choose any number you like.’

  ‘I’m going with thirty-seven, then,’ said Trev.

  ‘There’s as much evidence for that guess as there is for any other,’ said Ruby with a shrug. ‘In terms of other planes or dimensions that are actually known to have interacted with our own, however, the list is pretty short. For starters there’s Dark Limbo, the Shades’ realm.’

  ‘Been there,’ said Trev. ‘Picturesque in places but the public transport is terrible and the residents are homicidal. One star out of five, would not recommend.’

  ‘We ought to have a chat about that visit at some stage,’ said Ruby thoughtfully. ‘You might be able to fill in a few gaps for us.’

  Trev grimaced. ‘I’ve been trying to forget it, to be honest. Every once in a while I get through two or even three hours of sleep without dreaming about it.’

  ‘In any case, other dimensions known to have intersected with ours are the demons’ realm, the void dimension used by Prescott Ewart to bring down Brackenford rail bridge, and the feline realm,’ said Franz.

  ‘The feline realm?’

  ‘That would be my home turf,’ said Oscar. ‘If you could find me a way back to it, I’d really appreciate it.’

  ‘Next time I see one of the High Priests of Bastet, I’ll be sure to ask them,’ said Ruby, referring to the Ancient Egyptian cultists who’d first summoned Oscar two thousand years previously.

  ‘Maybe some archaeologist will find their sarcastic cat summoning instructions one day,’ said Trev, ‘and then we can return you to sender.’

  ‘They were probably written on papyrus, and that stuff didn’t tend to last all that well,’ said Ruby.

  ‘They put stuff all over their walls too,’ Oscar pointed out. ‘Is it too much to ask that someone go to Egypt and check the walls? I’d do it myself, but most airlines have highly discriminatory regulations about cats as passengers.’

  ‘I’ll add it to my to-d
o list,’ said Franz. ‘Although I have to warn you that it already runs to several hundred pages.’

  ‘Excuses, that’s all I ever get,’ complained Oscar. ‘Wafer-thin, weaselly damn excuses.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Trev, nudging the conversation back on course, ‘we were talking about Jack Smith’s lantern. It’s demon-made?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ replied Franz. ‘Ordinary metal and glass would not contain a soul.’

  ‘Not unless the glass was really, really thick,’ said Oscar.

  Franz raised an eyebrow. ‘Even then, highly unlikely.’

  ‘So we can’t break it?’ Trev asked. ‘Not even with a vapour weapon?’

  ‘Remember what you said happened to Bernard’s dagger when you tried to use it against Smith?’ Oscar said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Trev, slapping his forehead. ‘That didn’t really work. But what if he was distracted and I could sneak up on him?’

  ‘I’ve seen you trying to sneak,’ said Oscar. ‘The average marching band is substantially stealthier.’

  ‘Sneaky or not, a vapour weapon would not damage a demon-made artefact.’ Franz shook his head. ‘It has been tried.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’ said Trev. ‘I thought the lantern was his weak point?’

  ‘It is his weak point, in that it’s the only thing keeping him alive,’ said Ruby. ‘We can’t do much against the lantern directly, but we might be able to exploit his connection to it.’

  Trev frowned. ‘Right. Which means what, exactly?’

  ‘The lantern holds his soul outside his body, allowing only the faintest touch between them. Enough to keep him alive, if you can call his condition that, but greatly slowing the rate at which his body deteriorates.’ Ruby was pacing now, warming to her subject. ‘That link, not the lantern itself, is his weak point. Separating him from the lantern will kill him, but so will forcing more of his soul back into his body. Smith might seem tremendously powerful, but his very existence is based on that fragile connection.’

  ‘He’s the proverbial glass cannon,’ Oscar summarised.

  Ruby nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So… what? You’re saying that someone needs to cut his hand off?’ asked Trev.

  ‘That would be one way of doing it, and probably the most practical,’ said Franz. ‘Though getting close enough to do it is another matter.’

  ‘Plus you couldn’t use a vapour weapon,’ Oscar chipped in. ‘It’d have to be the old-fashioned way, with a piece of sharpened metal.’

  ‘Well I can’t carry an axe around with me in case I run into him,’ said Trev. ‘People would notice, and ask awkward questions. And anyway, the thought of lopping someone’s arm off makes me a bit queasy, even if the bloke in question is a desiccated semi-corpse. I’m not sure I could do it.’

  Bad Trev stirred in his chest. Oh yes you could, it seemed to say. Trev took a deep breath and ignored it.

  ‘Option two, then,’ said Oscar, ‘forcing more of his soul back through the link and into his body. How would we do that?’

  Franz stroked his moustache in thought. ‘There are ways of manipulating the soul. Isabella Mallory and Francis Ducrow both managed it using scientific means, but the apparatus required would be extraordinarily complex to build and operate, even if we had access to their notes and methods, which we haven’t.’

  Trev had been with Isabella Mallory when she’d burned all her notes and then died. The knowledge was lost; considering what Francis Ducrow had attempted to do with it, Trev didn’t regret that loss for a second.

  ‘Science is out, then,’ he said. ‘What’s the alternative?’

  ‘This,’ said Ruby, holding up the kris knife. ‘It was made to trap a soul. It might or might not be able to trap Smith’s against the counter-pull of his lantern, but it doesn’t have to – all it needs to do is pull a tiny fraction more into his body.’

  ‘Do we know for sure if the kris still… works?’

  Ruby sighed. ‘No, I can’t say that we do. And I’m not willing to murder someone to test it.’

  ‘Couldn’t we use a test animal?’ said Trev, giving Oscar a significant glance.

  ‘Oi,’ said the kitten, glaring back. ‘I think you’ll find that an ape would be a much better test subject. Even a dumb hairless one.’

  ‘Just kidding.’

  ‘These knives are specifically designed to capture human souls,’ said Ruby. ‘So animal testing wouldn’t tell you anything, even if I were prepared to let you stab one of my furry lab partners. Which I’m not.’

  ‘I wasn’t being serious about that,’ said Trev, raising his hands in apology. ‘But it’s a big risk, right? We have the same problem of getting close enough to Smith to use it, for one thing. And then what? Someone has to stab him with it?’

  ‘Not as such,’ said Franz. ‘It only has to draw blood. A scratch would be enough.’

  ‘But if it didn’t work, you’d then find yourself in very close proximity to an uninjured Jack Smith. And he’d probably be a little bit annoyed at being prodded.’

  ‘I think that’s a safe assumption.’

  Trev puffed out his cheeks. ‘Blimey. Deacon made it sound like you two had an actual plan.’

  ‘You have some better ideas, then?’ Franz folded his arms.

  ‘No, not really.’ Trev sighed. ‘I suppose I was just hoping for something without so many variables.’

  ‘If killing Smith was easy, someone would’ve done it long before now,’ said Oscar. ‘I think we agreed on that point right at the start.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Trev stood up and stretched. ‘So when are we going to try to do this?’

  ‘I think Feargal is putting together a team to track and ambush Smith,’ said Ruby. ‘I don’t know the when and the where.’

  ‘He didn’t mention that to me.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re not going to be on the team.’

  ‘Then why send me down here for a briefing?’

  Oscar cocked his head. ‘I suspect he just wanted something to ensure you wouldn’t crash his interview with Nichola Fisher.’

  ‘He’s not even my boss yet and he’s already giving me busywork.’ Bad Trev stirred again at the slight. ‘Sneaky bugger. Why didn’t he want me in that interview, anyway?’

  ‘This is just a guess, but probably because you’re a complete liability who can be relied upon to say or do the wrong thing in ninety percent of situations,’ offered Oscar.

  ‘That’s complete bollocks,’ Trev said. ‘It’s eighty-five percent at the most.’

  ‘I rounded up.’

  ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics.’ Trev put his mug in the sink. ‘Thanks for the tea and the chat. I’m going to see if I can catch Deacon when he comes out of that interview and have a word with him.’

  ‘He’s a good man, you know,’ said Ruby, with a hint of reproach.

  ‘Yep,’ said Trev. ‘He’s just really good at hiding it.’

  Twenty-Three

  As it happened, Trev didn’t have to wait for Deacon to come out of his interview. He was walking back along the corridor when he saw three people ahead of him. Deacon was one of them; the others were Granddad and a tall, middle-aged woman with dark wavy hair who was dressed in an expensive-looking business suit. They were walking away from Trev and didn’t see him. Deacon led them to a door and waved them inside. Well well, Trev thought. Looks like Nichola Fisher was late for her appointment.

  He lengthened his stride. Deacon was talking to Fisher and nobody in the group had noticed Trev’s approach.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Something’s telling me I need to be in that interview,’ Trev replied. ‘Call it a gut feeling.’

  ‘Well you certainly have plenty of gut to feel,’ said Oscar, peering down at Trev’s untoned torso.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Trev. He picked Oscar off his shoulder and placed him on the floor without stopping. ‘Catch you later.’

  ‘Kitten-thrower!’ Oscar called after him.
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br />   Trev caught the door before it closed and slipped inside. It was a small meeting room, with a six-seater table, a whiteboard, and a small cabinet with a hot drinks maker on top of it. Deacon was at the machine, his back to the door, getting some drinks. Trev walked past Granddad, who did a double-take, and offered his hand to Nichola Fisher.

  ‘Ms. Fisher? I’m Trev Irwin. Pleased to meet you.’

  Fisher gave him an up-and-down, her expression neutral. She had a pleasant, honest face, but her eyes were watchful. The proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, Trev thought.

  ‘The man everybody’s talking about,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you. Are you on the Custodian payroll now, then?’

  ‘Still doing some training,’ Trev replied, hoping she didn’t ask for details. He settled himself in a chair. ‘How’s business?’

  He could see Deacon in his peripheral vision. He’d turned around from the drinks maker and was staring at Trev, who pretended not to notice. If he asks me to leave, and I say no, then he looks weak in front of Fisher. Will he risk it? Trev knew that whether he was allowed to stay or not, he was going to be very unpopular after the interview. Out in the corridor, crashing the party had seemed – for some reason – like a worthwhile gamble. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Fairly busy,’ said Fisher. Her mouth was quirked in faint amusement. ‘But not so busy I can’t help out the Custodians at short notice, of course.’

  Deacon handed out the drinks. Trev, unsurprisingly, wasn’t offered one. He considered commenting on it before deciding he was in more than enough shit for one evening as it was. Granddad didn’t look like he was particularly impressed with Trev’s presence either. At least I didn’t bring Oscar in with me, Trev thought. They ought to thank me for that much.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Nichola,’ said Deacon. It appeared he was going to carry on as if Trev wasn’t there. ‘I apologise for the short notice, but the matter is urgent.’

  Fisher’s face had returned to its careful neutrality. ‘And what is this “matter”? The request you sent me was pretty vague.’

  Deacon took a sip of his coffee, keeping her waiting. ‘We’re trying to trace a certain artefact,’ he said at last. ‘It’s understood to be stolen.’