Grindhelm's Key Read online

  ‘But anyway, even with the issue of the traitor, I still believe you’d be safer here than in Brackenford.’

  Trev said nothing, but his expression made it clear he was unconvinced by Deacon’s reassurances.

  ‘Are you any closer to identifying the traitor?’ Granddad asked.

  Deacon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. Whoever they are, they’ve gone to ground. I’ve been monitoring the computer systems, call logs, mission reports and many other things, and nothing’s come up that I’d call suspicious. It’s possible that they’ve got wind of my investigation, though I can’t see how. We’re the only three people in the organisation that know about it.’

  ‘Or they’re just keeping quiet because they’re planning something,’ Trev said. ‘Or they’re working through a third party again. Do you think it’s possible the traitor is the person employing Jack Smith?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but without any evidence it’s complete speculation,’ said Deacon after a pause. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well whoever his employer is, they knew about me and my relationship to Sarah,’ Trev pointed out. ‘Otherwise how would they have known to set Smith on me in the first place? I don’t believe that Smith tracked me down on his own. Somebody marked me as a target for him.’

  Deacon considered for a moment. ‘It’s an interesting point, and I’m inclined to agree. But it’s still a leap to assume that the person in question is our traitor.’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘I don’t know. Our best bet to find out is to question Smith.’

  ‘Which is the same as saying our best bet to find out is to commit suicide.’

  Deacon sighed. ‘Anyway, let me know if you’re going to stay here overnight and I’ll make the arrangements.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Trev, although he already knew the answer was going to be no. ‘Mishti’s invited me down to the gym for some training, so I’ll see if being hit with a stick helps me make a decision.’

  ‘All right,’ Deacon replied, turning back to his computer. ‘I’ll let you know if we turn anything up. And you let me know straight away if Sarah calls you again.’

  Trev stood up. ‘Will do.’

  ‘If it’s all right with you, Feargal, I’ll go and offer my services to Jane,’ Granddad suggested. ‘Research is my strong suit, after all.’

  ‘Thanks Bernard,’ said Deacon. ‘She’s pretty short-handed at the moment, so I expect she’d appreciate your help.’

  They left the office. Trev turned to head for the gym, but Granddad put a hand on his arm. ‘Are you going to take Feargal up on his offer to stay here?’

  Trev snorted. ‘Am I, bollocks.’

  ‘I think he’s right, you know. You would be safer here.’

  ‘What about the traitor?’

  ‘I think he’s right about that risk, as well. It’d be a huge gamble to try and get at you here. The place is too busy. And I’m sure that Feargal can arrange to make sure that you’re never left on your own.’

  ‘I’m not convinced,’ Trev said. ‘I don’t mind being here when I’m awake and alert, but I don’t like the idea of being asleep here.’

  ‘You think making yourself a target for Jack Smith is safer?’

  Trev shook his head. ‘Not as such. But the thing is, however terrifying Smith might be, we know he needs me alive. And we know the traitor wants me dead. So by that weird logic, I’m actually safer at home than here.’

  ‘But you argued that Smith might kill you next time if you don’t have any information.’

  ‘Might,’ said Trev. ‘He might. Whereas the traitor will kill me if they get the chance.’

  Granddad frowned, but he didn’t push any further. ‘Well give it some thought while you’re training. You don’t have to decide just yet.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Trev. ‘I’ll come and find you when I’m finished.’

  They parted company. Granddad disappeared down the corridor in the direction of the Senior Archivist’s office, and Trev went in search of someone to hit him with a stick.

  Ten

  ‘Shit,’ said Trev. His wooden practice sword went spinning out of his grip and bounced away across the mat for the third time in as many minutes. He shook his sore hand and looked ruefully at the woman opposite him.

  Mishti Desai was a wiry Indian woman in her late thirties, with long hair worn in a plait. She stared back at Trev with raised eyebrows, one hand on her hip, the other pointing her own sword at him. She was the Custodians’ lead vapour weapon instructor, and had been stuck with the thankless task of trying to make the uncoordinated Trev into a better fighter. She was beginning to look like she wished she’d opted for an easier job, like nailing a jelly to the ceiling or ice-skating uphill.

  ‘You’re still trying to block with the crossguard,’ she said. ‘You’re just putting your hands where I can hit them. Use the flat of the blade.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Trev grumbled, picking up his sword. ‘It’s just difficult.’

  ‘Of course it is, that’s the point,’ said Desai. ‘You won’t improve with a vapour weapon until you can fight effectively without a vapour weapon.’

  Trev nodded. He was something of a natural with a vapour weapon, and had taken to using them with hardly any training at all. However the weapon was doing almost all of the work; Trev had no swordsmanship of his own. This meant that the movements required to sword-fight didn’t come naturally to him, and as a result he was having to constantly draw on the weapon’s stored combat knowledge, exerting more of a drain on his reserves of psychic energy. He had power and speed in abundance, which allowed him to compensate for the limits of his technique in most cases. However against a serious opponent, someone of the calibre of Ezekiel Barker, his limitations had been shown up.

  ‘I’m doing my best,’ Trev said.

  ‘For your sake I hope not,’ said Desai. ‘Come on, you can do better than this.’

  Trev tried to scrape up some enthusiasm. He appreciated Desai’s efforts and could see the value in what she was trying to do. It was just that, well, he’d never been someone with natural physical prowess. PE lessons at school had been dispiriting, and frequently humiliating, for him. If Olympic athletes were at one end of the scale, then Trev was right at the opposite end. Probably tripping over his own feet. He was just glad that the training room was mostly empty. There were a few gym-bunnies dedicated enough to be working out on a Sunday afternoon, but he and Desai were the only people using the sparring mats.

  He flexed his fingers on the sword’s hilt. He was wearing padded gloves – along with head, chest, arm and leg guards – but Desai had rapped him on the knuckles often enough that his hand was aching despite the protection. He took a breath, set his face in what he hoped was a determined expression, and took up his guard stance. Desai settled herself into position on the other side of the mat. She wielded her sword as if it were part of her arm, and Trev could only envy her skill. If they were both using vapour weapons, he’d have given her a fair fight. With the wooden swords, though, he offered her less challenge than a practice dummy.

  ‘Only block with your weapon if you have to,’ she said, circling to her right. Trev tracked her movement, his head filled with jostling thoughts about stances, thrusts and parries. That was his biggest problem. He could perform any of the moves Desai had shown him in isolation; he just couldn’t put them together in an actual fight. By the time he’d identified what type of attack Desai was using and remembered the appropriate counter, she’d already hit him.

  ‘The best defence is for your opponent’s attack to miss altogether,’ Desai continued. She darted forwards a couple of steps and feinted a couple of quick strikes, going high then low. Trev backed away and held his defensive posture, tracking Desai’s weapon with his own but staying out of range. She came at him again and he side-stepped, knocking her weapon away with the flat of his blade.

  ‘Better,’ she said. ‘That was more instinctive. You
think too much, I can see it on your face. “If she does this, I have to do that”. It’s slowing your reaction time. You know the moves, we have to keep at this until they’re almost automatic.’

  Trev nodded. He tried to clear his mind of all the conflicting thoughts and watched Desai closely. She danced towards him, feinting with the sword, looking for a gap in Trev’s defence. He kept on the move, maintaining the distance between them, his sword following the movement of hers, ready to parry if needed.

  Desai dodged back and to the side before closing in with a flurry of strikes that Trev was forced to block. He caught the first three before Desai’s sword slipped past his blade and rapped him on the shin-guard.

  ‘Damn it,’ said Trev.

  ‘That was much better,’ said Desai. ‘Yes, I hit you in the end, but you looked looser, less mechanical. And you didn’t block with the crossguard.’

  ‘That’s great, but if this was real I’d be crawling around searching for my foot at this point,’ said Trev.

  ‘You’re not going to become a sword-fighter overnight,’ Desai replied. ‘We’ve only been working together for a few weeks, and you were starting completely from scratch. You’re doing OK.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Trev. He knew what Desai was saying made sense, but he was impatient. He wanted to learn how to fight in the style of a cheesy action film, with a two-minute training montage backed by some 1980’s pop-rock. That seemed a lot more efficient than this laborious “learning in real-time” approach. What was next? Homework?

  ‘You know the basic movements well enough by now. Practice them at home between our sessions,’ said Desai.

  ‘Of course,’ said Trev, sighing inwardly.

  ‘What’s up with you tonight?’ Desai asked. ‘You’re not exactly a bundle of enthusiasm.’

  ‘Too much stuff going on,’ Trev replied. He pulled off his head-guard and tried to bring his flattened hair back to its usual spikiness with his fingers. ‘Sarah, Smith, the Eyes of Nona, and whoever else wants to make my life difficult. They’re practically forming a queue.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Oh, and as a nice bonus I might be getting the sack from my job.’

  ‘I think everyone was assuming that you’d be coming here to work soon anyway,’ said Desai, frowning. ‘Or are you going to try and hold down two jobs?’

  Trev grimaced. ‘To be honest I’m still not sure about joining the Custodians full-time.’

  ‘Really? Then why are you bothering will all the training? Going on ops? All that stuff?’

  ‘I haven’t decided that I’m not going to join. I just don’t know if I will.’

  ‘Have you had this conversation with Feargal?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘What about your grandfather?’

  ‘Er… no.’

  Desai put the two training swords and their protective gear back in a tall metal locker. ‘You can’t sit on the fence forever, you know. And you shouldn’t help yourself to the Custodians’ resources if you’re not planning on giving anything back.’ She faced him and folded her arms. ‘I’m going to be a bit annoyed if I’m doing this training with you and you’re just going to stroll off at the end of it.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Trev protested. He didn’t want to burn his bridges with one of the few genuine allies he had in the Custodians. ‘I’m not going to walk away. I don’t mind helping out on a freelance basis. You know, case-by-case. I’m just not sure about making this my full-time job.’

  ‘Then maybe you ought to tell Feargal that. He’s made a lot of effort on your behalf.’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t ask him to.’

  ‘But you’ve been happy enough to take advantage of the facilities and resources here.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Trev again, though he knew how weak it sounded.

  Desai didn’t reply. She gave him a flat stare, arms still folded.

  ‘All right, I’ll have a chat with him and tell him my concerns,’ said Trev. ‘Happy?’

  ‘Over the moon,’ said Desai. ‘Right, I’m going for a shower. Got things to do this evening.’

  ‘Yeah, likewise,’ said Trev. His plans for the evening all came under the blanket heading of “NOT GETTING KILLED”. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  Desai headed for the changing rooms. Trev watched her go. I’ve managed to piss her off, he thought, at a time when I really need allies. Smooth, Trev. Smooth.

  He retrieved his phone, which he’d left on the corner of the mat in case it rang during the training session. It hadn’t. Most of the training room’s occupants had finished their workouts, with only two blokes left doing bench-presses in the corner. Trev considered going over and shouting “No pain, no gain!” or “Show them the whole thing!” at them in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, but decided that he probably wouldn’t make any friends that way. Instead he did a few stretches to get the kinks out of his back and then decided to follow Desai’s lead and have a shower.

  The men’s changing room was large and L-shaped, with two long rows of lockers arranged back-to-back down the centre and the basins and shower cubicles tucked away around the corner. The room was filled with steam from the showers and three men were getting changed back into their street clothes, chatting among themselves about abs, chest-waxing or whatever else men in gyms talked about. Trev had no idea. He’d spent most of his life avoiding exercise, and viewed gyms as enemy territory. The three men nodded to him as he walked past on his way to his locker, before resuming their conversation in lower voices.

  Trev was something of a minor celebrity within the Custodians, a status he’d done his best – unsuccessfully – to dispel. It was common knowledge that he’d faced down a demon, gone toe-to-toe with Ezekiel Barker and destroyed the murderous entity haunting Spectre’s Rest. In all of those cases Trev felt he’d been extremely lucky to survive, but the Custodians’ rumour mill had painted him as some kind of all-conquering badass. Trev’s attempts to play down his achievements seemed to have had the opposite effect, with his apparent modesty impressing his “fans” still further.

  He found that wherever he went in the Custodians’ HQ people gave him sideways glances, or pointed him out to their friends, or wanted to shake his hand. Some people revelled in such attention. Trev wasn’t one of them. He had no interest in being a celebrity and he’d never fantasised about being rich and famous; only rich. He tried to ignore the fact that the three blokes were now talking about him and found a towel and some shower gel. He went around the corner and took the last shower cubicle in the row. He cranked up the temperature and stood under the water with his arms folded, letting the spray work on his neck and shoulders. He was there for a while, shedding the tension of the previous twenty-four hours, his mind wandering. Finally he soaped, rinsed and stepped out to towel off.

  His extended stay in the shower had created a thick blanket of steam and he could barely see the corner that led back to the locker area. The buzz of conversation was gone, so Trev assumed the other three men were gone as well. That was fine by him, as he didn’t particularly want an audience while he got changed. He finished drying and wrapped the towel around himself. He was just gathering up his toiletries when he heard a soft footstep from around the corner.

  He paused, suddenly feeling uneasy. It’s just the last straggler from that group of three, the optimistic part of his brain said. There’s always that one bloke who takes longer than everyone else to get changed. Nothing to be worried about. But Trev was worried. He’d been in the shower for a long time, more than long enough for all three of the other men to get dressed and leave. And if it was someone else using the facilities, why weren’t there any noises of locker doors being opened and closed, clothes rustling, zips being zipped or unzipped?

  He listened. He heard nothing except the drip of the shower. Despite the silence, he was convinced that there was someone there, waiting, just out of sight. The optimistic part of his brain was bundled off the stage by the paranoid part of his br
ain, which cracked its knuckles and got to work filling his head with discomforting thoughts. You’re trapped, it said. There’s someone waiting around that corner. And they aren’t after your autograph.

  Trev looked around for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon. All he had was a half-empty bottle of shower gel, which didn’t appear to have been designed with life-or-death combat in mind. He had a towel too, which gave him the option of towel-snapping a potential assailant, although he’d have to do it naked as the towel was the only thing preserving his modesty.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered.

  He edged towards the corner, moving as quietly as he could, the bottle of shower gel clutched in his hand. If there was someone there who wished him harm, the fight was likely to be very short. Unless his opponent had a fatal allergy to soap.

  He heard a creak. It sounded like a locker door opening or closing. Specifically, it sounded like Trev’s locker opening or closing; the door had always made a very recognisable noise. It was followed a few moments later by the sound of the door back into the gym swinging shut and clunking into its frame. Trev paused, not sure what to do. Had the person really left, or was it a trap? He risked a peek around the corner. The steam was beginning to clear, but it was still quite hazy. As best he could tell, he was alone.

  A flash of white caught his attention. There was a folded piece of paper wedged into one of the slots in his locker door, which stood open. He walked towards it, eyes flickering around in case of an ambush. He reached out to take the paper, and at that moment the changing room door crashed open.

  Feargal Deacon stood there. He was holding an automatic pistol, and it was aimed directly at Trev’s chest.

  Eleven

  A flurry of thoughts ran through Trev’s head in the space of a second.

  Deacon’s the traitor?

  He’s going to kill me right here, right now?

  What happens if my towel falls down?

  Deacon held his aim on Trev for a second, then moved briskly inside and past him. Keeping his weapon out in front of him, he searched the room with efficient speed. Trev watched him, somewhat bemused. The note was still sticking out of his locker door, and he felt that he didn’t want Deacon to see it. There was a chance it was something embarrassing, like a fan letter, or a declaration of love from one of the meatheads who’d been getting changed earlier. Trev pulled it out of the slot and threw it inside his locker to look at later.