The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny (10 page)

I yelled a warning to Ms. Fate at the wheel, and Lord Screech on the roof, concentrated all my remaining strength; and a Timeslip opened up before us. Nothing subtle or complex about this one, only a great rip in space and time, and a huge glowing tunnel for Ms. Fate to steer into. The Fatemobile roared forward into the savage rotating energies, and, just like that, the Nightside and the pursuing carpets were gone, and we were hurtling down a shimmering corridor with no beginning and no end. Screech swung down from the roof and dropped into the back seat. Even elves have enough sense to be cautious when it comes to Timeslips. Great bells were ringing all around us, voices screeched and howled, and from somewhere came the sound of huge engines straining, fighting to hold back some incomprehensible threat.

And then the Fatemobile shot out the other end of the Timeslip, and Ms. Fate swore harshly and slammed on all the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, stopping only a few yards short of the massive barricade blocking the street before us. It rocked to a complete halt, amidst the unpleasant smell of scorched fluffy tyres, while I glared through the cracked windscreen at the man standing so elegantly before us. He raised his bowler hat to us, politely and entirely without irony, and smiled complacently.

“Nice try, John,” said Walker. “Everyone out, please. End of the line.”

Ms. Fate looked at me, but I shook my head tiredly. No point in fighting any more. We’d done all we could. The three of us stepped out of the Fatemobile. The car looked like it had been through hell, but it had held together and got us here safely. I patted the scarred pink bonnet fondly, as if it were a horse that had run a good race. Ms. Fate, Lord Screech, and I formed a stubborn silent line before the Fatemobile, and waited for Walker to come to us. As always, he gave every appearance of being the perfect city gent, in a neat suit, complete with bowler hat and umbrella. Only those of us who found it necessary to deal with him on a regular basis knew exactly how devious and deadly he could be. A hundred or more of his shock-and-awe troopers were lined up by the barricade, covering us with their guns.

“Any ideas?” said Ms. Fate. “I’m feeling rather out of my depth, and distinctly outgunned.”

“Relax,” said Lord Screech. “They’re only human. Except possibly Walker; we’ve never been too sure about him.”

“He’s human,” I said. “The best and the worst of us, wrapped up in one underhanded package.”

“Ah, John,” Walker murmured. “You know me so well.”

“You could have taken us at any time,” I said, too tired even to be properly outraged. “You let us exhaust ourselves fighting your proxies, waiting for me to be dumb enough to use a Timeslip, all of which you’d interfered with to deliver us here. Of course. It’s what I would have done.” I looked at Screech. “If you’ve got any explodos left in your finger, feel free ...”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to use it on Walker,” said the elf. “He’s protected.”

“Can we at least try talking reasonably?” I said to Walker. “I know the odds are against it, but we have been able to find common ground in the past.”

“That’s right, John,” said Ms. Fate. “You talk reasonably to Walker, and I’ll be right behind you. So I can use you as a human shield when the shooting starts.”

Lord Screech stepped forward, suddenly seeming more arrogant, noble, and inhuman than ever. All the troopers’ guns moved to follow him. Walker leaned on his umbrella and gave Screech his full attention.

“Hold hard and stand amazed,” said the elf, in a carrying, sonorous voice. “I hold all answers here, and it is I who must bar confusion. Let it be known by all that I am not Lord Screech, Pale Prince of Owls, but yet still an elf of great renown and vital importance.”

“You’re not who you claimed to be?” said Walker. “Really, you do amaze me. An elf who lies—who would have thought it? I don’t give a damn who you really are; just give me the damned Peace Treaty. Or we can take it from your cold dead fingers, if you prefer. Guess which I’d enjoy most?”

I looked at Screech. “Who are you? And why do I know I’m not going to like the answer?”

“Maybe you’re psychic,” said the elf, with a smile and a wink.

His glamour disappeared like a cut-off song, and the whole world seemed to shake and reassemble itself, as Lord Screech gave way to the real elf, and his true form. I think we all gaped, just a little. In place of the typically tall and slender Lord Screech, we were now faced with an elf almost twice as tall as any of us, but bent over by a hunched back that pulled one shoulder down and forward, ending in a withered arm and a clawed hand. The rest of his form was smooth and supple as a dancer, but his hair was grey, his flesh was the colour of old bone, and two elegant horns thrust up from his heavy brow. He wore a pelt of some animal fur that blended into his own hairy torso, and his legs ended in cloven hooves. He was noble and elegant and almost unbearably inhuman. He grinned widely, his deep-set eyes full of mischief.

“Of course,” I said. “I should have known. The only elf that is not perfect. Puck.”

“Indeed,” he said, in a cold, lilting voice. “Who else but I, that wild rover of the speckled night, could pass freely between two elven Courts and yet pay allegiance to none? Loved by both, trusted by neither, able to speak and hear the things no other elf could be suffered to know? I am Puck, that merry wanderer of the Nightside, and I have led you all in a sweet and merry dance, to suit mine own purposes. I do not have the Peace Treaty, Lord Walker. I never did. Another elf has it, one of lesser renown but great craft, and he has passed quietly and unobserved through the Nightside, hidden and protected behind a most powerful glamour, while I have been so very visible, alongside the infamous John Taylor, holding your attention all this while. That other elf has now gone through the Osterman Gate with the Peace Treaty, and my part in this game is done. Be a good loser, good Walker.”

Walker considered this for a long moment, while I reminded myself, yet again,
Never trust an elf.

“I could still have you shot,” said Walker. “If only on general principles.”

“You could try,” said Puck. “But even if you did somehow succeed, you would but provide the one common cause that could unite all elves to go to war with the Nightside. I may not be perfect, but I am still royal; and an insult done to me is an insult to all the Fae.”

“Oh, get out of here,” said Walker, smiling just a little. “Before I run you all in for loitering with intent.”

He turned his back and strode away, waving at his troopers to accompany him. I felt like shouting after them as to who was going to dismantle their bloody big barricade; but I thought I’d pushed my luck enough for one day. I turned to Puck.

“I really don’t like elves,” I said.

“You’re not supposed to,” said Puck. “Merely marvel at our cunning and be dazzled by our brilliance.”

“You want a slap?” I said.

“Never trust an elf,” said Ms. Fate. “They always have their own agenda.”

“Well, quite,” said Puck.

“That’s it,” said Ms. Fate. “I am out of here. I let my lovely car be ruined because of you! I risked my life for you!”

“Of course,” said Puck. “That’s what humans are for.”

I really thought I was going to have to stand between them, for a moment. Ms. Fate glared at me.

“I’ll be waiting for my cut of your fee. And the next time you need a ride, call somebody else.”

She stomped back to the Fatemobile, threw herself through the space where the door used to be to slip behind the steering wheel, fired up the engines, and roared away. I considered Puck thoughtfully.

“So,” I said. “Here we are. Mission accomplished, more or less. Now tell me what you promised I need to know.”

“Something bad is coming to the Nightside,” said Puck, and there was something in his eyes, in his voice. If he hadn’t been an elf, I would have said he was afraid. “Something very old, and very powerful. You’ll know the name when I say it, but in this at least, trust me when I tell you that it is not what you think it is, and never was. You must find it and make it yours, John Taylor. Or everything you have done will have been for nothing.”

“Why?” I said. “What’s coming? What is it, damn you?”

He leaned forward, to whisper the name.

“Excalibur.”

THREE

Familiar Faces, Come Round Again

I headed for home, via the Underground. I must have been looking more than usually grumpy, because everyone gave me lots of room. A few of Walker’s security people were still hanging around the station entrance, but they made a point of looking the other way. I ended up sitting in a carriage on my own, indulging myself in a quiet brood. At least the trains are always on time in the Nightside. Supposedly because if a train does arrive late, the System Controller takes it out the back and shoots it, to put all the other trains in a properly motivated frame of mind.

I still didn’t feel like going home, so I went to Strangefellows, the oldest bar in the world; where everybody knows your game. Not actually the sleaziest bar in creation, but pretty damned close. It was just another night in Strangefellows. The Witches of Woking were out on a hen night, getting tipsy on Mother Superior’s Ruin and reanimating the bar snacks so that they scampered back and forth on the table before them. Someone had got the Water Witch of Harpenden drunk by sneaking up behind her liquid form and injecting it with a horse hypodermic full of neat gin. You could actually see the ripples running up and down her as she giggled, lurching splashily between the tables, watering everyone’s drinks in passing. At another table, two vaguely humanoid robots from some future time-line were sucking on batteries and farting static.

A young woman wearing far too much make-up was wailing for her demon lover, because he’d just dumped her and gone off with her best friend. A stone cherub from a nearby graveyard was checking its investments in the Financial Times, and frowning a lot. A newly reborn vampire was sitting sadly at a side-table, staring at the glass of wine before him, wine that he’d ordered but couldn’t drink. He was telling anyone who’d listen that he hadn’t wanted to come back as a vampire, that he’d tried so hard not to come back ... but he got so bored just lying in his coffin. So here he was now, with gravedirt still clinging to the good suit they’d buried him in, trying to come to terms with all the normal, everyday things he’d never be able to do again.

He didn’t need to worry. If he kept up the self-pity routine long enough, someone would ram a stake through him if only to shut him up.

I leaned on the bar, and waited for the barman to get around to serving me. Alex Morrisey owned and ran Strangefellows, and didn’t believe in being hurried. He was currently busy with a minor Norse deity at the other end of the long bar and was putting a lot of effort into ignoring me, but I was used to that. It was his little way of reminding me that I still hadn’t paid off my bar tab.

Beside me on the bar an upturned top hat juddered briefly, then a pale, elegant hand emerged, waggling an empty glass plaintively in request for a refill. The magician had been in there for some time now, and we still hadn’t figured out a way to get him out. Damn, that rabbit had been angry. Never do a magic trick with a pookah. Further down the bar, two white-robed Sisters from the Order of Saint Strontium were getting stroppy over glowing Half-Life cocktails, and everyone else was giving them plenty of room. Any other bar would have banned them, but Alex liked having them around to irradiate some of the more elderly bar food.

I leaned patiently on the bar, glad of a chance to do a little quiet thinking. As cases go, the elven client’s had been particularly annoying. Chased half-way across the Nightside, attacked from all sides at once, and not a penny richer at the end of it. Just a word of warning, a name out of legend. Excalibur ... I supposed I shouldn’t be so surprised. Everything turns up in the Nightside eventually. Except ... Excalibur never had before. Why now, and where had it been all this time? I was pretty sure the Collector never had it, if only because he’d never have stopped boasting about it. Could the sword’s reappearance into history be connected to Merlin Satanspawn’s recent final death? Or could it be heading here through a Timeslip, direct from King Arthur’s time? The trouble with the Nightside is that it offers so many more possible answers to a question than anywhere else.

Excalibur.

It isn’t what you think it is, and it never was.

Sewer Man Jack arrived at the bar beside me, smelling strongly of several different colognes and spotlessly clean. It wasn’t his fault that a kind of awful psychic aroma seemed to hang around him anyway; but that’s what you get from working in the Nightside’s sewers. You wouldn’t get me down there on a bet. With all the weird sciences and strange magics fizzing and shaking and detonating all over the place, it’s hardly surprising so many failed experiments end up flushed down the sewers. Where they have been known to combine with the wildlife and kick them way, way up the evolutionary ladder. Which sometimes leads to the need for the Sanitary Brigade, with their really big guns and flame-throwers. Operatives like Sewer Man Jack get to earn their combat pay.

Sewer Man Jack’s party trick is to blow smoke rings. Only he does it by lighting his farts. And he wonders why he isn’t invited to more parties ...

“Busy night, John?” he said politely.

“You could say that,” I said. “Yourself?”

“Just finished dealing with another would-be Phantom of the Sewers. I blame that Lloyd Webber musical myself. Then there was the giant ants last month. Still, every time you think you’ve got it bad, someone’s always ready to tell you something worse. I was just chatting with the Sonic Assassin, outside the Time Tower. Word is, the Collector has thieved a whole new kind of time-travel device, from some far-future museum; a device that can project his consciousness into any person in the Past, Present, and Future. So now he can track down his precious rarities in complete anonymity. Must be very dispiriting, having everyone shoot at you the moment you show your face ...”