More and more Droods were asking urgent questions of the Matriarch and the Sarjeant, and raising their voices angrily when they didn’t get an answer, which was almost unheard of among the heavily disciplined Droods. But the Matriarch and the Sarjeant were still intent on getting useful information out of the Armourer and becoming increasingly angry over the evasive answers they were getting. The lab assistants moved in behind Maxwell and Victoria, to provide support. They’d armoured down as well, to show off their lab coats because they usually impressed people.
Eddie and Molly looked at each other, nodded resignedly, and shouldered their way through the Droods to confront the Matriarch and the Sarjeant. No one gave them any trouble. The Droods might be feeling a bit shaken by their current circumstances, but they hadn’t lost their minds. Eddie waited until he was right in front of the Matriarch, then raised his voice.
“Everybody shut the hell up!” And everybody did, including the Matriarch, the Sarjeant, and the Armourer. Just a bit shocked that anyone would talk to them like that. Eddie smiled. “That’s better. We have to ask the right questions, or we’re never going to get anywhere. So, Armourer: Could something or someone in the Nightside have drawn us off course? Interfered with Alpha Red Alpha’s trajectory, the way Ethel intercepted the Merlin Glass, so Molly and I appeared inside the Sanctity instead of the grounds?”
Maxwell and Victoria put their heads together for some urgent murmuring, then turned to their lab assistants. Voices began to rise as they discussed all kinds of theories and got nowhere fast.
“Shut up!” said Eddie, again, and silence reluctantly fell, along with a certain amount of sulky annoyance. “If you don’t know, just say so.”
“We don’t know,” said Max.
“And if we don’t, no one does,” said Vicky.
“However . . . given that we don’t know how Ethel interfered with the Merlin Glass . . .” said Max.
“And to be fair, there is an awful lot we don’t know about Ethel . . .” said Vicky.
“Then let’s ask her,” said the Matriarch. She raised her voice. “Ethel! Speak to me!”
They waited, but there was no response. The silence dragged on uncomfortably, until Eddie cleared his throat. Everyone turned to look at him.
“You know something,” said the Matriarch. “What do you know, Eddie?”
“Ethel spoke with me in my room, before I left,” said Eddie. “She made it very clear she had no intention of getting involved with the invasion. We’re on our own.”
“Why didn’t she tell the rest of the family that?” asked the Sarjeant.
“Why did she tell me and not the Matriarch?” said Eddie.
“She did tell me,” said the Matriarch. “I just couldn’t believe she’d abandon us . . .”
Mutterings rose up among the gathered Droods before the Sarjeant glared them back into silence.
“Why would Ethel turn her back on us?” said the Sarjeant. It wasn’t clear whether he was addressing the Matriarch or Eddie.
“She disapproved of the war,” said Eddie. “And given some of the things we’ve done that she has approved of . . . Still, look on the bright side. At least she didn’t take back her torcs and her armour.”
The Matriarch turned her attention to Molly. “You know this area. Where is Blaiston Street in relation to the rest of the Nightside?”
“Right out on the edge,” said Molly, with a certain sense of satisfaction. “This is where the boundary changed, remember? We’re about as far as we could be from the centre of things.”
The Sarjeant glared at the Armourer. “Fire up the dimensional engine again. Have Alpha Red Alpha put us where we should have been, right in the heart of the Nightside. We can’t launch an invasion from here!”
“We’ve been trying to summon the remote-control column,” said Max.
“But it isn’t answering,” said Vicky.
“We’ll have to go back inside the Hall and run a whole series of diagnostics on the machine,” said Max.
“Before we dare try using it again,” said Vicky.
“And that could take some time,” said Max.
“Quite a lot of time,” said Vicky. “Given that we don’t have a clue what’s gone wrong.”
“We can’t hang around here any longer,” the Matriarch decided. “The Authorities must know we’ve arrived. I don’t want to give them time to organise their defences. Split the family into the agreed groups and start the attack, Sarjeant.”
“You can’t just march into the Nightside!” said Molly.
“What if the Authorities already have people in place, waiting to meet you?” said Eddie.
“Then we walk right over them,” said the Sarjeant. “We’re Droods. That’s what we do.”
Eddie gestured angrily at the watching Droods. “Are you kidding me? Look at the state of them, huddled together like sheep in a thunder-storm! If someone were to jump out of one of these houses and shout Boo! they’d run a mile!”
“They’re soldiers,” said the Sarjeant. “They’ll remember that when the fighting starts.”
“I thought you wanted a bloodless coup,” said Molly.
“That’s up to the Authorities,” said the Matriarch.
“Come on, think about this!” said Eddie. “We’ve only just got here, and already the plan’s gone wrong. This is no way to fight a war.”
He sounded angry because he was. He didn’t like to see his family looking this thrown, this lost. Even in the Nightside.
“You people should be frightened,” Molly said darkly. “The Nightside is going to eat you alive.”
“Not another word, Molly,” said the Matriarch. “We all know where your loyalties lie.”
Molly was ready to take that as a challenge, but Eddie put a hand on her arm. She looked at him angrily, and he met her gaze steadily. Molly shrugged quickly, turned away, and didn’t say any more. The Matriarch raised her voice to address the Droods, but they were too busy arguing among themselves to listen. The Sarjeant-at-Arms summoned a gun into his hand and fired it into the sky. The sound was deafening in the narrow street, and everyone snapped around to look at him. The Sarjeant addressed the suddenly silent crowd in a cold, firm voice.
“Let me remind you of the unofficial Drood motto: Shut the hell up and soldier. You have your armour and your training, and you can rely on both of them to get you through this. You are Droods. You have a job to do, so get on with it. You can start by searching the houses on this street. Tear them apart if you have to but find me someone I can question. And put up a perimeter! I don’t want anyone coming or going without us knowing about it. Why are you still standing there? Move!”
The Droods quickly broke up into small groups and went charging up and down Blaiston Street, kicking in one door after another. No one was in the mood to knock. They slammed into the silent houses, yelling for someone to show themselves, feeling better now they had something to do. Using their armour made them feel strong and in control again, just as the Sarjeant had known it would. They stormed through house after house, searching every room and smashing anything that got in their way. Because brick and wood and stone were no match for their armour. They raged up and down the long, circular street, calling out to each other in increasingly confident voices . . . But they didn’t find anyone. All the houses were empty, the occupants long gone.
While all this was going on, the Matriarch turned her fiercest stare on the Armourer. “Take your people back into the Hall. Go down to the Armoury and do whatever it takes, but get Alpha Red Alpha working again! I want to know why it dumped us here. Did someone else take control, and if so, who? Tear that machine apart if you have to, but get me some answers. Go! Now!”
Maxwell and Victoria nodded quickly, rounded up their assistants, and hurried back inside the Hall. Eager to get to work and even more eager to get away from the Matriarch. Eddie
looked thoughtfully up and down the deserted street, then moved in beside Molly, who was scowling out into the dark.
“Have you noticed?” Eddie said quietly. “Even the homeless people are gone. There’s no one in the alley-ways.”
“Of course they’re gone,” said Molly, not looking at him. “People in places like this can always tell when something bad is coming. That’s how they stay alive.”
“Are you mad at me?” said Eddie.
“I’m mad at your whole damned family,” said Molly.
“Well,” said Eddie. “No change there, then.”
She looked at him and managed a small smile. “They shouldn’t be here, Eddie. We shouldn’t be here. It’s all going to go horribly wrong . . .”
By now the Droods were returning. Between them they’d searched the entire circular terrace, house by house and room by room, and hadn’t found a single person to interrogate. The Matriarch just nodded, as though she hadn’t expected anything else.
“Sarjeant, move the family out. I want all the designated target areas under our control as quickly as possible, so we can start laying down some law.”
“You heard the Matriarch!” the Sarjeant said loudly to the assembled Droods. “Follow your standing orders, and don’t take any shit from anyone.”
“Is that really how you want to do this?” Eddie said to the Matriarch.
She looked steadily back at him. “I will see the Nightside razed to the ground from boundary to boundary if that’s what it takes. So I can be sure the long night will never threaten the world again.”
“You’d have to kill everyone here to be sure of that,” said Molly.
“Let’s hope that won’t be necessary,” said the Matriarch. She turned back to the Sarjeant. “Find the Authorities and make them surrender. From fear of what we’ve done and what we might do. After that, all the other power groups in the Nightside will go along.”
Molly started to say something, but once again Eddie put a hand on her arm.
“Sarjeant-at-Arms!” said the Matriarch. “Move the family out!”
“And remember,” Eddie said quickly, “you can’t use your phones to communicate; they won’t work in the Nightside.”
“Everyone, stick to torc-to-torc communication,” said the Sarjeant. “More secure, anyway. Let’s go, people! You’ve all got your special compasses from the Armourer. They’ll guide you to where you need to be.”
“Let’s just hope they work better than Alpha Red Alpha,” said Eddie.
The armoured Droods marched out of Blaiston Street and into the long night, and the thunder of their golden feet was like the threat of a coming storm. They held their heads high, their usual Drood confidence restored. Smashing up a whole street of houses had put them in a good mood. A Drood in his armour could smash a hole through the world. They’d just needed to be reminded of that. Eddie watched them go and wished he felt that confident. He was worried about what would happen once they left the relative sanity of Blaiston Street and encountered the more-extreme dangers of the Nightside. Where the threat was as often to the soul as to the body. But they were Droods. Trained to fight and win under any and all conditions. Whatever they met, they should be strong enough to break it, tear it down, and set it on fire, as long as they remembered they were Droods. Eddie turned to the Matriarch.
“What do you want Molly and me to do?”
The Matriarch looked to the Sarjeant, and he spoke for her.
“We have a special mission for you. Go to Strangefellows and kick everyone out. Do as much damage as you feel necessary, but we need that bar under Drood control. The knowledge that we hold Strangefellows will help to undermine local resistance. It’s a symbol of the Nightside. We need it broken.”
Eddie nodded. That made sense. However . . .
“John Taylor and Suzie Shooter have been known to drink there,” he said carefully. “What are our orders, if we run into them?”
“If they put up a fight,” said the Matriarch, “or if it looks like they might escape, you are authorised to kill either or both of them. For Luther.”
Eddie nodded but didn’t say anything. Molly didn’t even nod. The Matriarch sighed quietly.
“I know; you’ll both make up your own minds, as always. But if you can’t hold on to them, I’ll have no choice but to order them killed on sight. I’m sending you two to Strangefellows because you’re the only ones with a real chance of taking them alive.”
* * *
• • •
Eddie and Molly left Blaiston Street and set off into the long night. Molly seemed to know where she was going, so Eddie let her take the lead. He was concerned with his own thoughts. In their own way, and for their own reasons, the Matriarch and the Sarjeant were being kind. They knew he had no stomach for the kind of open street fighting the Droods would inevitably get caught up in. Strangefellows was a simple task, and there was always the chance he wouldn’t even get to meet John Taylor and Shotgun Suzie. He wondered what he would say to them if he did.
To his surprise, after only a few streets, the badlands disappeared, and they entered a more civilised part of the Nightside. Familiar hot neon burned on every side, colourful shops and restaurants and clubs lined the streets, and the pavements were packed with people hurrying back and forth. Traffic roared endlessly along the wide-open road, as though it had never been away. Molly noticed Eddie’s surprise and smiled.
“You’re never far from anything, in the Nightside. The best and the worst of things are always lying in wait, just around the next corner.”
“How far is it to Strangefellows?” said Eddie.
“Not far.”
“What do you think of our mission?” Eddie said bluntly.
Molly scowled, and people on the pavement moved quickly to give her even more room. “I had no idea your family had such detailed plans for the overthrow of the Nightside.”
“Neither did I,” said Eddie.
“But you used to run the family!” said Molly. “How can there be so many things about them that you don’t know?”
“It’s a big family, and I wasn’t in charge for long,” Eddie said steadily. “They didn’t tell me everything.”
“Clearly,” said Molly. “You should have asked a lot more questions, while you had the chance.”
“I was busy!” said Eddie. “Trying to keep the Hungry Gods from destroying the world.”
“Excuses, excuses,” said Molly.
They walked for a while in silence, and when Molly spoke again, she carefully didn’t look at him.
“Do you really think your family can win this war, Eddie?”
“Of course,” he said, just as carefully not looking at her. “It’s what we do. We’ve fought a lot of wars in our time. We prefer to prevent them where possible, that’s what field agents are for . . . But we’re always training for the next one. We’ve fought secret wars all across the world. All right, the Nightside threw some of the younger ones for a while, but it didn’t last. They were expecting an easy start; they know better now. We’ve fought every kind of enemy you can think of, Molly, and some beyond your wildest nightmares.”
“The Nightside is different,” said Molly.
“It’s not like we’re going to be facing an army,” said Eddie, looking at her for the first time. “Or even a properly trained resistance. Most people here will take one look at armoured Droods marching down their streets and quite sensibly run for their lives.”
“Only till they realise your family mean to put a stop to their fun,” said Molly. “You have no idea what most of these people went through just to get here, for a chance to find what they need. Or what they’ll do to hang on to it once they’ve found it. People here will fight for any number of reasons. And you have to remember, there’s a lot more to the Nightside than just people. There are Forces and Powers here that have nothing in commo
n with the Street of the Gods. Ancient creatures and presences from before and outside of history, who won’t stand for being crossed.”
“Hopefully, they’ll have enough sense to stay out of a fight they can’t win,” said Eddie. “Or, what could still be a mostly peaceful occupation will deteriorate into blood and slaughter on a grand scale. Droods are trained to fight to win, whatever it takes.”
“And if it does come down to fighting in the streets, to bodies piling up and blood running in the gutters?” said Molly.
“I’ll deal with that when I have to,” said Eddie.
Molly didn’t say anything more. She knew she’d pushed him as far as she could.
* * *
• • •
They walked on through the Nightside, and people surged past them, laughing and talking loudly, enjoying themselves as they searched for their own particular pleasures and damnations. Or planned the best way to profit from someone else’s. Hot music blasted out the open doors of night-clubs that never closed, while predators and prey circled each other in a dance that both sides relished. And everywhere people rushed to buy the things they weren’t supposed to want but always had and always would. Dreams by the pound and hope in pretty colours, men and women chasing fulfilment and heart’s ease in small, easy-to-manage doses. Love for sale, on every street-corner. Love, or something like it. The streets were alive with possibilities for good and bad and everything in between.
Eddie looked at the people passing by, with their laughter and chatter, their desperate needs and overwhelming longings, as though it were just another night in the Nightside. How could they not know that everything had changed? Couldn’t they feel it, on the air? That life as they knew it was effectively over? Eddie wondered what would happen if these happy, driven creatures did dare to defy the Droods. How far would his family go against unarmed civilians, to stamp out all forms of resistance? Eddie didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“How, exactly, are we supposed to take control of Strangefellows?” Molly said finally. “Alex can’t do that some nights, and he runs the place.”