“Of course,” said Molly, smiling cheerfully.
The Armourer set off down the narrow trail with the ease of long familiarity, leaving Molly and me to stumble along after him. We clung to each other for comfort and support, and to share body warmth. I’d got too used to my armour insulating me from the harsher environments of the world. The surrounding mountains were massive grey walls of rough stone, with ragged cracks and crevices and not a sign of life anywhere. A suitably grim setting for a fair dedicated to death and destruction. The mountaintops had dustings of snow, picked up and tossed around by gusting winds too high up for us to feel.
And up above the mountaintops, I could make out the shimmering heat haze of heavy-duty force fields hiding the fair from the outside world. Force shields were necessary to hide the various energy systems and magical emanations from the exhibits on display. So many new energy spikes in one place would have raised eyebrows and set off alarms in every tracking station in the world. The Armourer said there were also a whole bunch of magical protections in place to hide the presence of the force fields. Because the sudden appearance of such powerful energies would arouse suspicion in themselves. As in, What have you got to hide? The Supernatural Arms Faire had been around for a long time, and it survived by being very thorough and very paranoid.
“If your family has known about the fair for such a long time, why haven’t they done something about it?” said Molly, holding on to my arm with a death grip as a stream of pebbles shot out from under her foot.
“Better to let it be, so we can keep an eye on what’s happening,” I said. “If we spook them, they’ll shut it down, wait a few years, and then start it up again somewhere new, even more secret and underground. And then we’d have to waste precious time and resources hunting them down again. This way we get to see who’s producing what, and who’s buying it, whilst at the same making sure all of our weapons are as up-to-date as we like to think.”
I glanced back the way we’d come, just in time to see a long straggling line of local people passing by on a much higher trail. Men, women, children and donkeys, all heavily laden. Some of them glanced down into the valley, but it was clear they didn’t see a thing. As far as they were concerned, they were alone on the mountain, following the trail their ancestors had laid down centuries before. The fair’s protections were working. The locals kept going, carrying on with their everyday lives as they had for generations, with no idea of how close they’d come to one of the world’s most dangerous secrets.
By the time Molly and I finally reached the bottom of the valley and the outskirts of the fair, the Armourer had already flashed his invitation around, reassured the fair’s security people, forewarned them about me and Molly, and was off chatting happily with old friends. He walked around quite openly, nodding and smiling to people who nodded back quite cheerfully—people who would have done their utmost to kill him on the spot if they’d even suspected he was a Drood. But then, he had the best kind of cover; he really was what he was pretending to be . . . just another weapons enthusiast.
He strolled up and down the long rows of stalls and booths, peering at everything, picking up the occasional item to study it more closely and ask detailed questions, clearly enjoying himself tremendously. Every now and again he’d meet up with some old acquaintance from previous fairs, and then they’d stop right in everybody’s way for long conversations about what was worth looking at. No one made any fuss. Like the Armourer said, the fair liked having the enthusiasts around. They added character. All the people Uncle Jack knew were clearly in the same line of work as him; the outfits and the accents might differ, but they all had the same boyish smiles and wide-eyed enthusiasm when it came to various means of murder and mayhem.
They thought the Armourer was one of them: a retired old weapons maker with too much time on his hands, filling his retirement with happy interests. I made a point of standing close enough that I could eavesdrop on what was being said. There’s nothing quite like standing before some stall, apparently browsing, to let you hang around with your ears wide-open. One of the Armourer’s old friends used to work at Area 52 in the Antarctic, while another was a Russian exile who used to work at a secret Soviet science city in what was now the wilds of Georgia. Others worked for corporations, or secret agencies, or certain well-known names with delusions of grandeur and more money than sense. But no matter who they were, or used to be, the refrain was always the same: The fair was not what it used to be; the stall and booths used to be bigger and more varied, there was far too much hype and not enough substance, and the youngsters showed no respect at all.
After a while I let the Armourer go; he knew what he was doing, and I wanted to look at the weapons. The first booth I stopped at specialised in steampunk technology, featuring outmoded weapons of mass destruction from a calmer, more civilised age, when arms could also be works of art. What was once cutting-edge had become cute and interesting, passed by and superseded by relentless science, now brought back as antiques and curios—and collectibles, of course. Nothing like a patina of history to add layers of value.
Standing beside the booth, and actually lowering over it, was a great steam-powered automaton, the Iron Mann of the Plains. STILL IN WORKING ORDER, claimed a sign set out before it. Blue-black steel, gleaming and polished to within an inch of its life, with flaring red eyes in its immobile face, and huge arms and legs. In its day, the sign proclaimed, the Iron Mann of the Plains could outrun a steam train and lift the heaviest of weights, and had a Gatling gun built into its chest. Unfortunately, the booth owner confided, you had to keep stoking the thing with coal to keep the steam pressure up or it clanked to a halt. And then it was a real bugger to get it going again. Brilliant, but never very practical, its time in the sun over almost as soon as it had begun.
The booth owner was very keen to show me a series of series of carefully polished lenses from thirteenth-century Arabia, which when properly arranged could focus sunlight into a laser beam. But he didn’t seem particularly keen to demonstrate the effect. Perhaps it wasn’t sunny enough. Beside me, Molly had got interested in an eighteenth-century phlogiston flamethrower. Molly raised an eyebrow.
“Science proved that phlogiston didn’t actually exist.”
“It worked perfectly well until then,” said the booth holder.
We moved on. A surprising number of people recognised one or the other of us. Sometimes both. No one was in the least surprised to see Shaman Bond at the Supernatural Arms Faire; I’d gone to great pains to establish his reputation for turning up anywhere. I’ve always liked being Shaman Bond; my cover identity doesn’t have my restrictions or responsibilities. And people are nearly always happy to see Shaman Bond, whereas if Eddie Drood turns up it always means trouble for someone. Several of those we met were surprised to see Molly and me together: the notorious chancer and the infamous wild witch of the woods. In fact, one passing acquaintance actually leaned in close so he could murmur, “Too much car for you, Eddie,” in my ear. I didn’t hit him. It would only have attracted attention. It didn’t help that Molly found the whole situation hilarious. And then I came to a sudden halt as our way was blocked by a very wide, wide loud person I knew only too well.
“Shaman Bond, as I live and breathe!” said a familiar fruity aristocratic voice. “Delighted to see you again, dear boy! What the hell are you doing here? Wouldn’t have thought you had the wherewithal to use the bloody pay toilets here! Eh? Eh?”
Augusta Moon stood before me, grinning broadly. A larger-than-life professional troubleshooter and monster hunter, Augusta looked like one of P. G. Wodehouse’s more frightening aunts. Tall and wide and heavy with it, Augusta dressed like some old-fashioned maiden aunt who’d read too many Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries: a battered tweed suit, stout walking shoes and a monocle jammed firmly into her left eye. If Augusta had ever heard of fashion, makeup and femininity, it was only as things other people did. If the cold was bothering her, she hid it remarkably well. She carried a stout oak
en walking stick with a heavy silver head that still had dried blood crusted on it from her last encounter with the forces of evil. She also wasn’t above poking people with her stick when she wanted to make a point. People who knew her were usually careful to stand out of arm’s reach. She grabbed my hand and gave it a good mauling, laughing heartily all the while. Some monster hunters are more frightening than others.
Augusta Moon travelled the world doing good, and to hell with whether other people appreciated it.
She finally released my aching hand and scrutinised Molly through her monocle. “Didn’t know the two of you were an item! Hmm. Didn’t see that one coming. Blessed be the world that still has such surprises in it! Look after this one, girl. A hard man is good to find. Eh? Eh?”
“What’s a lady like you doing in a place like this?” I said.
“Oh, doing a little shopping, looking for something new and nasty to put the wind up the ungodly. Not everything responds to being hit over the head with a stout stick, though the Lord knows I’ve tried the method on practically everything under the sun, or hiding from it. I once used this very stick to make a shish kebab out of a vampire. It was his own fault for bending over.”
“You are an appalling person, Augusta,” I said solemnly.
“Only in a good cause, dear boy. What are you doing here, Shaman? Looking for a little something for an engagement present, perhaps? Eh?” She dropped Molly a roguish wink. “Hold out for a ring, dear, and then use it to pierce something exotic! These modern gels, eh, Shaman?” She looked at me thoughtfully. Augusta had a magnificient brain behind her chosen facade. “Wouldn’t have thought you were the gun-running sort, old cheese.”
“I’m here representing someone else,” I said smoothly. “Someone who doesn’t want their face seen, because it would only push the price up. You know how it is.” I gave her my best knowing look. “You aren’t here by chance, Augusta. What are you really looking for?”
She gave her harsh bark of laughter again, and prodded me right above the navel with her walking stick. “No fooling you, eh, Shaman? No, no . . . I was in Delhi last week, searching for the Golden Frogs of Samarkand. Bloody things have gone walkabout again, and the usual rush is on to find them first and claim the bounty. And keep them out of the wrong sort of hands. Ugly-looking brutes, but no accounting for taste, as the vicar said when he kissed the verger. Anyway, the trail ran stone-dead cold in Delhi, but a backstreet encounter in Calcutta pointed me in this direction. So if you should happen to spot the bloody things here, hands off! They’re mine!”
“You’re welcome to them,” I said. “I don’t want golden warts on my unmentionables.”
“Then I’ll see you around. Be good, my dears, and if you can’t be good don’t do it in front of witnesses!”
She crushed my hand again, slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to rattle my teeth, and barged between Molly and me. Still laughing, she disappeared into the crowd, which immediately fell back to give her plenty of room. Molly and I headed determinedly in the opposite direction.
“Nice friends you have,” said Molly.
“I thought she was a friend of yours,” I said.
“Are we looking for anything specific?” said Molly, linking her arm companionably through mine, though I could barely feel it through the thicknesses of two very heavy coat sleeves. “I mean, apart from the duplicated Drood armour, which we are not going to find, because it never actually appears, no matter what the rumours say.”
“To be honest,” I said, “I think this is the family’s way of getting me out of the Hall for a while. I did wonder at first whether Harry was up to something and wanted me out of the way. . . . But it’s more likely the council thinks I need some time off for rest and relaxation. A little holiday after my near-death experience. And God knows I could use some serious downtime, after all the shit that’s been raining down on me recently. As missions go, this is almost certainly a waste of time. So let us enjoy ourselves and take it easy for once.”
“All right,” said Molly. “I can do that. Hell of a place for a holiday, though.”
“That’s my family for you,” I said.
We strolled on for a while, taking it easy, taking in the sights. The air was still bitterly cold, except for when we walked through brief gusts of heat generated by the stalls’ heaters. Some booths actually had steam rising up from them. The walkways between the displays were covered with simple wooden boards, and there were no signs or directions. As centuries-old fairs went, this one didn’t impress me as being at all well organised. There was certainly no lack of interested customers gathering excitedly before the various stalls, money clearly burning a hole in their pockets. They chattered happily with each other, argued over provenances and delivery routes, and nearly always seemed to end up with the age-old refrain, Anything off for cash? Some people stared in awe at the more impressive offerings, too intimidated to even inquire after the price. I recognised a surprising number of faces from all sides of the tracks: good guys and bad and every shade of grey in between. Everyone needs weapons, no matter what side you’re fighting on.
“Buy me something,” said Molly, after a while.
“Other girls want chocolate or flowers,” I said. “Or shoes.”
“Oh, I want those, too,” said Molly. “But you can’t come to an arms fair and not buy anything. I’m pretty sure there’s a law against that.”
So we looked around to see what there was.
One stall was offering assorted alien technology: from things that fell off the back of an alien starship, or stranded Greys and Reptiloids, or things that fell through dimensional doorways when the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. It was all dumped on the benches set out before us, in random heaps and piles. Large, blocky shapes of unfamiliar metal; warped crystal things with strange lights flickering deep inside; semiorganic bits and blobs trailing metallic filaments like tentacles. It could have been the secrets of the universe laid out before us, or the biggest bunch of junk and tat ever assembled in one place. The stall owner cheerfully admitted he had no idea what any of it did.
“It’s old stock, picked up from a fire sale in the Nightside. Got to be worth something, hasn’t it? It’s alien! Pick something, and we’ll fight over a price. You should be able to reverse-engineer something useful out of anything here. Hey, you! No touching!”
The big, hulking man standing next to me sneered haughtily at the stall owner and prodded a weird, wobbling thing with a disdainful fingertip. There was a sharp clap, like a very localised thunderstorm, and then he disappeared, leaving behind a space where he used to be. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum, while for a moment everyone’s hair stood on end. The stallholder blinked a few times, and then recovered wonderfully.
“See! See!” he said, addressing the surrounding crowd. “How useful is that? Wouldn’t you like to make someone you know disappear?”
We left him haggling with a very interested crowd, while I wondered how he was going to sell the thing without handing it over, or how the buyer was going to carry it away. . . .
Another store boasted an exhaustive display of crystals, magic stones and balls in every shape and colour you could think of. Molly oohed and ahhed over them, but I couldn’t see anything to get excited about. Not one decent aura among the lot of them. According to the middle-aged woman behind the stall, dressed in what she no doubt fondly imaged was the very latest Gypsy chic, everything on the table had a fascinating history or legend attached to it. Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Mind you, she spotted me as an unbeliever straightaway, and concentrated her sales pitch on Molly.
“See this one, dearie? The shimmering sphere with the bloodred flaw? That is the original Scrying Stone that Dr. Dee used to learn the artificial language Enochian, created expressly so that men could talk directly with angels. If you could only reestablish contact with the same spirit that spoke with Dr. Dee, who knows what secrets you might learn?”
“I think the key word in that se
ntence was if,” said Molly. “Do I look like a rube? You’d have a better chance of contacting the spirit world if you banged your head against the wall.”
“Well!” said the Gypsy lady, drawing herself up. “I never did. . . .”
“Oh, you must have,” said Molly sweetly.
I took her firmly by the arm and we moved on. Next up was a twee affair almost buried under displays of fresh flowers, offering a wide range of elven artefacts and weapons at really quite reasonable prices. I pointed a few things out to Molly, but she shook her head immediately.
“Never trust an elf, or anything they leave behind. You can bet most of it’s boody-trapped, ready to do something transformative and allegedly humorous to whatever poor fool picks it up without industrial-strength gloves on.”
“They’ve got a wand,” I said. “It looks very nice.”
“Traps are supposed to look inviting. Elf wands are just the sugar coating on the trap, because they’re one of the few elven weapons a human could actually use.”
“I know a private investigator in the Nightside who uses one,” I said. “Larry Oblivion.”
“Yes, but he’s dead!” said Molly. “There’s not a lot more the wand can do to him! Hey, how is it you know someone from the Nightside? I thought Droods weren’t allowed in the Nightside.”
“We have agreed not to enter,” I said. “There’s a difference. We could go in if we wanted to; we choose not to. Wouldn’t be seen dead in the place, myself. I know Larry because he and his brothers did some work for the family recently.”
“Rather you than me,” said Molly. “That Hadleigh Oblivion gives me the creeps.”
Microsoft had a really big presence at the fair; but then, Microsoft has a really big presence everywhere.
I paused before a simple open booth representing the Gun Shops of Usher franchise. It seemed odd that the family who’d bankrolled the Supernatural Arms Faire for so many centuries should have such a modest presence. The man standing behind the counter was Mr. Usher himself. I looked him over thoughtfully, and he nodded politely.