The Eighth Court (3 page)

The Royal Courts of Justice has a portal entrance of pale stone on the north side of the Strand opposite the church of St Clement’s Dane. It has iron railings along the front, which are opened to allow the public inside, but if you’re fey they still make your teeth ache when you walk between them.

Joining the file of people going through the metal detectors and full-body scanners, I walked through without raising any alarm. Once past security, I strolled past the central reception confidently and mounted the steps to the first floor. I turned right at the top of the steep stairway and followed the corridor to the end. The door to Claire’s office was closed. I tried it, finding it locked. I placed my hand upon it.

“Can I help you?” The voice came from a young woman in a doorway I had passed. I let my hand drop from the door.

“I was looking for Claire Radisson,” I explained. “This is her office, isn’t it?”

“Claire isn’t here today,” said the woman. “If you’d like to make an appointment I’m sure reception can help you.”

“She asked me to come and see her,” I explained.

“She’s not there,” the woman said, bluntly.

The woman was telling the truth as she saw it. “May I leave a message for her?” I asked.

“I’m sure reception could help you with that.” She had emerged from the office and was now standing in the corridor.

“Perhaps I’ll go and ask them,” I said.

“I think that would be best,” she said.

She watched me head back towards the stairway. I took three steps down and waited out of sight for a count of thirty. Then I leaned back around the top of the stairway, finding that the woman had retreated to her office. Wrapping myself in glamour I re-entered the corridor and ghosted past her door to Claire’s office. Placing my hand on the door I felt the lock tumble. I pushed the door open and slipped inside. Being careful not to touch the inside door handle, I leaned against the door and pushed it shut with my foot.

Some time ago, Blackbird and I had returned to Claire’s office to find it booby-trapped with darkspore, the mould used by female wraithkin to consume the flesh of the unwary – at least it looked like mould. It was actually part of them, a living remnant which could consume organic material, feeding the host. If Claire said they had been here then I had every reason to be cautious.

Taking shallow breaths, I tested the air for the heavy scent of rot and decay. Edging into the room, I could see that the outer office had changed little since I’d been here last. There was a picture – modern art – that had not been here before. Claire had acquired a new office chair with a flexible mesh back, and a chrome coat-stand. The doors to the Queen’s Remembrancer’s office were closed, but I suspected that even if there were small changes in the outer office, the inner sanctum would remain as it had always been.

I glanced across Claire’s desk and that’s when I noticed the open cupboard. There was an empty square on the floor of the cupboard. The indentation was rectangular. It was where the safe containing the knives and the horseshoes for the Quit Rents ceremony was kept. The safe had gone. There were marks in the plasterwork where the plaster and bricks had been chipped away to expose the bolts that anchored it, and dust on the floor where the anchors securing the safe to the wall had been levered out. Someone had taken their time and neatly removed the safe, which must have taken a while and caused a fair amount of noise, but no one had raised an alarm.

Scanning the room, I noted the scuff marks in the carpet. Checking the door handles to the Queen’s Remembrancer’s office, I opened it and scanned the room from the doorway. There was no one there and the room hadn’t changed at all. Even so, there was no sign of the safe or the people who’d taken it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice came from the outer door. The woman from the other office was standing there looking severe.

I turned to face her. “The safe, where is it?” I asked her.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing in here, but if you do not leave right away I am calling security,” she threatened.

“This is not a game,” I told her. “Claire asked me here. Now where’s the safe?”

She went to shut the door on me, but I moved too quickly. Wrenching the door from her, I propelled her backwards. As she staggered back I caught her by the lapels of her jacket and lifted her up the wall with one hand. She squeaked in surprise, the seams in her jacket crackling as they took the strain. She tried to kick me but I pressed in close so our breath mingled, allowing her only limited movement.

I spread my glamour around us, deadening sound. “You can scream, no one will hear you.” She took that as an invitation, screaming her head off. True to my word, though, we remained alone.

I waited until she realised it too, and her screams petered out. “Earlier, you asked if you could help me. Now’s your chance. Where’s the safe?”

“Fuck you,” she said, through gritted teeth. You had to admire her. A foot off the ground, pinned to the wall and she was still spitting abuse.

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I risked my life for the contents of that safe. I know damned well that Claire wouldn’t let it out of her sight, so where is it?”

She glared at me.

“I’d play these games if it weren’t so fucking serious,” I said. “I’ll ask you once more.”

She shook her head, clamping her lips tight.

The air shifted in the corridor. The light faded, and dappled moonlight grew and shifted across the wall. Her eyes went wide, the whites around them stark in the pale light. My hand was outlined against her jacket, the purest black. Looking into her eyes I knew she was seeing me as a lightless hole in the world. A song hummed in my veins, a long note, low and loud, calling to me. I could feel tendrils of darkness, spreading from my hand under her clothes. Her eyes went wide. She screamed again, uninhibited, kicking and thrashing in my grip. “They came and took it! Some men. From a company. They took it away!”

I held back the tide rushing into me, gritting my own teeth against the flood that pressed for release. “When?”

“A little while ago. For pity’s sake!” she squeaked.

“Who took it?”

“Some men. They’re replacing it with a newer one.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes. Twenty maybe?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. Tears were running down her face. There was the certain knowledge in her eyes that I would kill her. A small part of me believed her. A small part of me wanted to, but she was telling the truth.

I released her and she collapsed like a sack of sand onto the floor. Her head lolled to one side. I forced back the wave of power and let the magic fade. Looking down at her, I wondered what was becoming of me. There were some things ordinary people weren’t meant to see and she’d just come very close to dying. Looking at her made me think of the stories that Claire had told us when we first met. She’d said that not everyone who dealt with the Feyre walked away unscathed, and I was beginning to see why. I needed to get better control of myself. I had almost killed her for no other reason than she wouldn’t give me what I wanted. That was what Raffmir would do, and I would not let myself sink to his level.

I squatted down in front of her. Her eyes were not focusing. She was in shock. Fifteen or twenty minutes maximum, she’d said. They’d only just gone – for a moment I wondered what would have happened if I’d walked in on them while they were cutting the safe loose.

If I left her where she was, someone would soon notice her. Perhaps they would call an ambulance or a doctor. It was more than I could do for her. I’d already done too much. Whoever had been here, they had a heavy safe containing the horseshoes, the nails and the two knives from the ceremony. Fifteen minutes with a heavy safe in this warren of a building.

There was every chance they were still here.

I jogged down the corridor, swerving round someone emerging from an office with a pile of folders, nearly knocking them off their feet. “Don’t run!” they called after me.

Ignoring them, I paused only to look through the windows into the courts along the hall. They had a safe, now where would they take it? Not into court. Out the front door? No, I would have encountered them already. They could cloak themselves in glamour but the safe would remain as it was. The iron inside it would protect it – that was why it was there. The iron in it should prevent them carrying it, so where were they? They must have found a way to counter it, to mask the nature of it.

Reaching the end of the corridor, I stopped. There were numerous stairways, up and down – difficult to get a heavy safe downstairs. If you were fey you couldn’t hold it with the knives inside it. Someone else was moving it. They must have human collaborators. It was the only way. Sprinting around the corner, I slipped between two gowned barristers in conversation. They shouted after me, but I was already past. There were display cases left and right – somewhere close there must be a goods lift. Somewhere, but where?

I rounded a corner and was presented with more corridors. I was running out of time. I could run around this maze all day and never find them. There must be a better way. My eyes settled on a small red box on the wall – fire alarm. Crude, yet effective. Now I was thinking.

Using the heel of my hand, I smashed the glass. Immediately sirens echoed down the corridor. There was a moment’s pause while everyone wondered whether it was a false alarm, and then they began moving. I kept ahead of the crowd, searching for misfits, the odd ones out, allowing myself to be shepherded towards the exits with the rest. Once outside I watched the doors, but no one emerged with a heavy object. There were lawyers, jurors, members of the public, police, but no one who looked like they would remove a safe. I moved down the street, heading for the side entrance. The restless autumn leaves swirled around my feet in the fickle breeze.

I peered through the iron railings under the stone arches into the courtyard of the Royal Courts of Justice, looking for anyone struggling with a heavy load. A wooden guard post was just beyond the railings manned by two security guards. This close, I could feel the dissonant hum of the iron railings between me and them. There was no way I could touch them, never mind climb over them and slip inside, and the proximity of so much iron was disrupting the glamour that made me less noticeable, drawing curious glances from the guards.

Moving back from the railings, I watched as one of them answered the phone while the other went to attend to a grey van that had pulled up beside the guard station. With luck and good timing, I would be able to slip into the courtyard unnoticed when they let the van out. As I moved in towards the iron gates, the guard went to speak with the driver, who wound down his window. I waited by the exit, watching them. There was a reflection on the windscreen: the monochrome image of bare branches of the trees above distorted by the curve in the glass. The clouds thickened, dimming the meagre sunlight so that the reflection faded. I caught a glimpse through the windscreen of the person in the passenger seat. The long face, high cheekbones and black hair were familiar.

It was Raffmir!

He must have seen me too. Suddenly the guard was thrown back and the van gunned its engine, leaping into motion. It crashed into the gate, swinging the heavy ironwork directly out at me. I dived, but the gates hit me, hurling me away with a force beyond their weight. I felt the dark pulse of power as they struck me, the jolt of pain as the iron sent a numbing shock through my body.

I landed heavily, and for a long while the dark swallowed me. After a while, though, I began to sense sounds, and lights, and cold, and it came to me that I must be dreaming.

The rain descended in sheets in the dark, depressing the branches of nearby trees and drumming on the ground. Everywhere tiny rivulets slithered through the grass, pooling in hollows and merging, joining to form the beginnings of streams, meandering towards the river.

I stumbled across the uneven ground. Though the rain did not touch me, it curtained my vision so that I nearly toppled over the bank into the flood. Even in the limited light under the clouds I could see the river was swollen, testing its banks and pulling at tree roots. Out in the stream, leafy branches emerging from the brown water gave testament to comrades already fallen to the flood.

Out on the river there was a light, swinging and bobbing. It hung over the flow, seemingly floating, as it edged towards me.

Alerted by the sound of hooves, I turned, alarmed. A horse galloped into view, then skidded and slid as, seeing the barrier too late, the rider tried to turn away from the river. The horse toppled onto its side with a solid thump, whinnying in protest. The rider slipped deftly from the saddle, rolling to the side, but failed to account for the treacherous ground and tumbled into the mud, coating himself in it all down one side.

The horse twisted and clambered to its feet, then trotted away sulking before halting at the limit of visibility. The horseman swore in a language I did not comprehend, but his meaning was clear. He ignored me, coming to stand at the bank’s eroded edge to stare into the dark. He was young, stoutly built and muscular. His long hair was twisted across his face and he pulled it behind him, plaiting it quickly into a loose braid in a practiced gesture. He was not dressed for the weather, wearing only light trousers and a loose shirt which clung to his skin, revealing muscular arms.

He saw the light on the river and ran back to the horse, which stood shivering in the dark. He pulled a small package from the saddle, slapping the horse’s rump so that it trotted away into the dark.

Returning to the riverbank, he called out in a harsh foreign tongue, raw and guttural, to the source of the light. It hung there in the dark, and then edged towards the bank. As it neared, a boat resolved behind it, pointing upstream. A figure in a long cloak stood in the craft, balancing easily as it rocked and swerved in the current. There was no sail, and no one rowing, yet it leaned into the current and danced between the flotsam being dragged downstream. As it neared the bank, the hood was pulled back.

“
Kimlesh?
”
I said, and then realised she could not see me.

She answered the young man, her clear voice carrying across the water.

“
What do you wish for?
”
she asked.

He answered her. His words were incomprehensible whereas hers were plain, but his gesture at the far bank was clear.

“
There is a bridge a few miles downstream,
”
said Kimlesh.
“
If it still stands.
”

He said something under his breath and then held up the bag he had taken from the horse’s pack. He shook the package, which chinked, and though the sound surely did not carry to the craft bobbing in the current, his meaning was clear.

“
You are lying. You will steal my boat and slit my throat, if you can,
”
she said.

He shook his head and climbed carefully down the bank to the water’s edge where the brown water sucked at the bank.

“
Your voice betrays you,
”
she said.

He searched the bank, then, looking for something but not finding it. After a moment, he called out, again.

“
There is no tether, Guillaume, nor any needed. This boat finds its way in any flood.
”

His expression was bemused. He called a question to her.

“
You already know that, son of Herleva. Why are you here, then?
”

He shrugged, glancing over his shoulder.

“
First we bargain, Guillaume, and then we will see,
”
she said.

There was a drumming over the persistent pattering of the rain; hoof-beats splashing through the wet. His expression changed at the sound of hooves, and his entreaties became more persistent, though he lowered his voice so he would not be overheard.

“
What will you give me in exchange, Guillaume? What will you offer me in return for escape from your pursuers?
”
Her voice was quiet, but it carried across the water.

You had to admire the man. It took nerve to stand on the bank with the horsemen riding up and down the river looking for him while the bargaining went back and forth. At one point there was a cheer as they found the loose horse, but he never looked back. His attention was focused on the woman. Everything else, even the rain, might as well not have existed.

“
We are agreed then,
”
she said.
“
I will take you to the far shore, and you will grant me a single boon when I come before you and petition in person, be it within your power?
”

A jingle of harness behind us sealed the deal and the boat dived to shore. Guillaume tried to step into the shallows and sank up to his thigh in the deep water where the shore was cut away by the current. He was nearly swept away, but the craft was alongside, and she held it firm while he scrambled over the gunnel and tumbled in. Immediately the bow turned out into the current and it bobbed into the flow, the light dancing at the prow. A shout went up and horses pounded over, spilling men with spears. Guillaume was briefly visible, lying in the bow while the hooded Kimlesh stood in the stern as they faded into the rain.

The men peered into the dark, one casting a spear out across the water, which fell short and slipped into the flow and was not seen again. The men swore among themselves, but none tried to enter the stream after the young man. They gathered up their horses and rode away in a mass, downstream, heading for the bridge that Kimlesh had mentioned.