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"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 ru
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 ba
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 a
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…"
"So basically, anyone could be the Collector now," I said. "That is seriously spooky. I just went through something similar with Dr. Fell. You can't trust anyone to be who they claim any more. As if the Nightside wasn't paranoid enough already…"
Sewer Man Jack looked at me interestedly. "You finally had a run-in with Dr. Fell? What happened?"
"I happened-to him," I said.
"You worry me sometimes, John," Sewer Man Jack said sadly, and he moved away.
Alex Morrisey finally drifted my way and poured me a glass of wormwood brandy without waiting to be asked. I looked at it.
"What's wrong now?" said Alex. "It's a clean glass. Because I know you're fussy about things like that."
"Nothing wrong with the drink," I said. "I was just wondering if I'm becoming predictable. Never a good idea, in the Nightside. Start falling into familiar routines, going to the same place, always ordering the same drink, and you can bet good money someone will figure out a way to take advantage."
"Oh, shut up and drink your drink," said Alex. "This bar already has a resident gloomy bugger, and it's me."
Alex was dressed all in black, as usual, in mourning for the way his life had turned out. He also wore a black beret, to hide his spreading bald patch, and designer shades, in the mistaken belief that they made him look cool. Alex was born miserable and hadn't improved with age. He gave short measures, always got your change wrong, and mixed the most distressing cocktails in the world. Wise men avoided the bar snacks. On the other hand, he put up with people and behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated for a moment anywhere else, and viciously enforced a general truce that made Strangefellows one of the few real neutral grounds in the Nightside.