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“That’s the Goth talking,” I said. “I liked you better when you were a punk. You had more energy. And the pink mohawk suited you.”
“Bastard,” said Strange Chloe.
“You were a punk?” said Coffin Jobe.
“Shut up, Jobe.”
“We all have our secrets,” I said. “Get over yourself, Chloe. This is more important than your hurt feelings.”
“Nothing is more important than my feelings,” said Strange Chloe.
She stepped forward and glared at me. I could feel power building around her. I hastily subvocalised my activating Words and armoured up. Coffin Jobe and the Dancing Fool gaped at me; they’d never seen a Drood take on his armour before. Not many have and lived to tell of it. Strange Chloe didn’t care. Her rage seethed and crackled on the air between us as she took another step forward. The impact of her gaze hit me like a fist. That was her gift and her power and her curse: to make anything disappear that dared not to love her. Strange Chloe’s stare slammed against my armour, terrible energies filling the space between us as she concentrated, the unyielding power of her fury straining to find some hold, some purchase, against the impenetrable, more than normal certainty of my strange matter armour. I took a step forward, towards her, and her face became almost inhuman in its concentrated rage.
Things close to us began to disappear, driven out of reality by the overspilling energies of Strange Chloe’s stare. Objects and trophies and pieces of furniture just vanished, one after the other, air rushing in to fill the gaps left behind. Rich deep carpet faded away and was gone, leaving a slowly widening swath of bare boards between us. Strange Chloe glared at me, scowling so hard it must have hurt her face, but all I had to show her in return was my featureless gold mask. I was almost close enough to reach out and touch her when her power broke against my armour and blasted back at her. The full force of her gaze was reflected by my unyielding armour, and Strange Chloe screamed silently as she faded away and was gone.
I armoured down.
“Sorry, Chloe,” I said to the empty air where she’d been. “I hope you’re happy now, wherever you are.”
“You killed her,” said the Dancing Fool.
“Her own power turned against her,” I said. “And don’t you dare sound so outraged, Nigel. You know damn well you never liked her. Not really. Don’t you dare pretend she was ever your friend. You just let her hang around because she was useful: a big gun you could pull on people who weren’t impressed by your fighting skills. She was always more my friend than yours.”
“You were never her friend,” said the Dancing Fool.
“Sometimes . . . you just don’t have the time,” I said.
The Dancing Fool laughed briefly. There wasn’t any humour in the sound. “You’ve robbed me of one of my colleagues. Seems only fair I should rob you of one of yours. Never did like you, Walker.”
His long lean body snapped into a martial arts stance as he turned on Walker, clearly expecting to take him by surprise, but Walker was already waiting, gun in hand. He smiled briefly and kneecapped the Dancing Fool, shattering his left kneecap with a single bullet. The Dancing Fool made a shocked, surprised sound as the impact punched his leg out from under him, and he fell to the floor. Tears streamed down his face as he clutched his bloody knee with both hands as though he thought he could hold it together by sheer force. His breathing came short and hurried as the pain hit him in waves, each one worse than the one before.
“How did you do that?” he said to Walker, forcing the words out. “I’m fast. I can dodge bullets. And I always know what’s coming! How could you do that?”
“Because you never met anyone like me before,” Walker said calmly.
I moved over to join him, giving the crippled Dancing Fool plenty of room. “Was that really necessary, Walker?”
“I thought so, yes,” he said. “We don’t all have suits of armour to protect us.”
“Sorry, Nigel,” I said to the Dancing Fool.
“Shove it!” he said. Both his hands were slick with blood now, and his ruined leg trembled violently from shock and nerve damage. “I’ll get you for this. Get you both! I’ll never stop, never give up. You’ll spend what’s left of your lives looking back over your shoulder, waiting for me to be there. And I will! I’ll kill you both for this!”
“No, you won’t,” said Walker. And he put a bullet through the Dancing Fool’s other kneecap.
There was only the briefest of screams, and then the Dancing Fool passed out from pain and shock and horror. I looked at him, and then at Walker.
“It was a mercy, really,” said Walker, putting away his gun. “Revenge is such a waste of life. Besides, it’s never wise to leave an enemy in shape to come after you.”
“There is that,” I said. “At least they won’t call him the Dancing Fool anymore.”
We both looked around for Coffin Jobe. He was lying dead on the floor. I got Walker to help me pick him up and settle him in a chair, so at least he’d be comfortable when he came back to life again. I left Nigel where he was; I didn’t want to risk waking him.
“Well,” said Walker. “This was all very distracting, but it doesn’t get us any closer to Alexander and Peter. In fact, after this I think we have to assume that they’ve been observing us ever since we got here and are therefore probably heading for the nearest exit or locking themselves inside a reinforced secret bunker.”
“No,” I said. “They won’t leave. Not with so much unfinished business left between us. They know they haven’t won until they’ve beaten me. Beaten me fair and square, to keep my family from coming after them. Because the other side of Anything for the family is Anything for any member of the family. And the Kings’ best chance for wi
“Would you still be willing to make a deal?” said Walker. “Hands off, leave safely, in return for the Independent Agent’s secrets?”
“No,” I said. “But they’ll think they can persuade me to settle for that. Because that’s how they think.” I raised my voice. “I know you can hear me, Alexander! Talk to me! Tell me where you are so we can sort this out face-to-face. You know you want to.”
A vision of Alexander King sitting at his ease on his great wooden throne appeared on the air before us. He looked exactly as he had before: an aged rogue in flamboyant clothes. But his smile was cold and calculating now, and it added years to his shrunken face.
“Just walk straight ahead,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
The vision snapped off. I looked at Walker, and then leaned in close to murmur in his ear.
“Don’t stand on ceremony. If you get the chance, kill him.”
“Glad to,” murmured Walker.
We walked on through the Independent Agent’s monument to his own genius, through room after room full of trophies and mementos, the museum he’d made of his life. Endless photos from his extensive career, from all places and periods, showing Alexander King as a young man, growing steadily older . . . but not beyond a certain point. No photos of a more than middle-aged man, past his best, or of an old man limping into retirement. Just portraits of the legendary Independent Agent with famous faces from politics and religion, along with movie stars and celebrities, and even a few gods and monsters. (Though those last tended not to photograph well.) Alexander King really had got around in his day.
I paused before one photo, nicely framed, but just one more set among so many . . . A young and handsome Alexander stood with his arm around the waist of a very young Martha Drood. A simple snapshot of a warm moment in the Cold War. Martha, when she was just a field agent, like me. She wasn’t even as old as I was. She was beautiful, just like everyone said.
Another photograph showed a middle-aged but still stylish Alexander standing next to a young Walker dressed in what looked like his very first good suit. I looked at Walker, and he shrugged easily.