16

Max pulled the ivy around the gargoyle’s neck, adjusting it until the soul chain was hidden. “If you don’t move too much and keep most of your body behind the guttering it should be out of sight.”

“This is going to be brilliant,” it replied.

“Don’t get carried away. As soon as we spot one of them you need to tone it down, and when they get close you need to keep still so they use the Sniffer. When he tries to climb up then you need to use the–”

“I know, I know,” it replied. “Don’t worry, it’s going to work.” It took the Opener from Max and put it between its teeth.

“I’m not worried,” Max said but the gargoyle was already climbing up the wall. When it reached the top it leaped across to the top of the portico and up to the guttering at the corner of the church. Once he was satisfied the gargoyle was in position, the Opener tucked away and the soul chain still hidden, Max hid in the doorway across the narrow London street. It had taken hours to find the right place but once he had it had been no trouble to bring the gargoyle through from Aquae Sulis and formulate the plan. Now it was just a matter of waiting for an Arbiter to turn up so he could be tracked back to the corrupted Chapter’s cloister.

“Hey!” the gargoyle shouted at a young man walking by. “Hey you, short-arse! Hey, look at me when I’m trying to insult you!”

The man stopped and looked at the church. The gargoyle waved and the man jolted.

“Yes, it’s me,” the gargoyle yelled. “What are you wearing? Is that supposed to be a hat? You put your Mum’s tea cosy on instead.”

As expected, the young man pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and began filming as the gargoyle blew raspberries at him. “Are you another actor?” he asked. “Are you from the same people who did the Nelson stunt?”

“Nelson?” The gargoyle pulled a face as if he’d just smelt a rotten egg. “Nelson was an amateur. No charisma. I’m so much more interesting than him.”

“Don’t take it too far,” Max whispered under his breath.

“That’s so cool,” the man said. “I’m posting this right now.”

“Yeah, you do that,” the gargoyle said. “Make me famous.”

Max hoped the ivy was doing a good enough job. Whilst it wasn’t ideal having the gargoyle made famous on the mundane virtual library network, it wasn’t as if anyone in the Nether used it and besides, he could hardly take the gargoyle out and about in Mundanus anyway. There was no other way to find one of the London Arbiters so efficiently.

Then he saw Faulkner at the end of the street. He remembered him from the cafe on Judd Street. Max got the bug ready, activating it so the claws sprang open, ready to catch onto the fabric of the Arbiter’s coat. He had a spare in case he missed, but he still needed Faulkner to get closer.

“Have you seen this?” the first man asked and then looked back at the gargoyle, disturbed by Faulkner’s manner. “He was saying a lot more a few minutes ago.”

Faulkner got out a mobile phone and made a call as he walked down the street to stand next to the other spectator. The gargoyle pulled faces for a minute or so, then stopped when Faulkner ended his call.

“Aw, show’s over,” the young man said. “I’m going to see if I can find the wires or the battery. No one knows how they did Nelson, maybe–”

Faulkner shook his head. “I wouldn’t if I were you.” He flashed an ID at the young man. “Move along.”

“Bloody hell, it’s just a bit of fun,” the man said. “The filth are all fascists these days!” He ran off.

As predicted, Faulkner got out a Sniffer and began winding it. He was less than ten feet away. Max placed the bug on the palm of his hand, lined it up as best he could and then flicked it with his fore finger. It landed just above the belt of his coat and crawled away beneath the waistband, geared as it was to seek out a dark crease upon landing. Satisfied, Max gave the gargoyle a curt nod and slipped away, limping without using his stick so the sound wouldn’t alert the Arbiter. By the time he was in the next street he knew the gargoyle had opened a Way in the church roof and escaped into the Nether driveway of Mr Ekstrand’s house whilst Faulkner had been trying to find a gate into the churchyard. Mission accomplished.

 

Sam pulled the iron out of the coals and laid it on the anvil, then, pausing only to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he struck it with the hammer. He’d barely slept, he’d hardly eaten but when he worked the iron he didn’t feel it. It was the only thing he could bear to do as he waited for Lord Iron to come back from his latest trip.

The strikes upon the red metal rang through the forge and he felt each one through the gloves, up his arm and into his chest. His blows were hammering the blunt stump into a flatter point, “drawing down” as the blacksmith had taught him. He didn’t have a particular piece in mind; he just wanted to practise the basics. He’d made a few curls, slit a few pieces and made some holes, each time the technique felt easier. At school he’d barely been able to wield a coping saw in woodworking class yet here he was, doing something totally practical with relative ease. His teacher wouldn’t recognise him.

“I hardly recognised you,” said a voice at the door. “I thought you were Bob.”

Sam left the hammer where it had last struck and looked at Lord Iron. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Iron was dressed in his usual Savile Row suit, looking effortlessly immaculate as he always did. His shoes shone against the muddy stones at the threshold. “Looks like you’re well on the way to becoming a blacksmith. Bob said you’d taken to it well.”

“Seems I’m good at something after all,” Sam replied, thrusting the metal’s tip back into the coals. “Shame it’s not two hundred years ago. How was the trip?”

“Very good. Made some progress with a European partner and scoped out some–” He smiled. “You’re not interested in all of that.”

Sam just worked the bellows and watched the fire, not knowing how to start to say what he needed to.

“I understand you went back to Bath. Are you satisfied with the way everything’s been handled?”

He nodded.

“If the house doesn’t sell in the next week I’ll get a team of stagers in. They dress the house neutrally, apparently it makes it easier for people to imagine living there themselves.”

Sam pulled out the metal and laid it on the anvil. He beat it again and tried to ignore the fact he was being watched.

“Drawing down,” Iron said. “It looks like you’ve been doing it for weeks rather than days. You really do have a gift. What about the other six?”

“Six what?”

“Bob must have taught you the seven core skills; splitting, curls–”

“Yeah, all those.”

When he paused to see his progress, Iron came closer to inspect the work. “This is the only craft that every other craft depends upon, and the only one where functionality and art are truly fused.” When Sam didn’t say anything, Iron carried on. “People used to fear blacksmiths, you know, as much as they needed them.”

“Bob told me about that.”

“Good. It’s important to know these things.”

The metal had cooled too much to be worked any more. Sam picked it up to put back into the fire, but changed his mind and lay it back down on the anvil. “I know more about you, too. I know what your business does, all over the world.”

“I’ve never hidden that from you. I gave you that tour–”

“You gave me a tour of the clean bits, the offices and the paper work and the fucking PowerPoint presentations. You didn’t tell me about the stuff you’re doing in the Congo and the things you’ve been covering up in South Africa and Chile. The acid rain and thousands of hectares of land you’re just fucking up forever to make a quick buck. You make out that you’re refined and the whole time you’re living off the blood and deaths of people and nature, and helping your mates to cover up their shit too. I know all of it.”

Iron appeared to be unmoved. “They say childhood ends when you understand the ugliness of the world.”

“Don’t fucking patronise me! Your company has committed atrocities that make BP and Shell look like humanitarian organisations! And don’t tell me your company is so huge that you don’t know everything that happens at the lower levels because I won’t believe it.”

“I do know. I know everything that happens, in ways you can’t possibly appreciate. Yet.”

“So you just don’t give a shit as long as the wheels keep turning, is that it? Profit is more important than people, right?”

“It’s not the profit.”

“Oh, so you get a sense of personal satisfaction from being the most evil man in the world? The obscene wealth is just a bonus.”

Iron looked down at the foot of the anvil. There was no defensiveness, no anger, just… Sam couldn’t work it out. Resignation? Was he so at ease with himself and the awful things he did that he felt nothing?

“There’s a lake in Chile that’s so acidic everything in it has died and the land for miles around it can’t support any life. There are conditions in a mine in South Africa that are so bad the average life expectancy of the men who work there – work for you! – is less than forty. Doesn’t any of that make you feel anything?”

“It makes me feel incredibly sad.”

Sam chucked the hammer to one side and jabbed him in the chest with his gloved finger, leaving a black smudge on his tie. “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t, more like.”

“No, Sam, I’m literally incapable of stopping all of this. I’ve wanted to, for a long time, but it’s… just what I am.”

Sam gripped the metal he’d been working tight. “That’s such bullshit. You’re incapable of picking up the phone and saying, ‘Let’s pay those people proper wages and, while we’re at it, let’s spend some of these profits on cleaning up the mess we’ve made.’”

Iron shook his head. “Have you ever known anyone with an addiction? You can find them over a toilet, throwing up their guts, losing everything in their life and say to them, ‘Just stop drinking’ and it’s simply impossible for them. Even when it’s obvious it’s killing them.”

“Alcoholics can recover,” Sam said, the metal rattling against the anvil as he struggled to rein in his anger.

“Neugent killed Leanne, but I was the one who made him into the thing he is now.” Iron stared at the anvil. “I do that. I’m poisonous without even trying to be. Everything I’ve ever done in my life has been part of this… this natural talent. When I became Lord Iron it was amplified – the company machine grew and took over until it propagated itself endlessly. It isn’t just me, it’s the people I’ve hired, the ethos of the companies I own. I’m the root of all of it and it won’t change just because I have a moment of clarity.”

Sam didn’t know what to make of what he was saying. Was it depression? Self-pity? Or was there something else involved, something unbelievable like the Fae and that world they lived in? Questions and worries surfaced again about the wedding rings and the railing at the park and the plugs that formed in his wounds, but he didn’t want to lose focus. “Of course you can change it. We could go to the house, right now, and you could close the business down.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Sam lifted the metal and struck the anvil with it, the dull clang filling the forge. “People are dying, people are being murdered and poisoned by the only air they have to breathe and you have to take some responsibility for it!”

“I am,” Iron said, looking at him in the eye again. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Eh?”

Iron lifted the tip of the metal, ending its vibrating song, and inspected its tip as Sam wondered whether to pull it away from him and whack him over the head with it. “I’ve tried so many times to find the right one and they end up killing the best people around them. Neugent was the last. I realised it was all my fault – when I got too involved the poison in me would leech into them. Just like CoFerrum, just like everything else in my life. But I have the solution now, and that’s why I’ve brought you here and tested you and had you taught. Because you can take on the mantle and do something better with it.” He smiled. “Everything’s going to be all right, Sam.”

And then he threw himself forwards, still holding the tip of the metal and directing it to his chest. It pierced him before Sam even fully registered what he was doing and he tried to let go of the other end of it with a horrified cry. His hand didn’t co-operate, as if his fingers and palm were magnetised to it. Sam staggered backwards as Iron pushed himself forwards, further onto the spike of metal, an awful wet gurgling erupting from his throat as bubbles of blood emerged from his mouth and died on his lips.

Sam hit the wall of the forge, the blunt end of the metal now against his own chest, Iron’s eyes still fixed on him and now only inches away from his own. He could smell the blood and felt it spray onto his face as Iron coughed. The metal felt hot again, even through his glove, and he feared his own heart was going to be pierced as the pressure built.

Iron’s smile was fading and his skin looked like it was made of wax. Sam struggled to breathe as the heat from the metal penetrated the thick leather apron, then his shirt, and flooded into his chest. He shook violently and felt a warm liquid running down his leg as the last rattling sigh escaped from Iron’s lips and he became a dead weight at the other end of the shaft. As he collapsed Sam was pulled down with him, still unable to release the metal. Iron’s blood ran down the shaft and over the gloves, dripping off the cuffs and onto his wrists as Sam heaved his chest up and down, feeling like the air was drowning him.