“Why.” I take a step towards him. “Don’t. You.” Dr. Armstrong gestures at a smear of darkness near his feet. I take another step towards him and realize the grass is damp. I’ve just trodden in something squishy, and it smells horrible, fecal. “Know?”
“Two class 6 or higher entities faced off at a range of five meters right here. You’re standing in all that’s left of one of them.” The light glints silver off his spectacle lenses. “Your wife was lying right … there.” He points to one end of the mess. “Her ward was broken. According to Control’s diagnostic monitoring she put her phone into Hail Mary mode just before the incident, but it would have been about as much use as an umbrella in a hurricane. Forecasting Ops projected that if this particular fork in the decision tree came to pass—it was only an eighteen percent probability—she’d be a greasy smear on the lawn.”
I could strangle him. Fuck, I could eat his soul, except it’s probably stringy and tastes of cardboard and spreadsheets. “Is she all right?” I ask softly.
The SA takes a deep breath. “She’s on the second floor in room 309—Schiller’s guest suite—having a long, hot shower, according to Dr. Schwartz. Cassie is looking after her. She’s a bit shaken, unquote, and she’s had a very bad day. When we finish here—”
“What—”
“I want you to go to her.” He glances round. “Walk with me,” he says again.
This time, I don’t put up a fight.
“I made a bargain with the devil,” Dr. Armstrong says as he picks his way across the blood-drenched grass in the direction of the car park, “and part of the package deal is my soul. Your wife”—his voice falters—“was going to be my successor eventually, assuming that she came through all right and passed all the tests. And assuming she did indeed survive whatever happened out here.” He raises a hand before I can interrupt. “The person upstairs thinks she’s your wife, Mr. Howard, the way you think you’re still just Bob Howard, a bit of a lad who likes messing with computers and having a laugh over a pint of beer. But I want you also to be very certain, at the same time, that she has been at ground zero of a nonsurvivable event. Now, there are several various and sundry reasons—and some of them are even relatively innocent—why she might have come through; but it’s also a remote possibility that she died, the way you died six years ago in Brookwood Cemetery—and I’m trusting you to work out what happened. You know what it’s like to try and pay no attention to the papery whisper of the tantalizingly appetizing souls around you, so I trust you to go easy on her, but the organization needs to know. Because I don’t believe she survived because her phone absorbed the entire force of the blast. She placed the Pale Violin beyond human reach some time ago and its master has subsequently shown no sign of interest in her, and I don’t think the Black Pharaoh would have saved her out of the goodness of his heart.”
“The Black”—I blank for a moment as my brain reboots—“the Black Pharaoh?”
“I said I made a deal with the devil, didn’t I?” The SA shrugs. “It was Him, or the Sleeper: who would you rather work for?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “That’s treason—”
“Only if it be unsuccessful,” he says tonelessly. “The fix is in. The fix was in even before you noticed there was a problem in need of a solution. That’s why I had to keep you in the dark, in the sandbox, for so long. We work under oath to the authority vested in the Crown: but you didn’t ask which Crown the new oath and warrant cards are sworn to. The PM’s dead, Bob. Half the cabinet are brain-wormed castrati thanks to Schiller. Our biggest traditional ally appears to be in the throes of a takeover by something so much worse than the Sleeper that Schiller chose to flee and make his stand here. And the agency is in ruins. What else would you expect the Board to do?” Gravel crunches beneath my boots as we cross onto the car park. There’s a big-ass pavilion on the lawn and I see ambulances with flashing lights loading up stretcher cases from inside it. “We have to be realistic. Pick fights we can win.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Iris.” I reflexively rub my right upper arm, the patch that still aches in bad weather.
“Speaking of whom.”
“Oh, you didn’t … please tell me you didn’t?”
“Sorry, Bob, but that’s how it’s going to be, now. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.”
A middle-aged woman in a black suit is heading our way. I recognize her and I feel a sick sense of dread. “Michael, Bob.” She gives me a small, tight-lipped smile. “The Leader is ready to see you now,” she tells the SA. To me: “It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I won’t hold any grudges if you agree not to.”
I look at Iris. I used to like her, once. That was before she sacrificed a baby in front of me. “Life’s too short,” I say, taking care to mind my words.
“I see.” She straightens her back and turns away. “He’s waiting, Michael,” she upbraids the SA, and I experience a sudden nauseating perspective flip: Iris is bossing the Senior Auditor around? Is this what we’re coming to, the shape of things under the reign of the Black Pharaoh?
“He’ll deal with you later,” she tells me, offhand. “I expect you’ll want to visit your wife first.” Then she stalks away in the direction of the tent, clearly taking charge.
Dr. Armstrong looks at me.
“Why?” I ask again.
He shrugs, almost embarrassed. “She’s a good manager,” he says, almost defensively. Lowering his voice: “If the Board had not authorized and I refused to cooperate with this, Dr. O’Brien and I would both be dead, along with the rest of the Auditors. Cassie Brewer would be dead too, and the Host unbound, and the government in the hands of the Sleeper’s Inner Temple by sunrise tomorrow. You and Johnny might have survived, if you had the wits to get on board the first flight out and not look back. This was much too close for comfort, Mr. Howard. We could have kept fighting, but we would have had to win every battle; they only have to win once. The Board voted to throw in their lot with a lesser evil so that a new binding geas could be installed. We just have to hope and trust that the lesser evil is in fact less deadly than the alternative.”
Behind him an older woman in a purple frock is picking her way towards us. “You there! I say—”
Dr. Armstrong turns towards her. “Can I help you?”
“You’re”—she stops and peers at me—“I saw you on television,” she announces, in much the same tone she might telegraph the discovery of a wasps’ nest in her attic. “Weren’t you disbanded? Home Office,” she adds.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, we were disbanded.”
“But not for long,” the SA remarks drily. “Bob, you handle this; I have to report to our new Master.” He walks away, whistling; he’s so far off-key that it takes me a few seconds to recognize “My Way”: I did what I had to do …