you,” replied Nicholas. Mr Hodgeman’s turn as a tour guide was quite convincing. Nicholas wondered if the man had to do it often for casual visitors, as part of what Uncle Edward would call “misdirection”.
The library was very impressive. Hodgeman closed the double doors behind them as Nick stared up at the high dome of the ceiling, which was painted to create the illusion of a storm at sea. It was quite disconcerting to look up at the waves and the tossing ships and the low scudding clouds. Below the dome, every wall was covered by tiers of shelves stretching up twenty or even twenty-five feet from the floor. Ladders ran on rails around the library, but no one was using them. The library was silent; two crescent-shaped couches in the centre were empty. The windows were heavily curtained with velvet drapes, but the gas lanterns above the shelves burned very brightly. The place looked like there should be people reading in it, or sorting books, or something. It did not have the dark, dusty air of a disused library.
“This way, sir,” said Hodgeman. He crossed to one of the shelves and reached up above his head to pull out an unobtrusive, dun-coloured tome, adorned only with the Dorrance coat of arms, a chain argent issuant from a chevron argent upon a field azure.
The book slid out halfway, then came no further.
Hodgeman looked up at it. Nick looked too.
“Is something supposed to happen?”
“It gets a bit stuck sometimes,” replied Hodgeman. He tugged on the book again. This time it came completely out. Hodgeman opened it, took a key from its hollowed-out pages, pushed two books apart on the shelf below to reveal a keyhole, inserted the key and turned it. There was a soft click, but nothing more dramatic. Hodgeman put the key back in the book and returned the volume to the shelf.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping this way,” Hodgeman said, leading Nick back to the centre of the library. The couches had moved aside on silent gears and two steel-encased segments of the floor had slid open, revealing a circular stone staircase leading down. Unlike the library’s brilliant white gaslights, it was lit by dull electric bulbs.
“This is all rather cloak-and-dagger,” remarked Nick as he headed down the steps with Hodgeman close behind him.
Hodgeman didn’t answer, but Nick was sure a disapproving glance had fallen on his back. The steps went down quite a long way, equivalent to at least three or four floors. They ended in front of a steel door with a covered spy hole. Hodgeman pressed a tarnished bronze bell button next to the door and a few seconds later the spy hole slid open.
“Sergeant Hodgeman with Mr Nicholas Sayre,” said Hodgeman.
The door swung open. There was no sign of a person behind it. Just a long, dismal, white-painted concrete corridor stretching off some thirty or forty yards to another steel door. Nick stepped through the doorway and some slight movement to his right made him look. There was an alcove there, with a desk, a red telephone on it, a chair and a guard—another plainclothes policeman type like Hodgeman, this time in shirtsleeves, with a revolver worn openly in a shoulder holster. He nodded at Nick but didn’t smile or speak.
“On to the next door, please,” said Hodgeman.
Nick nodded back at the guard and continued down the concrete corridor, his footsteps echoing just out of time with Hodgeman’s. He heard behind him the faint ting of a telephone being taken off its cradle and then the low voice of the guard, his words indistinguishable.
The procedure with the spy hole was repeated at the next door. There were two policemen behind this one, in a larger and better-appointed alcove. They had upholstered chairs and a leather-topped desk, though it had clearly seen better days.
Hodgeman nodded at the guards, who nodded back with slow deliberation. Nick smiled but got no smile in return.
“Through the left door, please,” said Hodgeman, pointing. There were two doors to choose from, both of unappealing, unmarked steel bordered with lines of knuckle-size rivets.
Hodgeman departed through the right-hand door as Nick pushed the left, but it swung open before he exerted any pressure. There was a much more cheerful room beyond, very much like Nick’s tutor’s study at Sunbere, with four big leather club chairs facing a desk, and off to one side a drinks cabinet with a large, black-enamelled radio sitting on top of it. There were three men standing around the cabinet.
The closest was a tall, expensively dressed, vacant-looking man with ridiculous sideburns whom Nick recognised as Dorrance. The second-closest was a fiftyish man in a hearty tweed coat with leather elbow patches. The skin of his thick neck hung over his collar and his fat face was much too big for the half-moon glasses that perched on his nose. Lurking behind these two was a nondescript, vaguely unhealthy-looking shorter man who wore exactly the same kind of suit as Hodgeman but in a much more untidy way, so he looked nothing like a policeman, serving or otherwise.
“Ah, here is Mr Nicholas Sayre,” said Dorrance. He stepped forward, shook Nick’s hand and ushered him to the centre of the room. “I’m Dorrance. Good of you to help us out. This is Professor Lackridge, who looks after all our scientific research.”
The fat-faced man extended his hand and shook Nick’s with little enthusiasm but a crushing grip. Somewhere in the very distant past, Nick surmised, Professor Lackridge must have been a rugby enthusiast. Or perhaps a boxer. Now sadly run to fat, but the muscle was still there underneath.
“And this is Mr Malthan, who is…an independent adviser on Old Kingdom matters.”
Malthan inclined his head and made a faint, repressed gesture with his hands, turning them towards his forehead as if to brush his almost nonexistent hair away. There was something about the action that triggered recognition in Nick.
“You’re from the Old Kingdom, aren’t you?” he asked. It was unusual for anyone from the Old Kingdom to be encountered this far south. Very few travellers could get authorisation from both King Touchstone and the Ancelstierran government to cross the Wall and the Perimeter. Even fewer would come any further south than Bain, which was at least a hundred and eighty miles north. They didn’t like it, as a rule. It didn’t feel right, Sam had always said.
But then, this little man didn’t have the Charter Mark on his forehead, which might make it more bearable for him to be on this side of the Wall. Nick instinctively brushed his dark forelock aside to show his Charter Mark, his fingers running across it. The Mark was quiescent under his touch, showing no sign of its connection to the magical powers of the Old Kingdom.
Malthan clearly saw the Mark, even if the others didn’t. He stepped a little closer to Nick and spoke in a breathy half whine.
“I’m a trader, out of Belisaere,” he said. “I’ve always done a bit of business with some folks in Bain, as my father did before me, and his father before him. We’ve a Permission from the King and a Permit from your government. I only come down here every now and then, when I’ve got something special-like that I know Mr Dorrance’s lot will be interested in, same as my old dad did for Mr Dorrance’s granddad—”
“And we pay very well for what we’re interested in, Mr Malthan,” Dorrance interrupted him. “Don’t we?”
“Yes, sir, you do. Only I don’t—”
“Malthan has been very useful,” interjected Professor Lackridge. “Though we must discount many of his, ahem, traveller’s tales. Fortunately he tends to bring us interesting artefacts in addition to his more colourful observations.”
