tea and eating doorstop-size sandwiches. Hodgeman was the fifth, and clearly still on duty, as unlike the others he had not removed his coat.
“Sergeant Hodgeman,” Lackridge called out rather too loudly. “Please escort Mr Sayre upstairs and have one of your other officers take Malthan to Dorrance Halt and see he gets on the next northbound train.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Hodgeman. He hesitated for a moment, then with a curiously unpleasant emphasis, which Nick would have missed if he hadn’t been paying careful attention, he said, “Constable Ripton, you see to Malthan.”
“Just a moment,” said Nick. “I’ve had a thought. Malthan can take a message from me over to my uncle, the Chief Minister, at the Golden Sheaf. Then someone from his staff can take Malthan to the nearest station.”
“One of my men would happily take a message for you, sir,” said Sergeant Hodgeman. “And Dorrance Halt is much closer than the Golden Sheaf. That’s all of twenty miles away.”
“Thank you,” said Nick. “But I want the Chief Minister to hear Malthan directly about some matters relating to the Old Kingdom. That won’t be a problem, will it? Malthan, I’ll just write something out for you to take to Garran, my uncle’s principal secretary.”
Nick took out his notebook and gold propelling pencil and casually leaned against the wall. They all watched him, the five policeman with studied disinterest masking hostility, Lackridge with more open aggression and Malthan with the sad eyes of the doomed.
Nick began to whistle tunelessly through his teeth, pretending to be oblivious to the pent-up institutional aggression focused upon him. He wrote quickly, sighed and pretended to cross out what he’d written, then ripped out the page, palmed it and started to write again.
“Very hard to concentrate the mind in these underground chambers of yours,” Nick said to Lackridge. “I don’t know how you get anything done. Expect you’ve got cockroaches too…maybe rats…I mean, what’s that?”
He pointed with the pencil. Only Malthan and Lackridge turned to look. The policemen kept up their steady stare. Nick stared back, but he felt a slight fear begin to swim about his stomach. Surely they wouldn’t risk doing anything to Edward Sayre’s nephew? And yet…they were clearly planning to imprison Malthan at the least, or perhaps something worse. Nick wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Only a shadow, but I bet you do have rats. Stands to reason. Underground. Tea and biscuits about,” Nick said as he ripped out the second page. He folded it, wrote “Mr Thomas Garran” on the outside and handed it to Malthan, at the same time stepping across to shield his next action from everyone except Lackridge, whom he stumbled against.
“Oh, sorry!” he exclaimed, and in that moment of apparently lost balance, he slid the palmed first note into Malthan’s still open hand.
“I…ah…still not quite recovered from the events at Forwin Mill,” Nick mumbled, as Lackridge suppressed an oath and jumped back.
The policemen had stepped forward, apparently only to catch him if he fell. Sergeant Hodgeman had seen him stumble before. They were clearly suspicious but didn’t know what he had done. He hoped.
“Bit unsteady on my pins,” continued Nick. “Nothing to do with drink, unfortunately. That might make it seem worthwhile. Now I must get on upstairs and dress for dinner. Who’s taking Malthan over to the Golden Sheaf?”
“I am, sir. Constable Ripton.”
“Very good, Constable. I trust you’ll have a pleasant evening drive. I’ll telephone ahead to make sure that my uncle’s staff are expecting you and have dinner laid on.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Ripton woodenly. Again, if Nick hadn’t been paying careful attention, he might have missed the young constable flicking his eyes up and down and then twice towards Sergeant Hodgeman—a twitch Nick interpreted as a call for help from the junior police officer, looking for Hodgeman to tell him how to satisfy his immediate masters as well as insure himself against the interference of any greater authority.
“Get on with it then, Constable,” said Hodgeman, his words as ambiguous as his expression.
“Let’s all get upstairs,” Nick said with false cheer he dredged up from somewhere. “After you, Sergeant. Malthan, if you wouldn’t mind walking with me, I’ll see you to your car. Got a couple of questions about the Old Kingdom I’m sure you can answer.”
“Anything, anything,” babbled Malthan. He came so close, Nick thought the little trader was going to hug him. “Let us get out from under the earth. With that—”
“Yes, I agree,” interrupted Nick. He gestured towards the door and met Sergeant Hodgeman’s stare. All the policemen moved closer. Casual steps. A foot slid forward here, a diagonal pace towards Nick.
Lackridge coughed something that might have been “Dorrance”, scuttled to the door leading back to the tunnels, opened it just wide enough to admit his bulk and squeezed through. Nick thought about calling him back but instantly dismissed the idea. He didn’t want to show any weakness.
But with Lackridge gone, there was no longer a witness. Nick knew Malthan didn’t count, not to anyone in Department Thirteen.
Sergeant Hodgeman pushed one heavy-booted foot forward and advanced on Nick and Malthan till his face was inches away from Nick’s. It was an intimidating posture, long beloved of sergeants, and Nick knew it well from his days in the school cadets.
Hodgeman didn’t say anything. He just stared, a fierce stare that Nick realised hid a mind calculating how far he could go to keep Malthan captive, and what he might be able to do to Nicholas Sayre without causing trouble.
“My uncle is the Chief Minister,” Nick whispered very softly. “My father a member of the Moot. Marshal Harngorm is my mother’s uncle. My second cousin is the Hereditary Arbiter himself.”
“As you say, sir,” said Hodgeman loudly. He stepped back, the sound of his heel on the concrete snapping through the tension that had risen in the room. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
That was a warning of consequences to come, Nick knew. But he didn’t care. He wanted to save Malthan, but most of all at that moment he wanted to get out under the sun again. He wanted to stand above ground and put as much earth and concrete and as many locked doors as possible between himself and the creature in the case.
Yet even when the afternoon sunlight was softly warming his face, Nick wasn’t much comforted. He watched Constable Ripton and Malthan leave in a small green van that looked exactly like the sort of vehicle that would be used to dispose of a body in a moving picture about the fictional Department Thirteen. Then, while lurking near the footmen’s side door, he saw several gleaming, expensive cars drive up to disgorge their gleaming, expensive passengers. He recognised most of the guests. None were friends. They were all people he would formerly have described as frivolous and now just didn’t care about at all. Even the beautiful young women failed to make more than a momentary impact. His mind was elsewhere.
Nick was thinking about Malthan and the two messages he carried. One, the obvious one, was addressed to Thomas Garran, Uncle Edward’s principal private secretary. It said:
Garran
Uncle will want to talk to the bearer (Malthan, an Old Kingdom trader)
