“I don’t believe it!” she said. “He’s done it again!”
“Stop kicking the dead man, Chloe,” said Big Aus. “Major bad karma. It isn’t really his fault, after all.”
Strange Chloe sniffed. “Makes me feel better.”
We gathered around Coffin Jobe’s body again, and waited and waited, but he didn’t come back. We finally did kneel down beside him and tried slapping his cheeks and calling his name, but there was no response. All the colour had dropped out of his face, and his open eyes were fixed and staring. Finally everyone looked at me, because I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers. So, very reluctantly, I pushed my Sight all the way open and Saw ghosts.
They were everywhere, hundreds of them, men and women and even children, walking on the ground and in the air, stumbling and gliding out of Traitor’s Gate, most still carrying the memories of their death wounds on their insubstantial bodies. Some had heads; some didn’t. The horrible trauma of their violent deaths had carried over into how they thought of their bodies. Some were still bleeding from wounds that would never heal, while others bore the torture marks of rack and wheel and fire. Traitors all, condemned to suffer long after their deaths.
They were screaming and howling and crying out, ghostly voices from far away, thick with rage and despair and horror at what had been done to them. And some wept, never to be comforted, troubled forever by their crimes and betrayals. They burst out of the high stone wall like maggots from a wound and crawled headfirst down the cracked gray stone like shimmering lizards.
Half a dozen of them had grabbed hold of Coffin Jobe’s soul and were preventing it from returning to his body. Jobe looked quite different in spirit: a large, even muscular form. The man he remembered being before his affliction ate away at him. He fought the ghosts fiercely, his soul blazing brightly on the night, stronger than it had any right to be, but still he was no match for the ghostly defenders of the Towers of London. They seemed more like beasts than men, tearing at his soul with hands like claws. And more ghosts were coming. Coffin Jobe looked right at me and cried out for help, and then the ghosts Saw me too.
A great astral shout went up as the ghosts all looked in my direction and Saw me Seeing them. The closest ones surged right for me, mouthing ancient curses, though their voices seemed to echo from miles or years away. Their eyes burned with more than human hatred and misery, their horrid forms radiating menace. I stood my ground and reached into my coat pocket for the weapon the Armourer had provided for just such a situation. I took the jade amulet out and showed it to the ghosts, and another great shout went up. They knew what it was.
I said the activating Word in a loud carrying voice, and the mellow bomb detonated in my hand. And for fifty feet straight ahead of me, the world was full of happy thoughts, good intentions, and positive emotions. Enforced mellowness saturating the night. I was immune, of course, but it hit the ghosts like a hurricane, driving them back. They just couldn’t stand the happiness. They fled, shrieking horribly. Some were crying. Even the ones holding on to Coffin Jobe fled back to the safety of the Towers, and he looked at me, smiled briefly, and then dropped back into his body. I shut down my Sight, slamming all my mental barriers back into place. I’d Seen enough for one night.
I bent down over Coffin Jobe as he started breathing again and surreptitiously hit him with a nerve pinch. He’d sleep for a good hour or more now. I smiled inwardly. One down, more or less unhurt. Three to go. I shut down the mellow bomb and slipped it back into my coat pocket.
“Well, at least he’s breathing again,” said the Dancing Fool just a bit dubiously. “I suppose that’s an improvement.”
“What, rather than not being even a little bit alive?” said Strange Chloe. “Yes, I’d say so. But he’s no use to us like that. Maybe I should . . .”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Big Aus said quickly. “Kicking the hell out of him does not help.”
“It helps me.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Big Aus said determinedly.
“I said, It helps me!”
“Can we hold back on the whole shouting thing?” I said. “My device is keeping us unseen and unheard, but only as long as you don’t push it. There’s no need to panic; just leave him here. I can See well enough to get us inside.”
The Dancing Fool looked at me suspiciously. “And you never mentioned this before, because?”
“Because we had Coffin Jobe,” I said. “And you know I don’t like to reveal my secrets unless I have to.”
Big Aus looked down at the unconscious Coffin Jobe. “I’m not sure I like the idea of just leaving him here . . .”
“We can pick him up again on the way out,” I said. “And besides, what’s the worst that could happen to him? Someone might kill him? I think he’s pretty used to that by now. So, are we going in or not?”
“We go in,” said Big Aus. “No way are we giving up, not when we’re so close. Show us the way, Shaman.”
I led them towards Traitor’s Gate, indicating which flagstones they should avoid treading on. We had to approach the gate by a slow, indirect route to avoid the protective magics floating unseen in the air. I made the others hop on one foot, crouch down and rise up, and even walk backwards. Mostly for my own amusement, but occasionally because there were real traps to be avoided. Coffin Jobe would never have been able to get them in. There were wards present that would have fried his mind just for looking at them and places where only knowledge of the right passWords kept us all alive. But eventually we came to Traitor’s Gate, and I led the way through the great stone maw that was the only entrance into the castle complex. A gateway into horror, death, and worse than death for all too many people. I kept my Sight strictly focused so I wouldn’t have to See things I didn’t want to, but even so my skin crawled all the way. It’s not easy walking through a place you know can kill you horribly in a hundred ways if you let your concentration drop.
I could still feel the screams, even if I couldn’t hear them.
Once through the gate and into the enclosed cobbled courtyard, it was all calm and quiet. The ghosts were outside, the Yeomen Warder patrols couldn’t see or hear us, and all that stood between us and the ravens was the locked door of their lodging house. I froze as I heard approaching footsteps and gestured urgently for the others to stand still and silent. Half a dozen Yeomen Warders came walking out of the shadows, chatting quietly. I cursed them silently. Dealing with the ghosts had taken longer than I’d thought, and the patrol had come around again. The bright red and gold uniforms looked quaintly old-fashioned, but the men inside them looked hard and competent and experienced. One of them had a raven perched on his shoulder and was feeding it grapes that looked very much like eyeballs.
“That’s a raven?” Strange Chloe said quietly. “That’s it? I was expecting something a bit more special. Not just an oversized crow!”
“Don’t show your ignorance,” I said firmly. “Ravens are the Rolls-Royce of the crow family.”
“Are you sure they can’t see or hear us?” said the Dancing Fool, shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.
“Are they rushing towards us, yelling terrible oaths and shooting at us with great big shooty things?” I said. “Then no, they can’t see or hear us.”
“Let the Yeomen open the lodging house for us,” said Big Aus. “And then we kill them all.”
“Ravens, or Yeomen Warders?” said the Dancing Fool.
“Just the ravens,” I said quickly. “Spill human blood in this place, and you’ll set off every alarm they’ve got.”
“No,” Big Aus said flatly. “Kill them all, ravens and men, and anyone else who gets in our way.”
I decided that this had gone far enough. I would have liked more time to take care of my friends before I had to take down Big Aus, but the secret of a field agent is to be flexible. So I pulled my concealing glamour back into my torc and let the others suddenly appear in the courtyard. The Yeomen Warders reacted immediately, producing really big guns out of nowhere and yelling for us to surrender. The Dancing Fool howled an ancient Scottish battle cry and charged the guards, moving so quickly I could barely follow him. He was in and among them in a moment, somehow never where their guns were pointing. With déjà fu, he could actually dodge bullets. I’d seen him do it.