Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (3 page)

T
here are many King’s Heads in London. But for Adam there would really be only one. It was the cheerful pub of that name down one of the many alleys off Fleet Street, and was usually full of journalists spending freely on doing what journalists do best. In the secret square where the King hid his Head, a board declared that this was ‘an authentic pub, lunch served’.

Adam had been sitting in a corner nursing a pint of beer for half an hour, and now eyed those same lunches eagerly. He was small and slightly podgy, with clammy hands, a freckled face and ginger hair. The thought of meeting Sam made him nervous and he was finding it hard to keep still.

When the door was indeed darkened by Sam’s black shape and Sam came in shaking rain from his coat and headed arrow-straight across the room, Adam saw in him a man going to war. There was the travel bag, and the oh-so-convenient coat with at least three pockets that only special eyes could see. The coat’s sleeves were baggy, and as Sam took it off Adam observed that his jumper also hung loose.

So. He was ready to draw the weapon no one expected, hidden in its sheath, for the first time in years of respite. And yes, across his back was a narrow plastic wrap, slightly longer than a bag of golf clubs. Full-out war, then.

All of which made him more nervous, so that as Sam sat down and greeted him it was all he could do not to burble, ‘
I
didn’t do it!’ Sam inspired in Adam, and in spirits like him, an awe that those who didn’t know The Truth, capital T, capital T, would never understand.

‘I don’t suppose you know anything?’

‘I asked around last night. Had a chat with some people in Devon.’

‘Go on.’ Sam wasn’t interested in the how of the matter. For now he just wanted to establish the what and the why.

‘It isn’t nice.’ Adam told what he’d heard in a night’s frantic telephoning. A neighbour claimed to have seen a man go into Freya’s house the afternoon before she was found dead. But he hadn’t left for several hours, according to the neighbour, who claimed she’d been gardening. She was evidently the kind of woman, recently retired, who liked to stick her nose into other people’s business.

‘And she described the man as dark-haired, tall. Elegant.’

‘Dark hair?’

‘Very dark. And extremely dark eyes. That struck her even from the next garden.’

‘Damn.’ Sam caught Adam’s satirical look and added, ‘I do have an alibi, in case anyone thinks it’s me. And I am not “elegant”.’

As a cue for what he termed ‘the grisly bit’, Adam frowned. ‘Whoever killed her knew her very well. And she must have been extremely pleased to see him. That is, before he stabbed her with a dragon-bone blade. What I mean is, whoever killed her did it in the bedroom.’

‘Someone she knew as a lover?’ Sam asked.

‘Almost certainly. At least we know it wasn’t one of her lot, since he didn’t have blond hair and blue eyes.’

No
, thought Sam.
Dark hair and dark eyes put him in the younger set. One of my lot. So who would she know well enough not to suspect? Enough to love, even? But then, Freya’s loved so many. Even me, in her own quaint way. Prohibited love always had a certain attraction for her.

Privately Sam began listing Freya’s many lovers in his family.
Primes – apart from me: Seth, Jehovah, Thor, Helios, Apollo. Seconds: Gawain, Jason, Mark. Two of whom are dead. Thirds: Rhys,
Alrim
, Saul. Numerous others who don’t know who it was they loved. And after that I lose touch. Shit, with that on my record
– remembering the raven –
no wonder I’m under surveillance. The only prime around with dark hair, dark eyes, a reputation for swordsmanship and a ruthless inclination towards survival. Seth and Jehovah have my colouring – but why would they kill Freya? Whereas I
–
I’m the ideal scapegoat. And even if I don’t have a motive, I’ve enough history for people to think they
perceive
one
.

But I wasn’t there. I can prove it.
 

‘It’s a narrow field of suspects, but a hard one to search. Do we know where any of them are?’

‘Rhys, Alrim and Saul are all growing old, being third generation. One of them’s seventy and he’s already going grey.’ Adam gave a disregarding laugh, as though grey hair were something he only imagined. ‘As the surviving second, Mark is still under Jehovah’s firm wing.’

Sam swore. ‘That makes him about as accessible as opening a can of solid diamond with a Swiss army knife.’

‘There are others who fit the description, you know. I don’t have records on many of them. But there have been a few who’ve had it off with her.’

‘List them, then,’ Sam said abruptly. Hearing all those names duly recited, he felt sickened. He hated Adam’s crude turn of phrase even more; its injustice rankled. Freya was love, Freya was life. No one could be surprised that she’d had as a lover just about everyone who came near her. And the coward who’d killed her hadn’t even had the guts to use his own weapon, instead of dragon bone. Freya had trusted him, too. Freya had never learnt not to trust.

‘When’s the funeral?’

‘Tomorrow evening. Family’s wasting no time in getting her back up to Heaven. Her mother is furious.’

Sam rose to go, but Adam shot out his arm to restrain him. He didn’t actually touch Sam – he was too intimidated for that. ‘It’s a closed funeral. Old school only. Just the Valhalla bunch.’

Sam was silent as he slung the bag on his back. Turning to leave, he merely said, ‘You’ve been very helpful, Adamarus.’

The train journey to Devon was a long one. On such a short winter’s day Sam didn’t expect to arrive before nightfall. The carriage was full: tired-looking business people in suits, a noisy group of students, a mother and her two complaining children. Resisting the temptation to go first class and avoid the incessant whining of children, he sat facing the sunset and watched without seeing as the English landscape rushed past. Large wet fields between the thinning suburbs. The odd farmhouse, brick and timber, then stone, in which the lights burned early. Then the outrage of other cities, huge factories forcing billows of chemical smoke from their metal chimneys. The vast car parks by the stations, the large neighbouring Safeway’s and Tesco’s. The empty sidings. The burrows torn in the embankments by rabbits.

Sam saw all of this, but registered nothing. His mind was fixed on Freya, and his memories.

Close, were you?
 

I liked her, certainly.
 

He’d known her back in the old days; and that was how he’d always remember her. She carried a staff around which ivy coiled, and her long fair hair was crowned with more ivy that twined around her brow. The kindest and most beautiful of women, standing by a river singing her songs to a perfect world.

But when he met her afterwards, she wasn’t in that world, and neither was he. It was when the war raging in Heaven was at its worst. And if there was war in Heaven, whether between traditional combatants like Valhalla and Olympus or Elysium and Arcadia, or between such new and unexpected factions as Nirvana or Shangri-La, you could be sure of repercussions on Earth. Sometimes it was simply a matter of war in Heaven tapping the resources of Earth – weapons, manpower – in order to eliminate their enemies’ allies there as well as in Heaven itself. More often it was down to basic human empathy. Mortals’ awareness was tragically underdeveloped, but still they could
sense
it when the creatures of Heaven were fighting – the deaths of all those angels, avatars, valkyries and seraphim echoed back to Earth, and in their unconscious way the humans knew. And they also fought. It was infectious. Regrettably, too, what they lacked in Heavenly magic they made up for in sheer destructive ingenuity.

A siren was wailing. The streets were empty, save for rats running through the collapsed buildings. The sky was full of smoke and he could hear the rumble of planes and the distant thud of bombs.

Why had he come here? With the whole world to wander, why here? What was Sam Linnfer with his boyish smile, aka one Sebastian Teufel, doing in ruined Berlin at the height of the 1944 air raids?

He knew the answer already. He’d come because he needed to convince himself. He’d come because he’d seen what one country had done to so many millions of people, and wanted to reassure himself that this place was still human. He’d come because, after four years of fighting in France for the French, he’d seen the tables turn and felt bound to help the losing side. He’d come because, deep inside, some part of him that still wandered in that perfect world back in the good old times had known that this was just a shadow of the war in Heaven. It was his responsibility to lighten this shadow in whatever way he could.

The air raid receded and the people of Berlin began to come up out of their shelters. In scenes like these, not so long ago he’d helped dig bodies out from the ruins of homes in Dover and London, or kept injured people alive with a touch of his magic. Even if their sufferings weren’t due to him, they were the fault of his family and therefore a responsibility passed down to him. Helping these people was what he saw as duty. Sam had been neither born nor bred to this ideal. But, like several other human words, it helped justify actions prompted in him merely by impulse.

He came upon a crew of firefighters struggling before a burning ruin. They were trying to work their hose before the blaze caught the few nearby houses left intact. Sam stood across the road, gazing at the fire, his eyes distant. As he stared the flames seemed to shrink. Eventually there were just a few burning embers, which died as he clenched his fists. The whole process had taken him ten minutes of concentration.

Ten minutes of standing exposed and dumb.

‘Papers!’

A Brownshirt officer, uniformed, his shiny buttons silly in the ruined street. He was holding out his hand imperiously. Sam dug around and produced his papers. The man flicked through them, looking ready for a fight on any pretext. A single flaw in Sam’s documents, one look out of place, and Sam might be forced to get mythological. Which would be embarrassing.

But the papers, as Sam had known, were perfect. Unfortunately though, his look of dowdy submission was badly out of practice, and he peered at the Brownshirt with unabashed curiosity.

Sure enough, this made the man angry.

‘What are you doing here, just staring?’

‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’

Another voice. ‘You can come with me.’

The speaker was blonde, tall and wearing a long coat unscathed by any of the hardship around her. But this wasn’t what attracted Sam’s attention. He’d long ago learnt that outside appearance was only useful for mundane matters. Mostly what counted was the glow he might perceive on the inside. And here he was, seeing a prime in the same street, in the same town. He couldn’t quite believe it.

Freya had zapped the charm up to full voltage, and it quickly won out. Within a minute she had taken the unresisting Sam by the arm and was dragging him down the street. ‘Where’s the nearest Portal?’ she asked quietly.

‘Bomb dropped on it last night.’

‘We’re in danger – not from humans. There are people here fighting another war.’

Sam felt his guts churn. ‘What are we talking about?’

‘There are five Firedancers on my trail. Now that Valhalla’s fallen, this was the only place I could think of where Firedancers stood a higher chance of dying than me… What are
you
doing here?’

‘I’m everywhere in this shadow world. Isn’t that the story? These Firedancers – has anyone bothered to send some after me?’

‘You don’t merit the attention. The battle is for Heaven, not Earth.’

There was the clatter of a roof tile falling. A sound common enough, but Sam’s head snapped up; Freya too looked quickly around. A shadow disappeared over a rooftop and suddenly they felt very alone. They were some way off now from the wail of fire engines, and the voices of people clambering out of their cellars to discover that everything they’d called their own was destroyed. Close by was a shattered railway station, carriages still at the platforms with all their glass blown out. A tape surrounding the skeletal building declared, ‘Danger – Unexploded Bomb’.

‘They’re in the station,’ whispered Sam.

‘They don’t know what you are. They’re on your territory now.’

He smiled wryly. ‘You expect me to be your knight errant?’

She put a hand up to her hair, fastened in a tight bun, and pulled from it a narrow stick. The bun stayed in place, supported by other means, but looking at the stick the word that came to Sam’s mind was: needle. Its end was gleaming and seemed very sharp. The thing was made out of a dark, dark metal, and he had a feeling it would be poisoned.

‘Will you?’ asked Freya softly.

He made a flicking movement with his right hand, and there was a slim, silver dagger in it. Another gesture and it was gone. ‘Why should I help you?’ he asked, eyes not leaving her face.

‘Because I’m not one of those who’s harmed you. Because you know that Firedancers are only used by the bad ones among us. Because it’s cowardice, sending Firedancers against a prime. Because no one from Family has spoken to you for far too long.’