Live and Let Drood

of it and responded entirely in kind. There was something about the second voice that I found sort of familiar, though I couldn’t place it. I concentrated on what they were saying.
    “…I have always been well served by traitors,” said Crow Lee.
    “I’m not just any traitor,” said the second voice. “I am the worm at the heart of the Droods, the viper they have nursed at their bosom. Do you really think I’d bow down to the likes of you?”
    “You will if you know what’s good for you,” Crow Lee said complacently. “I am the power here.”
    “And I am a Drood. The First Drood! I am older than your power, little magician. I have lived lifetimes and seen civilisations rise and fall.”
    “But you’re not a Drood anymore, are you? You don’t have your armour…though Eddie does. Isn’t that odd?”
    “Odder than you realise,” said the traitor. “He shouldn’t be able to access his armour with the other-dimensional intruder dismissed along with the Hall. We’re going to have to make Eddie tell us where he got his armour from.”
    “We?” said Crow Lee, lazily. “What’s in it for me?”
    “I will have his armour. I want it. And then you’ll have a Drood in full armour as your ally. I want that armour!”
    “Well, you can’t have it,” said Crow Lee. “I’m going to strip it off Eddie and then destroy it. Then the Droods really will be gone from this world.…Of course, I might decide to keep it for myself. You know how much I enjoy playing with new toys.…Where did you get that?”
    “From the Armageddon Codex,” said the traitor. “Where all the Droods’ forbidden weapons are kept. I took it with me before I left the Hall, before it was sent away. It wasn’t difficult. I was there when they built the Codex. I helped design the locking systems. Who has a better right to this weapon than I?”
    “What better weapon for a traitor,” said Crow Lee, “than Oath Breaker?”
    I couldn’t help but react to that, at the thought of one of our most dangerous weapons in the hands of a traitor. I must have made some kind of noise, because Mr. Stab turned around and looked at me. I held myself very still, and he went back to looking out the window.
    “You have nothing that can stand against me as long as I hold Oath Breaker,” said the traitor.
    “Don’t be too sure of that,” Crow Lee said steadily. “You’d be surprised at some of the Objects of Power I’ve acquired here and there. But this is no time to be falling out, when we’ve achieved so much together! Let us think of our partnership as a balance of power and move on. Come with me, into the study. I want to see Eddie brought down by another Drood.”
    I quickly eased the hearing aid out of my ear and slipped it back into my pocket dimension. And then I did my best to look surprised when Crow Lee strode back in with the traitor Drood at his side. I didn’t recognise him at all. He was a very ordinary-looking man, nothingremarkable about him at all. He did look sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him. It’s a big family, the Droods.
    “You don’t know me, do you?” said the traitor. “Even though we’ve spoken many times in passing. But then, that’s the point. I’m never anyone important or significant, and I don’t stand out. I’m always just there in the background, perhaps some useful functionary, just another Drood doing a necessary job…poisoning the wells in the quiet of the night. Adrian Drood, at the moment. Not my real name, of course. But then, I’ve had so many names and identities down the centuries.”
    “You’re the Original Traitor,” I said. “The one who’s undermined and betrayed us over and over. Why?”
    “Because the family has moved away from what I intended it to be,” Adrian said calmly. “I was the very first Drood. I was there when the Heart first fell to Earth. I made the original pact with the Heart for power and armour. I made the Droods possible! Everything they are came from me! I set us up to be shamans and protectors, shepherds to Humanity…but it was never meant that the sheep should forget their place.
    “The family forced me out of power because I wouldn’t go along with their changes. Exiled me, made me the first rogue Drood. So I disappeared, went away, walked up and down the world, hugging my rage and hatred to my cold, cold heart. I spent a lot of time with the Immortals, a family much like mine. I gave their leader the idea for immortality, having