Live and Let Drood

out from under your foot while you were busy puffing up your chest and boasting. You don’t live as long as I have without learning a few useful tricks. Now, let’s try this again.”
    He thrust the monkey’s hand at me and spoke a single Word, and just like that the rogue armour ripped off me, and all my pain and injuries returned. I cried out, but I didn’t fall. Adrian cried out at the cold shock of what it was like to wear Moxton’s Mistake. And then he stoodbefore me, powerful and proud, in the golden glory of Drood armour. He started to say something and then he cried out again in horror as the rogue armour constricted suddenly about him. It shrank in sudden spurts, falling in upon itself, crushing Adrian inside it as it compacted itself in sudden rushes. The limbs were sucked inside the trunk, which collapsed in on itself, while Adrian screamed and screamed until the screams cut off abruptly. And still the armour shrank in upon itself, until nothing was left but a golden box, a cube barely three feet in diameter, sitting quietly on the carpet before us. Crow Lee looked at it in silent shock, and then looked at me.
    “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I didn’t know it could do that.”
    The golden box exploded back into human shape again and stood facing me. Moxton’s Mistake, regarding me with its featureless golden face.
    “He put me in the Maze,” it said, in its rasping inhuman voice. “Left me there to run wild for centuries. Did he think I’d forgive and forget? Your torc has no authority over me, Eddie Drood. I serve you only because I choose to.”
    “We made a bargain,” I said steadily.
    “So we did,” said the rogue armour. “I haven’t forgotten. Take this as a sign, a warning…of what might happen to you if you were to turn against me.”
    It hunched its back, which split open to allow out what remained of Adrian Drood. A hot and steaming cube of compacted meat and splintered bone burst out of the armour’s back and fell, stinking and splashing, to the floor in a rush of bodily fluids. And while I was looking at that, the golden armour flowed forward and wrapped itself about me. I shuddered, and not only from the familiar cold. I felt strong and well again, free from all pain, but I also felt the armour’s presence watching me thoughtfully. I looked at the bloody steaming mess on the carpet. Not a bad end for the greatest traitor the Droods had ever known. I just wished…I could have done it myself. It occurred to me that the armour could have done the same thing to me any of the times I wore it. And still could…
    I turned to consider the Plymouth Fury. Mr. Stab was still trapped beneath it, still struggling to break free. He rocked the heavy car back and forth with his more-than-human strength, but he still couldn’t lift the thing off him. The Plymouth Fury settled itself more firmly, like a duck upon its eggs, quietly humming “Rock ’n’ Roll Is Here to Stay.” I stopped down, picked the monkey’s hand up off the floor and slipped it through my armoured side and into my pocket dimension. Because you never knew…and because I didn’t want anyone else to surprise me with it.
    I moved over to the car and knelt down beside Mr. Stab’s protruding head and shoulder. He’d worked one arm out from under the car, and suddenly there was a blade in it, shining bright. I grabbed his hand and squeezed hard until he dropped the knife. And then I picked it up and snapped it neatly in two. The bright glow was quickly gone, leaving just two pieces of broken steel. Mr. Stab glared at me sullenly as I threw the pieces aside.
    “It’s all right,” I said to the car. “You can get off him now.”
    “Are you sure?” said the car. “I can run back and forth over him a few times, if you like. No trouble…”
    “Thanks,” I said. “But that won’t be necessary.”
    The car sniffed loudly, reminding me irresistibly of Molly for a moment. “People…just don’t know how to enjoy themselves.”
    The Plymouth Fury backed slowly away, reversing steadily till it was halfway out the jagged hole it had made in the wall when it arrived. Mr. Stab rose slowly to his feet, brushing the dust off his Victorian finery in an unfussy way. His eyes never left mine.
    “You’ll never stop me,” he said coldly. “I can recover from anything you do to me. You’ve seen that for yourself.”
    “Maybe no one ever tried hard enough before,” I said. “Maybe no one was ever motivated