Live and Let Drood

his tea from the saucer. Yes. I thought that was a great trick, and demanded to be allowed to try some. He smiled and offered me the saucer, and I took a sip, but I didn’t like it. I pulled a face, and everyone laughed. Who laughed? Who else was in the room with me? Why can’t I remember them? As though I’m not supposed to, not allowed to…”
    “Wait a minute,” said Molly. “Hold everything. Go previous. I thought you said your grandfather Arthur died back in the fifties. You weren’t even born then.”
    “That’s right,” I said, frowning. “He died in 1957, in the Kiev Conspiracy.”
    “What was that?” said Molly. “Some old Cold War thing? Well before my time. And yours.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. I was frowning so hard it hurt my forehead. There was something I couldn’t quite remember, something just out of my reach. Something important. “I don’t know the details of how he died. No one ever told me. It was just…1957, and the Kiev Conspiracy. Why did I never ask more about that? Why did I just accept it? I never used to accept anything they just told me.…But I am sure I’ve been here, in this room, before.…”
    And then the ceiling came crashing down on us. No warning, not a sound; the ceiling just bulged suddenly out above us and then broke apart, everything coming down on our heads at once. I subvocalised my activating Words and called for my armour, but nothing happened. The armour didn’t come. I froze where I was. I couldn’t believe it. Molly threw an arm around me and thrust her other hand up at the descending ceiling. She said a very bad Word, and a shimmering protective shield appeared around us. The broken ceiling fell down, hit the shield and fell away, unable to touch us. The whole room shook as the entire ceiling came down in heavy chunks and pieces, followed by parts of the compressed floors above. Molly grabbed my arm and hauled me through the doorframe and out into the corridor. The shield came with us, still protecting us. Safely outside the room, Molly held me close as smoke and dust billowed out of the room after us. The room was filling up with wreckage from above, hammering loudly together as though annoyed it had missed its chance at us.
    Molly dismissed the shimmering shield with an impatient wave of her hand and looked at me anxiously.
    “Eddie? Are you okay? What happened in there?”
    I raised a trembling hand to the golden torc at my throat. It was still there. It felt warm and alive, just like always. So why hadn’t my armour come when I called it?
    “How long?” I said numbly to Molly. “How long have I been walkingaround with a useless torc at my throat? How long have I been naked and defenceless in the face of my enemies?”
    “Eddie, take it easy.…”
    “You don’t understand!” I shouted at her. “I’ve never been separated from my armour! It’s been with me my whole life, in one form or another. First from the Heart and then from Ethel…How can I be a Drood if I don’t have my armour?”
    And just like that I was off and running, ignoring Molly as she called out behind me. I sprinted down rubble-strewn corridors, jumped over piles of collapsed brickwork, ignoring the angry sounds of shifting stonework all around me and heading for the one place in the Hall where I thought I might still find some answers. The one room you could always count on. The Sanctity. The heart of the Hall and of the family. I raced down broken corridors that were little more than death traps of holed floors and collapsed walls, staring straight ahead, thinking of nothing but where I needed to be. Running so hard my leg muscles ached, so fast I could barely get my breath. I could hear Molly running behind me, calling after me, but I didn’t look back once. After a while she just concentrated on running and keeping up with me. I like to think it was because she trusted me to know what I was doing.
    I ran on, and sometimes I ran through corridors that were there, and sometimes down corridors I remembered that were whole and undamaged. Sometimes I ran through memories of places and people, with ghosts of old friends and enemies. And sometimes I think I ran through rooms and corridors that weren’t there anymore. Until finally I came to the Sanctity.
    The great double doors had been smashed open and were hanging drunkenly, scarred and broken, from the heavy brass hinges. There should have been guards, Drood security; there should have been powerful