Live and Let Drood

need to go the sneaky route, come at him in unexpected ways. Lateral thinking and all that. Personally, I’d recommend giving up on the whole idea and taking a nice vacation somewhere really far away. You can’t get more lateral than that. But you wouldn’t do that, redoubtable and infamous as you are.…Don’t touch that!”
    I took my hand carefully away from a crystal thing sitting on a pile of papers. “Sorry,” I said. “I thought it was a paperweight.”
    “It’s designed to look like a paperweight,” Patrick said darkly. “Here—try this. It’s a skeleton key made from real human bone. And, no, you don’t get to ask whose. This useful little item can open any lock, mechanical, magical or electronic.”
    “The Drood Armourer gave me one of these once,” I said, accepting the yellowed bone thing gingerly.
    “I know!” said Patrick. “Who do you think I stole the idea from? Now, this…is a hearing aid. Just stick this little beauty in your ear, and you’ll be able to listen in on any conversation from any distance. Even in other rooms and in other languages! I’m still working on the immediate-translation tech, but if it doesn’t kick in, you can always read the subtitles.”
    He turned to Molly and offered her a pair of spangly glitterball earrings. She hefted the ugly items on her palm and looked dubiously at Patrick.
    “What do I do with these?”
    “You throw them,” said Patrick. “And they go Boom! And all the people who were bothering you suddenly aren’t.”
    “Groovy!” said Molly. She whipped off the silver Celtic rose thingsshe’d been wearing, stuffed them into a pocket, and clipped on the new earrings. I looked severely at Patrick.
    “Tell me those things have a safety catch.”
    “Of course!” said Patrick. “They’re perfectly harmless until you say the magic Word.” He leaned over and whispered the Word in Molly’s ear, and she actually giggled and pushed him away. He looked pleased with himself. “I’d throw them pretty damn far, though, if I were you. And I wouldn’t play with them, either. Just in case.”
    Molly looked at the expression on my face and patted me fondly on one cheek. “Will you relax, Eddie? I’m wearing the Twilight Teardrop, remember? Guaranteed personal protection, on levels even Kayleigh’s Eye has never heard of! You could set off a thermo nuke right in front of me, and I wouldn’t even be bothered by the bright light.”
    “That’s the Twilight Teardrop?” said the Regent, leaning forward to inspect the ruby stone pendant with new interest. One look into its bloodred depths was enough, and he immediately retreated to a safe distance. “Such a small thing,” he said, “to be so powerful and so thoroughly cursed. I’ve always said the best way to make use of that thing would be to make a gift of it to someone you really didn’t like. And then leave the country until all the unpleasantness was over.”
    I looked at the bony key and the earplug in my hand. “I could use something a little more dangerous, and preferably long-range.”
    “You’ve got your armour,” said Molly. “That’s dangerous enough for anyone. Though I could lend you my charm bracelet, if you like. If you’re really feeling in need of something to throw.”
    “I am not wearing that on my ankle,” I said firmly. “I have my dignity to consider.”
    Molly then said something very coarse about my dignity, and Patrick, the Regent and I pretended not to have heard her.
    Patrick distracted Molly with a small flat black-lacquered box with a big green button on the top. “This,” he said proudly, “is a protein exploder. Does what it says on the box. It’s alien tech. Or possibly tomorrow tech. One of our people brought it back from the Nightside. He bought it from a street trader. Fell off the back of a Timeslip…Noinstruction manual, of course, which is why he got it so cheap. It’s taken me almost a year to work out how to use it, and I still don’t have a clue how it works. Just point it at your enemies, and wave good-bye to what’s left of them.”
    “Cool,” said Molly, shaking the box in a far too casual manner. Everyone else in the room winced. Molly looked at Patrick. “What does it do?”
    “I told you!” said Patrick. “It explodes people’s protein! Suddenly and violently and all over the place. Just don’t point it in the general direction of anyone you like. It’s not exactly pinpoint accurate.”
    Molly stuffed the box up