“Do you think Catling has them?” Harry said.
Jack looked about the room, considering his answer. “Grace said something to me just now…there are very few people who could touch the kingship bands. Catling is one, and the others are all in this room: Noah, Silvius, Ariadne, Grace herself. Does anyone here want to confess to stealing them? No? Then Catling has them. There is no one else who could take them.”
“Why would she take them?” said Noah.
Jack threw his hands up. “Who knows? I have no idea why she’d take them, then claim all this innocence and anger at ‘my loss’ of them.”
“Perhaps she just wants an excuse to act,” said Grace.
At that Weyland turned to Jack.
“Why the hell have you lost them, Jack? For all the gods’ sakes, this is my daughter’s life you’re playing with! Couldn’t you have managed to—”
“It’s not really Jack’s fault—” Noah began.
Weyland sent her a glance of simmering anger, and Noah looked away.
“You care for nothing but your own gratification,” Weyland went on, addressing Jack once more. “You do nothing but tear lives apart and—”
“Fine words from a man who personally tore apart Cornelia’s and my three sons when Troia Nova fell!” Jack snarled.
“You haven’t thought about them for three and a half thousand damned years,” Weyland shouted. “Don’t pretend to be feeling a loss now!”
“That’s enough!” Silvius roared, making both Weyland and Jack step back. “That’s enough,” he repeated more moderately. “Catling has played her cards well, eh? To have you two at each other’s throats? United you’re her doom. Separated by anger and jealousy you’re her triumph. Try to remember it.”
Jack and Weyland stared at Silvius, then looked to each other. They didn’t say anything, but both nodded, then looked away.
Noah, watching, sighed.
“Well, well,” said Catling. “That was very pretty, wasn’t it?”
Jack was in his bedroom in Copt Hall. He paused in the act of draping his jacket over a bedpost, and turned around.
Catling was standing in the door, leaning nonchalantly against its frame, her arms folded.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Pretty?” He undid the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, then very slowly rolled them up to his elbows, exposing the lower of his armbands. “What was pretty?”
“What you did for Grace,” said Catling. “Dragging her away from the pain like that. Very pretty trick. I should have remembered Ariadne might tell you about that; she wouldn’t have had the power to drag Grace away from me, but you do.”
“I’ll do it again, Catling. If I need to.”
“You’ve become quite attached to Grace, haven’t you, Jack?”
He didn’t answer, turning to the side table where Malcolm had laid out a late-night whisky, and picking up the glass.
“Whatever you can do for Grace’s pain, Jack, you mustn’t forget that her fate is tied to mine. Grimacing in pain or smiling happily, she’ll go down with me if you think to unwind me.”
Jack sat down on the side of his bed, sipping at the whisky. “I haven’t forgotten it.”
“My, my,” said Catling, very softly, very threateningly. “You think you’re so clever, eh? Well, maybe you can rescue Grace from her pain—I’ve grown a little tired of that trick, anyway—but you can’t stop me from wounding you in other ways, Jack. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Don’t think you can—”
“Don’t think to harm me, Jack! If you do, if you try one more trick like that UXB outside my front door, then I’ll destroy you!”
“You can’t destroy me. You need me.”
Catling stared at him. “You have no idea what I can do to you, Jack.”
Then she vanished, and Jack was left sitting on the bed, whisky in hand, staring blankly at the now-empty doorway.
Eventually, he roused himself, drained the whisky and turned out the light, laying down atop the bed fully clothed.
He didn’t sleep all night.
Neither did Catling rest. Someone had the final two bands, and, having thought a little about it, Catling was beginning to think Jack had them, whatever he said.
He wasn’t wearing them at present, Catling would have felt that, but no doubt he’d secreted them away at some point, where he could snatch them and use them once he was ready to attack her.
Taken in that context, Jack’s little display of indignation and anger was rather amusing. Convince her he didn’t have the bands, and then strike when she least expected it.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have gone to Jack and threatened him, but the entire day had unsettled Catling just the littlest bit. Best to remind Jack of what she might do if truly riled.
And best for her, she thought, if she started to make some backup plans. Turn all that strength she was gaining from the Blitz to useful purpose. Make sure, absolutely certain, that when Jack and Noah moved they wouldn’t be able to snatch her.
Grace was the key.
Grace was the perfect backup plan.
Catling finally managed a small smile, relaxing as she considered her options and how she might use Grace to full effect.
She still didn’t like it that the imps had vanished, though.
Where could those dratted blackhearted creatures have got to?
EIGHT
London
Tuesday, 24th September 1940
Jack rose before first light, dressed, took coffee and toast in the kitchen, then drove down to London.
He parked in central London, in the ancient City, and then…walked.
Feeling. Feeling the City almost as if it were the first time he’d stepped foot in it. Feeling the City as if it were a stranger to him, and he to it; feeling it with the force and power of the four kingship bands of Troy that he wore.
He could sense Troy in the City. Sometimes he caught sight of a rampart out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to look, and would think for a moment he saw the walls of Troy rising behind one of London’s grim nineteenth-century warehouses.
Sometimes Jack heard the distant wail of an air raid siren, or caught the far-off drone of aircraft as the RAF drove back a Luftwaffe bomber raid, and heard as well the war cries of the Greeks, and the thud of horses’ hooves as the besiegers drove their war chariots against Troy’s walls yet one more time.
How had he missed this before? Ah, it was the kingship bands, Jack knew that, but still he was overcome with wonderment as he wandered the City. Had he done this, infused London with the ghostly presence of Troy, or had it been the Game, resurrecting once more its birthplace?
Was this his work, or Catling’s?
And what did it mean for London’s fate? Was it destined to die like Troy, be betrayed as Troy had once been—
By the Troy Game itself, Aeneas had said.
—or would London manage to escape its predecessor’s fate, and become master of its own destiny?
To none of these questions could Jack find an answer. All he could do was wander and absorb the greater understanding, the greater reality, of London. It amazed him, enthralled him, terrified him and comforted him, all in one.
The shadow hung heavier than ever over the city (had such a shadow hung over Troy? Was it a precursor to destruction?), and try as Jack might to garner a greater understanding of it, all he could manage was to gain a sense of the hugeness of it.
Damocles’ sword, he thought, had nothing on this.
Towards the evening, when he was worn out from wandering and the frustration of not being able, despite the bands, to scry out any understanding of the shadow, Jack sent a message to Grace.
Grace, are you free? Will you meet me this evening at seven, on the corner of Knaresborough Place and Cromwell Road? I need to speak with you. Please, Grace.
He wasn’t sure if she would agree, but within moments he received a faint assent, and he smiled.
And the next moment froze in anger, as Catling once again stood before him. Jack had been moving through the empty backstreets of Covent Garden, heading to his car, and had almost reached the Austin.
She stood in the twilight some three or four paces down the street, in the centre of the road. She smiled once she realised Jack had seen her, and drew her hands out from behind her back.
She held one of the golden kingship bands of Troy in each hand.
Do you see these, Jack? Do you want them?
“Damn you,” Jack said, taking a step forward. “What is this? First you say you don’t have them, and now you tease me with them? Why the torment? Just give them to me, damn you! I am of little use to you without them!”
Catling’s form shimmered, as if it had lost strength at Jack’s anger, and the bands faded completely from view.