Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [33]
“You were expecting me?” Crake asked, bemused.
“I was expecting someone entirely different! A judge, if you must know! What are you doing here?” Before Crake could answer, Plome had taken him by the elbow and was hurrying him down the hall.
At the end of the hall was a staircase. Plome steered Crake around the side to a small, innocuous door. It was a cupboard under the stairs, to all appearances, but Crake knew by the prickling of his senses that appearances were deceptive here. Plome drew a tuning fork from his coat and rapped it smartly against the door frame. The fork sang a high, clear note, and Plome opened the door.
Inside was a single shelf with a lantern, and a set of wooden steps led down. Plome held the still-ringing fork high and ushered Crake past. Crake felt himself brushed by the daemon that had been thralled into the doorway. A minor glamour. Anyone opening the door before subduing the daemon with the correct frequency would have seen nothing but a cluttered cupboard, probably accompanied by a strong mental suggestion that there was nothing interesting inside.
“Watch yourself,” said Plome. “I’ll go first. Third step from the bottom will paralyze you for an hour or so.”
Crake stopped and waited for Plome to shut the door, strike a match, and touch it to the lantern. Plome led the way down the stairs, and Crake followed him. At the bottom, Plome struck another match and lit the first of several gas lamps set in sconces on the walls. A soft glow swelled to fill the room.
“Electricity hasn’t caught on here yet, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically, moving from lamp to lamp with the match. “The Tarlocks banned small generators. Too noisy and smelly, that’s the official line. But really it’s so they can build their own big generator and charge us all for the supply.”
The sanctum under the house had changed little since Crake’s last visit. Plome, like Crake, had always leaned toward science rather than superstition in his approach to daemonism. His sanctum was like a laboratory. A chalkboard covered with formulae for frequency modulation stood next to a complicated alembic and books on the nature of plasm and luminiferous aether. A globular brass cage took pride of place, surrounded by various resonating devices. There were thin metal strips of varying lengths, chimes of all kinds, and hollow wooden tubes. With such devices, a daemon could be contained.
Crake went cold at the sight of an echo chamber in one corner. It was a riveted ball of metal, like a bathysphere, with a small circular porthole. Crake felt the strength drain out of his limbs. A worm of nausea crawled into his gut.
Plome followed his gaze. “Oh, yes, that. Rather an impulse purchase. I haven’t used it yet. Need to wait for the electricity to get here. To provide a constant vibration to produce the echo, you see.”
“I know how it works,” Crake assured him, his voice thin. He felt suddenly out of breath.
“Of course you do. And I expect you know how dangerous and unpredictable the echo technique is too. Can’t risk a battery conking out on me while I’ve got some bloody great horror sitting inside!” He laughed nervously before noticing that Crake had lost the color in his face. “Are you quite alright?”
Crake tore his eyes away from the echo chamber. “I’m fine.”
Plome didn’t pursue the matter. He produced a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “The Shacklemores were here looking for you.”
“The Shacklemores?” Crake was alarmed. “When?”
“Sometime around the end of Swallow’s Reap, I think. They said they were visiting all your associates.” He wrung his hands. “Made me quite uncomfortable, actually. Made me think they knew about … well, this.” He made a gesture to encompass the sanctum. “It’d be very awkward if this got out. You know how people are about us.”
But Crake was too busy thinking about himself. The Shacklemore Agency was bad news. Bounty hunters to the rich and famous. He’d expected they’d