The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [97]
"I am William Shakespeare," he said, "and I have important news for the King."
The house was in the alley of St John the Beheaded.
"Is this where Irving Braxiatel lives?" Steven said to the servant who opened the door.
"Are you expected?" the servant said calmly. He was dressed in velvet breeches and a white silk shirt with an embroidered waistcoat. His eyes moved from Steven to the blood-soaked Christopher Marlowe, who was slumped with an arm across Steven's shoulders. "I don't - look, just announce us will you?"
Steven snapped.
The servant was imperturbable. "May I ask what the nature of your business is?"
Various possibilities flashed through Steven's mind. He could lie, he could bluff, he could force his way in, or ...
Tiredness washed over him and receded, leaving him shaking. He couldn't be bothered. Marlowe had to be healed, and healed fast.
There was no time for lies. "My friend has been injured in a duel,"
he said finally. "We need help."
"Ah, you're looking for the Doctor," the servant said calmly, opening the door wider. "Please come in."
"Yes, a doctor would be ... What did you say?"
The servant glanced at Steven. "You must be Signor Taylor. I have been waiting for you. My master alerted me to your presence in Venice."
As Steven carried the almost unconscious Marlowe into the richly appointed house, he said, "How did you know that we would turn up here?"
"Where else was there for you to go?" the servant murmured, leading them down a book-lined corridor. "After my master discovered that you had been in the hidden underground room, he suspected that you might return." He turned a corner and stopped by a particularly ornate tapestry between two bookshelves.
"Originally my instructions were to kill you, but he recently changed the word "kill" to "help" after he realized that you were an associate of the Doctor." Pulling the tapestry to one side to reveal a metal door set into the brick behind it, the servant pressed a set of buttons in its centre. "My name, by the way, is Cremonini." The door slid back into the wall and he led the way down a set of white metal steps. Steven followed slowly, with Marlowe almost a dead weight on his shoulder.
Steven recognized the room as soon as they entered: a white metal box with a wide path around the edge of an empty pool of water and a small control panel set into one wall. As he let Marlowe slump to the path, Steven let out a sigh of relief.
"Your friend is close to death," Cremonini said, kneeling down beside Marlowe and lifting a sodden corner of his shirt. "I do not know much about mammalian physiology, but I do know that much."
"I'm hoping that the Doctor can help," Steven said. "Can one of those shuttle things get us to him?"
"The envoys' skiffs are able to home directly on Laputa."
Cremonini straightened and walked over to the control panel. "I will summon one now." His hands drifted over the buttons. "What is that device in the gentleman's chest, by the way?"
"I don't know." Steven slid down the wall until he was sitting with his feet dangling in the water. "But it's been there for a good few years, apparently."
Cremonini turned and looked over at him. "I only ask," he said calmly, "because it looks to me like the fusing unit for a meta-cobalt bomb."
Steven turned to look at him, too tired to be amazed. "Aren't you in the least bit surprised?" he asked.
"I'm a robot," said Cremonini, "nothing surprises me."
A contingent of four guards escorted Shakespeare along the torch-lit corridor. The flickering light made the wood-panelled walls seem to shift disconcertingly, like rippling backdrops. Laurence Fletcher, one of the King's minions, had been despatched to the door to check that Shakespeare was who he said he was, and he now led the way towards what Shakespeare recognized as the Great Hall.
There