CHAPTER TWENTY
Friar’s Deal

“Where’s the boy?”

The Black Friar glowered down at Edie.

“Gone.”

“Gone? Gone how? Gone where?”

Something in the accusing way he asked gave the strong impression that whatever had happened was going to turn out to be Edie’s fault.

“Just gone. Don’t know how, don’t know where.” Her chin jutted forward as she refused to look away from his eyes.

“You don’t know how, you don’t know where. And now . . . you’re here.”

“Yep.”

He exhaled, a long and noisy out breath whistled out of his nose like a safety valve taking the pressure off a steaming boiler.

“Well. That’s fine and dandy, no doubt. Capital, even. And I suppose you—”

“I thought you might know why.”

He didn’t look like someone who was used to people interrupting him so bluntly. He cleared his throat.

“You thought I might know why you’re here?”

“Why George has gone.”

The safety valve blew as the Friar detonated in a spluttering explosion.

“Why he’s gone? You think I know why the boy has gone? Sunder me from my bones, girl! I assure you it’s nothing to do with me! Why the very thought of—”

“I thought you might know if it’s to do with the Hard Way.”

The explosion stopped. The Friar ran his hand over his bald head and down to his chin. It was as if he were wiping off the look of shocked indignation and replacing it with one of genuine puzzlement.

“The Hard Way?”

“You said if he didn’t put the dragon’s head on the Stone, he’d be guaranteed the Hard Way. I wanted to know if suddenly disappearing was part of that.”

The Friar stepped back. Looked less ominous. Scratched his head.

“You’re saying he didn’t put the head on the stone?”

“Yeah.”

“Because he ran out of time? You surprise me, indeed you do. I saw the mark he bore, I sensed the power within, I felt he would succeed.” The monk looked genuinely puzzled. “Well, devil me kidneys . . . I’d have wagered on him finding the Stone Heart, indeed I would. I thought more of the boy.”

Edie had a sudden flashback to George, his face set and determined as he held the pistol steady, aimed right into the Minotaur’s eye. She remembered how he hadn’t flinched, not even at the thunderous detonation when he’d pulled the trigger.

“He didn’t run out of time. He found the Stone Heart. It was the London Stone. He worked it out. He followed the map of words you gave him. He did other stuff, too. He was a bit amazing. He just chose not to put the dragon’s head on the Stone. He chose the Hard Way. And I want to know if that’s why he disappeared.”

“He chose the Hard Way? You’re telling me he actually chose the Hard Way? Trophies and trumpetings, why would he do that? Unless . . .”

The Friar looked at Little Tragedy. Then at Edie. And then slowly took three steps back to the bar. He reached back over it and grabbed a Coke bottle. He popped the metal cap thoughtfully between his teeth and held the bottle out to her.

“Have a drink, in as much as this hellish soda water can be called a drink, then tell me everything, leave nothing out. We’ll see what we can see and mayhap do what can be done.”

Edie took the bottle and sat down on a stool and, suddenly very conscious that the broken dragon’s head was in the pocket of George’s coat, only an inch from the Friar’s elbow, started to talk.

She told him of everything that had happened since they’d left this room the night before, and ended on the Gunner being spirited into the mirrors by the Walker.

“And that’s why I want to know about the mirrors. And that’s why I want to know about the Hard Way. I have to find George, and we have to help the Gunner.”

“And why is that?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” she answered, without thinking. And when she heard herself say it, she realized that that was exactly why, for her, it had to be done. Take a life, save a life.

Only then did she drink from the untouched bottle of Coke. The bubbles rose inside her; she burped thunderously and looked defiantly at the mountainous spit.

“And you have told me everything that happened?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, crossing fingers in her mind. “I’ve told you everything I saw.”

Which was strictly true. They had left last time pretending that they had to go to fetch the broken dragon’s head, not telling the Friar that it was with them, in George’s coat pocket. And that brought her eye back to the same coat and the same heavy pocket lying on the bar top by the Friar’s elbow. She looked away and hoped he hadn’t noticed the weight inside it as he’d pushed it aside to reach over for her Coke.

“I didn’t ask you if that was all you saw. I asked you if that was all that happened.”

For a being made of bronze, his eye was disconcertingly steely.

“That was what happened.”

“Still not quite what I was asking, but close enough for a glint, perhaps.”

She heard Little Tragedy try to stifle a small snort of derision. He didn’t do a very good job, and the sound irritated her more than she would have expected. Her head came up, eyes bright and defiant.

“I’ve got nothing to hide.”

The Friar peered at her for a moment, and then his shoulders started to twitch, and the twitch turned into a quake, and the quake rumbled into a laugh, and soon the whole room was reverberating to the deep rolling mirth of the mountainous figure at the bar. He reached for a beer towel and dabbed at the tears streaming out of his eyes as he chuckled and chortled and generally did a very poor job of trying to control himself.

Being laughed at unexpectedly is never a very pleasant experience. Being laughed at by a ton and a half of bronze alloy in a cassock is even more annoying.

“Hoi,” she said, trying to stem the tide. “What’s so funny?”

“Sorry,” gasped the Friar. “Intolerable rudeness, eternal shame, gross lapse of hospi . . . hospitality. But a glint. Having nothing to hide? Why the thought of it. A glint is nothing but a veritable warehouse stuffed to the gunwales with hidden things. The hidden and the hiding are two sides of the same coin, as you know in the core of your young being, whether you acknowledge it or no. A glint absorbs the hidden in the world and must hide to survive in that world. Why if it were not so nearly a symmetry, it might be a paradox.”

And he erupted into a fresh spasm of laughter, shoulders heaving and chins wobbling at the sheer hilarity of it all.

She had no idea what the avalanche of words meant. It felt as if he were using his booming voice to bludgeon her. She did understand what a paradox was, and it was a paradox that this smiling figure, who seemed all hospitality and good cheer, was in fact particularly frightening. It was as if he’d found a way to use all that bonhomie as a weapon. He was a million miles away from the smiler with the knife who’d pursued her on a distant beach in what seemed a different life, but there was something about all the mirth that seemed to suggest, if not a hidden knife, then a hidden agenda that might be just as fatal to her as a blade.

All the laughter and the good cheer had the effect of making it hard to think, and thinking was how Edie stayed ahead of things.

“Hey,” she said. He kept on laughing.

Without thinking why she was doing it, she picked the bottle cap off the table in front of her, held it between thumb and forefinger, and flicked it at the Friar. Metal hit metal as the cap hit him square on the forehead with a distinct tink that chopped off the laughter like an ax. The bottle cap bounced up and off the sloping head, glinting in the headlights of a car passing outside the window, and the Friar’s left hand snapped out and opened and closed in one astonishingly fast reaction from a man who was so mountainous and fat. He caught the cap and crushed it in one movement. Then the hand opened and gently dropped the mangled disk on the table in front of her.

“Oh-oh,” said Little Tragedy behind her.

“Silence, You Imp!” boomed the Friar. He lunged forward, hoisted the knees of his cassock, and sat on the stool in front of Edie. The crushed bottle cap was still rocking on the small circular tabletop between them. Edie decided to be intimidated later. Right now she needed answers.

“The mirrors,” she said. “I told you all that happened. Now you tell me about the mirrors, and then tell me about the Hard Way.”

The Friar rubbed his chin with one hand, while the other drubbed out an irritated tattoo on the table. He stopped the finger tapping and looked off to one side at the mirrors.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said shortly.

“A deal?”

“A deal. Something for you, something for me.”

“What kind of something?” she asked, trying hard not to look at the coat on the bar top with its suspiciously bulging pocket.

“I want your word. I want your word that if the boy lives and you find him that you will bring him to me.”

“You want George?”

“I want to talk to him. I want him to talk to me.”

“And that’s all?”

“And that’s all.”

She didn’t need to think.

“Deal.”

The Friar peered at her, peered so intently that she felt he was in fact peering into her, and then spat in his hand and held it out. She was unsure what to do. Little Tragedy cleared his throat from the shadows.

“Spit in your ’and, and shake ’is.”

Her mouth, now she thought about it, was too dry to muster any extra spit. She worked it, trying to generate some moisture.

“It’s more for the look of it than the actual spittle, my dear,” said the monk.

So she dry-spat into her hand and let the big bronze hand close around it. She was surprised by how soft and warm the smooth metal was.

The Friar sat back with a smile.

And for an instant she wondered if she had just unwittingly betrayed George in some way.