Tales of the Hidden World Read Free Page B

trouble was . . . lab assistants tended to blend into one another. They arrived, they did good work, and they moved on. Which was how it should be. Only he stayed and grew older while the lab assistants seemed to grow younger every year. They moved on because they had ambition, and the Armourer thought he could remember a time when he did, too.
    He used to know, and care about, every assistant and every project in his Armory. He took a pride in it. He was always striding up and down, peering over shoulders, offering a helping hand, handing out useful criticism and the occasional commendation. But these days he just didn’t seem to have the energy. And, if he was honest with himself, he just didn’t care as much as he used to. It was hard to get excited about a new gun, or gadget, when he’d seen so many before. When an Armourer stops caring about the work . . . then maybe it was time for him to step down. But he wasn’t ready just yet . . . to give it all up and spend the rest of his life in the dayroom, watching television with all the other old fossils. He still had ideas. Still came up with things new enough and important enough to get his blood racing. He still had it.
    He finished his cookie, took a long drink of hot tea, and sank back in his special chair. And the sights before him drifted away, replaced by older visions from another Time. He looked back over his long life; trying to decide, needing to know . . . Whether he did more good for the family, and the world, during his time as a secret agent out in the field, or afterward, as the family Armourer, creating things to keep field agents alive, and kill people who needed killing . . . It suddenly seemed very important to him, to be able to understand his life, if only on that level. Such a long life . . . so many things achieved . . . But did any of them really matter?
    Why did he give so much of his life to his work? Because that’s what he had.
    His work mattered. He was convinced of that, at least. People were alive today because of what he’d done. He’d been involved in saving Humanity, and the entire world, on many occasions. Even quite recently, with the Hunger Gods War, and the invasion of the Hall grounds by the army of Accelerated Men. He could still put on the family armor and fight the good fight. All through his life, he’d always been ready to put his life on the line, for others. That had to mean something. . . . But what did it mean? If he hadn’t done the work, if he hadn’t gone out to fight, somebody else would have. What might his life have been like if he had never given up being a field agent? Had made himself a legend, like his brother, James? What if he’d never taken on the burden of the Armory and buried himself underground? What if . . . he’d found the strength to turn his back on the family, and his work, and his damned duty, and just walked away? No . . . No, he could never have done that. He believed in the family, and what it stood for. Sometimes in spite of himself and the family.
    Eddie had been the only one to successfully tell the family to go to Hell, and make it stick. His nephew, Edwin, son of his sister, Emily and her husband, Charles. Good people, all of them. And even Eddie kept coming back, to be the family’s conscience and take on the missions no one else could. Eddie even ran the family for a while, when the old system grew corrupt, and then he gave it all up to go back into the field, where he belonged. He left, but he kept coming back, because he knew he was needed.
    The same mistake Jack made.
    The Armourer wondered just how many deaths he was responsible for, throughout his long career as the Armourer. Far more than he ever killed personally, as an agent out in the world. As a field agent, he’d dispatched his fair share, but as Armourer, his deadly touch had spread across the whole world. Every time a Drood agent killed an enemy, it was because the Armourer had made it possible. If all the ghosts of