Sixty-One Nails Part 38

"Is it wise to get more knives? What if they're like that one?" I nodded towards the dark-wood box. Blackbird glanced at the knife box and shook her head. "Wait and see."

Claire returned with another bundle wrapped in black cloth. There was no sense of anything about it when she placed it on the table and unfolded it. Wrapped inside the cloth were two blades, or rather tools. One was a small neat hatchet and the other a kind of bill-hook with a broad flat blade. The blades were polished as if they were made of silver, or perhaps they were plated. They were clearly ceremonial. She looked at us. "May I?" I indicated the bill-hook. "Of course."

I picked the bill-hook up from the cloth, finding the oddly shaped blade lighter than it looked. I tested the edge with my thumb and it was sharp. The broad, flat blade reflected distorted scenes from the room. If it came from the Tower armouries, then it probably had a distinguished and honourable history.

"It's unusual enough, but it's totally different to the original Quick Knife. It's just a blade."

"We brought an expert from the armouries in to see if the Quick Knife could be mended, but apparently it is the wrong sort of metal."

"Or the right sort," Blackbird added. "It's very likely to be made of some sort of iron. If it were pure then that would make it brittle. That's why steel replaced iron as the metal of choice, it's much more resilient. What's the other knife in the case made of?"

"Some sort of alloy, definitely not iron. Would you like to see it?"

"Maybe later." Neither of us wanted her to open the box with the Quick Knife in it. "The broken knife is the key. Once the Quick Knife was broken, the ritual was weakened. Each time the ceremony is performed with the wrong knives, it weakens a little more." She glanced at me. "A worm at the heart of the ceremony, do you see?"

"There's nothing in the records saying that the ceremony must be conducted with a particular set of knives," Claire commented. "It just says that two knives must be presented, one blunt and one sharp, and must be tested for their qualities."

"I'm sure you've carried out the ceremony according to the instructions you were given," said Blackbird, "but that in itself is not enough for the ritual to have power. I'm sure now that the knife is the reason the barrier is weakening and also the reason why your Remembrancer is missing. You know he's not coming back, don't you? "

"He's not dead," said Claire.

"That may not be the worst of it," said Blackbird. "It is in all our best interests to make sure the ceremony goes ahead with a new knife, and soon."

"You want me to change the ritual, just because you say so?"

"No, I'm not telling you to change it. I'm saying you have to put it back to the way it was, the way it was meant to be. If we don't then the consequences may go far beyond the fate of one Remembrancer and his clerk."

"I don't know..."

"Claire, we stand on the edge of something terrible. The breaking of the Quick Knife has changed things, weakened them. If things break down completely then the incidents you refer to could be the very least of it. We need to get the knife repaired or remade."

"It can't be welded or fixed in that way. We tried. The only way is to get a new one made."

"Can you do that?"

"I can't, but perhaps you may be able to."

"Us? Neither of us want to get anywhere near it."

"It mentions in the journals, when the nails became too rusty to use. Two of your kind came and took them away and got them re-forged."

"That's very unlikely, Claire."

"Oh, I don't mean they did it themselves. I mean they took them to a smith and he did it for them. "

"Where would the Feyre get a smith from?"

"From the same place as always, the Highsmiths. "

"The high smiths?"

"The Highsmith family, the people who rent the Moors in Shropshire. They are the smiths to the Six Courts. Surely you know this?"

It was our turn to admit we didn't know all of it. "I guess you are not the only ones to lose things," Blackbird conceded.

Claire acknowledged this with a nod. It relieved some of her tension that she was not the only one fumbling in the dark.

"The Highsmiths were the family that produced the new set of nails. All except for the sixty-first one. "

"Why wasn't the sixty-first nail remade?"

"It didn't need to be. It's made of a different metal to the rest and it hadn't rusted. It's like the Dead Knife, rather than the dark metal of the others."

"I wondered about that when I read it in the leaflet," said Blackbird. "Ten nails for each horse-shoe and then another. I thought it must be a spare."

"No, the sixty-first nail is different from the rest, though I've no idea why. Shall I get it? It's in the safe with the others, ready for the ceremony next week. "

"We'd like to see it, thanks."

Blackbird and I waited, both wrapped in our own thoughts, while Claire retrieved the nails. They were in a velvet case, a little like that used for jewellery, which she unrolled across the table. Each bundle of nails had a pocket and it was immediately clear to Blackbird and I that the nails were iron, though thankfully they didn't have the noxious aura of the Quick Knife.

The last nail in the roll had a pocket of its own, though. Claire extracted it and held it up so I could see it, unsure of my reaction. It was the same size and shape as the other nails, a square section about two or three inches long, narrowing sharply along its length to a fine point. "Any ideas?" I asked Blackbird.

"No, I don't see why that one should be different from the others. It's not iron, or anything like it, is it? Is there nothing in the journals about it, Claire?" she asked. "Nothing obvious, no. The nails were taken back to the Highsmiths about a hundred and fifty years ago, but the sixty-first was returned with the rest, unchanged. "

"Well, the problem is with the knife, not the nails. Do you have an address for these Highsmiths? "

"I can get it for you."

She replaced the nail and rewrapped the bundle, taking them out again while Blackbird and I considered what we had learnt. For my part, the revelation that there had been regular, if infrequent, meetings between humanity and the Feyre was an eye-opener. It had never occurred to me that such things might be going on, but why would it? People didn't generally notice things they weren't looking for.

"Somebody knew this was going on," said Blackbird, her thoughts following the same lines as my own. "Claire obviously does, and presumably the Remembrancer, if he's alive?"

"No, I mean the Feyre. I'm beginning to see another hand in this."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember I said yesterday that I wasn't following you, but it wasn't random chance that put me there either?"

"Yes, you said it was fortune."

"I chose my words carefully. I really wasn't following you, but I was waiting for you."

"For me?"

"Not for you specifically, but for someone or something. Kareesh sent me a message, which she does from time to time when she an errand to run or maybe a message to be delivered. She said: 'Be at the southern end of the Leicester Square tube station platform at the morning peak on Thursday and make yourself useful.' She didn't tell me what to do or why, but that's pretty standard for her. I waited there to see what would happen.

"And then I collapsed down the stairs onto the platform."

"I was waiting on the other platform, but it didn't take me long to realise what was going on. "

"So did she mean for you to save me?"