“My breaking heart,” retorted Oda with a scowl.
I glared and snatched up the rest of my salami roll, biting into it to hide my anger. Not hiding it very well, clearly, since Oda sat up straighter and said, “I didn’t mean that…” She hesitated, then made a grunting sound, relaxing. “Chaigneau hates you,” she said finally.
“It’s mutual.”
“You embarrassed him.”
“It’s something I’m good at.”
“It’s more than that – you tainted him. He’s now been touched by magic.”
“So? He’s a killer of magicians, a paladin of narrow-minded insanity; surely it’s good to know his enemy?”
“He doesn’t believe you’ve really lifted the curse you put on him.”
“Why not?”
“He won’t say.”
“Is this another of his paranoid irrationalities coming through?”
“Did you undo what you did to him?” she asked sharply.
I met her eyes, unafraid of her cold glare. “Yes.”
Another hesitation – perhaps something more too? “If you live,” she said finally, “if you meet Bakker and have your revenge, if you kill him – what will you do then?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about it. “Clearly Chaigneau will try to kill me, the instant all this is over. So either you and I become implacable enemies, or I run away to another city and learn French or something.”
“He’ll find you.”
“Then you and I become enemies,” I answered. “And if I survive that…” There was nothing on her face to answer the hopeful enquiry in my voice, so I just said, “If I survive your Order, then… I don’t know. My CV isn’t great; and, besides, there’s this two-year gap where I vanished, which employers will assume was spent in prison. I don’t have any money that isn’t obtained by the use of a spell; I don’t have a home; I don’t even know what’s happened to my friends. I just… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll pack up and go. Head out to some other place and start again. Go back to being eighteen with just my qualifications and a week’s work experience, wipe everything else clean, say I had cancer or something. Maybe be someone else, get a false name, try discretion and tact for a change. It could be an adventure.”
“What about them?”
“Them?”
She tapped the side of her head conspiratorially and said, “Them with the blue eyes.”
We thought about it, and grinned. “We will find joy in all life, anywhere. To be whoever we want to be… nothing but joy.”
“Doesn’t sound joyous to me,” said Oda.
“That’s because you don’t like living without certainties,” I replied. “You’re just afraid.”
“I am not!”
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Fear is the art of being alive – without fear there’s no bravery, no heroism, no…”
“Shut up,” she exclaimed.
I raised my hands defensively. “Sorry – I’m sorry. Is there anything else to eat?”
We lost patience before I was due to be discharged; in the middle of the night I got up, wrote Oda a brief and reasonably polite note, gathered up what few clothes we could find, and slipped out of the hospital, into the empty streets. Cold air on our face and hard pavement under our feet was a bliss we could not describe.
I spent the next day replenishing my stock – I found a new cardboard ad offering the services of “***PLAYFUL SEXY CHICK!!!!***” and scribbled my symbols of magic onto its back with a biro, sliding it into the ATM to withdraw enough money for my day of shopping. I bought new clothes and replenished my supply of tools for the trade – then went to the dry-cleaners and sat and waited while they struggled to remove the endless swirls of paint, dust, smoke, dirt and blood from the fabric of my coat and the surface of my bag. The result looked like a faded clown’s costume that had once been dyed beige, but the fabric felt warm and dense, a weight without which I would have felt naked. For lunch I had a curry at the local tandoori house, dipping poppadoms into every chutney and spice. We were determined to find out what even the fiery red one was like, having avoided it in my previous life, and found that there were indeed flavours that could make our teeth burn. In the afternoon I booked myself into a hotel, and that evening, I went out for a drink.
I met her by the bar of a small jazz café near Hyde Park. She said her name was Felicity, and that it was nice of me to try, but she wasn’t really interested. I told her I just wanted to have a conversation and she answered that that was what everyone said, that men were all the same. But she didn’t say no when I bought her a drink; and we talked about the weather, the price of tickets on the underground, the embarrassment of our current politicians and all their useless prancing for the media, and what was on television, until at last I felt human again, and when it was time to say goodbye, we kissed and promised never to see each other again.
When I dreamt that night, I didn’t wake up with the taste of paper in my mouth, and that, I concluded, could only be a good sign.
The next day I bought a mobile phone – the first I’d ever bought in my life – and rang the hospital where I’d been staying until they put me through to Dr Seah, who after a lot of umming and aaahing and “Have you been in a fight yet?” agreed to ring Oda and give her my number.
Oda rang me no more than ten minutes later. She was not a happy person.
“You bastard! I’ll kill you if you ever do that again!”
“Hello to you too.”
“Where the hell did you think you were going, what did you think you were doing, you can’t just…”
“I needed some air.”
“You needed two days of air without telling me? Just walking off into the dark like you were… what if something had happened?!”
“Please don’t try concern; you’re much better at indignation.”
“If you
“Oh please, like the sniper rifle isn’t gleaming through the window already,” I said. “I’m calling now, aren’t I?”
“You’re a selfish pig, sorcerer. A lying, selfish pig.”
“I just thought I’d let you know I’m OK.”
A calmer edge entered her voice. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Is it abusive?”
“Sinclair woke up.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know – they moved him the second he gained consciousness.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“His assistant.”
“Charlie?”
“If that’s his name.”
“You know where?”
“I just said I didn’t.”
“Right – got any way to contact him?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he woke up?”
“Because he’s not in the morgue and he’s not in the hospital, what do you think?”
“All right, thanks. I’ll try and find him.” I hung up quickly, before she could shout any more.
