clinkings—and when the voice spoke again, it was from over her head. “I’ll escort you,” it said heavily. “Even dying from the pinpricks of the clown’s little men, Big Biter is a protector few would care to cross.”
“You’ll… escort us?” asked Jacky incredulously.
“Yes.” The thing sighed ponderously. “I owe it to your companion, who freed my brothers and sisters and me and gave us the chance to revenge ourselves on our maker before we died.”
Jacky had noticed that the thing’s voice was not echoing, as though they stood in a room instead of a tunnel.
“Make haste,” Big Biter said, moving forward, “the darkness is hardening.” The peculiar trio made their way to the stairs and plodded up them. At the first landing Coleridge wanted to rest, but Big Biter told him there wasn’t time; the creature picked Coleridge up and they continued.
“Don’t hang behind,” their escort cautioned Jacky.
“I won’t,” Jacky assured it, for she realized that now there was no sound or echo from the corridor they’d vacated, or even from the flight of stairs they’d just ascended. What was it, the eyeless Sisters had said to her half a year ago?
When they finally got to the top and stepped into the bright torchlight of the kitchen hallway in Rat’s Castle, a couple of Carrington’s men took a step toward them, then took two steps back when they saw the creature that was carrying Coleridge in its heavy arms. Jacky looked up at Big Biter and almost recoiled herself.
Their escort was an amphibious giant, with long black catfish tentacles around its face like a caricatured beard and hair, and eyes like glass paperweights, and a pig-like snout, but by far his most striking feature was his mouth: it was a twelve-inch slash across his face, which he could barely close because of the rows of huge teeth in it. He wore an ancient coat, the front of which was shredded and wet with red blood.
“These vermin won’t interfere with you,” Big Biter said quietly. “Come on.”
He set Coleridge down and walked with them to the front door. “Go now,” he said. “Quickly. I’ll watch until you’re out of sight, but I’ve got to get back down the stairs before the darkness hardens completely.”
“All right,” said Jacky, gratefully breathing the relatively fresh pre-dawn air of Buckeridge Street. “And thank you for—”
“I did it for your friend,” rumbled Big Biter. “Now go.”
Jacky nodded and hustled Coleridge outside and down the dark street.
* * *
They’d made it back to Hudson’s Hotel without mishap, and when they’d gotten into Coleridge’s room Jacky had flopped him onto the bed. The man was asleep before Jacky had gotten to the hall and gently closed the door behind her. She’d seen the laudanum bottle on the bedside table, and she believed she understood now why Carrington’s restraining measures had proven ineffective on the elderly poet. How could Carrington have known what a tremendous tolerance for opium Coleridge had developed?
Then she had walked down to the Thames, by the Adelphi Arches where the subterranean tributary emptied into the river, on the chance that Ashbless, or whatever remained of him, might emerge from the tunnel.
The sky was a bright steely blue in the east now, and a tattered string of clouds above the horizon had begun to smolder and glow. The sun would appear at any moment.
There was a turbulence in the water in the still deep shadows below the arches, and Jacky glanced down just in time to see a ghostly, semi-transparent boat surge out. As it emerged into the dawn grayness it became simultaneously incandescent and more transparent, and it receded away toward the eastern horizon at such a speed that Jacky was momentarily certain it was only a hallucination born of total exhaustion; but a split second later she became aware of two things: the first red sliver of the rising sun had appeared over the distant London skyline, and a man was splashing about in the water a dozen feet out from the bank, having apparently fallen through the ghost boat when it became insubstantial.
Jacky leaped to her feet, for she recognized the man, who was now swimming a little dazedly toward shore.
“Mr. Ashbless!” she shouted. “Over here!”
* * *
Just as the snake boat had passed between the two poles—each supporting a pharaoh-bearded head—that flanked the last archway, Ashbless felt a tremendous swelling heat burst up inside himself, stunning the beleaguered shred that was his consciousness, and until he splashed into the icy Thames he was blissfully sure that this was death.
When he’d thrashed to the surface and shaken the long hair out of his eyes it occurred to him that he once again had hair, and two eyes. He held up first one hand, and then the other, in front of his face, and grinned to see all fingers present, all skin unbroken.
The restoration Doctor Romanelli had hoped for in vain had happened to him—when the sun was resurrected and made whole and alive again at dawn, Ashbless had been allowed—God knew why—to partake in it.
He’d just begun to swim in toward shore when he heard a call. He paused, squinting at the shadowed shore, then recognized the person sitting on the wall, waved, and resumed his stroke.
The water was surging and swashing around the Adelphi Arches, and when he stood up in the shallows and splashed his way up onto the mud bank he saw why: the subterranean waterway had stopped flowing into the Thames, as completely as if a huge valve had been closed somewhere—and now that the immediate backwash had abated, the river was flowing past Ashbless’ point of exit as smoothly as it swept past the rest of the bank. A few river birds had swooped down to peer inquisitively at the churned-up mud that was swirling away downstream.
He looked up at the thin figure perched on the wall. “Hello, Jacky,” he called. “Coleridge got out too, I think.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jacky.
“And,” said Ashbless, climbing up the bank, “I daresay he won’t remember anything he saw last night.”
“Well,” said Jacky, mystified, as the dripping, bearded giant scrambled up the slope and hoisted himself up to sit next to her on the wall, “as a matter of fact, he may not.” She peered closely at him. “I thought you were dead when you slid past me down there. Your… eyes, and… “
“Yes,” said Ashbless gently. “I was dying—but there was magic loose last night, not all of it malign.” It was his turn to peer at her. “You found time to shave?”
“Oh!” Jacky rubbed her bare upper lip. “It… the moustache… was singed off.”
“Good Lord. I’m glad to see you made it out, anyway.” Ashbless leaned back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “I’m going to sit here,” he said, “until the sun’s high enough to dry me off.”
Jacky cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll die of the chill—which seems at least a waste, after surviving the… condensed works of Dante.”
He grinned without opening his eyes, and shook his head. “Ashbless has got lots of things to do before he dies.”
“Oh? Such as what?”
Ashbless shrugged. “Well… get married, for one thing. Fifth of next month, as a matter of fact.”
Jacky tossed her head carelessly. “That’s nice. To whom?”
“A girl named Elizabeth Jacqueline Tichy. Pretty girl. Never met her, but I’ve seen a picture of her.”
Jacky’s eyebrows went up. “Who?”
Ashbless repeated the name.
Her face twitched irresolutely between a piqued smile and a frown. “You’ve never met her? So how can you be so damn sure she’ll have you?”
“I know she will, Jacky me lad. You might say she hasn’t any choice.”
