City people were so rude. She walked across the road and headed down the street to the corner, trying to get her bearings. As she reached the cross-street she could see the familiar outline of the BT Tower above the buildings. She wasn't far from the centre then. Not far from Oxford Street, and shops, and cappuccino bars.
She turned and headed towards the BT Tower and civilisation. As she walked she went past a bookshop and glanced sideways into the large window. Her reflection met her gaze. No wonder they walked away from her. My God, she looked a fright. Reflexively her hand patted her pockets for a comb to tame her unruly curls. The water hadn't helped, and anyway, these days her hair tended to have a mind of its own you.
A man appeared in the shop doorway wearing a polo shirt with the shop's logo emblazoned on it. 'Go away, you're putting the customers off!'
She gaped at him. Putting them off? How dare he! There was an echo of a rumble, beneath the ground. Alex could feel the water far below her, feel it wanting to burst upwards and engulf the man and his stupid shirt.
'Get lost! Shoo!' He affected a two-day stubble that was so carefully cultivated. He obviously loved himself.
Alex, lifted her chin. The rumbling below her subsided. 'Why don't you… take your stupid books and your stupid half-a-beard, and your stupid shirt with its stupid logo, and go and fuck yourself?'
The man bristled, but he didn't leave the doorway.
'It's a public footpath, isn't it?' she said, 'You can't stop me. I've got as much right to be here as you have, prick!'
'Right, that does it. I'm calling the police!'
'Help yourself,' she said, fussing with her hair in the windows reflection. 'By the time they get here I'll be long gone and they'll think you're as big a prick as I do.'
He made a big show of going inside and picking up the phone, glaring at her through the half-reflection of the window as he punched the numbers. Alex was guessing that with the other hand he was holding the phone closed — that type were all show.
She did look a state, though. There were black rings under her eyes from staying up until all hours, and her sweatshirt and skirt looked like they'd been trampled by elephants before she'd put them on — one of the disadvantages of getting completely soaked and then drying them by forcing all the water out.
She glanced back at the dickhead in the shop, stuck a finger up at him for good measure and walked on. Within yards she had cloaked herself in glamour. Let the police see if they could find her — they could try. She headed for the brighter lights of Oxford Street.
Meetings with my boss were very different, I reflected, than when I used to have a real job. When I reached the stairs down to the training room I could hear Garvin before I could see him. He was using one of the weapons on the rubber car tyre that we used for stamina exercises, hung in the corner from a chain in the ceiling. The raw smacks as he hit the tyre travelled down the corridor as a fast percussion. He was sweating it, pushing himself. When I opened the door I realised he was doing it in pitch blackness.
'Come in. Close the door.' The percussion continued.
I stepped inside, closing the door with a soft thud, and finding myself in darkness as the noise continued. I stood there waiting for him to finish.
The lights flickered on leaving me blinking in the light. I realised that Garvin was behind me.
'Just because the sound continues does not mean I'm still over there. You should know that Dogstar.'
He wandered back to the spinning tyre, swinging the long staff in curves and sweeps around and through the tyre without once touching it, this time in silence, letting his muscles cool slowly from the exertion.
'I asked you to come and see me,' he said, circling slowly around the twirling tyre but still avoiding hitting it.
'Amber told me.'
'She said she told you twenty minutes ago. Where were you?'
'I went to see if Alex was back.'
There was a sharp double thud. In Garvin's hand the staff had separated into a shorter staff and a long handled blade. Most of the tyre dropped to the floor, bounced once and then rocked back and forth, leaving the top section jiggling around manically on the end of the chain.
'You cut the tyre in half,' I said, stating the obvious.
'I can always chain up another tyre,' he said, sweeping the blade in a circle, and finishing with a flourish that joined it once more into a staff, 'but getting another Warder at short notice is much more difficult.'
'Why do you need another Warder?'
'Because one of them is running around after his daughter?' he suggested.
'I… I needed to meet Katherine and I thought it best if it was done discreetly.'
'Discreetly? So you send a black limo to get her? In the middle of a housing estate?'
'I don't know. I thought maybe…'
'No, the problem is, you didn't think. I asked you not to see her. I asked you not to tell her Alex was alive.'
'I'm sorry, but I felt I had to.'
'A bit late for that, isn't it? You appropriate the property of the courts for your own purposes, co-opt one of Mullbrook's staff into doing your dirty work, and do something that I expressly asked you not to do…'
'You only said it wasn't a good idea.'
'And was it? Did she take it well?'
'Not really.'
'Well I think we can assume I was right, then, can't we?'
'It's better that she knows.'
'Let me say something, Niall, as someone with a great deal of experience in managing the courts and dealing with humanity. It is, in fact, almost exclusively better, if people do not know. Do I make myself clear this time?'
'I couldn't leave her like that.'
'This is not about assuaging your guilty conscience. I have a job to do and you're supposed to be helping me — instead you're making it harder.'
'She won't tell anyone.'
'Of course she'll tell someone! She's bound to, sooner or later. There'll be someone close, someone she trusts. It's like pissing in a pond. You break the banks and then it leaks into the bigger pool, before long it's in the stream and then the river and before you know it the entire ocean is tainted with piss. It's what happens.'
'I'll talk to Katherine and ask her to be discreet.'
'I think you've done enough talking, don't you? I asked you to be discreet. Asking her to keep it quiet will only stimulate her interest and encourage her to ask more questions. No more, Niall. Is that understood?'
'I understand.'
'You said that last time. If you're not cut out to be a Warder, with all the privileges and comforts that come with it, then other arrangements can be made. If you want to be a Warder then you need to start acting like one. I gave you a job. Have you done it?'
'Not yet.'
Garvin sighed. 'There are a group of them holed up in a squat in north London, an old factory. Amber will go with you.'
'Amber?'
'Yes, Amber. Perhaps if you see how the job should be done, you'll get on with it. I've sent Fellstamp and Fionh elsewhere. If you won't do this, Dogstar, then I'll send someone who will. Amber's waiting for you downstairs. She won't wait long. Get your kit and get moving.'
I said nothing, pressing my fist over my heart in acknowledgement and left, pulling the door shut behind me, then leaned against the wall next to the door, breathing slowly in and out. Garvin was usually the measure of control and diplomacy, but today I'd seen another side of him. If he'd sent Fellstamp and Fionh in search of some of the escapees then that was bad news. They would not treat them as carefully as I would. I needed to get on top of things if I was going to save any of these people, and keep my job.
I also needed to talk to Katherine, which meant going against what he'd just told me. If Alex turned up at her mother's then Katherine would need to know what the situation was, otherwise she might go complaining to the
