'Perhaps it may be best for both our sakes to dispose of him.'
Nanzi said nothing, but Voland guessed that she wasn't keen. 'We could both be arrested and executed. There is no overly useful information coming from the commander of the Night Guard. I say it's time we rid ourselves of this Investigator Jeryd.'
She nodded and laid her head on Voland's chest. She then drew one of her spider limbs across his pink human leg, smiling softly at the contrast in colour and texture. It pained her to even think of it – has she had grown attached to the old rumel. He was a nice person – a good person – but one thing that Voland had taught her was practicality. Emotions could ravage her, in her human state, so that her logical thinking suffered. As a spider, the deed should be more simple. Her animal instincts would take over, and it would become a job, just like any other. Sometimes she wished she could always enjoy the strength of will of her transformed state – with no weakness of purpose, no reliance on others.
'OK. I'll kill him. I'll have to do it soon, though.'
THIRTY-THREE
'A golem show!' Marysa exclaimed. Her expression of joy was worth a thousand times the effort needed to get the tickets. She held his hands in hers, and somehow managed to shake the day from him, the way she always did.
'Yeah.' Jeryd was a little coy, for some reason. He wasn't the greatest romantic in the world and he knew it. No matter how old he became, he reacted just the same as when he was a kid doing this sort of thing for the first time. It was such an awkward business. 'I thought we could do with getting out, and I know how much you liked them back in Villjamur. So you'd better throw some fancy rags on, because the Great Iucounu starts in an hour or so.'
'Great, I'll go and change quickly.'
'Hurry now, or I'm going without you.' Jeryd contentedly watched her rush out of the room: surprising his partner was one of his great pleasures. As he listened to the familiar sounds of her getting ready, he sighed contentedly, and turned to look out of the window. It was snowing – no surprise there – but at least the street cleaners had left their path to the theatre fairly unobstructed. There was snow still along the tops of walls, or gathering on rooftops, places where the cultists couldn't easily do their work. To Villiren, snow was still a soft white plague. Storm lanterns hung at street intersections, their soft orange glow caught in the glistening cobbles. A part of him considered that tonight might even qualify as romantic.
To be honest he needed a night of escape like this, for his own sanity. Otherwise, thoughts of the improbable spider killer dominated his mindspace. The case took up his entire day, from questioning relatives about the disappearance of a loved one, to piecing together individual incidents in the hope of establishing a general pattern. And on top of that, as always, was the bloody administration. He wondered what the Inquisition would be like if it wasn't for paperwork.
Could he even match the wits and abilities of this spider, a being so unlike him, something so abnormal that it managed to resuscitate his worst childhood fears? No one else in the Inquisition seemed to care about the case. He had had words about his suspicions with one or two of the senior officers, but he could tell from their expressions that they would be leaving him to deal with it alone. And that was fine – he was used to taking the weight of the world on his shoulders without thanks, but it made for a stressful existence. One of the guys at work had kindly bought him a bottle of whisky, said he'd been working too late and would soon appreciate its company. He merely left it unopened in his bottom drawer, because that was a dangerous road ahead.
Eventually Marysa came downstairs and bounded into the living room, just like old times. A blink of the eye and they might have been kids again – where did all that time go? She wore her classic-fit green gown, with the brooch he'd bought her fifty years back, presented to her on one of the bridges of Villjamur as an anniversary present. Her white hair was tied back elegantly and she wore his favourite perfume.
'Shall we?' He offered her his arm.
*
Nanzi loitered on the rooftop, observing people shuffling along thtreets below with monotonous strides, one after the other, their headowed and hunched under the snowfall. Skies had clouded over. Many of the lanterns kept being taken by thieves looking for scraetal, leaving a darkness in which Nanzi, in her arachnid form, couleel comfortable. Snow had amassed along the guttering, obscuriner view, so the spider poked one leg over the top to clear some spacor her to scrutinize the scene fully.
She was halfway between the theatre and Jeryd's house. Her targead announced proudly to Nanzi earlier that day where he would be going tonight for his wife's surprise, providing the spider with the perfect opportunity to be rid of him.
Every couple that walked by, she homed in on and scrutinized patiently, sensing to see if any one of them was Jeryd. In the mass she sensed joy, misery, excitement, awkwardness – a whole host of states of being, which came to her in alterations of air chemistry.
Down to the left: Jeryd and Marysa. Arm in arm, he smiling, her laughing at something he had said. After a kid narrowly missed Jeryd with a snowball, he scooped up some loose snow from a wall and arced one back.
Cautious now of being spotted, Nanzi withdrew her legs, and watched them cautiously. The couple drifted further along, and Nanzi propelled her body across the roof tiles with the agility of a ballet dancer, all the time studying their progress. The lights of the city proved hypnotic, reaching her in languid pulses of heat, and chemicals from street vendors smeared the air, but she kept herself as focused as possible, tap-tapping from tile to tile, spitting fresh silk to support herself, so that she didn't slip and plummet to the ground.
Streets became people-thick, the golem show pulling in quite a crowd.
Then she lost them, Jeryd and Marysa, in a throng of bodies by the entrance to the old theatre. Her animalistic instincts took over: she must find him, she must kill him.
Up to the roof of the theatre eventually, up and up to a giddy height. The precarious structure seemed to rattle in this wind. Scuttling back and forth, she examined the surface for a few loose tiles, then managed to remove enough to squeeze her bulbous form into the building itself.
And down into the darkness.
*
Lights out. A dignified ripple of applause.
Three rows from the back, on the right side of a red-upholstered auditorium, Jeryd was getting vaguely interested as a golemist lumbered onstage in a flamboyant white shirt. His face resembled a sack of potatoes and he was laughing merrily to himself. A small white pterodette of some kind, all spindly and barbed, shambled along by his feet.
What a damn humiliation for a cultist, Jeryd thought, to be reduced to mere entertainment. Does he get teased by the others?
The man blew kisses to the crowd and Marysa excitedly clutched Jeryd's hand. This was all a little cheesy, and Jeryd couldn't tell if she liked these shows ironically or genuinely, but at least she seemed happy enough. Certain things seemed to reduce her to a sweet young girl again, so he simply smiled then focused on the man up onstage.
As they usually did, the golemist placed several waist-high, potbellied statues about the torch-lit stage, before stepping back into the shadows at the centre rear, the white creature tottering after him to stand by his feet.
A guitarist began throwing some chords, minor thirds mainly and, after a few predictable flashes of magic, the stone statues became liquid and motile. One by one, they began gyrating in a hypnotic rhythm.
*
With so many people, the air chemistry completely altered, anndividuals began losing their individuality. Nanzi ripped her way through the various floor levels and dropped down onto the ceiling of the auditorium proper. No – right above the stage now, looking down on all the rigging and apparatus of theatre. Ropes spiralled down to the limelight, and a red curtain sagged sadly like an age-collapsed face. Analysing the audience, Nanzi eventually located Jeryd and Marysa near the back, safely away from the majority. Although a large crowd, the theatre could
