‘But Margaret—’
She didn’t care to listen to his response; she had already started walking briskly along the garden path that would take her to the palace gates. Tesla hurried to catch up with her, trailing along like a reluctant child after an impatient and unbending mother.
Margaret soon reached the gates, emerging clumsily from the thick foliage with a stumble over a loose stone. The guards who were stationed at the gate – which was now closed – seemed very surprised to see her, and they raised their weapons to their shoulders and were about to say something when Tesla rushed out of the garden behind her. He said something to the guards in their language, and while they still seemed suspicious, they nonetheless lowered their weapons, and one of them reluctantly opened the palace gates.
Once they were outside, Margaret veered immediately to the left. She knew exactly where she needed to be; the only question was whether they would make it there before Tesla collapsed. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure he was following her. He was, and he caught her gaze for a second and started to say something, but she turned her head away, ignoring him, and steamed on ahead as fast as she could.
‘Margaret, wait—’ Tesla, who was beginning to feel the first stirrings of the potent cocktail Margaret had given him, protested.
‘Time waitsh for no man, Tesla,’ she countered, huffing and breathing hard from the exertion of her power-walking. ‘Keep up or fall behind, it’sh your choice!’
She rocketed ahead, almost colliding with two soldiers as she veered at speed around a corner. Their startled eyes almost popped from their skulls at the sight of her, and one reached for her weapon – a nine-millimetre pistol holstered at her hip – but then Tesla came scurrying around the corner as well. As he had before, he explained the situation, and the pair of soldiers let them pass, albeit with looks of suspicion on their faces.
Tesla was beginning to feel woozy now; his vision was becoming blurred at the edges and it felt as if all of the energy was draining from his body like air from a slow-punctured tyre.
‘M-, M-, Margaret,’ he stammered, his voice low and his delivery sluggish, ‘I d-, d-, don’t feel g-, g-, good, I th-, th- think something is wr-, wrong…’
‘Don’t be sh, shilly,’ she snapped in response. ‘Nothing’sh wrong with you. I’m a d-, doctor, and that’sh my professional opinion! You’re f-, fine! Hurry up!’
‘I f-, feel—’
‘Shut up!’ she snarled, her desperation now as naked as an assassin’s blade flashing in the dark. ‘Just shut up and fucking follow me! Move it!’
After that Tesla stopped protesting; the venom in Margaret’s voice was apparent, and he was beginning to feel very drowsy now. He had no energy to argue; all he could do at this point was follow Margaret and do as she said. Margaret’s heart was in her mouth, thumping out a doom beat, and her stomach began to churn with a crippling nausea as she reached her destination: the foot of the tall tower that looked out over the river – the tower from which she had seen the teenage soldiers jumping into the water outside the city walls.
‘Mother of God,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘I’m here. It’s happening, it’s actually happening.’
Sergeant Tesla came staggering up the path behind her. His dilated pupils were enormous dishes of black in his eyes, and his countenance had taken on an air of haggard exhaustion, like a drunk’s after an all-night binge.
‘M-, M-, M-, Margaret,’ he slurred as he swayed like a sapling in a gale on his feet. ‘I f-, f-, feel—’
‘Chin up shweetie, you’re fine!’ she said with forced chirpiness. ‘We’re going up to the r-, roof of that tower. Thatsh the best place to shee the sh-, shtars.’
‘Mar-, Margaret I c-, c—’
She spun around and grabbed his slim shoulders and shook him with a desperate violence that she didn’t know she had in her.
‘We’re going up to the roof of that tower,’ she hissed, with her jaw set tight and her muscles trembling with barely suppressed savagery. ‘You are fine, do you undershtand me, boy?! There’sh nothing wrong with you. Nothing! Now how the hell do we get up there?! I know there’sh a way! Fucking take me up there, now!’
‘Margaret, you’re h-, h-, hurting me—’
She could no longer restrain herself; she slapped Tesla with a vicious open hand across his face. Her own palm stung immediately from the force of the blow, and she knew that his cheek would be burning with pain. He stared up at her with the confused, betrayed look of a beaten dog that had done nothing wrong.
‘M-, Margaret—’
‘Are we friendsh or enemiesh, Tesla?’ she hissed. ‘If you’re really my friend, you’ll t-, take me up there right now. Otherwishe, I know the truth: that you hate me. That you’re a traitor and a l-, liar.’
‘O-, okay,’ he stammered, still stunned from her brutal slap. ‘There’s a ladder b-, built into the wall just h-, here.’
He stumbled over to the city wall, lurching like a lush mired in the depths of inebriation, and pushed aside the thick boughs of a shrub. Sure enough, steel rungs had been attached to the wall there. They led all the way up the wall of the tower to a spot on the roof.
‘We h-, have t-, t-, to climb a-, a- … all…’
His voice trailed off into garbled sludge as his head began to loll about his shoulders. The sedative power of the antihistamines and alcohol had finally kicked in with full effect, and Tesla was powerless to resist their combined, crippling might. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, his knees buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the ground. Margaret walked over to him, her head light with both the buzz from
