‘I will kill him if I must.’ It couldn’t have been that. He must have misheard. Fitz closed his eyes, preferring blindness to the juddering spasms that had begun to shake his field of vision. Forget it. I heard him wrong.
But there was no mistaking his neighbour’s next words. They sounded from the study clear as the peal of a bell.
‘I must go,’ Mr Ahmadi said. ‘He’s here now. I saw him from the window only a few minutes ago.’
For a second or two, nothing happened. Then, from within the study, behind the great mahogany desk Fitz had glimpsed so often while passing down the hallway towards the library, Mr Ahmadi Junior set the bone-handled, antique receiver down in its cradle. Fitz heard it settle into place, and then the familiar, extended crackle of dry wood stretching its limbs as Mr Ahmadi leaned back in his spindled chair.
Every nerve in Fitz’s body, acute and sensitive, seemed to prickle. He choked with agitation on the air, his jaw thrust forward like that of a fish snagged on a drawing hook.
And then his fingers twitched, and he dropped the book.
He had forgotten that he was holding it. The Giant’s Almanac: fifty or sixty pages, manuscript, card covers, written in a free and open hand. It was almost nothing. It hardly slapped the floor when it hit. It hardly made a sound. It hardly dented the silence.
But it was enough. Immediately, from within the sealed study he heard Mr Ahmadi push himself back from the desk and rise to his feet. And he heard another noise, the sound of hard, powerful claws scrabbling against granite. Fitz didn’t stay to hear more. His eyes snapped open. His arm swung to the floor to retrieve the book, even as his legs, charged with fear, uncoiled down the hallway. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the gallery window. There was no time to waste.
As he scattered himself down the hallway, round the corner and into the Friary’s grand, central hall, Fitz could almost feel the touch of Mr Ahmadi’s grip on his neck. His words, his strange words, his threatening words, seemed to chase him like a demon or a fury, tightening round his collar. But his mind, calculating, told him that his neighbour was not the most immediate danger; the long iron handles of the Friary’s panelled doors would present no obstacle to the house’s oldest resident, the huge Alsatian Mr Ahmadi had inherited from his father. Fitz had raced Aslan a hundred times, and knew his footing in the halls of that house as well as he knew his own. And he knew, as only a friend really knows, just how quickly the dog would take up the chase, and how relentlessly he would pursue it.
At the top of the broad and turning stairs, Fitz drew up and inclined his head. He was a hunted animal scenting the air. The moment he reached the ground floor, he would have a choice: to let himself out of the front door, and circle round the back of the big house, through the kitchen garden and orchard; or to reverse, sprint down the back hallway, negotiate the complicated kitchen, and try his luck with the servants’ entry. He imagined both routes, almost simultaneously, with geometric precision.
He didn’t reach a decision.
From the other side of the first-floor landing, the door he had yanked behind him was now rattling violently. It wouldn’t hold for long. Fitz wedged the book firmly under his arm, and when the latch finally gave way, he sprang.
Often he took the steps of the grand staircase two at a time. Today, with one hand gliding on the wide oak bannister, he stretched for three. He calculated, leaping: the curve of the descent would deposit him, with a bound, halfway across the lobby on his way to the front door. Momentum knew this was his preferred route, but, with sudden resolve – hearing fast legs on the steps behind him – he twisted, swinging his legs clear over the bannister and into the back hallway. Through the dim light, between heavy shelves crammed with dusty instruments, he tried to lengthen his pace. The hallway opened on to a high-ceilinged, panelled dining room, framed with more portraits of black-bearded fathers. Every one of them seemed to frown at Fitz as, without a break in his gait, he propelled himself across the surface of the room’s heavy walnut dining table – holding his feet high to be sure his trainers wouldn’t scuff the polished finish. On the other side, as he darted through the doorway, he let it swing closed behind him; this might buy him the second or two he would need in order to locate the back door keys.
There was no need. The cook had left them hanging, as she often did, on the old disused chimney breast beside the kitchen’s elaborate range. Tonight was her night off, and the cold meats she had left for Mr Ahmadi’s dinner lay, covered, on the broad table that stood between the hearth and the door. Fitz snatched the keys from their hook, tossed the book on to the table, vaulted it, caught the book as it slid off the other side, and just managed to plant the right key in the ancient lock of the house’s heavy back door. For a second he felt gift and magic surging through his
