Nightingale lament

number ringing. I studied the other cards plastered across the glass wall in front of me. The usual mixture - charms and potions and spells, love goddesses available by the hour, transformations and inversions, and how to do horrible things to a goat for fun and profit.

Someone picked up the phone at the other end and said, 'This had better be important.'

'Hello, Pew,' I said, trying hard to sound natural through my puffed-up mouth. 'It's John Taylor.'

'What the hell are you doing, calling me?'

'I'm hurt. I need help.'

'Things must really be bad if I'm your best bet. Why me, Taylor?'

'Because you're always saying you're God's ser­vant. You're supposed to help people in trouble.'

'People. Not abominations like you! None of us in the Nightside will be safe until you're dead and buried in unconsecrated ground. Give me one good reason why I should put myself out for you, Taylor.'

'Well, if charity won't do it, Pew, how about this? In my current weakened state, I am vulnerable to all kinds of attack, including possession. You really want to face something from the Pit in my body, with my gift?'

'That's a low blow, damn you,' said Pew. I could practically hear him thinking it over. 'All right, I'll send you a door. If only because I'll never really be sure you're dead unless I've finished you off myself.'

The phone went dead, and I put it down. There's no-one closer, outside of family and friends, than an old enemy.

I turned around, slowly and painfully, pushed the booth door open and looked outside. A door was standing right in front of me, in the middle of the pavement. Just a door, standing alone, old and battered with the paint peeling off in long strips, and a rough gap show­ing bare wood where the number had once been. Prob­ably stolen. Pew lived by choice in the rougher neighbourhoods, where he felt his preaching was most needed. I left the phone booth and headed for the door with the last of my strength. Luckily everyone else was giving it plenty of room, probably because it was so obviously downmarket as to be beneath their notice. I hit the door with my shoulder, and it swung open be­fore me, revealing only darkness. I lurched forward, and immediately I was in Pew's parlour. The door slammed shut behind me.

I headed for the bare table in front of me and leaned gratefully on it as I got my breath back. After a while, I looked around me. There was no sign of Pew, but his parlour seemed very simple and neat. One table, bare wood, unpolished. Two chairs, bare wood, straight-backed. Scuffed lino on the floor, damp-stained wall­paper, and one window smeared over with soap to stop people looking in. The window provided the only illu­mination. Pew took his vows of poverty and simplicity very seriously. One wall was covered with shelves, holding his various stock in trade. Just useful little items, available for a very reasonable price, to help keep you alive in a dangerous place.

The door at the far end of the parlour slammed open, and Pew stood there, his great head tilted in my general direction. Pew - rogue vicar, Christian terror­ist, God's holy warrior.

'Do no harm here, abomination! This is the Lord's place! I bind you in his word, to bring no evil here!'

'Relax, Pew,' I said. 'I'm on my own. And I'm so weak right now, I couldn't beat up a kitten. Truce?'

Pew sniffed loudly. 'Truce, hellspawn.'

'Great. Now do you mind if I sit down? I'm drip­ping blood all over your floor.'

'Sit, sit! And try to keep it off the table. I have to eat off that.'

I sat down heavily and let out a loud, wounded sigh. Pew shuffled forward, his white cane probing ahead of him. He wore a simple vicar's outfit under a shabby and much-mended grey cloak. His dog collar was pris­tine white, and the grey blindfold covering his dead eyes was equally immaculate. He had a large head with a noble brow, a lion's mane of grey hair, a deter­mined jaw, and a mouth that looked like it never did anything so frivolous as smile. His shoulders were broad, though he always looked like he was several meals short. He found the other chair and arranged himself comfortably at the opposite end of the table. He leaned his cane against the table leg so he could find it easily, and sniffed loudly.

'I can smell your pain, boy. How badly are you in­jured?'

'Feels pretty bad,' I said. My voice sounded tired, even to me. 'I'm hoping it's mostly superficial, but my

ribs are holding out for a second opinion, and my head keeps going fuzzy round the edges. I took a real beat­ing, Pew, and I'm not as young as I once was.'

'Few of us are, boy.' Pew got to his feet and moved unerringly towards the shelves that held his stock. Pew might be blind, but he didn't let it slow him down. He pottered back and forth along the wall, running his hands over the various objects, searching for some­thing. I just hoped it wasn't a knife. Or a scalpel. I could hear him muttering under his breath.

'Wolfsbane, crows' feet, holy water, mandrake root, silver knives, silver bullets, wooden stakes . . . could have sworn I still had some garlic . . . dowsing rods, pickled penis, dowsing rod made from a pickled penis, miller medallions . . . Ah!'

Pew turned back to me, triumphantly holding up a small bottle of pale blue liquid. And then he stopped, his mouth twisted, and his other hand fell to the rosary of human fingerbones hanging from his belt. 'How has it come to this? You, alone and helpless in my home, in my power ... I should kill you, damnation's child. Bane of all the chosen . . .'

'I didn't get to choose my parents,' I said. 'And everyone said my father was a good man, in his day.'

'Oh, he was,' Pew said unexpectedly. 'Never worked with him myself, but I've heard the stories.'

'Did you ever meet my mother?'

'No,' said Pew. 'But I have seen the auguries taken shortly after your birth. I wasn't always blind, boy. I gave up my eyes in return for knowledge, and much good it's done me. You will be the death of us all, John. But my foolish conscience won't let me kill you in cold blood. Not when you come of your own free will, begging my help. It wouldn't be ... honourable.'

He shook his great head slowly, came forward, and stopped just short of the table. He placed the phial of blue liquid on the table before me. I considered it, as he shuffled back to his chair. There was no identifying label on the phial, nothing to tell whether it was a cure or a poison or something else entirely. Pew collected all kinds of things on his travels.

'Hard times are coming,' he said suddenly, as he sat down again. 'The Nightside is very old, but it is not forever.'

'You've been saying that for years, Pew.'

'And it's still true! I know things. I See more with­out my eyes than I ever did with them. But the further ahead I look, the more unclear things become. By sav­ing you here today, I could be damning every other soul in the Nightside.'

'No-one's that important,' I said. 'And especially not me. What's in the phial, Pew?'

He snorted. 'Something that will taste quite ap­palling, but should heal all your injuries. Knock it back in one, and you can have a nice sweetie after­wards. But magic has its price, John, it always does. Drink that, and you'll sleep for twenty-four hours. And when you wake up, all your injuries will be gone, but you'll be a month older. The price you pay for such ac­celerated healing will be a life one month shorter than it would otherwise have been. Are you ready to give that up, just to get well in a hurry?'

'I have to,' I said. 'I'm in the middle of a case, and I think someone needs my help now, rather than later. And who knows, maybe I'll find a way to get the lost month back again. Stranger things have happened, in the Nightside.' I paused and looked at Pew. 'You didn't have to help me. Thank you.'

'Having a conscience can be a real bastard some­times,' said Pew solemnly.

I unscrewed the rusted metal cap on the phial and sniffed the thick blue liquid within. It smelled of violets, a sweet smell to cover something fouler. I tossed down the oily liquid in one and just had time to react to the truly awful taste before everything went black. I woke up lying on my back on the table. My first feel­ing was relief. Although I'd tried hard to sound confi­dent, there was a real chance Pew might have decided to finish me off while he had the chance. He'd tried often enough in the past. I sat up slowly. I felt stiff, but there was no pain anywhere. Pew had taken off my trench coat and folded it up to make a pillow for my head. I swung my legs down over the side of the table and stretched slowly. I felt good. I felt fine. No pain, no fever, and even the taste of blood was gone from my mouth. I put my hand to my face and was startled to encounter a beard. A month of my life had flown by while I slept... I got to my feet, went over to the wall shelves, and scrabbled among Pew's stock until I came up with a hand mirror. My reflection was a surprise, if not a shock. I had a heavy ragged beard, already show­ing touches of grey, and my hair was long and strag­gling. I looked . . . wild, uncivilised, intimidating. I didn't