The Dragon’s moment of triumph was already sliding away. She roared her frustration, but there was nothing to be done. She felt herself shedding her scales, dwindling from the mythical to the particular, while Hobart’s scarred body fluttered like a flame in a breeze, and went out.
Her instant of questioning would surely cost her dearly. In failing to finish the story, to satisfy her victim’s desire for death, she’d given him fresh motive for hatred. What change might it have wrought in Hobart to have dreamed himself devoured?; to have made a second womb in the Worm’s belly until he was born back into the world?
Too late, damn it; far too late. The pages could contain them no longer. Leaving their confrontation unfinished they broke from the words in a burst of punctuation. They didn’t leave the din of the animals behind them: it grew louder as the darkness of the Wild Woods lifted.
Her only thought was for the book. She felt it in her hands once more, and took fiercer hold of it. But Hobart had the same idea. As the room appeared around them in all its solidity she found his fingers clawing at hers, tearing at her skin in his eagerness to claim the prize back.
‘You should have killed me,’ she heard him murmur.
She glanced up at his face. He looked even sicklier than the knight he’d been, sweat running down his sallow cheeks, gaze desperate. Then he seemed to realize himself, and the eyes grew arctic.
Somebody was beating on the other side of the door, from which the pained cacophony of animals still came.
‘Wait!’ Hobart yelled to his visitors, whoever they were. As he shouted he took one hand from the book and drew a gun from the inside of his jacket, digging the muzzle into Suzanna’s abdomen.
‘Let the book go, or I’ll kill you.’
She had no choice but to comply. The menstruum would not be swift enough to incapacitate him before he pulled the trigger.
As her hands slipped from the volume, however, the door was thrown open, and all thought of books was eclipsed by what stood on the threshold.
Once, this quartet had been amongst the pride of Hobart’s Squad: the smartest, the hardest. But their night of drinking and seduction had unbuttoned more than their trousers. It had undone their minds as well. It was as if the splendours Suzanna had first seen on Lord Street, the haloes that sainted Human and Seerkind alike, had somehow been drawn
In their panic at this disease, they’d clawed their clothes to tatters; their torsos shone with sweat and blood. And from their throats came the cacophony that had called the Dragon and the Knight out of the book; a bestiality that was echoed in a dozen horrid details. The way this one’s face had swollen to lend him a snout; the way another’s hands were fat as paws.
This, she presumed, was how the Seerkind had opposed the occupation of their homeland. They’d feigned passivity to seduce the invading army into their raptures, and this nightmare menagerie was the result. Apt as it was, she was appalled.
One of the pack now staggered into the room, his lips and forehead swollen to the brink of bursting. He was clearly trying to address Hobart, but all his spellbound palate could produce was the complaint of a cat having its neck wrung.
Hobart had no intention of deciphering the mewls, but instead levelled his gun at the wreckage shambling towards him.
‘Come no closer,’ he warned.
The man, spittle running from his open mouth, made a incoherent appeal.
‘Get out!’ was Hobart’s response. He took a step towards the quartet.
The leader retreated, as did those in the doorway. Not for the gun’s sake, Suzanna thought, but because Hobart was their master. These new anatomies only confirmed what their training had long ago taught them: that they were unthinking animals, in thrall to the Law.
They were backing off along the corridor now, their din subdued by their fear of Hobart.
In a matter of moments his attention would no longer be diverted, Suzanna knew. He’d turn on her again, and the slim advantage gained by this interruption would have been squandered.
She had to let her instinct lead; she might have no other opportunity.
Seizing the moment, she ran at Hobart and snatched the book from his hand. He shouted out, and glanced her way, his gun still keeping the howling quartet at bay. With his eye off them, the creatures set up their racket afresh.
There’s no way out –’ Hobart said to her, ‘– except by this door. Maybe you’d like to go that way …?’
The creatures clearly sensed that something was in the air, and redoubled their din. It was like feeding time at the zoo. She’d not get two steps down the passage before they were upon her. Hobart had her trapped.
At that realization, she felt the menstruum rise in her, coming with breath-snatching suddenness.
Hobart knew instantly she was gathering strength. He crossed quickly to the door, and slammed it on the howling breed outside, then turned on her again.
‘We saw some things, didn’t we?’ he said. ‘But it’s a story you won’t live to tell.’
He aimed the gun at her face.
It wasn’t possible to analyse what happened next. Perhaps he fired and the shot miraculously went wide, shattering the window behind her. Whatever, she felt the night air invade the room, and the next moment the menstruum was bathing her from head to foot, turning her on her heel, and she was running towards the window with no time to consider the sense of this escape route until she was up on the sill and hurling herself out.
The window was three storeys up. But it was too late for such practicalities. She was committed to the leap, or fall, or-
The menstruum scooped her up, throwing its strength against the wall of the house opposite, and letting her slide from window to roof on its cool back. It wasn’t true flight, but it felt like the real thing.
The street reeled beneath her as she tumbled on solid air to meet the eaves of the other house, only to be scooped up a second time and carried over the roof, Hobart’s shouts diminishing behind her.
She could not be held aloft for long, of course; but it was an exhilarating ride while it lasted. She slid helter skelter down another roof, catching sight in that moment of a streak of dawn light between the hills, then over gables and chimney stacks and down, swooping, into a square where the birds were already tuning up for the day.
As she flew down they scattered, startled by the twist evolution had taken to produce such a bird as this. Her landing must have reassured them that there was much design work still to do. She skidded across the paving stones, the menstruum cushioning the worst of the impact, and came to a halt inches from a mosaiced wall.
Shaking, and faintly nauseous, she stood up. The entire flight had probably lasted no more than twenty seconds, but already she heard voices raising the alarm in an adjacent street.
Clutching Mimi’s gift, she slipped from the square and out of the township by a route that took her once in a circle and twice almost threw her into the arms of her pursuers. Every step of the way she discovered a new bruise, but she was at least alive, and wiser for the night’s adventures.
Life and wisdom. What more could anybody ask?
IX
THE FIRE
he day and night that Suzanna spent in Nonesuch, and in the Wild Woods, stalking Hobart, took Cal and de Bono to no less remarkable places. They too had their griefs, and revelations; they too came closer to death than either wanted to come again.
Upon parting from her, they’d resumed their journey to the Firmament in silence, until out of nowhere de Bono had said: ‘Do you love her?’
Oddly enough, that very thought had been on Cal’s mind, but he hadn’t replied to the question. It had frankly embarrassed him.
