realized that we were on the second floor and the drop to the street below seemed likely to injure me more grievously than Alain and his friends would dare to. I should perhaps puff myself up, brazen it out, and remind Alain whose damned father’s opera this was and whose grandmother happened to be warming the throne. No part of me wanted to bank on Alain’s commonsense outweighing his anger, but an ankle-breaking drop into the alley where they flushed the shit … that didn’t appeal either.
And then I saw her. A tattered figure in the alley, bent over some burden. A bucket? For one ridiculous moment I thought it was another of those little boys lugging water for the tank. A pale hand lifted a brush, moonlight glimmered on what dripped from it.
‘Jalan Kendeth, hiding in the privies. How appropriate.’ Alain DeVeer banging open the door behind me. I didn’t turn my head even a fraction. If I hadn’t taken care of business at the start of the intermission I would have rapidly filled the privy I was standing on by way of both trouser legs. The figure in the alley looked up and one eye caught the moonbeams, glowing pearly in the darkness. My shoulder ached with a sudden memory of the masked figure I’d barged into. Conviction seized me by the throat. That had not been a man. There had been nothing human in that stare. Outside the blind-eye woman painted her fatal runes, and inside, among the lords and ladies, hell walked with us.
I would have run head first into a dozen Alain DeVeers to get away from the Silent Sister. Hell, I’d have flattened Maeres Allus to put some space between me and that old witch. I’d have put my foot in his groin and told him to add it to the debt. I would have charged right at Alain and his two friends but for the memory of a fire on The Street of Nails. The walls themselves had burned. There had been nothing left but fine ash. Nobody got out. Not one person. And there had been four other fires like that across the city. Four in five years.
‘Oh, Jalan!’ Alain drew the ‘a’ out, making it a sing-song taunt, ‘Jaaaalaan.’ He really hadn’t taken having that vase broken over his head very well.
I jammed myself further through the broken shutter, wedging both shoulders into the gap and splintering more slats. Some kind of webbing stretched across my face. Because right now I needed a big spider on my head? Once more the gods of fate were crapping on me from a height. I looked to the left. Black symbols covered the wall, each like some horrifying and twisted insect caught in its death throes. To the right, more of them, reaching up from where the blind-eye woman had returned to her work. They seemed to have grown along the sides of the building, like vines … or crawled up. There was no way she could reach so high. She planted her hideous seeds as she circled the building, painting a noose of symbols, and from each one more grew, and more, rising until the noose became a net.
‘Hey!’ Alain, his gloating turning to irritation at being ignored.
‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ I pulled free and glanced back at the three of them in the doorway, the old man clutching his wine looking on bemused. ‘There’s no time—’
‘Get him down from there.’ Alain shook his head in disgust.
The drop to the street had been knocked off the top of the list of today’s most terrifying things, where it had nestled just above Alain and friends. The writing on the wall immediately outside swept all that other stuff right off the list and into the privies. I stuck both arms through the hole I’d made and launched myself out. I made it a couple of feet, and came to a splintering halt with my chest wedged into the shutter frame. Something dark and very cold stretched across my face again, feeling for all the world like a web spun by the world’s toughest spider. The strands of it closed my left eye for me and resisted any further advance.
‘Quick!’
‘Grab him!’
Pounding feet as Alain led the charge. When it comes to wriggling out of things I’m pretty good, but my current situation offered little purchase. I seized the windowsill with both hands and tried to propel myself forward, managing an advance of a few inches, jacket ripping. The black stuff over my face pulled even harder, pressing my head back and threatening to throw me back into the room if I lessened my grip even a little.
Now, nature may have gifted me a pretty decent physique but I do try to avoid any strenuous activity, at least whilst clothed, and I’ll lay no claims to any great strength. Raw terror does, however, have a startling effect on me and I’ve been known to toss extraordinarily heavy items aside if they stood between me and a swift escape.
Anticipating the arrival of Alain DeVeer’s hand on my flailing shin occasioned just the right level of terror. It wasn’t the thought of being dragged back in and given a good kicking that worried me – although it normally would … a lot. It was the idea that whilst they were kicking me, and whilst poor old Jalan was rolling about manfully taking his lumps and screaming for mercy, the Silent Sister would complete her noose, the fire would ignite, and we’d each and every one of us burn.
Whatever had stretched across my face had stopped stretching and was instead keeping me from getting any further forward, all its elasticity used up. It felt more like a length of wire now, cutting across my forehead and face. With my feet finding nothing to push against, I hung, one-third out, two-thirds in, thrashing helplessly and roaring all manner of threats and promises. I rather suspect Alain and his friends might have paused to have a laugh at my expense because it took longer than I expected before someone laid a hand on me.
They should have taken the matter more seriously. Flailing legs are a dangerous proposition. Fuelled by desperation I struck out and made a solid connection, booted heel to something that crunched like a nose. Someone made a noise very similar to the one Alain had made that morning when I broke the vase over his head.
The added thrust proved sufficient. The wire-like obstruction bit deeper, like a cold knife carving through me, then something gave. It felt more as though it were me that gave rather than the obstruction, as if I cracked and it ran through me, but either way I won free and tumbled out in one piece rather than two.
As victories go it proved fairly Pyrrhic, my prize being the liberty to pitch out face-first with a two-storey drop between me and the flagstones. When you run out of screaming during a fall you know that you’ve dropped way too far. Too far and too fast in general for there to be any reasonable prospect of you ever getting up again. Something tugged at me though, slowing my descent a fraction, an awful ripping sound over-riding my scream as I fell. Even so, I hammered into the ground with more than enough force to kill me but for the large mound of semi-solid dung accumulated beneath the privy outlet. I hit with a splat.
I staggered up, spitting out mouthfuls of filth, roared an oath, slipped and plunged immediately back in. Derisive laughter from on high confirmed I had an audience. My second attempt left me on my back, scraping dung from my eyes. Looking up I saw the whole side of the opera house clothed in interlocking symbols, with one exception. The window from which I tumbled lay bare, a man’s face peering from the hole I’d left. Elsewhere the black limbs of the Silent Sister’s calligraphy bound the shutters closed, but across the broken privy shutter, not even a trace. And leading down from it, a crack, running deep into the masonry, following the path of my descent. A peculiar golden light bled from the crack, flickering with shadows all along its length, illuminating both alley and building.
With more speed and less haste I found my feet and cast around for the Silent Sister. She’d rounded the corner, quite possibly before I fell. How far she had to go until completing her noose I couldn’t see. I backed to the middle of the alley, out of the dung heap, wiping the muck from my clothes to little avail. Something snagged at my fingers and I found myself holding what looked like black ribbon but felt more like the writhing leg of some nightmare insect. With a cry I tore it from me, and found the whole of one of the witch’s symbols hanging from my hand, nearly reaching to the ground and
