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First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 2014 Jamie Buxton
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First e-book edition 2014
ISBN 978 1 4052 6800 4
eISBN 978 1 7803 1369 6
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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For my dear friend Leon Arden, who gave me the idea.
For the king has come to seek a flea, as one who hunts a partridge in the mountains
The Book of Shama-el
Stone disobedient children
The Book of Spoken Words
Flea smelled the dump before he saw it. A bad place, deeply unclean. The thick air bounced with fat black flies and once Flea had seen a body there. Swollen, revolting, compelling, it had lain for three days until the Temple persuaded someone to move it with promises of spiritual purification. But that was nothing compared to what he had just seen today. Nothing at all, really.
Big white moon, gusting wind and the sky pulsing silver and black, black and silver. The rolling clouds sent the walls into a slow endless topple towards the valley floor. Flea dragged his right hand against the stone blocks. Their rough mass told him the walls still stood so the Temple still stood, and the dead were not walking so the world had not ended. Not ended yet.
Maybe he still had time to put things right. Maybe he could find out how a man he had just seen die was going to change everything.
He heard the dogs start up again in the distance and forced his feet to shuffle into a broken run. The quicker he moved, the sooner he’d find Jude, and the sooner he found Jude the quicker he’d be sorted. Jude would know. Jude would help him.
And all would be well.
Wouldn’t it?
Contents
three days to go
two days to go
one day to go
