“But all he said was ‘thief,’ he said get into this man’s bed, get into his house and steal something from him – and that was easy. It should’ve been easy. It was easy enough to agree to, anyway. If you’re going to sleep with somebody for gain, why wouldn’t you steal from him too? If you’re a cool romantic outlaw type who keeps her desperation simmering just below the surface, where everyone could see it anyway? Of course I agreed. What did I have to lose, when I’d lost it all already? Gods forgive me, but I was almost grateful.”
I’d told the story before, here and there, or parts of it: just often enough that the old ways of telling it, the old words came easily to my tongue. A little too easily. They were out before I understood how much they must be hurting him. I wanted to bite them back, too late; I wanted to apologise, but for what? For telling the truth about the girl I was, the girl he made of me? Nothing would get any better, if I went that way. If I took us down that road.
Besides, I’d made something different of myself, and that was all on me. Nothing to do with him, no choice of his. My burden to bear, my guilt to confess. All in a rush I said, “So that’s what I did. I signed up, I got my Aspect on, I tracked down my target and seduced him, all as per instructions. Yeah. Only then I figured out that what the client wanted me to steal was his oxygen, and... Well. Apparently I wasn’t so cool after all, or I still had too much of Fay left in me, or whatever. Because I didn’t want to do that. So I didn’t.” Which would obviously be why my erstwhile employer was in pursuit of me now. There. All wrapped up, in one neat burst of speech.
Jacey took his time, thinking it through. Then he said, “Sweetheart.”
I said, “Don’t call me that. That was Fay, not me. And a long time ago.”
“Not that long,” but he was immortal, what did he know about time? “And – well, here you are,” tucked into his shoulder, under his arm, just the way I used to be. Skin on skin, in the sweat and the heat and the solitude, whispering secrets. Just the way we used to be. “And there are some holes in your story,” he went on sternly, kind of the way I’d just been hoping he wouldn’t be. “Like names, and details, and like that. Tell me what actually happened?”
“You don’t need to know the poor guy’s name. It wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway. He was... just a pawn.”
Like me.
“It’s what you Powers do, you use us to fight your battles for you. Yeah, yeah, I know: you wouldn’t use me. But others would. Others did. Him, and me too.”
“So who...?”
“Oz Trumby,” I said; and Jacey was quiet then, very still, and apparently there were names that could make even a Cathar hold his breath, and who knew?
Then, “Wait, what? You were
working
for
Oz Trumby?
”
“Yeah.”
I had to do something.
“And I guess he just found out that I didn’t do what he asked. What he paid me for.” What he had most generously paid for, with money in the bank and a house and a boat, none of which mattered all that much, all of which I could walk away from at need – as witness, here I was – and with my Aspect, which mattered a great deal, at least to me.
None of that meant anything to Oz, of course. The money, the power: they were just small change to him, the kind of life-changing benefit he handed out like tips for good service. He didn’t even look for gratitude. But good service, yes. He expected people to deliver what he’d paid for.
Nobody ever cheated him, nobody would dare – but I had. And now he’d found out.
And he knew where I was, or his agents did; and of course he knew all about Savoy; and talking it through with Jacey was the same as working it out on my fingers, and –
“We need to get out of here.”
“Yes.” No argument, no hesitation. Jacey’s mind was tracking my own thoughts, which was one of his best tricks way back when. I used to think it was magic, but not really. Mostly I expect I was just pretty obvious. Fay’s life had been so simple; I didn’t often want to go back – what, and give up my Aspect? No way! – but right now, oh, I might have given a lot to be stripped back to basics. One girl, one boy, one place to be and no one chasing me...
Dream on. We didn’t even stop for the traditional cold plunge; we just tipped a bucket of water over each other to rinse the sweat away and reached for towels, grabbed clothes when we were only half dry, skirted the hole in the hallway floor and headed back into the tunnel with our hair still dripping.
Hand in hand like a statement, the one thing we really wanted to say to each other, the one thing we really didn’t need to:
hurry, hurry...
Two hurries, because there were two things we needed to do. The second was the one we’d said aloud: to get moving, be somewhere else, oh, yes. Savoy was a sanctuary, sure – but not against Oz Trumby.
The first was to warn Reno. She was suddenly not safe, in her own refuge. Nobody was safe. Which wasn’t fair, but life isn’t; which was my own fault all down the line, and there was nothing new in that either.
Trouble. I bring it. You should probably not take me in.
Jacey surely shouldn’t. Perhaps he was having second thoughts, constructing a wall of regrets; as we went, he said, “Maybe you should go back to Jordan’s people.”
“Oh, what?”
“No, I’m serious. The Lord of Hell and his lady? Even Oz Trumby couldn’t move against those two. And they’ll be feeling very grateful to you just now.”
“They’ll be with their precious son just now. And Jordan wants to kill me.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not, now. He might be grateful too, by now; you’ve given him back a lot of what he’d lost. And you’re right, he did have to grow up sometime. He knows that too; I think he’s always known it. Anyway, even if he’s still, what, lingeringly murderous, his parents will nip that in the bud. You shouldn’t be running from everybody at once, it’s too complicated.”
Which was my thought again, echoed back at me as we hustled along the walkway to the dormitory platform. But everything about Jordan was complicated, and not everything could be cancelled out by his father’s word. I didn’t know how I felt, even, only that I didn’t want to be facing him again today. Especially with Jacey so firmly attached to my right hand, and so welcome there.
I said, “I’d rather go to your folks than his,” just to make the point; he knew exactly how I felt about his family.
“Okay, deal,” he said immediately. “We’ll go there.”
Had I just been snookered, or stymied, or sold a dummy? Or some other sporty metaphor to prove that he was playing me for a sucker? I wasn’t sure, and we were in too much rush to jerk him to a halt right now and interrogate the slippery drip, but – yeah. I was fairly sure, actually.
Still. Rush. One thing at a time. Warn Reno; get the hell out of here; then take Jacey apart, make him sorry he’d ever tried to put one over on me.
Heh. If I only could. Dream on – though I might enjoy trying.
Safe in the knowledge that he’d enjoy it too, and then take me apart entirely, and...
No. Let’s not go there. Not now, not today. Not the day I ran from Jordan.
The day I did to him what Trumby had paid me to do to someone else: seduced him and took advantage of his trust, took something from him that he couldn’t live without, that left him with his throat open to the knife. Funny, the parallels hadn’t struck me before.
Right now, it was like being hit by a train.
Sometimes, a parallel is just painfully apt. There we were picking our way along the platform, between huddles of stressed and frightened Savoyards not sure where their greater safety lay. I guess metaphorical trains can jump metaphorical tracks; I felt the impact, the thought of it so hard, I almost stopped moving. I did hesitate, just long enough for the crouched figure against the wall there to lift his head and find me.
One more time, the Sibyl saw me; one more time, the Sibyl sang.
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse...
It was a child’s nursery rhyme, and I didn’t understand it. I didn’t want to hear it: that thin reedy voice, haunting me like a monument of loss as we hurried away.
“Should we be telling them?” Jacey’s voice was just a murmur, but his eyes were a giveaway. “Give them time to get packed up, start moving. They can’t stay.”
“Of course they can’t – but let Reno tell them. If we start a panic now, there’ll be a stampede. There’ll be deaths.”
More
deaths. “She’ll know how to handle it; she’ll get the train organised, evacuate them properly...”
If she has the time.
It was the thought we both shared, and neither one of us uttered.
A
S IT HAPPENED
, she didn’t have the time. None of us did. It was still the right choice we made, but people could have suffered for it regardless. That’s one of the hard lessons of being grown-up, that sometimes the right thing can go very, very wrong.
We were through the crowds and off the platform, past the boy still blowing his lonesome horn, halfway up the dead escalator – taking the escalator without discussion, without need for words, because it was fewer steps and we were both ramped up, leaping easily – when we started to hear screams.
Behind us, below.
I stopped dead, we both did, and gazed at each other with a dreadful surmise. Neither one of us wanted to make that full turn around, to go back down and see just what had followed us onto the platform.
Only, there didn’t seem to be enough screaming for the horrors we imagined; and when someone came running, he came from the other platform, where the train still shuttled back and forth into the network proper.
Young man, nothing to pick him out from the crowd, nothing in the least strange about him bar his evident terror. People like him washed up at Savoy all the time, and seldom stayed for long. Likely it was their first encounter with the non-human world, and for most of them it would be their last. If they had their way, at least, it would.
This boy, I thought he would jump under a train sooner than meet anyone – anything – else from the Overworld. Whatever it was that followed him, I thought he’d lead it straight through onto the dormitory platform, where so many people were gathered. I thought it’d be a slaughter.
I’d already taken the first step back down, that way you do, only missing the slam of my Aspect all around me because actually it was all there already. Jacey checked me, though. Just his hand in mine, enough to hold me against my firm intent: it was like a casual reminder that this was a Power at my side. No mortal boy could have stopped me so easily. Or at all.
He said, “Wait. You think it’s after him?”
“No, but he’ll –”
“No, he won’t. See?”
So I looked, and no: he wasn’t running through to the other platform. I should have known that without looking, just from the sudden silence down below. Apparently just having an Aspect wasn’t enough; I needed to pay attention.
The boy with no face had let his horn drop on a thong around his neck, and grabbed the screaming boy as he tried to pass; and now they stood there head-to-head. The faceless one was saying something, anything, it didn’t matter what. I did briefly wish that he might have gone on playing instead; there might be some kind of protective magic in music, and I knew for sure there was none in any words. Friends talk to each other all the time, and bad things happen anyway.
And here came the thing that he’d been running from, and no blame to him for that. I thought he should still be running, and his friend too.
Jacey thought we should still be running, on up the steep wooden steps. His insistent tug said so, and his voice too, “Christ, come
on
...!”
“Wait, shouldn’t we...?”
“Shouldn’t we
what?
You think you can fight that?”
Well, no, but he wasn’t giving me the chance to prove it. With his hand locked around my wrist, he marched upward and I went with him, willy-nilly.
Speaking truth to power all the way, cursing him blindly in a sullen monotone. Not really trying to fight him, though: not pulling back against his relentless tug, not in the grip of a toddler tantrum, not having a meltdown, no.
I hated it, but he was right. We couldn’t fight that. Even working together, a daemon and a Power. No chance.
Even so, I watched over my shoulder as we climbed. I wanted to cry
Fly, you fools!
but there was no point. It was – well, just too big. People think they know what to do when an earthquake hits, but the first time they’re actually in one, mostly they just stand abstracted while the world shakes underneath them and everything falls down all around.
Okay, maybe they fall down too. Even if nothing falls on top of them. It’s hard to keep your feet when the ground’s turned to jelly, but it’s harder still to take positive action, get moving, get out of there. Something gets cut between the mind and the muscles: the paralysis of shock, it’s very real.
Those boys were really only standing there, waiting for the wyrm to eat them.
S
EE, YOU SAY
“dragon” and everybody knows what you mean: bright colours, flame and flight and glory. Virgins and sacrifice, terror and greed and death like a promise, everybody looking around for a hero on horseback.