Kitabı oku: «Prince of Fools», sayfa 4

5

Opera! There’s nothing like it. Except wild boars rutting.

The only good thing about Father’s interminable opera was the venue, a fine domed building in Vermillion’s eastern quarter where a preponderance of Florentine bankers and Milano merchants gave the city a very different flavour. For the first hour I gazed up at the nymphs cavorting nude across the dome, somehow painted so that the curved surface presented them without distortion. As much as I admired the artist’s eye for detail I found the scene frequently interrupted by flashes of imagery from the Blood Holes. Snorri felling Norras with what must have been a fatal punch. Ootana falling forward from the pit wall, the back of his head broken open. That leap. That spectacular, impossible, insane leap! On stage a soprano soared through an aria as I replayed the Norseman launching himself to freedom.

In the intermission I searched for familiar faces. I had come late to the showing and had shuffled my way noisily to a seat blocking everyone’s view. In the dim light and separated from my more punctual companions I had to settle for sitting among strangers. Now under the lanterns of the intermisso hall and plucking glasses of wine from every passing tray, I found that despite my brother Darin’s dire warnings the opening night was surprisingly poorly attended. It seemed that Father himself had failed to arrive. Taken to his bed, the gossip had it. He was never a music lover but the Vatican’s coffers had financed this tripe of angels and devils wailing one against the other, fat men sweltering under wings of wax and feathers whilst belting out the chorus. The least their most senior local representative could do was attend and suffer with the rest of us. Damn it all, I couldn’t even spot Martus, or fucking Darin.

I jostled past a man in a white enamel mask, as though he were attending a masquerade rather than an opera. Or at least I attempted to jostle past, failed, and bounced off him as if he were cast from iron. I turned, rubbing my shoulder. Something in the eyes watching from those slits swept away in a cold wash of fear any inclination I had to complain. I let the press of people separate us. Had it even been a man? The eyes haunted me. The irises white, the whites grey. My shoulder ached as though infection ate at the bone … Unborn. Darin had said something about an unborn in the city …

‘Prince Jalan!’ Ameral Contaph hailed me with irritating familiarity, puffed up in ridiculous finery no doubt purchased for just this occasion. They must have been desperate to fill the seats if toadies of Contaph’s water were invited to the premiere. ‘Prince Jalan!’ The flow of the crowd somehow pulled us further apart and I affected not to see him. The fellow was probably just pursuing me for the fictional paperwork regarding Snorri. Worse still, he might have already heard the Norseman was running amok in Vermillion’s streets … Or perhaps he’d scratched off the gold plate from my gift. Either way, none of the reasons he might want to talk to me seemed to be reasons I might want to talk to him! I turned sharply away and found myself face to face with Alain DeVeer, sporting an unbecoming bandage around his head and flanked by two large and ugly men in ill-fitting opera cloaks.

‘Jalan!’ Alain reached for me, finding only a handful of my own exquisitely tailored cape. I shrugged the garment off and let him keep it while I sprinted for the stairs, weaving a dangerous path around dowagers sporting diamonds in their hair and gruff old lords knocking back the wine with the grim determination of men wishing to dull their senses.

I have quick feet but it’s probably my total disregard for other people’s safety that allowed me to open a considerable lead so swiftly.

There are communal privies at the rear of the opera house. For the men, a dozen open seats above water flowing in channels that pour out into the alley behind. The water runs from a large tank on the roof. A small band of urchins spend all day filling it with buckets – an activity I had occasion to note when using one of the cast changing rooms for an assignation with Duchess Sansera a season previously. I was banging away dutifully as a chap does with a woman of declining years and increasing fortune when hoping to cadge a loan, but every time I seemed to be getting anywhere a small boy would wander past the door, heavy buckets sloshing. Quite put me off my stride. And the old cow didn’t loan me so much as a silver penny.

That afternoon with Duchess Money-Buckets wasn’t a complete waste though. After I’d let her usher me out of there with a wet kiss and a goosing of my buttocks, I chased down as many of those ratty little children as I could and kicked some arse. It’s true that my foe outnumbered me but I am the hero of Aral Pass, after all, and sometimes when Prince Jalan Kendeth is roused to anger it’s best to flee, whatever your number. If you’re eight.

I had found three of the little bastards cowering in the tiny utility room where the buckets are stored along with assorted brooms and mops. And that was the pay-off – another hiding place to add to my list.

Racing along the same corridor now, with Alain and friends a corner or two behind me, I stopped dead, hauled the closet door open and dived in. The thing with closing doors behind you is to do it quickly but quietly. That proved a challenge whilst trying to disentangle myself from various broom handles in the dark without the teetering bucket towers crashing down around me. Seconds later when Alain and his heavies clattered down the corridor, the hero of Aral Pass was crouched among the mops, hands clamped to mouth to stifle a sneeze.

I managed to hold the sneeze back almost long enough, but no man can be in complete control of his body, and there’s no stopping such things sometimes – as I told the Duchess Sansera when she expressed her disappointment.

‘Achoo!’

The footsteps, fading at the edge of hearing, stopped.

‘What was that?’ Alain’s voice, distant but not distant enough.

Cowards divide into two broad groups. Those paralysed by their fear, and those galvanized by it. Fortunately I belong to the latter group and burst out of that closet like a … well, like a lecherous prince hoping to escape a beating.

I’ve always made a close study of windows, and the most accessible windows in the opera house were in the aforementioned communal privies, which needed them for obvious reasons. I pounded down the corridor, swerved, banked, and crashed through into the fetid gloom of the men’s privy. One old gent had settled himself there with a flagon of wine, clearly feeling that breathing in the sewer stink was preferable to a seat closer to the stage. I ran straight past, climbed onto the rear throne and tried to jam my head between the shutters. Normally they were propped ajar to offer sufficient ventilation to prevent the place exploding if one more over-fed lordling passed wind. Today, like everything else since I got up, they seemed to be against me and stood firmly closed. I shook them hard. They weren’t latched and it made no sense that they wouldn’t give. Fear lent strength to my arm and when the damn things wouldn’t open I ripped out the slats before thrusting my head through.

For a half second I just stood with that cool, slightly less fetid, air on my face. Salvation! There’s something almost orgasmic about getting out from under a heap of trouble, winning free and thumbing your nose at it. Tomorrow maybe that same trouble will be waiting around a corner for you, but today, right now, it’s beaten, left in the dust. Cowards, over burdened with imagination as we are, spend most of our attention on the future, worrying what’s coming next, so when that rare opportunity to live in the moment arrives I seize it with as many hands as I’ve got spare.

In the next half second I 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 twisting in a breeze that just wasn’t there – as if it were somehow trying to wrap itself back around me. I flung it down in revulsion, sensing it was more filthy than anything else that coated me.

A sharp retort returned my gaze to the building. As I watched, the crack spread, darting down another five yards, almost reaching the ground. The shriek that burst from me was more girlish than I would have hoped for. Without hesitation, I turned and fled. More laughter from above. I paused at the alley’s end, hoping for something clever to shout back at Alain. But any witticism which might have materialized vanished as all along the wall beside me the symbols started to light up. Each cracked open, glowing, as if they had become fissures into some world of fire waiting for us all just beneath the surface of the stone. I realized in that instant that the Silent Sister had completed her work and that Alain, his friends, the old man with his wine, and every other person inside was about to burn. I swear, in that moment I even felt sorry for the opera singers.

‘Jump, you idiots!’ I shouted it over my shoulder, already running.

I rounded the corner at speed and slipped, shoes still slick with muck. Sprawling across cobbles, I saw back along the alleyway, now lit in blinding incandescence shot through with pulsing shadow. Each symbol blazed. At the far end, one particular shadow stayed constant: the Silent Sister, ragged and immobile, still little more than a stain on the eye despite the glare from the wall beside her.

I gained my feet to the sound of awful screaming. The old hall rang to notes that had never before issued from any mouth within it down the long years of its history. I ran then, feet sliding and skittering beneath me – and out of the brilliance of that alleyway something gave chase. A bright and jagged line zigzagged along my trail as if the broken pattern sought to reclaim me, to catch me and light me up so that I too might share the fate I’d fought so hard to escape.

You would think it best to save your breath for running, but I often find screaming helps. The street I had turned into from the alley ran past the back of the opera house and was well-trodden even at this hour of the night, though nowhere near as crowded as Paint Street that runs past the grand entrance and delivers patrons to the doors. My … manly bellowing … served to clear my path somewhat, and where town-folk proved too slow to move I variously sidestepped or, if they were sufficiently small or frail, flattened them. The crack emerged into the street behind me, advancing in rapid stuttering steps, each accompanied by a sound like something expensive shattering.

Turning sideways to slot between two town-laws on patrol, I managed a glance back and saw the crack jag left, veering down the street, away from the opera house and in the direction I’d taken. The people in the road hardly noticed, transfixed as they were by the glow of the building beyond, its walls now wreathed in pale violet flame. The crack itself seemed more than it first appeared, being in truth two cracks running close together, crossing and re-crossing, one bleeding a hot golden light and the other revealing a consuming darkness that seemed to swallow what illumination fell its way. At each point where they crossed golden sparks boiled in darkness and the flagstones shattered.

I barged between the town-laws, the impact spinning me round, hopping on one foot to keep my balance. The crack ran under an old fellow I’d felled in my escape. More than that, it ran through him, and where the dark crossed the light something broke. Smaller fissures spread from each crossing point, encompassing the man for a heartbeat before he literally exploded. Red chunks of him were thrown skyward, burning as they flew, consumed with such ferocity that few made it to the ground.

Whatever anyone may say about running, the main thing is to pick your feet up as quickly as possible – as if the ground has developed a great desire to hurt you. Which it kind of had. I took off at a pace that would have left my dog-fleeing self of only that morning stopping to check if his legs were still moving. More people exploded in my wake as the crack ran through them. I vaulted a cart, which immediately detonated behind me, pieces of burning wood peppering the wall as I dived through an open window.

I rolled to my feet inside what looked to be, and certainly smelled like, a brothel of such low class I hadn’t even been aware of its existence. Shapes writhed in the gloom to one side as I pelted across the chamber, knocking over a lamp, a wicker table, a dresser, and a small man with a toupee, before pulverizing the shutters on the rear window on my way out.

The room lit behind me. I crashed across the alleyway into which I’d spilled, let the opposite wall arrest my momentum, and charged off. The window I came through cracked, sill and lintel, the whole building splitting. The twin fissures, light and dark, wove their path after me, picking up still more speed. I jumped a poppy-head slumped in the alley and raced on. From the sound of it the fissure cured his addiction permanently a heartbeat later.

Eyes forward is the second rule of running, right after the one about picking up your feet. Sometimes though you can’t follow all the rules. Something about the crack demanded my attention, and I shot another glance back at it.

Slam! At first I thought I’d run into a wall. Drawing breath for more screaming and more running I pulled away, only to discover the wall was holding me. Two huge fists, one bandaged and bloody, bunched in the jacket over my chest. I looked up, then up some more, and found myself staring into Snorri Snagason’s pale eyes.

‘What—’ He hadn’t time for more words. The crack ran through us. I saw a black fracture race through the Norseman, jagged lines across his face, bleeding darkness. In the same moment something hot and unbearably brilliant cut through me, filling me with light and stealing the world away.

My vision cleared just in time to see Snorri’s forehead descending. I heard a crack of an entirely different kind. My nose breaking. And the world went away again.