Chase the Morning

Chapter Eleven

I stood up automatically as the door opened. The man who stepped through looked like most of the clients I saw – no, like the cream of them, the ones who usually arrived via Barry’s office, suitably stoked with hospitality and charm. His dark three-piece suit was cut like an Armani diamond, his white shirt crisp and smooth, its collar tailored precisely to his throat, his ruler-straight tie as silkily iridescent as a grey opal. The sheer sleek perfection of the ensemble, down to his finely tooled dark shoes and soft glove-leather attaché case, created an air of the exotic, the foreign which exactly fitted his face – high-browed, hook-nosed, sallow, with a slender drooping moustache and eyes like sunken inkwells. Foreign clients almost always meant serious money.

‘Mr Peters,’ I said, and his thin lips curved in a smile. He held out a long hand, and I reached out –

Blackness. Noise.

I jerked back my hand, without the least idea why. It’d been the weirdest feeling. Like the time I nodded off in my first big meeting, lulled by the heat and the monotonous droning voices – and then snapped awake, flushing with guilt and adrenalin, wondering how long I’d been out for, if anyone had noticed – like that. Only here I’d been dipping down into a nightmare, hellishly vivid – like that damn daydream again. Dark, firelight, screaming and shouting, and one voice, much nearer, speaking words I couldn’t quite make out. It left me shaken, just when I didn’t want to be. Peters’ smile didn’t change, but somehow it left me in no doubt at all that he’d noticed; bad start. I hastily tried to cover up my embarrassment by waving him to a chair.

‘Er – won’t you sit down? If you’d like some coffee – or a drink, perhaps? Sherry? An excellent fino, cooled –’ Sherry seemed to go with that face, though I felt the urge for something a lot stronger myself.

‘No; no, I thank you. You are most kind, but I regret I have very little time. I would prefer, if you will forgive me the discourtesy, to proceed to our most urgent business.’

I relaxed, though his voice gave me the crawls. His English had the same exaggerated perfection as his suit. Exotic, all right, with that accent; and yet – dammit, I knew it. I knew him, somehow – God alone knew where from. And I didn’t like him one little bit. It was a struggle not to let it show. I couldn’t remember the exact details of my daydream, but he’d have fitted into it rather nicely – the voice especially. Maybe I’d dreamed it up around that voice.

‘Well,’ I said, just a trace stiffly, ‘we’re here to be of service. As I understand the situation from our conversation earlier, Mr Peters, you want us to take responsibility for handling a consignment of a highly confidential nature, from the Caribbean area. We’re more than willing to do this, naturally, at conditions you’ll find competitive and with the highest standards of care. Provided –’ I tapped the desk gently with my ruler. ‘Always provided we ourselves know the nature of it, its origin, content and destination, and are free to inspect it at any time. In total confidence, it goes without saying. Confidence is the lynch-pin of our business –’

Peters held up a hand in deferential interruption. ‘I regret not having more fully informed you sooner,’ he smirked. ‘But it is not one consignment that is involved, but many. A continuous contract, in fact. The commercial forces I represent aim to become a significant force in the trade from this area – and, confidentially, to dominate it within a very short time.’ He stabbed the air gently with a black lacquer ballpoint.

The cane-tip lifted.

I blinked. What had I just –? A flicker of movement. Something I’d recognized momentarily – yet not now, somehow …

‘Understand,’ he added, ‘this is no idle ambition. It is a project in which you personally would do very well to become involved.’

Great. Was I seeing things? And I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, either. I clasped the ruler in steepled fingers, and stared down at my bare desktop, trying to formulate a reply.

A spouting of yellow fire – God, a fireball! Racing across the barren ground – swelling – a swathe of his own people caught in it – fragmented silhouettes capering, blazing, falling – scythed down like smouldering grass – filling my sight –

And as if that wasn’t enough –

‘Go on!’ I said to myself. Literally. I knew my own voice when I heard it. ‘Answer him! Just as you would normally. This is where it’s all happening!’

I smiled. A bit sickly, maybe, but it wasn’t too much of an effort. Seeing things, hearing things I might be, but here at least I was on firm familiar ground.

‘You must understand, Mr Peters – in this I have to consider the interests of the company before my own. Neither on their behalf, nor on mine, have I any interest in breaching the law or the established ethics of the trade, even passively.’

I flung up my sword against the blast –

‘And however great the profit. That is our settled policy, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. We manage well by our own methods. We don’t need to change. We don’t want to.’

Scorching smell in my nostrils –

I looked down hastily at my terminal in case it was overheating.

Spots dancing before my eyes – burning colours – the fireball broken. Dust cascading.

‘Nice one!’ said myself to me.

I found I was panting, perspiring, my throat dry; I had the damndest urge for a drink. But Peters, appearing not to notice, spread his arms wide, waving the pen expressively. ‘That is regrettable. Deeply regrettable. Consider the interests of your firm, then, if you will. We have most substantial backing – and we will not hesitate to make use of the resources at our disposal. If need be, globally.’

The cane turned – pointed, twirled like a wand in a sweeping, luminous arc –

‘I must be frank. If, after all, we cannot make use of you, we must – how shall I put this? – replace you. You suit us admirably, but there are, after all, other agencies, other young men of your qualifications and bright prospects. If we with our influence chose to favour one such instead of you, it would inevitably blight your career, your success – would it not?’

Not at me, but at the left-hand fire.

‘Would it? Forgive me, Mr Peters, I don’t see how.’

Or to put it another way – are you threatening me personally, you little jerk?

‘My dear sir, English expresses it admirably: there is only room for one at the top. In our hands such a person, and the agency he must one day come to head, would be placed in a position of high advantage – favoured, for example, by official sources, by departments of government, by government itself. Not only in the Caribbean area, but at this end also, in this country. The rise of such an agency would be – how shall I put it? Meteoric.’

The tip moved – the fire lifted, logs, twigs, coals and all – a roaring pillar of flame – crazies bolting in all directions –

God. Was this what a breakdown was like? Or a touch of that stress paranoia I’d heard about in high-pressure jobs. Just get me through this one meeting, that’s all; this next half-hour. Then I can rush down and sneak Gemma’s valium. All of it.

‘Quite meteoric. Its competitors would find themselves at its mercy, to be … taken over if they had the sense to allow it, or otherwise – simply overwhelmed.’

I blinked, and flexed the ruler thoughtfully in my hands. Somehow or other, quite suddenly, the panic had subsided. Was I seeing things – or just dramatizing what he was threatening me with? A touch of stress, maybe – but the threats were real enough, to me, to the company. A good company, a lot of good people with careers sunk in it. Surely I was getting way out of my depth here, I ought to be passing this little tick on to higher authority. This kind of tough talking was Barry’s territory, if anybody’s. And yet, somehow, I felt that I did have authority behind me, all the damned authority I could ever need. The hell with breakdowns; if I was hearing voices, they were talking sense. A colossal confidence was welling up in me – and I was just itching to deal with this little son-of-a-bitch on my own.

The fiery pillar opening out – its summit spreading, broadening – looming, cresting, streaming flames and smoke – curling over like a tidal wave – coming thundering down over the heads of the remaining worshippers – straight at me.

Some dramatizing! I must really hate this guy; well – why not?

I chuckled, and touched the ruler to my lips. ‘You’ve chosen a rather extreme way of putting your point, surely? This is an established agency, with a long list of satisfied and continuing customers – governments included. So we’re not entirely without backing and influence ourselves, you know. The agency can cope with commercial and political pressures; it’s had to before, and survived. In fact it’s flourished. Otherwise why are you coming to me now?’

I spat on my swordblade, and flicked it skyward –

‘That’s right!’ I was talking to myself again. ‘That’s what it’s all about. You’re ahead of any game he knows. Tell him that.’

‘And,’ I said aloud, ‘to be equally frank – if I personally am half the man you think I am, then I ought to be well able to deal with any such assaults on my own account. Shouldn’t I?’

I shouted with laughter – filled my cheeks – blew a loud rude rasp at the descending stream. The cascading fire touched the steel – and split. Spattered like a stream of tapwater – lost its unity – collapsed, raining a choking cloud of bright embers and hot ashes on the heads of the terrified crowd. Wild shrieking spread the panic – here and there hair and clothes burst into flames. I bellowed with thunderous triumph –

I swallowed. Jesus, that was vivid! Where the hell was I getting all this! Maybe it had been creeping up on me since that mysterious call of his; maybe I’d sussed out something wrong about him them. Subconsciously, maybe – or I was developing a sixth sense. Telepathy I could just about believe in, but – No. Too many late nights with low life down at the docks, that was it. No wonder I’d dreamed up that sort of a fantasy round him, kept seeing it every time I nodded off. Though I’d have expected my kind of mind to come up with arms dealers or drug barons, something – well, more practical. Mundane, if you like. Just went to show what a funny beast the subconscious must be. I glanced up at the office around me. The familiar, the everyday, the solid – bookcases, plants, pictures, Dave’s desk (and where was he right now?). Usual, everyday things. Things a man would cling to – no, better than that. Things I could set my feet in firmly, and brace myself against whatever the world threw at me. Real things; or were they?

These weird visions, these sudden plunges into blackness, assaulting all the senses at once, consistently – could they be real? God knows, they felt it while they lasted. The old quibble – is the philosopher dreaming he’s a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming he’s a philosopher?

The new twist being that here the answer mattered.

Whatever my counterstroke really was, Peters hadn’t liked it one bit – that was obvious. He shifted awkwardly in his chair and smoothed back his grey-streaked black hair. Where was I going to get stood on? Where was the real battle being fought? I tensed. He leaned forward and tapped the pen sharply on the arm of his chair.

‘Your confidence is admirable, but, I fear, based on insufficient experience. One might almost say ignorance. A crude frontal assault, possibly – but suppose it were simply too broadly based to resist? The devastation of your clientele – a flood of traffic at compelling rates that would simply swamp all available shipping …’

Already the cane was moving again – with it the right-hand fire. Not lifting but slithering, snaking forward – wider than a man’s reach, spreading – the coarse bushes bursting into flame as it passed – worshippers who can’t move fast enough caught in its path stumbling, falling, vanishing with a hiss and a shriek into its blazing maw –

‘Watch him!’ said my inner voice. ‘Don’t just defend yourself! Bat it right back at him!’

You again! How can I? When I don’t know where I am, what battle I’m really fighting? When I can’t trust my own senses? My mind –

‘What’s it matter?’ said my voice, far too calmly.

What d’you mean, what’s it matter?

‘Real – unreal – it’s the same fight, isn’t it? In either world you ought to have the edge on him! Look for it in the one you know best. Find it, and the other will follow – then you’ll know!’

Right. Well, I had the answer to that quibble now. Stand on the butterfly, and see what happens next. If it dies, it’s real. But in the world I knew best, there was a way to deal with Peters.

I rubbed my hands. ‘Well then. In that case, I’d bring in more shipping of our own – and more backing, if need be. There’s no shortage of either, Mr Peters, elsewhere in the world – not for people who’ve a trustworthy track record. And we can play a wider gambit too; political dirty tricks won’t shift us, not with our competitors to help. Agencies stand together against this kind of badger game, and the banks behind them. We’ve helped beat it in the past – and others would help us beat you! I’d turn your own damned tactics right back against you –’

Somewhere behind me – a vast impossible distance – a voice croaking urgently

Ou fais kataou z’eclai’!

I ignored it. I knew already what I had to do. I found I was clutching the metal ruler tightly, and –

I thrust my sword in my belt – clapped my hands, hard. Stooping – snatching up the chains again – whirling them, one in each hand – hear them sing!

A whistle – on the same notes – loud – louder –

A mighty crackle filled the air, and they stuck out, stiff as rods, every link, every collar quivering – not at the onrolling flames, but high above them. The field flashing alight with a wild blue glare –

My summons obeyed.

Mine –

Mine –

Mine –

The black night crashed in around me. A drumroll of thunder split the clouds. Blue sparks sizzled in a wild corona from every collar as the lightning’s fearful charge coursed through me and along the chains and lanced out like a jagged crack in the night itself, straight at Don Pedro.

The iron chains melted in my hands as that surge of power passed through them. They fell in sizzling, spattering beads, to sink gratefully back into the earth they’d been torn from. But the power in him also was daunting; Don Pedro was not blasted, not consumed. Only the bolt struck his outstretched cane, with its silver mountings, and drove it leaping backward in his hand.

And, as he had commanded, the fire followed it.

It rose like a cobra, coiling back on itself, and struck. Over the apex of the high stone it splashed, and I saw him as it fell, saw him lose his balance under the torrent of blazing debris, slide forward and down, tumbling among that crashing avalanche of fire down onto his own altar. The crowd howled and fell back; but I rushed up to the very edge of the stone, eager to be sure of my triumph …

And stopped. On the altar all was blazing ruin, a heap of shattered wood still flaming, the shed blood sizzling and blackening around its edge, hissing as the first drops of rain began to fall. Yet at the centre of it, suddenly, there was a thrusting upward, a spilling aside – and Don Pedro stood there. His robes hung ragged and smouldering, his cane was gone, his face scorched, his hair and beard a halo of fire; yet he did not seem to notice. He glided towards me, right to the edge of the stone above me – and I saw that his very eyebrows were aflame; yet the darkness beyond them was deeper than ever as it fastened upon me …

Peters shook his head, with all the sad wisdom of age and experience. ‘I see that to have any hope of convincing you I must place my cards on the table,’ he sighed, ‘and reveal the full extent of our operation.’ He snapped the silver-worked catches on his attaché case, opened it, and held it out with both hands. ‘The documentation speaks for itself …’

Instinctively I rose and leaned forward. But something in my memory rose up and clawed at me. Cards on the table? Katjka’s cards – Ace of Hearts, the Two of Spades – two empty pools of blackness that became one. And the Knave with the cold dark eyes …

My hesitation saved me. Out of the open case – his cupped hands – a blade of yellow flame spat upwards. As if to impale a star – right where, if I hadn’t hesitated, my eyes would have been. With a snarl of anger I snatched up the first thing to hand – the ruler – and sprang up, vaulted right across the desk, and went for him.

Blackness roared –

Light again. His chair tipped back, we crashed over – snapping and champing like animals, both of us – rolling about this way, that way. My hand on his throat – his cane holding back my sword – his free hand scrabbling for my eyes – Christ, he was strong! All the noise we must be making, why didn’t somebody come in –

Searing heat –

What the hell? Something burnt – my hair smouldering – we’d rolled into the fire. What fire? The light glaring – the floor hot –

On and off – light to dark – back and forth – two worlds flickering around us as we tumbled back and forth. I’d been right, my other voice!

‘Right! Right! Doesn’t bloody matter! Here or there, you lousy little sod – I’ll wring you till your bloody pips squeak –’

‘Hijo de la puta adiva –’ choked the small man.

Peters – Pedro struggling to twist his cane around to strike me – tearing my sword from my hand. I put a little more effort into it – and both cane and sword tore free, fell aside. Our hands shot straight for each other’s throats –

My arms were longer – my grip caught, tightened – harder – tighter. Into the vacuum of his eyes a green spark leaped, exploding upwards. Threads of green fire crackled and coursed along his sleeves as they met mine – and spurting sparks of red sprang up in answer. His eyes weren’t black any longer, they were shimmering green mirrors, and I could see myself in them. A self I hardly recognized – a snarling, ferocious mask with eyes of blazing red –

Tighter.

Tighter –

His grip loosened. One hand fell from my throat – and though he couldn’t have seen where the cane lay, flew straight to it, snatched it up and struck at my head. But somehow my sword was under my open fingers, and as he surged up I closed both hands around the hilt and lashed out.

A classic forehand smash. It caught him right on the sleek crown of his head, knocked him flying, flat on his back on his own altar. The sword rang in my fingers as if I’d struck solid stone. He lay groaning, writhing, kicking feebly, fingers scrabbling at the dark trenched gash. A wound like that should be fatal – but this was no ordinary man. Panting, I staggered forward, bent over him, lifting the sword to strike again. His mouth opened –

I sprang back with a yell of disgust. Just in time to avoid the fountain of blackness he vomited out.

‘You filthy bastard –’ I gargled, about to hack wildly at him, I think. Somebody caught my arm, though, and I looked around, into Jyp’s face. It was only about then my memory really began to reassert itself.

‘No,’ said Jyp wearily. ‘Don’t go near him. That wasn’t any attack. He won’t attack again.’

‘But –’

‘No buts. You whipped him. You met him out here on the Spiral, where he gained all his power, and you beat the bejasus out of him. Fought him, spell for spell –’

I shook my head, confused. ‘Spell? It – it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t using any magic. Something was happening here, but I wasn’t … in control of that. He had me thinking we – were just talking business, till the end. In my office – just sparring over a deal –’

‘Your kind of knowledge. Your kind of magic. Oh, the power behind it, that was … someone else’s, sure. But the using of it, the will – that was all yours. You had to make the moves. Don Pedro, he must’ve seen what had happened, thought you were the weak link in the partnership, that he could beat you on that level. So that’s how you saw it; but you turned it against him. And what you did there you were doing here too, I guess. Didn’t matter how you beat him – you did, and that’s what counts. Smashed his power, broke his body. And now he’s tried to escape from you. To run.’

‘Running? But he’s –’

‘In time. Fled away out of this wider world, where he was beaten. Fled blindly! Panicked like a wounded animal. Remember how I said some folk just break and bolt when the Spiral gets too much for them – back to the moment they first entered it? And look where that’s taken him. Back to his sick-bed. He’s dying of vomito negro – Yellow Jack. Just like he should’ve done all along.’

And as I stared at the writhing form of my enemy I saw that there was some subtle change around him, that the white stones behind him did take on something of the look of high stucco’d walls, the fitful light of the dying flames flickering across them like a single guttering lamp – or a sick man’s image of the fever consuming him. The rich robes his hands clenched and tore in their delirious agony spread out like embroidered coverlets, the stained altar-stone the soiled sheets of a lordly sick-bed. Nausea welled up in me, and a terrible unexpected pity, and I could only stand there, without speaking.

‘You are wrong in one thing only, Master Pilot,’ said Mall softly. ‘Aye, he has the yellow fever. But ’tis not that which kills him. See, the blackened and bloated tongue that near chokes him! Too often I’ve seen men die thus. Helpless in his derangement he cannot look to himself, and he has none loves him enough to risk coming near. Sooner than court infection, they leave him to perish most miserably – of thirst.’

Another voice beside us broke the brief silence. ‘Well! Hope he enjoys it, the little bastard! I’d say that’s just about up to his own standards of amusement – wouldn’t you?’ Clare’s mouth set hard as she contemplated the writhing figure. ‘Oh, don’t look so shocked! When they chained me up in that dungeon of his, with the cage and the bones and everything – they were laughing, those Wolves. Then they took the light away. I’d a few hours to think about his kind of fun.’

‘I just bet you did,’ said Jyp sympathetically. ‘But that’s done with now. And by the look of it, so’s he.’

Once again, though, he was mistaken. Racked by the last throes of his delirium, Don Pedro shrieked and sat upright, clutching at the headwound, his fingers scrabbling in agony, tearing like claws, tearing away the very flesh. Until suddenly it ripped – and slid away and sank, the sallow face sagging like crumpled linen …

There was no blood. There was no white bone laid bare beneath. No skull. Nothing but a shape, a mould, a form of the same solid darkness that lay behind his eyes, shining in the firelight like the blackest of opal.

The few Wolves and Caribs and worshippers who had not yet fallen or fled the field took one look. Then, with a great wailing unison howl they turned and bolted, stumbling over rocks, blundering into trees, trampling each other in their final dissolution of panic, as the hand that had held them was lifted and they looked upon its secret source. One acolyte alone I saw of the dozens there had been, a tall mulatto, backing away, his fingers knotting in his ash-stained robes; then he flung them over his eyes, and with a yell he hurled himself bodily into the still-blazing fire. The flesh slid wholly from the shape that staggered upright before me, slipping down in tatters, collapsing with the remnants of the robe.

Some thing reared up where it had been. A weird thing, a skeletal, shining shape, black against the leaping fires – a glossy chitinous beetle carapace, a tottering stick-insect caricature of a man. It stood, swaying gently, a head above me, far taller than Don Pedro. Indeed, it was stretching and straightening those distorted spider-limbs as if they had been too long cramped, as if it had to pump blood into them after bursting its chrysalis in a new birth. And like something newborn it was swaying its onyx skull of a head this way and that and making low uncertain chittering noises, as if peering around with anxious timidity at what might be a hostile world.

It looked grotesque, grisly, unpleasant – but not in the least bit menacing. Pitiful, almost, as I circled around it, sword ready, and snatched a burning stick from the altar. I advanced, and it hunched its limbs protectively, cheeped and chittered and backed away in great bounding strides. It looked so miserable, this thing of fear stripped of all its disguising, that it was almost hilarious. I couldn’t help it; I began to laugh, great gusty wholehearted laughter that boomed across the air like the thunder overhead. And at my side I heard Mall suddenly laugh, as she had laughed in the castle. Her high clear tones blended with mine and together we shook the skies, like the laughter of the gods from cloud-wreathed Olympus.

Jyp was laughing; I could see it, though I couldn’t hear him. Clare staggered up to us, picking her barefoot way across the stony ground, and hung on our shoulders, doubled-up and helpless. Pierce threw down his bloody axe and guffawed himself scarlet, and all the surviving crew with him, mocking, pointing, mopping and mowing and making rude gestures at the quivering thing that hopped from foot to foot before us. Hands the gunner sniggered and pointed and spat – and even Le Stryge, arms folded over his filthy coat, gave a frosty smile and snorted. At last, less in attack than in dismissal, I hefted the brand and flung it. It bounced off that black skull with no more than a musical clonk, quite harmless; but the dark thing shrilled in panic, and whirling about fled chittering away into the darkness with great bounds of its long legs, and faded utterly into the drizzling night.

Our laughter pursued it, but faltered at last. A great silence fell over that field, with its ghastly harvest of burned bodies, scattered, smouldering, steaming as the soft rain touched them. Slowly I thrust my sword back into my belt. I kicked at the rum bottles that lay around, but most had shattered or spilled. Jyp picked up a full one, still corked, and tossed it to me. I looked to the silent drums where they lay in the wrecked tonnelle, overturned and broken, their decorated skins pierced; and as I strode over to them a robe of rich scarlet, torn and abandoned, tangled about my foot. I picked it up, draped it around over my shoulder, tied it round me like a sash. From beside the drums I scooped up the ogan, the iron gong, and the hammer that had played it. I tapped once, in an experimental sort of way, a quieter, more lilting rhythm than it had played before – then I broke off a moment, put the rum to my lips, drew the cork with my teeth and spat it flying at the altar. I took a great swig, and let the sweet aromatic fire gurgle down my throat. Then I drew a deep breath, and began to play the rhythm again, and, lifting my feet, I danced. A warrior’s dance, a dance of rejoicing but a solemn one, a noble bransle. I snapped my fingers, and thunder beat a vast slow roll. I turned to Mall, took her hand and she danced with me, whirling together under the pattering rain. Jyp danced with Clare, the men and women of the crew in a weaving, wavering line, our eyes laughing one to another in a sort of solemn frenzy of deliverance. A richness and a joy welled up in me that I felt I’d never known. In this my hour of triumph the world – even the wider world, the Spiral and all the worlds within it – seemed too narrow a place for my embrace, for the vast infinite love that was mine to give. And while the thunder and the iron played we swept slowly away from that place of barrenness and ruin towards the forest’s edge.

The storm-wind stirred the green leaves till they flew like banners above us; and as we passed beneath their shelter I looked back once, and out of the iron-clad confidence within me I shouted a command. Before the first echo died a blue finger of lightning pressed down, once, twice, three times to the solemn beat of the dance. The altar flew into fragments, the white stones tumbled; the barren hill-crown was blasted clean. Still dancing, I turned away, and holding Mall’s hand – who held Jyp’s, who held Clare’s who held Pierce’s – we paced away, without breaking our dance, down into the darkling jungle towards the sea.

How long we danced for, to the beating of the iron and the crashing in the heavens, I’ve no idea. All the way down to the beach, perhaps; for it was on the sand I woke up, face pillowed in my arms, as the first grey foretaste of dawn touched me. The first thing I decided was that I’d been eating the sand, because my mouth seemed full of it, and my body was weighed down, my guts leaden; I couldn’t so much as move, even though I heard voices beside me. Stryge was holding forth, sardonic as ever.

‘You did not recognize the thing? You surprise me. I knew at once; and if I had not been sure, I would have when I remembered the castle’s guardians – the coat and hat figures, the zombie, the rats. That was Baron Samedi, guardian of the underworld, the graveyard god – personification of death. That was the loa with which Don Pedro was so proud to have allied himself.’

‘Sounds natural,’ muttered Jyp. ‘One as evil as the other –’

‘Hardly!’ said Le Stryge with all his usual contempt. ‘Samedi is not evil – he has his honoured place among the Invisibles, he is essential to the natural order. That he should seek to extend his dominion, his realm, is only natural to him, by whatever means imbecile mankind may give him – murder, famine, war. The evil in that is not his; he would not understand it. Did you see any in him, when he stood revealed? In their partnership it was all Don Pedro’s – and so it was only his evil nature that endured, in the end, beyond his normal span. Whatever else there might once have been in the man, Samedi had already devoured. So, when the shell perished, there was only naked Death remaining. And we were well equipped, just then, to laugh at the fear of Him.’

With a low devastated moan I managed to roll over. My own head seemed to be full of black rocks. Through gummy eyes I saw Clare bending over me, and behind her Jyp. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked softly, passing a cool hand over my brow.

‘Terrible …’ I croaked. ‘Mouth like the docks at low tide. Like the worst hangover I ever had – and worse again, much worse –’

‘Yeah, well, that’s not surprising,’ chuckled Jyp gently. ‘Guess you don’t know it, but you’re lucky you’re not waking up slightly dead. You put away nigh on five quarts of high-proof hooch in about the space of half an hour last night.’

‘Yes,’ I gargled, feeling the acid rise at the back of my throat. ‘I remember. But Somebody else got most of the benefit. That wasn’t entirely me –’

‘You remember?’ barked Le Stryge, pushing the others aside and hauling me up by the scarlet sash I still wore. ‘You remember?’ He barked in my face. ‘That’s unheard-of. You can’t do that –’

‘Well, I can,’ I mumbled, thrusting him back from me so sharply he sat down hard on the sand, ‘all about it, so piss off. No offence intended.’

I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. Le Stryge’s breath had finished off what the acid had begun. The sea was nearer than the bushes, so I staggered to the water’s edge and proceeded to heave the entire contents of my stomach into the tide. After that I sat down heavily, a lot better but weaker, only half aware of Le Stryge still rabbiting on behind me.

‘– but that – that is impossible! The one ridden by the loa is the merest instrument – a vessel, a vehicle for the Invisible. After such possession – such total domination of the self – the conscious mind cannot recall anything of what happened when the loa was in command.’

‘Zat so?’ demanded Jyp sceptically. ‘And yet you heard me talking to him just after the whole shebang broke – didn’t you? Listen, that was Steve there, and nobody else – not that I could see, anyhow. What about Don P? You were saying that was kind of a fifty-fifty partnership.’

‘Indeed – but that was no mere possession. That was more like a conscious alliance, of a kind that could only come about with a being of vast potential. Not such an empty commonplace shadow of a creature as this boy –’ The hard, creaking voice tailed off. Suddenly I had the sensation of keen eyes on the back of my neck, that I was being studied with a new and suspicious intensity.

I didn’t turn round. I hardly cared. Empty, a shadow, that was exactly how I felt – like a discarded garment forgotten on the ground. I thought of Don Pedro’s flesh slipping away, and shuddered; little better than that. It wasn’t just the hangover, it was worse, far worse. It was the memory of having been suddenly full, full to overflowing with a furious joy in life. I had been given a glimpse, a taste of what it was I most lacked – and it had all gone in fighting, all save those last few minutes. I had had no chance to turn my thoughts to anything else. I had tasted fullness, and had it snatched from my mouth.

But then Clare, who had held back while I was being sick, came to put a comforting arm about my shoulder, and that didn’t feel bad at all. And only a minute later came Pierce’s cheerful hail.

‘Ahoy there, my gentle lords and ladies! The boats are readied, the wind is from the land. Let us make all haste aboard, that we may be quit of this demon-haunted place with the first light of dawning!’

That fetched us. We scrambled up and half-staggered along to where the captain and Mall stood waiting by the boats. There rode the two ships at anchor in the mirroring bay, just as we had left them; but no ill shapes hung from the rigging now. ‘Aye, we’ve been aboard,’ said Mall, following my gaze. ‘While you yet slept. Made all secure, though in truth little enough was touched – unusual for Wolves, they must have been on the tightest leash.’

‘They were,’ I agreed, thinking of how nothing had been stolen from our office.

She smirked mischievously. ‘Even your gold was yet there in your cabin,’ she added, and a great cheer went up from the surviving crew. I looked at them, and thought of all they had risked, and of those whose long existences had found their eventual end on this quest – and I looked at Clare; and I thought how little money that gold actually represented, even with what more I’d promised.

‘I’ll double it!’ I shouted. ‘The whole bloody bonus! Double what I promised you!’

We were all but swept aboard shoulder-high. They nearly upset the boats. But Pierce’s bellow broke up the turmoil at once; we were shorthanded, and the rush to set sail was overwhelming. Everyone had to plunge in and help, whether they knew what they were doing or not. I found myself quite blithely scrambling up the ratlines with the mastheaders. Even shuffling out along the yard on the looped footrope to undo the sail-lashings wasn’t too bad, since the ship wasn’t heeling. And it was a great moment when the white mainsail boomed out beneath us, and seemed to fill with the very first high beam of the rising sun, a golden wind. I could even look down below and see Clare’s slender limbs among the team at the capstan, hauling up the anchor; and there was Israel Hands limping along, leading a party below.

What for, I found out as we scrambled back down to the deck, and the old Defiance began to get under way. Pierce shouted a warning to us, then a command, and the whole ship heeled with a thunderous crash. The Chorazin, still in shadow, juddered at her moorings; water fountained, and bits of planking flew skyward. ‘Be firing’ at ’er waterline,’ the topman next to me remarked sagely. Again the blast – and this time the black ship wallowed sharply, and began to turn on a broken mooring. One of the masts juddered free, and collapsed in a flailing mass of rigging.

‘A pricey prize she might’ve been!’ said another.

‘Balls!’ said my neighbour, and spat overside. ‘Who’d buy her? Nobbut more Wolves – and I’ll have their money by other means, I thank you.’

I joined Jyp and Mall on the quarterdeck, looking back as the Wolf ship settled into the shallow waters. ‘There’ll be scuba divers find that one day and thinking they’ve found the wreck of a pirate ship,’ remarked Jyp dryly.

‘Won’t they realize it hasn’t been sunk for two or three hundred years?’ I enquired.

Mall grinned and rumpled my hair. ‘Why, what year d’you think is this?’ she enquired innocently.

I put my hands to my head and groaned, while the others laughed. At least I knew better than to get into that sort of discussion now. I imagined that ship, no longer a living, travelling thing, sinking back into Time as it settled to the shallow bed, back to the era of its building and belonging; to become a haven and a shelter for small crawling things, to rot and break up, and at last be gently entombed by the pale shifting sands of the bay. I looked back at the island beyond, full of sleepy dawn sounds and the rush of surf – and, finding that I still wore the red sash, I undid it and tipped it over the stern. It spread out and floated in our wake for a moment, a scarlet stain on the blue waters of the bay; and then it folded in and sank from sight. I glanced up at the hillside, but I couldn’t make out the mansion anywhere. The whole view seemed cleaner now, and that was the way to leave it.

Ahead of us, under the curve of the mainsail, long fingers of cloud stretched low along the horizon, their upper curves sun-reddening hills, their trailing edges fringed with gold – a new archipelago, beckoning us onward. And even as I saw it we passed beyond the point into the open sea, I felt our bows lift and go on lifting – and now I dared look overside and see the sun-gilded sea fall away beneath us into a deeper azure, a mist of blue and gold. Higher we rose, riding on other seas, our sails filled with the winds of many thousand dawnings, driving us out of shadow to chase the timeless morning and pass over it and beyond, homeward bound.

Sunset came soon, and it was night. The arch of cloud shone against the stars, the wind was steady and Jyp was at the helm. In the mild warm night we, officers and gentlefolk – including Le Stryge, unfortunately – sat around on the quarterdeck, under the light of the lanterns. Up in the foc’sle the crew were singing, soft distant songs and ballads long vanished from the changing years. I was sitting with my back to the deck railing, counting out the gold to Pierce, who was humming happily and plying me with most amazing old brandy in the hope I’d make just a little mistake. I hadn’t the heart to remind him I was a businessman too. Clare was chatting happily to Mall, who was tuning up her fiddle with meticulous care. She twanged a couple of strings experimentally, played a note or two, then began to play along softly with the ballads the foc’sle were singing.

I sighed. The music was getting to me. ‘What’s the matter, Steve?’ enquired Clare softly.

‘I feel … hollow. Hungry.’

She chuckled, and punched me gently in the arm. ‘What, after that breakfast? You wait till we get back. You’ve bought me dinner once or twice, but you’ve never let me cook you a meal. And you’re going to get the biggest, most marvellous –’

‘I didn’t mean that. I mean, I accept, I’ll love it, I really am starving, I can hardly wait, but – that wasn’t how I meant it. I’m hollow like a tooth; aching. Le Stryge was right. Don Pedro was right, Mall – all right, all of you. I was empty; I’ve made myself empty, in ways I never even realized till … Till I was filled. That was wonderful. An honour, a glory; but its left me feeling like … I don’t know. An empty bottle. An unfulfilled purpose. There’s a gap in me, right in the centre of my life, and somehow I’ve got to find ways to fill it, to live as something like a whole man again. God alone knows how.’

Clare smiled, and put her arm round my shoulders again. ‘Oh, that’s simple enough. Come home. Go on building up your career. You’ve got a great one ahead of you – take my word for it. Secretaries always know; and there isn’t one in the company who doesn’t think so, even Barry’s Jane. Just remember there’re things in life besides work, now and again.’ She chuckled. ‘Such as food. If you’re really still starving you’ll need something to soak up that brandy. I’ll go raid Mr Pierce’s cabin stores.’

‘Eh?’ said Pierce, alarmed, losing count; then he remembered he was homeward bound, and rich, and chuckled. ‘Go ahead, m’dear. There’s half a round of fine Stilton still there, and a case of good biscuit and some pickles – oh, bring what you may find, we’ll all have a bite.’

I watched Clare trip away down the ladder and across the deck, her hair flying, her slim legs flashing beneath the striped sailor’s jumper from the slop chest that made a short dress for her. The one who cares most for you …

Something was shifting inside me, the first stirrings of an injured limb after the plaster comes off or the stitches are removed, slow and painful but with the promise of eventual satisfaction. That hunger of mine reached out after her, craving whatever she could give.

‘You know,’ commented Jyp, leaning over the wheel. ‘Clare may be right, but – there’s another way open to you, Steve. And me, I think it’s a better way. Stay in the outer world. Stay out on the Spiral. Don’t sink back into the Core. Stay with us, with Mall and me. We’ll see you find your feet okay, and soon – why, there’ll be no holding you back! Life out here’s not always the way you’ve been living it. It can be like one long holiday, for as long as you want it that way. Think of the endless worlds waiting out there! And you needn’t ever navigate an office desk again.’

Pierce rumbled agreement. Le Stryge just snorted. Mall, I noticed, played on.

‘Jyp,’ I said, ‘that’s flattering as hell. Thank you a million times over – damn it, I’ve never had friends like you and Mall. And yes, I can see there’s a whole new life here. But – I don’t know. I’m torn.’ I looked after Clare, silhouetted a moment against the light of Pierce’s cabin door. ‘If I go back … She won’t remember, you say. A few days and it’ll all be gone. But will I? I asked you that before. You’ve time to answer now.’

Jyp whistled. ‘That’s a great big can of worms. Like I said, it depends on a lot of things. A whole lot of things. What kind of person you are. How you change. How much you want to remember. How much you try. How much you refresh those memories, maybe.’

‘By coming back, you mean? Out of the Core?’

‘Sure. But I got to admit, that’s got problems, too. Folk who make it a habit, well, they remember okay. It’s the Core they tend to forget. Never completely, maybe – but it’s liable to kind of slip away when they aren’t looking. Time slackens its grip on ’em, and bang! goes a year, or two years, or more, since last they set the evening at their heels. Till they linger so long that no navigation can get them right back where they were. Till, sooner than it seems, maybe, they begin to forget – and find they’re forgotten.’

It seemed to me there’d been something more in his voice than his usual laconic good nature. ‘Is that what happened to you?’

‘I’d a wife back then,’ he said, neutrally. ‘Sailors’ wives, they get used to their men staying away; but if I’d known how long it was, maybe … Crap, maybe I did know. You can’t have it both ways. You make your own choice in the end, I guess. And I’ll level with you, Steve – answer what you were really asking. Yes. Yes, it’s more’n likely you’ll not remember. Yes, this may be the only chance to choose you get.’

‘That’s so,’ said Mall, and went on playing.

Clare reappeared, laden with a tray of good things, and brought it up to us. I couldn’t help noticing the lilt of her breasts beneath the striped jersey, the flash of thighs as she climbed to the deck, the faintest glimpse of golden hair as she stooped to put down the tray. Mall, too, was looking; and she suddenly sang a line or two from the ballad she was playing, in her mellow voice.

I sighed again. My heart wasn’t open, and my purse was fast emptying; not that I grudged a penny of it. Clare smiled, as if acknowledging what Mall was saying, and settled down beside me. She took my arm and started feeding me some kind of pate on biscuits.

‘I don’t know,’ I said again, when my mouth wasn’t full. ‘What a hell of a choice – there’s no other like it. God, I’m tempted – I’m torn. Almost literally,’ I added, feeling Clare’s grip tighten on my arm, the pressure of words unspoken. ‘But the way it seems to me –’

They all leaned forward, waiting for my answer. It was amazing, a wonderful thing in itself; that I should matter to them. Come to that, they mattered to me – even that evil thing, Le Stryge, in his way. There was a debt there, if nothing more. I’d never had to feel like this before.

‘It seems to me that the life I knew, the old life I had – I made a hash of that, a whole lot of mistakes. It’s pure chance I didn’t just go on making them, or worse. And though I’ve done a bit of learning, maybe, I’ve not finished yet. This new life I’m offered – I could make a real hash of that, too, couldn’t I? Only the consequences might be worse – infinitely worse. Christ, they almost were!’ I shuddered at the thought of what I might have been at this moment, so easily.

‘I laid myself open to one kind of evil. I’d better make sure I’m less open to others, before I start hanging around them again. I don’t want to leave you all – but, but I think I’d better. I should go back and learn to live my first life properly, and then maybe I can think about seeking out some others. I’ll try and remember! I’ll fight to stay in touch – and maybe I will. But if I don’t – that’s how it’ll have to be. That’s best for all of us.’

‘A brave settling,’ said Mall quietly, ‘and, a’mine avis, the right and the true one. May’t serve you better than you know now, my Stephen. I – I shall not forget.’

‘Yeah, well, you’ve got a point, I guess,’ conceded Jyp. ‘There’re some real ugly guys around out here. Can’t have you whizzin’ about like a bomb ready primed for the first comer to pick up. So – go!’ He sighed. ‘Forget all else if you must – but don’t forget the docks, and Danube Street. And ’fore all the Tavern! Fix that in your mind. Fight for it. Then maybe the rest’ll stay. And when you’re good and ready, you just keep asking your way, and you’ll find it in the end, if you really want to. But till then – well, I guess staying away, that’s right ‘nough the safest thing for you …’

Le Stryge snorted – much closer, I knew now, to a real laugh than that evil cackle of his. Contempt must be one of his few remaining links with human feelings. ‘The safest? Is it? I would not be so sure, boy. Stay away if you like, from this wider world of ours – and pray for your own sake that it stays away from you! I wonder if it will. Your destiny is uncertain, even in my eyes – do you know that? But should it chance to lie beyond the limits you once knew, that would not surprise me. And should that be so, then whatever you do to avoid it, it will surely find you out.’

I swallowed. The deck felt suddenly chill beneath me; but Clare’s arm was warm on mine, and held me tight. As if she was anxious to draw me away …

I rose, and she rose with me. ‘How long before we reach home?’ she asked.

‘Why, hours yet, m’dear,’ rumbled Pierce. ‘Till we cross the dawn again. At sunset – which sunset, sailing master?’

Jyp grinned. ‘The sunset after the dawn we sailed. They’ll hardly have had time to miss you.’

I gaped, but Mall just chuckled. ‘Not for naught’s he named the Pilot. Time holds few shoals for him.’

I shook my head wonderingly. Clare, accepting as ever, just chuckled, and drew me with her to the companionway. Laughing, skipping lightly to the tune of Mall’s music, she led me by the hand down to the deck. I went, not looking back. But at my cabin door I hesitated, staring out into the night. Far ahead there, just above the horizon – was that faint streak of deeper darkness the first sight of land, or just a line of dark cloud? Whatever it was, it hung there like a frontier between sea and sky, or a barrier between the wider world and the narrow, between many dreams and a single cold awakening. Suddenly I was afraid of it, of crossing that dark bar once more and into the embrace of harbour walls, both sheltering and imprisoning. There I could find my firm berth again and never leave it, rooted fast to the mud. While all the seas of the world, all the infinite oceans of space and time beat between shore and shadow, only the breadth of a memory beyond my reach. I was afraid to go home.

But then, softly, Clare opened the door, and drew me in.

Why not? If she’d soon forget – if I might, also – what harm could it hold for us? We’d earned our holiday; and I, my first new lessons in living. And loving; there was time for a little of that. Time enough, till morning.