Chase the Morning

Chapter Three

That place …

Just two days back I’d have liked it. I might even have checked out that disco, it looked stylish and upmarket. Not that that would make the cocktails less lurid, the moronic beat less numbing; but the clientele would be smoother, and there’d be no need to talk. Eye to eye, body to body, direct; no well-worn lines, no show of caring, no rite of lies. That was the way they liked it, too, the ones who went there; a short, sweaty, sleepless night, make-up smears and animal smells, and if it went well a shared breakfast. The girls who hung up their clothes first – they were the ones it went best with; I’d noticed that. Names were things we traded lightly, without obligation, between kisses; no need to call again, and these days I seldom did. All right, so it wasn’t love; but love isn’t for everybody. At least – unlike so much – it was honest. At least nobody got hurt.

Now, though, even the idea of the place and all that went with it made me sick. The sight of the whole pettifled street clawed at my sanity. Its mere existence seemed to clash horribly with what I’d stumbled on that night, romanticized or not. I had to get out, or believe … Or believe nothing, trust nothing, my senses least of all. I forgot the car; I blundered blindly across the road, lucky that it was empty. If there was anyone to see me they must have thought me drunk. I plunged gratefully into the sheltering blackness of an alley mouth like an animal injured, desperate to hide. My fingers skidded along the still fresh paintwork of a window-frame, and struck worn stone beyond it. I blinked, and looked around. The alley was narrow and dark, now the sun had gone down; but that only made it look more like the ones I’d gone weaving through that strange night. Whatever had been done to it the shadow hid; the faint glimmer of twilight, sheltered from the harsh street lighting, draped its mantle of mystery around it once more. I looked back and laughed aloud at the contrast; all that newness seemed like a façade, a thin gaudy crust over what really lay here. Suddenly it wasn’t so hard to believe in myself again. Just as Jyp had predicted, I’d come back.

As Jyp had predicted – and what else had he said? ‘… you ask for Jyp the Pilot, right?’ It came back to me, clear as I’d heard it. ‘Ask anyone, they all know me …’ Well, that ought to be easy enough. But somehow I didn’t relish it round here, not in any of those dinky-looking little bistros, they didn’t seem suitable somehow. But at the far end of the alley there was a dim yellowish gleam of windows. That ought to be something.

It turned out to be a pub, not very large and anything but restored; in fact, it looked about as rundown as any I’d seen. It stood on the alley corner, defined by a curved fascia of Edwardian glazed tiling in dark red and blue, very cracked and dirty, and stained-glass windows, equally dingy and opaque, etched with advertisements for the forty-shilling ales of forgotten breweries. The light that escaped was glaring, the sound of voices raucous; it looked tough, and it made me nervous. But it was somewhere to start. The warped door squealed as I stepped through into a suffocating cloud of smoke.

I’d half expected the conversation to stop; but nobody paid me a blind bit of attention. Which was just as well, because in this company, this spit-and-sawdust setting, I knew I was a sharp contrast, my white designer anorak and grey houndstooth casuals an intrusion as stark as the electronic fruit machine flickering unheeded at the back of the bar. The fluorescent light showed it up all too brutally: the cracked vinyl flooring in its faded gaudiness, the smoke-yellowed walls, the crumpled walnut faces of the old men who were most of its customers, elderly labourer types hunched and shrunken in their grubby raincoats. And deaf, probably, since the loud voices were theirs; the few younger men, mostly fiftyish versions of the same, sat glumly contemplating them like a vision of destiny. By the door a handful of teenage skinheads swilled cans of malt liquor and moaned at each other. I plucked up my nerve, and pushed past them to the bar. The beefy landlord served me my scotch in a glass clouded by scouring, and wrinkled his brow when I asked if a fellow called Jyp had been in.

‘Jyp?’ He stared at me a moment with great incurious ox eyes, then rounded on his regulars, leaning over the peeling varnish. ‘Gentleman asking fer Jyp – anyone know him?’

‘Jyp?’ The old men turned their heads, muttered the name back and forth among themselves. Frowns deepened, one or two heads were shaken, others seemed less sure. But nobody said anything, and the landlord was just turning back to me with a shrug when one old fellow hunched up by the gas fire, browner and more wrinkled than the others, suddenly piped up with ‘Wouldn’t be Jyp the Pilot he means, eh?’

There was a moment’s silence. Then cackling chorus of recognition arose, and the landlord’s brow suddenly lost its furrows. ‘Oh, him! Haven’t set eyes on him in awhile! But –’

And, astonishingly, the whole place seemed to change, as if some subtle shift in the light, perhaps, transformed it. Nothing looked different; but it glowed like a gloomy painting suddenly well lit. Somehow the whole grim tableau came alive with an atmosphere that transcended its grime and depression, made it seem almost welcoming, comfortable, secure, the centre of its own small community. It was as if I was seeing it through the old men’s eyes. ‘Bound t’be around somewhere, he is!’

‘Down Durban Walk, maybe –’

‘Seen him up by old Leo’s yesterday –’

They were transformed too, coming alive, chipping in cheerfully with tips and directions to places I might try. It wasn’t only me who noticed; the skinheads were gaping at the old men as if they’d gone berserk – and at me as well. Finally a consensus emerged; Jyp would almost certainly be having his dinner at the Mermaid. But I’d have to run if I wanted to catch him before he went off to work. That I certainly did; and I tore out of that pub faster than anyone can have in years, though not before I’d settled for the scotch.

Their directions were mercifully clear, and I had the sense not to go back for the car. I tore around alley and lane until I found myself skidding over some of the worst and filthiest cobbles ever, and saw in the narrow street before me an ancient-looking pile that could hardly be less like the pub I’d just left; its irregular three-storey frontage was genuine half-timbering, none of your stockbroker’s Tudor. The sea-breeze was freshening – if that was the word to use of something which stirred up so many remarkable stenches. On the creaking signboard swung a crude painting of a mermaid, bare-breasted and long-haired as usual, but with a sharp-peaked crown and twin curving tails. No name, but who needed one?

I went to the door, found it opened outwards, and down some wooden steps into a smoky room crammed with tables, lit, it seemed, only by the marvellous open fireplace at the back. It was pretty rough-looking, but ten times more alive than the other fleapit. The long tables were crowded with drinkers, mostly arty-looking long-hairs, weirdly got up and arguing noisily, chucking dice, dealing cards and tilting what looked like earthenware mugs – a real-ale place, evidently. Not to mention haggling over mysterious, heaps of leaves on the table, or stuffing long pipes with them, reading aloud to each other from handwritten pages or crudely printed sheets – all this along with, and sometimes accompanying, some pretty heavy necking and groping with the few women visible – sometimes remarkably visible, but I restrained my interest. Too many of their gentlemen friends openly wore remarkably wicked-looking knives on their belts. Just the sort of place Jyp would like, I thought, shuddering slightly; but there was no sign of him, and the only service visible was one fiery-nosed oaf in a leather apron slouching around about four tables away, deaf to louder shouts than mine. I wound my way through to the back by the fireplace, a more respectable enclave with marvellous old high-backed cushioned settles. A couple of middle-aged hippy types were monopolizing the ones nearest the fire as if they owned them. One was short, rotund and piggy, the other middle-sized and balding, with a close-trimmed moustache and goatee. I thought one might be the landlord, but heard them arguing uproariously about literature in flat yokel burrs. I put them down for Open University tutors, but asked them all the same, and was surprised when the taller one very politely directed me to the snug at the side. And there, sure enough, with his lean nose buried in a huge pot of beer, sat the man himself.

He almost dropped the jug when he saw me, and all but overturned his table leaping out. ‘Steve! Told you you’d be back, you hoot-owl! Hey, sit down, have a beer – hell, I gotta get to work, you know, we can’t make tonight that party I promised you, dammit – but we’ve still got time for a beer – or maybe two beers, or three –’ When he’d pounded what little breath I had out of me I managed to break in and let him know I’d something to tell him, something serious. He insisted on getting me beer before I started; but when he heard about the raid on the office he almost choked on his.

‘Obeah? Ouanga? Yeah, I heard of those all right. I’ve sailed those waters, once or twice. And Mazanxas…’ His face wrinkled up as if at some disgusting smell. ‘Them and the Zobops and the Vlinblindingues. They’re bad news. They’re secret societies, brotherhoods of cunning men, warlocks, sorcerers – bokors, they call them. Powerful brotherhoods. And ouanga’s just their style.’

‘Great. And just what the hell sort of voodoo is this ouanga?’

He shrugged. ‘You said it.’

I swallowed my mouthful very carefully. ‘You mean – it really is voodoo?’

He spread his hands. ‘Well – not exactly. Voodoo now, I can guess what you’d think about it, but truth is it’s a faith like any other – still a mite rough at the edges, maybe. Worshippers dance ’emselves into a trance, call down their gods to possess them – but Christians, Jews, way I hear it is they were all doin’ that once. Kind of a stage faith goes through, maybe; I’m no scholard. Only there’s good and bad in any faith. S’pose … suppose it was a stone in the ground, okay, and you turn it over? What’s underneath, darkness and things crawling – that. That’s ouanga.’

I said nothing, and he nodded to himself. ‘Kind of like devil-worship is to us, I guess – only there’s a lot more of it about. Plain voodoo, now, it’s a little wild, maybe, but its gods or spirits – loas, they’re called – they’re mostly good guys, or neutral at least. But the worst of these bokors, they worship with different rites, rites of blood and wrath. They call down different loas – real bastards, mean, destructive, maneaters, the lot. Only – funny thing, this – they’re called by pretty much the same names. As if the rites could somehow twist their natures right about. All got their good counterparts save one, and he’s the one the rites are named for – a shadowy type called Don Pedro. Not a nice guy, by all accounts.’

I started; but Jyp, still thinking hard, didn’t seem to notice. ‘So yeah, it sounds like some kind of voodoo guys turned you over. But who – or whether it had anything to do with the other night – it’s beyond me, Steve! I can’t guess. If it’d been round here now, this raid, I’d have said yeah, it might’ve been the Wolves handing out a warning – or just their little bit of fun. It’s from down that way the bastards stem, same as most of the Iskander’s cargo; and they’ll follow any god who’s as big a stinker as they are. But on the other side of town – the everyday side, the Core? Hell, no! I just can’t believe it, Steve! The Pack’d never stray so far in – never! What’s to make them? Greed, fear, those are the things drive their breed strongest, and they weren’t satisfying either one. You – can you think of anything?’

‘Not about my raid, Jyp – but about yours. And that reason for it you couldn’t figure out, remember? What if you were just meant to be window-dressing?’

This time he did choke. But when he got his breath back and the beer out of his nose I told him about my idea, and he began to nod as he listened, first excitedly, then grimly. ‘Dandy!’ he said at last. ‘Stage a burglary to cover up dirty dealings – and leave a body to make it convincing. It could be, Steve – it could well be! A bit smart for the Wolves, maybe – but even they get a rush of blood to the brain once in a while … h’mm. But if that’s so, what’s so hot about it? Didn’t come off, did it? Thanks to you. But here you’ve got yourself lathered up like a trotter –’

‘Don’t you see?’ I barked, so loud it momentarily halted the hubbub outside. I lowered my voice. ‘I’m only surprised they waited a night! Whatever they came to do, it’s still undone! Whatever was wrong with that cargo still is wrong. Something’s not there that should be, or is there when it shouldn’t be! And what’s that mean? It means ten to one they’ll come back –’

Jyp sat there a moment, silent. Then he slammed a palm against his temple making his red hair fly. ‘They had to wait a night,’ he mumbled. ‘To put the hex on you.’

‘What? But how’d they know anything about me?’

He snorted. ‘They’ve ways. Maybe you were followed – though there’s other things might’ve done that. That’s the way the Wolves’d think, okay. Couldn’t believe you’d just turned up out of the blue, no – not when you started pokin’ round after the Iskander. At least I got half a brain working – jehosaphat!’ He gulped at his beer, then straightened up.

‘Thanks, Steve – though thanks still ain’t enough. Chances are you just saved my life one more time.’ He grinned. ‘Getting t’be a habit, ain’t it? But let’s us both do some more thinking now, and quick – will they be back? Word got around about that raid, y’know. Next morning half the folks with stuff there showed up post-haste – and they checked through it all real careful on the spot, with me there. Nothing funny there. Now lemme see, what’s left? Not much. Half the flamewood – but you can’t hide things in loose planking. What else’s large enough to be hoaxed easily?’

He muttered to himself, then suddenly hissed ‘The roots! Damn great shapeless bales of them – could get anything in there!’ He began drumming again. ‘Can’t just go tearing into them to look, though. Not without the consignee being there. He’s in Damballah Alley – and that’s way the other side of the docks, up behind Baltic Quay …’

Damballah Alley? We looked at each other. Even I’d heard that name somewhere.

‘Okay, so Damballah’s a voodoo god,’ protested Jyp uneasily, as if he didn’t like where this was leading. ‘He’s one of the good guys, the source of life – couldn’t be less like this Don P. character. And it’s only natural the Iskander would be carrying some stuff for those Alley fellas, sailing from those waters. Doesn’t prove anything. Still, sure, we ought to get the consignee and go look –’ His face hardened suddenly, as a wash of anger swept away the uncertainty. ‘The hell it doesn’t prove anything! It’s the best lead we’ve got. It fits; it all fits, too goddam well! And if old Frederick’s been trying to pull anything I personally will make him shove every one of those roots – sideways! But there’s not much time, and the far side’s a couple of miles away; a boat’d be fastest – if we can find one at this hour –’

‘Look, Jyp,’ I suggested, rather diffidently, ‘My car’s not far away – I think –’

His face lit up. ‘Your car? Wow, great! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ He bounced up again, excited as a schoolboy; hastily I downed my beer – a shame, it was excellent – and followed. In my confusion I hadn’t noted the street where I’d parked, or even the name of the dingy pub, but Jyp recognized the description and led me back there by what seemed a much shorter route. As we passed the pub he stuck his head round the door, to be greeted by a cheerful roar, and shouted his thanks; and from there I had no trouble finding my way.

As we emerged from the alley I was surprised; darkness had fallen in earnest now, with a touch of moist haze in the air, and it had transformed the place. New paint and trendy trimmings were swallowed up in a gloom the glaring pools of the streetlights only deepened. The strings of bright globes and glowing signs seemed to hang suspended in space before the solid untouchable shadows that were the buildings; their rooftops, ornamented with gable and turret, were timeless silhouettes against the lambent sky. For a moment I wondered if the car would still be there.

It was, though. When we got to it Jyp circled it, fascinated, unable to keep his hands off the smooth paintwork; and when I unlocked the door for him he got in awkwardly. ‘Ain’t never been in one of these fancy closed-in autos before,’ he confessed with an abashed grin, and was fascinated by the sun roof. He seemed equally impressed when I turned the starter, but as I accelerated smoothly away across the cobbles I heard him suck in his breath sharply, and when I reached thirty I glanced across and saw him rigid and staring in his seat, his feet braced against the well. A little cruelly, I took it up to forty as I turned into Danube Street, but it had the opposite effect; once he realized we weren’t flying out of control, he kicked and whooped ‘Hey, can you get any more out of her?’

‘Fifty-five suit you?’

He bounced on his seat as I accelerated, and yelled ‘Twenty-three skidoo-ooo-ooo! Faster – hey, what’re you slowin’ down for?’

‘There’s that junction you mentioned – and such things as speed limits in this town! And traffic lights!’ Though look what stopping for one of those got me into …

‘So where do we go from here, pilot?’

Jyp had slumped down in his seat, sulking, but he sat up quickly to gaze around like an excited child at the bright lights and garish shop windows of Harbour Walk. It had been a while, he claimed, since he’d been this way. Just how long, was something I should have been wondering about – but oddly enough it didn’t occur to me to ask, just then. Fortunately the geography didn’t seem to have changed, he picked an unlikely-looking turn-off, and gave me clear directions down a whirl of side roads. Once off the main road I took a corner or two too fast, just to cheer him up.

At last, tyres screeching, we turned into a much wider street, a smoothly curving terrace of stone buildings with tall half-columned frontages. These were no business buildings; they must once have been the town mansions of merchants, within easy reach of their wharves and counting-houses. They must have been really imposing then, with their tall windows and carved door lintels towering at the head of broad steps, all faced in fine-chiselled sandstone. Now the steps were dished with wear, the lintels cracked and chipped and bird-fouled, the windows mostly boarded and eyeless; torn posters and spray-paint slogans spattered the blackened stone. Only two or three of the street-lamps were working, but there was no sign of life to need them. I pulled in by a crumbling kerb, and almost before I could lift the handbrake Jyp bounced out. Something clattered against the door-frame. ‘C’mon!’

I blinked. Somehow I hadn’t noticed that particular something before. ‘Jyp – hadn’t you better be careful? That, uh, sword you’re wearing – do you want to leave it in the car?’

He chuckled. ‘Round here? Like hell I do. Bundlers, Resurrection Men – never know what you might run into. But don’t worry! Nobody’ll notice it, like as not. Folk only see what they want to see, most times; if it doesn’t fit in, they just ignore it.’ His teeth flashed in the gloom. ‘How many strange things’ve you seen out of the corner of your eye? C’mon!’

I hastily locked the car and scuttled after him. He wasn’t easy to keep up with, and I didn’t want to get left behind in this mirk. I wondered what a Bundler was, but I hadn’t the breath to ask; and it occurred to me, as the car faded from sight, that I wasn’t really that crazy to know.

Jyp didn’t head for any of the steps, but instead turned into a narrow and uninviting gap around the middle of the terrace, a lane that led us past what might once have been stables and carriage-houses, but were now half-crumbled hulks. At the end the old mews bent sharply to the right, and as we turned it felt as if a warmer, darker air flowed about us. There were lights ahead, though, and as we drew closer I saw they were old-fashioned street-lamps mounted on wall brackets, illuminating the frontages of a row of small shops. The light was warm and yellow, and as we passed by the first of them I heard hissing and looked up; it was a genuine gas lamp. I wondered how many of those were still in use. On the wall beneath it a Victorian nameplate, much cracked and defaced, read Danborough Way; I spoke it to myself as I read it, and the sound made me stop and think for a moment.

The shops themselves seemed just as peculiar; they all looked old, and one or two even had bottle-glass window-panes, though mended here and there with clear glass or painted slats of wood. Many of the windows above them were lit; odd scents hung in the still air, a murmur of soft voices, and occasionally the thud and stutter of rock music, never loud. One shop, at the far corner, had a modern illuminated newsagent’s sign, cracked in one corner, and another, further along, had what looked like the original Victorian sign to proclaim it was a ‘Provision Merchants to Family and Gentry’, and a heap of faded cans in its window. Another, better kept, seemed to be a second-hand shop, piled high with furniture. But the others were harder to guess; they had no signs, or hand-lettered cards that read ‘His Grace the Sovereign Joseph!’ or ‘The Mighty Gunzwah’s Emporium’, interspersed with advertisements for ginseng, hair restorer, Tarot readings, Goon Yum tea and vitality tonics for men. One immense luminous orange effort read ‘Have You Got The Runs???’, as if trying to persuade me I was missing something.

Fortunately it was towards another door that Jyp turned, the shop next to the furniture store, and the best kept by any standards; its woodwork was well varnished, its brasswork gleaming, its windows an orderly riot of everything from gaudily-covered books to bunches of feathers, incense burners and what looked like very good ethnic jewellery. What really caught my eye was a painting a crazy piece of naïve imagery, gaudy as a parrot and childlike in its directness – but with anything but a childish effect. A black man in a fantastic white military uniform complete with scarlet sash, gilt buttons and plumed sun-helmet, sitting tall and proud in the saddle of a winged horse, rampant against forked lightnings crossing in a stormy sky. In his hand a curved sabre – and round his head a coruscating halo of gold leaf. A real ikon, in fact – only the style looked African, Ethiopian maybe, because it was obviously Christian. Or was it? Along the bottom I read, in neat copperplate script, Saint-Jaques Majeur. But that look didn’t square with any saint I’d ever heard about – least of all the shower of scarlet droplets that flew from the sabre’s edge. I turned to ask Jyp, but he pushed impatiently past me. A mellow bell bounced on its spring as he flung open the door.

Out of the door behind the counter, as if he had been pushed, popped a black man, middle-aged or older, with elegant white mutton-chop whiskers. He wore a neat green baize apron, like a butler cleaning the silver, over a brown corduroy waistcoat. ‘Frightfully sorry, gentlemen,’ he began in resonant tones, ‘but we are closed for business today –’ Then he saw Jyp, and beamed. ‘But not to you, of course, captain! What can I –’

He was choked off as Jyp shot his long arms across the counter, caught the waistcoat and drew the man over the counter with such inexorable strength that his feet left the ground. Jyp glared at him narrow-eyed, almost nose to nose. ‘That shipment of root, Frederick! The one that’s gathering dust down at the warehouse right now? It’s your order, isn’t it, all of it? Then how come you’ve not been down to pick it up, huh?’

The man’s eyes widened and he flapped his hands and cawed in helpless surprise. I felt suddenly ashamed, and caught Jyp’s wrist; it felt like steel cable. ‘Let him down, Jyp! He can’t answer you if he chokes!’

Jyp said nothing, but he released the man, who almost collapsed behind the counter. ‘But captain,’ he wheezed, ‘I haven’t the slightest – I really do not understand – if I have somehow given offence, I – I am really not as young as I was, you understand, it is not as easy for me to arrange matters as – I do not presume –’ Even stammering, he remained beautifully spoken.

‘You couldn’t get down there yourself, then?’ I prompted him. He drew a deep breath, and smoothed down his ruffled whiskers.

‘No indeed, sir! For smaller loads I can fit in my car, certainly – but the roots are a large vanload, and I no longer maintain one.’

Jyp tapped the marble-topped counter thoughtfully, and looked around the little shop. ‘That so? Why’d you order so much, then? You mean to leave it with us, and just pick it up piecemeal as you need it?’

Frederick permitted himself a pitying smirk. ‘At such rates of tonnage and floorage, sir? Hardly. No, I have a most obliging neighbour who maintains a suitable van, and has promised to go down and collect the roots when next he has a few hours free; but he has not managed it yet, and naturally in these matters one does not wish to press …’

Jyp’s lined face had gone very cold. ‘Maybe it’s about time one did. C’mon, Fred, you’re going to introduce us. This instant.’

‘Whatever you wish, captain, whatever …’ babbled the old man as Jyp drew him irresistibly out from behind the counter. ‘But I assure you … Mr Cuffee … most pleasant and helpful fellow-tradesman …’ Jyp propelled him gently out into the street. ‘So large a purchase … the advantages of buying in, ah, bulk, if I may venture upon the vulgar phrase … His initiative entirely –’

‘Was it now?’ enquired Jyp, with gentle menace. ‘High time we had a word with such an enterprising guy. Now which door might his be?’

It was the furniture shop. I jabbed the plastic bell-push labelled Cuffee, heard the harsh shrilling echo through the place, but nothing stirred. Again, and there was nothing, and no light in the upstairs windows. Again, and the old man blinked. ‘How unusual! He is most often at home at this time. And his truck is not in its customary place. Perhaps he is clearing a house somewhere –’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. I looked at Jyp. ‘Unless he’s running that little errand right now –’

Jyp whirled. ‘The warehouse – c’mon!’ He loped off down the street, dragging the protesting shopkeeper stumbling after him, green apron flapping in the heavy air.

‘But captain – my shop – it’s not locked up –’

‘It won’t blow away! Steve, this time can you really hit the gas?’

‘If you’re sure it’s that im –’

‘I’m sure. I’m goddam sure! Though I’d just love to be wrong.’

‘Well …’ I swallowed. ‘I can try.’

The tyres screeched on the cobbles as we swung around the corner, and Frederick, tumbled headlong in the back, added a note of his own.

‘Stop!’ barked Jyp, crouched pale and drawn beside me. I stamped hard on the pedal, and he braced himself stiff-armed against the dashboard; he’d had speed enough to last him awhile. The back end almost broke away, fish-tailed madly for a moment before I brought her to a snaking, slithering sideways stop. I flicked off the ignition and slumped over the wheel, fighting off the manic laughter of relief. To think I’d ever baulked at a red light …

‘We’re here!’ said Jyp.

Following his gaze, I saw the same dim street, all quiet, all mundane, the same pile of scaffolding, the pale light over the warehouse door, quay and ocean beyond hidden in the shadow of emptiness; not a soul in sight. But Jyp snapped his fingers and pointed; from the shadows beyond us my headlights awoke twin answering glitters, and gleamed faintly on the dark bulk of a furniture van. Then the sea-breeze sighed a little, and the dark line dividing the warehouse doors seemed to deepen for an instant.

Jyp fought the doorhandle, then he was out and running. I tumbled out more awkwardly and sprinted after him. I caught him up as he reached the doors; they were ajar, creaking slightly in the breeze. There was no other sound, and still nobody in sight. Cautiously Jyp pushed the door back. Inside it was blackness, tinged with a thousand peculiar odours. Nothing moved, and I stepped after him, saw his silhouette in the faint light from outside cast around this way and that – then trip over what looked like a sack on the floor just inside the door, grunt and stoop down to it, turn it over. Emptiness gaped up at us, a ghastly mockery of my own surprise, all wide eyes and sagging jaw. I didn’t know the man; and never would, now.

‘Remendado,’ whispered Jyp hoarsely. The day man – I should have relieved him about ten minutes back –’

I stumbled back, sickened, deadly afraid, and something clattered underfoot. Jyp looked up – and then threw himself away with a yell as a long blade flashed into the light, hissed across the air where he had been. He vanished into the shadows, and suddenly they were alive with jostling forms, with trampling feet. Hands grabbed at me, a grip that slipped and instead threw me crashing back against the door – saving me, as another tongue of metal sang in front of my face.

I was free. So I ducked down, grabbed the sword I’d tripped over …

I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t think of anything. Perhaps I screamed; I remember a scream, and there’d been no other voices. But what I did do was fling myself aside, away, towards that line of light and through it, an instant before heavy bodies hurled against it slammed it at my back. And then, staggering on the step, I ran away.

I just took to my heels. It wasn’t blind panic, if there is such a thing; I knew what I was doing, selfish and ashamed. I wasn’t going for help, or anything like that; I was running in deadly fear. It was like trying to scale the side of a collapsing pit, crumbling under me. The clutch of those hands in the dark had ripped away any self-control I might have had, laid bare the sheer animal. I was running to save me. It was just some mad quirk that sent me in the wrong direction, away from the car, down towards the shadows of the docks and the nightbound ocean beyond.

And even as I ran, the door crashed open again behind me. I looked back, and there was no stopping then. Three figures, huge and lanky, came bounding out in the hazy lamplight, long coats flying, and after me in an instant. And in the hand of each there gleamed no mere knife, but a great broad swordblade, dully glinting.

Then I definitely yelled; and I ran all the harder. But it seemed to me that the shadows drew back, would not touch me, refused to hide me; and my pursuers loped long-legged at my heels. Out of the street’s end I bolted, chest bursting, and turned right because that was the nearer side, onto what was only half a street; on my left it fell away to a gleam of open water. I had run out onto the wharfside itself. But what I saw in that water stopped me dead as little else could, shaking with a fear far greater than any those pursuing figures could inspire. In that awed moment I forgot them completely.

Only by that starlit gleam was the water visible, a pool of blackness turned suddenly to a mirror of black glass, gently rippling. It was the image in that mirror that held me spellbound, a web of black lines, a thicket of leafless thorns. In utter amazement, all else forgotten, I lifted my eyes, knowing what the shadows had been hiding from me, what I would now see.

I knew, yet I was not ready for it. The thicket was a forest; a forest of tall masts, of tangled rigging and stern spars crossing the night. To either side they stretched before me, as far as my eyes would reach, stark against the stars, high and magnificent. The docks that only an hour or two earlier I had seen stand empty and forlorn were now thronged with many tall ships, moored clustered and close. So many they were, so high they stood, that sky and sea were all but blotted out. The pool I saw gleamed through the gap between a reaching bowsprit and a high-transomed stern. I may have heard the crash of feet behind me, but hardly noticed it. I was confronted with a wonder wider than my mind could take in, a towering glimpse of the infinite. Like the wind off the ocean it shook me, chilled me, showed me how vanishingly small I was, and all my concerns. I knew only too well it was no illusion; it was I who felt unreal. Where something like this could happen, fear seemed irrelevant.

Until the last moment, when the clatter of boots became too loud to ignore, and I heard the panting breath of my pursuers. Then, agonized at my own stupidity, I turned to bolt again; too late. A hand plucked at my sleeve. I tripped on a loose stone, spun around and crashed down on my back. Hard boots stamped painfully down on my arms as I struggled to rise. Winded, helpless, I wheezed for breath. Their long faces bent over me, silent, expressionless, leaden and grey in the faint light. A swordtip glinted, a great broad cutlass-thing, looking rusty and pitted and not very sharp. It swung idly back and forward before my eyes, so close it parted the lashes; then it went swinging up for a great slashing stroke. The animal kicked out in me again. I filled my chest with one fiery, sobbing breath, and screamed for help.

The sword did not fall; and I felt the feet that pinned me stiffen. Piercing yellow light fell across us like a net, and froze all movement. Someone had answered, a sharp voice from seaward, clear and challenging. Wood boomed hollowly, like a menacing gong. I twisted my head around and blinked. Down the lowered gangplank of one of the nearby ships another figure came bounding, tall and lithe. A shaggy mane of hair, golden in the light of the deck lantern, swung over broad shoulders and bare arms, long and muscular. ‘Well, cubbies?’ came the voice again, cheerful and insolent. ‘What’re ye nipping at tonight? Drop it, and back to your kennels! Or must I whip ye there myself? I’ll have no mongrels pissing around this wharf!’

Half stunned, half dazzled, I heard something strange in that voice, something more than its slight burr. But then for the first time one of my pursuers spoke, and I could imagine no stranger voice than that. Gargling, growling, grating like feet on frosty gravel, it ran ice in my blood to hear it, wholly, horribly inhuman. ‘Grudge the Wolves their honest meat, does thee? Hie thee back to thine own bounds, bitch, and mind what’s thine!’

Bitch?

A rich untroubled laugh answered him. As my eyes adjusted I gaped at the newcomer. A belt of gold plates sparkled over tight black jerkin and breeches, much like Jyp’s, and a long sword swung from it. But for all their tightness it still took me a moment to realize this was a woman, and quite an attractive one at that. Her face clouded with anger as she stared down at me, and it rang in her voice. ‘So ye’re snapping after strangers, now, are ye? Off, away, back aboard that hulk of a Chorazin else I leather a lesson on your hides! That’s no fit meat for puppies!’

They stood fast above me, and their laughter was ghastly. ‘Then come thee, vixen! An’ take it from ’em!’

Before the words were done she swung up her scabbard and with a sharp hiss of metal she drew on them. Animal-swift they responded, snarling, shifting to a fighting stance – and forgot me. Their feet lifted from my arms. ‘Up, boy!’ yelled the woman. ‘Up, and t’heels! Run!’ And with that she charged straight at them.

Run again. Run as I’d been told to, and leave someone else in the lurch; a woman, at that, who’d saved my neck without even knowing who I was. And perhaps it was being called boy …

‘Like hell!’ I said, and flung myself at the ankles of the nearest Wolf. It was like butting a lamppost, but I’d played rugby at school; he yelped with surprise and went crashing down on the stones of the wharf. His sword skittered across the paving. I meant to jump on him, but then the woman and the other Wolves collided in a clash of steel. One Wolf staggered back from the impact, but the other plunged in, his great cutlass of a sword flung high, and brought it cleaving down. It looked unstoppable, but the woman’s own blade caught it; and hers was longer, and hardly any narrower, a huge straight sabre of a thing. Its hilt enclosed her hand in an intricate basket of gold-work; against that the Wolf’s blade jangled and was caught. A sudden slash drove it back against him, skipped free – slid upward – and straight into his throat. The Wolf reeled, staggered, dark blood welling between his scrabbling fingers; he collapsed, kicking, she spun about to face the other –

A boot glanced off my temple and sent me sprawling, head ringing, eyes unfocusing. Rolling over, trying to clear my head, I saw the woman and the second Wolf cross blades in a flickering sequence of thrust and parry. Her guard sagged, the Wolf lunged – and shot right by her as she danced lightly aside, and ran the sabre with ruthless ease right into his unguarded armpit. But the third Wolf, mine, had had time to retrieve his sword, and even as the woman’s sword sank deep into his fellow’s side he aimed a violent slash at her.

Or tried to; because, staggering up, I’d wrapped both arms around his swordarm, and hung on. He was almost strong enough to carry me along with him, but it made nothing of his cut. Then the air sang above me, like the beat of a great wing, and I felt the shock down my arms. The body jerked and bowed like a cornstalk in a reaper and I let go hastily as the head flew up on a dark fountain. I shut my eyes, and heard two distinct splashes from the water below.

When I looked up, the woman was swiftly rifling the pockets of the other two bodies, stuffing the proceeds down her cleavage. She grinned. ‘Whole, are ye? That was rudely well done, for a man unarmed. How’d ye set those hyaenas on your traces?’

‘Jyp –’ I croaked, and she stopped.

‘Jyp, ye say?’ she barked. ‘What of him? And where?’

‘At the warehouse – got to help him –’ Her hand caught me under the arm, hauled me up like a kid.

‘Follow then! Fast!’

I only stopped to scoop up one of the fallen cutlasses, but even so she left me well behind. Sword still in hand, she was almost at the corner, her soft-topped boots slapping the stones. But I caught her up as she reached the forecourt, and together, no word spoken, we charged against the door. Nobody had locked it; it flew wide, till it juddered against another body – another Wolf, not Jyp – and the dim light flooded across the roof. From the back somewhere came the clang of metal, and a shout. The woman plunged that way, I after her, and down a long aisle between stacks of packing cases. Acrosss the far end a shadow dodged, and after him others, taller, brandishing swords and what looked like fish-spears, vicious tridents; some stopped, saw us and turned, menacing.

She didn’t stop. Straight into the midst of them she ploughed. Her sword slashed this way and that with a noise like wind in phone lines, and there was a horrible croaking scream; one Wolf fell kicking, another crossed blades with her, but another yet ducked under her arm. He was coming for me! The cutlass felt like a ton of iron in my hand, but I stuck it out in the best imitation of her lunge I could manage. The Wolf, still straightening up, ran on the point; but I was too far away. He jumped back with a shrill curse, and hacked at me; I tried to parry, but the sheer force of the impact smashed the hilt right out of my fingers and toppled me back against a packing case. The blow smashed right into it and through, and sliced my neck hairs before the splintering wood stopped it. The Wolf snarled, ripped it free – and was felled where he stood by a slash through the back of his neck.

He slumped like a coat off a hanger. The woman swung back and stabbed at the one scrabbling on the floor, then seized me by the arm and dragged me after her, shaking my stinging fingers. Together we sped down another aisle, past another twitching body, and around again. Ahead loomed a stack of planking, the air heavy with the sweet sappiness of cut wood. A minor riot was developing round its base, with Wolves hopping up and jabbing their weapons viciously at something I couldn’t see. One was clambering up like a gross spider, almost at the top, but the last board he hung on tilted suddenly, swung out and tipped him and a minor avalanche of planks right down onto the heads of his fellows.

Into the midst of the melee, blonde hair flying, the woman charged with a carolling war-cry. The Wolves swung to meet her with a chorus of ghastly snarls and the narrow aisle erupted in a tumult of bangs, crashes, splintering wood and shrieks. This way and that they fought her, but in the narrow way no more than two or three could reach her at once, and among the scattered planking she was far more agile then they. I saw one flung back and sag down, another run through, double up and drop, another –

Why I went after her, unarmed idiot that I was, I don’t and didn’t know; maybe her sheer fury swept me up, maybe I was too scared to be left alone. I leapt up on a plank, only to fall off with a yell as a Mohawk-crested Wolf sprang up at the other end. I hadn’t expected their eyes to gleam green that way in the near-dark; it damn near threw me. He lunged at me with his trident, I dropped and it hit the stack behind me and stuck, quivering. A long hand snaked out and seized me by the throat, held me pinned while he struggled to work it loose; I lashed out with my foot. He howled shrilly. He was human enough there, anyhow, but it didn’t put him off one whit. Snarling seventy kinds of murder, he left the trident, plucked a massive cutlass from the folds of his coat – then dropped it and collapsed as a plank came whistling down edgewise on his skull. After it, with a wild rebel yell, flew Jyp, flinging himself down from the pile onto the remaining Wolves. Caught off-balance between him and the woman, they wavered – and she struck. One, two, it was like an explosion hurling them back, and they sprawled twitching where they fell; another folded violently as Jyp’s sword slammed into his stomach, but the tall Wolf behind him seized that chance to slide past and run at the woman. Only he saw me first …

The trident was stuck. The cutlass lay at my feet. I knelt, scooped it up and slashed at him. No nonsense playing fencer this time; I just struck out with my best squash-player’s back-hand.

He must have thought I was cowering. He didn’t stop to raise his guard. The impact was jarring, the sound … horrible. The thudding chop you hear from the back of a butcher’s shop, muffled by wet meat. The cutlass flew out of my hands again, and the Wolf reeled, gaped, clutched frantically at his upper arm. A slight ripping of cloth and it came away, entire, in his hand. A dark rush stained his side. Eyes glaring, foam and slaver pouring from his lips, the Wolf loomed over me like death incarnate; then suddenly his eyes wandered, he gave a high-pitched womanish shriek and staggered. Still shrieking insanely, he fell down at the feet of his fellows and died. That broke them, and they turned to run. Not far. I grabbed the trident, and this time it tore free, but I didn’t need it. Only one escaped and bolted down the aisle, but Jyp launched himself like a leopard onto his back and slashed his throat as he ran.

I pressed face and stomach to the planks, shaking with fright and reaction, struggling hard not to throw up. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. The sight of death in there was revolting, the reek was worse; not even the spicy fragrance of the planks could drown it. It didn’t seem to bother the woman. When I looked up eventually I saw her perched casually on a packing-case, breathing deeply. It would have been eye-catching if her top and trousers hadn’t been spattered with blood, though none of it seemed to be hers. As my sickness subsided the implications sank in; this big blonde amazon had just butchered maybe a dozen strong men, or whatever, bigger than herself, and suffered no worse than a scratch or two. For a moment she seemed as inhuman as the Wolves; but I couldn’t look at her that way. She’d saved me, gratis and for nothing; she’d saved Jyp …

A hand fell on my shoulder, and the light of a lantern blossomed around me. Ye’ve no hurt?’

I blinked. She looked different, close to; and younger. She was taller than me, but not by so very much, and though her features were too large and strong to be really pretty, they were by no means rough or mannish. Her face was oval and regular, clear-skinned and creamy, her nose long but tip-tilted; full shapely lips made up somewhat for the slight trace of jowl at her jaw. The effect was slightly coarse, but sensual. Her heavy-lidded green eyes were surprisingly mild and sympathetic.

‘No worse than a few bruises … and maybe an old cut opened. But that’s all thanks to you – stepping in where you’d no need –’

She waved a hand; that at least looked raw-boned and strong. ‘Ach, think no more on’t, boy! Always my delight to scotch that stinking Pack in their dirty businesses! And since it was to help Master Jyp here, I’m well repaid!’

‘You’re a friend of his, then?’

‘Hey, that’s right!’ chuckled Jyp. He was wiping off his clothes with a Wolf’s long overcoat. He bounced up and draped his arms around our shoulders. ‘You two don’t know each other! You made such a good team I clean forgot! Steve, this is Mall, an old drinking buddy of mine –’

‘That’s a stale honour!’ she grunted sardonically, scratching her bare shoulder. ‘So’s every sot in the Ports – the more so an they’re lechers also.’

‘Known to her victims as Mad Mall,’ continued Jyp smoothly. She tossed her mane, revealing a band of something like rich brocade around her brow, but the nickname didn’t seem to displease her – rather the reverse. ‘She’s in the same line of work I am – everything from manning your ship to guarding your cargo! And that’s her specialty! She’s the best damn help you could have brought back.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Hell, that’s three, Steve! The other night, the warning, and now you pull me out of this. You’re my lucky charm; I’ve got to see you’re okay! Keep this up and I’ll never get quit!’

I groaned. Disgrace came flooding back. ‘Christ, Jyp – if you only knew – I just buggered off. I’m sorry – I was scared sh –’

He cut me short, chuckling. ‘What else could you do? You ran in the right direction. I don’t care much for coincidence, not in these parts. And you came back; and it’s thanks to that I’m still here. Counts for one hell of a lot with me, does that. It’s your play, pal; you chalk up the point.’

I wasn’t so sure. ‘Jyp, – look, I wasn’t thinking of fetching help, I just –’ His gesture was so sudden, so savage, it shocked me into instant silence. He listened an instant, took two soft padding steps – then sped and pounced like a panther. A frightened shriek split the air, and something heavy was knocked over. I heard Jyp chuckle, and it was not his usual open laugh. ‘My, oh my!’ he said. ‘What’ve we here? Seems there’s mice about as well as rats! Say, Steve – mind seeing if Frederick’s okay? I’ve something here’ll drive him wild!’

Frederick was all right. In more sense than one; for as I got back to the warehouse door he was just tiptoeing up to it, with the jack handle from my car clasped in a pudgy fist. He leaped like a hare when I emerged, but he didn’t drop it. ‘Oh, my dear sir!’ he said, and rolled against the wall. ‘Most awfully sorry – so cowardly of me – saw you go for help – but simply lacked the nerve –’

‘Oh no?’ I grinned, which seemed to unnerve him all the more. I must have looked pretty ghastly, and I was thinking how I’d behaved. Courage came late to us both; to him it had come unaided. ‘I left the keys, Frederick. And I know you can drive.’

He mopped his face with an enormous silk handkerchief. ‘Indeed, sir! But would you believe it never once occurred to me?’

‘Frankly, no. Put that thing back and come along; Jyp wants you to meet somebody …’

The old man’s face could hardly darken with anger, but it looked as if it did, his smooth brows knotting and his whiskers quivering with the strength of his feelings. Neither could his neighbour turn pale, exactly; but the fat man Jyp had hauled out of his hiding place had gone a strange shade of grey, and was quivering like a jelly. Small wonder, with his late employers lying in assorted pieces around him, and Jyp’s sword resting idly on his shoulder.

‘This is absolutely monstrous, sir!’ puffed Frederick. ‘Nay, outrageous! I demand an explanation, Cuffee! To make me a dupe, to involve my long-established business as an unwitting party to some low deceit – some common fraud –’

‘Seems pretty uncommon to me!’ interrupted Mall cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d played the gamut of cozening and coney-catching, but this one’s left me dry!’

‘An explanation, Cuffee!’ persisted Frederick. ‘Or I shall have to take steps! Severe ones! What will you tell the Invisibles, man? Think! You can’t argue with Ogoun!’

‘Maybe I’ve a better idea,’ drawled Jyp. ‘Our late friends here didn’t have time to get anything away, now, did they? So if there was something here, chances are there still is! So we should take a good look – get to the root of all this, if you’ll pardon the expression!’ Mall groaned. ‘And Mr Cuffee here can do the work!’ Jyp was watching the shopkeeper closely; and I was a little surprised at the man’s reaction. He went even greyer and got up enough nerve to start blustering; but Jyp jabbed him with the sword, and he slouched to his feet, still protesting. I didn’t like that. It suggested we’d hit on something he was more afraid of than Jyp. And that didn’t make sense; for two pins Jyp would have cut Cuffee’s throat there and then.

For all that, Jyp didn’t goad him more than was absolutely necessary. I was glad, for a good many reasons. We herded the man, still protesting, round to the far corner of the warehouse, to where a great stack of misshapen bales stood in three rough layers against the wall. The odour of them was indescribable – not bad, exactly, just indescribable, except that some of it was dry earth, and the rest suggested medicine rather than food, and resin rather than spice. Like menthol, it seemed to numb some senses and heighten others; and it was very penetrating. As the lantern caught the shapes I saw they were enormous square-sided bundles of crude straw netting, through whose wide meshes dirty pinkish things, gnarled and knobby, stuck out in obscene-looking attitudes.

Frederick motioned Cuffee that way. ‘Open the bales!’ he ordered his neighbour. ‘Each one now, one by one!’

Cuffee held back, glaring around at us, sweating hard. I saw now he was by no means old, and he had a weightlifter’s muscles beneath his dirty t-shirt – from hauling furniture, no doubt; but his great quaggy belly put ten years on him, and fear seamed his face. He mouthed an obscenity at us all, and visibly faltered before seizing the first bale on the top row. He dug his fingers into the tough netting and effortlessly ripped it apart, then skipped sharply back. Roots exploded everywhere, tumbling down around our ankles; the heady smell billowed up about us, but there was nothing else there. ‘Carefully, damn you!’ growled Jyp. ‘Don’t go damaging Frederick’s stock!’

Shaking his head and cursing frantically, Cuffee tore open the next bale more carefully, but still skipped back and let the contents flow down; and for all Jyp’s curses and Frederick’s puffing he did just the same with the next one, and the seven or so after that. A sloping heap of roots grew and slumped out across the floor. I leaned heavily on the trident; I was already giddy with the shock of things, and the heavy fumes seemed to make it worse. But beyond a few mouldy-looking duds, Cuffee turned up nothing at all out of place. We all watched him. He was scared, all right; so scared that when he came to the beginning of the bottom row, he baulked again. Jyp wasted no word, but simply jabbed his swordpoint against Cuffee’s kidneys. The man yelped and jumped, unseamed the first bale right down the front, then as it slowly spilled its contents he flung himself away so fast he skidded on the hard round roots and crashed to the ground.

But beyond the rustling trickle of roots there was nothing – nothing at all. In idiotic puzzlement Cuffee stared at the little low heap that was left in the sagging net. He began to giggle hysterically with the reaction, and I felt like joining him. Then he reached out a tentative finger, and poked it.

Something pounced back at him. In all my life I’d never seen anything like it.

It was a hand, a huge one; but that makes it sound too human. Transparent, half-formed, fluid, it shone mistily from within, shimmering the colour of distant lightning through the dimness. It clutched at that probing finger and clenched shut. There was a crackle, a shriek, a puff of smoke – and a glare lanced down Cuffee’s arm, a brightness so intense I saw all the bones shine right through the flesh as if it was smoky glass. Light flared out between the roots as if a furnace blazed there; then before we could even blink the last of the bale burst outward. A blinding corona enfolded the hapless Cuffee like an anemone snaring a fish.

‘Dupiah!’ shrieked Frederick, in a voice that shivered the air. And, clapping both hands to his bald head he bolted, still shrieking, for the door.

‘Dupiah!’ Mall echoed him. Jyp dropped the lantern with a crash. As one, before I could move, they seized hold of my arms and flung themselves after him, dragging me along bodily between them, still facing backward. Out of the shadows came the deep boom of the door as Frederick reached it. Staring helplessly as my heels skipped over the boards, I saw the glaring glow rise and come after us, shifting and changing as it moved. It was a view I could have done without. I seemed to see all sorts of things in that ghastly orb of swirling smoke and light, eerie, horrible things that set my teeth on edge. I shook with a sense of sheer immanent malice I would never have believed; devouring hatred poured out of it like an acrid stream. Just one jump ahead of it, it seemed, we raced around the corner, and reached the door.

It was shut.

In his panic the old man had slammed it behind him. Jyp and Mall dropped me like a sack and threw themselves at it. I scrambled up, half hypnotized by that glowing, seething thing bearing down on us. It was sheer loathing and revulsion, nothing like bravery, that drove me to dash back and swing out at the thing with the trident I still held.

The shaft slowed suddenly, as if the air had thickened and grown glutinous; it jarred, stopped, stuck. Then the ghastly light danced upon the three tines, and came racing and sizzling down the shaft towards my hands. I dropped the thing with a yell, barely in time, as the door creaked open. The others seized me, flung me bodily out to crash across the cobbles, and themselves after me. Jyp pulled the door closed behind him with a crash, and Mall threw her weight against the handle while he fumbled with the keys. I sat up, dizzy and sick; my arm was agony again, I had struck my head badly on the cobbles, and acquired a whole new set of bruises. I watched Jyp trace a strange symbol with his swordtip in the thick paint of the door, a weird curlicued shape like a series of interlocking arcs ringing a compass rose. Then he reversed his sword and thrust it through the twin handles like a symbolic bar.

That done, he sank to his knees with a gasping sigh. ‘Damn!’ he muttered, in a shaken voice quite unlike his normal confident tones. ‘What a goddam crock! We’ll have to get old Le Stryge to this!’

‘Aye, well enough,’ said Mall, hitching up her tight pants. ‘But what of –’ And she jerked a thumb at me.

I swallowed. Words wouldn’t come, sensible words. ‘What … what was that bloody thing?’ was the best I managed.

‘Nothing!’ barked Jyp, so savagely I hardly knew him. Anger burned off any sign of his normal friendly self. He sounded almost contemptuous. ‘Nothing for you to meddle with! Nothing for an outsider!’

With astonishing strength and urgency he seized my arms, lifted me bodily and slammed me on my feet as if I was a child. Then he more or less frogmarched me out into the murky road and up to where my car stood, its doors still wide, the courtesy lights glowing yellow into the haze.

‘Now go!’ he barked, and thrust me roughly into the driving seat. ‘Get lost! Beat it, y’hear! Come back in a week, maybe – no, a month, if you must! Better still, forget what you’ve seen – forget me – all of us – everything! Drive off in your fancy closed car – close your mind! Forget!’ And with that he slammed the door violently shut.

Unable to speak, I stared beyond him. Mall was barely visible, a pale face watching beneath the dim warehouse light. She stepped back, and blended with the dark. Jyp spun on his heel and went off down the cobbles at a fast trot, without a backward glance, till he too was one with the night.

Slowly, shakily, I started the engine, slipped into gear and turned the car out and away. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to drive, at first. But the way back seemed shorter somehow, the streets I knew eager to reclaim me. I turned out of Danube Street into the bright lights and hubbub of a cheerful city evening. But I couldn’t feel at ease there, not for now; I’d looked into the heart of another light, and it writhed still inside me. Something had been scorched out of me, new fires set alight. It occurred to me then, with a slight twinge of surprise, that I’d never been what you might call sensitive to other people, adept at reading their feelings, not normally. But something had given me that gift, however briefly. I’d read Jyp like a book. And so I wasn’t as bewildered as I might have been, nor any way offended by his sudden harshness. The man was terrified. It was as simple as that. Strange and formidable as this creature who’d befriended me seemed to be, he was almost out of his mind with fear. It was for my own good he’d tried to drive me away.