Weaveworld

2

The interior was a kind of Purgatory, in which thousands of household items – armchairs, wardrobes, lamps large and small, curtains, rugs – awaited Judgment, piled up in dusty wretchedness. The place stank of its occupants; of things claimed by woodworm and rot and sheer usage; of once fine pieces now so age-worn even their makers would not have given them house room.

And beneath the smell of decrepitude, something more bitter and more human. The scent of sweat perhaps, soaked up by the boards of a sick bed, or in the fabric of a lamp that had burned through a night whose endurer had known no morning. Not a place to linger too long.

They separated once more, for speed’s sake.

‘Anything that looks promising,’ Cal said, ‘holler.’

He was now eclipsed by piles of furniture.

The whine in Suzanna’s skull did not die down once she was out of the sun; it worsened. Maybe it was the enormity of the task before them that made her head spin, like an impossible quest from some faery-tale, seeking a particle of magic in the wilderness of decay.

The same thought, though formulated differently, was passing through Cal’s mind. The more he searched, the more he doubted his memory. Maybe it hadn’t been Gilchrist they’d named; or perhaps the removal men had decided the profit made bringing the carpet here would not repay their effort.

As he turned a corner, he heard a scraping sound from behind a stack of furniture.

‘Suzanna?’ he said. The word went out and returned unanswered. The noise had already faded behind him, but it had sent adrenalin rushing through his system, and it was with speedier step that he made his way to the next mountain of goods and chattels. Even before he came within five yards of it his eyes had alighted upon the rolled carpet that was all but concealed beneath half a dozen dining chairs and a chest of drawers. All of these items lacked price-tags, which suggested they were recent, unsorted acquisitions.

He went down on his knees and pulled at the edge of the carpet, in an attempt to see the design. The border was damaged, the weave weak. When he pulled he felt strands snap. But he could see enough to confirm what his gut already knew: that this was the carpet from Rue Street, the carpet which Mimi Laschenski had lived and died protecting; the carpet of the Fugue.

He stood up and started to unpile the chairs, deaf to the sound of approaching footsteps at his back.