Alchemical symbol: Antimony [https://i.imgur.com/7omjkx8.png]
The moon looked down on a street of low buildings, each different from its neighbour. Some faced the street with large shutters, others with closed doors. Some had a single level of windows, some had two, and a few climbed higher. Most ground floor windows were shuttered and dark. Lamplight shone from a handful of upper windows.
The reek of human filth and rubbish, while present, faded into the background behind burning and metal, animal hides and cloth, and — instantly claiming Andra’s full attention — the strong, urgent smell of meat.
Nothing stirred but a ginger cat slinking along the gutter.
‘This is the place.’ Slight pointed to a wall and a metal gate, both the height of a tall human.
The meat-smell came from a building, its upper windows visible above the wall and gate. The windows were shuttered. No light shone from within. Andra shivered, all pain and tiredness forgotten as the driving force of need tensed every muscle.
‘Where’s the dog?’ Boss asked.
Dog-smell came from behind the gate. The animal breathed heavily, unmoving. Asleep.
Slight sidled up to the gate and gave it a quick push. Metal clunked against metal. From the other side came a gruff bark. Slight flinched and scuttled back across the street, followed by the deep wow-wow-wow of the dog.
‘This is mad,’ Boss said.
Tick straightened from his usual slump. He eyed the gate and wall with the interest he normally devoted to his bits of metal. ‘Where can we wait, out of sight?’
The dog quieted as they moved away. Slight led them down the street into a bay between buildings. At their approach, a scurry of rats squeezed into crevices. Moonlight gleamed on puddles of oily liquid between large metal containers. The containers smelled strongly of rot.
Andra leaned against one of the containers with Mouse beside her. The others gathered round. Lump breathed through his mouth. The disturbed rats rustled in their holes.
‘Is the dog tied or loose?’ Tick asked.
‘Loose, I think,’ Slight said.
‘And the owner sleeps over the shop?’
‘I think so.’
‘Right.’ Boss crossed her arms. ‘What’s the big plan, Tick? It had better be good.’
‘It’s easy.’ Tick smiled. ‘We make the dog bark.’
Alchemical symbol: Nickel [https://i.imgur.com/SX7htXR.png]
Nevin woke with a start, in darkness. Dim grey light outlined the shuttered window and caught the edges of the crates. Night had fallen. He must have slept — or passed out.
His mouth was dry. With the darkness had come cold too, and his bruised body had stiffened from lying on the hard floor. His legs were numb and his hands—
The crates contained lamps. Just ugly lamps with glass chimneys and brass bases in the form of dancing girls. The girls had rather unrealistic anatomy. What they didn’t have were any conveniently sharp edges.
So Nevin had smashed the glass. Using a curved shard of glass to saw through the cord binding his own wrists, with his fingers numb and everything slippery with blood, had been messy; not something he’d recommend.
He moved his fingers. Was relieved to find he could move them, though the cuts stung fiercely. And it had been worth it: his hands were free.
Pain throbbed in his legs as the feeling returned. His ankles were still bound. He sat and brushed his hands across the dusty floorboards, searching for the piece of glass that must be nearby.
Considering his circumstances, he felt surprisingly cheerful. His head was clear, his hands were free, and he had a plan. He just had to find the glass, cut the rope binding his ankles, then open the window shutter, and after that — well, one problem at a time.
A dog barked in the distance. Below, voices rumbled. A chair scraped on a stone floor.
Nevin froze, the scrap of glass in his grip forgotten. Stairs creaked in time to heavy footfalls. One, no, two men, were climbing.
Damn.
He rolled to his knees and tried to stand. His legs buckled. The footsteps drew closer.
Even if he could stand, what was he going to do? He wasn’t going to escape by hopping.
Damn.
He sagged back to the floor, curling up on his side, the piece of glass hidden in his hands. They wouldn’t be fooled — not for more than a second — but a second of surprise might be enough. He slumped like an unconscious body.
The door creaked. Light penetrated his half-closed eyes, and he heard someone breathing. It was the big man, the Snake. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was sure of it. His muscles tensed.
‘He’s still out of it,’ said Reedy Voice.
The other grunted. Heavy boots crossed the floor. The floorboards shifted under Nevin’s body. A meaty hand grabbed his nose and mouth. The fingers smelled of garlic and gripped like a vice, unrelenting.
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Nevin couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. Panic rushed in. His eyes shot open. The big Snake loomed above him, and the glass was in Nevin’s hand. He lashed out.
The Snake caught his arm and twisted. The shard of glass dropped to the floorboards. ‘Nah. He’s awake.’ He chuckled and released his grip on Nevin’s face.
Panting, Nevin subsided. The light was too bright; he squinted and blinked while the Snake inspected him with the mild interest of a man considering a trapped mouse. The new scars across his face were nearly parallel lines. Marks Nevin had seen before, more than once.
The Snake’s companion was the shorter man who’d also been at the temple. He set a gas-lamp on the floor. The blue-tinged light turned their faces to death masks. ‘Let’s get on with it then.’
From the pocket of his coat he took a jar, the sort which might have been made for jam or chutney, but was now a quarter-full of crimson liquid. The sloshing red fluid glowed in the lamplight. It wasn’t blood. Nevin took a deep breath.
The Snake clamped his hand back on Nevin’s nose. ‘Open wide, pretty boy.’
Nevin shut his mouth and squirmed against the grip of the remorseless fingers, but knew it was useless. He couldn’t hold his breath forever. As soon as he opened his mouth, the big man shoved fingers in. Nevin bit as hard as he could.
‘Bastard prig.’ The big man banged Nevin’s head on the floor.
Agony rang through Nevin’s skull. Before he could recover, liquid poured into his mouth and flooded his throat, the taste bitter and strong. He choked and spluttered, fighting the instinct to swallow.
The short man stepped back, and after a moment, the Snake released his grip.
Nevin shuddered and coughed. The bitter taste lingered at the back of his mouth. Spirits, he thought, along with whatever else it was made from. Some he’d coughed onto the floor and some had gone down his throat. How much was too much?
‘How long?’ the short man said.
The Snake shrugged. ‘Takes em quick the first time.’
Nevin got his breath back. The two men stood and watched him with dispassionate curiosity. He had his hands free, but his feet weren’t, and he couldn’t imagine any conceivable way he could either overcome or escape the two of them. The Snake alone was too much for him.
Blood pulsed in his ears. Was it his imagination, or was the pain in his head fading? All the pain — the stinging glass cuts on his hands and wrists, the bruises and stiffness — it all felt oddly distant, as if happening to someone else.
The two men spoke to each other. He couldn’t hear them over the thunder in his head. His heart pounded, his breathing fast and shallow. The floor receded: a strange sensation, as if he were floating and only the dragging weight of his legs and arms prevented him from drifting upward.
Darkness fringed the edges of his vision. Colour slowly drained from the world, leaving only shades of grey, all grainy and insubstantial.
Breath by breath he was further from himself, further from everything. He wasn’t floating now. He was falling, falling faster and faster and he tried to hold on, to remember how it felt to be real, to grasp the world as hard rough edges and noise, but there was only blackness rushing in on him, wiping out every sense.
Until all that remained was a thin whisper of thought alone in black terror.
Utterly alone.
Alchemical symbol: Antimony [https://i.imgur.com/7omjkx8.png]
It was a game, this much Andra understood.
Lasker children played the same game. You roused a sleeping dog (or grumpy adult) and ran away laughing. A good game for children to learn quickness and timing — and a healthy respect for their elders, if they weren’t quick enough.
Boss and Slight and Mouse were teasing the dog. They tapped the gate or lobbed a stone over the wall. The dog barked, the children ran. Then they waited for the dog to quiet, and waited some more, and then did it again. And again.
At first the children had laughed. Now the moon was high over the rooftops and the upper windows of the houses were all dark. The children still ran, the dog still barked, but they were growing bored and tired, and none of them laughed.
Boss ran to the gate, slapped the metal. The dog barked, and this time, it kept barking. The repeated taunting was driving it into a frenzy. Boss slouched back across the street and returned to their lurking place.
‘This is dumb,’ she said. ‘So the dog barks. So what?’
Tick crouched by one of the metal containers, hunched in a ball, his arms locked round his knees. ‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘Then go again.’
Silence fell. The dog settled.
‘Is this going to work?’ Boss said. ‘We could be here all night.’
Tick said nothing. His body tensed into a tighter ball.
‘I’ll go,’ Mouse said. She slipped away.
A moment later, the dog barked in furious rage. From the building facing the gate came the bang of a shutter swinging open, and a woman screeched, ‘Shut that bloody dog up.’
A similar bang answered from the building behind the gate, the place with the meat. A man’s bald head emerged from an upper window. He scowled down at the dog and shouted: ‘What?’ as if the dog might answer.
The dog whined. The man muttered and disappeared inside.
Mouse scurried back to them. ‘That was close. I don’t think she saw me. Again?’
Tick shook his head. ‘Wait.’
They waited. Lump rocked back and forth. Andra folded her arms over her growling stomach. The constant meat-smell was torture. She’d been curious at first, and amused enough to watch and see what happened. Now she was tired and too hungry for patience. They’d been playing this game half the night. If she was fit, it would take her moments to climb the wall and kill the dog. And then she’d at least have dog to eat.
Mouse leaned close to her. ‘It won’t be long now.’
Then Tick nodded to Mouse, and she ran again, and again the dog barked. In the nearby houses, people rolled over in bed and muttered and groaned.
The bald man re-appeared at the window above the yard. He leaned out into the night and shouted: ‘Quiet you. Get down.’
The dog whined. Mouse hadn’t returned. She was still crouching in the shadows by the gate.
Boss grinned. Tick lifted his hands, fingers spread. His mouth moved soundlessly, and one by one, he folded his fingers down. The others watched, and between them there was tension, a rising excitement. Though Andra did not understand, the children did, and like a group of hunters who have tracked their prey for days and now have sighted it, they breathed as one, their solitary thoughts joined in a single purpose.
‘Go,’ Tick said.
Boss slunk out of their hiding place and down the street, away from the gate. She crossed the street to the foot of the wall. She scrabbled in the dirt, found a pebble, and tossed it into the yard.
The dog barked.
‘Light’s sake,’ the screeching woman yelled. ‘I’ll kill that bloody dog.’
The bald man scowled out of his window. ‘Quiet!’
The dog fell silent. It padded in anxious circles.
Tick beckoned to the others. Lump and Slight followed him to where Boss waited, and Mouse crept round from the gate to join them. Boss gestured to Lump, who jumped, grabbed the top of the wall and lifted himself up to peek over. At once the dog barked.
Lump dropped back into hiding. From the building, a door banged. Footsteps crossed the yard. There was a muttered word, a thump, and a pained yelp. The clink of a chain, and then the footsteps returned. The door slammed.
The children looked at each other, and Tick nodded. ‘Now.’