It would have to be the antidote. But where to take it? Not in the street, that was for sure. Even though the plague left most streets half empty, there was still a chance that someone might pass by. And not on the river, or even near it. The aftermath was bad enough without the risk of drowning. Eventually he settled on a dark alley. He couldn’t think of anywhere better.
The alley smelt of pee and was the sort of place where you were just asking to be mugged. But fear of plague had cleared out all the derelicts, so his only companion was a scrawny tomcat, which eyed him briefly without much interest, then returned to scavenging its dustbin.
Chalkhill pulled the spy-kit from his pocket and extracted the golden vial. It was one of the new fast-acting spray spells and he pushed the nozzle against the pulse in his wrist before he had a chance to lose his nerve. The tomcat glanced round warily as the vial hissed.
‘Yeee-ahhhh!’ Chalkhill howled as the inside of his head exploded. He hurled himself against one wall of the alley, bounced violently and ricocheted into a doorway. The door held, if only just, so that his momentum took him out again and slammed him face down on the cobbles. His foot caught the dustbin. The tomcat spat at him angrily and raced away. Chalkhill climbed to his feet, aching all over with a warm flow of blood dribbling from his nose. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily.
‘Ooooowwwww! The second wave hit him. He spun on his axis, flailed his arms and punched in a small, leaded window.
‘Bog off – I’m drunk!’ a cross voice called out from inside.
Chalkhill hurled himself backwards and sent the dustbin flying. The metallic clatter was unreal. Along the alley lights began to appear in the windows. Plague or no plague, somebody was bound to come out soon. Maybe none of this was such a good idea. Maybe…
‘Waaaaaaaaahhhhhh!’ Wave three. ‘Yabba-dabba-dabba- dabba-dabba!’ Chalkhill chattered. Sparks danced before his eyes. The world spun round and round. He began to hallucinate pink snakes. Sensing his helplessness, a large rat emerged from the shadows to gnaw at his ankle. In a sudden suicidal impulse he ran head down towards the nearest wall.
Then it stopped and so did Chalkhill, mercifully having only grazed the wall. He stood, paining and panting while the hallucinations died away. He was bruised and bleeding and the rat had ripped flesh from his leg.
He just hoped it would be worth it.
Twenty-Five
It was worth it! He could actually feel the spell membrane break beneath his hand, but there was no mind-bending whatsoever. In fact he was experiencing exceptional clarity and some increased energy despite the pains throughout his body. His fingers fiddled with the catch, the locks gave way, the window swung back silently and Brimstone’s house lay open before him.
Chalkhill climbed through, vowing to lose a little weight. He closed the window carefully, triggered the coatings that left it opaque from the outside, then snapped a light cone.
He was in a nicely proportioned room – these old houses all had nice proportions – but one that was completely empty of furniture or fittings. Brimstone clearly wasn’t making full use of the big house. Which wasn’t surprising. He always lived frugally. Probably just moved himself into three or four rooms. Except that begged the question of why he needed a big house in the first place, even if it was old and probably cheap.
Chalkhill started to creep forward so he wouldn’t make the floorboards creak, then remembered he was alone in the house and strode out of the room.
He was in the main hallway by the front door, which was devoid of furniture as well. There were several doors leading off it. Chalkhill opened two at random. They led to empty, unfurnished rooms. Two more… two more empty rooms. In minutes he’d covered the ground floor. All the rooms were empty. There was a kitchen without pots or pans or any cooking equipment whatsoever – the place smelled of dust and looked as if it hadn’t been used for more than a century. Strange…
Brimstone had to be living upstairs. Maybe he’d set himself up a bed-sit. Maybe he used spells for cooking some men did when they didn’t really care about the taste – or maybe he just ate out all the time as he seemed to be doing tonight.
Chalkhill climbed the stairs, his footsteps echoing on the bare floorboards. He reached a landing where a half-open door revealed a bathroom, but that looked as little used as the downstairs kitchen. He went up another flight to the bedroom wing. Chamber after chamber was empty, not so much as a mattress on the floor, not so much as a tattered blanket in a cupboard. The whole place was absolutely, totally deserted. What was going on here?
His light spell was beginning to dim, so he cracked another and leaned against a wall to think. This was definitely the house where the cabby claimed to have taken Brimstone. More to the point, this was the house Chalkhill had seen Brimstone leave at dusk. He had to be living here, yet there was no sign of human habitation whatsoever.
Which meant Chalkhill had missed something.
He went back downstairs and double-checked the rooms. All empty, like that stupid kitchen. He was double-checking the kitchen when a small sound behind him caused him to spin round, heart suddenly pumping. There was a familiar figure silhouetted in the doorway.
‘What kept you?’ Brimstone asked him sourly.
Twenty-Six
For the first time in her long life, Cynthia Cardui felt old. It wasn’t just the stiffness in the joints or the little pains that were one’s constant companion, it was the way emotions lost their power. One was calm. One was far more logical than one ever was in one’s youth. But, as if in horrid compensation, life grew cold.
She stared down at the body of her lover. He had always been a thin man, thin and wiry, but since the life force left him, he looked shrunken, like a dried-out husk. So strange to see him like this and yet feel… nothing.
The embalmers glided around her like wraiths, sober-faced women who all seemed to have slim hands with long fingers. They had inserted tubes into the major arteries of each thigh and attached them to terrible machines. One pumped out every last drop of his remaining blood, the other pumped in spell-bound gravistat to replace it. The gravistat liquid acted to dissolve internal organs while triggering the process of petrification.
They were removing the brain now. (For some reason brains resisted the action of the gravistat.) Since it was important to preserve the skull intact – no cuts were permitted – the embalmers inserted an iron hook and expertly drew it out through the nose.
Cynthia watched as the glistening lump of greyness dropped into a jar. Strange to think of all the prejudice and wisdom it had once contained; and all the love. By faerie custom, it was treated with little deference. She knew that when she left, it would be minced and laid out on a rock behind the palace to feed the birds.
The gravistat itself was beginning to drain out now. The embalmers were used to the smell, but Cynthia took a step backwards. In itself, the liquid was odourless, but once mixed with liquefied intestines, the stench was extreme. From somewhere behind her, a priest-wizard began a sonorous chant.
Had she and Alan done the right thing? The question was almost irrelevant. They had done the only thing. The tragedy was how much their actions had cost. But how bravely he had borne it. He had always been much more determined than she was, much less concerned with the personal consequences.
Such consequences…
She doubted she would ever take another lover, not at the age she’d reached now. She had no children and her profession meant she had few friends. (And was about to lose the most important of them, in all probability.) In such circumstances, she was likely to die alone. But at least Alan had not. She had been with him through the worst of his illness and poor dear Henry had been with him at the end. All exactly according to plan.