It was not, of course, an impossible journey to make. But the power to do so, which was usually—and contemptuously—referred to as magic, had been waning in the Fifth since Chant had first arrived. He'd seen the walls of reason built against it, brick by brick. He'd seen its practitioners hounded and mocked; seen its theories decay into decadence and parody; seen its purpose steadily forgotten. The Fifth was choking in its own certainties, and though he took no pleasure in the thought of losing his life, he would not mourn his removal from this hard and unpoetic Dominion.
He went to his window and looked down the five stories into the courtyard. It was empty. He had a few minutes yet, to compose his missive to Estabrook. Returning to his table, he began it again, for the ninth or tenth time. There was so much he wanted to communicate, but he knew that Estabrook was utterly ignorant of the involvement of his family, whose name he'd abandoned, with the fate of the Dominions. It was too late now to educate him. A warning would have to suffice. But how to word it so it didn't sound like the rambling of a wild man? He set to again, putting the facts as plainly as he could, though doubting that these words would save Estabrook's life. If the powers that prowled this world tonight wanted him dispatched, nothing short of intervention from the Unbeheld Himself, Hapexa-mendios, the all-powerful occupant of the First Dominion, would save him.
With the note finished, Chant pocketed it and headed out into the darkness. Not a moment too soon. In the frosty quiet he heard the sound of an engine too suave to belong to a resident and peered over the parapet to see the men getting out the car below. He didn't doubt that these were his visitors. The only vehicles he'd seen here so polished were hearses. He cursed himself. Fatigue had made him slothful, and now he'd let his enemies get dangerously close. He ducked down the back stairs—glad, for once, that there were so few lights working along the landings—as his visitors strode towards the front. From the flats he passed, the sound of lives: Christmas pops on the radio, argument, a baby laughing, which became tears, as though it sensed there was danger near. Chant knew none of his neighbors, except as furtive faces glimpsed at windows, and now— though it was too late to change that—he regretted it.
He reached ground level unharmed, and discounting the thought of trying to retrieve his car from the courtyard he headed off towards the street most heavily trafficked at this time of night, which was Kennington Park Road. If he was lucky he'd find a cab there, though at this time of night they weren't frequent. Fares were harder to pick up in this area than in Covent Garden or Oxford Street, and more likely to prove unruly. He allowed himself one backward glance, then turned his heels to the task of flight.
Though classically it was the light of day which showed a painter the deepest flaws in his handiwork, Gentle worked best at night: the instincts of a lover brought to a simpler art. In the week or so since he'd returned to his studio it had once again become a place of work: the air pungent with the smell of paint and turpentine, the burned-down butts of cigarettes left on every available shelf and plate. Though he'd spoken with Klein daily there was no sign of a commission yet, so he had spent the time reeducating himself. As Klein had so cruelly observed, he was a technician without a vision, and that made these days of meandering difficult. Until he had a style to forge, he felt listless, like some latter day Adam, born with the power to impersonate but bereft of subjects. So he set himself an exercise. He would paint a canvas in four radically different styles: a cubist North, an impressionist South, an East after Van Gogh, a West after Dali. As his subject he took Cara-vaggio's Supper at Emmaus. The challenge drove him to a healthy distraction, and he was still occupied with it at three-thirty in the morning, when the telephone rang. The line was watery, and the voice at the other end pained and raw, but it was unmistakably Judith.
"Is that you, Gentle?"
"It's me." He was glad the line was so bad. The sound of her voice had shaken him, and he didn't want her to know. "Where are you calling from?"
"New York. I'm just visiting for a few days."
"It's good to hear from you."
"I'm not sure why I'm calling. It's just that today's been strange and I thought maybe, oh—" She stopped. Laughed at herself, perhaps a little drunkenly. "I don't know what I thought," she went on. "It's stupid. I'm sorry."
"When are you coming back?"
"I don't know that either."
"Maybe we could get together?"
"I don't think so, Gentle."
"Just to talk."
"This line's getting worse. I'm sorry I woke you."
"You didn't—"
"Keep warm, huh?"
"Judith—"
"Sorry, Gentle."
The line went dead. But the water she'd spoken through gurgled on, like the noise in a seashell. Not the ocean at all, of course; just illusion. He put the receiver down and— knowing he'd never sleep now—squeezed out some fresh bright worms of paint to work with, and set to.
It was the whistle from the gloom behind him that alerted Chant to the fact that his escape had not gone unnoticed. It was not a whistle that could have come from human lips, but a chilling scalpel shriek he had heard only once before in the Fifth Dominion, when, some two hundred years past, his then possessor, the Maestro Sartori, had conjured from the In Ovo a familiar which had made such a whistle. It had brought bloody tears to its summoner's eyes, obliging Sartori to relinquish it posthaste. Later Chant and the Maestro had spoken of the event, and Chant had identified the creature. It was known in the Reconciled Dominions as a voider, one of a brutal species that haunted the wastes north of the Lenten Way. Voiders came in many shapes, being made, some said, from collective desire, which fact seemed to move Sartori profoundly.
"I must summon one again," he'd said, "and speak with it," to which Chant had replied that if they were to attempt such a summoning they had to be ready next time, for void-ers were lethal and could not be tamed except by Maestros of inordinate power.
The proposed conjuring had never taken place, Sartori had disappeared a short time later. In all the intervening years Chant had wondered if he had attempted a second summoning alone and been the voiders' victim. Perhaps the creature now coming after Chant had been responsible. Though Sartori had disappeared two hundred years ago, the lives of voiders, like those of so many species from the other Dominions, were longer than the longest human span.
Chant glanced over his shoulder. The whistler was in sight. It looked perfectly human, dressed in a gray, well-cut suit and black tie, its collar turned up against the cold, its hands thrust into its pockets. It didn't run but almost idled as it came, the whistle confounding Chant's thoughts and making him stumble. As he turned away the second of his pursuers appeared on the pavement in front of him, drawing a hand from its pocket. A gun? No. A knife? No. Something tiny crawled in the voider's palm, like a flea. Chant had no sooner focused upon it than it leapt towards his face. Repulsed, he raised his arm to keep it from his eyes or mouth, and the flea landed upon his hand. He slapped at it with his other hand, but it was beneath his thumbnail before he could get to it. He raised his arm to see its motion in the flesh of his thumb and clamped his other hand around the base of the digit, in the hope of stopping its further advance, gasping as though doused with icewater. The pain was out of all proportion to the mite's size, but he held both thumb and sobs hard, determined not to lose all dignity in front of his executioners. Then he staggered off the pavement into the street, throwing a glance down towards the brighter lights at the junction. What safety they offered was debatable, but if worst came to worst he would throw himself beneath a car and deny the voiders the entertainment of his slow demise. He began to run again, still clutching his hand. This time he didn't glance back. He didn't need to. The sound of the whistling faded, and the purr of the car replaced it. He threw every ounce of his energy into the run, reaching the bright street to find it deserted by traffic. He turned north, racing past the underground station towards the Elephant and Castle. Now he did glance behind, to see the car following steadily. It had three occupants: the voiders and another, sitting in the back seat. Sobbing with breathlessness he ran on, and—Lord love it!—a taxi appeared around the next corner, its yellow light announcing its availability. Concealing his pain as best he could, knowing the driver might pass on by if he thought the hailer was wounded, he stepped out into the street and raised his hand to wave the driver down. This meant unclasping one hand from the other, and the mite took instant advantage, working its way up into his wrist. But the vehicle slowed.