‘So he got away under cover of it?’
‘I think so.’
The piece of paper was secured by a small piece of sticky tape. He laid the package on a shelf beside a window, got out his multi-knife, and sliced through it. The stone was revealed to be a fragment of red tile, with faded decoration down one edge. Costain took a step back as the paper flapped open. He saw that Sefton had felt it too. The weight of it had suddenly increased. That was the feeling of something hiding that they’d experienced. On the paper was written a message in a large, scrawled hand:
You smell of modern shit. Leave us alone. We smell death near you soon. You brought that on yourselves.
‘Death near us soon,’ said Sefton. ‘Well, there’s a shock.’ He put his hand over the tile, as if trying to gauge the forces involved. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if this would hurt someone who didn’t have the Sight?’ He lowered his hand closer and closer to the tile. ‘It’s not getting any stronger.’
‘Just leave it.’
‘If it can hurt us, maybe it could hurt Losley.’ He touched his palm to the tile quickly and then raised it again.
‘Don’t fucking do that! Did I tell you that you could do that?’
‘Like you’d know one way or the other.’ And there was that furious look again, the real Sefton now that they were out of character. ‘I’m the one who’s been looking into this.’
‘You’re not planning on recognizing my rank at all, then?’
Sefton seemed to pause at that. He didn’t want to say it out loud — which was just like him. His eyes locked on Costain’s, his finger reaching towards the tile again. And suddenly with a yell he withdrew it. Blood went flying from his finger.
A drop of it landed on the tile.
And motion blurred everything as something battered Costain’s entire body.
‘A Shaft of Light in Paddington Station.’ The fortune-teller laid down a card that showed a painting of just that, looking like an old advert or something. The light looked summery, with dust motes hanging in it. ‘Something Glimpsed from the Underground.’ That was the image of what must have been a tube carriage window, with a brickwork arch outside it, also a green and blue light that spoke of meadows gleaming through it. ‘The Sacrifice of Tyburn Tree.’ She slapped the third card down over the first. She’d made a pass of her hands over the cards before they’d begun, and they’d regained the same lustre of importance that they’d had when Ross had first glimpsed them. Now they looked. . delicious, meaningful like Christmas, a colourful present that had been unwrapped, a terrible pang of nostalgia that was like the prospect of happiness and repose she’d felt from the rest of the fair. But this third card looked terrible, too, and it connected with her. It was a man hanging by his neck, in silhouette, other terrible wounds having been done to him, judging from how the crowd, in faux-medieval dress, all around him were pointing at various parts of his body. The fixture from which he hung sprouted many such nooses, like it was a proper tree, and rooks flew all around it.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked.
The woman looked angry, but some explanation seemed to be required here to fulfil the bargain. ‘The first two are indications of different sorts of hope: summer and autumn. The third is what the hope is actually about.’
‘The hanged man?’ She remembered that name from TV shows. It had always made her look up.
‘These aren’t like normal Tarot cards, which are for the rest of-’ She stopped herself, and for a moment Ross thought it was because she’d already said too much, but it seemed that she’d noticed something else about her subject and now she was smiling, revealing gaps where teeth should be — another sacrifice, Ross guessed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘this is important to you personally?’
Ross didn’t want to show it. ‘The man being hanged. . is a sacrifice?’
‘Does this cause you pain? Are the details going to make you suffer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you listen here, copper, and I’ll tell you all about it. The berk on the card, he’s had three things done to him. The threefold death, they call it: he’s been sacrificed three times. A death wound to the head. A death wound to the side. A hanging to kill him too.’ The woman was gleefully examining her face. ‘Makes his soul like gold, that does — commends him to the fire.’
‘To the fire?’
‘So I’m told. Sends him to Hell as solid currency. You get a lot in return for a three in one.’
Ross felt the room swaying around her. She felt the knife in her pocket. She suddenly had in her mind a picture of her dad’s face tilted up against the ceiling rose. The bruise on his head. The wound in his side.
Quill’s head collided with the ragged man’s stomach. With a cry, the other fell back, and whatever was in his hand went flying. The buffeting winds shut off. Quill leaped to grab him. He got his hands clenched among the dirty ancient coat, and slammed the man down onto the marble floor, hauling one hand behind his back, pulling the handcuffs from his own pocket. But then he realized that he was sitting on top of just a dirty old coat with nothing in it. And then on top of nothing at all. He was crouching on bare marble, his arse in the air, handcuffs jingling from one hand. He looked up to see New Age punters walking past him, raising eyebrows.
He got to his feet and looked quickly around the floor. There they were. He grabbed a fold of his own coat to pick them up in. Then, feeling nothing very dangerous from them, though there was definitely power of some kind, he took them in his bare hand. They were two thin paddles. . or vanes. They were made of very old metal, with ancient decorations, like something from out of a long barrow that should now be in a museum. And in his hands they felt useless.
Sefton lay on the hard floor, his head ringing. He felt as if he was back in the playground. He’d just been thrown to the ground by something with that same effortless power over him. It had felt as he imagined being caught in an explosion would feel. But it had left him. . he made himself breathe deeply. . with his ribs intact, and. . he rolled over. . his hands were just bruised where he’d landed on them. He managed to look over at Costain, who was pushing himself to his feet, looking quickly around him as if he might be attacked again. Sefton himself slowly stood up. The piece of paper was blowing away in shreds, departing too swiftly to catch, too swiftly for normality, and all that had been left of the tile was dust that was vanishing into a red stain on the floor.
The crowd was staring at them, though trying not to. What had they witnessed? Not as much as the two policemen had. That had been an explosion meant only for those with the Sight, a silent warning — something that felt as if it had been put together hastily by an anonymous member of a subculture that didn’t want to be policed. ‘That was my fault,’ Sefton said.
‘Yeah,’ nodded Costain, looking angry, ‘it was. Let’s get some details on this fucker.’ And he led them off to find the stall manager.
‘I don’t know nothing about that,’ the fortune-teller was saying, but Ross wasn’t listening any more. ‘Our bargain is fulfilled.’
Ross got to her feet at the same instant the woman did, intent on apprehending her.
The woman glared at her. ‘We haven’t had the law bothering us for a few years now. We stayed out of sight of them. But then they was got rid of, and so will you be. That’s the way the wheel’s turning.’
Ross gave her a hard stare. ‘Try and get away, I’ll have you.’ She could hear running feet behind her. The others had finally come to find her. She kept eye contact with the woman, who produced a small knife that was too small to make Ross back off. She felt like reaching into her own pocket and comparing blades. But, no, she had to keep her authority. ‘What’re you planning on doing with the potato peeler?’
The fortune-teller suddenly drew it across her own palm, and cried out at the pain. Ross took a step forward, to try to stop the woman doing herself any more harm. But then it occurred to her that she hadn’t paid proper attention to the floor. It was really interesting, so she got down on to her hands and knees and, dimly aware of the rest of her team arriving, she settled on the perfect spot, a brass line at the edge of where the wood and marble flooring met. She raised her head back, smiled at the others, and-