The priest had fallen to the floor. He was clutching hands to his eyes, almost like a man trying to gouge his own sight away. And he was moaning and wriggling, as if in the grip of some grave palsy.
Lune stepped over him and continued on her journey.
She hardly dared pause when she reached the outside world. The egg was still giving off its chill, a cold that seemed to leech energy and resolve from her between one breath and the next. It was still an arduous journey back to the Château. But she was out, and there were no Aftmen waiting to detain her. Lune put on her skates and set off along the streets that bordered the black ribbon of the frozen river, trying to push all thoughts of the blinded priest from her mind, at the same time reassuring herself that what she had done was right and necessary.
The eggs had been made by men, in ages past, as an insurance against this long and deepening winter. Fire had been poured into them. Bottled for centuries, it was a gift from the dead. Though the eggs were rare, and rarer still with each passing generation, their fire was all that stood between the world and slow freezing death.
“What we do will seem wrong at times,” Madame Bezile had explained. “It will seem harsh, and it will involve deception and cruelty. The Aftmen will dog our every step, thinking that they act for the greater good. We will make enemies of decent men and women, the pious and the misguided, the brave and the foolish. The churchmen are not wicked, but their scripture has led them badly astray. They revere the eggs so highly that they would sooner see the lights go out than waste a drop of holy fire. But we serve science, not superstition. Across Free France, even beyond its margins, children shiver and starve for want of the energy a single egg can bring. My argosy carries life to those who most need it. Our mission is truly sacred.”
If there had been few travellers abroad before, there were even fewer now. The beer gardens and theatres had finished business for the evening. Lit windows and lantern-decked alleys were now dark. The occasional illuminated mansion or civic building served only to emphasize the nightly gloom that had settled on most of the city. Some of these places ran on gas or other contrivances, but as always fuel was scarce. And even gas or torchlight offered only a feeble defence against the night and the cold. Only the eggs could truly push back that chill, and even then only until the pure white light had stopped pouring from their hearts. That same light could make ancient machines turn again; it could send icebreakers to the Northern Wastes and propel fliers and argosies to the ends of the Earth. It could energise weapons potent enough to slice a tenement in half, or make the frozen river boil again. Lune had seen something of that light now, as she turned the egg against the priest.
How much had she spent: a hundredth, a thousandth, of the egg’s capacity? As her skates flashed along the ice, she wondered if Madame Bezile had some means of evaluating what portion of an egg had already been depleted, and whether some sanction would be forthcoming against Lune for squandering that which was precious beyond measure . . .
She heard the whisk, whisk, of another skater coming up behind her, moving with effortless, confident rhythm. A scissoring noise like knives being sharpened against each other. Lune did not look back. She maintained her pace, neither hastening nor slowing, until the road forked ahead. She took the rightmost turn, braking sharply, and sped down a narrowing, meandering alley away from the river. She knew the city well but not this winding passage. Old, sagging buildings, three or four storeys tall, leaned in on each other, trapping a thread of star-flecked sky between their jagged rooflines. The ice was rough and rutted and she had no choice but to slow down. A black cat, or rather a cat-shaped absence, dashed across the ice ahead of her, almost losing its tail under her blades. Lune drew breath sharply, but as the cat disappeared between barrels stacked at a doorway, it occurred to her that the other skater was not on her heels. Lune smiled at her nervousness. Any other night, she wouldn’t have thought twice about another traveller catching up with her from behind.
The alley terminated in a set of rising steps, glazed with treacherous ice. She risked a glance back the way she had come, and thought for a moment about returning to the main thoroughfare, where the going would be easier. But no, she wasn’t chancing it. Lune removed the skates again and climbed the steps, taking particular care now that the egg was in her care. If her mental map of this district wasn’t failing her, she had an idea where this alley ought to come out.
She had nearly reached the top of the steps when the figure loomed over her, blackflame cloak rippling and billowing as if stirred by some hidden breeze. Aftman, Lune thought to herself: almost immediately followed by the realisation that she had failed; that in fact this was worse than merely failing because now she would have to answer to more than just the authority of the Mademoiselle. Then something steely and sharp glimmered in the Aftman’s hand, and she recognised the curlicued barrel of a pistol.
“Come with me,” the Aftman said. “I think you have something I want very much. You have just come from the Cathedral, haven’t you?”
Lune’s heart roared. She couldn’t see the Aftman’s face, only the cloak and the pistol. The rest of him was lost in shadow. Strangely, he stood next to a patch of wall marked with the same chalk design she had seen before entering the Cathedral.
The chalk marks bright, unsmeared by rain or passing hands—as if they’d been made very recently.
“You mean this?’ she asked, innocently enough, and began to bring the egg out of the pouch, cradling it as she had done before.
“If you’re intending to blind or stun me, it won’t work,” the Aftman said, and—by dint of leaning towards her—his face revealed itself, along with the black globes that he wore on his eyes. “Besides, it would be a shame to waste any more of that power, wouldn’t it? Not when you’ve gone to so much trouble to steal it.”
There was something wrong, Lune realised. The man looked like an Aftman, but he wasn’t speaking like one. Aftmen didn’t normally travel alone, either. Usually in pairs, or threes, the better to overwhelm their prey. And that pistoclass="underline" It was strangely ornate, agleam with baroque ornamentation. Not the weapon of civic militia, but of a privateer, or a rich playboy . . .
“Who are you?’ Lune asked.
“Oh,” he said, mocking. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“I think you’re bluffing,” Lune said, and once more took the egg from its pouch, once more touched the lever.
The same light as before shot forth. She saw it echoed in the Aftman’s lenses, a flash like black fire, as though the light of the egg had reflected from something deep within the iris itself.
“Ah!” cried the Aftman, but it did not sound as though he had been wounded, nor did he fall. Rather, it was a cry of triumph. Lune stepped back, but she was too slow. A cone of light snapped from the Aftman’s left eye, expanding outwards until she was enveloped in an aura of shifting colours: magenta, vermilion, ebony black. She batted at the lines of colour, fighting a dark rainbow, but though her hands went straight through, the colour held her. Black expanded, held, was all there was.
Later, Lune woke. There was a gritty sourness in her mouth and a pungent smell, not unpleasant, filled her nose. It made her sneeze. She blinked, but the darkness around her was all-enveloping: She could not even see her hand in front of her. But the surface beneath her bound hands was velvety soft.