She ate her fill with him and then groomed herself, finding comfort in the ritual of cleaning, the rough sc ratch of tongue on fur. Sated, she felt the need to sleep. It would be good to find a spot to curl up. She looked up and down the narrow vent. Everything was in black and white, like a ferrotype, and the vents were bright and sharp as a full moon.
That way.
She took off in that direction, padding down a vent towards a junction. Faint light filtered through a fan overhead; more than she needed.
That way.
And that was the way she went. Except suddenly she wasn’t sure whose thought it was that had directed her. It had seemed too clear to be the cat’s, too focused and decisive. But she was only a passenger here, along for the ride. Wasn’t she?
Was it a coincidence that Slag had twice gone in the direction she picked?
Stop.
She came to a halt and began to idly lick her paw.
The other paw.
She put that paw down, and started on the other one.
Slag didn’t seem in the least distressed by this. He thought the idea to lick the paw was his own. But it wasn’t. Jez was sure of that now.
Stretch.
And she did, a luxuriant lengthening of the spine.
Well, now, she thought to herself. Isn’t this something?
Twenty-Nine
Frey pressed himself up against the wooden wall of the corridor, his eyes wide and his heart pounding.
Couldn’t have been.
He leaned out and looked round the corner. Down a short half-flight of rickety steps was a doorway to the street. Beyond was light and bright fabrics, dust and noise and chaos. A thoroughfare like a thousand others in Shasiith, hammered by the afternoon sun, hot as a kiln. And off the street were more doorways and alleys and passages: shadowy tributaries to the blinding river of humanity that ran between them.
Couldn’t have been.
Maybe he hadn’t seen what he thought he saw. Damn, the sun in this country was enough to give any man a touch of the strange. And no one could blame him for being jumpy.
Last night, he’d sent a message to the Trinica on the Delirium Trigger, to ask for a rendezvous in secret. When the time came, he decided to walk instead of going by rickshaw. He needed to rehearse his apology. And after that, he needed to work out how the spit he was going to persuade her to help him. Assuming, of course, that she turned up at all.
Wrapped up in his thoughts, nervous at the prospect of their meeting, he’d hardly been paying attention to the people around him as he walked. Hardly noticed his surroundings. It was only chance that he looked up when he did, and noticed the crumbling stone alleyway, and the Iron Jackal lurking in its shadow.
He’d thought himself safe in the day. Night was the time for horrors. Night was when he couldn’t sleep for fear that the Iron Jackal would come when his eyes were closed, when he couldn’t even have a drop of Shine to take the edge off because he needed to be alert in case… in case…
Couldn’t have been.
He clutched Crake’s device in his left hand. A chrome ball, the size of a large apple. It was featureless except for a single press-stud. Two slender wires ran from it to a battery pack that hung at his hip. The pack was heavy and clumsy and had been bashing against his leg all day, but Frey had gladly endured it. He’d take any chance he could get right now, and Crake’s invention was the only one offered to him.
You’ll only get a minute or two out of this, Crake had said, as he was strapping the pack to Frey. Don’t waste it. Find a hiding place and hold down the stud. It won’t work if the daemon can see or hear you, but it might stop it finding you by other means.
Agitated, he retreated from the corner, further up the corridor. Where was he, anyway? It was a dim wooden back-alley, a raised passageway that ran parallel to the street, with several doors leading off it, all closed. At one end was a rectangle of light, and a hubbub of voices and activity. He was protected from the sun here, but not from its heat, and the warm, soupy air drew sweat from his skin.
Halfway along the corridor, he stopped. Had he seen it? It was nothing more than a glimpse, really, and given how wound up and exhausted he was, the odd hallucination here and there was nothing to be surprised at. As the seconds ticked by, he became more and more certain that it hadn’t been anything at all.
Until he heard footsteps on the stairs.
His heart bucked in his chest. He drew a revolver with his free hand – an unthinking response to danger – and his body tensed, ready to run or fight. But probably run.
The panic only lasted a moment. The footsteps were too light, too fast to be made by the thing he feared. A middle-aged Dakkadian woman in dusty hemp robes came into view, carrying an armload of white sheets. She froze as she saw him, sucking in a shocked breath. Her narrow eyes widened at the sight of his revolver.
He shoved it quickly back in his belt and held up the empty hand to show her he meant no harm. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. My fault. Thought you were a horrible daemonic monster.’
She frowned at him, evidently decided he wasn’t a threat, and hissed something in Samarlan that sounded insulting. Then she hustled past him, still muttering. He slumped back against the wall, letting out a sigh of relief.
A long, rattling snarl made his blood run cold. He turned his head slowly.
It came up the steps into the gloom, a hulking, blade-fingered shape that filled the passageway. It brought the darkness with it, shrouding itself in shadow. It twisted towards him, muzzled head cocked at an angle. The red gleam of its mechanical eye shone keenly against the blackness.
Frey backed up, tripped on his heel, turned and fled.
The Dakkadian woman hadn’t yet reached the end of the passageway. She spun around as she heard him running, and shrieked in alarm, thinking he was about to attack her. He shoved past her instead, knocking her against the wall, too scared to care about chivalry. She fell over in a bundle of sheets, and he raced past her and out into the light.
The passageway came out onto a raised plank walkway running through the middle of an enclosed square. Grubby apartments were stacked up on all sides, their balconies rusted and plaster walls cracked. To either side of the walkway were dye-pits, lurid circles of purple and yellow and red. Dozens of Dakkadians worked around the pits. Men stirred the thick dye with poles; women spread dripping fabrics onto racks, their arms stained to the elbows. Prowling along the walkway were three Samarlan overseers, keeping an eye on the slaves below.
Frey looked back over his shoulder. Maybe the Iron Jackal was confined to the darkness. Maybe sunlight would protect him. That hope died as the saw the Iron Jackal come lunging up the passage on all fours. It sprang over the fallen woman and landed in a predatory crouch on the walkway. In full view of everyone. Except that nobody was looking at it. They were all looking at him, wondering at the crazed foreigner who had come sprinting into their midst.
The nearest Samarlan, seeing Frey approach at pace, stepped back uncertainly. Then, reaching a decision, he dropped into a low stance, ready to tackle the intruder.
‘What are you doing, you moron?’ Frey screamed at him in disbelief. ‘Get out of the way!’
But the Samarlan wasn’t getting out of the way. He lunged when Frey was close enough. Frey clubbed him round the head with the chrome ball he was holding. The Samarlan pitched limply off the side of the walkway and plunged into a pit of purple dye. Frey scampered down a short set of steps that took him to ground level, and ran off between the dye-pits while workers were still trying to fish their unconscious overseer out with their poles.