‘Ship? What are you thinking, dipshit? Let’s go, move it! What ship? You’re getting delusional! Drink some water.’
Hannah ran on, the balls of her feet barely touching the broken yellow line, but Steven slowly closed the distance, passing people, lots of them, hundreds of runners, all plodding along at the same pace.
Mile ten.
‘I can’t keep this up,’ he gasped, and moved to the side of the road. At least there he could use the bit of shade from the ponderosas to clear his vision. ‘She’s too fast,’ he told himself.
At mile eleven, he saw the dog, someone’s wolfhound, broken free from its owner. Loping along at an easy jog, the dog ran beside him, uninterested in the other runners, apparently unwilling to leave the struggling bank administrator behind.
‘What do you want?’ Steven asked, coughing up a bit of phlegm. ‘A dog biscuit? A bone or something? Why don’t you drop back a stretch so my horny roommate can check out your tuckus?’ The dog ignored him. ‘Nah,’ Steven said, waving a hand dismissively at the animal, ‘you’re not his type.’ He passed two runners, chatting about something he couldn’t hear, then three singletons, and finally a husband and wife couple wearing matching gear. All the while, the dog kept pace.
‘You see that woman up there?’ he said. ‘She’s the one in the hat with the tan legs? No, of course you don’t. Well, regardless, I’m trying to catch her, but I can’t seem to do it. She’s running too hard, and I’m just not up for it today. So why don’t you run up there and get her to slow down a bit. Bite her leg for me, will you? Go on. Head up there and look all cute, and maybe she’ll stop to pet you. What do you think?’
The dog cocked an eye at him, then turned back to the downhill course.
Mile twelve.
‘All right, time to kick,’ Steven muttered. ‘You ready? Although I don’t know how much kick I have left.’ He scoped out a path to Hannah, a spot about a quarter-mile along where he would overtake her. He could sprint that far; he knew it. Once there, he would rely on whatever reserves of strength he had to finish the race. ‘I’ll take her hand and she can drag me to the line,’ he told the wolfhound. He wiped his blinded eyes on the tail of his T-shirt, nodded to the dog and said, ‘Let’s go.’
Running a quarter-mile fartlek this far into a half-marathon was like squeezing orange juice out of week-old peel, but to Steven’s pleasant surprise, it was working. He knew he would pay at the finish line, for his legs, lungs and lower back were operating on some kind of biological overdraft programme. The moment he stopped running, he would collapse, roll over in that puddle of blood staining the deck and maybe pass out. There were paramedics at the finish line, however. They’ll get an IV in me, hydrate me and make sure I don’t die. I can’t die, not today, he thought; he was running too hard to speak. If I die, they’ll take the blanket off. They’ll see us. All of them. I can’t die.
He caught up to her, slowing to appreciate the narrow pear shape of her bottom, tucked just above the stitched hem of the tiny running shorts he hoped she had chosen just to drive him mad. Steven inhaled several times before coming alongside.
‘Hi-’ All he could manage on the shot-glass of breath he had sucked in; anything polysyllabic would have taken his legs out from under him.
In black and white now, an old photo, Hannah smiled. She wasn’t panting, or sweating; she wasn’t about to collapse or to require medical attention. She wasn’t even wearing sunglasses, but she didn’t seem to mind the harsh morning light. Instead, as she ran along, less than a half mile from the finish line, she said, ‘You have to wake up, Steven!’
The spider-beetle crawled from her ear and skittered on jointed, hairy legs across her cheek. It paused against the perfect tan backdrop of her face, pale grey in the photograph, then crawled with surprising speed over her lip and into her mouth.
Steven stumbled and fell, tumbling over the macadam. He felt his knees and elbows tear open and start bleeding. His chin struck the pavement, scraping itself bare, as did one shoulder and a hip.
Hannah ran on, oblivious.
Steven felt blood seeping from the back of his hand and his neck, not from his cuts and grazes. It pooled in a black puddle around him and he mopped the street with his T-shirt. He looked as though he had been doused with a bucket of heavy syrup.
Too hot, too tired, too dehydrated and too battered to get up, Steven lay in the street, the legions of runners he had passed stepping over or around him as they made for the finish line, most of them awkward, moving in jerky stops like figures in a silent movie. The dog stayed with him, sitting on its haunches, until it finally padded across the road and bit him on the wrist.
Light and colour returned. ‘Ow, fucking shit! What did you do that for, you bastard? he shouted.
The voice rang in his head. Unlike Nerak’s, which had boomed from everywhere at once, this was small, plaintive. Wake up, Steven.
Things went runny, gelled and shifted, some fading while others shone stark and bold; runners drifted across Stanley Avenue towards Clear Creek. Steven was lying beneath a pair of oak trees that had grown beside the road. They blocked the sun, allowing only flickers of dappled yellow to reach him. Blinking, he sat up and surveyed the damage to his wrist. It wasn’t bad. Everything hurts, though. My arms, legs, lungs, back, knees, chin; fuck, even my eyes hurt, for Christ’s sake.
Wake up, Steven.
Dogs can’t talk.
I know that, silly.
Just let me rest. Leave me alone for a second and let me rest.
The boat’s going to crash.
What boat? What…? The blanket. You mean the blanket? The boat under the blanket?
Wake up, Steven.
THE INLET
‘Come about, Marrin,’ Captain Ford said, calmly, sensibly. Garec had been shouting. ‘Make your course zero-six-zero. You can see it. We have to round that point.’
Marrin had lashed himself to the helm. He was armed with a battle-axe and a short dagger and waved them wildly when anyone moved towards him. He was lost in the throes of whatever madness had found him on the brig-sloop’s quarterdeck. They were closing fast on the Malakasian trawler now.
Garec hadn’t lowered his bow, though he had no wish to kill Marrin.
‘Wait, Garec, just a moment,’ Captain Ford whispered.
‘We don’t have much time, sir.’
‘You think I can’t see that?’ He reached for a pin near the base of the mainmast and braced himself as the Morning Star pitched and bumped over the swells, running into the shore. They would run aground; the water was deep enough to round the point, but if they rammed the trawler, Steven’s cloaking spell would be shattered. If they survived the impact, they’d be limping into Pellia, completely exposed.
‘Marrin,’ he tried again, ‘if you ram that ship, it’s a tag hanging for all of us. You realise that, don’t you?’
The first mate stared somewhere beyond the Malakasian shoreline, and mumbled, nothing the others could understand. It didn’t look like he even heard them.
‘Let me take him,’ Garec said. ‘I won’t kill him.’
‘Not yet. Kellin?’
‘I’m here.’ Her voice came from somewhere behind him. He didn’t turn to look.
‘Get below; see if you can help Gilmour.’ Warily he moved a few steps closer.
Marrin mumbled louder and tightened the bit of hemp holding him to the brig-sloop’s wheel.
Captain Ford stopped. They were close to the trawler; he could hear voices hailing from across the shallows. The breakwater, a few hundred paces offshore, roared a background warning. Grand, Ford thought. Even if we miss the boat, we’ll be caught on the mud. We’ll never make this tack, not now. Without taking his eyes off Marrin, he said, ‘Brexan?’
‘Right behind you.’