“Think he’d like to roll in it,” said Mack.
“Agreed, brother,” they said, almost as one.
“Gentlemen,” said Matthew, and perhaps now was the time to get out while he could, for he sensed violence about to rear its ugly head, “I admire your taste in women. I would ask where you found such a lovely specimen.”
“Specimen,” said Jack, with a snort that blew bits of snot from his nostrils. “Makes our Fancy sound like a fuckin’ worm, don’t he?”
“Like a bug, crawled from under a rock,” Mack observed.
“No disrespect meant.” Matthew realized it was a lost cause; these bully boys were wanting to thrash him, come what may, and Matthew’s plan was to get their minds on Fancy and then—ignominiously or not—bolt from the balcony as soon as he could. “I was wondering where I might find a woman of that breed?”
“You can buy ’em, boyo, on the pussy market.” Jack leaned in, leering, his breath smelling of whiskey sharpened by snakeheads. “I thought that was your fuckin’ business.”
“’Cept we didn’t buy Fancy,” Mack confided, and now he put an arm around Matthew’s shoulders in a way that made Matthew’s spine crawl. “We come across her owned by a gentleman gambler in Dublin. He’d won her at the faro table last year…”
“Year before that,” Jack corrected.
“Whenever.” Mack’s grip tightened on Matthew’s shoulders. “We decided we’d have her. You listenin’ here? It’s a good story. Wanted to teach him he couldn’t play faro in that tavern without our permission or a piece of the pie, and him riggin’ the box against those other poor punters. We left him crawlin’, didn’t we?”
“Crawlin’ and pukin’ blood,” said Jack.
“Man with no knees left,” said Mack, “has got to crawl.”
“Sure as fuck can’t walk,” Jack added, and then he pressed the mouth of his bottle against Matthew’s lips. “Have a drink with me, Spadey.”
Matthew averted his face. He caught a movement, and saw that this little drama was being observed by Fancy, who had stood up upon her rock to watch.
“No, thank you,” Matthew said. And he saw the Indian girl turn her back and dive from her perch into the sea, where the waves closed over her brown body and rippled white in her descent.
“You didn’t hear me, boyo.” Jack’s voice was very quiet. “I said I want you to have a drink with me.”
“And then with me.” Mack’s bottle also pressed against Matthew’s mouth. “Wet your whistle while ya can.”
“No,” Matthew repeated, for his boundary had been reached. “Thank you.” He started to move away from them, even as they pressed in harder on either side. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to—”
Mack suddenly whipped The Lesser Key Of Solomon from Matthew’s hand. He used it to smack Matthew hard on the nose, which caused a fierce and staggering pain and made Matthew’s eyes blur with tears. In the next instant, before Matthew could right himself, Jack gripped the back of his neck and headbutted him on the forehead, sending jagged spears of light and flaming stars through Matthew’s brain. His arms and legs at once became heavy dead limbs, without feeling or purpose.
“Hold him up,” he heard one of them say, as if an echo in a long cavernous corridor.
“Little fucker don’t weigh nothin’.”
“Got me an idea. Don’t let him drop.”
“Want me to knee him in the balls?”
“No. Let’s send him swimmin’. But first…drag him over here. Lemme get them curtain cords.”
“What’re ya thinkin’, brother?”
“I’m thinkin’ Spadey got hisself drunk, climbed up on that thing, it fell, and…over the side he went.”
“You mean to kill him?”
“I mean to wash our hands of his shitty little self, that’s what I mean. And damned to the depths for him, where he’ll never be found. Come on, drag him over.”
In the fog of his dazed brain and throbbing brainpan, Matthew realized this was not good for his future. In fact, it was horribly bad. He felt himself being dragged. His eyes were blinded by sunlight and black shadows that shifted in and out of his befouled vision. He tried to get his feet under himself, tried to get a hand up to protest this rough treatment.
“He’s comin’ round.”
“Smack him again.”
Another headbutt slammed into Matthew’s forehead. Bright balls of light exploded behind his eyes. He felt his legs dance of their own volition for a few seconds. He thought Gilliam Vincent might commend him. Wasn’t he at a dance at Sally Almond’s tavern? Didn’t he hear fiddle music—though terribly off-key—and the banging of a drum close to his ear?
The echoing voices returned.
“…up on that thing with him. Tie his hands behind him.”
“Ain’t somebody gonna miss the cords?”
“Not my concern, brother. Maybe they’ll think he made himself some reins for his horse, and got tangled up in ’em.”
Horse? Matthew thought, in his deep dark cave. What horse?
He felt pain at his shoulders. His arms had been pulled back. Tying his hands?
“Now get the other cord tied around him and the horse. Come on, hurry it!”
Horse? Matthew thought once more. It seemed very important that he figure this out, but his brain was not working too well. He felt himself being wrapped around with a rope of some kind. Lemme get them curtain cords, he remembered hearing.
“They’ll know it was us.”
“No, brother, they won’t. Leave your bottle on the ledge. Help me push this bastard over. You ready?”
“Always ready.”
“Push.”
Matthew felt himself falling. He tried to blink his light-smeared vision clear. He had a scream locked behind his lips, but his mouth would not open.
Horse, he thought.
As in…seahorse.
He hit the water on his side. The chill of the sea shocked some of the sense back into him. He had time to gasp a lungful of air before he went under.
I float, Matthew recalled saying to Sirki.
But he realized at once that no man tied to several hundred pounds of stone seahorse was going to float, and so with the desperate air locked in his lungs and his hands bound behind him he rode his horse beneath the waves and down and down into the blue silence below.
Twenty-Three
UNDERWATER, Matthew was turning as he sank. The seahorse was above him one instant, and then the next he was riding it to his death. His ears crackled with pain. He heard the air bubbles bursting from his mouth. His vision was clouded with blue. He roused himself to fight against the cords that bound his wrists together, yet his strength was already much abused and used-up. He was a dry vessel, surrounded and suffocated by the sea.
Panic set in and caused him to thrash wildly and with no purpose. More air escaped lungs and mouth. The pressure upon his ears was inescapable, as was his predicament. The roar in his head was the sound of a watery grave opening to forever hide his corpse from the sun, and yet it might be the voice of a demon from The Lesser Key Of Solomon, exulting in the demise of a good man.
Matthew’s stone mount suddenly hit something with a sea-muffled thud, landing upright on its base. Its descent ceased.
He could see only smears and shadows, strange forms around him that might be angular rocks sculpted by time and currents. His heart pounded, and with the next loss of air he knew his stuttering lungs would lose their grip on life and the sea would come rushing in to complete the job the Thackers had begun.