‘This line’s getting worse. I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘You didn’t—’
‘Keep warm, huh?’
‘Judith-’
‘Sorry, Gentle.’
The line went dead. But the water she’d spoken through gurgled on, like the noise in a sea-shell. Not the ocean at all, of course; just illusion. He put the receiver down, and -knowing he’d never sleep now - squeezed out some fresh bright worms of paint to work with, and set to.
3
It was the whistle from the gloom behind him that alerted Chant to the fact that his escape had not gone unnoticed. It was not a whistle that could have come from human lips, but a chilling scalpel shriek he had heard only once before in the Fifth Dominion, when, some two hundred years past, his then possessor, the Maestro Sartori, had conjured from the In Ovo a familiar which had made such a whistle. It had brought bloody tears to its summoner’s eyes, obliging Sartori to relinquish it post haste. Later Chant and the Maestro had spoken of the event, and Chant had identified the creature. It was a creature known in the Reconciled Dominions as a voider, one of a brutal species that haunted the wastes north of the Lenten Way. They came in many shapes, being made from collective desire, which fact seemed to move Sartori profoundly.
‘I must summon one again,’ he’d said, ‘and speak with it,’ to which Chant had replied that if they were to attempt such a summoning they had to be ready next time, for voiders were lethal, and could not be tamed except by Maestros of inordinate power. The proposed conjuring had never taken place. Sartori had disappeared a short time later. In all the intervening years Chant had wondered if he had attempted a second summoning alone, and been the voiders’ victim. Perhaps the creature coming after Chant now had been responsible. Though Sartori had disappeared two hundred years ago, the lives of voiders, like those of so many species from the other Dominions, were longer than the longest human span.
Chant glanced over his shoulder. The whistler was in sight. It looked perfectly human, dressed in a grey, well-cut suit and black tie, its collar turned up against the cold, its hands thrust into its pockets. It didn’t run, but almost idled as it came, the whistle confounding Chant’s thoughts, and making him stumble. As he turned away the second of his pursuers appeared on the pavement in front of him, drawing its hand from his pocket. A gun? No. A knife. No. Something tiny crawled in the voider’s palm, like a flea. Chant had no sooner focused upon it than it leapt towards his face. Repulsed, he raised his arm to keep it from his eyes or mouth, and the flea landed upon his hand. He slapped at it with his other hand, but it was beneath his thumbnail before he could get to it. He raised his arm to see its motion in the flesh of his thumb, and clamped his other hand around the base of the digit in the hope of stopping its further advance, gasping as though doused with ice-water. The pain was out of all proportion to the mite’s size, but he held both thumb and sobs hard, determined not to lose all dignity in front of his executioners. Then he staggered off the pavement into the street, throwing a glance down towards the brighter lights at the junction. What safety they offered was debatable, but if worst came to worst he would throw himself beneath a car, and deny the voiders the entertainment of his slow demise.
He began to run again, still clutching his hand. This time he didn’t glance back. He didn’t need to. The sound of the whistling faded, and the purr of the car replaced it. He threw every ounce of his energy into the run, reaching the bright street to find it deserted by traffic. He turned north, racing past the Underground station towards the Elephant and Castle. Now he did glance behind, to see the car following steadily. It had three occupants. The voiders, and another, sitting in the back seat. Sobbing with breathlessness he ran on, and - Lord love it! - a taxi appeared around the next corner, its yellow light announcing its availability. Concealing his pain as best he could, knowing the driver might pass on by if he thought the nailer was wounded, he stepped out into the street, and raised his hand to wave the driver down. This meant unclasping one hand from the other, and the mite took instant advantage, working its way up into his wrist. But the vehicle slowed.
‘Where to, mate?’
He astonished himself with the reply, giving not Estabrook’s address, but that of another place entirely.
∧Clerkenwell,’ he said. ‘Gamut Street.’
‘Don’t know it,’ the cabbie replied, and for one heart-stopping moment Chant thought he was going to drive on.
‘I’ll direct you,’ he said.
‘Get in, then.’
Chant did so, slamming the cab door with no little satisfaction, and barely managing to reach the seat before the cab picked up speed.
Why had he named Gamut Street? There was nothing there that would heal him. Nothing could. The flea - or whatever variation in that species it was that crawled in him - had reached his elbow, and his arm below that pain was now completely numb, the skin of his hand wrinkled and flaky. But the house in Gamut Street had been a place of miracles once. Men and women of great authority had walked in it, and perhaps left some ghost of themselves to calm him in extremis. No creature, Sartori had taught, passed through this Dominion unrecorded, even to the least - to the child that perished a heart-beat after it opened its eyes, the child that died in the womb, drowned in its mother’s waters - even that unnamed thing had its record and its consequence. So how much more might the once-mighty of Gamut Street have left, by way of echoes?
His heart was palpitating, and his body full of jitters. Fearing he’d soon lose control of his functions, he pulled the letter to Estabrook from his pocket, and leaned forward to slide the half-window between himself and the driver aside.
‘When you’ve dropped me in Clerkenwell I’d like you to deliver a letter for me. Would you be so kind?’
‘Sorry, mate,’ the driver said, ‘I’m going home after this. I’ve a wife waiting for me.’
Chant dug in his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet, then passed it through the window, letting it drop on the seat beside the driver.
‘What’s this?’
‘All the money I’ve got. This letter has to be delivered.’
‘All the money you’ve got, eh?’
The driver picked up the wallet and flicked it open, his gaze going between its contents and the road.
There’s a lot of dosh in here.’
‘Have it. It’s no good to me.’
‘Are you sick?’
‘And tired,’ Chant said. ‘Take it, why don’t you? Enjoy it.’
‘There’s a Daimler been following us. Somebody you know?’
There was no purpose served by lying to the man. ‘Yes,’ Chant said. ‘I don’t suppose you could put some distance between them and us?’
The man pocketed the wallet, and jabbed his foot down on the accelerator. The cab leapt forward like a racehorse from a gate, its jockey’s laugh rising above the guttural din of the engine. Whether it was the cash he was now heavy with or the challenge of out-running a Daimler that motivated him, he put his cab through its paces, proving it more mobile than its bulk would have suggested. In under a minute they’d made two sharp lefts and a squealing right, and were roaring down a back street so narrow the least miscalculation would have taken off handles, hubs and mirrors. The mazing didn’t stop there. They made another turn, and another, bringing them in a short time to Southwark Bridge. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost the Daimler. Chant might have applauded had be possessed two workable hands, but the flea’s message of corruption was spreading with agonizing speed. While he still had five fingers under his command he went back to the window and dropped Estabrook’s letter through, murmuring the address with a tongue that felt disfigured in his mouth.
‘What’s wrong