"So? Everything"s just a story. Each and every life, with a million billion zillion endings. For everyone we help there"s a trillion we don"t."
"That doesn"t make us bad. We do good, like the Blessed Destroyer did good. We can"t help everyone," Erasmus reminded her. "Just those you"re guided to."
"We"re not bad," she told herself firmly. When she died, Chloe wanted to flit about in Asphodel"s shadows, like the birds twittering above them now in the warm blue skies. But in truth she wasn"t sure where she might find herself. She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out one of her new diamonds. The ancient Greeks had thought lots of funny things. Some believed that diamonds were living beings, formed by a chemical reaction from astral spirits in the air...
She held up the diamond so its facets caught the light. "Anyone inside?" she whispered.
Jamais gave a low yelp and scared one of the maids. She looked up at him in alarm. Chloe giggled.
"Come on," said Erasmus, walking a little faster into the heart of the city. "Let"s find someone who will clear up after us."
It would soon be sunset, and the streets would hum to the chanting of Hail Marys. Chloe held on to Jamais"s collar tightly as Erasmus steered them through a bustling street market thronged with shoppers.
There was a commotion, raised voices. Screams and gasps and the sound of heads breaking.
Jamais broke Chloe"s grip on his collar and tore away down the street. "Come back!" shouted Chloe. She sprinted after him, ignoring Erasmus"s own shouts, his demands that she stop still and wait here.
A man, a wealthy merchant by the look of the fine silks and linens he wore, lay on the ground propped up by one elbow. "Thief," he gasped to the concerned onlookers, clutching his b.l.o.o.d.y head. "He stole my diamonds. My diamonds!"
Chloe"s eyes sparkled at the thought of the tiny jewels, their beauty and their strength. She ran on after Jamais, after the robber. There was no difficulty following his trail, she could hear her friend"s frantic footfalls up ahead out of view, could feel the tiny ripples in time that flared with his nostrils, steamed with his quickening breaths.
She turned into a narrow, high-walled street, and found him, alert and tensed, stealthily creeping up to a crossroads. She danced lightly over to join him, pressed her back against the warmed stucco front of a tall house, and peeped round the corner.
Two men stood in the quiet dusty road. One was skinny and shaking, whooping ragged breaths, a small velvet purse in his hand. The thief. He stood before a man who dwarfed him, tall and heavyset, dressed dashingly in some kind of military greatcoat. He had a full, pale face. Chloe could see the glitter of amus.e.m.e.nt in his small dark eyes even across the street. He held out one enormous hand for the stolen purse.
"Really, D"Amantine," he sighed, and his voice was like rich spiced fruit. "Gifts for your old master. A generous gesture, but a foolhardy one. You will not serve me as a dead man, or as a caitiff rotting in gaol. You must sow the seed, D"Amantine." He took the little purse in one hand and closed his great fingers on it, and cupped the man"s cheek with the other. Chloe shivered to see those hands. She felt that if he held a lump of coal in his palm he could grind his own diamond from it in an absent-minded gesture.
The thief, D"Amantine, flinched suddenly, slapped a hand to his cheek where the large fellow had touched him.
"Run, now," said the man. "You mustn"t linger here."
Treating this more as a command than a caution, D"Amantine bolted away, darted down the next street.
And the big, bearlike man saw that Chloe stood watching. There was such intensity in his gaze that Chloe flinched with a hoa.r.s.e gasp.
At once, Jamais pushed past her and let out a menacing growl, guarding his friend. And then Chloe saw the man"s eyes and realised something awful, something that had not happened before. The big man looked at Jamais and clearly didn"t see the image of the big black dog her friend projected. He saw Jamais for what he was, and the bristling tip of the powers over which he had unreasoned, animal command.
The man crouched forwards, looking at Chloe again, resting his hands on his knees. "Do I scent a spy?" he rasped, like a pantomime giant. "What do those eyes see, I wonder?"
With unexpected speed he chased towards her. Chloe shrieked, and Jamais growled and snarled and finally flew to attack him. He grabbed the man"s coat, tearing at the pocket.
"No!" the man commanded, furiously. He brought a hamlike fist down on Jamais"s snout. Jamais yelped and staggered back, and his sharp teeth ripped through the coat lining and tore the pocket free. It flopped to the ground and suddenly diamonds were scattering in the dirt-filled gutters.
The man swiped again at Jamais with the back of his hand and caught him a blow on the hip that bowled him over and over. Chloe shrieked and threw herself at the man.
But in her fear she had forgotten her nature. She drifted through the alternatives. The tiniest touch from others and she knew what they were, what they might be, what would befall them and if their silly dreams could stand a chance. And if she felt sad she would root around the one true reality and find a happier moment for that person, that one in a million, timeless moment.
Seizing hold of this man, it was like she had thrown herself from a high cliff to splash down through thick black ice.
Sabbath was the name he had taken. was the name he had taken.
Sabbath had taken so many things.
He knew of the time lores.
Sabbath pinned down with certainty the things Chloe could only feel.
He could not, would not dream; sleep for him was a necessary function, not one to be polluted by random sentiment.
For Chloe, who mixed mad jumbles of life, Sabbath"s touch was the cold, warning rattle of approaching death. A rational, calculated absolute that would not be cheated.
The ice that trapped her cracked, and she sees him suddenly in his special ship staffed only by apes. A long skinny man, a little streak of nastiness, stands beside him. she sees him suddenly in his special ship staffed only by apes. A long skinny man, a little streak of nastiness, stands beside him.
"D"Amantine brought you the diamonds!" Skinny Man rubs his delicate hands together. "I knew..."
"A dangerous joke," grumbles Sabbath.
"Simply a demonstration of my skill." Skinny Man smiles and shows skinny teeth. "I instilled that impulse in the first subject. It bas become a hereditary memory, pa.s.sed through three generations now."
"But will there be a fourth?" Sabbath steeples his fleshy fingers. "He was a fool, he acted on your clever impulse the moment I recalled him. He"s a wanted man now."
Skinny Man takes a little vial from Sabbath; it has a needle point that scratched D"Amantine and stole his blood. Skinny Man holds it up to the light like he can divine the future of the thief from these dark drops. "He will go to ground, and perform as instructed." When Skinny Man smiles he smiles like a ghoul. "Aside from the diamonds he will bring when recalled, nothing else matters to him."
"His diamonds do not matter to us, now." Sabbath watches his apes as they work his ship"s controls, acting on the few fragments of the dark lore they comprehend, adjusting, supposing, conducting the engines" operation. Then his vision shifts and Chloe sees that he sees her, and that he is smiling too.
"Our task is to be made so much easier," he says, "our way back to the beginning safe and a.s.sured..."
"As I maintained it would be," says Skinny Man slyly, "all along."
And Sabbath has hold of her and slings her child"s body against the ground. child"s body against the ground.
Chloe couldn"t move, both breath and sense slammed out of her. She could feel dirty diamonds digging into her back. As she spiralled into her own darkness she felt their hard points squirming against her skin like they wanted to get inside.
She awoke and it was dark. She was laying face down in the gutter. The diamonds had been s.n.a.t.c.hed up and away, of course. Sabbath was long since gone. Jamais"s dark, comforting shape sat crouched beside her, keeping guard. Instinctively she reached out to stroke him. He squealed, and the noise tore her properly awake. Jamais was hurt. She looked at him anxiously, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. And in his mouth.
His jaws opened, and Chloe saw that on the tip of his s...o...b..ry tongue was a single diamond.
"You clever boy," she whispered, and took the gem with shaking hands. It was of those that had spilled from Sabbath"s pocket, and it was beautiful; better than the ones Erasmus got for her. There was something about it, different from the gem she had held up to the light by the stream. This one not only caught the light, it held on to it. It flickered and pulsated.
Chloe decided she would keep quiet about this.
Then she saw something square and heavy lying close by on a doorstep.
It was a large, leather book. On its cover was a geometric design of some kind, angular, overlapping triangles almost like the facets of a cut diamond themselves.
She lifted it it was surprisingly light and her fingers tingled with warmth.
The first page was blank. She turned to look overleaf.
A picture of herself was looking sadly back up at her.
Chloe froze. And she knew in that second that now she had picked up the book, she would never be able to put it back down again.
She felt for her shoulder bag, pulled out the fruit she"d been saving for later and discarded it. The book was a perfect fit for her bag, just as she feared it would be.
Erasmus rounded the corner of the narrow street. "Are you hurt?" he asked.
Chloe didn"t know how she felt. Perhaps she should look in the book when she got home, maybe that would tell her.
"You shouldn"t have run from me." Erasmus looked stern and unhappy. "I look after you as I did in the Old Time. It"s the rules."
She had the good grace to look guilty. "I"m sorry, Erasmus."
"It"s time we left here. No Paris for you. We"ll go forward another few years. See what you find there."
Chloe nodded. The book felt light on her back, but the diamond clamped in her sweaty hand burnt and bit at her soft skin, made her wrist ache just to carry it. She needed hard, plastic hands like her dolly if she were to keep it. Or maybe she could mount it in metal and wear it on a chain. It was beautiful and special. It didn"t matter that it had come from Sabbath, and the Skinny Man with the terrible smile. Beauty was beauty, whatever its source. She would keep this diamond just for her.
They left for their home, hidden on the clifftops overlooking the warm Mediterranean.
Next morning, she emerged to take a last look at the breathtaking view. The slapdash sea was higgledy-piggledy with sailing boats, a mad array of billowing sails and hard wooden lines, curves and straights.
She thought of her clever idea about the twisting, turning river, and she thought of Sabbath. The turns did not interest him. Men like him would construct ca.n.a.ls, efficient and measurable, a clear, straightforward route from start to finish.
She went to her room and picked up the book. It felt heavier now. Her fingers were sweating stickily. They seemed to be choosing for themselves the place she would open the book.
The leathery volume creaked open. Chloe stared down at a picture of Sabbath and D"Amantine printed on the yellowing paper. On the next page was the scary Skinny Man.
This wasn"t a storybook. It was a book about her. A chronicle of all she had done, and all she would help bring about.
Chloe longed to turn to the last chapter to learn how the story would close. Would she find herself in Asphodel or Tartarus? But more than that, she longed to throw the whole book away, to fling it from the cliff to the lapping sea far below. She didn"t want her life to be caught flat in the pages of a book. It was like someone was doing to her what she did to others. She should throw the thing away.
But she couldn"t.
And once, when she tried to peek at the ending, the book taught her a lesson. The book took her eyes and twisted them, bent them out of shape. Made it easier for the tears to leak out.
She"d never dared look again.
The book was more her governor than poor, silly, half-brained Erasmus.
Chloe remembers all this as she traipses along after Basalt through the grime of London more than 170 years later. That was the last of her sunny days. It"s as if the book and the diamond stole the light, somehow. And she sees something like mist in her eyes, figures shifting and circling, like a gathering of ghosts has blown in from nowhere.
Fourteen.
Telling tales Fitz felt sick, just crouching there in the garden in the aftermath of the old woman"s killing. He knew he ought to call the police. That was what you did when you witnessed a murder. The police would come and sort everything out, it was their job. Just dial 999 and it would all be over.
Except the Doctor had said, whatever happened, no police. If Basalt was arrested, how could he lead any of them to the truth the truth he couldn"t extract from that difficult little girl, playing her little games?
And thinking about it, how would Fitz explain what he was up to, hiding in the old dear"s back garden?
Well, he couldn"t stay here, that was for sure. The TV was still blaring loudly inside the house. What if, under the cover of that racket, Basalt had sneaked outside? He might"ve noticed Fitz out here and come looking...
Holding his breath, Fitz edged clear of the conifer and sprinted for the side alley.
As he reached there, and stole up to the wooden gate, the noise of the TV stopped. His stomach squirmed again. He could hear the sound of the front door closing. Someone coming out?
No. There were no footsteps. Someone had just gone inside the house.
He listened for any further movement but there was none.
Fitz gave it a few minutes to be absolutely sure, then scrambled over the gate and edged up to the front garden. He saw that a white, unmarked van, battered and crusted with rust, was now parked right outside. He took a deep breath and quickly crossed the garden in long loping strides. Only when he reached the other side of the street and had the fat trunk of an oak to hide behind did he chance a look back at the crippled lady"s house.
He blinked.
There was the old girl now, looking out of the window. There was no mistaking it was her even from here, in the dim light cast by the lamps of her living room, her beautiful blue eyes sparkled just the same as before. Something about her was different, though.
She was standing up.
Look, ma, no wheels.
Fitz couldn"t believe it. He"d seen her, what Basalt had done to her, barely a half-hour ago. Now not only was she entirely unharmed, she was actually a new improved model with posable leg action. What the h.e.l.l was going on?
Gripping the rough bark of the tree, Fitz wondered what he should do now. The short answer keep absolutely still came to him seconds later when the front door opened and Basalt stepped out, dressed in a different suit and carrying a holdall. He was followed out by two other dark-suited men, one carrying a bulky bundle wrapped in bin-bags, the other half a ton of cleaning materials. Suspicious, Fitz noted. Very suspicious.
Basalt opened up the back of the van and the men dumped their burdens inside. Then all three got inside and the van spluttered and rattled into life. As it pulled away, Fitz made a mental note of the numberplate. He was glad to see the back of the thing, and Basalt too.
Now he was alone, he started to tremble, but he knew he couldn"t just leave things there. Wishing he felt less nauseous, Fitz crossed the street, went up to the woman"s front door and knocked smartly. No one answered. He knocked a second, and a third time.
Finally, the woman answered. She was back in her wheelchair, but she was clumsy as h.e.l.l, banging the wood against her wheels" metal frame like this was the first time she"d opened her own front door.
"Can I help you?" she asked him, looking up at him nervously with those startling eyes.
"I"m one of your neighbours," Fitz announced. "From number 132."
"Oh, goodness, yes of course," said the woman, visibly relaxing. "How are you?" She looked apologetic. "I"m afraid I can"t offer you anything in the way of refreshments, I"m feeling a little "