By the time I’ve talked my way past the knock-kneed old geezer at the lodge, the sun is going down. So I’m standing on the steps of the Bishop’s Palace, trying not to shiver.
Obviously I’m wearing my leather jerkin; it’s the nearest thing I’ve got to a coat. And a new woolen hat because people stare at the top of my head if I don’t wear one. I’ve polished my boots and found a pair of gray trousers and a white shirt that’s been ironed within living memory. I’m cold, but smart.
Once a year, my mother remembers that I still exist and sends me a birthday present. As a mother, she seems to feel that she should express her love through an item of clothing. And since she has only a vague idea what size I am, that item of clothing is always a tie. I am the proud owner of eight ties. All blue. In an attempt to make the best possible impression this evening, I’m wearing the bluest.
I ring the bell. The front door opens. The red-haired housekeeper takes one look at me, whips out an amulet, and waves it in my face.
Ten seconds later we’re both amazed to see that I haven’t vanished in a puff of smoke.
I smile politely. “Can Kazimíera come out to play?”
The door slams in my face.
I guess we’ll have to do it the hard way, then. I chalk symbols on the walls on each side of the door. The pockets of my coat aren’t big enough for a brazier, so I pull out a paper cone, a couple of inches tall, and put it on the top step.
I make a shape with my fingers. “Melchidael, Baresches, Zazel, Firiel.” I light the blue touchpaper and jump back. The firework emits a fountain of sparks and a cloud of red smoke that smells of roses, cinnamon, and rosemary. Then it goes off with a bang.
There’s the sound of screaming from inside. I step up and touch the door. It swings back enthusiastically. I’m crap with people, but doors seem to like me.
The housekeeper’s in the middle of the entrance hall, dancing like a dervish, beating frantically at her clothes with her hands and screaming, “Get them off me! Get them off me!”
Her son tries to get her in a sort of bear hug, but she gives him a whack, bang on the nose. He staggers back, streaming blood. Akinbiyi charges in, but his legs turn to rubber and he has to grab the back of a chair.
Only one person is immune: Kazia is halfway down the stairs, staring at me. I beckon frantically.
There’s no magic to help me now. It’s up to her. Can she resist my natural charm? She’s just standing there, her knuckles white where she’s clutching the banister like she’s glued to it. I beckon again.
She runs down the steps, ducks around the housekeeper, and grabs a brown coat.
“Kazimíera!”
Damn! Akinbiyi’s got her by the arm. But she pulls free and darts past me, through the open door and down the stone steps to the pavement. Akinbiyi tries to stumble after her, but goes flat on his face. The door slams shut, nearly knocking me down the steps after her.
She’s already running off toward the lodge. As I catch up with her, out on the street, she stoops to tie her shoelaces. Her hair is cut incredibly short and I can see her scalp through it. I’m itching to find out how it feels and I’m dangerously close to running the palm of my hand over her head when she turns to look up at me . . .
The coat she grabbed, it’s a man’s; it’s swimming on her and falls in folds onto the cobblestones. I mean, it looks great on her, but when I pictured this, on the way over, for some reason I imagined a red wool coat like Marvo’s.
“I don’t want to talk about my uncle,” Kazia says, standing up and rolling back the sleeves of her coat.
Amazingly, I’ve got enough money for the tickets and although I’ve never been to the cinema before, I manage to find my way inside without making a complete fool of myself.
It’s this barn of a place, lit by gas, with murals along the sides showing Montgolfiers sailing serenely across blue skies stained brown by leaking rainwater. We’ve got seats down the front, near the scryer, and while we wait for the show to start we can see ourselves reflected in the glass. An attractive couple, if you can ignore my woolly hat. I pull it off and stuff it in my pocket. My heart sinks as I catch Kazia staring at my clean-shaven head.
She looks away quickly. Now what do I say?
I remember a couple of weeks after they first tossed me in through the front door of the termite nest, all shiny and new, one of the old monks took me aside and put me straight about chatting up girls. Basically, he said, make it sound like you’re interested in them. There were two things I didn’t get: how he knew, and why you’d want to talk to girls if you weren’t interested in them in the first place. He confused me even more by telling me that they were snares of the devil and if I had anything to do with them I’d burn in hell for all eternity, next to Judas Iscariot and Attila the Hun.
Kazia watches me chalk a pentagram on the wooden back of the seat in front of me. The chat-up line I’d planned was, “OK, so tell me about your uncle.” Yeah, I know: not very romantic, but straightforward and to the point. If she doesn’t want to talk about him, I’m stuck.
I say, “So have you been to the cinema before?”
“Not much.”
“Did your uncle disapprove?” Clever, eh?
“I told you, I don’t want to talk about him.”
Not clever enough. And I’m still wondering what to try next when she says, “How long have you worked for the police?”
“The jacks? About a year.”
And now that it’s her asking me questions, it seems to go easier. Of course I have to be careful: I don’t want to tell her how I pissed everyone at Saint Cyprian’s off so much, they gave me a crap degree and lumbered me with the job at the mortuary.
Which doesn’t pay, by the way. Like I said, I’m basically the Society’s property on loan to the jacks.
Anyway, I make it up. I tell her I was always fascinated by all the exciting things you can discover when you take a dead body to pieces, and Kazia gives me this funny look. So I change the subject and we talk about several more things that aren’t her uncle but finally there’s no escaping him anymore. I know nothing about Henry Wallace, apart from the fact that he’s dead and may have had a thing about housemaids, but I’m getting this feeling that maybe he wasn’t that nice to be around.
I’m probably imagining this, but despite the dead bodies I get the impression that maybe Kazia likes me. Time to put an end to that.
“Before your uncle was killed—”
“I told you—”
“But was there anything—I don’t know . . . Was there anything that happened ?”
Her face has gone hard. “Many things.”
If you’re in a hole, keep digging. “Something that didn’t make sense. Something . . .”
The auditorium is nearly empty. A couple of families with kids; a gang of cool-looking guys about my age, with their legs over the seats in front; old blokes sitting on their own; three men coming in at the back. I want to explain to Kazia why I’m doing this, but I know if I try I’ll make a mess of it—
“Could he have been using an unlicensed sorcerer?” She’s on her feet. I say, “Please, don’t go. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Have you ever met an unlicensed sorcerer?”
“Once. He was just this kid, about twelve. Small-time stuff—you know, buried treasure, love potions . . .”
She’s staring down at me so intently it’s actually kind of scary. God, she’s beautiful!
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. He wasn’t doing any harm and I didn’t want to see him wind up on a bonfire.”
A couple of ushers are going around turning down the gas; the fading light dances across her cheek and for a second I imagine it’s my lips and I come over all giddy.
“Akinbiyi,” I manage to say. “How old is he?”
“Twenty-one . . . twenty-two. Why?”
“Too old. The kid who works in the gardens—he’s the housekeeper’s son, or something—anyway, he’s the right age.”
“For what?”
“To be Gifted. There has to be sorcery. Too many things don’t make sense.”
She settles back into her seat. “Your friend the monk . . .”
“Andrew?”
“He has—what do you call it?” She gestures. “On his shoulder.”
“A chip on his shoulder?”
“Yes. And he knows the cathedral.”
I shake my head. “But there has to be someone under twenty . . .”
She leans closer to me and whispers, “What about me?”
“Huh?”
Only the emergency lights are still glowing. I can’t see her face anymore, just this tiny sharp gleam in her eyes.
“If you suspect anyone who’s under twenty . . .”
“Yeah, right.” Do I have to explain this? “You’re a girl. Women can do witchcraft, but they never get the Gift.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Witches serve demons. Sorcerers command them.”
The audience starts clapping as a spotlight comes on and a bloke in a dinner jacket and a bow tie walks out onto the stage below the mirror. He bows and sits down with his hands resting on his knees.
“And women never have the Gift?” she whispers as everyone goes quiet.
“Never. Count yourself lucky.”
The guy on stage is an elemental. His eyes close. The scryer glows . . .
And we’re in Mexico, flying down the Grand Canyon. I suppose they’ve stuck a scryer in a Montgolfier and it’s all dead impressive if you like rocks, but I’m finding it hard to pay attention. My elbow is touching Kazia’s, on the rest between the seats. I can sort of feel her breathing and I want to concentrate on that . . .
Except that I’m still running through names in my head, trying to come up with a likely sorcerer. And Einstein’s Laws have crept back to haunt me. Contiguity fades over time, but never absolutely disappears. It cannot be destroyed by magical means . . .
I found no contiguity between the head and body. Ferdia found lots, but he’s an idiot. Cimerez told me . . . what did Marvo say? “Fact is, Frank, this guy has no head.” Now what the hell did that mean?
I realize that Kazia has stopped breathing. When I look around, she’s staring past me.
Next thing, she’s on her feet, stumbling away along the row and dashing for the exit. I jump up and chase after her. As I run up the aisle I hear scuffling behind me. I chase her along passages, down stairs . . .
It’s dark outside. When I catch up and grab her arm, she looks scared.
“Kazia?”
It’s like she’s trying to hide behind me, and when I look around I see three men coming down the steps from the cinema.
One of them’s the size of a building. Number two is this skinny little runt—the top of his head’s so flat, if it rained it’d form a puddle. Light flickers across the pockmarked face of the third as he stops for a moment to light a cigarette.
Kazia jerks her arm free and she’s off like a hare, her coat billowing behind her. I give chase and when I look around the three men are charging after us. I follow her around the side of the cinema—my God, she can move!—across the road and down a high-walled, narrow alley between two derelict buildings. I realize she doesn’t know where she’s going.
“Kazia!”
She scorches down a flight of rough stone steps, like all the hounds of hell are on her tail. I can hear the thunder of boots behind me and I’m getting a stitch in my side. She’s through an archway, across a wooden footbridge over a stagnant stream, and we’re struggling across a rubbish dump. Rags. Rotting food. Rats squealing in the darkness. The stink is ghastly and I’m up to my knees in crap; but I’m doing better than her, and even if I can’t see where I’m going, at least I know where I am.
I grab her hand. There’s an iron rail, muddy ground, a row of derelict warehouses . . . and the lights of a busy street market that stinks of rotting vegetables and ragged lumps of meat, buzzing with flies. There’s two blokes—one on an accordion, the other on bagpipes—glaring across the street at each other and hacking out different tunes. A solid mob of people is shuffling, pawing, and haggling in the light of lanterns and torches. I look back and see the Building peering over the crowd at us. I duck low, drag Kazia down the side of one of the stalls, and double back.
Peering through a rack of dried fish, I see the Building plowing through the crowd with Flathead on his heels. After a few seconds there’s no sign of the bloke with the cigarette. I turn to Kazia . . .
Oh God! She’s pulled her coat open and she’s panting for breath, and I can see her breasts rising and falling beneath her sweater. Inappropriate thoughts! Where are the termites when you need them? I turn quickly and lead the way over a pile of rubble between two collapsed buildings . . .
Into the heart of the Hole.