even being clipped by a recoiling gun was bad – but Kite had never seen anyone suffer the effects so long afterwards.
‘Yes. Yes, what … were we doing there?’
‘Looking for your son. Finding a couple of libraries, maybe.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jem said, himself again. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘You just forgot for a minute what—’
‘That’s not normal, that’s never happened before.’ Jem’s voice broke halfway. ‘Everything was gone, I didn’t know who I was bloody talking to, not since I woke up!’
He pushed his hand over his mouth. Kite levered it away and put both arms around him. Jem hugged him tight. Outside, the limits of London were sliding by, tenements and washing lines, and then houses with gardens. There was a strange brown mist in the streets. He thought it was smoke at first, but there was too much of it. Nearer the station, tributaries of track ran together and, beyond them, dull grey walls and wires stretched overhead, some singly and some in tentacular clusters that wound down wooden poles. He couldn’t see what they did. Unease hit the seabed under his diaphragm. They looked like totems, the kind the Caribbean maroons made, that might have been memorials or KEEP OUT signs. He wouldn’t have known it was London if Jem and the timetables hadn’t said so.
Jem gripped his hand as the train glided into the platform. When it stopped, the jolt jerked them sideways an inch.
‘Gare du Roi,’ the guard called. ‘Gare du Roi, all change!’
‘Miz, I think …’
‘Hold on,’ Kite said, worried now. He was closest to the door and the latch wasn’t obvious until he saw a sign that said you had to push down the window and open it from outside. It meant leaning awkwardly. Once the door was open, he stepped back to let Jem go first. ‘What’s wrong?’
Kite saw it go from him this time. He stopped still on the platform and stared at the people going past, his eyes sliding over Kite as much as they did anyone else. He jumped when Kite touched his arm. He didn’t recognise him.
‘I’m sorry, this is – but could you tell me where we are?’ Jem said. He sounded different. It was a French accent. When Kite told him, he shook his head. His shoulders had gone back, taut; he didn’t like talking to a stranger. Kite put his teeth together and tried not to stare. It wasn’t a lapse. Everything that made him Jem was different. Even his expression wasn’t right. He held his face open usually, but it was locked now. It was how people looked in the parts of the docks you didn’t go if you were in a uniform, where it was only stevedores and carpenters, and women who watched you too hard over the slick noise of the fish knives.
Feeling like he was sinking, Kite asked his name. There was a long pause before the wrong one arrived.
Joe.
The panic came down slowly, not in a normal flustering rush but like something very, very heavy. It had solid edges. Kite could think past it enough to get them into a cab and to a hospital, where the doctor at least seemed to take it seriously. He waited, but before long a nurse came to say, crossly, that visiting hours were over thank you.
He stayed the night at the first place he walked into, an inn called the Coeur de Lion. The chatter at the bar was English and the men were rough; mostly they were filthy and still wearing tool belts. They talked about tunnels and drills. There were newspapers strewn about, so he found a corner and read one start to finish. It was in French, but easy French, and full of pictures. Mainly it was news from Paris. The Emperor’s brother had been typically silly; society parties; abolition rally. The Saints had blown up something, again, in the Premier Arrondissement.
He felt better for having had to concentrate on something and slid the paper under his coat to show Agatha later, but it still made him jump when a girl cleared her throat next to him and said the room was ready. He saw her wondering whether to ask about the burn scars, but she was too polite, and only gave him the new candle that came with the room and explained that he could have another on Wednesday, if he stayed, or before for three sous, and he had to pretend to know whether or not that was reasonable.