better, Anissina behind them, doubt working its way down the arch of her eyebrows. I could feel blood seeping through my shirt. I looked down, saw redness crawling downwards and upwards and all around. I stammered, “You . . . you tore a . . .”
Never finished the rest.
She said, “Drink.”
I said, “Uh?”
She repeated, firmer, “Drink.”
I opened my eyes and was dazzled. I closed them again. I put one hand over one eye and risked opening the other a fraction, waited for that to get comfortable, then opened it the rest of the way. The dazzle was just a glow, a bedside lamp by a bed, bulb turned away to the wall. I risked opening my other eye, peering out between my fingers. Dazzle faded to glow. Somewhere distant and close all at once, a train rattled by. Oda sat on the end of the bed. There was a gun in her lap, and a humourless thing that looked stolen from the samurai section of the Victoria and Albert Museum perched by her right knee. She was holding a plastic cup towards me. It had a straw, and was full of a sharpness that could well have been orange juice.
She said, “Drink.”
I took the cup in one hand. The arm that held the hand that held the cup was bare. The arm was joined to my shoulder. The shoulder was tied onto the rest of me by an igloo of fresh bandaging. I stared at it, stared at the orange juice, stared at her. I said, “I tore a stitch.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I noticed.”
“You put a gun against my head!”
“You sound surprised,” she said. She did not.
“No, not really. Just a little . . .”
“Disappointed?” She also had a cup of orange juice. She slurped from it through a stripy pink and white straw. “You know, sorcerer,” she said, “I was always planning on killing you one day.”
I did not credit Oda with a sense of humour. “Why haven’t you?” I asked.
“The usual.”
“Which usual?”
“Greater pictures, lesser evils.”
“Oh. That usual.”
“Make no mistake,” she added. “You are the spawn of the Devil and will burn in all eternity for your sins, for your godless, soulless existence as arrogant minion of Beelzebub upon this earth. The fact that you may be useful to the greater good is neither here nor there as regards the inevitable destruction of your warped spirit.”
“Thank you, Oda,” I said, letting my head fall back against the pillows of the bed. “I’m pleased to see you too.”
I drank orange juice, and looked round the room. It was a studio of some sort, bed and sofa and kitchen all sprawled across the same floor, counters keeping them apart. The floor was covered with great white rugs, far too clean to be lived on; a black grand piano was in one corner, a small cluster of chairs round a TV, a low dining room table and of course, the bed, pressed up into a corner by a window with the blinds drawn, into which I had been unceremoniously dumped. A clock on the wall said 16.33. I looked up at Oda and said, “Is the clock right?”
“Yes.”
“Where’d the day go?”
She shrugged. “There was a lot of shouting. A lot of arguing. You will be unsurprised to learn that much of it happened while you were bleeding to death on the grass in Regent’s Park.”
“I was in Regent’s Park?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. I was bleeding to death?”
“Someone,” she said, lips pursing round the straw, “someone might just have happened to have torn a stitch.”
“But I’m not bleeding to death now.”
“No. That was one of the conclusions of all the shouting. I had always imagined Aldermen would be good at holding committee meetings. They’re not.”
Thoughts returned slowly to us. I said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not thinking I killed Nair.”
She shrugged. “It’s all the same to me. Kill him, don’t kill him - one less freak on the streets.”
“But . . .”
“You’re useful, sorcerer,” she said. “That’s what it boils down to. You killed Bakker and that was a useful thing; you destroyed the Tower, and that was an extremely useful thing. Now you’re on your own. And that” - she let out a long sigh - “is also, potentially, useful. The Aldermen are cowards.”
We nearly laughed. “I guessed.”
“They’re terrified of whatever killed Nair.”
“So am I.”
“They think they’re next.”
“So do I.”
“Do you believe this myth? That the ravens protect the city? That there are . . . things, whatever that means, waiting to come gobble up the