rising into it as more of the city burned around them. The air seemed to be growing thicker with the smell of it. It was starting to sting his eyes.
They were out there somewhere, the Diplomats, circling around the area. He could feel their presence as a faint tickling sensation in his pulsegland, a kind of itch that could not be scratched away. It had been that way since the sun had first begun to set, though it had grown no stronger since then.
What are they waiting for? Ché found himself wondering.
‘Those fires are getting closer,’ he announced, and Curl nodded, looking at his hand but not at his eyes. He was playing with her fingers as she sat before him, and she with his.
He watched her with affection. There was something vulnerable about this girl, behind her wit and her determined manner.
‘We should be going.’ he said, and tugged her hand.
She looked at him at last, and he could see her steeling herself for the task ahead, the streets that needed to be negotiated if they were to make it to safety. Ché helped her to her feet as she held a hand to her mouth and coughed. The smoke was thickening.
They both stood there looking out, mouths hanging open in wonder.
To the north a few streets away, an entire row of buildings was alight; a line of fire that crackled and sparked and rose higher as it gained purchase on walls and furnishings, spreading through the buildings towards them. To the left it was the same, a street burning; to the right too. He and Curl seemed to be standing at the centre of a gathering inferno.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Curl, twisting her head from side to side.
Ché clambered out of the hole and scrambled on all fours up the slope of the roof. He coughed and covered his mouth as he looked south, his eyes reflecting flames.
‘Water,’ he called down to Curl. ‘We have to reach the nearest water!’
It wasn’t far, he saw. He could see it through the smoke as they rounded the corner.
‘This way,’ Ché said from behind the cloth that wrapped his face, and took off towards the walls of the spa, his eyes scanning to left and right. He knew without looking that she was following behind.
They ran through a plaza of long tables and benches, with a lattice of wooden poles over their heads from which hung paper lanterns, each one slightly aglow from the burning structures behind them. Their boots pounded loud against the planking. Ahead, the structure of the public spa stood low against its fiery backdrop, its walls round, steam pouring from its open top as though it too was on fire. Ché spotted movement in the street beyond it, between the sheets of flames that were dying buildings.
‘Hey!’ Curl swore as he grabbed her and forced her down behind one of the tables.
He released her so he could look over the table. Nothing now. No sign of the figure he had just seen. Ché glanced around and took in the plumes of smoke and flying sparks getting closer, and tried not to let them spook him.
‘Come on,’ he said, and he was up and jogging again, pistol in his hand now.
From their left came a blast of noise. One of the lanterns disappeared before his eyes.
Ché swore and ran onwards while trying to spot the source of it. Another blast sounded, and a table flew into the air just as they were passing. He veered to the right and cleared the plaza, bursting through a sheet of cloth hanging in his way. The rear of the spa loomed right in front of them; before it, squat huts belching steam.
‘I think someone’s shooting at us!’ Curl exclaimed as he guided her through he door of one of the huts, into its clammy darkness. He slammed the flimsy door shut behind them, and a fist-sized hole appeared in the wall at the level of their heads.
Ché was on the ground in an instant. ‘Get your head down!’ he hollered, pulling Curl to the floor. In the next moment the hut erupted with the violence of a storm. Chips of wood spat across the darkened space as portions of the walls imploded.
‘Do something!’ she screamed at him from her foetal position on the floor.
‘I’m doing it!’ he yelled back from beneath the cover of his own arms.
He felt shards of flying wood stabbing into his flesh. His body had taken over,