Wolfhound Century - By Peter Higgins Page 0,117

Master's cabin.’

The Gate Master’s lodge was an incongruous wooden superstructure on the lip of the sea gates. The lock on the door gave easily at a shove from Lom’s shoulder. Inside was near-darkness. The smell of pitch and lingering tobacco smoke and tea. Maroussia found a lamp and matches. In the yellow lamplight the interior had a vaguely nautical flavour: large-scale charts of the harbour and the inner reaches were pinned to the walls, and more of the same were spread out on a plan table under the seaward window, with instruments, pencils, a pair of binoculars. There was a chair, the kind with a mechanism that allowed the seat to revolve and tip backwards. A long thin telescope on a tripod stood on the floor; heavy oilskins hung from a hook on the back of the door; a pair of large rubber boots leaned against the foot of a neat metal-framed bed. The Gate Master had left everything prepared to make himself comfortable when he returned: firewood stacked in the corner, water in the urn, a packet of tea, a box of biscuits. Lom pulled the heavy curtains across the window while Maroussia lit the stove and the urn. There were even two mugs to drink from. Maroussia sat on the edge of the bed and Lom took the swivelling chair, leaning back and putting his feet up on the table.

‘What if someone sees the light?’ said Maroussia.

‘There’s no one for miles. Anyway…’ Lom shrugged. ‘Shipwrecked mariners. Needs must.’ But he took Safran’s heavy revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table within reach.

‘Any bullets left in that?’

‘No.’

Maroussia was looking at him. Her eyes were dark in the lamp shadow. Uncertain.

‘Before the mudjhik fell…’ she began, and stopped. He waited for her to continue. ‘I felt something. Inside my head.’ She paused again. Lom didn’t say anything. ‘I don’t know… There was a kind of sick feeling, like I was going to faint. Everything seemed very far away. And then… it was like a fist, a big angry punch, but inside my head. It didn’t feel aimed at me, but it almost knocked me over anyway. And then the mudjhik… went.’

‘What you did was crazy. Running at it like that. You were lucky. If it had caught you when it swung – '

‘It was you, wasn’t it? The mind-punch thing. It felt like you. You did it.’

Lom said nothing.

‘And when you blew yourself out of the ground…’ said Maroussia. ‘How do you do that? I mean, what is it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s something I used to be able to do. When I was a child. Then it stopped when Savinkov sealed me up. But since the seal was taken – actually before then, when I came to Mirgorod – It’s been coming back. I just… I just do it.’

There was a long silence. Pulses of sleet battering at the window. Maroussia was examining the woollen rug on the bed. Picking at it. Removing bits of fluff.

‘Who are you?’ she said eventually. ‘I mean, what are you? Where do you come from? I mean, where do you really come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lom. ‘But I’m beginning to think I should try to find out.’ He took a biscuit from the box. It was soft and stale and tasted of dampness and pitch. He swallowed it and took a sip of tea. Cooling now. Bitter. He chucked the box of biscuits across the room onto the bed next to her. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have one.’

‘No.’

‘Sleep then. We need to clear out early tomorrow. You can have the bed.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll take the floor.’

‘We could share the bed,’ she said. ‘There’s room.’

She was sitting in shadow. Lom couldn’t see anything in her face at all. Another scatter of sleet crashed against the window. The door with the broken lock stirred in the wind.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would be better.’

83

Lom lay on his back, pressed between Maroussia and the wall. He was tired but sleep hadn’t come. As soon as he had got into the bed, Maroussia had pulled the blanket over them both, turned on her side, away from him, and apparently gone straight to sleep. He felt her long back now, pressed against his side, the length of her body stretched against his.

The wind and rain had died away. He could hear the slow rhythm of her breathing and the quiet surge of the sea. And it seemed to him that somewhere at the edge of his mind he could hear Safran under the water, crying in his pain. But if he tried to reach for the thread of it, it wasn’t there.

‘Vissarion?’

‘Yes?’

But she said nothing more. Only the gentle ebb and flow of her breath. The rising and falling of her ribs against him. He turned on his side so that his face was against the back of her neck. He could smell her dark hair. The moment of rest at the end of the pendulum’s swing, before it fell back and swung again. They would have time. Later. Or they would not.

The mudjhik lay pinned under a hundred thousand gallons a second. On its back. It pounded the concrete floor beneath it, the floor built to take the brunt of the Mir in flood, pounded it with its fists and heels and head. The mudjhik would never sleep. Never die. No matter how long, no matter what it took. It would pound its way out.

Somewhere, deep inside the angel-stuff, what remained of Safran wanted to scream but had no voice. Wanted to weep but had no tears. No mouth. No eyes.

They overslept. Lom surfaced eventually to the sound of Maroussia making tea. She had drawn back the curtains and filled the cabin with grey dawn light. Lom stumbled out of bed and found the Gate Master’s shaving kit – a chipped bowl for water, soap, a razor and a small square of mirror – all set out neatly ready for use. He washed and shaved for the first time in… how long? He had lost count of the days. The mirror showed him the hole in the centre of his forehead with its crust of blood. He washed it clean and watched it pulsing faintly with the beating of his heart. He touched it with his finger. The new, healing skin felt smooth and young. The pulse inside it was a barely palpable fluttering.

‘Here.’

Maroussia nudged him gently and handed him a mug of strong, sweet tea. She had found sugar. As he sipped it, she kissed him, once, quickly, on his freshly shaven cheek. He caught once more the scent of her hair and felt the cool bright touch of her mouth fading slowly from his skin.

With the Gate Master’s razor he cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt, knotted it bandanna-fashion round his head to hide the wound of the angel mark, and checked the result in the mirror. The effect was odd but not unpleasing. Gangsterish. Buccaneering. Conspicuous, but not as instantly-identifying as a hole in the head. After a moment’s hesitation, he folded the Gate Master’s razor, slipped it into his pocket and turned to find Maroussia appraising him.

‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

‘And you look… fine,’ said Lom. She had washed her hair. It was damp and lustrous. Her cheeks were pink. ‘But you’re going to freeze out there.’

‘I’m too hungry to notice.’

‘We’ll find a café,’ he said. ‘When we get back. We’ll have breakfast.’ Coffee. Eggs. Pastries. That would be normal. That would be simple and good. Then a thought struck him. ‘Have you got any money?’ He had none. Nothing but a razor and an empty gun.

Maroussia dug in her pockets and came up with a few coins. Enough for tram fares to the city, perhaps. Not much more.

‘I wanted to leave something,’ she said. ‘For the Gate Master.’

‘We’ll send it to him,’ said Lom. ‘Afterwards.’

They stood for a moment in the middle of the neat cabin. They had set things as straight as they could, and Lom had made a temporary repair to the lock. It would hold.

‘We’d better go,’ said Maroussia.

‘Yes.’

By Peter Higgins

Wolfhound Century

Peter Higgins read English at Oxford and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College before joining the Civil Service. He began writing fantasy and SF stories in 2006. He is married with three children and lives in South Wales.