– barely audible, had there been anyone to hear it (there wasn’t) – the faintest spill of light and earthy perfume.
Almost nothing, really.
The egg of time, ripening.
20
Lom stopped in front of the Armoury and looked up. Narrow and needle-sharp, the One Column on Spilled Blood speared a thousand feet high out of the roof. The militia was headquartered at the Armoury, not the Lodka, a distinction they carefully maintained. Being both soldiers and police, yet not exactly either, the militia considered themselves an elite within the security service, the Novozhd’s killers of choice.
He climbed the splay of shallow steps and pushed his way through heavy brass-furnished doors into a place of high ceilings; black and white tiled floors; cool, shadowed air; the echoes of footsteps; the smell of polish, sweat, uniforms and old paper. There were texts on the walls, not the exhortations and propaganda that encrusted the city, but the core tenets of the committed Vlast.
ALL THAT IS COMING IS HERE ALREADY.
HISTORY IS THE UNFOLDING OF THE CLOTH, BUT THE CLOTH HAS ALREADY BEEN CUT AND EVERY STITCH SEWN.
A clerk behind a high counter was watching him.
‘I’m looking for Major Safran,’ said Lom
‘Just missed him. He left about ten minutes ago.’
‘How do I find him?’
‘Try the stables. He’ll be with the mudjhik. Never goes home without saying goodbye.’
The stables, when he found them, were a separate block on the far side of the parade ground. The doors, fifteen feet high and made of solid heavy planks, stood open. Lom stepped inside and found himself in a high-ceilinged hall of stone: slit windows near the roof; unwarmed shadows and dustmotes in the air. It didn’t smell like stables. No straw. No leather. No horse shit. The mudjhik was standing motionless at the far end of the hall, in shadow. A militia man was sitting at its feet, his back against the wall.
‘I’m looking for Major Safran.’
‘That’s me.’
Lom took a step forward. The mudjhik stirred.
‘Come on,’ said Safran. ‘He’ll be still.’
The mudjhik was a dull red in the dim light, the colour of bricks and old meat. Taller than any giant Lom had seen, and solider, squarer: a statue of rust-coloured angel stone, except it wasn’t a statue. Lom felt the dark energy of its presence. Its watchfulness. The mudjhik’s intense, disinterested, eyeless gaze passed across him and the sliver of angel stuff in Lom’s forehead tingled in response. It was like putting the tip of his tongue on the nub of a battery cell: the same unsettled sourness, the same metallic prickling. The same false implication of being alive.
Safran waited for Lom to come to him. He was about thirty years old, perhaps, smooth shaven, his hair clipped short and so fair it was almost colourless. His uniform was crisp and neat. A small, tight knot tied his necktie. Without the uniform he could have been anything: a teacher, a civil servant, an interrogator: the joylessly nutritious, right-thinking staple of the Vlast. And yet there was something else. Safran seemed… awakened. The life-desire of the mudjhik glimmered in his wash-pale eyes. His slender hands moved restlessly at his side, and the mudjhik’s own hands echoed the movement faintly. And there was the angel seal, the third blank eye, in the front of his head.
‘Well? I’ve got five minutes.’
Lom took off his cap. Letting Safran see his own seal set in his brow.
Safran grunted. ‘You can feel him then.’
‘It’s watching me?’
‘Of course.’
Lom looked up into the mudjhik’s face. Except it had no face, only a rough and eyeless approximation of one. It wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, not with its head sockets, but it was looking at him.
‘They call them dead,’ Safran was saying, ‘and they use them like pieces of meat and rock, but that’s not right, is it? You’d know what I mean.’
‘Would I?’
‘We know, people like you and me. The angel stuff is in us. We know they’re not dead.’
Lom stepped up to the mudjhik and placed his hand on its heavy thigh. It was smooth to the touch, and warm.
‘Is it true,’ he said, ‘that it contains the brain and spinal cord of a dead animal?’
‘You shouldn’t touch him. He has his own mind. He acts quickly.’
‘With a dead cat for a brain?’
Lom didn’t remove his hand. He was probing the mudjhik, as it was probing him. He encountered the distant pulse of awareness. Like colours, but not.
‘Not cat,’ said Safran. ‘Dog. It’s in there somewhere, but it’s not important. You really should step away.’