Marsh had caught his eye. Something had changed in the stance of the man, a sudden alertness that would have gone unnoticed had Coya not know known him for the better part of his life.
‘I’m certain your words will be well received,’ he continued as Creed followed his gaze: both of them looking at Marsh, at the bodyguard’s hands now reaching beneath his brown leather longcoat for something in the small of his back. ‘You have nothing to fear from us, believe me. You are wise enough not to allow such power to ruin you entirely . . . Besides, you know too well the consequences, should that ever occur . . .’
Coya blinked in surprise as Marsh lifted a pistol in his hand and aimed it towards the crew.
The crack of the shot went right through him. He stared in shock at his bodyguard, standing there like some duellist with his right leg extended forwards, his other hand still beneath his coat, a puff of smoke dispelling in the wind from the end of the raised gun. Coya followed the line of the shot and spotted a man toppling backwards onto the deck, while crewmen around him shouted out in surprise or dived for cover. The victim was a monk, he saw, one of the pair of monks who had come aboard to bless this august occasion of their meeting.
Another bang went off nearby, loud enough to burst his heart. Creed shouted something by his side as chunks of debris whistled past them.
A wash of black smoke blew across their position by the rail. He had time enough to see a second monk leaping towards them, something round and black in his hand, and Marsh pulling another pistol from his coat, then firing it, before the smoke engulfed them entirely; and then Coya was sprawled on the deck with a great weight pressing down on him, and another bang tried to squeeze the insides out from him.
When the smoke cleared, Marsh was still standing there with his hands now empty save for a knife. He was turning to track the monk vaulting over the rail to his death.
Coya gasped as the man vanished over the side.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Creed, patting him down before helping him to his feet.
Coya found his voice again. ‘I’m fine, I think,’ he said as he stooped awkwardly for his cane. ‘And you?’ he asked, as he leaned on it for support and looked up at the general. ‘You seem to be bleeding, on your head, there.’
Creed dabbed at his head where a shallow wound ran crimson. The general frowned then turned to look over the rail. Coya was curious too.
Below, a great distance below, a canopy of white drifted down towards the surface of the sea. As the wind carried it in the direction of the coast, he saw a man dangling beneath it, the burned orange of his robes unmistakable.
Creed shook his head in obvious fascination.
‘These Diplomats. They grow crazier every year.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The House on Tempo Street
In sweat, they lay with their lungs heaving and their cries still ringing in their ears, both of them splayed like martyrs on the sodden bed, their bodies glistening in the daylight cast through the tattered, mouldy curtains of gala lace that hung across the open window.
Bahn blinked to clear his eyes. Through the air above the bed the dust motes were dancing as though in play, whipped up by the frantic action of the last hour.
‘We make too much noise,’ she muttered next to him, but without much concern in her voice, even as a child’s yell rang up through the thin boards of the floor, and voices murmured from behind the even thinner wall at their heads.
Bahn could only gasp and wait for his galloping heart to stop racing. He was burning up, and he kicked away the thin blanket that had snared itself around his ankles. He wiped his stubbled face dry, and realized that he’d forgotten to shave that morning.
The room was a cupboard-like space with a triangular, slope-beamed ceiling too low for a man to stand properly beneath. It reeked of dampness, sex, and the spiced smoke from an incense burner sitting beneath the open window. A perch, they called this kind of attic room in Bar-Khos; the preserve of prostitutes and street hustlers, or those in hiding from the law.
Bahn looked down at the girl as she rolled against his side and rested an arm across his stomach,