stung his face and pressed down on him like a heavy weight. Wind-spun rain gathered itself in front of him and resolved itself into a thing of rain, a man of rain – no – a woman of rain – taller than human, a hardened column of rain and air.
And then the rain attacked him.
Lom spun around and tried to hide from it, but when he turned it was in front of him still. It lashed out and struck him. A fist of rain. A hard smash of wind off the sea, filled with rain. A stinging punch of rain in his face. He fell to the ground, tasting rain and blood in his mouth. The rain became a great foot and stamped on him, driving him face-down into the stone, driving the breath from him.
He was going to die.
He hauled himself to his feet and tried to run, slipping and stumbling across the cobbles. But he was running towards his enemy, not away. The rain surrounded him, and met him wherever he turned, dashing pebbles and nails of rain into his face. He held up his hand to protect his eyes. The droshki kiosk was in front of him. He stumbled towards it and pulled at the door. It wouldn’t open. He tried to barge into it with his shoulder, but the rain kicked his legs out from under him and he fell on his back, cracking his head. When the world came back into focus he was looking up into the face of the rain. His nose and mouth began to fill. He gasped for air and his throat filled with rain and blood. Rain kneeled on his ribs, driving the breath out of him. He was drowning in rain.
Something broke open inside him then. He felt it burst, as if a chain-link had snapped apart. A lock broken open. Some containment that had been placed inside him long ago had come undone.
He remembered.
He remembered what he had done that afternoon in the Provost’s room.
He remembered how he had gathered up all the air in the room and thrown it at her, and she had screamed and fallen. He remembered the pop that had followed when the air recoiled, refilling the temporary vacuum. He remembered the Provost’s papers flying about the room, the air filled with a cloud of hot embers and ash and smoke from the fire, the chair falling sideways, the picture crashing down from the wall. He remembered what he had done, and he remembered what it had felt like, and he remembered how he hadn’t known, not then and not later, how he had done it.
He tried to do it again. Now!
He reached out into the squalling, churning air and gathered up a ball of wind and rain. He tried to compact it as hard as he could. And he flung it at the figure of rain.
It was a feeble effort. It made no difference. Nothing could. He was going to die.
The thing of rain was standing over him, suddenly gentler now. Lom felt the attention of its regard, appraising him, wondering. A hand of rain reached down and touched his forehead gently. Fingertips of rain stroked the shard of angel stone cut into his head. He seemed to feel a brush of kindness. Pity.
Poor boy, it seemed to say. Poor boy.
The thing of rain dissolved into rain, and he was alone.
He picked himself up off the ground, bruised, exhausted, soaked. He needed to get inside. Out of the rain. And quickly.
13
It was almost midnight when Lom arrived, bruised, soaked and chilled to the core, at Vishnik’s address. Pelican Quay turned out to be a canal-side row of houses, one among many such streets on Big Side, north of the river. The rain had paused. A damp and cave-like smell on the air and the heavy iron bollards and railings on the far side of the road betrayed the invisible night presence of the canal. Number 231 was a tall flat-fronted tenement squeezed between neighbouring buildings, the kind of house once built for grander families but partitioned now into many smaller, boxy apartments for the accommodation of tailors, locksmiths, cooks, civil servants of the lower ranks. Many pairs of eyes were observing him: although it was late, the dvorniks were out, each hunched in a folding chair under his own dim lamp in the lea of his domain. The dvornik of number 231 was drinking from a tin mug. His face gleamed moonily. His