mudjhik?’ said Lom. ‘Doing your own killing today?’
‘Who was that woman? Teslev, stop her.’
‘Wait,’ said Lom. ‘I want to talk to you. Both of you.’
Teslev ignored him and hurried after Maroussia, who had reached the end of the alley, walking fast. Her back looked long and thin and straight in her threadbare coat. The nape of her neck, bare and pale between collar and short black hair, was the most vulnerable and nakedly human thing Lom had ever seen. He felt as if a fist had reached inside his ribs and taken a grip on his heart, squeezing it tight.
41
Maroussia’s legs were shaking so much it was hard to walk. Her spine was trickling hot ice, waiting for the impact of the militia man’s bullet.
Keep going, she told herself. Don’t look back. Get out of sight. Think!
Her world was compressed into the next few seconds. She imagined the bullets smashing into her spine. Her legs. Breaking.
Think! Do something! Now!
There were no limits. No rules. Just do something.
An alleyway opened up to her left, narrow between tall buildings. No one had been down it since the snow started. She knew where the alley went. Nowhere. A dead end. She cut into it. At least for a few moments she was out of their sight.
One side of the alley was a blank brick face, the other a wall of rough stone blocks stained with grime. Dark windows looked out over it, but high overhead, out of reach. No doors. The building was, she thought, an old warehouse. If she could get inside it… inside was better… she could run… weave… find a way out again… into the crowded streets… lose herself in the crowd…
She took a few steps into the middle of the alley, turned, ran at the wall, jumped… Her fingers stretched for the window ledge…
Her weight crashed hard against the wall. Her knee, her elbow, smashed against it. Her fingers scrabbled at the rough face of the stone, well below the window, and she fell.
She pulled off her shoes and forced the bare toes of one foot hard into the crevice between two blocks of stone, drove her fingers into the gap at shoulder level, and pulled herself up. It worked. She was off the ground, barely, her body flattened, her cheek pressed against the cold wall, her fingers trembling. She tried to dig them further into the stone, tried to gouge out holds by sheer effort of will. She raised her good leg, gasping as her weight pressed on her injured knee, lifted one hand, pulled herself a little higher. It worked. And again. She was almost half her own height above the snow and crawling slowly up the vertical face of the wall. She stretched upwards and got the fingertips of one hand onto the stone ledge of the window. With a desperate lunge she got the other hand next to it. Her feet slipped but she scrabbled with her toes and got purchase again, half pulling and half walking upwards until her backside was sticking out, her knees tucked under. There was a groove in the window ledge she could hook her fingers into. If she could just get one knee up there—
‘Are you going to come down, or do I shoot you up the arse?’
42
Lom turned his back on Safran and walked over to the old woman’s broken body. She had been so fragile. He could have picked her up and tucked her under his arm. It was taking all his effort not to look behind him, back up the alley, to see if Teslev was coming back.
‘Who gave you the photographs, Safran? The pictures of the Shaumian women? Who turned you loose on them?’
Safran stared at him. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
‘I mean,’ Lom continued. ‘You’d hardly come after them on your own initiative, would you? You probably don’t even know who they are. I mean, who they really are.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I hope for your sake the order came directly from Chazia herself.’
‘And who are you working for, Lom?’
Lom shrugged. He kicked at a stone. Keep him off balance. Don’t let him have time to think.
‘So did you find the object Chazia wanted?’
This time Safran looked genuinely puzzled.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Never mind. Don’t worry about it.’
The crack of a pistol shot echoed off the high walls. It sounded a few streets away.