City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [112]
He leant over to fetch a brush from under the table and began to remove the loose flakes of shell-skin. The result was a sound like raining toenails on his carpet.
A black cat suddenly darted out from under the chair and turned to regard Voland with utter contempt for his habits. Voland merely chuckled as the feline padded indignantly from the room.
Eventually he finished the task, rubbed his weaker, human foot for comfort, then settled into his whisky. On the table was an envelope from the portreeve, Lutto’s embossed insignia bold even in this half-light.
So, then, who might it be this time?
He opened it and set the enclosed document on his lap. Names and addresses drifted towards his vision.
Deltrun, Shanties district, Third Street West. Bacunin, Scarhouse, causes organized trouble for Ferryby’s, sleeps in the flat above the Workers’ Union headquarters. Bukharin, causes trouble for Coumby’s, Ancient Quarter, apartment three of the Tauride complex. Plekhanof, Fourth Street, Scarhouse, next to a nonprotected iren. Sedova, his wife, same address.
Random script filled the bottom of the page, notes scrawled by the portreeve himself. These were to be ‘donations’ to the cause, with the addition of ‘May they be of greater benefit than they are now’. He wondered who these extra people might be, their role in the city’s affairs, and why the portreeve had flagged them for attention.
His name was whispered through the air: ‘Voland . . .’
Doctor Voland looked up from his chair as the spider came through the hatch in the ceiling.
‘You’re back.’ He rose casually, as if a guest had entered for dinner.
‘Yes.’ The voice came as a slur of wind whenever it inhabited this state. ‘I have . . . two more.’
‘Grand! Where have you left them?’
‘Down below, in the first section of the abattoir.’
‘Grand.’
The transformation then occurred in front of him: the spider contorted, bulged a bit . . . then juddered into her natural shape. Voland walked over to a cupboard, drew out one of his mono-grammed dressing gowns, and handed it to her.
Nanzi said, ‘Thank you,’ and he noted with delight, as he always did, how she retained the two huge spider legs, those arachnid tendons that joined awkwardly but efficiently with her human hips. It was a wonder she could walk at all sometimes, a wonder due to his own craftsmanship.
He beamed. ‘Would you like a hot bath?’ Voland suggested. ‘The firegrain’s been working particularly well this evening.’
‘If it’s no trouble.’
‘It isn’t. Not for you, my sweet.’
That soft smile of hers – one that he had fallen in love with long before he had revealed to her his affections – enhanced her natural charisma. She was many years his junior, but this age difference, among other things, generated in him the strong urge to protect her. Voland would have done anything to make Nanzi feel properly cared for.
*
Voland had first found Nanzi five years ago, both her legs smashed up under fallen masonry in the town of Juul, on the other side of Y’iren. It was a quiet place, with an ambience that came from a calm sea, the pungent odour of the fishing boats enhancing his love of that remote town.
Nanzi was lying there helplessly beside the harbour, constant drizzle pooling around her, a flower in her hand that she was taking to her mother, she explained, through gasps of pain. How could he have not fallen for her? A few nearby fishermen and dock labourers had helped him lift the masonry from the wall collapsed through neglect.
They examined her shattered legs as her screams erupted in quiet explosions.
But he then told her he could help.
Voland was a legend among the medical underground, and had even trained with the great Doctor Tarr in Villjamur for several years, before their ethical differences came to light. But what Tarr never possessed was Voland’s ability to use other forces in this ordinary world.
Voland was not a cultist by any means: his feeling for relics was one of distrust. People seemed to look back