City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [126]
‘I pass along here on my way to work, and was just heading there now. Are you going to the office too?’
‘I can always check that joint some other time,’ he said. ‘I know vaguely where it is now, at least. Come on, let’s get back to HQ. There are probably a whole load of reports to read through, and it’s not as though anyone else is going to deal with them.’
*
Later that night Nanzi and Voland made love again in the tenderest of ways. She needed this release after a stressful day at work. There had been an assault involving a beautiful young woman, and Nanzi had spent most of the afternoon calming her down and taking the details. None of the others in the Inquisition seemed to realize how traumatic the experience must have been to the girl.
It was so difficult for her to balance helping the community during the day, with helping Voland at night in her alternative guise. Day and night, she barely ever stopped helping people out. But Voland had rebuilt her and she felt in debt to him – time working for him was important. Certainly it helped that he was a perfect gentleman. On the other hand she also loved working for the Inquisition. That was a job in which she could feel herself a woman who had achieved something. Though it was a male-dominated profession, her efforts over the last couple of years had seen her reach the lofty position of investigator aide. Jeryd was charming enough, if a bit slow – and would he ever stop eating? She found him vaguely endearing, but he was now becoming too much of a risk, and so, lying there semi-naked, she told her lover about her fears.
Voland smoked a cigarillo as he contemplated her problem. ‘You wish to be rid of him now?’
‘I can’t be sure,’ she said. ‘I really just don’t know. He is such a bumbler at times – and not a particularly good investigator – but he tries hard, and I do learn from him.’
‘Perhaps it may be best for both our sakes to dispose of him.’
Nanzi said nothing, but Voland guessed that she wasn’t keen. ‘We could both be arrested and executed. There is no overly useful information coming from the commander of the Night Guard. I say it’s time we rid ourselves of this Investigator Jeryd.’
She nodded and laid her head on Voland’s chest. She then drew one of her spider limbs across his pink human leg, smiling softly at the contrast in colour and texture. It pained her to even think of it – has she had grown attached to the old rumel. He was a nice person – a good person – but one thing that Voland had taught her was practicality. Emotions could ravage her, in her human state, so that her logical thinking suffered. As a spider, the deed should be more simple. Her animal instincts would take over, and it would become a job, just like any other. Sometimes she wished she could always enjoy the strength of will of her transformed state – with no weakness of purpose, no reliance on others.
‘OK. I’ll kill him. I’ll have to do it soon, though.’
THIRTY-THREE
‘A golem show!’ Marysa exclaimed. Her expression of joy was worth a thousand times the effort needed to get the tickets. She held his hands in hers, and somehow managed to shake the day from him, the way she always did.
‘Yeah.’ Jeryd was a little coy, for some reason. He wasn’t the greatest romantic in the world and he knew it. No matter how old he became, he reacted just the same as when he was a kid doing this sort of thing for the first time. It was such an awkward business. ‘I thought we could do with getting out, and I know how much you liked them back in Villjamur. So you’d better throw some fancy rags on, because the Great Iucounu starts in an hour or so.’
‘Great, I’ll go and change quickly.’
‘Hurry now, or I’m going without you.’ Jeryd contentedly watched her rush out of the room: surprising his partner was one of his great pleasures. As he listened to the familiar sounds of her getting ready, he sighed contentedly, and turned to look out of the window. It was snowing – no surprise there – but at least the street cleaners had left their path to the