City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [129]
Suddenly Marysa hauled him aside, a blade in her hand, and shoveim beneath the row of cushioned seats. As the silent screams rattleround inside his head, he placed his arms over his face and peeperom behind them at his wife. She was slicing, this way and that, ahe massive limbs of the creature darting with phenomenal grace, rolling and ducking under the blows it tried to deliver in return. Bue had to turn away and cover his eyes. The seating nearby was ripped apart and Jeryd began to shiver, and the images blurred, and the sound of screaming faded, and he . . .
*
‘Jeryd . . .’
His wife’s voice, soothing.
Water splashed across his face, not so soothing.
He rubbed himself dry, peering about him now, alert and on edge. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘You fainted,’ Marysa declared embarrassingly.
‘Nice one, mate,’ someone commented, and a man laughed in the crowd of theatregoers staring down at him.
Jeryd was lying on a pile of coats on the floor of the foyer, with its fancy flambeaus and elegant decor in the background.
‘Well, I realize that,’ he muttered. ‘I mean, what the hell happened before?’
‘A massive spider just dropped down and tried to attack us but I managed to fight it off with my messer.’ She held it up for a moment, a sharp weapon with a wooden handle, before slipping it back into her boot. ‘It’s a good thing I went to all those Berja classes.’ Her expression showed that she was feeling proud of herself. ‘The thing nearly had you at one point – it kind of hovered over you as if it couldn’t decide whether or not to kill you. I don’t think it wanted to – if that makes any sense. How bizarre! Anyway, it wasn’t just me that helped you – there were one or two men from one of the gangs, I think, and they fired crossbow bolts at it until it cowered away somewhere up in the darkness.’
‘I didn’t know you carried a blade.’
She suddenly looked coy. ‘I was awarded it in my class, by the master.’
Jeryd grinned awkwardly, and pushed himself upright with great unsteadiness. Then it dawned on him: the spider. The one he was tracking – it was after him, too.
A spider. After him.
Fuck.
‘Marysa, we have to go,’ he said urgently, and she helped him off the pile of coats before guiding him through the parting crowds.
The image of the creature made him breathe heavily once again and Marysa hugged him. He couldn’t believe how she was now the tough one.
‘Marysa, we have to go somewhere safe. I think . . . I think this spider is out to get me.’
*
As they made their way home, he explained the danger they faced. Hold her that they had to move houses again, just in case. He suggestewo good hotels. Throughout the night they packed their essentiaelongings and moved out.
It was now abundantly clear to Jeryd that he would have to get the spider or the spider would get him. If he was honest, neither of these options radiated charm – although remaining alive was certainly preferable. So he would have to confront his deepest fears and snare a spider much bigger than himself.
If you looked hard enough, there seemed to be no end of places a colossal arachnid could hide. Every niche in a stone facade, every section of old guttering offered the potential for paranoia. It made choosing their new abode more complex.
A bloody spider.
In all his decades of working for the Inquisition back in Villjamur, Jeryd had never come up against anything quite so simultaneously ridiculous and frightening, but he had also learned in recent times to go with what seemed unlikely – because in this wide-flung Empire, nothing was impossible.
They’d found a hotel still open, which was all bad carpets and unfashionable curtains, but Jeryd was incensed to have to pay over the odds for a room. Empty corridors and vacant rooms were to be found everywhere, because of the war, but the night receptionist insisted that they did not barter. Damn rip-off city . . .
‘There had better be a bloody good breakfast as part of this price,’ Jeryd muttered as he slapped