City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [2]
A clear voice spoke up suddenly: ‘Welcome to my abattoir.’
‘The hell are you?’ Haust gasped. The man wore a top hat, white shirt, waistcoat, black breeches, the kind of outfit normally bedecking eccentric figures found in underground theatres in Villjamur. Slender, with a thin moustache, and smiling – always smiling. To his right loomed something rather like a spider, but with two almost-human eyes. Now and then it would rear up on its two hind legs, rubbing the other six limbs together, while clicking the lower pair sharply on the stone.
‘Me?’ replied the man in the hat. ‘I just run this little show. I suppose, technically, I’m therefore your killer.’
‘But I’m not dead . . . Am I?’ Another glance around the room, just to make sure – but still, none of the signs might encourage him to believe he was in a safe world any more.
‘Give it time, dear boy,’ the man said. ‘A grammatical amendment: I will be your killer. We must be correct on such points! You really did pick the wrong night for a stroll, didn’t you?’
Haust felt himself being lifted up, confirming the presence of a rope around his waist – then it occurred to him that the rope wasn’t tight, wasn’t connected to anything else. As if noting his expression of confusion, the well-dressed man said, ‘Oh, it’s for hanging you up to drain and cool afterwards. Procedures, procedures, I do tire of them occasionally . . . you know how these things work.’
Thin smoke trails took the shape of arms, forming faint outlines of bodies, mere wisps of figures smothering him, touching him, caressing his hands, his neck, his face – in a faintly erotic manner – and he noticed how their eyes were suggested by featureless holes.
‘What are they?’ Haust was petrified – his body shuddering within the resolute grip of these wraiths.
‘You’re being lifted by what we call Phonoi,’ the man told him. ‘Grand creatures, aren’t they?’
A whisper emerged from one of the apparitions: ‘Shall we dump him now, sir . . . ? Shall we?’
‘Sir, what will you have us do with him, sir?’ another murmured. ‘What now?’
‘Shall we break his bones?’
‘Shall we rip him first?’
‘Spill his offal?’
‘Can we?’
He was hauled through the air towards a massive cauldron, with fire licking up its sides, steam skimming across its surface. Haust began to shout again, as the smiling-faced man in the top hat offered him a wave and a bow.
A sudden drop, a desperate scream – and for the second time that night, everything faded to black . . .
ONE
It started with a knock at his door in the middle of the night, then someone urgently whispering his name through the keyhole, a voice he didn’t recognize.
‘Investigator Jeryd?’
In his still dreamlike state, the words seemed to float towards him like a ghost of sound.
What was going on?
He was in bed with his wife, Marysa, spending his eighth full night in Villiren. Jeryd had only just become used to the late-night noises of the city, the constant hubbub, and people walking by his window at all hours – sounds that played on his mind even when his eyes were closing. Sleep was a precious business, and being in a different bed was like living in a different context. His life felt full of disorder – which was ironic, really, considering that it had now been stripped down to the bare minimum.
He rubbed his hand over his paunch, and absent-mindedly swished his tail back and forth at the tip. Too damn late in the evening for such a disturbance. Over a hundred and something years to reflect on, and he couldn’t remember the last time his life seemed like this, so constantly up in the air. Until recently his work had always been his life. He had felt safe when representing the Inquisition of Villjamur. He knew what the routines were, what was expected of him. He had substance, a knowledge of where he did and did not fit in, and now without