Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [36]
I stood back aghast, seeing for the first time the shining wet surface of the floor beneath the stricken man. The front of his shirt was imbued with the same scarlet, still oozing from the rents in the cloth and the flesh beneath. The prints of my boots remained in the puddled blood – as the sight drove me stumbling backwards.
My heels caught on something soft; I only saved myself from falling by catching the edge of the table beside me. I looked behind me, and – with heart racing beyond excitement to fear – saw another form, as silent and motionless as that of Fexton.
I knelt down, legs trembling, and found the man's upraised shoulder. The figure turned over on to its back, and I found myself staring into the burnished, scar-etched features of the Brown Leather Man. His chest was also slashed and wet, but the fluid mingling on the floor with Fexton's darkening blood was itself clear; the briny smell, sharp in my memory, came to my nostrils as I looked at my own glistening hand.
The expiring candle blew out in a sudden rush of wind from the doorway. I scrambled upright as the light from a small hand lantern fell upon me. Dimly beyond its glare, I could make out the silhouettes of a pair of men.
"What's this, then?" spoke one of them. "Who's this 'un?"
"Mother o' Gawd. I told you we should've brought all the gear the first time." His companion leaned forward with the lantern. "Best give him a plumper 'n' bring 'm along."
I gathered my scattered wits, having gained the impression that these men had no good will towards me, and were possibly the authors of the carnage that filled the room. "See here–"
My argument went no further than that; the men were on either side; the larger of them stood a good head above me. Or so I thought: it suddenly seemed as if he were looking down at me from an even greater distance. "Give 'im another one," boomed a voice from miles away.
There was no need; the first blow finally breached my senses, as if it had been a cannonball shattering a castle wall that remains seemingly intact a moment before it crumbles into bits. My cheek lay against the wet floor, betwixt the Brown Leather Man's corpse and my assailant's boots. For a moment, before I lost all awareness, I fancied that I was flying, as one of the men lifted me on to his shoulder.
6
A Church Service Goes Awry
The robed sages of Arabia Felix have written: "There are two things without limit – the stupidity of Man and the mercy of God." (I have had time for religious studies since my retreat from the world's affairs.) I have not yet had proof of the latter, but the former was borne out by the fulfilment of my own lamentable desires.
I had wished for Excitement, and an end to Boredom; these had been given me, and in abundant measure. But as I regained consciousness, my disordered thoughts reassembling inside my throbbing skull, I would have cried out for the return of every drab and predictable second of my previous existence, so foolishly despised and irrevocably lost. I would have cried thus, but for the rag wadded in my mouth, stoppering all speech.
The precise nature of my confinement gradually became clear to me. The back of my head – seemingly intact, though I would have otherwise supposed that the blow to it had left fragments on the floor of Fexton's room jostled against the planks of a small cart, sparking a fresh throb of pain with each cobblestone under the creaking wheels. My hands were trussed behind me; against each shoulder another body was pressed tight – the cold forms of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man, I guessed them to be. A rough cover of sacking had been thrown across the faces of the living and the dead, to shield us from the inquiring eyes of any who might look