Perdido Street Station - China Mieville [246]
Yagharek clutched Shadrach’s linked hands as gently as he could with those great taloned feet. He stood up. Shadrach lifted the hollow-boned garuda with ease. Yagharek swung his heavy cloak over the sticky, spitting torch. It snuffed with a burst of black smoke. Shadows fell on them like predators as the light went out.
He stepped down and Shadrach and he moved quickly to the left, to the other flame that illuminated the cul-de-sac they crouched in. They repeated their operation, and the little brick gully was doused with darkness.
When he stepped down, Yagharek opened out his ruined cloak, charred and split and foul with tar. He paused for a moment and tossed it away from him. He looked tiny and forlorn in his dirty shirt. His weapons dangled in full view.
“Move into the deepest shadow,” hissed Tansell, his voice grating. Again, Pengefinchess’s mouth mirrored his own, and emitted not a sound.
Shadrach stepped backwards, finding a little alcove in the brick, tugging Yagharek and Isaac in with him, flattening them against the old wall.
They pushed themselves down, settled themselves and were still.
Tansell moved his left arm out stiffly and slung the end of a roll of thick copper wire towards them. Shadrach reached out and caught it easily. He wrapped it around his own neck, then looped it quickly over his companions. Then he slipped back into the darkness. At the other end, Isaac saw, the wire was attached to a hand-held engine, some clockwork motor, the catch of which Tansell released, letting the momentum take the mechanism, unwinding and dynamic.
“Ready,” Shadrach said.
Tansell began to hum and whisper, spitting out weird sounds. He was almost invisible. As Isaac watched him, he could see nothing more than a figure shrouded in obscurity, trembling with effort. The murmuring increased.
A shock snapped through him. Isaac spasmed a little and felt Shadrach hold him where he was. Isaac’s skin crawled and he felt a stinging current trickle in through his pores, where the wire touched his skin.
The sensation continued for a minute, and then dissipated as the engine wound down.
“All right,” croaked Tansell. “Let’s see if it’s worked.”
Shadrach stepped out of the hollow into the street.
The shadows came with him.
Enveloping him was an indistinct aura of darkness, the same one that had covered him as he stood in the deep shade. Isaac stared at him, saw the patch of deep black in Shadrach’s eyes and below his chin. Shadrach stepped slowly forward, and into the light shed by torches in the junction a little way off.
The shadows on his face and body did not alter. They remained fixed in the conjuncture they had assumed as he crouched in the coal darkness, exactly as if he stood still hidden from the flickering glow, beside the wall. The shadows that clung to him extended perhaps an inch from his skin, discolouring the air that surrounded him like a caliginous halo.
There was something else, an untimely stillness that crept with him even as Shadrach moved. It was as if the frozen furtiveness of his concealment in the bricks suffused the shadows that coated him. He stalked forward, yet the sense of it was that he was still. He confused the eye. You could follow his progress if you knew he was there and were determined to watch, but it was easier not to notice him.
Shadrach motioned Isaac and Yagharek to join him.
Am I like him? thought Isaac as he crept out into the lighter darkness. Do I slip around the corners of your eye? Am I half invisible, bringing my shadow-cover with me?
He looked over at Derkhan, and saw by her wide-mouthed stare that he was. To his left, Yagharek too was an indistinct figure.
“First sign of sun-up, go,” whispered Shadrach to his companions. Tansell and Pengefinchess nodded. They had disengaged, and shook their heads in exhaustion. Tansell raised his hand in a gesture of good luck.
Shadrach beckoned Isaac and Yagharek, and stepped out of the darkened alley into the sputtering firelight in front of the houses. After them came the monkeys,