The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [29]
Jack looked back at him, and smiled; and his smile seemed to say that he knew what Orphan was thinking, and that he was glad, for now Orphan could no longer hide behind mere words, or childish pranks such as the Persons from Porlock had perpetrated, that he would now have to choose a side. Why we are here – that's a question I think you need to have answered for you, he had said. Orphan turned his head away; he could not meet his friend's eyes.
In the ring the Red King lashed out and its tail hit Goliath's leg, the blade flashing, cutting deep, and the lizard collapsed with a sound of pain, and then the Red King was on top of it, biting at its opponent's throat, its claws falling like knives on the wounded Goliath. It ripped Goliath's body open, cutting and biting until, gradually, the other lizard's movements slowed down. Goliath's body gradually wound down, the way an old clock comes to a halt and stops beating the hours until, by degrees, time and sound die. It shuddered at last under the Red King, and was still.
Pandemonium broke around the ring. New torches were lit around the room and in their light Orphan could see Marx, his face contorted in rage or ecstasy – it was hard to tell which – exchanging money with a man beside him, saw Isabella Beeton turning to talk to a tall, dignified lizard with a navy uniform visible under his black robe, saw the lizards up on the balcony turn away (the fat man had disappeared), saw Jack's taut smile floating in the air beside him: more than anything, he saw the dead and broken lizard lying on the floor of the ring like a discarded toy. For one crazy moment he wondered if it, too, had once had a lover who might now mourn it.
He turned away from Jack. The air felt heavy with smoke and blood and he could stand it no longer. Looking towards the door he saw that Mother Jolley had moved away and was circling amidst her clientele, who now spread throughout the room in small groups. He saw the umpire entering the ring, ready to announce the winner. He saw the man in the bloodied apron also approaching, and wondered if he would serve up Goliath's remains. It would be cannibalism, he thought. He turned away and ran for the door, knocking people out of his path. He crashed into the door, and it moved open for him, and he escaped through it and up the stairs, and outside.
The cold air revived him. He walked away from Drury Lane, down to the Strand. The fog weaved in and out of his sight like a ghostly quilt. The sky seemed lighter, and he thought the sun must be rising, slowly, ever so slowly over the cold capital of the world. He walked to the river and stopped, hemmed in between Somerset House and King's College. A piece of darkness seemed momentarily to move in the sky, and he glanced up at it nervously, thinking again of black airships. But he could discern nothing beyond that first, hazy sense of movement, and his eyes returned to the flowing water, his thoughts liquid and disordered in his mind.
Revolution, he thought. That was Jack's ambition, his dream, his purpose. To fight their overlords, to overthrow the Queen and her line. To replace it with… what? He thought of the wounded birds in the ring, their silver blades flashing in the torchlight. And it seemed to Orphan that it didn't matter: that whoever ruled the empire, lizard or human, would be a being who would stand and watch a fight like that, and coldly make odds on the winner. He thought of Lord Shakespeare, the first of the great Poet-Prime Ministers, the greatest of them all. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods," he whispered into the mist. "They kill us for their sport…"
A damp breeze rose and touched his skin, sending a shiver through his body. Perhaps the automatons, he thought. Perhaps they had their own political ambition, perhaps they too were gathering in secret, preparing for a revolution. The thought neither cheered nor oppressed him. It left him unmoved. He thought of the revolution that had taken place in France,