The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [1]
The birds were plunging down behind the treeline now, and it occurred to Mary that they were larger than any birds that she had ever seen before. Their bodies looked more like the shells of crabs, and their wings were the red of fresh blood. Perhaps the tears gumming her eyelashes together were magnifying things, or perhaps her grief at losing Jim was unhinging her reason, but surely no bird that ever flew looked like that.
Mary began to move faster through the underbrush towards the trees, and the path that led to the settlement. Bushes whipped at her legs, scratching her as she broke into a stumbling run.
Someone in the settlement had started to scream like a pig about to be slaughtered, and behind the screams Mary could hear the flapping of huge wings. What was happening? What in God's good name was happening?
She was barely ten feet from the trees when the demon settled to the ground in front of her, furling its wings across its hard, red back. Eyes on the end of stalks, like those of a snail, regarded her curiously.
And as its claws reached out for her, she screamed. And screamed.
And for all the years following that moment, after everything that was done to her, in her head she still screamed.
August, 1592
Matt Jobswortham pulled back on the horse's reins, slowing his dray down by just a jot. The streets of Deptford were crowded with people going about their business - some in fine clothes, some in sailors' garb, some in rags - and he didn't want any of them going under his wheels. The barrels of cider on the back of the dray were so heavy that the wheels were already cutting great ruts in the road. They would cut through a limb with equal ease and what would happen to him then, eh? He'd be finished for sure, banged up in prison for months until someone bothered to determine whether or not there was a case to answer.
He glanced around, impressed as ever with the bustle of the place.
Deptford was near London, and the houses reflected that proximity. Why, some of them were three storeys or more! All these people, living above each other in small rooms, day in and day out. It wasn't natural. He liked coming to London, but he wouldn't like to live there. Give him his farmhouse any day.
It was a hot day, and he could smell something thick and cloying on the back of the wind, like an animal that had been dead for weeks. It was the river of course. He'd crossed it a good half hour before, but he could still smell it. Raw with sewage it was, raw and stinking, like a festering wound running through the centre of the city. He didn't know how people here could stand it.
Matt had been on the road since dawn, bringing the barrels up from Sussex. He'd been dreaming of the cider: imagining the sharp, bitter taste of it as it cut through the dirt in his mouth and the sewer smell at the back of his throat. Surely the landlord of the inn couldn't begrudge him a drop, not after he'd come all this way. It was a long way back, after all. Just a flagon, that's all he asked.
"Mary! Mary Harries!"
Preoccupied with thoughts of drink, he jumped when the voice cut across the rumble of the wheels. It was a cultured voice, foil of surprise, and he looked around for its owner. The man wasn't hard to find: he was ten yards or so ahead of the dray, young and fine-featured, and he wore a black velvet jacket slashed to show a red silk lining. He was of the nobility, that much was certain, and yet he was standing outside a Deptford drinking house with a flagon