The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [25]
We'll make for our rooms!"
Stone walls and tapestries flew past in a blur as they ran. For an old man, the Doctor was capable of an amazing burst of speed when he tried. It was all Vicki could do to keep up with him. His hand was clamped so hard around her wrist that she was getting pins and needles. Her breath was rasping in her chest, coming in short gasps. She hadn't run this fast for years. How far were the rooms? She was sure that they hadn't walked that far away from them.
And then she recognized a tapestry as it flashed past, and knew that they were only a step or two away.
Something closed over her free wrist. She jerked to a halt. The Doctor ran on oblivious until her hand was wrenched from his. As he stumbled to a halt and turned around, trying to work out what had happened, Vicki looked back over her shoulder. One of the guards was grasping her wrist, while the other lumbered up behind. Desperately she tried to lever his hand away from her wrist, but her own fingers closed over something alien, like bumpy twigs. She lashed out at the guard's face, but her hand passed through empty air where his cheek should have been. Whatever he was, he wasn't human.
CHAPTER FIVE
Steven Taylor rested his head in his hands and groaned. He was sitting in a shadowed recess in a nearly empty hostelry with a name something like the Tavern of the Angel, and he had a large glass of a vile liquid named grappa in front of him. It was cloudy, it was fiery and it made his head swim, but it was calming his system down and, at that moment, he didn't care what else it did so long as his stomach stopped churning.
After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, he had eventually realized that he wasn't going to get any sleep. The TARDIS did that to him - ever since leaving Mechanus he seemed to have been suffering from ongoing time-and space-lag. He'd gone for a walk, and eventually stumbled into this tavern beside some large bridge called the Rialto. It was small, and its walls were lined with boating mementoes - oars, nets, floats, the occasional badly stuffed fish - but it was a haven of sanity and cool air compared to the madness of the crowds outside. The bridge was arched, and lined on both sides with shops and stalls, and the shouts and laughter of the various people that were crossing it was driving slivers of pure pain into Steven's temples.
What had he been drinking last night? Watery and sour, it had tasted like adulterated vinegar, but after a couple of bottles he'd found he'd developed a taste for it. Whatever it was, it was strong.
When he woke up beneath Galileo's table, with the sun shining in his eyes and the astronomer snoring heavily on the couch, his head felt like someone had half-filled it with water. It took twice as much effort as usual to move it, and whenever he did the outside seemed to move a second or two before the inside caught up.
Turning it, even slightly, made him nauseous and unsteady on his feet - even more unsteady than he already was.
It was almost worth it, though. Last night had been fun - the most fun he'd had for longer than he cared to remember. He and Galileo had talked for hours. The man was a witty and entertaining companion, full of stories and barbed jokes against his academic contemporaries. He was also a good listener, encouraging Steven to talk about...
Oh no. Steven's head sank lower in his hands as he vaguely remembered babbling on about the Doctor and the TARDIS. Had he talked about the future and alien worlds? If he had, and Galileo remembered, he didn't know what the man's reaction might be. At best history might be changed, at worst Steven and his friends might be betrayed to the Inquisition, if they had that here as well.
The few days that the TARDIS had spent in Spain during the time of Torquemada would haunt Steven for some time to come, and he wasn't keen to come that close to any hot irons again.
The cloying, penetrating smell of fish drifted across from the Rialto market, and Steven nearly threw up.