Imogen Robertson - Circle of Shadows

‘He’s on the roof!’

Damn. They had someone on the street below. He looked back into the attic and almost at once the trunk jumped and bucked as the people in the room below tried to force their way up. He clambered up and swung himself over the apex of the roof so he would be hidden from the street. His feet slipped and scrabbled for purchase. Downwards was no escape. He headed to his left, flattened against the roof and holding onto the overlapping slates with his fingertips. He had waited too long, but his foolishness might also be his rescue, for it was getting dark now.

‘Thief! Thief! On the roof!’ More than one voice now on the street below. He had to move a lot faster. Be bold, Pegel, he told himself. Just let go with your right hand. Speed, momentum. You know about these things, they might help you fight gravity long enough. With a roar he pulled his hand free and began to run like a man crossing a scree slope, throwing each foot forward and on as it started to slip. The gap between this roof and that of the neighbouring house was small, hardly a stride. He hoped mathematics was as solid as he believed and leaped, then kept on running. His pursuers were on the street.

‘There, there! He’s jumped to the next.’

As long as he kept on the back side there was still a chance. Another leap, another life lost on his score. He glanced right. A veranda leading backwards along a larger courtyard. Could he make the jump down? Only one way to find out. He landed awkwardly. Physics was one thing. Biology another. His ankle twisted and he gasped, and slipped; the flesh on his palm tore, but he found a hold, drew himself into a crouch and keeping low, stumbled north. The voices of his pursuers were fading, but they’d work it out soon enough. The veranda ended and he clambered up the guttering and round the edge of the next roof. Thank God town-dwellers never look up. He couldn’t put any weight on that right ankle without wanting to scream. Well, you wanted excitement, he thought, and paused. The gutter-pipe looked sturdy, and between these two houses was a narrow passage. It was too dark to see what lay below him, but he guessed he’d find out soon enough. He lowered himself down and with his left foot managed to find a foothold on the sill of an upstairs window. Now the right only had to hold him for a second while he moved his hands. Letting go with his right hand was the hardest thing he had ever done; the gutter wanted to hold him away from the wall and tip him downward. For a second it seemed all was lost, but his poor torn fingers managed it and he found himself clinging to the wall and gasping in air like a fish on a slab. He slithered a little further down but instinct made him scramble for a hold with his right foot, and it buckled. Gravity grew bored with the game, and flung him into the darkness below.

The Alchemist wrapped his arms around himself.

‘Adam, you know of these drugs?’ Krall asked. ‘How?’

‘Old memories, old methods. The time before I started on the Great Work. I travelled in my youth, Benedict. You know that. You knew me then. You probably thought me happier then than now, poor fool. I sought truth and understanding, like that man there.’ He nodded at Crowther. ‘Thought I’d find it by wandering about asking impertinent questions. It was a shaman I met in Marseilles. He’d traded his way out of slavery and made a fortune on the Dominican Islands. He sold the drug to whores who worked the docks. It would leave their client without movement or speech, then they would rob them. They would wake confused.’ Kupfel stood and stirred the fire again. ‘I thought it might be of use when people needed to be cut for the stone. He gave me his supplies and promised he could arrange more if I wished.’

‘And?’ Krall asked.

‘And I tried it, of course. It can be taken in a liquid. Colourless, a little bitter but not foul. I paid a servant to cut me when the drug had been taken to see if it stopped pain along with the ability to move or speak.’ He shuddered and his voice grew lower. ‘It was hell. I lost my understanding, but not my sense of fear or pain. It was as if all the demons of the night had been released against me as a punishment for my arrogance. My memory was weak afterwards, but I was for some hours convinced I had died and been damned. I thought the flames were about me and a cut made along my arm was one of a million made by the hot knives of Satanic slaves. Better by far to face the blade with a clear mind than in that condition. The supplies and the notes for the method of preparation I shut away.’ He looked into the flames. ‘The angel drug is a preparation from the same shaman.’

‘Angel drug?’

‘The one smeared on that mask.’ It still lay in front of the fire, grinning up at them with empty eyes. ‘He used it in his ceremonies to let him see his gods. Taking it was like communion to him. He left me a rich and happy man.’

‘You have not prepared these compounds recently then?’ Crowther asked.

‘Not for twenty years.’

‘Where are your notes then, and the supplies?’

Kupfel wrapped his arms around himself more firmly. ‘Stolen.’

‘By whom?’

‘I do not know. The children here tell each other stories about me and from time to time the braver ones have broken in to search for my stores of gold. I noticed they were gone this winter, along with some books, and bought better locks with my son’s charity.’

‘You were not concerned that such dangerous items had been taken?’

‘No. How could the thief have known what he was taking? And in any case, my notes are always coded. Only someone who knew my ways of working could make any sense of them.’

‘And who knows your ways of working?’

‘No one. I wish for no disciple.’

Crowther sighed and sat back in his chair. ‘Yet it seems you have one.’

Kupfel waved his hand at Crowther as if he were a figment in the air he could disperse. ‘Someone else has met my gentleman from Marseilles, or one of his followers.’

‘Indulge us, Herr Kupfel. Could you write a list of what was taken?’

The Alchemist looked at Krall, and on his nod hunched his shoulder and made his way to the writing desk. As he wrote he murmured, ‘I still dream about that night and its horrors. Better to be poisoned, hanged, broken on the wheel than that. If this drug was used, that girl died surrounded by her worst imaginings, convinced that God had forgotten her.’ He put his palms together. ‘He had not, child, He had not.’

Darkness. Darkness and filth. Darkness, filth, pain and oh, by all that was holy, the stench! Pegel managed to open his eyes. He could see by the stars glimmering between the gutters above him that it was full night. He tried to raise himself, but his hand slithered and a wave of sickness washed over him. He lay back again for a moment and groaned as quietly as he could. He must have been unconscious for an hour at least. Perhaps the smell had finished what the fall had started. Still, he had been lucky. The gap between the houses where he had fallen was obviously a dumping ground. Shit-covered straw. Food scraps, broken rubbish, potato peelings. Didn’t these people have pigs to feed? The students must be keeping them all in ready money if they could throw away food. Still, it had broken his fall and he had avoided landing on anything that might impale him. He thought. At this exact moment it was difficult to tell just what his injuries were.

He tried to raise himself again, and this time managed to lift his head and struggle to a sitting position. Every bone in his body ached, but none seemed to be broken. Something stirred in the darkness and a rat ran over his right leg. He drew it back with a hiss, then had to bite his forearm to prevent himself from yelling out loud. The spasm dulled, and breathing heavily, he slithered through the mulch until he could find ground firm enough to stand on, then pulled himself upright on the broken edge of a barrel. He hobbled to the end of the alley and peered out. Everything quiet. A candle or two in the windows, but shadows enough. He brushed off his coat and breeches as best he could. He would get to his attic. He would have to pick up help on the way; he could not possibly haul water up the staircase with his ankle ballooning. Still. That was for later. First he had to get home, shadow to shadow, darkness to darkness, and have a look at what he had found.