Tim Powers - Dinner At Deviant's Palace

The stairs extended quite a way up, and after three or four ascending circuits of the stairwell he began to see rays of sunlight lancing through the dimness from gaps in the masonry; he stopped to peer through each one that he came to that faced the sea side, but each time there was some close stone or wooden surface blocking his view of the ocean.

At the first landing he ran out onto a wide concrete terrace where a dozen men were laboring at the cranks and capstan bars of a crane, the chain-supported arm of which stretched thirty feet out over the water, and Rivas looked around wildly, trying to orient himself. After a few seconds he spied the dangling roof-railing, way above him and off to his left. There was no one hanging on it now. He looked northwest, but at this lower level a warehouse wall blocked his view of half the ocean—the half that included the barge and Deviant's Palace. For one impetuous moment he thought of running out along the crane arm like a tightrope walker, but the cable being hauled in lay along the top of the boom, and was wet, and kept hitching and jerking.

The workmen were staring at him apprehensively, and he realized that his scalp must still be bleeding. «What's the,» Rivas gasped, «quickest way up to where that railing is hanging?»

One of the men frowned. «Some guys fell off there a few minutes ago.»

«I know .» He waved inexpressively. «One of them was me. So how do I get back up there?»

After a pause to think about it the man gave him a string of instructions, including one «really long jump,» and concluded with, «but they'll just throw you off again.»

«I wouldn't be surprised,» Rivas agreed, hurrying away.

Five minutes later he was climbing up the ladder down which Lollypop had fled at Rivas's previous arrival, and he paused when he was a foot below the edge of the roof. What, he thought, peek? Or scramble right up?

Scramble up, he decided. He got his feet a couple of rungs higher, then grabbed the roof edge and jackknifed up, rolling to his feet as quickly as he could on the slanting roof.

The old man with the long beard stared at him in fuddled surprise. «Didn't happen to bring another bottle?»

Rivas shook his head and, looking around cautiously, shuffled out to the now unrailed western edge.

«Then,» said the old man sadly, «your credentials have expired. Hey, kid! Here's the guy your old buddy dove in after!» ,

Rivas looked back, and his heart sank to see the blond young man stand up resolutely from beside the arch, cuffing tears from his face.

«Aw, hell, kid,» Rivas said in a tone of weary, scared exasperation. « I didn't do it. He shot at me and then jumped in, remember?»

«He was,» the boy said brokenly as he drew a long knife from his belt, «just beginning to . . . forget about . . . Nigel. And then you had to remind him . . . and now he's dead .»

Rivas flipped back his cuff and got his own knife into his left hand and waved it around, just to make the boy back off. The boy kept advancing. Rivas swore, then turned to look northeast.

The strange barge was, as perhaps he should simply have assumed, at rest beside the white stone centipede of a dock in front of Deviant's Palace.

Quickly he turned back to the roof, and saw that if there had been a chance of getting back down the ladder without a fight, it was gone now. Lollypop's young friend was only a few steps away, clearly waiting for Rivas to move away from the roof edge, and he was warily watching Rivas's knife.

Rivas wondered how the Rivas of a week ago would have handled this. The footing wasn't the greatest up here—probably he'd have tried a long kick at the boy's knife hand and, as close to simultaneously as possible, a wide, unaimed slash that could be relied on to strike somewhere between forehead and throat.

What he did was smile, sheathe his knife and step off the edge of the roof.

His fall was controlled this time—he was careful to keep his body straight and his feet together, and as he took and held a breath he wondered if the workman by the crane was watching. When he hit the water and was under it he spread his arms and kicked to keep from hitting the bottom. He was pleased with the unruffled way he'd handled it until he remembered that old Lollypop was drifting around down here somewhere in the dark water—maybe above him right now, grinning and reaching for him with cold hands—and he flinched to the side, swam spasmodically for a few strokes and then did a panicky thrash up to the surface. This time when he surfaced and shook the wet hair out of his face, he looked anxiously down. He swam fairly hastily toward the pillars and when he was in among them in the shadow of the massive overhanging masonry he became aware of a spattering sound.

He paused to lift his head and blink around, and he realized that the mutant children perched in the nets and hammocks were clapping their webbed hands, clearly hoping he'd do it one more time.

Lisa was standing out on the little pier in front of her house when Rivas came trudging up the canalside path. He'd stopped dripping, and his hair wasn't as damply spiky now, but his shoes still squished when he walked.

«Afternoon, Greg. I gather you fell into the canal last night; do it again today?»

«The ocean,» he said. «Twice.»

He'd decided not to approach Deviant's Palace from the seaward side, not at first, anyway, but to reconnoiter the place by simply walking in the front door. Beyond that he wasn't sure. Order a drink? If the legends were accurate, the place was as much a bar as it was anything else. Ask for a job? He shuddered.

«What are you doing out here?» he asked.

«I keep thinking I hear a hurt animal in the canal. This is the third time I've been out to look.» She shrugged and started toward the house. «Oh well.» She squinted back at him over her shoulder. «You don't look like you found your person.»

«No.» Thinking of her carpet, he kicked off his mud-caked shoes on the porch and peeled off his socks.

She looked surprised at the courtesy, but didn't remark on it. «Well,» she said, «while you were off looking for somebody, somebody was here looking for you. He left a—» She stopped, and looked at him.

He had frozen in the act of hanging the socks on the porch rail. «A . . . hurt animal,» he said.

She nodded. «In the canal. Do you know something about it?»

«Maybe.» Jesus, he thought, what does it take to kill one of those things? And I've led it here. «Have you ever heard of, uh, hemogoblins?»

«Yeah,» she said, her eyebrows halfway up to her hairline. «Vampire ghosts in the southern hills, right? Is that what I've got in my canal, one of those?»

He straightened up and spread his hands helplessly. «Well, I—yeah, if I had to make a guess. I thought I killed it last night. I twisted its head off, for God's sake.» He sat on the rail, next to his socks, and stared unhappily at the floor. «I'm sorry, Lisa. I didn't mean to lead it to your place. It's been following me around for days, sneaking up and saying disgusting things to me. I think it'll follow me when I go, but just in case, if you can get any screens for your windows, just for a couple of days, I'd—»

He stopped, for he'd finally looked up at her, and the mixture of pity and apprehension in her eyes startled him. He reviewed the last few things he'd been saying, and suddenly, after one flash of indignant anger, he was laughing– and then a moment later the laughter was shaking him as if it were a pack of invisible dogs, and he had to fall off the rail on one side or the other so he let himself fall in, and he sat rocking and hooting on the boards of the porch floor while tears coursed into his beard and Lisa, backed up to the far rail, smiled twitchily in an effort to keep from joining him; but soon she was laughing as hard as he was.