Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘His Majesty is most gracious. I won’t forget it … and nor will my prince.’

‘This man is a cowardly murderer and an agent of the French,’ Quare said, glancing over the knot of men arrayed against him. ‘By helping him, you are aiding the enemies of your king and country. Is there no loyal Englishman among you?’

‘We’re Morecockneyans,’ Cornelius answered. ‘ This is our country. Not up there – down ’ere. And we’ve got our own king, fank yer very much.’

‘Enough words,’ Aylesford said, advancing on Quare with his sword at the ready, the tip inscribing tight circles in the air. ‘I prefer to let my blade do the talking.’

Quare readied himself. He knew from his previous encounter with Aylesford that the Scotsman was the better swordsman, but that would not matter now. Aylesford was in for a nasty surprise. They all were. The throbbing of the hunter had grown stronger, more insistent.

‘Gorblimey, ’is ’and!’ exclaimed Starkey, pointing. ‘Look at ’is bleedin’ ’and!’

Quare’s hand rose of its own accord, elevating the hunter like a beacon. It cast a blood-red light upon Aylesford, who came on with a resolute expression despite the fear Quare saw in his eyes. He was right to be afraid. He just wasn’t afraid enough. Quare almost pitied him.

Aylesford was gripping the hilt of his sword with both hands now. He shouted something in his own language that was incomprehensible to Quare as he stepped up and swung with all his might.

Quare watched as if from a safe remove as the blade passed through his wrist. His severed hand spun through the air in a spray of blood. Absurdly, he tried to reach for it, to catch it, with the stump. Yet he felt as if he were the one being cast away, as if his own hand had rejected him.

Then the pain took him. He dropped to his knees with a strangled, disbelieving cry, cradling the stump to his chest as if to smother the flow of blood. Aylesford meanwhile darted to where the hand had fallen. It lay on the ground like something hewn from a statue, the fingers still locked tight about the hunter.

‘Stand back!’ Aylesford cried out in warning to the Morecockneyans, who needed no encouragement on that score and were retreating en masse from the grisly trophy as if from a fizzing grenado. ‘Mr Starkey, if you please.’

Starkey edged forward, holding out a sack of some kind at arm’s length.

Aylesford reached for it …

And someone stepped to block Quare’s view. He glanced up dully. Cornelius loomed over him. ‘Nighty-night, Quaresie.’ The pommel of his sword came down hard on Quare’s skull, and he saw no more.

Quare awoke shivering in a heap of damp, filthy, foul-smelling straw. His head hurt abominably, and there was an excruciating ache in his left hand, as if his fingers were cramping. Yet when he raised his arm, he saw that it ended in a swath of bloodstained bandages even filthier than the straw, if that were possible. He bolted upright as memories flooded back of the confrontation in the Old Wolf’s den, his headlong flight, its gruesome conclusion. Even so, it took him a moment to absorb what he was seeing … or rather not seeing. Then shock at the absence of the hand whose cramping he still felt gave way to gut-wrenching sobs so primal in intensity that he seemed merely to be their conduit, rather than their source. At the same time, the visceral certainty that he was free of the hunter and its control filled him with giddy joy, so that laughter mingled with his tears. He rocked back and forth, weeping and giggling like a madman.

After a time, drained alike of energy and emotion, he subsided into the straw and took in his surroundings. He was in a cell carved out of solid rock, or perhaps it was a wide natural crevice adapted to the purpose of confinement. He could not see much more: the only light came from a flickering torch set outside a barred door across from where he lay. An iron cuff around his right ankle chained him to one stone wall, but he would have been too weak to attempt an escape in any case. It took all the effort of which he was capable to roll onto his side, fumble his breeches open with his remaining hand, and piss away from himself. The acrid smell of his urine did not improve the stench of the straw.

He wondered what had become of the hunter. Why had it failed to protect him as it had done in the Old Wolf’s den? He didn’t understand it. But it was not his problem any more. He no longer felt the slightest connection to it. He was free of that burden. Yet the knowledge that it was still out there weighed on him. Aylesford carried it now, or so he assumed. Perhaps he had already departed, heading back to his masters across the Channel. But Aylesford would soon discover, if he hadn’t yet, that he had a new master now. Nor would that be the end of it. Only the beginning. The beginning of the end of everything. For as bad as things were now, Quare did not think they would improve once the dragon hatched out of the egg.

And Quare was the only one left who understood the threat. Pickens was dead, murdered by Quare’s hand, his blood and his essence absorbed into the egg to nurture the monstrosity growing there. Longinus was gone, vanished into the Otherwhere with a wound that must surely prove mortal. Now Quare would never learn if Magnus had told him the truth about Lord Wichcote. Had the man really been his father, despite his denial when Quare had asked him point-blank? Not that it mattered. Not any more. Even if the Morecockneyans didn’t kill him outright, his wound required better medical attention than he was likely to receive here.

Quare shouted, calling out for his captors, but there was no reply. It seemed he was on his own.

Or was he?

Magnus had removed Tiamat’s geis, but that did not mean Quare could not call upon the dragon now, of his own free will. He did not know what that would accomplish, if Tiamat would even hear him – or, if it did, heed his call. He did not know what would happen if he brought a dragon into the world. But all things considered, it could hardly make things worse. Perhaps it would take a dragon to defeat a dragon.

‘Tiamat,’ he said, gazing at the shadows cast by the flickering torch outside the door of the cell, as if searching for a portal into the Otherwhere. ‘Tiamat, if you can hear me, I need your help. Please.’

‘Oi, ’oo yer talkin’ to?’ came a rough voice that startled Quare. The door banged open, and in barged his old friend Cornelius. ‘Whatcher up to, eh?’

‘Just praying,’ Quare said. ‘A man can pray, can’t he?’

Cornelius shrugged. ‘Pray all yer like.’ He was carrying a wooden tray, and as he spoke he squatted, placed the tray on the ground, then stood again and nudged it towards Quare with the toe of one stained boot, as if afraid to draw too close to his prisoner … or to the no-doubt vermin-infested straw on which he lay. Upon the tray was a wooden bowl of grey and greasy porridge and a wooden mug filled with something that had the look of small beer. ‘Go on,’ he urged when Quare made no move to take the tray. ‘It ain’t gonter kill yer.’

Quare wasn’t convinced of that. But he had other things on his mind than hunger and thirst. ‘Where’s Aylesford?’

‘Gone, ain’t he?’ Cornelius replied. ‘’ippity-opped back ter Froggy land wif that ticker o’ yers. Good riddance, says I. Give me the creeps, it did, glowin’ like the devil’s own pocket watch!’

‘He must be stopped, Mr Cornelius! The hunter must be destroyed. Surely he can’t have got far by now! We have to go after him before it’s too late!’

Cornelius gave an ugly laugh. ‘You been dead to the world for more than a day, Quaresie, old boy. Mr Aylesford is on ’is way across the Channel by now and no mistake.’