Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

He saw that food had been laid out on a small dining table, and that he and Curl sat in a room of their own. A neatly made bed stood along one wall. A pair of velvet curtains covered a window at their backs. A plush rug lay on the floor. Despite the clean condition of the room, it still smelled of dampness and mould.

A murmur of laughter sounded through the closed door from the hallway and the taproom at the bottom of the stairs. Che sat and stared at the food with a soft spin to the world around him. For a while he forgot who this girl was, sitting next to him. Yet their legs were touching, and she seemed not to be bothered by it, so something existed between them, even if he couldn’t recall what it was. In his other hand, a hazii stick hung smoking from his fingers. He drew it to his lips, trembling. Inhaled, feeling each and every grain of the hazii weed scratching down the back of his throat.

‘Exhale, you idiot,’ said the girl as she took the stick from him, her cheeks bulging with food. He’d been sitting with the smoke in his lungs, not doing anything but staring into the guttering flame of the candle in the middle of the table.

Che exhaled and sat back and looked at her. ‘How beautiful you are,’ he said.

She smiled politely, as though she’d heard those words a hundred times before, then returned to her food.

‘You should eat,’ she told him. ‘It will do you good.’

He couldn’t face the thought of eating just then. His neck was truly throbbing, and it dawned on him only slowly that it was more than mere head pains. How long since I took the wildwood juice? he suddenly wondered.

‘They’re coming for me,’ Che mumbled as he tried to rise to his feet, though the words were mashed by his useless tongue.

‘They’re coming for all us,’ he heard her reply.

His hand slipped from the table and he dropped back into his seat. He could no longer sit up straight. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cool surface of the table, then turned it so that his cheek was pressed against it. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth.

He noticed that the wineskin was still in his lap. More drink was what he needed, he decided, and he straightened with a groan in the chair, and went through the laborious process of getting the Keratch into his mouth.

Before he could swallow it down, he was jolted by the sharp stab of the girl’s elbow against his ribs.

Through his swimming vision he saw that someone now stood before the table, and another was closing the door behind them.

They were dressed in civilian clothing beneath thin cloaks, the cloaks parted at their waists, a pistol poking out from each of them aimed at Che’s heart.

All at once he was sitting upright in his chair.

‘Mind if we sit?’ enquired Guan, and took one of the chairs across the table while his sister did the same. Swan studied the food for a moment, plucked a small pastry and popped it into her mouth.

Curl was frozen in her chair. Swan flashed her dark eyes at the girl. ‘Who’s your pretty friend?’ she asked sourly, and Che wondered how he had ever considered this woman to be attractive.

He said nothing, for Guan was fixing him with a cold glare. ‘I’d stop reaching for that gun if I were you,’ the man said. ‘I’m a whisker away from squeezing this trigger.’

Che took his hand away from the wooden stock of the pistol in his belt.

‘Hands on the table,’ Guan told him. Che laid the wineskin down, and his hands to either side of it. ‘You too,’ he told the girl.

Che was finding it hard to stay focused on the Diplomat’s face. It seemed to be leering at him in the dim candlelight of the room, shadows making pits of his eyes and a twisted gash of his lips. He could smell the water of the lake off him. Che’s eyes flickered to Curl’s hands on the table. They were trembling. He blinked, focusing on the man’s face again.

‘Well, say something, won’t you?’ prompted Guan. ‘Why don’t you explain to us why you turned traitor?’

His silence was making him angry, Che could see. He allowed a corner of his mouth to curl up, taunting him.

The man looked to his sister. She shrugged, helping herself to another pastry.

Guan raised the gun above the table and pointed it at Che’s face. His sister wiped her lips and swallowed the last of the pastry, then climbed to her feet. She went to the door, her pistol out, and waited there. She nodded.

Che held a single finger up. One moment. It caused Guan to hesitate. Che watched the end of the gun barrel through the flickering candle flame. He leaned forward towards him.

Che pursed his lips and blew.

The Keratch in his mouth jetted through the flame, igniting it in an even greater fire that roared across the Diplomat. The gun went off with a shocking bang. Guan toppled backwards with his clothes on fire, and Che heaved against the edge of the table and flung it onto its side after him.

He lurched to his feet, staggering for balance as he turned to the window, the smoke of the flames making him gag. He yanked open the curtains and tried to pull the shutters open. They refused to budge.

Swan was kneeling over her brother, trying to put out the flames.

Che grabbed Curl’s wrist while she stood there locked in panic. She tried to resist him as he pulled her to the window, managed to jerk her arm free from his grasp. ‘They’ll kill you too!’ he snapped at her, then turned for the window and charged the shutters with his shoulder.

They sprang open easier than he had expected, and with a cry Che tumbled out through the window, landing on his back on a slope of soft lakeweed. Curl landed on top of him, and they both slipped and spilled down the slope towards the water’s edge.

They stopped themselves just in time, and helped each other roughly to their feet. Che held his hand over his eyes against the blinding white daylight.

A gun fired from the window. Neither saw where the shot went.

‘Who are they?’ Curl demanded. ‘I don’t understand!’

‘This way,’ Che said, and set off at a rambling jog towards the nearest boardwalk.

The streets were empty of civilians. They ran as fast as they could, but he kept veering to one side as though the ground was tilting beneath him, so that Curl had to keep him straight. They ran until they were breathless, and kept on running. For a few moments it seemed as though the pulse in his neck was slowing ever so slightly. But then it hastened again, and he knew the two Diplomats were on their tail.

‘Where are we going?’ Curl wanted to know, angry more than frightened now.

But Che had no answer for her. He was too busy vomiting as he hobbled along the boardwalk, stabbing a finger down his throat whenever his gag reflex needed prompting, trying to empty his stomach of alcohol. ‘We should seek help,’ she shouted, with an arm around him, more sure on her feet than he was. ‘Find some guards!’

‘No soldiers,’ growled Che with the bile scalding his breath. He kept running, leading them into the western district of the city. He tried to load his pistol on the move, but struggled getting the cartridge slotted into it. Curl swore and took them from him, loading the gun as she glanced behind her. ‘They’re coming,’ she panted.

He looked back. His vision was a sickening wash of tones and forms. Squinting through it, trying to focus, he saw that Swan was on the left side of the street and Guan on the right, hugging the frontage of houses with their pistols held low. The upper half of Guan’s clothing was a burned and ragged mess. Swan jabbed a finger across the street. Guan nodded and took a side street, where he disappeared from view.

Che reckoned they should be near the house by now, for the street looked familiar to him. Not wanting to be outflanked by Guan, he turned them right into an alleyway and ran along it, then left so they were heading west again. He turned and aimed the pistol as Swan looked round the corner of a wall, ducked her head back. He stood waiting but she didn’t present herself again.