The New Weird (17 page)

Ashura thought about it. He didn't stop thinking about it.

Hours had passed since then. The inn was filled with disgruntled men and women. More and more of those women had to be helped into the back room, faint and ill from the attentions of Urkhan's chaffinch wards, and the men's tempers grew hot.

Mother Runnell sat atop the oak bar, turning her head this way and that, holding down the ugly mood of the place with an imperious frown.

At last, the events of the day ― and most of all this senseless, brooding inaction ― broke Ashura's patience. He left the inn, and while he walked towards his garret he racked his brains for some stratagem. Paragrat was right. Conventional magic was out of the question. And you couldn't attack Trimghoul with brute force, either ― he'd only kill innocents in his spite. Nor could you exactly sneak in to his house with a thin blade; at the first sight, or even snick, of a blade or wire or poison or anything else, he could remove it with barely conscious effort. Then woe betide the assassin!

Ashura glanced in at the shop windows as he walked. They were gaily decorated for Jape Day; it slowly dawned upon him that the yearly festival of tricks and cheats was but a night away. The garlands and brightly coloured paper decorations strewn across the street seemed out of place now and only depressed him further. He passed a shop. It was still open, and children were busy buying jokes and masks. He looked in at the articles on display. Fake spiders, beast costumes, rattles, waterguns.

He walked on, ran his fingers through his crudely shaved hair. and stopped dead. A strangled sound escaped his lips. He turned and retraced his steps.

"So that's the plan," he told Foxtongue, back at the Walking Eye. "It's ugly, it's degrading, and I've no right to ask you to do it. But if you're willing."

Foxtongue gave him a sad sort of smile. She was sitting up in bed fully dressed, cuddling her leg. It purred contentedly and flexed.

The pain in her stump had lessened considerably and she was properly awake ― and disturbed by the news from the inn.

"Your magic," she said. "You're certain of it?"

Ashura shook his head. "I haven't come across a better idea, that's all."

"Then that's good enough for me."

Ashura's heart was in his throat. "Are you sure ― I mean ― "

"Give me the potion, Warlock." She winked at him.

"Dee dee ee!"
sang the leg.

Ashura handed her the little jar and turned to Culpole. "Get Paragrat to sober up, and once Foxtongue and I are back ― " Ashura surreptitiously tapped the wood of the bedframe for luck ― "wake a councillor or two and go pick Urkhan up from the mansion."

Culpole nodded. "Off you go then. I'll be waiting for you. And Ashura ― all the luck of the city, my friend." They embraced.

Ashura and Foxtongue stood on the hill overlooking Trimghoul's mansion. Ashura shifted the haversack on his back so its occupant couldn't kick him so hard, and took the jar from Foxtongue's palm. "Remember," he said, demonstrating the workings of the jar as he spoke, "take the lid off and give Trimghoul the bracelet. You think that's the kind of payment he expects, and you're abashed when he tells you different ― "

"Because I'm new to the town, yes. I'm not acquainted with that kind of thing." She put on a ludicrous rustic accent. "I'm just a poor serving maid up from the country, sire."

"Wait till he has fallen asleep. Then unclip the false bottom. I've jammed it with a little wax, see? So it won't spring up too hard. Sprinkle the stuff on the sheets and leave. Don't turn round, don't look back, and don't stop running." He pressed the clip back, screwed the top back on, and slipped the jar back into the pocket of her cloak.

Foxtongue put her crutches to the ground and embraced him. "You know," she said. "I'll think of you when I bed him, all the time. Promise."

They kissed.

"I wonder what will happen to your little master," she mused, "when this is all over." Her implicit faith in his magic made Ashura's heart swell to bursting with anxiety. He shrugged, feigning a confidence equal to her own. "It takes time, but wards can be freed. Paragrat'll manage, and Mother Lamprey will rest at last. As for Urkhan ― " Ashura shuddered. "Let the townsfolk decide. Come now. Don't forget your story. I love you." He helped her with the rucksack.

She pecked him on the cheek and set off down the path.

Ashura trembled with love and fear.

He waited one tortuous hour. He was sending Foxtongue into danger, he knew. Though his wit had thought up the stratagem, he could not be the one to carry it out; that hurt. If anything went wrong, he knew, he would never forgive himself. The most exquisite hurt Trimghoul could then render him, was to let him go on living.

He looked up at the stars ― it had turned midnight; it was Jape Day! ― and walked down the path round to the back of the house. There was always a watchman on the front gate, but Trimghoul's mansion was no fortress ― it did not have to be ― and Ashura's ascent of the fence went unwitnessed. He loped across the new-cut lawn to the back wall. Somewhere in the house, Urkhan was concealed, his tortured mind twisted into the shape of a future GodGate, a model well worth the attentions of a rich and unscrupulous man. Ashura wondered for a moment how his old master was faring, but other, more pressing concerns soon drove Urkhan from his mind.

To his right he heard a young woman's gasp, a hint of a scream cut short ― not a scream of pain. He scowled. There must be more to Trimghoul's success with women than met the casual eye.

He moved towards the sound of panting, and looked up. There, the window above him. Trimghoul's bedroom? He supposed so. It sounded like Foxtongue's voice. To his considerable relief, things fell silent then. There was a slight pop, a faint flash of ruby light, and he knew that Foxtongue's leg was back, in its proper form, seamlessly joined to her silken thigh.

Still he waited. Maybe half an hour later he heard someone stir in the room ― and a voice, Trimghoul's, Foxtongue's reply. Ashura bit his lip till he drew blood. It was going wrong, he could sense it.

No, Foxtongue had managed, somehow, not to arouse suspicion. Again the sounds of Foxtongue at climax. Again blood rushed to Ashura's face at the thought of it.

Silence. Long silence.

She's gone to sleep, he said to himself, she's gone to sleep and she's forgotten what she's there for!

No. Again, footsteps, the rustling of covers.

Nothing.

Where was she?

A faint glow to the room. A sharp intake of breath.

The glow became more fierce. Then the screaming started.

Foxtongue's.

Then Trimghoul's.

The window shattered. Blood and fragments showered down on the cringing Ashura.

He straightened up. In a pool of glass a flayed mound of flesh, bone and intestine gibbered and shook. A hand rose, glowing, shedding nerve and artery in a shower of sparks and fluid. It fell to the ground. Trimghoul, or what was left of him, lay still.

Foxtongue leaned out the window. Her cheeks were wet. She was shivering. There was a look of fear in her eyes.

"God, Ashura, what did you do to him?"

Ashura was shaking, too. "Come down and I'll explain."

"I don't think I trust you, Ashura. You've learned black arts for sure."

And all of a sudden Ashura was laughing. "Oh, yes, black arts. Of course." He began to giggle hysterically.

Mystified, Foxtongue climbed down from the window and stood -on two legs ― beside him. She frowned. "Let me in on the joke, Ashura, or lose me forever. I won't part my thighs for necromancers. Not again. Ever. That includes you, it seems."

Ashura tried, with no great success, to sober up. "Have you ever wondered at Trimghoul's costume? Or why his windows were always sealed? I mean, when Trimghoul swats away a fly with his mind, he takes off a patch of skin as well! That's the weakness! It was staring us in the face all along! He had power, for sure, but deep down it was all out of control."

She took him by the lapels, pushed him against the wall, and breathed menacingly into his face.
"What was in the pot, Ashura?"

Ashura grinned. "Itching powder," he replied. "What better start to Jape Day?"

He slipped his arm round her waist. "Now, why don't we go back to Mother Runnell's and I'll explain everything."

The Neglected Garden

"I DON’T WANT TO GO," she said. "I'm not going."

Patient and calm, the way he wanted to be, he explained again; they had discussed it, she was moving out. He had already packed her things for her, five big cardboard boxes, labeled, he had done the best he could. Clothes on hangers and her big Klee print wrapped and tied carefully across with string, everything neatly stacked in the car, here, he said, here's the keys.

"I don't want the car," she said. Tears ran down her face but she made no crying sounds, her breathing did not change, in fact her expression did not change. She stood there staring at him with rolling tears and her hands empty, palms upwards, at her sides. He kissed her, a little impatiently, on her mouth.

"You have to go," he said. "Please, Anne, we've gone all through this. Let's not make it any harder than it already is," although in fact it wasn't all that hard, not for him anyway. "Please," and he leaned forward but did not kiss her again; her lips were unpleasantly wet.

She stared at him, saying nothing. He began to feel more than impatient, angry in fact, but no, he would say nothing too, he would give as good as he got. He put her car keys in her hand, literally closing her fingers around them, and picking up his own keys left the house. An hour or so, he would come back and she would be gone.

When he got back her car was still in the driveway, but she was nowhere in the house, not upstairs, not in the utility room; nowhere. Feeling a little silly, he looked in the closets, even considered looking under the bed; nothing. "Anne," calling her, louder and louder, "Anne, stop it, where are you," walking through the house and a movement, something in the backyard, caught his eye through the big kitchen windows. Letting the screen door slam, hard, walking fast and then seeing her, stopping as if on the perilous lip of a fire.

She was on the fence. The back fence, old now and leaning, half its braces gone. She sat at the spot where the rotted wood ended and the bare fencing began, legs straight out, head tipped just slightly to the right. Her arms were spread in a loose posture of crucifixion, and through the flesh of her wrists she had somehow pierced the rusty wire of the fence, threading it around the tendons, the blood rich and thick and bright like some strange new food and while he stood there staring and staring a fly settled down on the blood and walked around in it, back and forth.

He kept staring at the fly, it was suddenly so hot in the yard, it was as if he couldn't see, or could see only half of the scene before him, a kind of dazzle around the perimeters of his vision like the beginning of a fainting fit and back and forth went the fly, busy little black feet and he screamed, "Son of a
bitch!"
and moved to slap the fly away, and as his hand touched the wound she gave a very small sound, and he pulled his hand back and saw the blood on it.

He said something to her, something about my God Anne what the hell and she opened her eyes and looked at him in a slow considering kind of way, but with a certain blankness as if she viewed him now from a new perspective, and another fly landed and more hesitantly he brushed that one away, and still she did not speak at all.

"You have to go to the hospital," he told her. "You're bleeding, it's dangerous to bleed that way."

She ignored him by closing her eyes. Ants were walking over her bare feet. She didn't seem to feel them. "Anne," loudly, "I'm calling an ambulance, I'm calling the police, Anne."

The police were not helpful. He would have to press charges, they said, trespass charges against her to have her removed. They became more interested when he started to explain, in vague halting phrases, exactly how she was attached to his fence, and in sudden nervous fear he hung up, perhaps they would think he had done it to her himself, who knew what Anne might tell them, she was obviously crazy, to do that to herself she would have to be crazy. He looked out the kitchen window and saw her looking at the house, her eyes tracking as he moved slowly past the windows. He didn't know what to do. He sat in the living room and tried to think.

By the time the sun went down he still had no idea what course to take. He did not even want to go back outside but he did, stood looking down at her. "Do you want some water? Or some aspirin or something?" and in the same breath enraged by what he had just said, the extreme and dangerous stupidity of the whole situation, he shouted at her, called her a stupid fucking idiot and walked back inside, shaking, shaking in his legs and knees and inside his body, felt his heart pounding, it was hard to breathe. She had to be in pain. Was she so crazy she didn't even feel pain anymore? Maybe it was a temporary thing, temporary insanity, maybe a night spent outside would shock her out of it, a night sitting on the cold ground.

In the morning she was still there, although she had stopped bleeding. Ants walked up and down her legs. The blood at her wrists had clotted to jelly. The skin of her face was very white.

"Anne," he said, and shook his head. Her hair was damp, parts of it tangled in the fence, and the pulse in her throat beat so he could see it, a sluggish throb. He felt sorry for her, he hated her. He wanted her to just get up and go away. "Anne, please, you're not doing yourself any good, this is hurting you," and the look she gave him then was so pointed that he felt his skin flush, he refused to say anything, he turned and went back into the house.

Someone was knocking at his front door: the woman from next door, Barbara something, joined by the paperboy's mother whose name he could not remember. They were shrill, demanding to know what he was going to do about that poor woman out there and my God this and that and he shouted at them from the depths of his confusion and anger, told them to get the hell off his porch and he had already been in contact with the police if that would satisfy them, thank you very much, it's none of your business to start with. When they had gone he sat down, he felt very dizzy all of a sudden, he felt as if he had to sit down for a while, a good long while.