Page 77 of The Bedlam Stacks

For someone who had reduced the odds against us so efficiently, he didn’t look pleased. ‘I wish it had been Martel.’

I couldn’t tell if he meant it or if he was only saying it to make me feel more confident. ‘If he’s still here, he won’t be for long. Unless – do bullets hurt them?’

‘Not usually.’

‘Then . . . ’

‘Right,’ he said.

The way was steeply downhill after that. There were steps in places, even the weed-choked ruins of little houses and towers sometimes, but never people.

When we came out at the river, it was sudden. I hadn’t expected the sunlight or the heat, though I should have. We had come right down into tropical forest and the river was frisky, and over the far side, the trees weren’t whitewoods but everything else. Kapok roots poured over the riverbanks, full of green parrots and big monkeys. Right under the kapoks, shaded in their canopy, were calisaya cinchona, tall ones, never cut down or barked. With their quiet colours, they looked prim and European among all the brilliant jungle plants. I brushed Raphael’s sleeve and pointed, then put my arm round him and pulled him against me. He laughed.

The hand on my shoulder was nearly gentle when it arrived. Martel was strong and he thumped me back against his chest without having to pull much.

‘Now then,’ he said, and Raphael spun around. I’d never seen anyone look more helpless than he did then.

‘Let him go,’ he said to Martel.

‘I’ll let him go once we’re in sight of Bedlam. Now come along.’

I closed my eyes when I felt the muzzle of his revolver press to my temple. It was cold.

‘No you won’t.’

‘Of course I will. Now back through the woods, my dear.’

‘You can’t shoot into the pollen.’

‘I won’t be shooting into the pollen. I’ll be shooting into his head.’

Raphael was still for a second, then came back towards us. Martel pulled me away from him to let him pass.

I let my breath out slowly and felt Martel’s arm sink as my ribs did, then lift again with them. He was strong but he had been living easily. His gun was an old one, well kept but not meticulously, a clunky thing, beneath the silverwork, that I couldn’t imagine had come from anything like the ferocious accuracy of the American workshops. He wouldn’t be able to shoot Raphael with it from here, or not with any real certainty.

‘You’re taller close up,’ Martel said to me in his friendly way.

‘I know. I’d forgotten too. It’s funny, isn’t it.’

He laughed. I pushed my elbow hard into his stomach and twisted the gun out of his hand. As he lurched, I spun him onto his front on the ground and thumped down after him with my knee in his back. He was still stronger than me and so, although it might have been kinder to give him a moment or two to offer him some other chance, I wasn’t sure enough that I could hold him there, or of what he had said about not firing into the pollen, so I pulled the knot string from round my wrist and strangled him with it instead. I waited until well after he had stopped struggling. When I sat back, my arms ached. Raphael came to us slowly and unevenly.

‘Is he dead?’

‘I think so.’ I rubbed at the string marks across my palms. My fingers were stiff and pale from having had the blood stopped and I had to wait for it to come back, in pins and needles. When I swallowed, my throat hurt. I hadn’t been breathing for almost as long as it had taken. The world cannoned into me, all the noise of the forest and the sound of my own breathing through the bones inside my ears, and it was all much too loud. Martel’s body didn’t look like a person any more. It might have been a clever sculpture. Something strange turned under my lungs and I felt as though someone must have done some kind of magic trick, swapping Martel for this.

I rubbed my hands again. My arms had stopped aching. It hadn’t been difficult. Like it had before when I understood that Raphael wasn’t going to shoot me, the future had an odd new breadth. That Bedlam was in danger from Martel, that Raphael was, had seemed immovable a few seconds ago.

Raphael knelt down beside me. He didn’t touch Martel, but he nodded. ‘Yes.’ He inclined his head without lifting his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve never done anything more useless than that.’

‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

‘I would have taken that gun off anyone else.’ He looked away and then seemed to have to push hard to look back again. ‘I would have shot anyone else a long time ago.’

‘Familiar devils are important after a while, though, aren’t they? Better than nothing,’ I said, and then shook my head. I could hear how incoherent I sounded but I couldn’t see a way to sort it out.

Raphael watched me and I misread him. His neutral expression was a half-frown and it seemed cold. I had time to worry he was angry before he hugged me. I put both arms round him and had to rest forward against him, shaking now, though I couldn’t tell from what. I didn’t feel upset, but I could feel that everything I was thinking now was only skimming the surface of things, everything else shut off. He lifted me off the body and put me on my feet again. He was much stronger than Martel or me. He turned his head to his left and the rainforest beyond the river, his temple just resting against my chin.

‘Who inherits his land?’ I asked, for something else to say. I had my arms under his and my wrists resting on his shoulders, and they ached, but there was blood on my palms and I didn’t want to put them down.