She could see the end of the alley. A sunny patch. A bench and an old water pump, leaning together like confederates. She sped into the tiny courtyard. Sunlight spilled across her back, suddenand warm. Emma risked a glance behind and fell hard, scraping her palms against stone. Face down, she fought to free her ankle from the water trough she hadn’t seen under the pump. It was too late. The thing would be upon her any second.
When no attack came, she looked up. It was there, at the end of the alley, glaring at her. It had stopped a millimeter before the courtyard, where sun and shadow made a sharp dividing line.
It had the head of a boar and the muscled torso of a man. Wickedly sharp tusks sprang from its snout. Two weapons belts crossed its bare chest. Trousers hid its lower half, but Emma couldn’t miss the powerful muscles of its thighs.
Its eyes fixed on her, vicious and glinting. It slammed one meaty hand against the alley wall—no hooves, she noted with numb interest, just human nails filed to a point—but still didn’t take the single step that would have carried it over the threshold of shadow.
Maybe it couldn’t.
Then a cloud crossed the sun, plunging the courtyard into gloom. The boar-man swung one booted leg into the half-light. Triumph gleamed in its eyes. It moved slowly through the lighter shadow in the courtyard, as though wading through water. But still it came, inexorably, toward her. The razor tips of its nails reached for her with yearning. Emma wriggled back on her elbows, her breath coming in gasps.
From somewhere behind, hands wrapped around her arms and lifted her upright.
“Come,” murmured a voice in her ear, velvet as summer moss. “This way, and we shall outrun it.”
CHAPTER 18
She stumbled in the wake of a blur dressed in green, over sun-streaked cobbles and around tourist groups. Shops and colleges flashed by, a jostle of bicycles and shopping bags bruising her thighs as they pushed across Scholar’s Road. She could see nothing of her rescuer but the outline of a curly beard and a whorl of dark hair. Then the ground sloped, and Emma had to watch her footing. The Sister’s boots seemed determined to trip her at every step. Finally, the stranger’s pace slowed.
When she next looked up, it was to a familiar view. The river, its banks stirring with winter-browned bracken. The water shone in the dying light, flinging back reflections of bridges and colleges. Emma dropped the stranger’s hand and stepped forward into a wash of warmth. At the river’s edge, there were no more buildings to stand between them and the last of the westerly sun. She tipped up her face and breathed slowly, until the sear in her chest and tremble in her legs faded.
“And the lady is saved. The beast cannot follow us into the sunlight. We have enough of that here.”
Emma turned to find the owner of the velvet voice standing behind her, along with a forest-green tunic and a face made for mischief.
He scraped a bow that managed to be elegant and impertinent at once.
“My lady. The Court is all agog to see you, and here am I”—he caught Emma’s hand and lifted it to his lips—“stealing that first honor.” He twitched expressive black brows.
Emma suspected he was making fun of her, but it was hard to be cross with anyone so merry-looking. Under walnut skin, his cheeks glowed robin red. A little black beard sprouted from his chin, curling upward. When he smiled, his eyes turned up at the edges too.
“Who are you?”
“Just a well-wisher and a stranger. A mysterious,handsomestranger,” he corrected himself, all hopeful innocence.
Emma eyed his clothing. No human had worn anything of the kind for several centuries. But Emma’s mind had begun to admit—under mounting pressure from the evidence of the last few hours—that the man-shaped being before her might well not be human. She peered closer at his green velvet tunic, noting the tree embroidered across the chest.
“You’re… a messenger of the Night City,” she guessed. “Like the other. You wear the same tunic.”
The stranger feigned shock.What? Me?Then he tipped her a wink.
“Quite right. You’ve rumbled me. I am but a humble messenger, not a dashing young courtier fit to win the heart of a lady like yourself. Although I might be a lord in disguise?” he tried.
Emma pressed a shaking hand to her temple. Nothing made sense anymore. Least of all this conversation.
“Whydidyou run from your Court summons, by the way?” the stranger went on. “It was a most original reaction.”
“How do you know what I was running from?”
He laughed. “Come. When you fled a City messenger, the alarm spread to all of us at the City’s disposal. It is why that beast was sent after you. Not many would resist an invitation to Court.”
“I wanted to go home.”
“Home? You weren’t likely to find that among a pack of mortals—” He looked at her face. “Ah. You come from mortal stock, do you? I was born in the Night City. I sometimes forget that there are other ways into our realm. What a jewel of resourcefulness you are.”
He put his head on one side to study her. “How did you manage it? Are you a spellworker? A scholar?”
The sense of unreality washed over Emma again. This stranger spoke as though she belonged to some other world, just as the Sister had. As though the familiar town around her, the colleges and libraries, the bicycles clattering over the cobbles, was some mortal realm she no longer had any part in. It had not escaped her, the name they had both used, with such a similar mixture of pride and fear. The Night City.
