“Some other time, Jack. Right now, much as I love you for trying . . . well, you nearly died last night.”
She was right. The task was bigger than me. Bigger than all of us, maybe. And the hole I seemed to be digging was getting awfully damned big.
I could probably figure out how to get me and my friends out of here. But that didn’t help Henry, or the city, or the Strata. Dad always said if the prize mattered, you doubled down. More mean-street wisdom I’d maybe get a chance to thank him for someday. Of course, his mean-street wisdom had gotten a lot of young men killed.
“Brach’s going to answer for Henry,” I finally said, and stood up slowly this time. “So I can’t be lying around here all day.”
“Well, you can get out of bed,” she said, “but the sutures I’ve given you are temporary. A wound of the heart—which is what I believe you suffer—only truly heals when you make peace with whatever caused the wound in the first place. When you do, the tear will begin to heal on its own. Until then, any undue strain could rip it open again. If that happens”—she paused—“I don’tthink you’ll survive it. You’re just not versed enough yet to deal with such a wound.”
I gave her a hug and spared five minutes to take a red-hot shower in the greenroom bathroom (always perked me up), then grabbed some cold chicken tenders from the kitchen fridge—best way to eat them, if you ask me.
Church and Chuey were at the classic-metal table, trading concert stories—that was a favorite pastime at the Horse. I couldn’t take them with me to see Emaline, so I told them I was just ducking back to my flat for a fresh shirt and maybe to search Henry’s place for anything that could help us.
Then I gathered Cassius, who’d been standing guard at the Horse door, and together we headed over to my appointment with Emaline, hoping she would have better news than I did.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I shouldn’t be surprised. Modern London and its thanaturgic class are doing what they’ve always done, extending serfdom through enterprise and greed. How might they like it if we opened their gaols and burned their law books?
—Chancellor Wat Tyler, Medieval Stratum,
on the occasion of his Strata Chancery induction
Cassiusand I took the back alleys to slip the Shiguan prowlers on our way to Henry’s place. I asked Cassius to guard the door, and went inside. The air had gone stale, but everything else was still Henry: pictures with musicians, a console radio and record player given him by his mother, and a large bookcase filled with the most impressive vinyl collection I’d ever seen.
Henry and I had sat at his Formica table every Sunday morning, listening to those old records, Henry doing his deejay routine between songs. He loved playing the deep album cuts, the ones nobody seemed to know. Made us both feel like we were sharing a beautiful secret.
I missed him. I wished I could talk to him just one more time.
I’d come a half hour early to search his flat for anything that could help me renew the ward. I was also looking for an appropriate urn for his ashes. I’d just started digging around when two guys stepped into the living room from the kitchen. One wore a tunic and schenti, with a khat on his head and an ankh tattoo at his right temple; the other had on ratty jeans and a Femmes T-shirt beneath a black leather vest, wore a nose ring, and had the acronym S.L.A.M. burned across the back of his hand. Each had a compact lantern, bow, and khopesh hanging from their belt.
I drew my own khopesh. “Cass?—”
“Please don’t, Mr. Solomon,” said Ankh. “Let’s keep this civil, shall we? We’re here for your own good.”
S.L.A.M. smirked.
Then it hit me. These were reps from two of the schisms. S.L.A.M. was obvious, and the other guy had to belong to the Brotherhood of Heka. “If you knew I’d be here, you’re monitoring me in a way that doesn’t feel too good.”
“We know more than you think.” S.L.A.M. smirked again.
“Mr. Solomon,” said Ankh, “let us be brief. We originally delegated your trial to the chancery on the recommendation of our Shiguan constituents. But, to be frank, we weren’t much aware of Brach’s bolder machinations in the Strata until these last few days, else we might have chosen a different course.”
I chuckled. “And now it’s too late. Or, if you took the trial back at this point, you’d look?—”
“You gotta win, bruv,” S.L.A.M. said. “Otherwise things get real complicated, and neither you nor your friends at the Horse are in any position to handle that.”
The Horse? S.L.A.M. was a Soho rat.
I pointed at each of them. “Maybe the Brotherhood and S.L.A.M. want to help me mount a defense? That why you’re tracking me?”
Ankh cleared his throat. “We’ve been doing what we can without hindering the process, but things don’t seem to be going well, so we’re here with an offer.”
“Separate offers,” S.L.A.M. clarified. “Indeed,” Ankh said. “As a vulgar?—”
“We call ’em ‘rogue’ now, yeah,” S.L.A.M. clarified again.
Ankh sighed. “Fine. As a rogue thanatist, meaning unaligned with any schism, your chances at trial are remote. But with the backing of a schism, your odds improve dramatically.”
