فصل سی و ششم

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Cold as Hell

If you walk up a stony mountain stream, and find a place where pebbles have been trapped by a certain combination of flowing water and flaws in the streambed, you can sometimes see an unnaturally perfect circular hole in the rock made by one of the pebbles—a pebble stuck in the eddying water—endlessly turning in the base of the hole. The pebble cuts a hole in the stone because it never stops moving.

The Walker, a man trapped by the flow of events in his own life, also never stopped moving and found the only relief from this curse in finding enclosed circular spaces around which to shuffle as he dozed in the between-state that was the nearest a man doomed to walk forever achieved instead of sleep.

He favored the sunken stone circle in the library piazza beside St. Pancras station, and had the habit of turning in its closed circuit for hours on end in the quiet times of the night.

Only it wasn’t quiet this time.

His laps around the space were accompanied by a scraping noise, and the noise was one of metal against stone as he dragged the blade of his long knife along the stone bench curving him. His eyes were closed, but every time he completed a circuit, he paused, turned around, and retraced his steps the way he’d just come, thereby ensuring that the blade was honed on both sides equally.

He prided himself on the blade’s sharpness. He’d had a long time to perfect this means of honing it. He was almost doing it in his sleep.

There was a crump and a scree, and something hit the ground at a low angle and skittered into the circle in front of him. Because he was used to noises in the city at night, he kept his eyes closed, and thus tripped over the hard icy bundle that had appeared. His knee hit the ground as his eyes snapped open.

He grimaced in pain and displeasure, and lifted himself back up into a walking position. He walked around the thing and kicked at it with his boot, raising a puff of ice crystals. It spun on its axis, and from within there came a faint and shivery “Caw?” The Walker circled it two more times, then tapped it gingerly with the heel of his boot. The ice pod cracked, and a very sad-looking Raven staggered out, beak clattering with cold.

The Walker slid his dagger back into the scabbard.

Cold as Hell “Where in hell have you been?” he asked, with a twisted smile that lasted no time at all.

The Raven shook snow from between its feathers and flapped up onto his shoulder, burrowing in beside his neck, finding a roost in the voluminous hood of his sweatshirt. It didn’t answer the question because firstly it was rhetorical, and secondly it was the joke the Walker never tired of in this situation.

The Raven just took up its position inside the hood and closed its eyes and tried to stop shivering. It didn’t need the Walker for his sense of humor. It needed him for his warmth.