فصل سی و نهم

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A Day to Repair

George woke with a jolt. Edie was standing in front of him. She looked better. He could tell that because she was poking him with gusto.

“Hey, you were snoring!”

He looked around the room. He got to his feet and checked all the corners.

“He’s gone,” he said with disappointment.

“Who’s gone?” she said, looking at him suspiciously.

And so he told her all about the Clocker, and what he’d said. He didn’t tell her all of what he’d said to the Clocker, because it didn’t seem any of her business, and besides, he’d said it to someone, and somehow that was what mattered.

“What was he like, this Clocker?” she asked.

George described him, starting with the way he looked and his clock-face eye, ending with his warning about the Servants of the Stone.

A Day to Repair “And they’re not taints. Or spits?” “No,” he replied.

“So what are they?”

“Weirded.”

“They sound like it.”

“It means doomed. They’re cursed to walk the earth until they’ve undone whatever it was that got them in trouble in the first case. And the Servants of the Stone are— “In trouble with the Stone.”

“Yup,” he said, feeling the water deepening under his feet.

“And are you in trouble with the Stone?” she asked carefully, unconsciously rubbing her sea-glass between her fingers. She was remembering the warning from the drowning girl shouting, “He’s not what he seems.” She had a chilling jolt of doubt. She had thought the warning applied to the Black Friar. But what if the girl had been warning her about George?

“Yeah. But not their kind of trouble, though,” he said, feet paddling a little desperately in the deep water of his ignorance.

“Not ‘their kind’of trouble,” she parroted. “Oh. How does that work, exactly?” “The Clocker said they were beings who had made a pact with the Stone. I haven’t made any pact. I’ve, um, wronged it.” “And wronging it is different?”

“Apparently.”

Edie felt the room getting smaller. She wanted to be out in the fresh air, away from the dust and the dark, and away from the slightly uncomfortable feeling of being stuck in a locked room with George.

“How do we get out of here? I mean, it’s going to be a bit harder climbing out of here in broad daylight. . . .” George was suddenly aware of the time and the noises of the city outside the door. The grumble of traffic was full force, and with a shock he realized he must have slept again, and slept longer than before.

“We can go out from inside the church,” he said hurriedly, crossing to the door the Clocker had shown him. “See?” He gently undid the lock. Edie followed him cautiously. From the bottom of the narrow staircase came the sound of chanting in a language that wasn’t English.

“What’s that?” she whispered.

“Russians,” he explained. “It’s used by Russian Orthodoxes now, according to the Clocker.” “What are ‘orthodoxes’?” asked Edie, following him down the stair.

“I don’t know,” said George, slipping out of a doorway behind a pillar in the nave of the church. “Unhappy, from the sound they make.” The front quarter of the church was mainly full of old people, with a sprinkling of younger people all facing away from them toward the altar. They were all standing, and the song they were singing wasn’t really a song but more of a chanted moan of pain and apology led by a bearded priest in long black robes. His eyes were the only ones to see George and Edie slip out from behind the pillar and head for the door to the street. By the time he had registered interest, the door was closing behind them.

They paused on the steps and looked at the bustling city splashing past in front of them. The relative emptiness of the night streets had been replaced by throngs of pedestrians, and where empty night-buses had raced minicabs on uncrowded streets, unavailable taxis now inched forward in a rain-lashed gridlock.

“Brilliant!” said Edie in disgust, looking up at the sheets of water dropping out of the lead-heavy sky. She pulled her coat tight around her neck. “Just brilliant.” “No,” said George. “Edie. It is brilliant. Remember what the Gunner said? Gargoyles don’t fly in the wet! It means we don’t have to worry about them spotting us from the sky. The rain is brilliant. Come on.” “Come on where?” she asked, staying in the dry patch by the door. “I’m hungry.” “The Monument,” he explained excitedly.

“Yeah, but we don’t know what monument you need,” she said, thinking that even if he did know, it wasn’t a monument she needed, and wondered how or when she’d be able to work out if her new fear about George not being what he seemed would resolve itself.

“The Monument,” he explained. “The Clocker helped me work it out.” And he told her how the clues had been hidden in what the Black Friar had said.

“I didn’t know whether we should trust the friar,” she said.

“Me either,” he admitted. “But the Clocker said it seemed to make sense. And he couldn’t honestly see why the Friar wouldn’t help us.” “And why do you trust the Clocker?”

Because he had kind eyes, thought George. Because he understood when I told him about my dad.

“Because he told me not to,” he said. “He told me not to trust anyone, even him, not unless they were a spit without a hint of taint about them.” She shook her head as if this were the stupidest thing she’d heard all day.

“Could have been a double bluff though, couldn’t it?” “No,” he said emphatically, sure he was right. “Here.” He fished the square of chocolate from his pocket and held it out to her. “He left this for you. He said you’d be hungry when you woke up. He was that kind of person.” “The kind that gives sweets to unsuspecting little girls,” she said, taking the chocolate anyway.

“I don’t think you’re that unsuspecting,” he said.

“Too right,” she said around the lump of chocolate already disappearing into her mouth. “Haven’t been unsuspecting for a long, long time.” “Come on then, if you’re coming,” he said, looking up at the clock above them. It was getting late. The Herculeses stared out at the street, eyes fixed and stony as if they’d never moved an inch since the sculptor had chiseled them out of the living rock.

“You got any more?” she said in a chocolate-muffled voice.

“No,” he said, jogging into a narrow alleyway.

“Oh,” she said disappointedly.

He didn’t turn to see if she was following him. After a few yards he heard her voice behind his right ear.

“Why are we going this way?” she asked. “It’s wetter than the streets.” “No one puts taints on the back of buildings or in alleys,” he explained.

“Good thinking,” she said grudgingly. “That one of your friend the Clocker’s ideas?” “No,” he said. “I worked that one out all by myself.”