فصل پنجاه و چهارم

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Tempered Steel

The Gunner stopped them on the corner of the road leading onto Cannon Street, where the Black Tower rose into the sky in its cage of angled silver tubes.

“You don’t move until I whistle. When I whistle, you know I’ve got him, or the coast is clear.” George checked his watch. It read 3:31.

“I’ve got eleven minutes.” His voice was calm.

“You’ve got time. Don’t show yourselves. I’m gonna go around the back. See where the evil bugger is.” Edie put her hand out to stop the Gunner. As she touched him, a wave of impressions flowed into her. It wasn’t like glinting. It wasn’t fear. It didn’t have the slicing inalterable pain of the past. It was fluid, but it had a dark underthrob to it, like a tooth about to go bad.

“Wait,” she said. “Something not good’s going to happen.” He gave her a long look. Then a short smile.

“Glints see the past. Not the future. And bad stuff happens all the time. That’s why we keep doing what we do.” “It’s not that—”

He headed off at a trot.

“Later, eh?”

“What did he break?” said Edie, her eyes glued to his disappearing back. George leaned against the closed box of a newspaper stand as he answered.

“He swore an oath that he wouldn’t bring a bullet against the Minotaur.” “What does that mean?”

“He put himself in harm’s way, like taking on a curse or something. To save us.” “You mean me,” she said dully. Then some of the old fire returned, and her chin jutted tightly. “I didn’t ask him to.” She kicked angrily at the newspaper stand. It clanged satisfactorily, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

“Sorry. It’s my bloody temper. It’s always my temper. If I’d kept it. . .” She looked away.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

George’s hand reached for her shoulder. She shrugged it off. He didn’t, however, let go.

“Edie. What?”

“If I’d known how to control my temper, I don’t think I’d be where I am now. I wouldn’t be alone. I’d have a family.” She fired out a short laugh that sounded half a sob. “I’d have a dad, anyway—of sorts. If I’d controlled myself.” They stood there for a long time, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes on her back. Her eyes somewhere else entirely, somewhere with the sea on the horizon and pebbles underfoot, and a train rattling past full of unseeing eyes and a driver waving happily, misreading everything he was seeing and turning away before he saw what she had had to do to the man behind her.

“It just comes. It blows through me. Like a wind. I can’t close the doors and keep it out. It blows in like this black wind and I go with it, and then it’s . . . and then I. . .” “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not,” said a voice corroded by ill humor. “Not for you. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.” The Walker had materialized behind George, holding the dagger’s long blade at his throat.