And so he looked.
‘Look, I don’t have to crawl around on the ground to know there’s nothing here. I could see a pattern if it was all the way at the corner.’ He pointed. He had not slept yet, and she had dragged him around the empty streets for hours. Exhaustion set an edge on his every word. He wanted to return to the Tower and its promise of old patterns written on parchment, though that was beginning to feel like a distant dream.
‘All right,’ she said, pushing off from the wall, ‘on we go.’
‘And what do we do if we find one?’
‘You get rid of it.’
‘I don’t know how.’
Grada ignored him and walked off. He ran after her. ‘I can’t undo one of those without … making it happen. If I can even do that.’
‘Stop worrying. We haven’t found one yet.’
Farid sighed. ‘I thought I would be taking lessons from the duke.’ More than that, he wanted the duke to undo whatever it was Adam had done to him. He felt healthy enough, and he certainly didn’t feel controlled as the Patterned had once been, but it nagged at the back of his mind all the time, that Adam might still hold some part of him.
‘There will be talks and more talks before that happens,’ Grada told him. ‘In the meantime, make yourself useful. I want you to check for patterns on a manse I’ve been watching.’
He did not reply, but he kept his eyes open, looking at every street-stone and wall they passed for pattern-marks. In this part of the city the roads were narrow and every alley looked like night-time. He remarked on how empty the streets had become – without people to distract him he could see the cracks in the stones, the sand lining the edges of buildings. As they approached the Blessing he saw fading paint, crooked doorways, leaning buildings. The whole city gave off an air of decay – his great city. He could not remember when that had started to happen.
‘Stay near me,’ Grada ordered. ‘We’ll have to cross the river to get to the Holies.’ They couldn’t use the Asham Asherak Bridge, for it had fallen in the quake, but Farid’s steps slowed as she turned and headed north. The massive grey blur stood closer now, rising over the northern walls and stretching up towards the sky, and he could feel its pull, even from here.
Either through bravery or ignorance Grada paid it no mind as she made her way to the next bridge, Farid following reluctantly in her wake. She looked at the other side of the river, where they could see Blue Shields engaged in a battle with rebels, and stopped. He watched them, five soldiers against twice that number, but the five had the upper hand. Occasionally a shout carried over the water, but otherwise the swordplay was strangely silent, like a moving painting. One man lay on the bank, his head covered with blood.
‘We’ll have to go further north,’ said Grada.
She started to move off, but Farid remained where he was. ‘Can’t we try south?’ There were plenty of bridges there, five in all, between Asham Asherak and the Low Gate.
Grada said only, ‘Come, we cannot linger.’
At the next bridge, she considered a luxurious boat drifting south. Its gunwales had been gilded, and instead of nets or fish buckets, plump silk cushions filled its length. Men in fine robes lay across them, sharing a bottle of wine. ‘One of them might recognise me,’ she said. ‘We will go further north.’
Still Farid followed, though every part of him warned against it. The next bridge was barred for repairs and Grada slowed, looking around. They had reached the northernmost section of town, near the Worship Gate, and Farid felt a prickling along his skin: the void, that grey fog that his gaze could not hold, was near.
Grada must have known it too, for she glanced towards the wall and cursed under her breath.
Hiding his shock at her unwomanly language, he said, ‘Perhaps that boat has moved further south now and we can cross down there?’
She did not reply, so he occupied himself by looking for pattern-marks, first on the docks and then in the alleys leading east into the city. It was then he saw two bare legs, sticking out from a shadowed doorway. His unease deepened, but he motioned to Grada and said, ‘Someone’s hurt.’
‘We do not have the time,’ said Grada, but she followed him when he went to investigate.
Even as he moved closer he was dreading what he might find, for he was no healer – he had been a mage for only six days.
Inside the doorway a woman was lying on her back, staring at the sky. She was not dead – not yet, at least – but had succumbed to a strange illness that drained all her colour. Her hair had turned white, as had her skin, which was nearly translucent under the sun. Blue veins tracked the curve of her cheeks like pattern-lines.