The Tower Broken(84)

The woman moved her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came forth.

Grada took a step back. ‘It’s the pale sickness,’ she said. ‘I have not seen this for some time.’ When Farid moved away too she added, ‘It is not caught from person to person, else everyone in the city would have died months ago.’

Farid looked from one end of the street to the other: there must be a temple of Mirra somewhere nearby. He did not wish to stay near the emptiness for any longer than necessary, but he could not just leave this woman on the ground. ‘We need to take her—’

Before he had finished his sentence the pale woman arose, moving as if pulled by strings. She turned her face his way and a dreadful smile cracked her lips. Her eyes, which had been white, now shone icy-blue.

‘A djinn,’ said Grada, drawing a knife from her belt. ‘The djinn take the empty bodies. Get back.’

He obeyed at once, pressing himself against the opposite wall, and Grada faced the pale woman, slightly crouched, her strange, twisted knife at the ready. The woman laughed, a high, keening noise, and swiped at her with a claw-like hand. Grada ducked, then swung – and frowned when the knife made only a shallow cut. He got the impression she did not miss her mark very often.

‘Stay back,’ she repeated, though he had no wish to get involved in this fight.

Farid watched in horror. The pale woman passed in and out of the sunlight swinging at Grada, and in the barrier between light and dark he made out a shimmer over her shoulders, a ghostly shape that was arching its back and crooning in ecstasy. ‘Higher, Grada,’ he murmured, not believing his eyes. ‘The djinn is above her.’

The pale woman turned his way, fury in her eyes, and with a high shriek she rushed at him, brandishing clawed fingernails, her teeth bared.

Grada took aim and threw the knife over the woman’s head. The blade caught in the air, scintillating with blue light, the djinn’s form writhing around it. Grada grabbed the knife by the hilt and pulled upwards, slitting open the transparent creature. No blood fell to the ground, but a darkness showed along the edges of the cut as if she had sliced through to some lightless place beyond. The pale woman crumpled to the ground.

Farid blinked: the darkness was gone. Grada bent to pick her knife from the stone, then stood and looked towards the end of the alley. He followed her gaze and saw more colourless people, their mouths twisted into sadistic grins, their fingers curved forwards.

Grada backed up, pulling him with her. ‘Come; this way,’ she murmured, and they started moving eastwards now, away from the river and the bridges – and away from the Holies, where they had meant to go.

They reached another corner and took their bearings. Grada turned, but Farid pulled at her arm. ‘Not north,’ he said, ‘please.’ No sooner had he spoken than he saw three more people who had been emptied: a man in clothes so ragged they hung off him in shreds, a pale Blue Shield and a young boy, all cackling, their own wills gone now, their bodies subject to the pleasures of the djinn who rode them. Grada pushed Farid back beneath a wooden stairway and ran to meet the attack.

The ragged man swung at Grada first, the soldier right behind him and both cawing with delight. Grada dodged out of their way, then jumped as the boy ran at her, pulling out her knife and spinning, cutting through the ragged man’s neck. He fell in a spray of scarlet, his djinn detached now, rendered powerless, its face contorted with rage in the shadows where Farid could see it.

Grada backed off, glancing at the street behind, giving herself space.

The boy whooped and got on all fours like a sand-cat. His eyes had turned bright blue, like the pale woman’s before him, but a crack ran down his irises, as if they were made of glass and had been broken. The boy ran at Grada at the same time the soldier took another swing; she crouched and extended her arm and her knife glowed blue as the boy slid limply to the stones. Without stopping, she pulled up on the soldier’s leg, tripping him. When he fell she slid her blade through his ribs. Throughout the fight she moved with economy and precision, her body, which had once looked ungainly to him, now moving in a smooth dance.

Grada stood and examined her arms and stomach, as if looking for a wound.

‘Are you well?’ called Farid. He felt ashamed to have been hiding while the woman fought, though her skill was the greater. He stepped out from where she had shoved him.

Grada nodded, holding a finger to her lips.

He looked down the street and saw them, fifteen or twenty pale men and women. ‘How—?’ But he stopped, the question unasked. He knew that the ‘how’ never counted for anything. When his mother had died there was no understanding how blue marks could have taken her. There was no understanding this either.