The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) (35 page)

‘Mister Lyle!’ she screamed down at the ice, praying for an answer, that it was just a trick. And below, Feng Darin, dragging death behind him as he spun across Westminster Bridge, was woken from his trance as the voice, full of pain and despair, shrilled across the ice, shook the stones, sank into them, another part of London’s history, the time the child screamed above the fire and the ice of a battle being won and lost, through the city where the blood of kings fell on the cobbles which here were bought or here were sold or here died and here lived and here was born and here perished, around a shattered river.

And below, next to the still water surrounded by ice, Lady Diane Lumire looked up at Icarus, hearing the child’s scream, and smiled. Tess recognized the smile for the cruellest thing she had ever seen, remorseless, without even a cause to justify it beyond selfish personal gain. At least when in the past she’d met villains, they’d bothered to explain
why
they were villains.

Selene just didn’t care, and would never, ever understand.

Behind her, near the stairs up to the bridge, the ice exploded, outwards, upwards, as Lyle broke back to the surface.

 

Feng Darin could almost see his target, Lucan Sasso, standing in the middle of the bridge. But there was now a wall between him and it, stones rising up from the bridge itself to try and stop his advance, and on every side the enemy kept flocking in, scratching and tearing and punching, so that even when he could finally see his foe, he still couldn’t reach him!

 

Down on the river, Selene turned and saw Horatio Lyle pull himself up towards the bridge by the stairs, the water already starting to solidify as it poured off him, tiny icicles clinging to his coat. He crawled upwards, one hand still clinging to the hypodermic. With a hiss of frustration, Selene strode after him. Lyle reached the top of the steps as Selene’s hand closed round his ankle, dragging him bodily off the stairs and down on to the ice. He fell the five feet hard, on one side, landing with a crunch and a crackle of the ice embedded in his clothes and clinging to his hair, turning it white. Selene leant down, one hand closing round his throat.

There was a sound like a falling brick shattering soft wood. With a surprised expression, Selene looked down, and then, thoughtfully, pulled the needle out of her upper leg, dragging the plunger back up. A few drops of dirty Thames water still clung to the side of the hypodermic’s glass. She turned her gaze on Lyle. ‘But you didn’t have anything in it,’ she protested.

‘I took the opportunity of filling it with water while trying to find a way out from under the ice.’ Lyle’s voice was half breathless wheeze, half chattering teeth.

‘But . . .’ Selene staggered back an uncertain pace from Lyle, one hand going up to her heart, fingers tightening as if in pain. ‘But . . . I
feel
. . . water?’

Lyle crawled away from her, clinging to the icy stones of the stairs. Selene leant suddenly against the Embankment wall, eyes wide, face white, fingers opening, then closing into a tight fist. She bent, curling up around the point where the needle had gone in, as if in great pain.

‘Water?’

‘It . . .’ Lyle’s voice was almost non-existent, his eyes wide and frightened, reality slowly kicking back in and instincts sliding away into their box for another day. ‘It expands when frozen. You are very cold, my lady.’

And, as water turned to ice inside her, Selene clutched at the pain in her heart where she hadn’t realized she had a heart, and as what little life she had to call her own stopped, Lady Diane Lumire thought she heard - through the closing down of her senses which blocked out all sounds but the ever-unheard hum of the city, the sound that most are too well used to hearing to really notice or care about any more - she
heard
the city, and perhaps even she finally understood.

She slipped, still and heavy, on to the ice.

And Lucan Sasso screamed.

CHAPTER 28

Lyle heard the scream, but didn’t register it. Cold was burning his face, numbing his toes. He crawled up the stairs from the river on his belly, half-aware of the world around him, but unable to feel it except in the pounding of his mind, which imagined sensations that weren’t there. A slow, pinkish warmth was beginning somewhere in the back of his stomach, as if it grew from the spine and spread, narrowing his vision and muffling all sounds in his ears. Instinct said very quietly that this wasn’t a good thing, and when intellect growled, it retreated again. Though his mind tried to deny it, Lyle knew that unless he found somewhere warm, he’d soon be dead.

What he found was Lucan Sasso.

The punch threw him down into the snow piled against the side of the bridge, and sent dull pain coursing through his sleepy nerves. He crawled away blindly, tears rising involuntarily to his eyes and freezing to his eyelashes. The next blow knocked him back against the parapet, which he clung to as if it was his only friend, vision narrowing to a tight point, a sound in his ears like a bubbling volcano.

The hand that closed around his shoulder and dragged him upright had the same iron of Selene’s grip, but the eyes that drew level with Lyle’s had a tormented, broken fire in them that Selene had never understood. They were the eyes of a man whose mind was not entirely his own, that saw more things than they could cope with, and that could no longer hide the madness burning in the mind behind them.

For a second Lucan Sasso just stood holding Lyle, whose toes trailed uselessly on the ground, as if wondering which death was more suitable. Lyle, all feeling gone from his arms, his feet, his mind, numb to everything except the pain trying to break through the icy barrier that surrounded his senses, didn’t fight. He half-closed his eyes, and let himself hear the only thoughts that were left, as the city sang its songs in his ears.

And here, now, was the city, in Horatio Lyle’s head.

And Horatio Lyle understood what he’d always known, deep, deep down throughout his entire life. Horatio Lyle understood that the city was alive, and it was as much a part of him as he was a part of it, and whatever happened, whenever it happened, a tiny bit of him would live, stamped on to the city that he called home.

He opened his eyes and met Lucan Sasso’s gaze. For a second, neither moved, neither spoke. It was, thought Lyle, something inexpressible, unutterable. Almost . . . perfect.

And then the cry rang out. ‘Sasso! I am for you!’

In a moment Sasso spun, dragging Lyle with him, who flopped in his grip, half-dead already. Feng Darin stood on the bridge, and raised Selene’s blade.
Oh, good grief
, thought a vague, slurred voice in Lyle’s mind that might once have been his,
what now?

And Sasso laughed, the hollow laugh of a broken man.
‘What will you do with that, little mortal?
I will break you before you move!’ His voice was rising in pain and despair. Lyle flinched from it, shuddering, wishing he could struggle but unable to move.

Feng Darin stared at Sasso a long while, then at Lyle, who shook his head feebly, fingers opening and closing in pain. Their eyes met.

Feng Darin smiled.

Feng Darin raised the blade.

Lyle understood Feng Darin, and it was his turn to scream out in despair and fury.

‘
Darin!
’

Feng Darin turned the blade with ease and grace, brought it down, and . . .

Lyle closed his eyes. He felt the hand that held him let go, opening in surprise, and flopped like a fish on to the bridge, not even bothering to break his own fall. He buried his head in his hands.

The city was suddenly quiet. All eyes that could see had turned to the bridge. Only the gentle wheezing of Icarus, high overhead, broke the silence. Then footsteps, the sharp, heavy steps of Sasso as he advanced towards the shape of Feng Darin. Blood pooled around the fallen man, seeping through the snow. Lyle raised his head and saw Sasso bend down and pull the blade easily from Feng’s lifeless fingers, then, with a thoughtful expression, prod the man with a toe. Feng didn’t move. Sasso turned back towards Lyle, holding up the blade, the better to catch the light, and saw Lyle’s burning eyes fixed on him. He lowered the blade again, surprised.

Lyle dragged himself up, clinging to the parapet of the bridge, which seemed oddly warm under his fingers. He looked down at the cobbles. Water was running away; the snow seemed to be dissolving beneath his feet. He looked up at the sky. Black clouds were racing in from the horizon, as if they’d only just heard about the excitement and wanted to have a look.

‘Lucan Sasso was, in his time, a remarkable man,’ hissed Lyle, staggering a pace, half-falling, and clinging still to the bridge for support. ‘Honoured for his skills and bravery in battle. He was a poet too, a man of culture, and passion. At the time when he was still a young man, there was a lady. Some said she was an Austrian princess, some said she had come even from the realms of the Ottoman, some that she was a Spanish beauty raised in the south by Moors. Her name was Selene.’

Lyle’s voice was the only sound in the darkness. He reached a lamp post and used it to pull himself up straighter, feeling the warmth from the light that burned above it. Below, ice began to creak. There was a slow, sucking sound, the gentle hiss of boats slipping out of the melting ice and dipping back into water, the thud of drifting hulls banging against each other, the plop of masonry slipping under the waves.

Lyle’s voice grew louder, drowning out another sound, caught by a wind that rose from the river and the streets and seemed to bring with it a strange smell, salty, as if it had blown up from the Atlantic Ocean, and come many miles carrying a new message from another land with it.

‘Lucan Sasso met Selene in Rome, and was struck with her instantly. He followed her to Vienna, to Paris, protesting his love for her. She left him a blade, made of a very special stone. He swore he would kill himself with it rather than be parted from her, but she left that night. The same night, on Westminster Bridge, he stabbed himself through the heart with the stone blade.
Here.
’

Sasso was frozen in place, eyes fixed on Lyle, even as the wind rose and gusted the snow off the rooftops, as the water rushed through the river and the darkness seemed to close in around him. Lyle was almost shouting over the wind, tiny flecks of ice flying from his hair, which clattered as it was dragged in the wind.

‘Something took hold of Lucan Sasso. He is stone. His heart is an empty space under his skin, his skin is hard, smooth marble, his eyes do not dilate in bright light, the moonlight and the sunlight burn away the illusion of life that is half-real, half-imagined by all who see him, and reveal him for what he
really
is. Do you know what you really are, Lucan Sasso?’

Sasso half-opened his mouth, then hesitated, the blade hanging, forgotten at his side. Lyle smiled, even as tears stung his eyes, and his voice was hollow with despair, ‘
You
are a statue, Lucan Sasso. You never
were
real.’

‘I . . .’
The wind snatched his words away. Louder, raising his voice.
‘I . . . am a god! You cannot tame me . . . I . . .
I
am for ever . . . I am . . .
you cannot tame me!
’

Behind, him, Feng Darin rose up from the shadows and said, very quietly,
‘I can.’

And Sasso turned, and saw Feng Darin, the blood still running from where the knife had entered his heart, but slowing now, like clay, and whispered,
‘Surely you cannot have
wanted
to die?’

Feng Darin merely smiled, and raised his hand, palms up, towards the sky. Around him, the stones of the bridge rumbled, growled, roared and exploded, drops showering down around. They rose up so tall, a huge stone neck that extended from one end of the bridge to the other to join in an arch across the length of the road and still rose, nearly clipping Icarus as the ship circled overhead; the stones rose up and twisted into new and alien shapes, something coming out of the neck even as the cobbles fractured and tore, ripped out of stone to slide together into a clattering mass, and still the shape kept building into . . . a face. Long and thin, trailing sharp points and jagged, scaled lines. Eyes opened in its depths, peered round, peered down, followed Feng Darin’s gaze, his mind. Teeth of jagged stone grew from its mouth, its nostrils flared, spouting dust. The dragon looked down, and saw Sasso standing small and alone, far, far below, and opened a jaw so wide and so long, it looked as if it could eat Nelson’s Column like a piece of spaghetti.