At the lane’s end I went splashing into a running gutter, ankle deep, at the pavementless edge of another road. Three bounds carried me across, almost sending some sorry soul on a bicycle wobbling off into the gutter, and a fourth up to the faded red door. The latch was odd, and I was still struggling with it when I felt it shift and the door swing back. Out of the gloom peered Katjka’s features, foxy and astonished. ‘Stefan! Come! Come in! There’s nobody about – Agnece Bozij! You’re soaked! Come dry yourself by the fire!’
I seized her by the arms, and she slipped them playfully under mine and ran her fingers up and down my ribs. ‘Something sso urgent again, ej?’
She drew me into the warm gloom, and nudged the door closed with a thrust of her hip. I became aware that she was only wearing some kind of white linen shift. ‘Jyp!’ I said hastily. ‘Is he here? Or where –’
‘Ach, any minute!’ she said airily. ‘He’s always in here of an evening –’
‘Doesn’t he go to other places sometimes? The Mermaid?’
She shrugged, and made a face. ‘Well, sometimes – but always he drops in here, sooner or later. Just to say hello! You can wait, can’t you? Mmmnh?’
‘Katjka! Damn it, this is serious –’ I got no further than that. There were spices on her lips, sweet and hot, and she burned against me through the crisp linen. In my unstable state that was enough. I clutched her, felt her writhe and sank myself in her kiss as if to drown myself out of a world that had grown too vast. A great many things might have happened next if the door latch hadn’t jabbed me painfully in the small of the back as it opened. We flailed wildly and grabbed the carved bannister just in time to stop ourselves tumbling downstairs.
‘Well, hello young lovers!’ carolled Jyp cheerfully. ‘This some new routine I’ve not heard about, Kat? On the stairs, huh? Enterprising, I’ll allow, but a mite athletic for me –’
She gestured dismissively at him, and ruined the effect by putting out her tongue as well. ‘You idle sot! And here is poor Stefan who has been looking for you in such hurry!’ she lamented.
‘Well, he wouldn’t have found me where he was headed!’ Jyp’s drawl couldn’t have been more laconic, but I saw the sudden alertness in his look. ‘Glad you came, though. I was hoping you would. Wanted to say sorry, sort of, for the way I went and acted this night gone. So here I am, ol’ buddy – what’s a’brewin’?’ I gathered my breath, but before I could speak he’d caught at my arm. ‘Not more trouble with those mangy Wolves? Here was I just hearing they’d shipped out as if Old Nick himself was at their asses –’
‘That’s right!’ I said. ‘And they’ve got – a friend of mine with them! They were after me, but – Jyp, I need help! And fast!’
I heard Katjka’s sharp intake of breath. Jyp nodded slowly. ‘Sounds like you do,’ he said. ‘But if they’ve sailed already, an hour more or less won’t make no difference.’ He overrode my protests with hands uplifted. ‘Hold on, hold on. Suppose you come sit down and tell me all about it – and you, girl, scare us up some eats, eh? Then come listen yourself, y’hear?’ She nodded and went padding down ahead of us, disappeared into the darkness and reappeared almost at once with a bottle and three of those little flasks. Jyp took them with a nod so courtly it was almost a bow, and ushered me into a highbacked booth by the fireplace. ‘Always knows what’s needed, that girl. There, get that down you; one gulp, and then another. I’ll be glad to have her word on this. Katjka’s been around awhile, learned a lot. She’s got a feeling for this kind of thing.’
He poured me my second flask of the fierce spirit, then one for himself, and sighed as he settled down opposite me, shifting his scabbard around. ‘The unrighteous man findeth no place to lay his head, as my old man’d say. Truth to tell, way things’ve been shaping around here lately I was thinking I might sign on and ship out again awhile. In case the neighbourhood’d turn a mite hot for me, y’understand. Then I heard those bastards’d lit out, and I was coming down here to celebrate. Only now – well, spill it, Steve.’
Spill it I did, my shock dulled by the drink: the whole tale of the raid on the office and my chase down here. After a minute Katjka arrived, clumped tall steins of beer down on the table, and squeezed into the booth beside me, leaning her chin on her bony hand and gazing at me intently. As I told my tale I saw my listeners’ lean faces harden. The firelight flickered in the girl’s grey eyes, and the lines around her full mouth deepened. Jyp’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed to stare right through me, out into horizonless distances. The thought chilled me; I shivered as I told of that final vision, and felt Katjka’s arm around my back, her thigh pressed against mine, and was glad of it. She did seem to know what was needed – and more to the point, was quick to give it; what had she been trying to give me in those mad moments before Jyp walked in? What had I needed?
‘That’s all,’ I said, and took a deep draught of my beer.
Jyp blew out his breath sharply, and looked at me askance. ‘Now just what in hell were you hoping to do if you had caught up with the bastards? Take on a whole shipload of Wolves on your lonesome?’
I’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask that. ‘It was me the Wolves were after, I could have offered myself to them, if they’d let her go.’
Jyp spared me the laughter, just looked bleakly at me. ‘They’d have taken you cheerfully and kept her. Or let her go all right, overside. Or worse. They’re not nice folk, the Wolves.’ Katjka snorted. ‘In fact, if you want to get technical, they’re not folk at all.’
Katjka spoke, slowly. ‘She’s yours, this girl?’
‘No,’ I said hastily, ‘nothing like that. She works for me, that’s all – I feel responsible for her – for this –’
‘Well? demanded Jyp, but he was talking to Katjka, not me.
She shrugged, and from somewhere she produced what looked like a small oblong book and laid it down on the table; then she took my hand, and laid it palm-downwards on top. It felt warm, as if it had been next to her skin, and I realized it was a pack of cards. After a moment she released my hand, shuffled the cards and with flicking fingers began to deal them out on the table between us. They pattered stiffly down in neat overlapping rows, and when she had finished she motioned to me to turn one over, and then another. A little impatiently I turned over two at random; a girl I knew once had told fortunes with Tarot, a pretty tiresome girl, and I was expecting to see the same again. But these were ordinary playing cards – or not, for I had never seen anything like them. I had drawn the knave of diamonds first, and the double figure sneered up at me, swarthy, moustachioed like an Elizabethan brigand, with such malice in its glittering eyes that they shone and sparkled with the cold fire of real diamonds. Hastily I turned it back, and looked at the other; but it was the ace of hearts, and in the trembling light it seemed to swell and pulse, bright liquid red.