‘He’d better not,’ said Jyp between clenched teeth. Fynn sat silently, head lowered but glaring at us. There was something about him, the snarling curl of his lip, the way the hair grew back from the low widow’s peak on that sloping brow – the colour of that hair. I began to feel less than well. It wasn’t so long ago I’d seen that odd yellowish shade.
The water was bubbling in earnest now. The Stryge, with Fynn scrabbling at his back, came and seated himself cross-legged on the far side. He muttered and gestured over it as it seethed and spattered, slopping over the side into the fire. Wisps of steam drifted across its dark surface, like mist on the night sea. For a long time, still muttering, he stared into it, squinting from various angles. Then he picked up a shaving of wood, and tossing the calendar aside he laid the shaving lightly on the surface of the water. We all leaned forward to watch as it bobbed there, aimlessly at first. Then, abruptly, it changed direction, glided slow and straight to the edge and sat there quivering. Jyp sucked in his breath sharply. ‘So that’s their heading, eh? By south-south-west, a quarter … Why, that’ll be –’
‘The Caribees,’ said the Stryge quietly. ‘West Indies, most likely. Knew I didn’t like the smell. First that dupiah, now this … Ach.’
‘But why?’ I demanded. Fynn giggled, but the Stryge silenced him with a raised hand.
‘Fair question. Because their main plan failed, that’s why. Smuggling that deadly thing in, for some purpose or other. So they came after you.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘Simple. You brought it upon yourself. Poking after them with your sendings like that. Your spells.’
‘My –?’
‘They must’ve been on the look-out already. They’ve their own ways of looking, just as you have.’
‘You mean the computer? But there’s nothing magical about that.’
The old man cackled suddenly, as if at some private joke. ‘Anything you say, mon enfant. Your sendings came too close, and they traced them back. Just warned you off at first; but you would persist. Then they took a closer look. Decided they wanted you.’
‘Yes, but why?’
The Stryge shrugged. ‘How should I know? I would not want you in a gift, but have I the brain of a Wolf? Perhaps your sendings made them think you to blame for the plan’s failure, and to excuse themselves they would take you back to whoever is behind it. When they lost you, they went for the next best.’ The thin lips curled contemptuously. ‘They’d checked on that, too. The person you care for most in the world – and who cares most for you.’
I stared, and only just stopped myself braying with laughter, telling him he was daft. He had to be. The whole idea was daft, utterly bloody insane. Serve me right for taking an old wino seriously. Clare? What had she meant to me, till all this blew up? Not that much. A secretary I’d have been sorry to lose – okay, a little more than that, a friend, a welcome spot of human warmth in the business day. But I’d lots of friends, hadn’t I? More than most people, maybe, since part of my job was maintaining contacts. Colleagues, regular clients, and in my spare time the regulars at Nero’s and Dirty Dick’s, the crew down at the squash courts, the one’s I’d gone rock-climbing and hang-gliding with at intervals – hell, half the Liberal Club, the half that went there because it was a nice old-fashioned place to drink. Good company, all of them – not the sort of friends you’d spew out your troubles to, maybe, but then that was what made them good company. You didn’t humbug them, they didn’t humbug you – one of Dave’s handy West African expressions. And after all, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have the other sort of friends. I’d got on fine with my parents while they were alive, still did with my uncle and various aunts; though admittedly we’d lost touch a little, living so far apart. That was the trouble with my college friends, too, scattered all over the globe; how long since I’d heard from Neville? Come to that, how long since I’d seen Mike? He wasn’t that far away.
A scrabbling unease was undermining my annoyance. But it was still ridiculous. I wasn’t in love with Clare – anything but. I’d been closer, far closer to a good dozen or so girls since I left college – hadn’t I? Never mind the odd pick-ups this last year or two; far closer. About Stephanie, Anne-Marie, two or three of them, I’d been serious, really serious. Begun thinking about marriage even. Not to mention …
My teeth clenched shut. It was stupid; that was the past, wasn’t it? But then it all was. And he was talking about right now. His eyes were mirrors; and mirrors have no mercy. I’d never seen myself like that before. I felt, in memory, the touch of a hand on my arm, a voice concerned, sympathetic, a brief gust of that warm perfume. It wasn’t much; but there wasn’t any more, not from anywhere. I’d seen to that, carefully, systematically, neatly. If she was really the closest I stood to any other human being, then where the hell did that leave me?
I couldn’t answer it. Something was crumbling above my head, and suddenly I couldn’t be sure of anything any more. I’d been thinking about myself – bad enough. But what about Clare? How close had she come? She’d had boyfriends in plenty; what did she feel about me?
If he’d flung the water in my face, and the can and the fire after it, that old swine could hardly have shocked me more. He knew it, too. Those eyes held me while I writhed inside, seeing every scrap of my inner turmoil and relishing it, the way a sadistic child might enjoy a squirming insect impaled on a pin. If Clare was who I cared for most, if she cared the most for me –
‘What – what’re they going to do with her?’ I croaked. Fynn giggled again, and Jyp spat some word at him. Stryge appeared not to notice. He leaned forward, weasel-quick, grabbed my hands in his and brought them down towards the sides of the boiling billy-can. I flinched, but the grip of those arthritic claws, cold and horn-hard, was unbreakable.
‘Do you want to know, or not? You will feel nothing you cannot bear!’
Wide-eyed, helpless, I let my hands be drawn out over the fire, my palms pressed slowly and carefully to the ribbed metal. I gasped involuntarily, but it was nothing like heat I felt; it was more the violent energy of the bubbling water, making the tin vibrate like a drum, like a mass of drums. Throbbing, pounding, a wild insistent rhythm, and above it, in the chatter of the bursting bubbles, in the roaring of the fire beneath, something more – a babble of voices, a chant singing. ‘What is it?’ I gasped. The tin quivered like a living thing under my hands, harder and harder to restrain.
‘It is a rite,’ said the old man darkly. ‘A ceremoniecaille. I recognize it. A mangé – a sacrifice, perhaps to purge their failure in the eyes of their god, perhaps to a blacker end. That I cannot see; darkness hangs around it, a darkness hot and sweltering beneath damp leaves. But for that rite in particular there can be only one fit offering – and that must be a cabrit sans cornes.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘A goat without horns. Such a name.’
But I didn’t need any translations, either literally or what it really meant. I felt my scalp tighten with the horror of it, and I sprang up, tearing away my hands. ‘Then, Christ, what can we do about it? We’ve got to get her out –’
All Stryge did was smirk up at me in the firelight and shrug, and that was the last straw. A fury such as I’d seldom felt or given way to rolled over me like cold lightning, and I felt my hair bristle. ‘Damn you!’ I yelled. ‘There must be something! And you’re going to help me find it here and now – or I’ll wring your scrawny bloody windpipe into nothing!’ Jyp shouted something I was past hearing. ‘By God I will! And I kicked the boiling can at the Stryge.