The beam ended at the top of one of the upright struts. A square of wood a foot or two across. Then there was nothing. Two strides of empty air. Then another square at the top of another dizzying mast, then the plank to the flat roof. Ferro stared at him from the parapet.
“Jump!” she screamed. “Jump, you pink bastard!”
He jumped. He felt the wind around him. His left foot landed on the square of wood, but there was no stopping. His right foot hit the plank. His ankle twisted, his knee buckled. The dizzy world pitched. His left foot came down, half on the wood, half off. The plank rattled. He was in the empty air, limbs flailing. It seemed like a long time.
“Ooof!” The parapet crashed into his chest. His arms clawed with it but there was no breath left in him. He began to slide back, ever so slowly, inch by terrible inch. First he could see the roof, then he could see his hands, then he could see nothing but the stones in front of his face. “Help,” he whispered, but no help came.
It was a long way down, he knew that. A long, long way, and there was no water to fall into this time. Only hard, flat, fatal stone. He heard a rattling. The mask coming across the plank behind him. He heard someone shouting, but none of it mattered much now. He slipped backwards a little further, hands scrabbling at the crumbling mortar. “Help,” he croaked, but there was no one to help him. Only the masks and Ferro, and none of them seemed like the helping kind.
He heard a clunk and a despairing shriek. Ferro kicking the plank, and the mask falling. The scream fell away, it felt like for a long time, then it was cut off in a distant thud. The mask’s body smashing to pulp against the ground, far below, and Logen knew he was about to join him. You have to be realistic about these things. There would be no washing up on a river bank this time. His fingertips were slipping, slowly, the mortar was starting to come apart. The fighting, the running, the climb, they had all sucked the strength out of him, and now there was nothing left. He wondered what sound he would make as he plunged through the air. “Help,” he mouthed.
And strong fingers closed around his wrist. Dark, dirty fingers. He heard growling, felt his arm being pulled, hard. He groaned. The edge of the parapet came back into view. He saw Ferro now, teeth gritted, eyes squeezed almost shut with effort, veins standing out from her neck, scar livid against her dark face. He clutched at the parapet with his other hand, his chest came up beyond it, he managed to force his knee over.
She hauled him the rest of the way, and he rolled and flopped on his back on the other side, gasping like a landed fish, staring up at the white sky. “I am still alive,” he muttered to himself after a moment, hardly able to believe it. It wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise if Ferro had trodden on his hands and helped him fall.
Her face appeared above him, yellow eyes staring down, teeth bared in a snarl. “You stupid, heavy pink bastard!”
She turned away, shaking her head, stalked to a wall and started climbing, hauling herself up fast towards a low-pitched roof above. Logen winced as he watched her. Did she never get tired? His arms were battered, bruised, scratched all over. His legs ached, his nose had started bleeding again. Everything hurt. He turned and looked down. One mask was staring at him from the edge of the benches, twenty strides away. A few more were scurrying around below, looking for some way up. Far below, in the yellow circle of grass, he could see a thin black figure with red hair, pointing around, then up at him, giving orders.
Sooner or later they would find a way up. Ferro was perched on the peak of the roof above him, a ragged dark shape against the bright sky. “Stay there if you want,” she barked, then turned and disappeared. Logen groaned as he stood up, groaned as he shuffled to the wall, sighed as he began to search for a handhold.
“Where is everyone?” demanded Brother Longfoot. “Where is my illustrious employer? Where is Master Ninefingers? Where is the charming lady, Maljinn?”
Jezal looked around. The sickly apprentice was sunk too deep in self-centred gloom to answer. “I don’t know about the other two, but Bayaz is in the bath.”
“I swear, I never came upon a man more attached to bathing than he. I hope the others will not be long. All is prepared, you know! The ship is ready. The stores are loaded. It is not my way to delay. Indeed it is not! We must catch the tide, or be stuck here until—” The little man paused, staring up at Jezal with a sudden concern. “You seem upset, my young friend. Troubled, indeed. Can I, Brother Longfoot, be of any assistance?”
Jezal had half a mind to tell him to mind his own business, but he settled for an irritated, “No, no.”
“I’d wager that there is a woman involved. Would I be right?” Jezal looked up sharply, wondering how the man could have guessed. “Your wife, perhaps?”
“No! I’m not married! It’s nothing like that. It’s er, well,” he fumbled for the words to describe it, and failed. “It’s nothing like that is all!”
“Ah,” said the Navigator, with a knowing grin. “Ah, a forbidden love then, a secret love is it?” Much to his annoyance, Jezal found that he was blushing. “I am right, I see it! There is no fruit so sweet as the one you cannot taste, eh, my young friend? Eh? Eh?” He waggled his eyebrows in what Jezal felt was a most unsavoury fashion.
“I wonder what’s keeping those two?” Jezal didn’t care in the least, but anything to change the subject.
“Maljinn, and Ninefingers? Hah,” laughed Longfoot, leaning towards him. “Perhaps they’ve become involved, eh, in a secret love like yours? Perhaps they’ve crept off somewhere, to do what comes naturally!” He nudged Jezal in the ribs. “Can you imagine, those two? That’d be something wouldn’t it? Hah!”
Jezal grimaced. The hideous Northman he already knew for an animal, and from what little he’d seen of that evil woman she might well be worse. All he could imagine coming naturally to them was violence. The idea was perfectly revolting. He felt soiled just thinking about it.
The roofs seemed to go on forever. Up one, down another. Creeping along the peaks, one slippery foot on either side, edging across ledges, stepping over crumbling bits of wall. Sometimes Logen would look up for a moment, get a dizzying view across the tumbling mass of damp slates, pitted tiles, ancient lead, to the distant wall of the Agriont, sometimes even the city far beyond. It might almost have been peaceful if it wasn’t for Ferro, fast-moving, sure-footed, cursing at him and pulling him on, giving him no time to think about the view, or the nerve-wracking drops they skirted, or the black figures, surely still seeking for them below.
One of her sleeves had been torn half off some time in the fighting, flapping around her wrist, getting in the way as they climbed. She snarled and ripped it away at the shoulder. Logen smiled to himself as he recalled the efforts Bayaz had gone to in getting her to change her old stinking rags for new clothes. Now she was filthier than ever, shirt sweated through, spotted with blood and caked with grime from the roof-tops. She looked over her shoulder and saw him watching her. “Move, pink,” she hissed at him.
“You see no colours, right?” She clambered on, ignoring him, swinging around a smoking chimney and slithering across the dirty slates on her belly, sliding down onto a narrow ledge between two roofs. Logen scrambled down behind her. “No colours at all.”
“So?” she threw over her shoulder.
“So why do you call me pink?”
She looked round. “Are you pink?”
Logen peered at his forearms. Aside from the mottled bruises, red scratches, blue veins, they were sort of pink, it had to be said. He frowned.
“Thought so.” She scurried away between the roofs, right to the end of the building, and peered down. Logen followed her, leaned out gingerly over the edge. A couple of people were moving around in the lane below. Far below, and there was no way down. They’d have to go back the way they came. Ferro had already moved away behind him.