If you really love her, you will, whispered a little voice, deep inside of him. What she might not accept from you as a gift, she will accept from him as payment. That had been one of his greatest fears; that she would recklessly throw away every parting gift he offered because it came from a tainted source, and escape with very little more than she had arrived with.
He struggled with himself for hours, as he watched her in his mirror, her face reflecting a similar struggle. She had not gone back to her room in the Palace Hotel; instead, she had the taxi-driver drop her at the front entrance, but had changed her mind and begun to walk. She did not go far; stopped by a concerned policeman, she had assured the worried man that she had many troubles on her mind, and simply wished to walk until she had thought them out. He suggested kindly that she simply circle the block so that he could keep an eye on her safety, and with a shy bob of her head, she had agreed to follow his suggestion.
Around and around the block she went; granted, it was a long city block, but she circled it many times in the next few hours, and Cameron held vigil with her while she did so. Down Market, across to Mission, up Mission, and back again; around and around she paced, beneath the bright street lights and the everwatchful eye of the policeman. He expected her to finally tire and return to her room at about three in the morning, but she continued to walk as if she were tireless, or so restless that she could not have stopped if she wanted to. The city was very quiet at that hour and the noise of her footsteps was very nearly the only sound to be heard other than the chiming of clocks in towers all over the city. Four came and went, and still she kept her unchanging orbit.
What is it she is thinking about?
Finally, around five, the sun, behind the Berkeley Hills in the east began to lighten the sky, moving from the grey of false-dawn to the clear blue of another lovely spring day. The street-lights dimmed, then went out. Several carts passed, drawn by horses; the first traffic of the day was beginning. She paused, looked wistfully ahead to the entrance of the hotel and sighed wearily.
The chimes rang out the hour, and she looked at her watch to confirm it. She sighed again, and looked, first eastward towards the dawn, then south—in his direction.
Then she shook her head, and turned back towards the hotel. She had just reached the entrance at about ten minutes after five, and Jason stretched and relaxed a little, seeing the end of his vigil in sight.
All the horses on the street stopped dead in their tracks—and screamed in utter terror. She whirled, staring at them.
He froze, as out in the stable, Sunset and Brownie screamed in tones of identical terror.
Rose had made up her mind to go back to bed for a few fitful hours of sleep before visiting Master Pao. She knew nothing of Simon Beltaire, but he might, and she would trust his judgment. The man had tried to exert some hypnotic magnetism over her last night, of that much she was certain, but it had not lasted once she began to walk. Perhaps he had not counted on that; certainly, had she gone straight to bed, she would still be quite certain of the utter and complete truth of everything he had told her.
Now, she was not at all sure. In fact, given his behavior, and the arrogant way in which he had bullied his way into the theater-box, she was less and less inclined to trust him in any way. After all, the best way to tell a great lie was to salt it liberally with small truths. Just because he had been telling her things she knew were true, it did not follow that everything he told her was true. It did not follow that most of what he told her was true.
And if he knew Jason's problem, and possessed other manuscripts dealing with it, and was the "friend" he pretended to be—
Why didn't he offer help to Jason, rather than coming to me and asking me to be the means for Jason's demise? A very good question!
She had taken perhaps a dozen steps in the direction of the hotel entrance, when suddenly every horse in the street stopped dead, threw up its head, and screamed in mortal terror.
And with that scant warning, the earth rose up in revolt.
A terrible rumbling that made her stomach churn and her knees go to water began in the distance, and as she looked instinctively towards the sound, impossible as it seemed, she actually saw the earthquake approaching.
The whole street was rising, like an ocean wave, and more waves followed behind it. The street billowed as if it was a rug and a housewife was vigorously shaking it. As it billowed, buildings swayed and began to shake apart.
For some reason she herself could not have afterwards explained, she ran into the nearest hotel doorway, which was a small side-entrance that was almost certainly locked to the outside, and reached that spot just as the first wave struck.
She braced herself in the doorway with her hands and legs as the earth began an insane gigue. Around her, up and down Market Street, walls, chimneys, and entire buildings were toppling. Church bells rang with cacophonous fury, as if an enormous child had grasped each tower in its fist and was shaking it. Under the ringing of the bells, the earth roared defiance so deafening that Rose could not even hear herself screaming, although her mouth was open and she felt herself to be howling in fear. The cornices of buildings about her fell to the ground in a deadly hail of masonry; chimneys collapsed with killing force, crashing down into their own buildings or the ones next to them. There were no words for the terror that filled her; anything she had experienced before this was as nothing. There was only mind-numbing fear, and the sound of Judgment Day.
Then, finally, it all stopped.
She took a breath; another. She dared to think that it was over.
It began again.
She honestly thought, as the second quake struck, that she was going to die of fright.
Finally, after an eternity almost as long as the first quake, it was truly over. There were several small pulses, diminishing in strength, then—quiet. A hush as deathly as the roar had been settled over the street.
Then the screaming began.
The quake bucked and kicked like an untamed stallion, but Cameron's home and grounds had been made as safe as Pao's Earth Magick could make them, as Pao's home in China-town had been made as fire-resistant as a Firemaster could guarantee. All over the house, furniture and ornaments crashed to the floor in a paroxysm of destruction, but the house itself remained intact. With the sure instinct of one who had ridden out smaller quakes, Cameron dived beneath his desk, a sturdy piece of furniture that would shelter him if any of the rest of his possessions or parts of the ceiling came crashing down upon him.
The huge mirror flung itself from the wall and hurled itself at the desk just after he dove beneath it, shattering into a thousand splinters. Out in the stable, Sunset and Brownie screamed their terror, but they were safer than he was. There was no furniture in the stable to come hurtling at them.
There was a pause of about ten seconds, then the second quake hit, shaking the house with the fury of a dog killing a rat. If anything, the second quake was worse than the first.
Then, after an interlude of terror too long to be time, it was over.