Nightingale`s lament

Five - The Singer, Not the Song

I must be getting old. I don't take beatings as well as I used to. By the time I got out of the Cavendishes' building, my legs were barely holding me up, and a cold sweat was breaking out all over my face. Every breath hurt like someone had stabbed me, and a rolling blackness was moving in and out at the edges of my vision. There was fresh blood in my mouth. Never a good sign. I still kept moving, forcing myself on through sheer effort of will. I needed to be sure I was far enough away from the Cavendishes that they couldn't send the building's defence spells after me. And even when I was sure, I kept going, though I was having to stamp my feet down hard to feel the pave­ment beneath me. I might look a sight, with my

swollen face and blood-stained trench coat, but I couldn't afford to appear weak and vulnerable. Not in the Nightside. There are always vultures hovering, ready to drop on anything that looked like prey. So, stare straight ahead and walk like you've got a pur­pose. I caught a glimpse of myself, reflected in a win­dow, and winced. I looked almost as bad as I felt. I had to get off the streets.

I needed healing and general repairs, and time out to get my strength back. But I was a long way from home, and I couldn't go to any of my usual haunts. Walker would have his people staking them all out by now. Even the ones he wasn't supposed to know about. And if I called any of my friends or allies, you could bet Walker would have someone listening in. The man was nothing if not thorough.

Well, when you can't go to a friend, go to an enemy.

I dragged my battered, aching body down the street, glaring at everyone to keep them from bumping into me, and finally reached a public phone booth. I hauled myself inside and leaned heavily against the side wall. It felt so good to be able to rest for a moment that I briefly forgot why I'd come in there, but I made my­self pick up the phone. The dial tone was loud and re­assuring. There tends to be very little vandalism of public phone booths in the Nightside. The booths de­fend themselves, and have been known to eat people who venture inside for reasons other than making a call.

I didn't know Pew's current number. He's always on the move. But he always makes sure to leave cards in phone booths so that people can find him in an emergency. I peered blearily at the familiar card

(bright white with an embossed bloodred crucifix) and stabbed out the numbers with an unsteady hand. I was pretty much blind in one eye by then, and my hands felt worryingly numb. I relaxed a little as I heard the number ringing. I studied the other cards plastered across the glass wall in front of me. The usual mixture - charms and potions and spells, love goddesses available by the hour, transformations and inversions, and how to do horrible things to a goat for fun and profit.

Someone picked up the phone at the other end and said, "This had better be important."

"Hello, Pew," I said, trying hard to sound natural through my puffed-up mouth. "It's John Taylor."

"What the hell are you doing, calling me?"

"I'm hurt. I need help."

"Things must really be bad if I'm your best bet. Why me, Taylor?"

"Because you're always saying you're God's ser­vant. You're supposed to help people in trouble."

"People. Not abominations like you! None of us in the Nightside will be safe until you're dead and buried in unconsecrated ground. Give me one good reason why I should put myself out for you, Taylor."

"Well, if charity won't do it, Pew, how about this? In my current weakened state, I am vulnerable to all kinds of attack, including possession. You really want to face something from the Pit in my body, with my gift?"

"That's a low blow, damn you," said Pew. I could practically hear him thinking it over. "All right, I'll send you a door. If only because I'll never really be sure you're dead unless I've finished you off myself."

The phone went dead, and I put it down. There's no-one closer, outside of family and friends, than an old enemy.

I turned around, slowly and painfully, pushed the booth door open and looked outside. A door was standing right in front of me, in the middle of the pavement. Just a door, standing alone, old and battered with the paint peeling off in long strips, and a rough gap show­ing bare wood where the number had once been. Prob­ably stolen. Pew lived by choice in the rougher neighbourhoods, where he felt his preaching was most needed. I left the phone booth and headed for the door with the last of my strength. Luckily everyone else was giving it plenty of room, probably because it was so obviously downmarket as to be beneath their notice. I hit the door with my shoulder, and it swung open be­fore me, revealing only darkness. I lurched forward, and immediately I was in Pew's parlour. The door slammed shut behind me.

I headed for the bare table in front of me and leaned gratefully on it as I got my breath back. After a while, I looked around me. There was no sign of Pew, but his parlour seemed very simple and neat. One table, bare wood, unpolished. Two chairs, bare wood, straight-backed. Scuffed lino on the floor, damp-stained wall­paper, and one window smeared over with soap to stop people looking in. The window provided the only illu­mination. Pew took his vows of poverty and simplicity very seriously. One wall was covered with shelves, holding his various stock in trade. Just useful little items, available for a very reasonable price, to help keep you alive in a dangerous place.

The door at the far end of the parlour slammed open, and Pew stood there, his great head tilted in my general direction. Pew - rogue vicar, Christian terror­ist, God's holy warrior.

"Do no harm here, abomination! This is the Lord's place! I bind you in his word, to bring no evil here!"

"Relax, Pew," I said. "I'm on my own. And I'm so weak right now, I couldn't beat up a kitten. Truce?"

Pew sniffed loudly. "Truce, hellspawn."

"Great. Now do you mind if I sit down? I'm drip­ping blood all over your floor."

"Sit, sit! And try to keep it off the table. I have to eat off that."

I sat down heavily and let out a loud, wounded sigh. Pew shuffled forward, his white cane probing ahead of him. He wore a simple vicar's outfit under a shabby and much-mended grey cloak. His dog collar was pris­tine white, and the grey blindfold covering his dead eyes was equally immaculate. He had a large head with a noble brow, a lion's mane of grey hair, a deter­mined jaw, and a mouth that looked like it never did anything so frivolous as smile. His shoulders were broad, though he always looked like he was several meals short. He found the other chair and arranged himself comfortably at the opposite end of the table. He leaned his cane against the table leg so he could find it easily, and sniffed loudly.

"I can smell your pain, boy. How badly are you in­jured?"

"Feels pretty bad," I said. My voice sounded tired, even to me. "I'm hoping it's mostly superficial, but my

ribs are holding out for a second opinion, and my head keeps going fuzzy round the edges. I took a real beat­ing, Pew, and I'm not as young as I once was."

"Few of us are, boy." Pew got to his feet and moved unerringly towards the shelves that held his stock. Pew might be blind, but he didn't let it slow him down. He pottered back and forth along the wall, running his hands over the various objects, searching for some­thing. I just hoped it wasn't a knife. Or a scalpel. I could hear him muttering under his breath.

"Wolfsbane, crows' feet, holy water, mandrake root, silver knives, silver bullets, wooden stakes . . . could have sworn I still had some garlic . . . dowsing rods, pickled penis, dowsing rod made from a pickled penis, miller medallions . . . Ah!"

Pew turned back to me, triumphantly holding up a small bottle of pale blue liquid. And then he stopped, his mouth twisted, and his other hand fell to the rosary of human fingerbones hanging from his belt. "How has it come to this? You, alone and helpless in my home, in my power ... I should kill you, damnation's child. Bane of all the chosen . . ."

"I didn't get to choose my parents," I said. "And everyone said my father was a good man, in his day."

"Oh, he was," Pew said unexpectedly. "Never worked with him myself, but I've heard the stories."

"Did you ever meet my mother?"

"No," said Pew. "But I have seen the auguries taken shortly after your birth. I wasn't always blind, boy. I gave up my eyes in return for knowledge, and much good it's done me. You will be the death of us all, John. But my foolish conscience won't let me kill you in cold blood. Not when you come of your own free will, begging my help. It wouldn't be ... honourable."

He shook his great head slowly, came forward, and stopped just short of the table. He placed the phial of blue liquid on the table before me. I considered it, as he shuffled back to his chair. There was no identifying label on the phial, nothing to tell whether it was a cure or a poison or something else entirely. Pew collected all kinds of things on his travels.

"Hard times are coming," he said suddenly, as he sat down again. "The Nightside is very old, but it is not forever."

"You've been saying that for years, Pew."

"And it's still true! I know things. I See more with­out my eyes than I ever did with them. But the further ahead I look, the more unclear things become. By sav­ing you here today, I could be damning every other soul in the Nightside."

"No-one's that important," I said. "And especially not me. What's in the phial, Pew?"

He snorted. "Something that will taste quite ap­palling, but should heal all your injuries. Knock it back in one, and you can have a nice sweetie after­wards. But magic has its price, John, it always does. Drink that, and you'll sleep for twenty-four hours. And when you wake up, all your injuries will be gone, but you'll be a month older. The price you pay for such ac­celerated healing will be a life one month shorter than it would otherwise have been. Are you ready to give that up, just to get well in a hurry?"

"I have to," I said. "I'm in the middle of a case, and I think someone needs my help now, rather than later. And who knows, maybe I'll find a way to get the lost month back again. Stranger things have happened, in the Nightside." I paused and looked at Pew. "You didn't have to help me. Thank you."

"Having a conscience can be a real bastard some­times," said Pew solemnly.

I unscrewed the rusted metal cap on the phial and sniffed the thick blue liquid within. It smelled of violets, a sweet smell to cover something fouler. I tossed down the oily liquid in one and just had time to react to the truly awful taste before everything went black. I woke up lying on my back on the table. My first feel­ing was relief. Although I'd tried hard to sound confi­dent, there was a real chance Pew might have decided to finish me off while he had the chance. He'd tried often enough in the past. I sat up slowly. I felt stiff, but there was no pain anywhere. Pew had taken off my trench coat and folded it up to make a pillow for my head. I swung my legs down over the side of the table and stretched slowly. I felt good. I felt fine. No pain, no fever, and even the taste of blood was gone from my mouth. I put my hand to my face and was startled to encounter a beard. A month of my life had flown by while I slept... I got to my feet, went over to the wall shelves, and scrabbled among Pew's stock until I came up with a hand mirror. My reflection was a surprise, if not a shock. I had a heavy ragged beard, already show­ing touches of grey, and my hair was long and strag­gling. I looked . . . wild, uncivilised, intimidating. I didn't like the new look. I didn't like to think I could look like that. Like someone Pew would have a right to hunt down and kill.

"Vanity, vanity," said Pew, entering the room. "I knew that would be the first thing you'd do. Put the mirror back. They're very expensive."

I held on to it. "I look a mess!"

"You just be grateful I remembered to dust you once in a while."

"Have you got a razor, Pew? This beard has to go. It's got grey in it. It makes me look my age, and I can't have that."

Pew grinned nastily. "I have a straight razor. Want me to shave you?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I don't trust anyone that close to my throat with a sharp blade."

He chuckled and handed me a pearl-handled straight razor. One dry shave later, with the help of the hand mirror, and I looked like myself again. It wasn't a very good or even a very close shave, but I got tired of nicking myself. I handed back the razor, then did a few stretches and knee bends. I felt fit to take on the world again. Pew sat on his chair like a statue, ignor­ing me.

"Once you leave here," he said suddenly, "you're fair game again."

"Of course, Pew. You wouldn't want people to think you were getting soft."

"I will kill you one day, boy. The mark of the beast is upon your brow. I can See it."

"You know," I said thoughtfully, changing the subect, "I could use one last piece of help . . ."

"God save us all, haven't I done enough? Out, out, before you ruin my reputation completely!"

"I need a disguise," I said firmly, not moving. "I have to get back on my case, and I can't afford to be

recognised. Come on, you must have something sim­ple and temporary you can let me have . . ."

Pew sniffed resignedly. "Let this be a lesson to me. Never help the stranger upon his way, because he'll only take advantage, the bastard. Where is it you have to go next?"

"A nightclub called Caliban's Cavern."

"I know it. A den of iniquity, and the bar prices are an outrage. I'd better make you a Goth. There are so many of the grubby little heathens around that place, one more shouldn't be noticed. I'll put a seeming on you, a simple overlay illusion. It won't last more than a couple of hours, and it certainly won't fool anyone with the Sight. . ." He was pottering along the shelves again, picking things up and putting them down until finally he came up with an Australian pointing bone. He jabbed it twice in my direction, said something short and aboriginal, and put the bone back on the shelf again.

"Is that it?" I said.

Pew shrugged. "Well, you can have all the chanting and gesturing if you want, but I usually save that for the paying customers. It's really nothing more than window dressing. When you get right down to it, magic's never anything more than power and intent, no matter what the source. Look in the mirror."

I did so, and again someone else looked back at me. My face was entirely hidden under a series of swirling black tattoos, thick interlocking lines that made up a series of designs of ancient Maori origin. Along with the shaggy hair, the new look made me completely un­recognisable.

"You'll need another coat, too," said Pew. "Your trench coat's a mess." He held up a battered black leather jacket with God Give Me Strength spelled out on the back with steel studs. "You can have this in­stead."

I tried on the jacket. It was a bit on the large side, but where I was going they wouldn't care. I made my good-byes to Pew, and the parlour door opened before me, revealing a familiar blackness. I walked into the dark, and immediately I was back in Uptown again, only a few minutes' walk from Caliban's Cavern. I heard the door close firmly behind me and knew it would be gone before I could turn to look. I smiled. Pew probably thought he'd put one over on me, by keeping my trench coat. A personal possession like that, liberally stained with my own blood, would make a marvelous targeting device for all kinds of magic. Certainly Pew could use it to send all kinds of nastiness my way. Which was why I'd taken out a little in­surance long ago, in the form of a built-in destructive spell for the trench coat. Once I was more than an agreed distance away, the coat would automatically go up in flames. As Pew should be finding out, right about now.

Of course, I'd been careful to transfer all my useful items from the coat to my nice new jacket before I left.

Pew was good, but I was better.

By the time I got back to Caliban's Cavern, the queue was already forming for Rossignol's next set. I'd never seen so many Goths in one place. All dark clothes and brooding faces, like a gathering of small thunder­clouds. They were all talking nineteen to the dozen, filling the night with a clamour of anticipation and im­patience. Every now and again someone would start chanting Rossignol's name, and a dozen others would take it up until it died away naturally.

Ticket touts swaggered up and down beside the queue, fighting each other to be the first to target latecomers, offering scalped tickets at outrageous prices. There was no shortage of takers. The growing crowd wasn't just Goths. There were a number of celebrities, complete with their own entourages and hangers-on. You could always recognise celebrities from the way their heads swivelled restlessly back and forth, on the lookout for photographers. After all, what was the point of being somewhere fashionable if you weren't seen being there?

The queue stretched all the way down the block, but I didn't let that bother me. I just walked to the very front and took up a position there like I had every right to be there. Nobody bothered me. You'd be amazed what you can get away with if you just exude confi­dence and glare ferociously at anyone who even looks like questioning your presence. One of the ticket touts was rude enough to make sneering comments about my tattoos, though, so I deliberately bumped into him and pickpocketed one of his best tickets. I like to think of myself sometimes as a karma mechanic.

Caliban's Cavern finally opened its doors, and the queue surged forward. The Cavendishes had hired a major security franchise, Hell's Neanderthals, to man the door and police the crowd, but even they were hav­ing trouble handling the pressure of so many deter­mined Rossignol fans. They pressed constantly forward, shouting and jostling, and the security Neanderthals quickly realised that this was the kind of crowd that could turn into an angry mob if its progress was thwarted. They were there to see Rossignol, and no-one was going to get in their way. So, the Hell's Neanderthals settled for grabbing tickets and waving people through. I would have given them strict orders to frisk everyone for weapons and the like, but it was clear any attempt to slow the fans down now would have risked provoking a riot. The fans were close to their goal, their heroine, and they were hungry.

Inside the club, all the tables and chairs had been taken out to make one great open space before the raised stage at the far end of the room. The crowd poured into it, gabbling excitedly, and quickly filled all the space available, packing the club from wall to wall. I was swept along and finally ended up right in front of the stage, with elbows digging into my sides, and someone's hot breath panting excitedly on the back of my neck. The club was already overpoweringly hot and sweaty, and I looked longingly across at the bar, with its extra staff, but it would have taken me ages to fight my way through the tightly packed crowd. No-one else seemed interested in the bar. All the crowd cared about was Rossignol. Their diva of the dark.

There were far too many people in the club, packed in like cattle in their stalls. It didn't surprise me. The Cavendishes hadn't struck me as the type to care about things like safety regulations and keeping fire exits clear. Not when there was serious money to be made.

Set off by a single bright spotlight, a huge stylised black bird (presumably someone's idea of a nightingale) covered most of the wall behind the stage. It looked threatening, wild, ominous. Looking around, I could see the design everywhere on the fans, on T-shirts, jackets, tattoos, and silver totems hanging on silver chains. I could also see the celebrities jammed in the crowd like everyone else, their hangers-on strug­gling to form protective circles around them. There were no real movers or shakers, but I could see famous faces here and there. Sebastian Stargrave, the Frac­tured Protagonist; Deliverance Wilde, fashion consul­tant to the Faerie; and Sandra Chance, the Consulting Necromancer. Also very much in evidence were the supergroup Nazgul, currently on a comeback tour of the Nightside with their new vocalist. They looked just as freaked and excited as everyone else.

And yet, for all the excitement and passion in the air, the overall mood felt decidedly unhealthy. It was the wrong kind of anticipation, like the hunger of animals waiting for feeding time. The hot and sweaty air had the unwholesome feel of a crowd gathered at a car wreck, waiting for the injured to be brought out. These people weren't just here to hear someone sing - this was a gathering throbbing with erotic Thanatos. The mood was magic. Dark, reverent magic, from all the wrong places of the heart.

The crowd was actually quietening down, the chanting dying out, as the anticipation mounted. Even I wasn't immune to it. Something was going to hap­pen, and we could all feel it. Something big, some­thing far out of the ordinary, and we all wanted it. We needed it. And whether what was coming would be good or bad didn't matter a damn. We were a congre­gation, celebrating our goddess. The crowd fell utterly silent, all our eyes fixed on the stage, empty save for the waiting instruments and microphone stands. Wait­ing, waiting, and now we were all breathing in unison, like one great hungry creature, like lemmings drawn to a cliff edge by something they couldn't name.

Rossignol's band came running onto the stage, smiling and waving, and the crowd went wild, waving and cheering and stamping their feet. The band took up the instruments waiting for them and started playing. No introductions, no warm-up, just straight in. Ian Auger, the cheerful hunchbacked roadie, played the drums. And the bass and the piano. There were three of him. I felt he might have mentioned it earlier. Next a quartet of backing singers came bounding onstage, wearing old-fashioned can-can outfits, with teased high hairstyles, beautiful and glamorous, with bright red lips and flashing eyes. They joined right in, belting out perfect harmonies to complement the music, stamping their feet and flashing their frills, singing up a storm. And then Rossignol came on, and the massed baying of the crowd briefly drowned out the music. She wore a chic little black number, with long black evening gloves that made her pale skin look even more funereal. Her mouth was dark, and so were her eyes, so that she seemed like some old black-and-white photo­graph. Her feet were bare, the toenails painted mid­night black.

She grabbed hold of the mike stand at the front of the stage with both hands and clung to it like it was the only thing holding her up. As the show progressed, she rarely let go of it, except to light a new cigarette. She stood where she was, her mouth pressed close to the mike like a lover, swaying from side to side. She had a cigarette in one corner of her dark mouth when she came on, and she chain-smoked in between and sometimes during her songs.

The songs she sang were all her own material; "Blessed Losers," "All the Pretty People," and "Black Roses." They had good strong tunes, played well and sung with professional class, but none of that mattered. It was her voice, her glorious suffering voice that cut at the audience like a knife. She sang of lost loves and last chances, of small lives in small rooms, of dreams betrayed and corrupted, and she sang it all with utter conviction, singing like she'd been there, like she'd known all the pain there ever was, all the darknesses of the human heart, of hope valued all the more because she knew it wasn't real, that it wouldn't help; and all the loss and heartbreak there ever was filled her voice and gave it dominion over all who heard it.

There were tears on many faces, including my own. Rossignol had got to me, too. I'd never heard, never felt, anything like her songs, her voice. In the Nightside it's always three o'clock in the morning, the long dark hour of the soul - but only Rossignol could put it into words.

And yet, despite all I was feeling, or was being made to feel, I never entirely lost control. Perhaps be­cause I'm more used than most to the dark, or simply because I had a job to do. I tore my eyes away from Rossignol, reached inside my jacket pocket, and pulled out a miller medallion. It was designed to glow brightly in the presence of magical influence, but when I held it up to face Rossignol, there wasn't even a glimmer of a glow. So Rossignol hadn't been en­chanted or possessed or even magically enhanced.

Whatever she was doing, it came straight from her, and from her voice.

The audience was utterly engrossed, still and rapt and silent, drinking their diva in with eyes and ears, immersing themselves in emotions so sharp and melancholy and compelling that they were helpless to do anything but stand there and soak it up. It was all they could do to come out of it to applaud her in between songs. The three Ian Augers and the quartet of backing singers were looking tired and drawn, faces wet with sweat as they struggled to keep up with Rossignol, but the crowd only had eyes for her. She hung on to her microphone stand as though it was a lifeline, smoking one cigarette after another, blasting out one song after another, as though it was all she lived to do.

And then, as she paused at the end of one song to light up another cigarette, a man not far from me pressed right up against the edge of the stage, a man who'd been staring adoringly at Rossignol from the moment she first appeared, smiled at her with tears still wet on his cheeks and drew a gun. I could see it happening, but I was too far away to stop it. All I could do was watch as the man put the gun to his head and blew his brains out. All over Rossignol's bare feet.

At the sound of the gun, the Ian Augers looked up sharply from their instruments. The backing singers huddled together, eyes and mouths stretched wide. Rossignol stared blankly down at the dead man. He was still standing there, because the press of the crowd wouldn't allow him to fall, even though half his head was missing. And in the echoing silence, the crowd slowly came back to themselves. As though

they'd been shocked awake from a deep dark dream where they'd all been drifting towards . . . something. I knew, because I'd been feeling it too. Part of me recognised it.

Then the crowd went crazy. Screaming and shout­ing and roaring in what might have been shock or out­rage, they all surged determinedly forward. They wanted, they needed, to get to the stage, get to her. They fought each other with hands and elbows, snap­ping like animals. People were crushed, dragged down and trampled underfoot. Those nearest the dead man at the front tore him apart, literally limb from limb, scat­tering the bloody body parts among them like sacrifi­cial offerings. There was an awful feeling of... celebration in the crowd. As though this was what they'd all been waiting for, even if they didn't know themselves.

I'd already vaulted up onto the stage and out of the way. Rossignol snapped out of her horrified daze, turned, and ran from the stage. The crowd saw her dis­appear and howled their rage and disapproval. They started to scramble up onto the stage. The backing singers ran forward to the edge of the stage and kicked viciously at people trying to pull themselves up. The three Ian Augers came forward and reinforced the singers with large, bony fists. But they were so few, and the crowd was so large, and so determined. Hell's Neanderthals waded into the crowd from the rear, slap­ping people down and throwing them in the direction of the exit, whether they wanted to go or not. I started after Rossignol. One of the Ian Augers reached out to grab me, but I've had a lot of practice at dodging unfriendly hands. I headed backstage, just as the first wave of the crowd boiled up over the edge.

Backstage, no-one tried to stop me. Everyone there had their own problems, and once again as long as I moved confidently and like I had a purpose and a right to be there, no-one even looked at me. I saw the two combat magicians coming and ducked through a side door for a moment. They hurried past, dark sparks al­ready sputtering around their fists as they prepared themselves for some magical mayhem. They should be able to hold off the crowd, assuming Stargrave and Chance didn't get involved. If they did, there could be some serious unpleasantness. I waited until I was sure the combat magicians were gone, then headed for Rossignol's dressing room.

She was sitting there alone, again, with her back to the mirror this time. Her eyes were wild, unfocussed, as she struggled to cope with what had just happened. She was trying to scrub the blood and gore off her bare feet with a hand towel. And yet, for all her obvious dis­tress, it seemed to me that this was the most alive I'd ever seen her. She looked up sharply as I came in and shut the door behind me.

"Get out! Get out of here!"

"It's all right, Ross," I said quickly. "I'm not a fan." I concentrated and shrugged off the seeming Pew had placed on me. It was only a small magic, after all. Rossignol recognised me as the tattoos disappeared from my face, and she slumped tiredly.

"Thank God. I could use a friendly face."

She suddenly started to tremble, her whole body shuddering, as the shock caught up with her. I took off my leather jacket and wrapped it gently round her shoulders. She grabbed my hands, squeezing them hard as though to draw some of my strength and warmth into her, then suddenly she was in my arms, holding me like a drowning woman, her tear-stained face pressed against my chest. I held her and com­forted her as best I could. We all need a little simple human comfort, now and again. Finally, she let go, and I did, too. I knelt, picked up the hand towel, and cleaned the last of the blood off her feet to give her a moment to compose herself. By the time I'd finished and was looking around for somewhere to dump the towel, she seemed to have calmed down a little.

I straightened up, sat on the dressing room table, and dropped the towel beside me. "Has anything like this ever happened to you before, Ross?"

"No. Never. I mean, there have been rumours, but... no. Never right in front of me."

"Did you recognise the guy?"

"No! Never saw him before in my life! I don't mix with my . . . audience. The Cavendishes insist on that. Part of building the image, the mystique, they said. I never really believed the rumours ... I thought it was just publicity, stories the Cavendishes put about to work up some excitement. I never dreamed . . ."

"As if we would ever do such a thing, dear Rossig­nol," said a cold, familiar voice behind me. I got to my feet and looked round, and there in the dressing room doorway were Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish. Tall and aris­tocratic, and twice as arrogant. They glided in like two dark birds of ill omen, ignoring their property Rossig­nol to consider me with a cold, thoughtful gaze.

"You do seem in very rude health, Mr. Taylor," said the man. "Does he not, Mrs. Cavendish?"

"Indeed he does, Mr. Cavendish. Quite the picture of good health."

"Perhaps some of the stories about you are true after all, Mr. Taylor."

I just smiled and said nothing. Let them wonder. It all added to the reputation.

"We did think you'd learned your lesson, Mr. Tay­lor," said the woman.

"Afraid not," I said. "I'm a very slow learner."

"Then we shall just have to try harder," said the man. "Won't we, Mrs. Cavendish?"

Rossignol was looking back and forth, confused. "You know each other?"

"Of course," said the man. "Everyone in the Nightside comes to us, eventually. Do not concern yourself, my dear. And most of all, do not worry yourself about the un­fortunate incident during the show. Mrs. Cavendish and I will take care of everything. You must allow us to worry for you. That is what you pay us our forty percent for."

"How much?" I said, honestly outraged.

"Our hard-won expertise does not come cheaply, Mr. Taylor," said the woman. "Not that it is any of your business. Isn't that correct, dear Rossignol?"

She seemed to shrink under their gaze, and she looked down at the floor like a scolded child. "Yes," she said, in a small voice. "That's right."

"What's happening out in the club?" I said.

"The club is being cleared," said the man. "It is a shame that the show had to be cut short, but we did make it clear on the tickets that there would be no re­funds, under any circumstances."

"I am sure they will be back again, for the next show," said the woman. "Everyone is so desperate to hear dear Rossignol sing."

"You expect her to go on again, after what just hap­pened?" I said.

"Of course," said the man. "The show must go on. And our dear Rossignol only lives to sing. Isn't that right, dear child?"

"Yes," said Rossignol, still staring at the floor. "I live to sing."

"People are dying!" I said loudly, trying to get a re­action from her. "Not just here, not just right now. This is only the most recent suicide, and the most public. People are taking their own lives because of what they hear when Rossignol sings!"

"Rumour," said the woman. "Speculation. Nothing more than tittle-tattle."

"And there will always be fanatics," said the man. "Poor deranged souls who fly too close to the flame that attracts them. You are not to concern yourself, dear Rossignol. The club will be cleared soon, and all will be made ready for your next performance. We will have extra security in place and take all the proper pre­cautions to ensure your safety. Leave everything to us."

"Yes," said Rossignol. Her voice was heavy now, al­most half-asleep. Just the presence of the Cavendishes had reduced her to the same dull state in which I'd first found her. There was no point in talking to her any more. So I shrugged mentally and took my jacket back from around her shoulders. She didn't react. I put it on, and the Cavendishes stepped back to make room for me to leave. I headed for the door like it was my decision, and the Cavendishes glided smoothly aside to let me pass. I was almost out of the room when Rossignol's voice stopped me. I looked back. She had her head up again, and her voice was quiet but determined.

"John, find out what's happening. I need to know the truth. Do this for me. Please."

"Sure," I said. "Saving damsels in distress is what I do."