Bale helped himself to some soup. For the love of Mike, it was good! He hadn’t eaten anything at all in twelve hours. He could feel the richness of the broth replenishing his powers – rekindling his depleted energy.
He drank some wine, too and ate a little bread. But the bread proved stale and he was forced to dunk it in the soup to make it palatable. Well. You couldn’t have everything.
‘Are you getting tired, my dear?’ He glanced across at the girl.
She was standing on a three-legged stool in the centre of the room, a breadsack over her head and with her neck infibulated through a noose which Bale had constructed from a cowhide lariat. The stool was just wide enough to give her a fair base on which to stand, but the blow to her head had obviously weakened her and from time to time she swayed awkwardly against the rope, which, within reason, acted as a support for her neck.
‘Why are you doing this? I have nothing you want. I know nothing you want to know.’
Earlier, Bale had thrown open the salon shutters and the front door of the Maset to the night. He had also surrounded the stool with candles and oil lamps, so that the girl stood as if floodlit – visible for fifty metres in any direction except to the north.
Now he reclined as if on a divan, the saucepan of soup on his lap, the outlines of his body lost in the darkness outside the pool of candlelight, well out of any sight-lines afforded by the opened windows and front door. At his right side lay the Redhawk, its butt conveniently angled towards his hand.
He had chosen the three-legged stool because one shot from the Redhawk would be enough to topple the girl into the air. All he had to do was to shatter a single leg of the stool. True, she would kick and jerk for a minute or two, as the fall would be nowhere near long enough to break her neck – but she would eventually asphyxiate, leaving Bale ample time to make his getaway by the rear window while Sabir and the gypsy were occupied with trying to save her life.
None of this would be necessary, of course, if Sabir would simply come to terms. And Bale hoped that the sight of the girl would concentrate his mind on just that necessity. A simple transfer of the prophecies would do the trick. Then Bale would leave. Sabir and the gypsy could have the wretched girl. They were welcome to her. Bale never reneged on a deal.
In the unlikely eventuality that they came after him, however, he would kill them – but he was as certain as he was of anything that Sabir would capitulate. What did he have to lose? Some cash and a little fleeting fame. And to gain? Everything.