When Gods Die

Chapter 34

Startled by the sound of the rat’s screech, the rider swung around. His eyes flared wide in alarm, his right arm jerking up instinctively to shield his face and upper body as Sebastian slammed into him.

The impact was enough to unseat the rider. But that blocking sweep of his arm and the shift in the man’s seat deflected Sebastian’s momentum enough that, rather than crashing down with the man on the horse’s far side, Sebastian was flung back. The edge of one of the boards raked his ribs painfully as he fell.

Squealing in terror, the gray reared up between them, its sharp hooves slashing the air. Sebastian scrambled to his feet, dodged the gray’s hooves as the horse reared again. But the brown-coated man was already up. Boots slipping in the mud, he bolted around the corner.

Sebastian tore after him, up a street lined with workshops and small traders closing now for the night. He sidestepped a tailor’s apprentice who turned, a green-painted shutter held in his widespread arms, his mouth forming a silent O as Sebastian ran past.

The entrance to an alley yawned ahead. The brown-coated man darted down it, Sebastian hard after him. They were in an old mews, the high, bulging walls propped up by rotting beams that thrust out to trip the unwary, the former yards filled now with a hodgepodge of illegal shacks and grim hovels. A group of ragged children playing with a hoop shouted as they dashed past. One little boy of no more then five or six, his face smeared with filth, ran after them, calling to them and laughing until he could keep up no longer and fell away.

For a moment Sebastian thought the man had misjudged and trapped himself in a cul-de-sac. Then a black mouth opened up before them and Sebastian saw a low archway where the upper stories of the houses on either side of what had once been a narrow lane had extended out to swallow the sky, leaving only a dark tunnel beneath.

Plunging into a shadowy darkness of recessed doorways and sharp corners where a man might lie in wait, Sebastian was forced to slow his pace, listening always for the slap of running feet, the sawing of labored breath up ahead. Then the traboule opened up and he found himself in a courtyard of what must once have been a fine coaching in, its ground floor now filled with dilapidated workshops overhung by rented rooms where ragged laundry hung limp and the still evening air trapped the scent of frying onions and burning dung.

Leaping a puddle left by the previous day’s rain, Sebastian ran on. Two women taking down the laundry paused to stare; an old man filling a clay pipe called out something lost in the din. Sebastian followed his quarry through the arch and down a narrow passageway between two brown brick buildings. Then the pale glow of lamplight shone up ahead and the passageway emptied out into a wide, busy thoroughfare that Sebastian realized must be the Strand.

The man ahead of him was breathing heavily now, stumbling as he dodged between a hackney and a ponderous old landau sporting a faded crest. Two men on the far footpath, their red waistcoats and blue coats marking them as men from the Bow Street Patrol, turned and shouted.

Brown Coat’s head snapped around, his open mouth sucking in air, his eyes going wide. Abandoning the busy, lamplit expanse of the Strand, he careered around the nearest corner, heading now toward the river.

The streets were newer here and straight, the chance of running into a trap diminished. Lungs aching, his breath coming hard and fast, Sebastian pushed himself on. They were halfway across the open square of Hungerford Market when Sebastian caught him.

Reaching out, Sebastian closed his hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. They lost their balance together, the man pulling back, Sebastian practically running over him as, legs tangling, they sprawled across the pavement.

Brown Coat’s back hit the ground hard, driving the wind out of him. “Who are you?” Sebastian demanded. The man heaved up against him once, then lay still, panting, his face ashen with pain.

“Damn you.” Sebastian closed his fist on the cloth of the man’s coat to draw him up, then slam him back down again. “Who set you after me?”

A heavy hand fell on Sebastian’s shoulder, jerking him up. “There, there now, me lads,” said a gruff voice. “What’s all this, then?”