Chase the Morning полностью

The figure whirled about and ducked around the corner. I sprang after it; and found it there, standing, its back to me, as if gazing at the sky. A sky filling with light now, so that the surrounding rooftops stood out in sharp silhouette – but the light was white, and it didn’t drown the stars. My hair bristled. The sun rising when the moon should have, that was bad enough. But the moon in place of the sun – a new night, in place of a dawn and an end of deep shadows – That was far worse. I took two short steps forward, caught the figure by the shoulder, and felt a loose light cloak, almost a shawl, fall from the head. It turned sharply.

‘I’m sorry.’ I stammered idiotically, like anyone who’s accosted the wrong person, blinking hastily around for the real shadow. The face beneath the long hair was a man’s, lined and bony and sickly sallow, the livid lips set thin and hard. ‘I thought –’

Then the eyes met mine. The malevolent glitter in them lanced into me, diamond-hard, chilling – the triumphant eyes of the knave-card. And I had seen that face before! Where? A fleeting glimpse – a red car, madly driven … The thin lips split in a soundless crow of laughter, mocking, horrible. Instinctively I flung my sword up between us, as if to ward off a blow; but the shadow man only skipped back and fled. I bolted after him, furious now, fury fed on fear. This time there was no dodging, and no limp; the street was straight and he ran, fast, one block and across a road against lights, then another, with me never more than a sword’s length from his heels. Until, in the middle of the third block – he was not there. I skidded stumbling to a halt, stared wildly around, slashed at the air, at nothing. Then I gagged at a brief whiff of a horrible smell, like vomit. And that was it; I was alone.

Had he meant to lose me, whoever he was? He could damn well think again. I’d been ready for that. I’d kept track of every turn. I knew just which way we’d come, and where the river must be from here. Wherever here was …

I slid the sword back into my belt, and glanced around. High old walls, some of them stone, small barred windows – it looked strangely familiar somehow. Yes; these were warehouses, mostly Victorian by the look of them and pretty decrepit. But here and there ornate signs stretched out across walls cleaner than the rest, window frames newly painted; there was even a flash of pink neon. Another disco? Just the same sort of area, trendy chic creeping like a naked hermit crab into the shells of old solid commerce. But where? The neon sign spelt out Praliné’s – French-sounding, which meant precisely nothing; cafés in Moscow have French names. Anyhow, this didn’t smell like France – or Moscow either, somehow; there was a big-city sourness in the warm humid air, an unholy blend of traffic fumes and junk-food frying and aromatic plants that was wholly new to me. These were backstreets, with nobody about to ask. But just ahead there was more light, and the distant hum of traffic. I was curious; I went to look.

The street I emerged into was startling. No more warehouses; it was wide and well-lit and lined with houses, terraces of tall dignified houses in reddish brick. They had that elusive European look about them again, especially along their upper frontage, where a kind of continuous gallery ran, forming deep balconies under the common roof. Houseplants and large bushes grew there in tubs, bays and mimosas and others I didn’t know at all, exotic, elegant, airily graceful, trailing their foliage down over the ornate ironwork railings. But these houses had been restored, too; most of them were shopfronts, now, or cafés – some open. I strolled towards the nearest, and the warm night air rose up and hit me with the rich aromas of coffee and frying onions and hot pastry, and the blare of taped jazz. And suddenly I was so hungry I could have wept.

Hungry for more than food, too; it was a glimpse of civilization, of sanity – or at least of the kind of madness I knew. But would they take my kind of money here? I felt in my pockets. In an inner pocket were a few small coins, very heavy – gold pieces, of some kind I hadn’t seen, decorated with peculiar writing and elephants; they must be Jyp’s. All my ordinary money was in the pockets of my own clothes, on shipboard; and I began to feel very uneasy. I ought to be getting back. But I couldn’t resist peering in the window, seeing what kind of people were there. They were my own kind, exactly my own kind; they could have come from any country in the world, just about – mostly young, mostly Caucasian, but a good few blacks and Orientals too, a cheerful cosmopolitan crowd shouting so loudly over the jazz that I couldn’t make out the language. There was a menu, but the window was so steamed over I couldn’t make it out. And the café’s sign read Au Barataria. Which was where, exactly?