Free The Crooked Letter by Sean Williams Page B

crates and put his wiry hand on a cool-room door. Hadrian could sense the metallic heaviness of the door and the stuffiness of the space beyond. Without power to keep it cold, the interior of the cool-room was gradually returning to room temperature. The state of the foodstuffs inside would depend on how long they had been sitting there.

    ‘Yes,’ Pukje’s voice came out of the darkness, ‘it’s here, underground. Now, I’m showing you this because you need to see it. You’re walking around in a daze, and that’s dangerous. This isn’t a dream, or a game, or something that will just blow over. The fate of at least two worlds depends on what you do next. And on what we prevent our enemies from doing.’

    ‘By our enemies, do you mean Lascowicz? Or Locyta? Or someone else entirely?’

    ‘It’s hard to tell sometimes.’

    ‘Whose side are you on?’

    Pukje tugged on the handle, and Hadrian braced himself for the stench of spoiled food. The effort was meaningless. Something far worse awaited him.

    * * * *

    ‘Oh, Jesus.’

    A voice startled him awake. He blinked and tried to sit up. Knots in his neck, back and shoulders tightened.

    ‘Have you been there the whole time?’

    Soft hands touched him out of the darkness, helped him to his feet. He smelt Ellis all around him. Ellis as he had come to know her in the weeks she’d travelled with him and his brother; not freshly scrubbed and perfumed, but between showers, redolent with her own earthy smell. The quarters they’d rented in Amsterdam didn’t have a separate bathroom, just two primitive bedrooms with an adjoining door. It was that door against which he had fallen asleep.

    His muscles were fiercely resistant to moving, once freed from their awkward positions. She whispered to him, guiding him. He felt her next to him as she helped him to one of the empty beds. She was warm where he was cold. He wanted to put an arm around her and hold her against him, to embrace her vitality. His heart, which had turned to stone at the start of that long night, began to beat again.

    ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, her breath stale but sweet against his cheek. ‘I’m so sorry. I assumed you’d gone to bed. I didn’t know you were still there. I feel terrible.’

    He shook his head; in denial of what, he wasn’t sure. That he would respond, perhaps. That he was still bound up in the rules of her stupid game.

    ‘Will you forgive me?’

    He could forgive her anything, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

    He felt her stiffen beside him. ‘Oh, the game! The fucking game. Are you trying to make a point or something?’

    He shrugged. Silence filled the gulf between them. The room was utterly dark; it could have contained anything. She seemed enormously large to the feelers of his emotional radar. He felt like a collapsing star in comparison to her, shrinking steadily down into a cold, black hole.

    She got off the bed, and he thought then that he had pushed her too far. That he was being the stupid one now. They were all stupid, tangled up in games too complex to name.

    She walked across the room to the adjoining door. He heard it close, and he let himself sag back on the bed. Why? he asked himself. Why did he let them get to him? Why did they do it?

    He gasped with fright when her hands came down on either side of his shoulders. She was suddenly leaning over him, so close her hair brushed his left ear and her breath was hot on his face. He imagined that he could see her eyes and teeth shining in the dark.

    And then ...

    * * * *

    He flinched violently as the door was flung open. Horror struck him full in the face and he recoiled blindly into a wall. Bouncing off it, he staggered through the darkness, not caring where he was going as long as it was away. He tripped over the stack of milk crates and they clattered noisily across the floor. He went down too, vomiting before he hit the ground. The hot, acid bile burned in his throat and on his hands, and