Free The Emperor of All Things by Paul Witcover Page B

her voice heavy with resignation, she pulled the hood back over her head and drew the scarf up to cover her mouth and nose. Yet it was not just a rearrangement of clothing; her voice, her posture, even the quality of her eyes underwent a transformation, until, at the end of it, the woman was gone so thoroughly as to never have existed, and in her place stood Grimalkin. It was a change so convincing, so complete, that Quare stepped back and brought his pistol – which, without noticing, he had lowered – back into line.
    ‘You do not need to fear me,’ said Grimalkin, sounding very much as if she wished it were otherwise. ‘Even were you to ask your third question, I could not harm you now. We are bound, you and I, by ties of blood and destiny.’
    But Quare asked nothing. He could not find his voice, and even if he could have spoken, he would not have questioned her, wary of a trick. He watched, heart pounding.
    ‘Besides,’ Grimalkin added with a weary shrug, ‘my time here is done. The sky grows pale with the approach of dawn, and I am called Otherwhere.’
    That was news to Quare; as far as he could tell, sparing a quick glance upwards, the sky was as dark as ever, and the light of the moon had no rival. He did not think it could be any later than three in the morning; dawn was hours off.
    The noise of a small concussion, a hollow popping sound, drew his attention. Clouds of thick grey smoke boiled up from the rooftop to cloak the figure of Grimalkin. He cursed himself for a fool. But he would not compound his foolishness by entering that cloud to grapple with her; nor could he bring himself to fire into it. Instead, keeping his pistol raised, he backed away. The cloud seemed to follow him with an intent all its own, as if it might reach out with smoky tendrils to snatch the clock from his grasp.
    ‘We are not finished, you and I,’ came her voice from out of the murk. ‘We shall meet again, I promise you.’
    He saw – or thought he saw – a serpentine form flex within the billowing, and at that he cursed again, in fear this time, and pulled the trigger. The pistol misfired, the hammer clicking without effect. But already the cloud was thinning, breaking into patchy wisps that drifted with the wind, indistinguishable from the general fog of the city. Another moment, and no trace remained. He stood alone on the rooftop. Grimalkin was gone.
    Nor did Quare linger, afraid she would return, either alone or with allies who would not let an unasked question keep them from their objective. He set off at once for the guild hall, retracing his path across the roofs, cursing himself for having misloaded the pistol. He had been lucky many times over this night.
    He moved slowly, thanks to his injured leg, which had resumed bleeding and soon stiffened into the bargain. All the while, he debated what to tell Master Magnus. It was crystal clear to him that he couldn’t relate all that had occurred, not if he wished to continue as a regulator, or, for that matter, a journeyman in good standing. He knew there was no way he could make the master understand why he had not captured or killed Grimalkin; he did not really understand it himself. It wasn’t because he had found himself facing a woman – or not only because of that … and there, too, was a thing better left unsaid; without proof, no one would credit such an outlandish claim. Grimalkin a woman? He scarcely believed it himself. As for her warnings about the clock … What were they but the ravings of a lunatic? Even if the workings of the timepiece belied its plain exterior, he did not see how this clock, or, indeed, any clock, could be a weapon, unless the woman had spoken metaphorically, referring to some martial use to which the secrets of its mechanism might be put, beating ploughshare into sword, as it were, but even that possibility did not seem of sufficient gravity to warrant such desperate words.
    No, he would say nothing of that, either. He would hand over