“Surely,” Dradin said, “surely there has been a mistake.”
In a sad voice, his face strangely mournful and moonlike, Dvorak said, “There have indeed been mistakes, but they are yours. Take off your clothes.”
Dradin backed away, into the arms of the leathery, stretched, musty folk behind. Cringing from their touch, he leapt forward.
“I have money,” Dradin said to Dvorak. “I will give you money. My father has money.”
Dvorak’s smile turned sadly sweeter and sweetly sadder. “How you waste words when you have so few words left to waste. Remove your clothes or they will do it for you,” and he motioned to the mushroom dwellers. A hiss of menace rose from their assembled ranks as they pressed closer, closer still, until he could not escape the dry, piercing rot of them, nor the sound of their shambling gait.
He took off his shoes, his socks, his trousers, his shirt, his underwear, folding each item carefully, until his pale body gleamed and he saw himself in his mind’s eye as switching positions with the Living Saint. How he would have loved to see the hoary ejaculator now, coming to his rescue, but there was no hope of that. Despite the chill, Dradin held his hands over his penis rather than his chest. What did modesty matter, and yet still he did it.
Dvorak hunched nearer, hand taut on the rope, and used his knife to pull the clothes over to him. He went through the pockets, took the remaining coins, and then put the clothes over his shoulder.
“Please, let me go,” Dradin said. “I beg you.” There was a tremor in his voice but, he marveled, only a tremor, only a hint of fear.
Who would have guessed that so close to his own murder he could be so calm?
“I cannot let you go. You no longer belong to me. You are a priest, are you not? They pay well for the blood of priests.”
“My friends will come for me.”
“You have no friends in this city.”
“Where is the woman from the window?”
Dvorak smiled with a smugness that turned Dradin’s stomach. A spark of anger spread all up and down his back and made his teeth grind together. The graveyard gate was open. He had run through graveyards once, with Anthony—graveyards redolent with the stink of old metal and ancient technologies—but was that not where they wished him to go?
“In the name of God, what have you done with her?”
“You are too clever by half,” Dvorak said. “She is still in Hoegbotton & Sons.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes.”
“W-w-why is she there?” His fear for her, deeper into him than his own anger, made his voice quiver.
Dvorak’s mask cracked. He giggled and cackled and stomped his foot. “Because, because, sir, sir, I have taken her to pieces. I have dismembered her!” And from behind and in front and all around, the horrible, galumphing, harrumphing laughter of the mushroom dwellers.
Dismembered her.
The laughter, mocking and cruel, set him free from his inertia. Clear and cold he was now, made of ice, always keeping the face of his beloved before him. He could not die until he had seen her body.
Dradin yanked on the rope and, as Dvorak fell forward, wrenched free the noose. He kicked the dwarf in the head and heard a satisfying howl of pain, but did not wait, did not watch—he was already running through the gate before the mushroom dwellers could stop him. His legs felt like cold metal, like the churning pistons of the old coal-chewing trains. He ran as he had never run in all his life, even with Tony. He ran like a man possessed, recklessly dodging tombstones and high grass, while behind came the angry screams of Dvorak, the slithery swiftness of the mushroom dwellers. And still Dradin laughed as he went—bellowing as he jumped atop a catacomb of mausoleums and leapt between monuments, trapped for an instant by abutting tombstones, and then up and running again, across the top of yet another broad sepulcher. He found his voice and shouted to his pursuers, “Catch me! Catch me!”, and cackled his own mad cackle, for he was as naked as the day he had entered the world and his beloved was dead and he had nothing left in the world to lose. Lost as he might be, lost as he might always be, yet the feeling of freedom was heady. It made him giddy and drunk with his own power. He crowed to his pursuers, he needled them, only to pop up elsewhere, thrilling to the hardness of his muscles, the toughness gained in the jungle where all else had been lost.
Finally, he came to the line of old trains, byzantine and convoluted and dark, surrounded by the smell of dank, rusting metal. One backward glance before entering the maze revealed that the mushroom dwellers, led by Dvorak, had reached the last line of tombstones, fifty feet away.
—but a glance only before he swung himself into the side door of an engine, walked on the balls of his feet into the cool darkness. Hushed quiet. This was what he needed now. Quiet and stealth in equal measures so that he could reach the relative safety of the street beyond the trains. His senses heightened, he could hear them coming, the whispers between them as they spread out to search the compartments.
Spiderlike, Dradin moved as he heard them move, shadowing them but out of sight—into their clutches and out again with a finesse he had not known he possessed—always working his way farther into the jungle of metal. Train tracks. Dining cars. Engines split open by the years, so that he hid among their most secret parts and came out again when danger had passed him by, a pale figure flecked with rust.
Ahead, when he dared to take his gaze from his pursuers, Dradin could see the uniform darkness of the wall and, from beyond, the red flashes of a bonfire. Two rows of cars lay between him and the wall. He crept forward through the gaping doorway of a dining car—
—just as, cloaked by shadow, Dvorak entered the car from the opposite end. Dradin considered backing out of the car, but no: Dvorak would hear him. Instead, he crouched down, hidden from view by an overturned table, a salt-and-pepper shaker still nailed to it.
Dvorak’s footsteps came closer, accompanied by raspy breathing and the shivery threat of the knives beneath his coat. A single shout from Dvorak and the mushroom dwellers would find him.
Dvorak stopped in front of the overturned table. Dradin could smell him now, the must of mushroom dweller, the tang of Moth silt.
Dradin sprang up and slapped his left hand across Dvorak’s mouth, spun him around as he grunted, and grappled for Dvorak’s knife. Dvorak opened his mouth to bite Dradin. Dradin stuck his fist in Dvorak’s mouth, muffling his own scream as the teeth bit down. Now Dvorak could make no sound and the dwarf frantically tried to expel Dradin’s fist. Dradin did not let him. The knife seesawed from Dvorak’s side up to Dradin’s clavicle and back again. Dvorak thrashed about, trying to dislodge Dradin’s hold on him, trying to face his enemy. Dradin, muscles straining, entangled Dvorak’s legs in his and managed to keep him in the center of the compartment. If they banged up against the sides, it would be as loud as a word from Dvorak’s mouth. But the knife was coming too close to Dradin’s throat. He smashed Dvorak’s hand against a railing, a sound that sent up an echo Dradin thought the mushroom dwellers must surely hear. No one came as the knife fell from Dvorak’s hand. Dvorak tried to grasp inside his jacket for another. Dradin pulled a knife from within the jacket first. As Dvorak withdrew his own weapon, Dradin’s blade was already buried deep in his throat.