Page 8 of A City of Smoke and Demons
Ezra took a startled step back.
‘Up to scratch.’ Hernan was Master of Ceremonies tonight. He was wearing a top hat, scraps of red hair sticking out from underneath it. With his boozer’s skin and bloodshot eyes, he looked ridiculous. Ezra wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. Heart hammering, he searched the crowd for the blonde woman, but she was gone.
Hernan put his face close to Ezra’s, so close that Ezra could smell the whiskey on his breath. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Toe the line, Tarrenfire, or Maddog will have both our heads, and I’m sure as fuck not going to lose my job because of a little shit like you, so—’
Ezra punched Hernan in the teeth. He staggered back, then laughed, wiping his bloody mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Toe the line,’ he bit out.
Ezra did as he was told. Blood was pounding in his ears, and his knuckles throbbed.
In the back of his mind, he was aware of the last-minute bets. Maddog’s urchins were moving through the crowd, slipping scrawny hands into pockets. If anyone had worked out who Ezra was, no one called out. Perhaps they didn’t care. The Gendarme never bothered the upper class—with food always on the table and a steady income off the backs of the working class, those people never found themselves down on their luck. They got their kicks out of coming to the Devil’s Credges for the evening. Ezra had seen those smartly dressed men in the skin market and the doss house. He’d seen them step around a woman dead on the street. They ignored the orphans with their dirty faces. Their carriages left behind mounds of horse shit that no one cleaned up. They averted their gaze as they passed the cadging houses,the reform schools, and the workers calling for their rights on street corners.
He scanned the crowd. The woman was there again, at the back, her skin like death and her eyes a pair of black holes in her skull. Those bloodless lips curled.
Hernan rang the bell and the next thing Ezra saw was stars. Most boxers aimed for the soft parts of the body, not wanting to break their knuckles, but his opponent obviously had no care for his hands, smashing his fists into whatever part of Ezra he could get.
Which was a lot.
He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but in the end, he was on his back, blinking up at the lantern above him, hypnotised by the graceful way it swayed. Hernan’s grinning mug appeared in Ezra’s vision. He was swaying as well.
‘While I can’t deny that was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness, the boss wants a word. Up.’
Ezra was hauled upright and dragged from the ring. The pounding in his ears didn’t stop and everything was moving, even when he was dumped into one of the fancy chairs in Maddog’s office and the man himself was standing before him, arms folded.
‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘that went spectacularly to shit. What happened?’
Ezra shook his head. ‘I got distracted.’
‘By what?’
‘By … I don’t know.’ He rubbed his jaw, his fingers coming away bloody. Maddog made a noise, then handed him a cloth. Ezra dabbed at his face. ‘I can’t see,’ he said. His vision was filled with a dull, red blur.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Maddog assured him, pressing a glass of whisky into Ezra’s throbbing hand. ‘Drink up.’
Ezra peered at him suspiciously. ‘Why aren’t I dead? I thought you’d kill me.’
‘I want to, believe me. You lost me a lot of money,’ Maddog said. ‘What did you see, Ezra?’
Ezra licked his lips, tasting blood. ‘I saw … no, it wasn’t real.’
It can’t have been real.
‘What did you see?’ Maddog repeated. He perched on the edge of his desk, watching Ezra with undisguised interest.
‘There was this woman and her face flickered, like a lamp about to extinguish itself, and for a moment, I thought …’ Ezra paused, draining the whiskey. ‘It was her face, but it was wrong somehow. As if she was dead and had been for a while. The flesh was hanging from her bones, and her eyes …’
‘Were black,’ Maddog finished.
Ezra blinked. ‘How did you know that?’
‘They’re called Familiars. They’re servants of Asmael. Familiars are still human, but they’ve given over their souls to the Fallen One.’ Maddog said it so casually that Ezra was certain it was a joke.
He laughed uneasily. ‘Right. Well. I’m off to bed.’ His head was spinning, his ears ringing. ‘How do you know what those things are?’
Maddog’s face was as hard as it usually was. ‘None of your business.’
Two nights off in a row. Analise paced her room, wishing it was larger so she had more space to stomp. In the convent, her room had also been tiny so the courtyard became her favourite place. Everything was so alive, the bright-green leaves and the deep red of the roses as intoxicating as their smell. There were carp in the pond; by the time Analise was six, she’d named them all and knew each one from the others.
Those fish were her first friends. They’d shared a strange camaraderie, both somewhere safe where they were fed and cared for, but longing for something more. Well, she did, at least. She wasn’t sure if fish concerned themselves with freedom. Life behind the convent walls was slow and monotonous. Nothing ever changed, and Analise figured it never would.
