32
FLASHING BEFORE YOU
The River Gate. The Canal. Reeper Hill. As he lay
dying, Syannis knew the missing piece of the puzzle. The reason he
couldn’t work out how the Bloody Dag’s men were crossing the city
was because they weren’t. They were going under it. Bloody
long-winded and bizarre way to go about having a revelatory vision,
that was, but he supposed there was no logic to that sort of thing.
Not much use either, not when you were bleeding to death. A
revelatory vision a few days ago about being stabbed in the armpit,
now that would have been
useful.
Something scraped his
cheek, then his nose. Bloody stray cat again. He could hear it
purring. Didn’t have the energy to shoo it away.
‘Syannis, Syannis,
Syannis,’ it seemed to purr. ‘Not yet, not yet. This isn’t your
time or your place.’ The cat spoke with a soft voice, sprinkled
with a lilting trace of something foreign. He felt its whiskers
tickle his face. A paw rested lightly on his lips. He opened his
eyes for what he supposed would be the last time. A face stared
back at him. A brown face with a hooked nose and a pair of wild
lashing eyebrows streaked with white. An old face, from a long time
ago. He smiled.
The face smiled back,
but there was nothing welcoming in that smile. It was a greedy and
hungry smile. Avaricious. Syannis could smell his own blood, thick
in the air. The end was seconds away, the last flickerings of life
quietly bleeding from him. Strange way to die, he thought. He had
no idea where he was. Not lying in a gutter in the Kingsway any
more, that was for sure. He didn’t remember walking the rest of the
way, but maybe he’d made it after all. ‘Where the Bloody Khrozus .
. .’
A flash of gold
caught the moonlight. Then a flash of steel. A knife, with a
strange blade.
‘I’m not done with
you,’ said the voice. ‘Not yet.’