The tradesmen’s entrance must have been open. And there was no mistaking the sound of that stride—so sure, so untroubled, so inescapable, so aware of its inescapability.

I dashed aside through another door banging it behind me, there was no key in this one. But thank Gods the room was empty. Yes, the house was quite deserted, everyone must have gone off like loyal patriots to the allies-baiting.

I ran across this room to the farther door which opened on another staircase.

“Cija!”

The empty rooms reverberated.

I ran as silently as possible but soon had to sacrifice quietness to speed. He was on my trail.

“Come, little hostage, don’t you find the game is tedious when it has no more point?”

I searched the lock of every door I passed, but there were no more keys. My clothes dried a little. I could hear the rain-flurry on the dark-silvered windows. Up the top of a narrow, dark staircase, the first without a carpeting, on which I’d found myself suddenly as I ran from a light airy room littered with a child’s toys, I heard a moaning.

Startled, I was still for a moment, listening fearfully, till I was reminded of the pursuit by the click of a door just below me.

No help for it, so up the stairs and into that moaning room.

As I entered that dark, ill-smelling, shut-up room an old woman sitting by the bed rose up. “What are you?” she said.

I strode to the window and opened it.

She shrieked.

“What will Zerd think?” I thought.

“And this will benefit your patient,” I said. The fresh air swirled into the room, forced into eddies against the sick-room atmosphere. I leaned out, into the pouring rain. The ground was very far below. Before I could make sure of the means I saw of climbing down, the General entered.

He came over and his hand turned me.

“Shouldn’t jump if I were you,” he said. It was a wolfish tone, resonant with complete victory. And that death awaited me behind it.

The heap on the bed stirred.

She sat up.

I shuddered as I saw the eyes fixed on him, staring out from that discoloured face. It took me back to the heat, the terror, the smells of that time when I nursed Smahil all discoloured with blue poison—and in the weeks since I had last seen this woman, the poison must have spread across her whole body.

The fever-bright eyes glared on him, a wasted blotchy blue arm was raised.

She got out of bed, drew closer to him. Her white shift was dark with bitter sweat. I turned my eyes from the blue blotching of her breasts, whose swell had once been so proud and white.

She gripped him, pressing against him.