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De Rozio saw the intensity in Michael’s eyes and nodded, vaguely bewildered. Seth didn’t lose a second.
‘We’ll help you search through the material,’ he offered.
‘You two? I don’t know … When?’
‘Right now,’ replied Michael.
‘Do you know the codes for the library index cards?’ de Rozio asked.
‘Like the alphabet,’ lied Seth.
THE SUN DIPPED BEHIND the broken glass panes on the western side of Jheeter’s Gate. A few seconds later Isobel watched, hypnotised, as hundreds of horizontal blades of light sliced through the shadows of the station. The howling voices grew in intensity and soon Isobel could hear them echoing round the dome. The ground began to shake under her feet and she noticed shards of glass falling from above. A sudden pain seared along her left forearm. When she touched the spot warm blood slid through her fingers. She ran towards one end of the station, covering her face with her hands.
As she took shelter under a staircase that led to the upper levels she noticed a large waiting room in front of her. Burnt wooden benches were strewn across the floor and the walls were covered with strange crudely drawn pictures. They seemed to represent deformed human shapes, demonic figures with long wolfish claws and eyes that popped out of their heads. The shaking beneath her feet was now intense, and Isobel approached the mouth of one of the tunnels. A blast of burning air scorched her face and she rubbed her eyes, unable to believe what she was seeing.
From the very depths of the tunnel emerged a glowing train covered in flames. Isobel flung herself to the ground as the train crossed the station with a deafening roar, metal grating against metal, accompanied by the yells of hundreds of children trapped in the flames. She lay there, her eyes closed, paralysed with terror, until the sound of the train died away.
Isobel raised her head and looked around her. The station was empty except for a cloud of steam that slowly lifted, tinted dark red by the afterglow of the sun. In front of her, barely half a metre away, was a puddle of some dark sticky substance. For a moment Isobel thought she could see the reflection of a face on its surface, the luminous sad face of a woman enveloped in light who was calling to her. She stretched out a hand towards the image and found the tips of her fingers soaked in the thick warm fluid. Blood. Isobel jerked her hand away and wiped her fingers on her dress as the vision slowly vanished. Gasping for breath, she dragged herself as far as the wall and leaned against it to recover.
After a minute she stood up again and looked around the station. The evening light was fading fast and soon night would be upon her. A single thought took hold of her: she didn’t want to wait for that moment inside Jheeter’s Gate. She started to walk nervously towards the exit and only then did she spy a ghostly silhouette advancing towards her through the mist. The figure raised a hand, and Isobel saw its fingers burst into flames to light up its path. By then she had realised that she wouldn’t be able to get out of that place as easily as she had entered.
THROUGH THE COLLAPSED ROOF of the Midnight Palace shone a starry sky. Evening had taken with it some of the sweltering heat that had been pou
nding the city since dawn, but the breeze that blew timidly through the streets of the Black Town seemed little more than a warm moist sigh from the Hooghly River.
While they waited for the remaining members of the Chowbar Society to arrive, Ian, Ben and Sheere were listlessly killing time among the ruins of the old mansion, each lost in their own thoughts.
Ben had opted to clamber up to his favourite corner, a naked beam that ran across the front pediment of the Palace. Sitting exactly in the middle, his legs dangling, Ben would often perch on his solitary lookout post to gaze out at the city lights and the silhouettes of the palaces and cemeteries that bordered the sinuous course of the Hooghly through Calcutta. He could spend hours up there without speaking, not even bothering to look down at solid ground.
From the Palace courtyard Ian kept an eye on his friend and decided to let him enjoy one of his last spiritual retreats; meanwhile, he returned to the task with which he had been occupied the last hour: trying to explain to Sheere the rudiments of chess, using a board which the Chowbar Society kept in its headquarters. The chess pieces were reserved for the annual championships that took place in December – something Isobel invariably won with a superiority that bordered on insult.
‘There are two theories regarding the strategy of chess,’ Ian explained. ‘In fact there are dozens, but only a couple really count. The first is that the key to the game lies in the second row: king, knight, castle, queen, etc. According to this theory, the pawns are just pieces to be sacrificed while you develop your tactics. The second theory, on the other hand, supports the idea that pawns can and should be the most lethal pieces you use in your attack, and it is an intelligent strategy to treat them as such. To be frank, neither of these theories has worked for me, but Isobel is a passionate defender of the second one.’
In mentioning his friend’s name, Ian was reminded of how worried he was about her. Sheere noticed his distant expression and rescued him with a new question about the game.
‘What is the difference between tactics and strategy?’ she asked. ‘Is it purely technical?’
Ian weighed up Sheere’s question although he doubted there was an answer to it.
‘It’s a linguistic difference, not a real one,’ came Ben’s voice from on high. ‘Tactics are the collection of small steps you take to reach a position; strategy, the steps you take when there’s nowhere left to go.’
Sheere looked up and smiled at Ben.
‘Do you play chess?’ she asked.
Ben didn’t reply.
‘Ben deplores chess,’ Ian explained. ‘According to him, it’s the second most useless way of wasting your intelligence.’
‘And what is the first?’
‘Philosophy,’ answered Ben from his lookout post.
‘Ben dixit,’ Ian proclaimed. ‘Why don’t you come down? The others should be arriving soon.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Ben replied, returning to his place in the clouds.
In fact he didn’t come down until half an hour later. Ian was engrossed in an explanation of the knight’s ability to jump over other pieces when Roshan and Siraj appeared at the entrance to the Midnight Palace. After a while Seth and Michael also returned, and they all gathered round a small bonfire that Ian had built with the remaining bits of dry wood, which they kept in a part of the building to the rear of the Palace that was protected from the rain. The faces of the seven friends were tinted copper by the glow of the fire as they drank from the bottle of water Ben passed round. It wasn’t cold, but at least it wasn’t potentially deadly.
