The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North

Author:Claire North
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Locked in a room for even a little while, you become hypersensitive to every detail. One log more or less on the fire. The way the ash moves across the floor. The bed nudged a little off the perfect straight line. The cracks in the ceiling; the creaking of the floor; the turning of light through a high window.

When the woman came to light the fire, I was immediately aware of something different about her.

As always, she did not look at me, and ran away as quickly as she could, crossing herself.

But there was a truth in her heart, and it terrified me, or perhaps it terrified her and the line between our feelings was growing thin, and for a brief moment I wondered whether even one more day of life was worth the price that might have to be paid.

The next day, Ritte ordered the chains put back around my wrists and looped through the bar by the window, restricting my world back down to a miserable staggered half-circle. Then a boy, barely thirteen years old was brought in, blindfolded, and Ritte waited, eyebrows arched, to see what I might pronounce, and the truth of his heart was that he had dreamt of being a great man right up to the moment when they arrested him, and now his trousers smelt of piss and he wanted his mother and was afraid of his father, and if he survived this, he promised himself he would run away and learn a proper trade, and never learn to read because books were full of promises that broke people.

So I murmured, “He’s just a child. He’s no threat to you.”

Ritte shook his head. “Not good enough, Dr Abbey. We’ll come back when you’re in a more talkative mood.”

And Langa comes.

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