The singing girl with her glossy black hair, soft pink lips and petite figure reminded him strongly of Issie.
She passed out of sight, still singing.
“The ripples wash the moon away,
And will not let the starlight stay.”
The sound of a door slamming cut off the song, and silence fell over the alley again. Jak released a slow, pent-up breath of mingled relief and regret. He worked his way back out of the opening. Because of the scrape of his clothing on the walls, he didn’t hear the faint scrabbling of feet until he poked his head out. A hand closed over his long hair in an agonizingly tight grip, and a tremendous, muscle-wrenching jerk catapulted him out into the alleyway. Through the tears of pain that sprang to his eyes, he caught a fragmented glimpse of a scowling bull’s head.
Jak kicked himself off the ground, flowing into the momentum of the heave. He slashed backward and blindly with his knife, feeling the tip drag through flesh.
The hand tangled in his hair opened, he heard a grunt and Jak flung himself into a forward somersault. He came out of it on one knee, blade held between thumb and index finger, arm cocked for a throw.
He stared into the double prongs of a metauh rod, the V only inches away from his face. He didn’t hesitate—his leg muscles propelled him in a sideways lunge to the left, his body angled parallel with the ground. His arm and wrist snapped out and down in perfect coordination of eye and hand. He wasn’t able to see if or where the knife struck because his optic nerves were suddenly overwhelmed by a flare of light.
Jak hit the ground with all the grace of a piece of cordwood. His entire left side was numb, the only sensation a dull, prickly creeping under the flesh. His heart thudded slowly, lurching in his chest. Breathing took such a deliberate, conscious effort than he didn’t bother with it for what seemed like a long time.
His vision cleared fast, though, and he saw the Incarnate staring with foolish eyes at the knife hilt vibrating in his breast. A red line of blood shone on his ribs where Jak had nicked him.
Slowly, the bull-helmeted man dropped to his knees, the metauh rod falling to the street dust. He gazed beseechingly toward Jak and in an aspirated whisper, said, “I am the incarnation of Serapis. Tell me this is not happening to Serapis.”
Then he fell forward on his face, expiring very quickly and quietly for such a big man.
Jak tried to speak, found he couldn’t.
He sucked in a noisy, rattling gasp and clawed himself forward by the strength of his right arm. His head pounded, like sharp hammers were beating on the inside of his skull.
He fought, wrestled and cursed his way to his knees, then to his feet. The buildings tilted and spun all around him. He staggered, fell to hands and knees, forced himself erect again, face glistening with sweat. His left leg shook violently in a tremor, and he dragged it behind him like a sack of flour, the toe of his boot gouging a furrow in the sand.
“Stupe,” he husked out. “Triple stupe.”
He fixed his eyes on the nearest doorway, six yards or six thousand miles away. He stumbled, reeled and fell into it, leaning his entire weight against the door.
With fingers that felt like cucumbers, he unbuttoned his shirt. Outlined in blue and red against the bone whiteness of his skin, a spiderweb pattern of broken blood vessels and ruptured capillaries extended from his left shoulder across his chest.
The door suddenly opened behind him, pulled from the inside, and he lost what remained of his balance, very nearly falling flat on his back. The hands clutching his arm and holding him more or less upright were small, brown and strong.
A gray-eyed, pink-lipped, black-haired girl held him tightly, and it took him a dazed moment to recognize her. She was the girl with the water jug and the sweet song. She had reminded him of somebody, but he couldn’t recall who.