like a curse. She couldn’t be sure; he spoke in the Ilsig dialect.
The baby above had ceased crying; its mother must have given it the nipple or
perhaps she’d made it drink water tinctured with a drug.
Now Benna was pulling something else from inside his tunic. Whatever it was, he
moulded it around the other thing, and now he had cast it in front of the rat.
The big grey beast ran away as the object arced towards him. A moment later, it
approached the little ball, sniffing. Then it darted forwards, still smelling
it, touched it with its nose, perhaps tasted it, and was gone with it in its
mouth.
Masha watched it squeeze into a crack in the old adobe building at the next
corner. No one lived there. It had been crumbling, falling down for years,
unrepaired and avoided even by the most desperate of transients and bums. It was
said that the ghost of old Lahboo the Tight-Fisted haunted the place since his
murder, and no one cared to test the truth of the stories told about the
building.
Benna, still breathing somewhat heavily, trotted after the rat. Masha, hearing
that the footsteps were louder, went alongside the wall, still in the shadows.
She was curious about what Benna had got rid of, but she didn’t want to be
associated with him in any way when his hunters caught up with him.
At the corner, the youth stopped and looked around him. He didn’t seem able to
make up his mind which route to take. He stood, swaying, and then fell to his
knees. He groaned, and pitched forwards, softening his fall with outstretched