There was a loud crack as one of the guards rammed against the blocked trap door.

Harper took another swallow of the blood that pooled up from Belimai's hand. He concentrated on the wind pouring in from the open window. The currents of air and falling rain swung and turned like solid masses. He reached out and touched a gust of wind. It rolled under his fingers and shifted as he turned his hand.

"Can you feel it?" Belimai asked.

"Yes." Despite the urgency, Harper couldn't help but feel amazed. The dark hollow of the night transformed around him.

Rich tones of violet and blue tinted the currents of wind. They rolled over Harper, touching his burning skin and brushing through his hair like curious fingers. Droplets of rain and pungent scents hung on the winds like thousands of brilliant beads.

Another loud crack rang through the small room. This time it was the sound of the wooden trap door splintering under the blow of an ax. The box on top of the door jarred with the impact.

"We have to go." Belimai jumped up onto the window frame and then dived out.

Harper climbed up after him. He crouched on the sill for a long moment, assuring himself that he wasn't about to throw himself to his death. The wind wrapped around him and pulled at his arms. Belimai looked back at him from the midst of the swirling air. Harper took a deep breath and stepped out into the open arms of the night.

He fell for an instant. Then suddenly, a rush of wind swept up from beneath him and lifted him high up into the sky. The air rolled under him and rose like a cresting wave. He turned and twisted like the drops of rain caught in the wind with him. Each shift of his hands or twist of his body swung him out in another direction. He soared from one rushing current to the next without knowing how to control his flight.

In a matter of moments he was blown far out over the city steeples and smoking chimneys. Rising gusts from the river swept up and gently lifted him higher into the sky. The searchlights at White Chapel glittered like distant stars. The waters of the river below him moved like the glossy body of a small centipede. A thrill of both fear and exhilaration shivered through Harper s stomach. Harper closed his eyes, concentrating on moving his body through the columns of tumbling air.

He felt Belimai's hand close around his wrist. Harper glanced over to see Belimai holding his hand and soaring beside him. He relaxed and moved with Belimai, emulating the small turns and twists Belimai used to glide between the currents. As he moved with Belimai, some instinct deep in his blood seemed to awaken. A natural sense of how to manipulate the swelling waves of the wind flowed through him.

He turned and floated slowly back toward the glimmering lights of the city.

"Where to now?" Belimai asked.

"To see Richard Waterstone. We need to deliver his headline news to him." Harper felt a giddy grin spreading across his face. Ribbons of wind tickled his outstretched arms. He laughed. He should have been in pain and exhausted, but at that precise moment, he felt as if nothing could ever be wrong in his life.

Belimai glanced at him and laughed back.

"Why so happy suddenly?" Belimai asked.

"I just realized what a beautiful night it was." Harper pulled closer to Belimai and kissed him.

Epilogue

Solitaire

A deep red glow soaked through the curtains and filled the room as the sun slowly sank into the embrace of evening. I flipped through a deck of cards, carefully marking the aces. There wasn't much else to do. I had been waiting for well over two hours, attempting to maintain the appearance of ease. I propped my legs up on a chair and purposefully slouched a little more.

There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs, then the scent of soap and leather. The door opened quietly and Harper came in. He placed his cap on the rack and then hung up his heavy coat. He looked tired, as always.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" I asked.

"I haven't been gone so long that you've forgotten about me, have I?" he asked.

"How could I? You've been in the papers every day." I set the cards aside. "From the last I read I would suppose congratulations are in order," I said.

"You'd suppose?" Harper peeled off his gloves and tossed them across the pile of newspapers on the table in front of me.

"Papers have been known to get their stories wrong," I said.

"Yes, I'll give you that." Harper dropped down into the seat across from mine. He lit a cigarette and took in a deep breath of the smoke. The weakness of his right hand was hardly perceptible anymore. Only the thick, red scar remained as evidence of how badly hurt and infected the flesh had been.

"They misspelled your middle name, by the way," I told him.

"Did they?" Harper squinted at the litter of pages. "Jubaal. At least it wasn't Judas. I don't even care. I'm just glad to have the court proceedings and hearings done with."

"So, it's over?"

"It's done. I went to the gallows myself this afternoon to be sure," Harper said. "The abbot is most certainly dead and done with."

According to the papers, Abbot Greeley had ordered Captain Brandson to assassinate Lord Cedric to suppress a confession that Cedric had signed. Apparently, it had implicated them both in the murder of Lord Cedric's niece. The story in the papers made Lord Cedric out to be a kind man brought low by one moment of rage and terrible misfortune. Abbot Greeley, on the other hand, had taken on a deeply sinister role. There was even an implication that the abbot had been using the niece's death to blackmail Lord Cedric.

It was a remarkable work a fiction that Harper had strung together with confessions and tiny pieces of evidence. Brandson's pistol, left at the scene of Lord Cedric's murder, struck me as a particularly nice detail.

If he had wanted, Harper could have indulged in a little gloating or self-congratulation. He had certainly worked things out well enough to deserve it. Instead, he was quiet and thoughtful. He was acting as if there were something he still had to attend to. I shuffled through my deck of cards to give myself something to do.

The papers had mentioned other things, but I waited for Harper to bring them up.

"A game of cards?" I asked.

"Not yet. It's nice to just sit here and do nothing."

"It's not all that easy, you know. I've been sitting around trying to do nothing for the last two weeks."

"Your rooms look good," Harper said. "Did you paint the walls white?"

"No. I just washed them."

"Hmm." Harper wasn't paying much attention to the conversation. I knew him well enough to recognize the times when he was working his way to an unpleasant subject. I absently dealt myself a hand a solitaire. Harper smoked in silence for a while.

"I was surprised at how many people came out to see him swing," Harper said. "I don't think he even saw me in the crowd."

I didn't know quite how to respond. The abbot's destruction had been Harper's passion for the last month. He had been at the courthouse for days on end, giving testimony and presenting evidence. All that he had seemed to want was the abbot's public execution. Now he had it. The abbot had not been punished for any one of his real crimes. None of the harm he had done had been undone. All the execution had given Harper was revenge. I wondered if that had been enough for him.

"You could put a queen there," Harper suggested as I turned the cards through my hands.