What's in a Name (ch2.1)

And here's another chunk, or at least as much as I can get typed tonight (the clock is ticking...) We are now up to 31 pages of the 43 in the manuscript, and the total predicted word-count is down to 6500 words according to the current average -- given the large quantities of crossings-out that come with (a) trying to write action scenes (b) trying to write Erik, the ultimate unreliable narrator/viewpoint character, I can't imagine that end total is going to increase very much in practice. So that may be a reasonably workable story, although I'm still tempted to post just the first half... especially if the three thousand-odd words of that 'first chapter' actually *is* around halfway, rather than only being a chunk out of the beginning!

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The road from Rouen, in the years that followed, was to take him further —and to far stranger places— than the poor provincial child he had been could ever have believed possible. In the course of those travels he went through half a dozen names or more, picking them up and discarding them as casually as he acquired possessions when it proved convenient.

The name of Kolzhak had appealed to his childish taste, but he’d had to leave Guntram’s show in a hurry near the Belgian border, and it had seemed a wise precaution to leave that identity behind.

There had been trouble with Mazzini the conjuror — his magic had been tawdry enough, in hindsight, nothing but sleight of hand and a few bits of simple apparatus, but he’d seen no reason to take on an apprentice of any sort, still less to pass on the tricks of his trade to a half-dead freak. When he’d caught the boy practising to duplicate the basics of his art through nothing more than eagle-eyed observation, he’d accused him of being a spy, a thief, and worse. Simmy, who’d seen the writing on the wall for his own Living Skeleton act, had been quick to take Mazzini’s side against the interloper, and between them they’d made a good deal of unpleasantness. And so it had all ended in an accident, like the various pointed mishaps that used to befall boys at home.

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What's in a Name (ch2.2)

And the final chunk -- which turns out to add up to the original estimate of 7500 words after all. Evidently I enjoyed the Persian much more than I did struggling with Mr Nameless murdering people :-p

Now I need to decide whether I'm going to submit this as one chapter, or two (3300 and 4100 respectively)-- I thought I had an extra two days, but in fact it's got to be edited and finalised by tonight!

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Up ahead he could see some kind of pot-house, a momentary haven of warmth and cheap liquor for those who lived in this benighted quarter. He ducked inside, more out of instinct than with any coherent plan, and had to smother a cough at the thick reek of hot lamp-oil. But no heads turned at his entry; no eyes narrowed in suspicion at the mask that perforce hid his face.

The place was little more than a single low-roofed room, rough-hewn wood from the walls to the floor with a scatter of stools around the tables at the back. The lamps had burnt low and been left untrimmed and only a few fallen mugs gave any evidence that customers had been and gone. Somewhere close at hand, a clatter of pots bore witness to the existence of human habitation, but the sole occupant of the room was a single disconsolate figure sprawled across a table in the darkest corner, hooded and cloaked despite the heat as if awaiting some assignation too long delayed.

A trap. Danger shrieked from every instinct, wrought up to a fever-pitch alert. Yuri was brighter than he’d thought, had guessed his every move in advance— The strangler’s cord taut between his fingers, he sprang across the floor with the speed of a striking snake, twitched the hood aside and jerked the loop tight with a lethal snap.

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