Pax Britannia: Human Nature by Jonathan Green

yellow predator's fangs. Ulysses bit his own lip as fresh pain shot through his shoulder; an old wound suddenly remembered.
    Ulysses heard a gun bark - he knew it wasn't his - and the ape was thrown from him as the bullet punched into it between the eyes.
    Ulysses scrambled to his feet, and dusted himself down, testing his flaring shoulder joint. The pain was passing. He assessed that it wasn't going to hamper him.
    A gun barked again and another shambling ape fell face down on the boards.
    "Nimrod, go!" Ulysses shouted over the shrieks of the terrified animals and hungry roar of the spreading fires. "Get back-up!"
    He didn't bother to try to see if his faithful manservant had followed his instructions. They had been in such circumstances too many times, and they both knew the drill. If he were able, Nimrod would be on his way now, re-negotiating the labyrinth of the rookeries to escape their bounds and get help. A cunning criminal mastermind was making his escape and Ulysses wanted him alive - he wasn't done with the Magpie yet!
    Moving out from the shelter of the first tier of balconies, Ulysses dared another glance upwards. Somewhere up there, the Magpie was getting away. And there were still questions to be answered, to begin with the one which had been bothering Ulysses ever since he had first read of the theft of the Whitby Mermaid; why anyone would go to so much trouble to steal what was so obviously a fake?
    Fire was eating away at the walkway nearest to the oil lamp that Ulysses had exploded with one shot from his pistol, the strands of the ropes holding it up burning through and snapping free under tension, one by one. It would be only a matter of seconds before the whole thing came crashing down, Ulysses guessed. He had to get out of there and fast.
    He looked from the burning rope-bridge to the ropes securing it in place, to an iron-cast eyelet punched into the wall high above him which one of the thicker, mooring ropes ran through before descending to a securing bolt in the floor only a few paces away.
    Kicking a gambolling monkey aside, Ulysses ran for the rope, holstering his gun as he did so, and grabbed hold with his left hand. With his right he drew his rapier from the sheath of its cane and slashed through the anchoring rope with one strong sweep of the razor-sharp blade.
    Its mooring support gone, the bridge went slack and unravelled as the fire did the rest. The walkway dropped, trailing flames, with an animal roar, as it plummeted towards the mass of milling bodies and Ulysses headed skyward.
    Ulysses hurtled upwards, pulled through the flames and falling bodies of burning monkeys as the rope ran out through the iron ring in the wall still two floors above him.
    Something that was all arms and legs leapt at him as he rocketed upwards, but a sharp thrust of his blade put pay to whatever intentions the ape might have had for him. The rope-bridge crashed to the ground, crushing apes beneath it and sending a rippling blast of air to fan the flames of the other fires that had already taken hold.
    And then his ascent came to a sudden stop. Dangling there, twenty feet above the inferno, Ulysses jerked and kicked, attempting to swing closer to the balustrades of a balcony which was tantalizingly out of reach. He had better be quick about it too or the rope would burn through at the bottom and drop him back into the blaze below.
    Ever so slowly, it seemed, the rope began to swing. The tips of his toes scraped against the edge of the balcony. Ulysses put both feet against the wall and pushed off again. Like the weight at the end of a pendulum he swung backwards.
    The gulf between him and the balcony cruelly widened. When he was at the apex of his swing, with the space between him and safety Ulysses felt the rope sag. It was burning through.
    And then he was swinging back again. The rope gave again and he felt himself drop several dangerous inches. Knees bent, feet out flat before him, he connected with the