Etch took the keys from me with a wry grin that told me he’d been here before, more than once. He took us through one locked door and then the next, down a passageway, across an intersection. The place was fairly quiet but not deserted. Once we ducked into the women’s toilet as we heard voices approach. We waited dry-mouthed until they disappeared. Finally we saw, at the end of a corridor, a small lobby and the outside door. I spotted two guards, the younger one leaning against the paper-covered desk, arms crossed over his chest. The other stretched back in his chair, nodded and drank his tisane.
I pulled Etch back around the corner and prayed for inspiration. The light was too damned good to think we could just march out. Any moment now, the alarm would sound. I didn’t want to fight off half the city guards.
The younger guard broke off his conversation with a sleepy-sounding, “That’s it for me tonight.”
“Go ahead,” said the other, still slurping his tisane. “Leave all the tough jobs to me.”
“Ha! I wasn’t the one who doubled the night shifts. What’s the old lady so nervous about, anyway? A few wild-eyed kids, a handful of drunks and ramblers sleeping it off down the hall? We handle that every day.”
“You been sleeping these past weeks?” rumbled the older man. “I tell you, the Funeral Riot was only the beginning — ”
“Tell that to the kiddie brigade! Esmelda says — Sheest, I’m too tired to stand here and argue all night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I slowly let out my breath when I heard the outer door close. Etch rolled his eyes expressively. A few moments later the older guard’s chair springs squeaked and we heard him shuffling away in the direction of the men’s toilet.
I grasped the hilt of the standard-issue knife and sauntered across the lobby as if I belonged there, Etch half a pace behind me. The door latch creaked as I lifted it. We slipped through and I felt it click shut behind us. The shadows of the nearest alley closed silently around us.
If the demon god of chance laughed at me, bloody balls and all, then I was laughing back now. At worst, we were even.
o0o
Etch and I kept away from the center of the streets and to the cover of the trees and flowering bushes. We paused to plan our next move under the shadow of an ancient peach tree. The gnarled branches had been trained over an arched wooden trellis, so that setting fruit dangled inches from our heads.
I shrugged off the black jacket and let it drop. Maybe that was a stupid move, since I might need it again later, but if I no longer wore the Ranger’s vest, I’d rather take my chances than wear this. More instinct than sense.
“The front entrance is sure to be crawling with military goons,” Etch said in a hushed voice. “There might be a way through the gardens around in back. It won’t be easy.”
“What? You mean getting us into Montborne’s residence?”
“Where else?”
My head still felt muzzy, as if the dart drug had kicked up the older concussion. Montborne wouldn’t take Terris to his office, not at this hour, not if he wanted any kind of secrecy. I didn’t think he was ready to accuse Terris publicly on some faked-up charge, at least not until he’d questioned him. I went over everything I knew about Montborne, and I still couldn’t read him clear — whether he’d bother to keep his options open for later dealings with Esmelda — alliance or extortion — or just eliminate any witnesses when he had the chance.
But this direction didn’t feel right. I still couldn’t think straight. But I’d pressed the demon god hard now, even laughed in the bastard’s face. I couldn’t count on any second chances. I had to choose right the first time.
Something niggled at the back of my thoughts...something Terris said. I saw his face, tilted down and half away from mine, rainwater eyes hidden in shadow, skin flushed with the sea-whipped wind. I half-closed my eyes, remembering the tang, the wildness, the gritty yellow sand, the smooth curved shells... But no, he’d said something, said it with such a sense of loss that it was branded in my memory...
“Esme, doing the wrong things for the right reasons.” That wasn’t it, but close... “Now I know what the Starhall thing is.”
The Starhall. The center of it all. The gate where Terris had seen the last true Guardians die.
“Promise me!” he’d cried. “Promise me you’ll remember!”
I bent my face and covered it with my hands. Mother-of-us-all, let me be right. I realized this was the first time I’d prayed for anything besides an end to my own pain. Let me be right.
“Where then?” said Etch.
I told him, and for a moment I feared he’d say yes just because it was me who asked. But I wasn’t asking. Even if he refused, I was going to the Starhall.
“You sure?”
“If I’m going to make mistakes,” I said, “I’m going to make my own mistakes.” Something Terris would understand.
“So, I’ll help you get in through the back of the Starhall, just like anyplace else in this city.”
“You know a way?”
He shook his head, but I saw the white gleam of his teeth in the dappled shadows. “No, but I bet I can find it. You don’t live in a city as many years as I have and drink as many pints of brew, without collecting a few useful tips. Gardeners and stablemen, you see, have always had a special relationship. And somebody has to take out the garbage.”
So we made our way through the less-lit streets, keeping well away from the plaza. The skylights above the Starhall’s main chamber blazed as if someone — Pateros’s ghost, maybe — had set a torch to it. But back here, where the light barely reached, the building looked unfinished and cobbled-together. Bits of chopped-off wall stuck out into the alley. The chipped and broken bricks cast faintly patterned shadows against the crumbling mortar. There was an unmistakable smell of garbage emanating from the recycle and compost bins.
We picked a door from several hidden in the shadowed recesses. It was plain light-colored wood, cracked where the sealant had weathered off, with simple hinges, a lock, and a latch that could be lifted by one elbow. I pictured the kitchen drone, both arms spilling over with sacks of redroot peelings and boiled-out soup bones, backing out through the door.
Etch hunched over by the lock and pried it with the guard’s knife. I winced as metal whined across metal. Too damned loud.
I kept my mouth shut and glanced back up the alley. Anything I said or did would only cut into Etch’s concentration. But me, I was too tweaked to fight well. I didn’t like this place, full of bins to fall against and chunks of wall to crash into and Mother knew what to slip on. I didn’t like this knife — a plague-rotted, half-blind ghamel turd could have done a better job balancing it. I didn’t like...
...a muted something crept along my nerves, no more than leaves brushing against a branch...
I held the knife still, ready.
...a light beam across the far end of the alley, swinging side to side. The rapping of heeled boots on pavement. Two, three of them maybe, I couldn’t tell.
I skimmed the fingers of my free hand over Etch’s shoulder and he froze, knife point still jammed in the lock. The light beam jerked and played over the sides of the Starhall.
Mother, let them see only the jumble of shapes and shadows. If we don’t move, don’t breathe...
The next moment they were gone, their footsteps fading.
It was the waiting, that’s what it was. The waiting out here and the trying not to think of what I’d find — or not find — in there.
Then with a final resentful click! and a hiss of breath, Etch cracked the door open and we entered the Starhall.
Chapter 36
The back corridors of the Starhall had an airless, almost deserted feel. Solar strips along the tops of the walls gave off a subdued light, like a sickly haze. The silence was enough to make me itch.
Curfew or no, there should have been someone here in the middle of the night, even in this city where, as Avi told me, the most common crime was pickpocketing. A watcher, maybe,
stationed by the big front doors. There was no trace of any guard Montborne might have left. We made our way alone and unchallenged through the storage areas lined with boxes and bales of papers, frayed tapestries, rolled and tagged, closets stuffed with old ceremonial robes and reeking of pine oil and cedar. Here we had to choose to go down or forward, toward the central chamber itself.
The door to the basement stairwell stood just a hair open.
It could be a steward who left it that way, in a hurry to get home to a hot dinner. It could be.
It could also be that Montborne and Terris had gone this way, and that Montborne had made sure they were alone. The Starhall watcher, if there were one, would have let him pass without any questions, would have turned his back while Montborne conducted his secret business below.
The steps were stone, once scored for traction but now worn smooth and hollowed in the center. I kept close to one wall, pausing every few feet to listen.
At the bottom of the flight we came to a landing with a chair and an old desk, a shelf holding some books with frayed covers and an unlighted reading lamp. The wooden wall panels were black and warped, smelling of old lacquer. I saw three doors and another pit of a stairway, smaller, narrower. Darker.
Etch started to go down. Without thinking, my hand shot out. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist. He stared at me, his eyes puzzled as I shook my head. He set his chin, shaped the word yes, and pulled away from me. I held him fast. He looked surprised at how strong I was.
I tried to keep my voice no louder than the slither of a house-snake. “I can’t protect you too.”
Etch started to shake his head, but then saw my meaning. He’d never pretended to be a fighter. He would die for me but not, I thought, risk me dying for him.
After a moment, when I felt sure he understood, I let him go. He saluted me with his City Guards knife and stepped aside.
The air was even thicker here, cold and musty, the wall lights fewer and dimmer. Whoever came here — if anybody ever did — must bring their own. Halfway down I paused again. My heart beat so loudly I wasn’t sure I could hear anything else.
Voices. Yes, voices. I listened...
Men’s voices. Two. Muffled, maybe behind a door. I couldn’t make out words, only tones. One sounded sharp, no more than bursts of sound and then silences. The other, softer, stumbling, as if the speaker were exhausted or sick at heart.
Images rose up to drown me, like the shadows cast by churning batwings. I trembled under their weight, terrified I’d come too late, smelling the blood and the death-stench all over again.
My body moved on its own, as if it no longer belonged to me. The City Guards knife, even badly balanced as it was, seemed to come alive in my hand. I glided down one stair after another, as supple and silent as a shadow panther on the prowl. No grain of sand would shift under my feet, not even the flimsiest stalk of grass would quiver as I passed. I could creep past a browsing gazelle without its knowing. Even my heart beat soundlessly.
I no longer strained to hear the words between the two men. Only the pauses, the silences, the way the air shifted and eddied with their slightest breath.
At the bottom of the stairs, I found a passageway and then a door frame of rough, cobwebby wood. I sensed its powdery grain and the tiny poison sacs of the spiders nesting there. Holding the knife so there would be no reflection off its flat surface, I flattened myself against the wall.
Almost within straight eyeshot of the room, I no longer needed my eyes. I felt the quaking in Terris’s muscles and tasted the blood on his lips. I recoiled from the oily smoothness of Montborne’s voice even before he spoke.
“You have to admit I’ve been more than fair. I’ve listened to you. I’ve even come all the way down here in the middle of the night. Alone, just as you asked. But you see, there’s nothing here. Nothing at all. Just an old storage room nobody’s used for a hundred years. There’s no sense to it. I ask you, as one sensible person to another, why would the founders of Laurea hide something so important down here? And why is there no official record of it?”
Terris’s voice, ragged though it was, rang like steel. “The gaea-priests were supposed to keep the secret...and the warning. But the knowledge was lost — ”
“Come now, lad,” Montborne said, moving closer and holding out one hand, “I can see you’re not well. You’ve been through an ordeal that would break most men. There’s no shame in admitting you’re human. All of us make mistakes. Let me help you upstairs and I’ll see you’re properly taken care of.”
Terris swerved out of Montborne’s reach and came up flat against the wall. Montborne followed, closing in. The general’s back was toward me, and his red-and-bronze uniform looked faded and muddy. I slid through the door frame, well away from the light.
“It used to be...behind the wall,” Terris said, edging away again. I couldn’t tell if he’d spotted me or not. His eye sockets were dark circles in a face as white as bone. “But it was...shifted. Just a little...farther.”
“I think you’ve gone far enough!” With a single stride, Montborne closed the distance between them, whipped one of Terris’s arms behind his back and jerked him away from the wall. He increased the shoulder leverage and Terris arched back reflexively.
“Damn you, Montborne! If you could just look past your narrow-minded patriotic nose, you’d see — ”
I tightened my grip on the knife but kept my muscles loose. I wanted my own attack to be sudden and final. Tricky — if I were close enough to hold a knife-edge to Montborne’s throat, I would also be close enough for him to effectively counter the move, and he’d know how.
“ — it isn’t Laurea that’s at stake, it’s all of Harth!” Terris’s breath came like a hiss through his clenched teeth. No wonder — Montborne had his shoulder joint half dislocated. My own joints ached with memory; Westifer used to try that one on me, until I learned some sufficiently nasty countermoves. Montborne half-lifted, half-dragged Terris, searching for the leverage that would get him up on his toes and carrying his own weight. An inch or two closer now and they’d be in reach...
I shifted my weight just a fraction, and beyond the two men, something came into my field of vision — something glimmering a few inches inward from the scabby black wall. A twist of the grayish opalescent light, like a Ridge weirdie and yet much more intense. Terris’s forgotten door? A door that he was trying to maneuver Montborne through?
No time to think. I launched myself with every bit of power in me and rammed one shoulder into Montborne’s back just level with his short ribs. His breath went out of him hard; he staggered and half-dropped Terris.
The force of my charge carried us all forward, out of the grayish light of the Starhall cellar and through a momentary flash of green. I fell to my knees and sent Terris and Montborne sprawling.
The next moment, I was squinting up at a sky sullen with thickly layered clouds. Stale, metallic-tasting air stung my eyes and burned my windpipe. After the Northlight and those green tunnels, I thought nothing could ever surprise me again. But this place...
At our feet lay a jumble of blackened and splintered bones and tattered cloth. Some of the bones looked human. Around us stretched a broad, weather-eaten platform, piled high with rubble. One side, a tangle of corroded metal and rock, looked like the remains of a once-majestic tower. The other three sides opened to a scooped-out valley, its floor strewn with steaming, rust-colored pools and twisted bushes. I’d never seen anything like that foul-colored water or the clumps of vegetation scattered across the streaked, red-purple soil. Squinting at the leaden sky, I found no trace of brightness where the sun might be. If anything lived, it kept itself well hid. For now, anyway.
I picked myself up. “Some door.”
Terris knelt beside the bones. The fabric looked as if it had once been green, now bleached almost colorless. It shredded as he reached into the pile. He pulled free a fragment, thin and curved, of a human skull. The bone showed distinct tooth marks, but from what kind o
f animal, I couldn’t tell.
Something glinted among the slender gray-black finger bones. I pointed, and Terris lifted out a ring. He drew in his breath sharply as he brushed away the powdery silt. He pocketed the ring and got to his feet.
Montborne’s skin looked smooth and fine and dead like beeswax, but sweat beaded his forehead and white ringed his eyes. His voice came in a rasping whisper. “Is this hell?”
Terris’s eyes scanned the desolate horizon, then flickered back to the general’s face. “Hell? Yes, in a way. One that we must never be allowed to repeat.”
Chapter 37
I kept one hand on the hilt of my sheathed knife and both my eyes on Montborne as we followed Terris toward the ruined tower.
A little beyond the fallen blocks, we came to a jumble of chipped and splintered stone. From the shape and placement of the fallen stones, I guessed they had originally formed an archway. An open area faced them, once part of a spacious courtyard but now choked by chunks of crumbling stone, twisted branches, dried leaves and metal bars powdery with rust.
Terris bent over to examine a block of fire-blackened rock partly covered with scabby dun lichen. Under his touch, the surface flaked into chips that sifted to the pavement. Something small, with a dark, glossy shell and too many legs, scuttled away between the cracks.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“They should have left something,” Terris said. “A message in case we came back through some day. Or maybe a memorial to those who stayed behind.”
“‘Back through’? ‘Stayed behind’?” Montborne demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t see it yet, do you?” Terris’s eyes glittered in the lurid overcast light. “Harth was never our home, only the place we ran to...after we’d destroyed this one. This is the world we came from.”
“You’re crazy! I don’t know what kind of place you’ve taken us to, but we couldn’t have come from here.” Montborne gestured toward the poisoned valley. “Nothing human could live out there.”
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