She did. The memory of the wind filling up her coat made her grip a vise.
Master Meteron and Doctor Chalmers had descended the belfry tower together, with Meteron obliged to pick an easy route for the young scholar. Chalmers looked white as a pudding as he hugged the tower’s foot, inching with painful care until Meteron snared his collar and ushered him into position. The Alchemist took the front, Rowena pacing him. Meteron kept the reverend in the middle and took up the rear.
The four moved in a half crouch, keeping as low a profile in the wind as could be managed. Their hurried steps echoed, mice scurrying over upturned kettles.
“Is there a reason we didn’t go back down through the tunnels?” Rowena asked the Alchemist.
“We came that way, and they know it. They’ll have covered that exit already.”
“But, why the roof—” Rowena’s question was suddenly cut in half.
“It’s going well so far,” Chalmers declared.
Rowena winced. “Rule one, Doc.”
“You were talking, too,” he protested. “But, really—” he glanced back at Meteron, “—we haven’t had any trouble since leaving the cellar. Dodge a few guards, head straight up to the main floors, and then—”
“And then this,” the Alchemist murmured.
He had dropped to one knee, peering over the edge of the belfry level roof. Rowena could see the flat expanse of the clerestory below and the line of pitched gargoyles and rust-stained, soot-blackened relief work where it ended. For a moment, her sense of direction turned on its head. From the ground, she’d stared up at the Old Cathedral many times, but its steep rises and graceful slopes had seemed a single, continuous shape from that vantage point. Now she could see how many levels and pieces comprised the structure, how complex it really was. Rowena searched her memory for the terms the Alchemist had applied hours earlier as they reviewed the schematics.
The Cathedral’s interior had three levels. She couldn’t remember the names, except for “clerestory.” That was the one that mattered—the highest interior level. The clerestory had a roof spanning the whole building, from the front porch to the back of the chancel, where the EC collars gave their lectures on this thing or that. Rising up from the clerestory was the belfry level, joined by gutter works and spans of buttresses to the building’s tall sides and the clerestory roof that made up its floor. There were two towers, high and low, on the belfry level, the lip of that middle roof extending over the main. That was where Rowena crouched now. And if she peered up to her left, there was the central tower, the Cathedral’s highest structure. It bridged out from the upper belfry tower, seated just behind it and squarely over the chancel.
It’s a bit like one of those wedding cakes in bakers’ windows, she thought, with all the tiers stacked on one end, crowding up together.
The clerestory roof was perhaps sixty feet down, linked to the belfry level by several short buttresses set at terrible angles.
You could get down there, Rowena supposed, if you knew what you were about.
She looked to her three companions, certain there were only two among them with any notion what they were about. She studied the Alchemist’s grim expression and considered revising that figure downward.
“Well, we’ve got the rappelling lines,” Rowena observed.
The Alchemist and the thief were already at work setting one up.
“The way down isn’t the problem,” the old man replied. He set down a spool of line and sank a bracing pin into the mortar just behind the last line of crenellation.
Chalmers frowned. “What, then?”
Meteron threaded something through the heavy eyelet of the rappelling harness, wrapped it twice, then handed it to the Alchemist. Hands freed, Meteron reached for the stock and barrel of his carbine and had it assembled in time to gesture with its snub nose.
It touched six points of the clock—three, one, twelve, eleven, nine, and eight. For a moment, Rowena saw nothing. Then, sheltering in the puddles of shadow gathered below statuary and scrollwork, she saw glinting eyes, pale as bloodied milk.
“They are the problem,” Meteron said. He handed the Alchemist the carbine.
The old man was already strapped into the harness. He threaded the weapon through the leather saddle pressing against his back. Below, the aigamuxa shifted positions, speaking to one another in slithery sounds the wind sliced apart and carried away.
“Listen carefully,” the Alchemist said to Rowena and Chalmers. “I am going down first—with you, girl. When we’re down, stay behind those ornaments near the buttress arms. Ann will reel the line back and send you down after, Doctor. Then he’ll take up the line and come down on his own.”
Chalmers blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll provide cover while you come down.” The Alchemist patted the carbine. “Ann has to be last because he can manage the descent without a rig, and we need it brought down to this level to complete the escape.”
“Can’t he come down with me, like you with the girl? And then he could, you know?” Chalmers gestured breezily, made a little ffwhpp! noise, demonstrating the utter simplicity of his plan. “Head back up, disassemble the rig, shimmy down?”
Meteron snorted. “Waste of bloody time. Eventually the apes will tire of being held off. Then they’ll close with us.”
The Alchemist loosened a strap and gestured to Rowena. She leaned against him, felt a strap pass between her knees, then a pressure under her rear as it cinched tight. Rowena stared down at the drop. Four pink pinpricks winked in the darkness. She dug her fingers into the Alchemist’s sleeve.
“Ready?”
She nodded, still staring.
He bent his knees, back to the drop, and pushed out. Momentum hurled Rowena’s gullet into her gorge, though the descent was over in only three bounds against the buttress arm. The Alchemist whipped the harness off them, then shooed her back toward the cover of the ornaments at his back. Then he turned the carbine toward the ambuscades set in the higher points of downspouts, peaks, and statuary. He moved the muzzle from one set of glittering, down-hanging eyes to another, lingering on each a threatening moment.
Rowena stared out from under an arch of sub-buttress, flat on her belly and wide-eyed. Off to her right, she heard the line zipping back up, grunts and voices, a shrill cry. She watched the aigamuxa.
One seemed to be picking a path to the clerestory roof, swinging steadily lower, gnawing at the Alchemist’s patience.
Reverend Chalmers landed awkwardly, shaking like a teacup dog. He wriggled free of the harness and scuttled beside Rowena. The Alchemist’s satchel, swollen with the heavy book and hundreds of leaf notes, lay cradled in his trembling arms.
The reverend noticed the aigamuxa swinging down from the scaffolding surrounding a half-restored tower. It was within one hundred feet of their position, about ten o’ the clock.
Then ninety.
Eighty.
“Shouldn’t, um,” he wondered aloud, “shouldn’t he be shooting the beast by now?”
The Alchemist whirled, cracking shots twice at another aigamuxa who had been prowling closer, utterly silent on its blind eye heels at his level. The one creeping in at ten o’ the clock had been its distraction.
The shots kicked up sparks around the aigamuxa’s heels, sending it scrabbling backward, bounding for higher ground. The Alchemist turned and fired at ten o’ the clock for good measure. The bullet must have grazed the aiga as it closed fifty feet, for it howled, dangling awkwardly before it, too, fell back, swinging to a shared position with eleven o’ the clock.
A shadow moved above the Alchemist, smaller than the aigamuxa’s. Meteron pushed away from the buttress and dropped the last ten feet, landing in a crouch beside his partner’s knees, the rappelling gear slung over his shoulders. He drew his pistol with his left hand, stood with his back to the Alchemist’s, and checked the positions he’d neglected.
“They’ll close as soon as we take up a position for the descent,” he
said.
The Alchemist grunted. “Then we’ll need a better shot than me holding them off.”
Meteron bucked the rig off his shoulders and kicked it out from under his feet. “I’ll take the carbine and the girl.”
The Alchemist shot into the dark, caroming sparks off another copper downspout. The silhouette of an aigamuxa flashed in the night. “Why the girl?”
“Reloading. Chalmers would shoot himself in the foot. He can set the lines with you.”
The old man worked a mechanism below the carbine’s trigger loop, some kind of lever action used to ready a round. He passed the gun to Meteron and grabbed the dropped rig. Then he ran in a crouch toward the north edge of the roof, calling back to the buttresses: “Stay on me, Doctor!”
Chalmers crawled out from his nook beside Rowena and scuttled after, throwing one arm protectively overhead, ready to fend off the missiles with which the aigamuxa were clearly not armed.
Rowena darted beside Meteron. He stalked backward, carbine tucked under his right arm and pistol held out with his left, working to keep the aigamuxa under its roving barrel.
“How many are there, Master Meteron?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Danger really should lead to intimacy, Miss Downshire. Let’s dispense with formality. Call me Anselm.”
“Um . . . Anselm, how many are there?”
“About a dozen.”
They reached the end of the roof the Alchemist and Chalmers occupied. The two men crouched together, spooling up the rappelling lines.
“Aigamuxa like high places,” Rowena complained. “Why come up all this way just to get back down again?”
“You choose your battles,” Anselm answered. “The tunnels will be blocked off, and there are guards on the ground floor. They’re men, and that means they can use guns. Aigamuxa are dangerous, but only when you let them in close. They can’t see to fire a gun. And personally, I prefer killing monsters to men. Call it a peccadillo.” He thrust the pistol into Rowena’s hands, then unholstered its mate, dropping it at her feet. “Ever held a gun before?”
“No.”
“That’s a very nice one. Loads easily—there’s a cylinder drops out to the side. Here are a dozen reloads in preset rings. Pointed end in, flat bit out. Close the cylinder and leave the safety hammer up when you pass it. The carbine loads the same way.” Anselm winked down at her. “I’m afraid we’re in direct violation of rule two.”
Rowena smiled nervously. “Well—you’re not actually in the middle of a firefight.”
“Not yet.” He shouldered the carbine and sighted along its snub barrel. “Whatever I put in front of you gets loaded. That’s the new rule two.”
For what seemed a long time, the aigamuxa didn’t move, though Rowena could hear them calling back and forth under the wind’s low song. Anselm watched. The Alchemist secured the lines, Chalmers jumping on his orders.
Nothing changed.
And then Anselm’s lip curled. “God’s balls. Bear!”
“What?”
“Nasrahiel isn’t here.”
The Alchemist looked up. He cursed around the docking pin held in his teeth. “You’re certain?”
“Of course I’m certain!” Anselm snapped. “He’s the only goddamned aiga I’d pick out of a crowd. He’s not here.”
“The hell he isn’t,” growled the Alchemist, driving the pin into the mortar at his feet. “Ambush.”
He stood and put a hand to Chalmers’s chest, shoving the younger man down onto the tiled roof. He drew the weaponette from its holster.
A clawed hand reached up over from the ledge behind him, its four-jointed fingers closing around the crenellation’s edge.
There were three aigamuxa. Two leapt up from the face of the Cathedral they’d just scaled, ready to crash into the Alchemist’s flanks. The third was Nasrahiel. He perched on the roof’s edge between the riggings, leering with shark-toothed certainty.
Rowena cried out a warning, but two barking shots from the carbine punched through her words. Her ears rang, her nose full of burning ash.
The aigamuxa in the high towers began swinging down, the night exploding with their whoops and bellows.
For a moment, the world moved slowly.
The Alchemist flicked his wrist. The weaponette’s shaft sprang into a blade the length of his arm. His retreat turned into two dancing steps and a spin. He avoided the first aigamuxa’s lunge and sliced at the face of the other. The sword carved a bloody line across the creature’s nose. It bellowed in rage—but that was all. The cut would have blinded a man. An aigamuxa was another matter.
“Rowena! Switch!”
She felt the stock of the carbine butting her shoulder. Anselm glared down at her, hands out for the pistols. She cursed and passed them up to him, almost fumbling the one for his right.
Anselm lacked a trigger finger on his right hand, but that didn’t keep him from firing. With his middle finger in the loop, he could haul off the shots, though few were true enough to do more than discourage an enemy’s advance. With the left, Anselm winged the fast-moving aigamuxa as they brachiated down to the clamoring chaos of the clerestory roof.
Rowena had time enough to reload the carbine. Then she felt the wind crushed from her lungs, a weight like a cart run wild plowing into her chest.
The sky spun. Rowena’s feet left the ground, something long and sinewy curling around her throat.
Then there was only the hum of the copper roof falling still and the tinny whine of ringing ears.
Things had gone very quiet.
36.
“Surrender the doctor and the book,” Nasrahiel called, “and I will not kill the girl.”
The Alchemist put his back to Anselm’s, standing at a right angle to the aigamuxa and his hostage. Rowena’s feet stamped the air. She clawed the aigamuxa’s hand, face purpling.
The Alchemist glanced at his partner. “Ann, I know you wanted to face him, but—”
“The stakes have changed,” Anselm answered. He lowered his guns. “I’ll explain later.”
Chalmers scrambled to his feet. “He’ll kill her anyway! That’s what he wants. He must have figured it out when he studied the notations on my maps.”
Rowena’s kicking grew weaker. Her elfin face looked more gray than purple.
“Figured what out?” the Alchemist demanded.
“There’s a lot to explain later,” Anselm said apologetically. His left pistol snapped back up, leveled at the aigamuxa.
Two shots rang out. One came from behind Nasrahiel.
The aigamuxa doubled over when the machine pistol round took him in the shoulder. Anselm’s shot, which would have drilled into the center of his skull, cut cold air instead, whanging off a gutter works in the darkness beyond.
Anselm and the Alchemist looked where the other shot had come from. Inspector Haadiyaa Gammon perched some fifty feet up, at the foot of the lower belfry tower.
Nasrahiel threw Rowena over his unwounded shoulder and staggered off, running a wide, blind path through Reverend Chalmers, the young man futilely barring the way. He crashed in a heap of elbows. The shadows of the aigamuxa, howling and bellowing, rushed onto the Cathedral’s roof.
The Alchemist lunged after Nasrahiel, only to be spun around by a huge arm. A backhand blow swept him up off his feet and into a dark form, a red line scored in its face.
The two aigamuxa he’d fended off before closed with the Alchemist again. He moved his blade up, around, and between, ducking the blows he could and cutting to match the ones he was obliged to take. His head rang. His arm felt heavy. Somewhere far off, he heard Rowena scream.
Anselm emptied his left-hand pistol into the first two aigamuxa to rush forward. He heard the voice behind him call “Duck!” and obeyed in time to avoid the machine shot that would have cut through his back before punching into the stomach of the aigamuxa barreling up between its fallen comrades.
The creature took the shot full. It fell to the ground slack-jawed, its belly yawni
ng viscera.
Anselm scowled at Gammon and the Alchemist’s gift in her hands. “That,” he noted tartly, “doesn’t belong to you.”
Gammon turned, shot at another aigamuxa, then shifted left. Anselm put his back to hers. She circled around, giving him cover to reload.
“True,” Gammon said. “I’m also fairly sure it’s illegal outside Vraska.”
“And in Vraska.” Anselm emptied his right-hand gun, scoring a line of dents in the roof as his target veered narrowly away. “Mind your nine, Haadi.”
She did. The blunderbuss split the air with a sound like a hull breaching on the shallows.
The Alchemist spun left, driving the point of his sword into his assailant’s swinging arm. It sank deep, biting the artery. Blood fanned from the wound, spraying across his face. The creature’s knees buckled before he could tear the blade free.
The other aigamuxa dove in, ready to take the Alchemist with his blade bound.
He sidestepped, wrested the sword free, and brained the creature with the pommel as it sailed past. It landed on all fours, shaking its head and spitting curses.
He drove the sword’s point into the small of its back and flicked the trigger to empty its charge between the aiga’s twin spines. Crooked legs flailed out from under the creature, one last spasm, and then, at last, it stilled.
The Alchemist set the point of the blade in the ground and heaved for breath. There were stars out in the cloudy night—constellations he did not remember. He shook his throbbing head to clear the sky again.
Reverend Chalmers watched, stomach turning, as they died and they died. A lunatic impulse to check the book and see how it would record the bloodshed came to him. Though he squelched it with a very small effort, the absurdity still drove his hand down to his satchel, and he felt . . .
Nothing. The bag was gone, and with it the notes.
And the book.
Chalmers looked wildly around, trying to spy where the aigamuxa chieftain and his captive had gone. He saw Anselm Meteron and a strange woman with a very large pistol shooting down a ring of approaching aigamuxa. He saw the Alchemist struggling to keep his feet after his fray. There was blood running from his temple, and he looked dazed as another beast stalked nearer. Still, the old man saw the aiga and straightened in time to get his blade into a ready position.
The Nine Page 32