More interestingly for Winter’s purpose, there were more stained-glass windows along the sides of the cathedral, where it ran parallel to the white-faced building. She shuffled back down the steps and gathered her team.
“Okay,” she said. “There’s a building over there, all in white.”
“That’s the Priests of the White administrative headquarters,” Maxwell said. “A pretty new addition.”
“Where we want to be is on its roof,” Winter said. “That should get us onto the cathedral on one of its blind sides. We’ll need to watch the towers, though.”
“How far is it to the white building?” Bobby said.
“Maybe sixty feet,” Winter said. “I don’t think we could all run for it without being spotted. But there was a corridor in that direction a little ways back. Come on.”
She led them back the way they’d come, then turned right, down a side corridor. It led to a doorway, with another storeroom beyond stacked with small votive candles and boxes of worn copies of the Wisdoms. There were no other exits.
“This is almost underneath the white building,” Winter said. “It has its own basements, I assume?”
“It should,” Maxwell said.
“Bobby?” Winter said. “See if you can make us a door.”
Bobby grinned. “It might be a little loud.”
“If that kid was right, there shouldn’t be anyone to hear.”
“Here goes, then.”
Bobby took a deep breath, pivoted on the ball of her foot, and delivered a roundhouse punch to the stone wall at the back of the storeroom. There was a crunch and an explosion of small stones and dust, which left everyone coughing.
“Sorry,” Bobby said, as the air slowly cleared. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
The blow had had the desired effect, Winter was gratified to see. As she’d expected, the wall separating this tunnel from the basements of the white building wasn’t very thick. Bobby’s punch had shattered the stone, fracturing it in a bull’s-eye pattern like a rock thrown through a window. A little light filtered through the center, where bits of stone had fallen away, and Bobby was able to clear a respectable-sized hole in a few more moments.
“You okay?” Winter said, as the others came forward to help move the rubble.
Bobby made a face. “Think I broke a bone in my hand or something,” she said. “It’ll be all right in a few minutes. Next time I’ll use a pickax.”
Winter shot her a grin. When the hole was wide enough, Alex and Millie slipped through, with the others following when the two thieves waved them forward.
“Maxwell,” Winter said, “do you know the layout here?”
The priest shook his head. “It’s too new. We don’t have maps this recent.”
“Then we’ll just have to look for the stairs. Keep an eye out.”
Even more than the deeper tunnels, the basements of the Priests of the White were shockingly banal. Here the theme was paper—every room they passed was lined with shelves, which until recently had been stacked higher with bound volumes, wrapped scrolls, and loose sheets. Some of them were still untouched, but most appeared to have been emptied in a hurry, stray books and torn pages lying on the floor under mud tracks from many boots.
At the end of the hall, marble-faced stairs led up to the main floor, which presented a similar prospect. Large, open rooms with many desks alternated with more storage, with a side corridor leading to a well-equipped kitchen and canteen. Paper was everywhere, carpeting the floors as though the building had been hit by a blizzard of the stuff. It rustled around their feet as they walked, but nothing else moved in the vast space. On impulse, Winter reached down and picked up a page, parsing the unfamiliar Murnskai script with difficulty:
Fitness Report for Father Muren Nasidov, assigned to Saint Vilek’s of West Ristev
Overall: Good. Some concerns Nasidov may be becoming too close to his congregation. Recommend transfer after no more than one year.
Detail—
“Saints and martyrs,” Winter muttered, letting the sheet fall. “This is worse than Orlanko’s Cobweb.”
“I think that’s the stairs,” Alex called.
A narrow, seldom-used staircase led upward past a ring of overhanging galleries, ending in a locked trapdoor. Winter looked back to Bobby, but before they could rearrange the group to shuffle her to the front, Alex had popped the lock with a pair of thin metal picks. Millie raised her eyebrows, impressed.
“I told you I was the greatest thief in the world,” Alex said with a shrug. “Besides, this is kid stuff.”
“Open it carefully,” Winter said. “Someone may be watching from the tower.”
Alex nodded and pushed the trapdoor open a few inches. She put her eye to the crack for a full minute, then looked over her shoulder.
“If they’re there, I can’t see them.”
Winter gestured her forward. One by one, they climbed the last few steps and emerged onto the roof of the white building. It was made of overlapping slate shingles, sharply peaked to keep the snow off, which made the footing somewhat treacherous. The sun was nearly down in the west, the yellow-orange of sunset already fading to purple and black overhead. Just ahead of them, the side of the cathedral rose like a mountain, twice the height of the white building even without its towers. The thinner tower loomed far overhead, but as best Winter could tell there were no windows on its slim sides. It widened at the very top to support a covered platform, but that seemed to be empty except for an enormous bronze bell. A spiderweb of ropes and lines connected it to the larger tower on the other side of the cathedral, supporting long strings of double-circle flags in alternating red and white, along with representative emblems of Murnsk, Borel, and the other Sworn Church nations.
Of more direct interest were the stained-glass windows, each about ten feet high and three feet across, that pierced the thick stone wall of the cathedral at regular intervals. The gap from the edge of the white building’s roof to the cathedral’s side was perhaps ten feet, longer than Winter had guessed from the ground.
“Bobby, we’re going to need something to use as a bridge,” Winter said. “Can you go back downstairs and grab one of those long benches?”
Bobby nodded and disappeared back down the trapdoor. Winter turned to Alex.
“Try to keep the hole as small as possible,” she said. “We don’t want anyone down below noticing.”
“Got it.”
Alex flexed her fingers, like a pianist preparing for a performance, and extended a hand. A black sphere formed around it, then sent a lance of pure darkness into the stone beside the window. It stuck there, quivering as though anchored to the rock, and Alex nonchalantly stepped into space. She swung across the gap on her line of shadow, coming to rest boots-first against the wall in what was obviously a well-practiced maneuver.
From there she walked herself sideways until she was right beside the window and fired another line into the rock from her other hand. Putting her weight on this new anchor, she let the first one vanish like a wisp of smoke, leaning over to examine the glass. Darkness gathered around her hand again, and thin, quick spears of black punched out like a swarm of snakes, tracing a rotating circular pattern. A moment later they twined around a section of the stained-glass mosaic and pulled it away, leaving a hole big enough to crawl through. A few bits of glass dropped from the cut edge, but the rest stayed together, held in place by the leaded frame.
Bobby returned, carrying one of the long benches with the legs broken off. With some difficulty, Maxwell helped her work it up through the trapdoor and along the roof until they were opposite the window. Bobby stood it on end and let it tilt across the gap until it came to rest against the cathedral wall, and Alex guided it down and into the hole, making a narrow but sturdy-looking bridge.
“Not bad,” Alex said. “Maybe not quite worthy of Metzing, but not ba
d at all.”
All that remained was for them to crawl across, one by one. Alex went first, dropping lightly off the wall and onto the plank, then shimmying through the hole. Millie and Maxwell followed. Red looked down at the narrow alley between the buildings, thirty feet below, and swallowed.
“Something wrong?” Winter said.
“I’m not good with heights,” the big sergeant admitted. “Give me a moment.”
Eyes closed, she edged out onto the bench, crawling on hands and knees. Millie, waiting on the other side, took her arm as soon as she was close enough and guided her the rest of the way. When she was through, Winter looked at Bobby.
“No problems with heights?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Bobby said. “You?”
“Maybe a few . . . twinges.” Winter took a deep breath, dropped to her knees, and shuffled out onto the board. She kept her eyes locked on Millie’s encouraging face and tried her best to ignore the tingling, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. When she was across, she squeezed through the hole in the stained glass with a sigh of relief, and found Millie and Red squatting in a narrow, darkened alcove. Alex and Maxwell were pressed against each other, leaning against the wall, and it took Winter a moment to realize they were kissing enthusiastically. Alex broke away after a moment, blushing only a little.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “It’s been a long time since I did any thievery. It gets me excited.”
Winter raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Bobby emerged from the hole and got to her feet, dusting herself off.
“Maxwell?” Winter said. The priest still had one hand in Alex’s, their fingers entwined. “Am I right in thinking this place is going to look a lot like most cathedrals?”
He nodded, keeping his voice to a whisper. “This is the Widow’s Gallery. The main hall is down below. The speaker’s balcony is over there”—he gestured to the right—“with the priest’s quarters and so on behind it. Stairway down is the other way.”
“Right. We need to find a spot where we can get a good look at the main hall without being seen. Alex, you make sure the gallery is clear. The rest of you, stay down.”
Alex nodded and padded forward. They were standing in a nook, a notch in the thick stone wall designed to admit light from the stained-glass window. Now that it was nearly full dark, they didn’t have to worry about presenting a silhouette against the lit glass, and no lights were visible on the gallery level, with only a weak radiance shining up from below.
“Looks like we’re alone up here,” Alex hissed. “I can see down below, but . . . you’d better come take a look.”
Winter hunched over and shuffled forward. The gallery was a horseshoe-shaped balcony, stretching out fifteen feet from the wall on three sides of the great hall. Unlike the gallery of the cathedral in Vordan, where she’d nearly been trapped by Orlanko’s black-coats, this one was in fairly good repair, with its wooden boards solid underfoot and covered by dusty wool carpets. A waist-high railing at the edge provided at least a token effort to prevent people from falling to their deaths among the pews thirty feet below. Alex, lying on her stomach, had shuffled to the very edge and peeked over, and Winter followed her example.
The great hall of the cathedral was packed with people. Pews, braziers, and other furniture had been dragged aside, leaving the enormous oval of floor entirely full of neat ranks of kneeling figures. Many wore robes, either the black of priests or the gray of servants, but others were dressed in ragged shirts and trousers, and some were entirely naked. The precision of their arrangement was unnerving, reminding Winter of a battalion arranged for attack. At a glance, she guessed there were at least a thousand of them, maybe more; they extended beyond her line of sight beneath the gallery in all directions.
“Balls of the Beast,” she swore. “I know the boy said ‘everyone,’ but I didn’t think they’d all be here.”
“They don’t even look like they’re praying,” Alex whispered. It was nearly silent in the vast space, so quiet they could hear the occasional cough from the congregation gathered below. “They’re just . . . waiting.”
“Some of them aren’t in good shape, either.” A few of the naked figures were so emaciated it was hard to tell if they were men or women. Others were missing arms, or just hands, and many had weeping sores at their wrists, as though they’d spent a great deal of time shackled.
“Can you see your Penitent?”
Winter shook her head. “Too many black robes. She could be down there and I’d never know it. Damn. We may have to rethink this.”
“I’ve got an idea, but let me run it by Maxwell,” Alex said. She backed away from the edge on hands and knees, then sat up. “Shit!”
There was a sharp, wet sound. Winter bounced to her feet, hand falling to her sword. A young man in a black robe stood in front of Alex, with one of her black spears extending from her outstretched hand right through his breastbone. A moment later, it faded away, and he swayed slightly and coughed. Blood flecked his mouth.
“What’s wrong—” Bobby said, coming out of the alcove. Her sword slid free with a rasp, leveled at the throat of the stranger. “Don’t make a sound!”
“The pontifex sends me to greet you,” the young man said in Vordanai. His voice had an unhealthy gurgle to it, and he coughed again. “He wishes you to join him in the west tower. He sends his . . . his kind . . .” The young man’s knees gave way, and he toppled to the floor with a thump. Blood gushed from his mouth as he strained to mouth one more word. “. . . regards.”
Winter stared as the young man convulsed once, then died. What the hell was that?
“We have to get out of here,” Alex said, hands tightening. “They’re onto us.”
“That may be problematic,” Bobby said. She pointed to the left, in the direction of the main staircase. A group of robed figures at least a dozen strong had just come up, walking unhurriedly in their direction.
“Over here, too!” Millie said, voice high with fear. Another dozen black robes were closing in from the other end of the gallery.
“Back over the bridge,” Winter said, but Maxwell was already peering out the hole.
“There’s at least four of them waiting on the other side,” he said.
“Saints and fucking martyrs,” Winter said. She turned back to the group coming from the stairs.
“Charge ’em,” Red suggested. “We can break through, make a run for the main doors.”
“There’s another thousand downstairs,” Alex said.
“They’re not even armed,” Winter said. “What the hell is going on?”
“The pontifex sends me to greet you,” the closest black-robed figure said, coming to a halt. “He wishes you to join him in the west tower. He sends his kind regards, and assures you that you will be perfectly safe.”
Winter looked down at the corpse, then back at the second messenger. If he’d noticed his dead comrade, his pleasant expression betrayed nothing.
“Well?” Red said, her sword half-drawn. “Winter?”
“I think we go to the west tower,” Winter said.
“Are you kidding?” Millie squeaked. “That has to be a trap!”
“I don’t think it could be any more of a trap than what we’re in now,” Maxwell said calmly.
“What the hell would the Pontifex of the Black want to talk to us for?” Millie said.
As far as Winter could see, there was only one reason. “He wants to negotiate,” she said. I hope. “With Janus’ army so close, maybe he’s ready to talk terms.”
“You don’t sound very sure of that,” Alex said.
“I’m not. But it’s the only scenario where we have half a chance of getting out of here alive.” She straightened up, taking her hand off her sword, and raised her voice. “All right. Take us to the pontifex.”
—
One of the strangely calm
men led them around the gallery, to where a stone staircase twisted upward into the larger of the cathedral’s two towers. The other robed figures, to Winter’s surprise, stayed behind. They didn’t even ask the intruders to relinquish their weapons. Either they’re very confident or very stupid. Either way, she’d find out soon enough.
The staircase spiraled around the outside wall of the tower, giving views through arched doorways into broad rooms. What furniture there was had been pushed aside, and the chambers were packed with more people, kneeling in rows with their heads bowed. The calm and quiet of the priests and their servants were beginning to feel almost unnatural. Are they drugged? Or is this some ritual they’ve all trained for? The Priests of the Black managed to convince people who thought bearing a demon meant an eternity in hell to do it anyway for the good of the Church; they obviously had a considerable influence over their followers.
Four floors up, one of the rooms was different. There were more people, but instead of waiting in neat rows, they were huddled together in the center of the room. Most of them were servants in gray robes, with a few of the half-clothed figures Winter guessed were prisoners. They watched the group of intruders go past with a mixture of curiosity and fear that she hadn’t seen on any other faces. What the fuck is going on here?
The fifth floor was the top of the tower, a bit wider than the others. It was set up as a sumptuous office, with a vast desk of polished oak so ancient it was nearly black. Winter couldn’t imagine how they’d gotten it up the stairs, and the same was true of the heavy glass-paneled shelves, which bore rows of tattered, ancient books. Thick carpet was soft underfoot, and a row of elaborately carved chairs cushioned in red and white velvet sat in front of the desk. The whole setup rang a distant bell in Winter’s mind, but it took her a moment to place it—it was almost identical to the way Mrs. Wilmore had arranged her office back at the Prison, with her on one side of a massive, intimidating desk and rows of disappointing students sitting on the other. Is this where the pontifex brings his priests for a scolding?
The Guns of Empire Page 50