Next is the map room, Lina thought, conjuring an image in her head of the layout of the museum. Ancient and modern maps of Solace hung on the walls side by side with scavenged pieces of torn and faded paper illustrating unknown lands from dozens of different worlds. She paused, calculating their next move.
“Three doors out of this room—stairs to the left, straight on gets us into the art galleries, and to the right is…to the right is…Oh goddess, what else is on this level!” Panic left Lina’s mind empty. She couldn’t think.
Footsteps pounded behind them. The assassin was inside the museum. “Lina, we have to go!” Ozben cried, pulling her in the direction of the closest door.
Still trying to get her bearings, Lina let Ozben drag her into the next gallery. Landscape paintings covered the walls, and in the middle of the floor were several large sculptures of human figures in various poses. Lina pointed to a sculpture of a woman reclining on a divan. “Quick, hide back there,” she whispered. It was easy to get lost in the galleries if you didn’t know your way around, especially at night, when the lights were dim and the shadows thick. Lina hoped that would give her and Ozben an advantage.
Together they huddled behind the reclining statue, trying to stay silent, but even their breathing sounded loud in the quiet gallery. Lina found herself staring at the statue’s bronze plaque, which told the name of the sculpture: The Sleeping Beauty.
Lina glanced up at the statue’s serene marble face. The woman’s eyes were closed, her cheek resting against her stone pillow. That’s the problem—everyone’s asleep. They couldn’t hide forever; they had to get help, but most people would be asleep by now, even Nirean and the other chamelins. The museum had human guards, but they usually patrolled only at the beginning and end of the night. The strongholds were so well protected just by being in the mountains that most people didn’t worry about break-ins.
Lina bit her lip in frustration. The pain in her arm and the fear of discovery were making it hard to come up with any kind of coherent plan. She touched her sleeve to see if the bleeding had stopped. The fabric was wet, but she didn’t think the bleeding was getting worse. Oh, but it stung, so much that Lina broke out in a cold sweat.
Ozben touched her shoulder, and Lina glanced at him. Saw the concern etched in his face. He didn’t speak, but he nodded at her wound. She offered him a weak smile, as if to say, I’ll live.
Then she heard the footsteps.
Lina stiffened, and Ozben’s grip on her shoulder tightened. They pressed as close together as possible, making themselves into a tight ball behind the statue. The footsteps were faint and sounded as if they were coming from two galleries away—too close for Lina’s comfort.
“Where are you, little prince?” The assassin’s voice was a singsong echo through the galleries. “Come out. Come out. It must be frightening, hiding in the dark,” he taunted. Then the voice got louder, as did the footsteps. Lina tried to keep her body from trembling. The assassin was probably in the map room now, right next to their gallery.
Please go another way. Please take one of the other doors. Don’t come in here, Lina silently pleaded as she held her breath.
Then, as if the universe had heard her, the footsteps receded. The assassin was moving through one of the other doors. Lina’s heart pounded with fear and hope. If they were very lucky, the assassin would think they’d gone upstairs to the next floor. Once he was far enough away, they could backtrack through the museum and the Heart of the Mountain to get to Nirean or Zara.
The assassin’s voice rang out again in the stillness. “Do you really think you can hide from me, little boy?” he asked. “Do you think you can get away”—he paused—“when your parents couldn’t?”
Lina felt a tremor go through Ozben’s whole body. A soft cry like a wounded animal escaped from his throat. Lina reacted without thinking, wrapping one arm around his shoulders and clamping her other hand over his mouth to silence him. He struggled in her grip, his eyes wild.
“Ozben, no!” she hissed into his ear. “He’s lying. It’s a trick.” She prayed it was, at least.
Twisting in her grip, Ozben grazed her wounded arm with his hand, and the pain made her light-headed. She couldn’t help it. She jerked her arm back, releasing him.
Ozben sprang up from behind the statue, his eyes blazing. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed.
For an instant, there was only silence as the echoes of Ozben’s voice died away, but then Lina heard a sound that chilled the blood in her veins.
Laughter. A rumbling, mocking sound. The assassin was laughing at them.
And then he was running, his boots clicking on the marble floor, closer and closer.
Lina jumped up, grabbed Ozben by the arm, and tried to pull him through the doorway behind them. Only he wouldn’t budge. “Ozben, come on!” she screamed.
“I’ll kill him,” Ozben repeated, and with a shudder, Lina realized she believed him. If he could manage it, Ozben would kill the assassin. And probably get killed in the process.
“Ozben, he’s got a knife,” Lina said, trying to reason with him. “We don’t stand a chance, not like this. We have to find another way. Do you hear me?”
The assassin’s shadow appeared in the doorway. He saw them in the corner and broke into a run, his knife flashing in the dim light.
“Ozben!” Lina screamed, and she didn’t know whether it was her voice or the glimpse of the assassin’s knife that pulled Ozben out of his rage, but he let her haul him out the door, and they took off running down a hallway between galleries.
The assassin was right on their heels now. They couldn’t hide.
At the end of the hall was another set of galleries. They ran straight through the first two; in the third room, Lina veered them to the left and into a small resting room with three stone benches, a few chairs, and several portraits of humans and sarnuns hanging on the wall. She skidded to a stop, turned, and slammed the door to the previous gallery shut. There was no lock, and they had only a few seconds to block the door before the assassin burst through it.
“Quick, help me move that,” Lina said, pointing to one of the big chairs. She and Ozben each grabbed an arm of the chair and lifted it, half carrying, half dragging it over to the door. “Wedge it under the knob,” she directed, “as tightly as you can.” Together, they managed to shove the back of the chair snugly beneath the doorknob.
“That should buy us a little more time,” Ozben said. “Let’s keep moving.” There were two doors leading out of the room to the left and right. Ozben turned and headed for the door on the right.
“No, wait!” Lina pulled him up short, turning them toward the door on their left. “We want the stairs. We need to go up!”
“Whatever you say, just hurry!”
Lina heard the fury underlying the urgency in Ozben’s voice. She didn’t know how long she could keep him from turning and confronting the assassin. She had to do something fast.
She pulled him out the door and across a short hallway to a flight of stairs going up and down. She steered them up, and as she climbed, her mind raced with their options. They could activate the fire bell. She remembered there was one at the top of the stairs. Setting it off would bring the museum’s night watchmen running, but they weren’t armed, and there was a good chance the assassin would catch Ozben before the watchmen managed to summon the chamelins for help.
No, what they needed was to get the chamelins to come to them. Lina knew of only one way to do that, and it involved going up, to the top floor of the museum. After that…Lina’s stomach did a little flip as a plan started to come together in her mind. She couldn’t believe she was even considering it, but it looked as if they had no other choice.
“Ozben,” Lina said, the breath burning in her chest as they crested the third-floor landing, “are you afraid of heights?”
“No, I’m not afraid,” he said, but then he shot her a sidelong glance. “Wait, how high do you mean?”
“High,” Lina said.
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They hit the fourth floor and continued up, but their pace was slower now. Lina’s legs ached, and there was a fire burning in her chest. Soon it would be unbearable. But they couldn’t afford to stop and rest.
Next to her, Ozben was panting, his face covered in sweat. Lina started to encourage him when she caught her foot on the next riser and tripped. Her shin hit the stair hard, but she managed to grab the railing with her right hand to steady herself. She bit back a cry as pain flooded her leg.
“Are you all right?” Ozben asked, cupping her elbow to pull her to her feet.
“I think so,” Lina said. She was lying. Her shin throbbed when she put her weight on it, and her arm ached, but she kept going, gritting her teeth against the pain.
Finally, after another grueling flight of stairs, they reached the museum’s top floor. Ozben started to plunge ahead, but Lina grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop. “Let me think a minute.”
“Love to, but we don’t have a minute,” Ozben said, “unless you want to fight that guy here.” His tone told Lina that was exactly what he wanted to do. He glanced over the railing to the stairwell below. Lina didn’t have to look. She could hear the assassin’s boots pounding on the stairs. He’d broken through the barricaded door and was catching up. He was relentless.
“I just…I have to remember whether the ventilation shaft is in this gallery or the one to the east—or maybe the west.” Lina tried to get her bearings even as she sucked in a lungful of air. “Why can’t I…Ozben, I can’t remember!” she shrieked, giving in to the panic that clawed at her.
“Yes, you can,” Ozben said, gripping her shoulders. “You know Ortana better than anyone. You can do this.”
“You’re right. You’re right.” Lina blocked out the sound of the assassin’s footsteps and forced herself to concentrate on her mental map. The top floor of the museum was the steam-power galleries—she’d spent a good portion of time there when she was researching the Merlin’s engines. Then there was the nautical wing, with its sextants, its star charts, and the hulls of wooden sailing ships recovered from the scrap fields. Whenever she walked through there, she heard a soft, constant ticking sound because it was right next door to—
“The clock room!” Lina cried, and suddenly everything fell into place. She knew where they needed to go. She grabbed Ozben’s arm, and they took off running again.
When they entered the expansive chamber, sure enough, the sound of ticking filled the air. Clocks of every shape and size covered the walls or sat on pedestals in the center of the room. Most had twelve numbers on their faces, but some had only seven, and a few had seventeen. One of the largest clocks hung on the back wall, designed in a peculiar style that made it appear as if the clock were melting.
“Back there,” Lina said, pointing to a far corner of the room where, attached to the wall, sat an old iron grate about a foot and a half off the floor. Next to it was an old grandfather clock, its pendulum hypnotically swinging back and forth. “Watch the doors while I get the grate open,” she told Ozben.
With Ozben standing lookout, Lina went down on her knees in front of the grate. She reached into her apron and pulled out her screwdriver. Holding the smooth grip in both hands, she forced herself to take three deep breaths.
“Stay calm, be steady,” she murmured to herself. “You can do this. Fast as lightning.” Blocking everything else out, she fitted the screwdriver to the first screw and went to work. Seconds later, the last screw fell onto the floor, and Lina yanked the grate off the wall and tossed it aside. “Let’s go!” she called to Ozben.
“Where does this shaft lead?” Ozben asked, his voice echoing all around Lina as she crawled headfirst through the opening.
You don’t want to know, Lina thought. “Just stay close,” she said, dodging the question. “It’s not too far.”
Ozben crawled into the shaft behind her. “We should have stayed to fight him,” he said, anger punctuating each word. “He killed my parents.”
“No, he didn’t,” Lina insisted. She couldn’t be certain, of course, but the assassin’s words rang false to her. “If he had killed your parents, word of their deaths would have reached us long before the assassin got here. Think, Ozben. He was just trying to lure you out of hiding.”
Ozben didn’t answer, and for a minute, they crawled on in silence. Then Lina heard a banging sound coming from the bottom of the shaft, and her heartbeat quickened. The assassin had found the grate. He was crawling up the shaft after them. She’d half hoped he would be too big to fit, but then she remembered how slender he was.
It doesn’t matter, she told herself, trying to stay calm. We have a good head start. We’ll make it to the end of the shaft before him.
And then the danger would get even worse.
Great job staying calm, Lina.
The shaft angled upward slightly. Lina raised her hand and called on the lumatites for more light. When she could see better, she crawled faster. Ozben was right behind her, his breath coming in short gasps.
“I’m sorry, Lina,” he murmured. The anger in his voice was gone. “You’re right. If it weren’t for me, we’d have gotten away back there in the gallery. On top of that, you got hurt because of me.”
“What, this? It’s nothing—a kitten scratch.” Lina wiggled her arm and then hissed as a wave of pain broke over her. “Okay, maybe a really mean kitten.”
“No matter what, I won’t let the assassin get to you,” Ozben said. “If it comes to that, I’ll let him have his kill.”
“No, you won’t. Sacrificing yourself is not part of the plan,” Lina said. She wasn’t about to lose her only friend to an assassin. She tried to keep her tone light, but her voice quivered as she rambled on. “I know exactly what the plan is, and maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll let you in on it in a few minutes, but sacrifice is so far outside the plan that I can’t believe you brought it up. Don’t you trust me to get us out of this? Have I ever steered us wrong—” She stopped and thought about that for a second. “You know what, never mind. But I will get us out of this.”
Ozben’s soft chuckle filled the shaft. “I know you will. I trust you.”
Lina’s heart warmed, and hope overcame some of her fear.
As they traversed the shaft the air got steadily colder. Lina was soon shivering, her breath making little clouds in front of her face. She heard Ozben curse softly when he put his hands against the frigid metal of the shaft.
“Pull your sleeves over your hands,” she advised him.
“Why is it so cold all of a sudden?” Ozben asked, his voice hushed.
“Because we’re almost to the end of the shaft,” Lina said. “After thirty feet or so, it empties to the outside.”
“Outside?” Ozben said. His voice had gone up an octave. “But won’t that put us—”
“On a three-foot ledge on the side of a mountain, several thousand feet in the air,” Lina said. “Or maybe a two-foot ledge.”
“And why are we doing that?” Ozben asked. “So the assassin can more easily shove us off the mountain to our deaths?”
“Not at all,” Lina said. “He’ll barely fit on the ledge.”
“He’s a trained assassin, Lina,” Ozben said in exasperation. “Don’t you think he’s probably had extensive training in killing and ledge-walking? Unlike us!”
“Of course that’s possible,” Lina said, matching his exasperated tone, “but I prefer to think positively! It will put some distance between us on our way up to the aeries.”
“The aeries?” Ozben’s voice was even higher.
“You said you trusted me, remember?” Lina pointed out.
Ozben had no comment for that, but Lina’s plan was good. She knew it was. All they had to do was get close enough to the aeries to signal one of the chamelins. The top level of the chamelins’ living quarters was open to the sky, and in their shape-shifted forms, they had keen night vision. Someone would see them and come to help.
By now, Lina could hear the wind whistlin
g in frigid little gusts down the ventilation shaft. Twenty feet ahead of her loomed a wide, dark hole. They were almost there. “Brace yourself,” she said. “When we come out, the ledge will be icy. Find sturdy handholds before you try to move, or you might slip, and don’t look down.”
“Don’t worry,” Ozben said. “Whatever happens, just keep moving.”
Lina listened to the distant thumps of the assassin crawling through the shaft behind them. It was too much to hope for that he’d get stuck in the narrow space.
A gust of frigid air hit her in the face as she reached the end of the shaft. Taking a deep breath, Lina poked her head out into the open. Oh, she would give anything for a scarf to wrap around her face right now. When she’d recovered from the icy blast, the first thing she noticed was the stars. Thousands of them glittered in the blue-black expanse, an immeasurably beautiful canvas. Below them, moonlight shone on the snow-covered mountains. And though she’d warned Ozben against it, Lina looked down. The world fell away into a dark, bottomless pit, and her stomach flipped over.
“Lina, I’m right behind you,” Ozben said. The sound of his voice was a comfort. “Is the ledge there?”
“Yes,” she said, forcing herself to concentrate on the narrow rock shelf that extended to the left and right in front of the shaft. It had been carved there by hundreds of years of chamelin claws. They landed on the ledges to clear snow and ice from the shaft openings that lined the mountainside and provided ventilation for the stronghold.
Lina eased out onto the icy shelf and turned sideways so she could hug the mountain as much as possible while she crawled. Once she’d left the security of the shaft, fear rose up inside her again, stronger than ever. Taking in the sight of the bottomless pit on her right and the sheer rock wall on her left, Lina thought it was entirely possible that this could turn out to be the worst idea she’d ever come up with. No matter what, it would be the most memorable.
Unless they fell, of course.
Lina bit back a hysterical laugh and started to inch forward as the wind howled in her ears.
The Secrets of Solace Page 19