“Are they Kindred?” Elianor whispered. “Are they going to move?”
“No way to know until they do. Which way should we go?”
She cocked her head to the right, toward the main door. Slowly, as if stealth were a factor, they stepped down the aisle between the benches.
“Nathaniel, the monks have been dead for days. But we saw Rees hand Begw to them on my first night here.”
“Maybe we should leave.”
Elianor pointed with two fingers then ran to the far side of the doors. Nathaniel lifted the bar. The doors swung open.
Elianor peered at the nearest dead monk, a short-sighted doctor over a docile patient.
“Careful,” Nathaniel said, then went out through the church door to check outside. “What killed them?”
“Claws. Bites. Nasty.” Elianor paused. “Black blood.”
She pulled back, quickly on her feet, as if they’d caught the corpses faking, and now they’d wake up and attack. The monks didn’t move. Were they Kindred? Killed by the other Kindred, the ones from the mountain? Nathaniel had said that Kindred didn’t fight Kindred.
The main door swung back open. Nathaniel hurried inside.
“We can’t go back out that way,” he said.
Elianor looked back over her shoulder at the main door. “What did you see?”
The wet howl of the Black Dog echoed from above, around the nave, between the arches then spiralling towards the great basilica. The sound could have come from anywhere, but it was close.
“We have to go,” Elianor said.
“Go where?”
“I don’t know! Look for survivors? Try and find out what happened? There must be other records, something.”
Nathaniel rammed the door bar back in place then stalked towards the chancel, putting his hands in his hair. He stopped before the corpse of the Abbot. It teetered over him, propped up at the font, a macabre marionette.
“The tower,” Nathaniel said. “The Abbot’s chambers.”
“Let’s move,” Elianor said.
Nathaniel set off at a jog towards the right-hand aisle, the opposite side from which they had entered. He pushed open the door at the far side, led them through to another corridor and then down a set of stairs.
“Where was the Dog?” Elianor called. “Did you see it?”
“No,” Nathaniel said. “I saw Kindred coming over the wall. I think the ones that used to be Mabyn and his patrol.”
The next door opened into the quadrangle. Four walls of the cloister framed a covered walkway around a garden, an open space beneath the great blue sky. A dead tree stood in the middle with snow lining its naked branches. Elianor walked to the edge of the garden. She could see up onto the roof of the cloister. She had witnessed how far the Black Dog could jump. Would the Kindred also be able to clamber across these rooftops? Was there any route that did not lead to ambush? Nathaniel hurried around the outside, beneath the cover, heading towards the door in the far corner.
“Coming?” he called.
The door in the far corner was at the base of the great tower. At least fifteen metres tall, this was the very beacon she had watched from the mountain, the highest manned point in the Kingdom, the best possible chance of seeing into the West from the East. The tower had few windows. And from beneath the arches of the cloister she could not see the top.
They hurried through the door. Straight ahead of them was a staircase, winding along the inner circumference of the tower. To their right, an open door to the Abbot’s chamber. Elianor slammed the tower door shut behind them. There was no bar, just a heavy iron latch that she flipped into place.
The Abbot’s chamber was a duplex apartment, an open two-floor living space linked by a spiral staircase. Nathaniel stood in the centre of the room, hands on his hips, looking upwards. The chambers were ruined. Rich furnishings were flung in pieces about the room, the long tapestries ripped from the walls and torn to shreds as if bedding for a wild beast. Elianor looked at the claw marks in the wall. That was exactly what this was. The den of a beast.
“It’s a trap,” she said.
The Black Dog howled again. This time it was followed by the shriek of the Kindred. Something crashed into the quadrangle outside.
“Options, citizen Vile. Quickly if you please.”
“Look, there’s a door behind the bookshelf,” Nathaniel said. “I mean, where the bookshelf used to be.”
He pointed to the shattered frame. It had been broken in two and dragged from the wall. Porcelain shards gathered in waves about it. The books were gone. Above the wreckage was a door, flush to the wall, only visible by its outline and the keyhole halfway down on the right-hand side.
“That’s lovely, Nathaniel. Do you have a key?”
There was a loud slam. Elianor turned in time to see the tower door strain on its hinges, almost burst open, then thump shut again. Shrieks and howls accompanied the struggle, a battle outside to see who would get first feeding rights on those who hid within.
“Well?” Elianor said, her hand impotently on the hilt of her sword. “Can you open it?”
Nathaniel pushed past Elianor and left the Abbot’s chamber. He paused, briefly, to glance at the rattling door, then ran up the spiral stairs along the inside of the tower wall. Elianor kicked aside a broken chair leg as she ran after Nathaniel. His pounding footsteps sounded beyond the curve of the stairs. She didn’t slow her chase. The first floor passed quickly. She glanced through a door into the Abbot’s duplex: his bed, his personal affairs, all that had been private to him now scattered and shattered and strewn about the place. She kept on upwards. There was a door on the second floor, but Nathaniel had ignored it and run straight past.
On the third floor the stairs ended. This level of the tower was a storeroom, containing nothing but a few empty boxes. She sprinted across the bisection to a new staircase, up another floor, and another, spiralling higher into the tower. From the ground floor came a loud bang. Elianor tried to accelerate, but her body resisted. The injury and exertion of the last few days weighed her tired legs. She called, “Nathaniel, wait!” He did not wait. Of course he didn’t. Her sides burning, Elianor ran higher up the tower.
Suddenly, the climb ended.
The highest room of the tower was a guest apartment. Compared to the rest of the monastery, it was in pristine condition. There was an armoire and a dressing table, a bed and a chair. All was intact, decorated in the delicate floral patterns popular with aristocratic women prior to the revolution. The light from the west-facing window gave everything a soft glow.
“This is the room where my mother died,” Nathaniel said, stood in the doorway, his shoulders moving as he caught his breath. “The place where I was born.”
The bed was pushed up into the corner, a simple wooden chair at its side. Winter Bells were scattered clumsily across the sheets, the same white flowers Anton, Persephone, and Nathaniel had reported finding on that first night searching for the Black Dog. The same night she had also seen Nathaniel on the rooftops of the castle. Nestled on the pillow was a small brass key.
“I don’t know how long the door can hold out.”
“It’s okay,” Nathaniel said. “I think we’ve been invited.”
She grabbed the key and they left, without even thinking to look out of the window.
Chapter 63
Ifanna sat on her fat pony, her piggy eyes narrowed and glaring. Her family ran between the buildings of the mine like children playing on the farm. Squint hard enough and her eyes became mirrors, in which the children would find every one of their sins reflected.
“Burn it all!” Tannyr shouted. “Bring it all down!”
Where were the guards? Where were Anton’s men? There should be someone ringing the water-tower bell. There should be soldiers in the storerooms, and fighters ready to fall back and defend the entrance to the mine itself. Ifanna had been sure that Anton would protect the mines. Tannyr only had a dozen men and women still bloodthirsty and angry enoug
h to want to fight. A well-placed trap would have torn them apart. But there was nobody here. Anton had abandoned the source of the Garn’s wealth and power as if it meant nothing to him.
Tannyr had kicked in the door to the first building himself. Maybe he had felt the weight of his cowardice from the town, weight that would no doubt later come down in the form of his fists on her face. It was unnecessary bravado. Nothing seemed to be locked, nobody seemed to have cared. Tannyr knew it was abandoned: even his courage was borrowed from braggadocio. Ifanna had kept her fingers crossed within the bustle of her dress, hoping for some booby-trap that would blow her bloated husband to pieces, but the door banged open and nothing much more happened. Tannyr threw boxes of papers out onto the road and everyone cheered.
“Uncle Tannyr, over here!”
It was Bandleine, Annest’s boy, although by the blank look on Tannyr’s face, he had no idea. Just another cousin in the legion sprung from the family loins. Ifanna knew them all. Just a couple of years ago, she had cleaned grit from his grazes and snot from his face. Had the fire and fighting turned him into a man? Or was it a trick of the light, the size of his coat?
“Uncle, you should see what we’ve found back here.”
Ifanna followed her husband, he with his chest puffed out, she on her fat pony.
“It’s another smithy,” Tannyr said. The shed stuck out of the mine like a carbuncle on the nose of a witch. “So what?”
“There’s a whole warehouse through the back wall,” Bandleine called from inside. “Anvils, weapon racks, even water pumped in through the steam shaft.”
Smart boy, Ifanna thought. Maybe he’ll be useful later.
“A weapons factory? Anything left?”
“Sorry, Uncle. They cleared it out.”
Tannyr stepped back, as if the doorframe were hot, but he was grinning.
“If the armoury is empty, then they have no more weapons. And the mercenaries won’t stay for long.”
“What do you want me to do?” Bandleine said.
“Burn it. Then come help me collapse the mine.”
Ifanna brought her pony closer. She pulled up her leg and slid to the ground.
“May I look?” she said.
“What? Why?” Tannyr said, then didn’t wait for an answer. “Fine, whatever.”
She kept her head bowed as he strutted off. Then she waddled into the building. Her hips hurt from the riding, but she was used to the old pains, the pain in her back, the pain that ran up her middle finger to her left elbow. Inside, she put her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. So, this had been the Garn’s secret. It smelled of dust kicked up when long-term residents suddenly move house. The anvil was still there, the forge, cupboards open and drawers emptied, anything of immediate use pulled out and taken away. She marvelled at the speed with which Anton had responded. But immediate use was not the only sort of use.
“How am I supposed to burn this, tata?” Bandleine said to her. “It’s made of stone.”
She imagined Anton’s secret armoury full of people, working, hammering hot metal, forging tools, forging the future.
“Come and help me outside,” she said. “We’ll decide what to do later.”
The wooden hut at the end of the road burned limply, and a stack of discarded papers smoked beneath the light rain. Nothing much more. Nothing she couldn’t replace. She stopped at the end of the rail to catch her breath. One of Taran’s girls smashed the windows of the miners’ mess hall with the end of a sword she had stolen in town. Ifanna smiled. You go, you smash the world now. Plenty of time for the world to smash you later. The old woman took Bandleine by the arm, pretending to lean on him for support, and led him back to where Tannyr was shouting something about pulling the carts from the rails. As if that would do anything more than give a few people bad backs and bruised fingers. When she got to Tannyr, she stopped just outside his reach.
“You should go on to town,” she said. “I’ll take care of the rest here.”
He was waving his arms as two of the lads chopped at a sealed crate with blunt knives.
“What are you talking about, woman?” Tannyr bawled. “It was your idea to come here in the first place!”
She had to swallow a smirk. He would have never admitted it was her idea if he didn’t think he was blaming her for something.
“I thought that Haf would be hiding here. But she must be at…”
“The brothel!” His eyes lit up like a diver who had found a pearl. “Of course. There’s nowhere else left for her to go. But why don’t you want to come?”
Because if I let you carry on there will be nothing left to take after you’re dead.
“I don’t want to see what you’ll do to Haf,” she said, squinting.
The idea took root in his brain and spread like a drop of dye in a tub of soaking linen.
Chapter 64
Elianor put the brass key into the lock of the secret door. It wouldn’t turn. Nathaniel came into the room after her, glancing back towards the tower door. No sound from the Kindred. It was as if they had just given up trying and decided to have a picnic. Nathaniel tried the lock. There was a thick click, and the door sighed as it revealed a new staircase down beneath the earth. Elianor tried not to be irritated that his hands were apparently stronger than hers.
“Did you bring the torch?” she said.
The stairway was broad enough for them to descend shoulder to shoulder. The light from the door quickly surrendered to an impenetrable curtain of black. She stared at the dark, willing it to divulge its secrets. The dark did not care. She could draw her sword and use it as a blind man uses a cane, but that had not ended well on the Shadowgate bridge. She might just as well go down on hands and knees. Pride kept her standing, staring, not looking back, hoping her eyes would adjust and show her the way forward.
There. Up to the right was an oil wick lamp mounted on a metal frame in the wall. She took a few steps into the darkness then snapped her fingers twice at Nathaniel.
“Tinderbox!”
“Here,” Nathaniel called, tossing her his tinderbox from the top of the stairs. Looking back towards the light blinded her and for a shrill moment she thought the tinderbox would fly past her into the black. She caught it with her left hand. The thump of her heart beat out of rhythm with her breath.
Elianor crouched and lit the tinderbox. Air shifting from below made the flame spout and flicker. Guarding it with her hand, step by step she descended to the first lamp. The light from the tinderbox reflected in the glass cover. She lit the wick, screwed the glass back into position, and turned the dial until a pale light filled the space.
“Are you coming?”
Every lamp they lit pulled back the curtain to further depths. Between stopping at the lamps and their caution in the dark, they took several minutes to descend the fifty steps to the bottom. There they found a short corridor. At its end was an open archway, and beyond a large pentagonal room. Nathaniel took two long steps inside then inhaled as if he were trying to swallow everything through his nose. Elianor used the tinderbox on the lamp closest to the archway.
“Is it a natural cavern?”
It was a laboratory. Three of the five walls were lined with shelves of equipment, the fourth with the sort of barrels used to distil whiskey. The fifth wall was barred, a cage or prison. The cave beyond the bars was too dark to see inside. There didn’t appear to be any other exits.
Around the room were four large tables. The nearest was stacked with bottles and tubes, burners and glass flasks. There was a long-armed metal pincer for handling hot materials. Elianor remembered her lessons in natural sciences at the Academy but had no way to tell for what the tools had been used. A thin film of dust covered most of the equipment, excepting a pair of flasks recently cleaned, and a burner with a fresh ring of black around its rim.
The second was an operating table. A gutter connected it to a drain in the floor.
The third table was against the wall with the barrels. Straps a
nd leather bindings were arranged for a variety of shapes and sizes of human prisoner. A pulley contraption at one side could rotate the table to hold its victims at different angles. There was a space for a fire, a small hooded furnace with a chimney, and by that a racked shelf with needles, inks, and other instruments that one might use to cut a tattoo.
She started around the table to take a closer look and, as she did so, kicked something lying on the floor.
“My book!” Nathaniel said. He got on his knees and pulled it to his chest as if embracing a lost child. Then he caught sight of another, farther across the chamber, fallen open with its pages splayed beneath and its spine jutted upwards. “My books,” he corrected, shuffling over on his hands and knees, “the ones taken from my library.”
On the west side of the room the light from a lamp showed several ranks of bottles of black fluid, each carefully labelled with a name and a date, the dates stretching back over twenty years.
“Is that the potion your father needs?” Elianor said.
“It looks like what Abacus used,” Nathaniel said. “But how can we tell?”
“Close enough,” Elianor said. “Leave the books and put as many of those bottles as you can in your bag. I’ll get the rest of those lamps lit.”
“There’s something else,” Nathaniel said. “Here in the floor. A trapdoor.”
It was a large metal circle, with no obvious handle and a great mural carved into its centre. The mural was a tree, green colouring painstakingly worked into the woven leaves. Names were written in elegant calligraphy on the branches. The outside of the circle was a clockwork cog, the alphabet and the numbers 1 to 9 set in order around the edge.
“What makes you think it’s a door, and not another one of these… contraptions?” Elianor waved her hand towards the operating table.
But something struck Nathaniel as he stared at the trapdoor, because he laughed. Elianor watched him, carefully, wondering how long before his growing hysteria stopped him from being useful.
“They couldn’t get through and they took it out on my poor books.” Nathaniel waved at the trapdoor as he spoke. “It’s the Vile family tree. The outside is a code. A lock. Because of the books.”
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