‘I think I am not the only traitor in this room,’ said Silas. ‘Your men will see it too before long.’
‘My men know exactly why we are here,’ said Bandermain. ‘They are loyal men. Loyal to me, and to our country. We know what we must do, even if our leaders do not.’
‘Kidnapping a young girl,’ said Silas. ‘Since when have the Blackwatch begun hunting the innocent?’
‘She is not innocent. The Skilled are no more than a valuable resource to be found and exploited. They are secretive and underhand and she is the only one left alive who has dared to show her face in public long enough to let her identity become known. She is wanted by your High Council yet she has no interest in helping them. She is affiliated to no one, and that makes her useful.’
‘Useful to whom, exactly?’
Bandermain clenched his fists, and when he opened them again Silas caught a glimpse of his open palms. His left hand had a deep cut sliced across it, one that could only have been made by the slow cut of a sharp blade. The skin was healing slowly and someone had stitched it together neatly with thin black thread.
‘What happened to your hand?’
‘War is bloody. Or have you hidden away from it for so long you have forgotten?’
‘That is not a war wound.’ Silas opened his own hand, revealing an old white scar that matched Bandermain’s cut exactly. ‘Who gave you that cut? Who are you working for, Celador?’
‘Someone who hates Albion as much as I do,’ said Bandermain. ‘Someone who has a deep interest in you and your life, pitiful as it has become. You may enjoy living in the gutter like vermin while your country falls apart, but I still have a hand in influencing the direction of this war. Albion will die much sooner than you think, and my men and I shall be the ones to strike the final blow. I serve my country in my own way. That is honour. Perhaps you will recognise that before the end.’
Bandermain walked to the door and faltered in the doorway. One of his knees gave way and an officer stepped forward to support him, but he leaned against the doorframe and waved the man away.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Silas as a bone in his own neck snapped back into place. ‘Old wounds giving you trouble?’
Bandermain ignored him and gave an order to his men. ‘Have the carriage prepared,’ he said. ‘We are leaving now.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I have been told that your injuries are likely to heal within a matter of hours,’ he said, turning to Silas. ‘You will tell me what I need to know long before then.’
‘You still have not told me why you want the girl,’ said Silas. ‘It is a simple enough question.’
‘You will find out once we have her,’ said Bandermain. ‘In the meantime, there is someone who is very interested in meeting you. Where we are going, you will be made to talk. You are going to help us win this battle, Silas. Your time is over. Albion will fall and you will watch it burn. You can be sure of that.’
Bandermain left the room, and the moment the lock clicked into place Silas fought against his bonds and studied his surroundings again, determined to find a way out. Three of the walls were plain slabs of solid brick, but the fourth had a patch halfway between the floor and ceiling that was partly boarded with wooden slats. Now the sun was rising higher he could see tiny flecks of light seeping from the other side, cutting through the dark. He cursed out loud as his broken ankle realigned with a sickening crack. He tested it carefully. The bone was still knitting together, but it was strong enough to stand on. One of his arms was still useless, and his right leg was still heavily bruised, not nearly ready to mount an escape. One arm and one leg would have to be enough to get him over to those boards.
Silas twisted his wrist out of its bonds and freed his left hand, delicately sliding the useless arm between the buttons of his coat to keep it still. He wrenched the ropes round his ankles loose and pushed himself up, forcing his crushed thigh muscles to work. There were times when he had cursed the veil and hated it for healing his body and prolonging his life; now it was all but gone he found himself willing it back. The last thing he wanted was for his knees to give way and to have Bandermain find him crawling around on the floor.
Silas turned the chair and used the back of it to help him limp over to the boards. Every step was an effort, but he could smell fresh air on the other side. He pulled one of the boards away and looked into a narrow space that slanted upwards towards strips of sunlight caught behind what looked like a small wooden hatch. He pulled more boards from their nails until the entire opening was exposed and looked up along an old coal shaft.
The building was silent. There was no sign of any Blackwatch close by, but there was no way he could climb that shaft with a damaged shoulder. At least that was something he could fix for himself. He slid his left arm gently from its support, gritted his teeth and slammed his shoulder hard into the wall. The bone jolted back into its socket with a sickening thud, his shoulder muscles exploded and he growled with pain, grinding his healed fist into the stones as he waited for it to subside.
The coal shaft was cluttered with dead leaves and litter that had blown through the cracks in its upper hatch over many years. As soon as he was able, Silas squeezed into the shaft, sliding along on his side and pushing with his good leg until he was clear of the cellar. The walls and floor were filthy, but he had enough of a grip to make it all the way to the top, only to find that the wooden hatch was locked and its catch was rusted shut. He held on to the wall, twisted himself round and raised his good knee, aiming straight for the lock. One kick and the door shattered outwards, exploding into the cold light of midmorning. No guards came running, so Silas dragged himself out, legs first, into the middle of a quiet alleyway. His crow was waiting for him, looking down from the windowsill of a building close by. ‘Making yourself useful, I see,’ said Silas.
The crow flew down but he batted it away. ‘Keep watch,’ he said. ‘Stay high. Do not let anybody see you.’
The crow obeyed and soared up high above the rooftops. There was no sign of the Blackwatch, so Silas used the wall to support himself as he made his way slowly down the alley. Every step was a torture, but he kept going. He needed somewhere to rest and heal. Four streets away he found it.
The Blackwatch’s house was built in a quiet part of Grale, and Silas found it easy enough to stay out of sight whenever someone threatened to walk his way. The crow stood out against the grey clouds, circling high above a fenced-in patch of frozen grass. Iron gates hung ajar within the tall black fence, and beyond the gate Silas saw the pale grey shapes of headstones set into the ground. He pushed through into the silence of a large cemetery, left the overgrown path and headed straight across the graves towards a circle of old crypts gathered round a central point where four paths met.
None of the crypts was locked, since no one on the Continent would dare desecrate the resting places of the dead, but the door he chose was stiff and the hinges screeched as he scraped it aside, revealing a small flight of steps leading down into an airless space thick with the smell of forgotten years. Silas summoned his crow down from the sky with a low whistle, scraped the door shut behind them and followed the steps down into the dark.
Sunlight streamed in through cracks in the forgotten roof and old stone coffins with heavy lids were lined up along the walls of the small cavern below. Spiders clung to every corner in webs that were old and thick, and the walls ran so far back into the earth that he could not see the end of them in the dim light. The crypt was quiet and peaceful. He sat down on the cold stone floor and his crow hopped down beside him. Even without the veil he could feel the eerie stillness of the place and it reminded him of home. ‘Just a few hours,’ he said, cracking his damaged elbow joint and pulling his sleeve up to inspect a vicious bruise that was blossoming all the way along his arm. He propped himself against one of the coffin platforms and sat facing the door, listening for any sign of the Blackwatch outside.
Slowly, the day darkened into a shivering evenin
g. His injuries and his escape had drained him of what little energy he had left and, by the time the moon began to rise, Silas had fallen asleep, safe in the company of the dead.
7
Ashes & Stone
Kate and Edgar headed for the cavern’s outer wall and followed it until they spotted a narrow door cut into the stone. The cavern’s only clock chimed out the quarterhour above the meeting hall and when it fell quiet Baltin’s angry shouts echoed from the walls. People would start waking up soon, and Kate and Edgar did not want to be there when they did.
The cavern’s rear door was rarely guarded. It led into an old section of the City Below that the Skilled did not often use, but it was always kept bolted and locked.
‘My lockpick,’ said Edgar, holding his hand out. ‘Quick!’
‘What? You mean this tatty bit of wire?’ Kate dragged the wire she had taken from the lockhouse door out of her pocket and passed it to him. ‘Can you open it with that?’
‘Just stand back and watch a master at work.’
Edgar dug the wire into the keyhole as Kate slid back the bolts. The mechanism inside was old and stiff, but the lock soon clicked and he swung the door open with a grin of pride. ‘It’s a lot easier when someone isn’t dragging at it from the other side,’ he said.
Lanterns emerged from the houses behind them. More shouts went up and Baltin’s voice carried above the rest. ‘Sound the alarm!’ he ordered. ‘Find her!’ Glancing back, Kate spotted him striding down the middle of the street, still in his dressing gown, with two of his men behind him.
‘Kate,’ said Edgar, already inside the tunnel. A row of dead lanterns were hooked on the wall and he lifted one down, struggling to open the glass case. ‘Are you coming?’
Kate followed him into the blackness of the tunnel, but a handful of people were already heading their way. Kate closed the cavern door, leaving Edgar struggling to light matches in the dark. He held the lantern under his arm until at last one of them sparked and flared and he managed to light the stubby candle inside, flooding the space with light.
‘Goodbye, Artemis,’ Kate whispered to the door, before she turned her back on it and walked out into the dark.
Kate did not like the tunnels that made up the labyrinth that was the City Below. The last time she had walked through them she had been on her way to meet the Skilled, knowing that they would blame her for their leader’s death. Turning to them had been her only option at the time. It was the only way to keep the people around her safe. Now she was heading into the tunnels with no idea where she was going or what she was going to do next.
The lantern cast shifting shadows on the walls and Kate tried to ignore the gentle whispers that travelled along the paths. If there were shades down here, they would be attracted to her presence. Without the protection of the Skilled’s cavern, her spirit would shine like a beacon to the dead wandering these passageways and there was no way she could block them out.
Most of the tunnels were narrow and grim with only a rare light to break the suffocating stillness. Some were recently made, a hundred years ago or less, but most were ancient and a few of them had become unstable, their ceilings held up by wooden scaffolds that she and Edgar had to duck under as they went.
‘So far, so good,’ he said, choosing a direction with confidence whenever they came to a junction in the path, until they reached a point where five tunnels radiated out like a star, where he hesitated. ‘I think . . . it’s this way.’
‘I thought you knew your way around,’ said Kate.
‘I used to,’ said Edgar. ‘The upper tunnels at least, but things have changed a bit since I was last down here. It’s harder to know which way to go.’
‘What about that one?’ Kate pointed to a tunnel that was narrower than the rest. There were no old buildings sunk into its walls to suggest it had once been used as a street. The mouth of the tunnel was framed by a wooden doorframe and the floor was scattered with crunchy grit and earth, as if it had just been opened up recently.
‘Why that way?’ Something scratched behind them and Edgar spun, holding the lantern high. ‘What was that?’
‘Keep the light low,’ said Kate, pulling his arm down.
‘They’re coming,’ whispered Edgar.
Kate crept into the tunnel and felt her way along the walls. Edgar was not far behind her and his light cast her shadow along the ground ahead of her, making it difficult to see very far. After four weeks underground Kate’s eyes had been given plenty of time to get used to the dark but she did not need to see the walls to know that there was something unusual about them. These stones had not always been bare. There were holes drilled into them at regular intervals. Holes that had once held something. Lantern hooks maybe?
‘I don’t like this,’ whispered Edgar. ‘This path doesn’t lead up to the surface. Let’s go back.’
Kate could sense the veil nearby, like a mist of energy crackling in the air. She could feel the presence of shades within the tunnel, lots of them, all reaching out to her, trying to get her attention. Their whispers spoke quietly in the walls, willing her along. She concentrated on where she was putting her feet. No matter where the tunnel led, anything had to be better than being back in the lockhouse.
‘We’re heading down, not up,’ said Edgar.
‘I know.’
‘Then shouldn’t we go back? Find another way?’
Kate’s eyes fogged over, just for a second, and instead of blackness the tunnel suddenly appeared washed in a dull grey light. The stones glowed gently, as if they were lit from deep inside. She stopped walking. ‘There’s something down here,’ she said.
‘You saw something?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Is it something good or bad?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Is it the Skilled? Are they ahead of us?’
‘I can’t tell, can I, with you talking all the time?’
Edgar looked back the way they had come. There was no sign of anyone back there, and when Kate started walking without him he hurried to catch up. The movement of their bodies stirred up the stagnant air, raising thick breezes of dust from the floor.
‘This is definitely not the way out,’ he said.
Kate’s eyes fogged over again, and this time the feeling did not lift. The link between the veil and the living world was stronger here than in other places she had been, as if something down here was attracting it. The tunnel became wider the further they went and she saw thin doors set into the sides of it, most of them cracked and hanging awkwardly from broken hinges.
Edgar shone the light into the space behind one of them. ‘Someone has cleared these rooms out,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing in there. We could hide in one.’
‘No,’ said Kate. ‘We have to keep going.’
They kept walking, following the path to the very end where it stopped at a final dark red door. The handle had been smashed from its fixings and the door swung open easily against her hand. The two of them stepped inside and Edgar shone the lantern around an oval room with alcoves sunk into the walls at shoulder height, each one holding a small wooden box no bigger than the book Kate still had hidden in her coat.
‘Funeral boxes,’ she said. ‘Filled with ashes of the dead.’
‘Well that isn’t creepy at all,’ said Edgar.
The room was filled with long tables, each one covered in sackcloths that hid whatever was on it from view. It looked like someone was storing things in there. The clothes covered a collection of small shapes that were all roughly the same size, but neither Kate nor Edgar wanted to lift the sacking to look at what lay beneath.
‘Maybe we can hide in here,’ said Kate.
‘I’m not spending more than five seconds in this place.’ Edgar unclipped the lid of one of the boxes and wrinkled his nose at the ashes he found inside. ‘The boxes are full, all right,’ he said. ‘But there’s no inscription on the front of any of them. It should at least say who the ashes belong to.’ He
shut the box carefully. ‘Does it feel a bit odd in here to you?’
Kate ignored him and walked deeper into the room. Whatever the things beneath the cloths were, she did not like the feeling she had when she walked past them. It was a pulling sensation, as if each one of them was connected to her by string. All the cloths were fresh and clean. They had not been there for very long. Then she spotted something up ahead. A collection of tools had been abandoned against a narrow door in the wall. The door was broken, and the space beyond it was filled with old spiderwebs. As she drew closer she saw that something had been partly excavated from behind a covering of old bricks halfway up the wall; something made of stone with a curved edge set with a ring of small circular tiles.
‘Edgar,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve found what the person who opened this room up was looking for.’
Edgar made his way towards her, squinting in the lantern light. ‘Is that . . .?’
Wintercraft: Blackwatch Page 8
