“I do.”
“What do you want me to do with this one?”
Lenoir paused on the stairs. “Do you have a choice, Vincent?” He spoke in a voice so low it was all but inaudible, even to him. Somehow he knew the spirit could hear him.
“No.”
“Then do not ask me.”
Lenoir hurried down the stairs and out into the night. He did not wait for Vincent. He knew there was no need.
I
t had stopped raining. A sharp wind nudged the clouds aside, leaving the moon stark and hard-edged amid a scatter of stars. Standing water pooled along the street, shivering liquid silver under the glare of the moon. The cathedral seemed to rear up from the water like a kraken, vast and dark and disfigured. Lenoir wondered that it should look so sinister to him now. He had taken little enough notice of the place before. It was not a particularly grand building, dating from a period known more for pragmatism than aesthetics. Perhaps that explained why it had been left to hibernate, forgotten and forsaken, for over a century.
He found it strange that Los had chosen this place for a hideout. Lenoir could scarcely imagine a more conspicuous location for criminal activity, or one so supremely inappropriate for performing witchcraft. He knew little of Adali religion, but they were generally considered believers, practicing a hybrid form of worship that blended their native traditions with the Hirradic faith of their southern neighbors. It surprised Lenoir that Los and his followers would risk God’s wrath by bringing heathen witchcraft to His very house. Then again, Los was risking a great deal already. Perhaps conscription into the armies of the damned was just one more item on the list.
Lenoir scanned the grim structure uneasily, wondering how many enemies it sheltered. Would it be possible to gain entry without alerting the kidnappers to his presence? Stealth had never been his gift.
“Do you have a plan?”
The voice in his ear made Lenoir jump. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the spirit. “Our first priority must be the boy. We do not know what they might have done to him, and we do not dare kill his kidnappers until we are sure he is safe, in body and mind.”
“That is an objective, not a plan.”
Lenoir scowled, but he knew the spirit was right. “It would be ideal if we could find the boy without being discovered.”
Vincent considered the cathedral. “He is in the crypts, belowground.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him.”
Lenoir opened his mouth to seek an explanation, but decided he did not want to know. Instead he asked, “Is he well? Are the kidnappers with him?”
“He lives. His captors are with him.”
“How many?”
“I saw five, plus the boy.”
Lenoir could scarcely control his impatience. He had found Zach at last. All he had to do was separate the boy from his captors and the day would be won. “Assuming the kidnappers are all together, it should be safe to enter through the front door.”
Vincent disappeared, and Lenoir headed for the main doors. He waited for several agonizing minutes before there was any sign of movement. Thumps and scrapes sounded softly from the other side, as from a great distance. The doors were obviously massive in girth as well as height, and Vincent seemed to be having difficulty opening them. Eventually, however, there came a great, cavernous creak, and one side of the door drew inward. Absinthe eyes flashed in the gloom.
“The nave is empty,” Vincent said, “and I do not smell anyone nearby. They are all in the crypts.”
Lenoir shuddered. Perhaps the location was not so inappropriate after all. Over the course of centuries, an unknown number of Kennians had been entombed in the network of catacombs beneath the cathedral. It made a grim kind of sense that Los would surround himself with the dead while attempting to call forth one of their own.
“The entrance is at the base of the tower,” Vincent said, “through the vestry.” Seeing Lenoir’s surprise, he added, “I have been here before, more than once.”
“Lead on, then.”
It proved difficult to follow, for it was almost pitch-black inside. Lenoir sensed, rather than saw, the vastness of the room around him, seeming to stretch in all directions. He caught only glimpses of Vincent, for the spirit’s hair and clothing were as black as their surroundings; only the occasional flash of his eyes marked his location. Lenoir kept to the center of the aisle, or so he judged, his fingers groping the shadows for potential obstacles. The last thing he needed was to shatter his knees against the invisible pews.
“This way,” Vincent called softly, and Lenoir turned awkwardly to his right. The door to the vestry was unlocked, and he moved through it to a room that was, impossibly, even darker. “The stairway is here.” Vincent spoke in a whisper now. “Above us is the tower. Below is the way to the crypts.”
Following the sound of Vincent’s voice, Lenoir found a door that stood ajar. He nudged it aside. A faint glow from somewhere below sketched the outline of stone steps leading down. Lenoir could just make out another set of stairs leading up from his right, curling in a tight spiral to ascend the tower.
He headed down, moving as silently as he could. He could sense Vincent behind him. Cold, damp air seeped from the bowels of the cathedral, clinging to his skin like a wet rag. It carried a faintly metallic smell, and beneath that, the scent of paraffin.
The stairs curved gently as they descended, eventually disgorging him into a well-lit room of rough and ancient-looking construction. A thick stone wall with several archways divided the room into two naves, each of them containing a barrel-vaulted sanctuary. There had once been some kind of adornment in the sanctuaries—frescoes of Durian, Lenoir guessed, or perhaps the Generals of the Host—but the paint had long since worn away, leaving only scraps of color. The lower half of the wall was built from huge slabs of unremarkable gray stone, but the archways had been lined with fine red brick. Cassiterian, Lenoir judged, salvaged from whatever temple had once stood on these foundations. He knew little of architecture, but the crypt clearly dated from the early classic period.
Still, it is younger than Vincent,
he thought, and he could not suppress a giddy laugh.
At the far end of the room, a set of steps descended into a long hallway. “Where does that go?” Lenoir whispered.
“It leads to the dead,” said Vincent, “and also to the living.”
The tunnel reeked of paraffin from the torches that lined the walls at irregular intervals. The smoke stung Lenoir’s eyes as he scanned the area for places to hide. There were none; if one of the kidnappers should appear, he would spot the intruders immediately. There was not even enough shadow for Vincent to move instantly from one place to the next. Like Lenoir, he would have to walk.
Lenoir blinked. He spun suddenly, looking at Vincent; the spirit returned his gaze impassively.
So much for
that
question,
Lenoir thought. Vincent was unharmed by the torches. Sunlight alone, it seemed, was his enemy.
A pair of recessed archways appeared in the walls about fifty paces ahead, and as Lenoir approached, he saw that they were packed with skulls. Row upon row of them had been stacked together in neat lines, completely filling the recess. Glancing farther down the hall, Lenoir noticed several more such archways lining the corridor. He was reminded of the catacombs beneath his beloved Serles, where the skulls and leg bones of millions of Arrènais formed the brick and mortar of a vast necropolis beneath the bustling streets. He wondered, as he had so often in Serles, who these people were, how they had come to be here. Was it a privilege, or a punishment? And where were the rest of their remains?
Vincent paused at the first archway, his gaze drifting over the skulls, lingering on one or two as though they were especially significant. He whispered something in a language Lenoir did not recognize. Could the spirit identify these bones as individuals? Did he know their names, and the lives they had led?
“I saw him,”
Vincent had said earlier. Now Lenoir understood. Vincent had seen Zach and the kidnappers pass down this hallway. He had watched them through the eyes of these very skulls. Feeling a sudden chill, Lenoir gathered his coat more tightly around him and pressed on.
The hallway seemed to go on forever. Torchlight seethed and flared along the walls, contrasting eerily with the perfect stillness of the dead. The skulls watched Lenoir’s progress from their archways, empty eye sockets seeming to follow as he passed. He could feel Vincent’s presence just behind him. The sensation of being watched pressed in on him from either side. The corridor felt cramped and impossibly crowded. Lenoir began to sweat, in spite of the cold.
A pair of torches ahead signaled the end of the hallway. They flanked a single closed door. Lenoir glanced over his shoulder at Vincent. “What will we find on the other side of that door?”
“It is another room like the one we entered from, only much larger.”
“Are there any more skulls inside?” Lenoir was slowly becoming more accustomed to using Vincent’s supernatural gifts to their advantage.
But the spirit shook his head. “Once, but no longer. I cannot see into that room.”
Lenoir approached the door cautiously, bending his head against it to listen. The torches rustled and snapped overhead, but he heard nothing else. “Is there anything beyond this room?” he whispered.
“Yes, but I know little of those halls. These catacombs have known many uses.”
Lenoir thought. “Can you travel to the other side of this door?”
Again, Vincent shook his head. “It is not dark enough for me to travel that way.”
“Well, then,” Lenoir sighed, “ready your weapon, Vincent.” He drew one of his pistols, cocked it, and grabbed the cold iron handle of the door. Closing his eyes and uttering a silent prayer, he swung the door open.
Vincent swept past, as swift and silent as the shadow of a hawk. Cursing, Lenoir dove in after him, gun raised, his eyes raking his surroundings. He had only a fraction of a second to take it in: the huddle of bodies in the far corner, heads turning, eyes wide with shock. The air seemed to go out of the room in a single, collectively drawn breath. Then everyone started shouting.
Vincent’s whip had already found someone’s throat. The man was yanked forward with the force of it, his scream strangled off by the grip of the scourge. The others scattered. Lenoir hesitated, frozen with indecision as he tried to spot Zach amid the chaos. The kidnappers were flowing out of the room like cockroaches fleeing the light, darting beneath archways to disappear into the tunnels beyond. Lenoir could not see the boy. But he did glimpse a familiar face, a pair of beautiful, fierce eyes glaring hatefully at him from the depths of a hood.
Zera.
He pointed his gun at her, but she only sneered and fled the room. Without thinking, Lenoir went after her.
The torchlight from the room behind barely managed to penetrate the tunnel, and soon Lenoir was moving through darkness. He blinked furiously in a vain effort to hasten the adjustment of his eyes, straining to hear the sound of Zera’s retreating footsteps. She had been on the opposite side of the room, and had a few seconds’ head start. If she knew her way around these tunnels, she would have even more of an advantage. Lenoir tried not to think about it as he charged blindly ahead.
What are you doing here, Zera?
And yet somehow, Lenoir was not surprised, even though it made little objective sense. Some part of him even admired her for it, however grudgingly.
How headstrong you are, and
how foolish. You should have left this city behind. But you just had to be here, didn’t you, to witness your triumph firsthand?
Lenoir had seen it in her eyes as they faced off in the salon, a burning defiance that would not be cowed, no matter the danger.
You are not afraid of me. Even now, you think you will win. You will not let it go. And so neither will I.
A wall reared up unexpectedly in the dark, so close that Lenoir nearly crashed into it. The tunnel had come to a dead end. He must have run past a branching corridor somewhere. Cursing, he retraced his steps at a trot. He had not gone far when he felt a breath of cold air on his cheek, and he reached out, his fingers grasping the corner of an archway. A faint dripping sound drifted through the darkness. Lenoir passed under the arch and kept moving.
After a few minutes, the outline of the tunnel began to glow faintly. Lenoir came to a room that joined two corridors. Torchlight from the far corridor revealed several rows of what appeared to be wine casks. There were at least two dozen of them, their arched backs clustered together like a herd of beasts grazing silently in the shadows.
He started across the room. Suddenly, he glimpsed movement to his left, and he whipped around just in time to see someone leveling a crossbow at him. Lenoir ducked as the bolt whizzed overhead, shattering against the stone wall at the far end of the room. He could hear his attacker reloading, and he crouched, but it was too dark to see between the barrels. Keeping low, Lenoir moved back one row, away from the lit corridor. He wanted to keep as much of the room between himself and the light as possible, giving him the visual advantage. Any move his attacker made would be backlit, whereas Lenoir would be lost in shadow.
He gulped in air, trying to bring his labored breathing under control. It sounded horribly loud to his ears; he was sure it would give away his position.
It serves you right,
he thought bitterly. He had let himself get too out of shape, and now even a short burst of running was enough to tax his lungs. He tried to listen past his own breathing, straining for any sign of his attacker. If the man got the drop on Lenoir, it would be over. Crossbows were deadly accurate at short range, and unlike flintlocks, they gave no warning of an imminent shot.
Lenoir had seen enough of his attacker to be sure it was not Zera. Every second he wasted in this room let her slip farther from his grasp. He could not afford to crouch here, waiting for the other man to make the next move. Reaching into his pocket, Lenoir drew out his watch. It was an expensive piece, one of the last mementos he had of Serles. He ran his thumb over it regretfully, feeling the familiar texture of the engraved back. Then, readying his pistol, he threw it.
The watch landed near the door with a forlorn clatter. A shadow moved to Lenoir’s left. He fired. The shadow staggered and flailed, knocking over one of the casks. Under cover of the noise, Lenoir charged. The man was lying prone, grasping for his fallen crossbow, when Lenoir appeared from behind a cask and unloaded the second barrel of his pistol. The man jerked and went still. Lenoir dropped the spent flintlock into his coat pocket and drew his other gun. Two shots left, and no time to reload. He would need to spend them wisely. Sparing a sad glance at the innards of his shattered watch, Lenoir passed through the door at the far end of the room and into the lit tunnel beyond.