Foot in mouth. Ash hid a mad impulse to
make it worse, to correct her statement and point out that, of
course, the damned were burned. She dug into the wall, scraping her
boots for purchase, and already her fingers were dagger-cold,
aching. The well's water didn't seem as icy as the Milk, but that
didn't make it comfortable.
"Are you sure?" she asked, choosing the
marginally less awful subject. "That it was Frog, I mean? I didn't
see who it was."
"Quite sure. Unlike you, I didn't lean
so handily over the edge of the well for him."
"How then?" Carlyon was as tall and
much better built than Frog.
"A rock, I think. More fool me to walk
into a trap."
"He hit you?" Ash couldn't quite bring
herself to alter her fingertip grip of the wall to try to check on
him. "Did you pass out completely?"
"I woke when I hit the water. I don't
think he was counting on that, or you appearing. Were you following
me, Lenthard?"
"You looked so suspicious. Can you show
me how to float?"
Carlyon's voice, after a very long
pause, held a note of laughter with the disbelief. "You want me to
teach you to swim?"
"If you pass out again, I'll have to
keep you above water."
"I won't pass out."
She made an exasperated noise. "You
lost consciousness once. Don't be stupid."
"Did you tell anyone you were coming
here?"
"How could I? I was following you. And
you were following Frog, and it's my strong intuition that he won't
be mentioning this. How soon before you're missed?"
"After sunset."
"And I've the rest of the day free. The
Godskeeps come to adjust the position of the gods with every bell,
though. We could listen for it, and yell, and..."
"Could you hear me? Yelling?"
"Not till I was halfway down the
stair," Ash admitted. "And that with the well's cover open. Still,
the Godskeeps might use the well for something, and at any rate my
fingers are starting to cramp, so let's start with lessons and then
try to work something out."
"Does nothing daunt you, Lenthard?"
"Yes. This. But I'd rather learn how to
swim than cling here terrified 'til my fingers give out. I–" Her
voice had gone ragged, and she stopped and made herself breathe,
then forced herself back to business. "Just show me."
It helped a great deal to listen to
Carlyon's explanation of how she should move, and to practice while
he supported her. After a few false starts, she was able to paddle
tentatively about, exploring the narrow circumference of the well,
the stones very smooth and cool, with few finger holds worth the
name.
"What are you doing?" she asked
Carlyon, who was making the oddest splashing noises.
"Take off your boots," he said. "And
your tabard. You'll find it easier with them gone."
The tabard was simple enough, but she
hesitated over the boots. Retrieving her remaining knife – and
wondering what had happened to the one she'd been holding – Ash
handed it over to Carlyon, then searched out a narrow handhold in
the stonework to clutch while she fiddled with swollen laces.
She'd just kicked off the second boot
when the level of the water in the well surged, and she lost her
handhold, bobbing on an unexpected tide of warmth.
"What–?" As quickly as it had risen,
the water dropped, though it was impossible for Ash to tell if the
level was now higher, lower or the same. "What was that?!"
"The outflow from the bathhouse,"
Carlyon replied. "This is Montmoth's original Well of the Heart. It
draws on an offshoot of the Milk, but during the Breaking the rock
separating the offshoot from the bathhouse outflow ruptured. Rather
than attempt repairs, they consecrated a new Well of the Heart, and
built the Gods' Hall here."
"That's–" Ash fumbled through the
implications. "So, this is where Karaelsur's judgments were made,
where the old Sun declared Luinsel and Rhoi." And Eward Carlyon had
been down here. "No chance of swimming out that way, I suppose. Let
me get a better measure of this wall."
"You're not seriously going to try to
climb out?"
"Try, yes." The well's stonework was
tightly constructed, offering only fingertip holds. "Succeeding's
another matter. Stay as much as possible to my right – oh, and try
to use my knife to prise loose a stone."
"You don't want it with you?"
"I'd push myself off the wall trying to
use it."
Ash's skin was already waterlogged, and
the lower few feet of stonework slick and slippery, causing two
early falls in quick succession. Her third attempt took her to
drier stone, and then Ash's true climb began.
With no certainty of how far she had to
go, and no possibility of looking ahead for the best handholds, the
ascent had to be a matter of touch and caution. But the cold, while
nothing compared to the Milk's, still dulled sensation, competing
with the pain of bearing her whole weight on little more than the
tips of fingers and toes. Each handhold and foothold, every shift
of weight, had to be deliberate, measured, controlled.
Twin lines of pain opened across her
back. The muscle burn she could deal with, at least for a limited
period. The other concerned Ash far more. Her wound had progressed
satisfactorily, enough to remove the stitches, but it was far from
completely healed, and she could only guess how much strain the
climb placed on it. Was it only sweat trickling down her back? The
ache in her upper arms grew intolerable, while her toes and fingers
were passing through fire, and the climb had become an eternity.
Ash paused at a larger-than-ordinary toehold, where she could wedge
one side of her forefoot in place and lean into the wall to take
most of her weight. How much further? Had she made it halfway?
More? It had not seemed like a long fall, but not being able to see
made everything unreal, and her head was in danger of spinning.
Below her, Carlyon was completely
silent, no longer scraping her knife at one of the stones. For all
she knew, he could have passed out, and silently drowned while she
inched her way upward. What would she do if she called out, and he
didn't answer? What–?
Ash closed her eyes. She could not
fail. To die here, without even beginning a quarter of the things
she wanted to do? Without seeing more than Montmoth? To be disposed
of by Genevieve's killers, her hunt an abject failure?
Before finding out whether Thornaster
had been showing off just for her?
Stone by stone. If the climb as a whole
had become too overwhelming, then she would step back from that and
concentrate only on the next handhold, the next foothold. Other
matters she could worry about when there were no more stones.
Wincing as her fingers protested their
return to torture, Ash shifted slowly back into position, and slid
her hand up – and over.
The surprise almost cost her
everything. She inhaled sharply, and one foot slipped, but the hand
she'd curled between the lip of the well and its cover held firm.
Gripping hard, she repositioned her feet, and then used her free
hand to explore the metal above her. Two half-circles of what had
looked like beaten copper, it would be a solid weight to lift.
Wedging herself firmly into place, she heaved. Metal clanged.
"Lenthard?!" Carlyon's voice, rising to
a high point of hope and incredulity. "You made it?!"
Throat tight, Ash couldn't summon the
words. She hung from her one solid handhold, blinking in the dark,
until Carlyon shouted again.
"There's a bolt." Her throat still
tried to shut the words away, and Ash forced them out. "He bolted
it."
Utter silence. Ash wouldn't have had a
response either. Unwilling to admit defeat, she beat on the metal
until her strength finally gave way, and then, calling a warning,
fell once again into the dark.
ooOoo
"Why were you following Frog?"
It was the first either of them had
spoken since Ash's failure. Initially, all she'd been able to do
was float, her hands and feet stinging relentlessly, using one of
the handholds Carlyon had prised loose to take some of her weight.
But the silence began to press unbearably, and it was never in
Ash's nature to do nothing at all.
"Did you have some idea that he was
responsible for Heran's accident?" When only a stirring of water
followed, she added irritably: "We're not dead yet. Talk."
There was a marked difference to
Carlyon's voice when he finally responded, the words dragging.
"I checked all the seruilisi's quivers,
to see if they were short any arrows. Frog had one extra. It was
hardly conclusive, and, well, it was Frog."
Ash understood that. Of all the
seruilisi, Frog had been the most reasonable. She wanted to track
him down and shake him for making her like him.
"So you didn't tell anyone?"
"No."
"Didn't want to smear his good name if
you were wrong?"
"That's correct."
"Great. Was there anything else to make
you suspicious? Why were you following him tonight?"
"A note. It said 'Meet after Mern: the
usual place.' Only Frog could have dropped it, and all I had time
to do was follow him to find out what was going on. Straight into
this trap."
"I can hardly believe it of Frog. Does
he want to be Veirhoi so much? What can be worth all this
death?"
"Kiri Arpesial."
Ash held back an indignant little gasp.
"If you're expecting me to believe Kiri a scheming
murderess...!"
"No. What Frog wants. So very
much."
"Oh." Becoming Veirhoi would not
automatically gain Frog Kiri, but a Montmoth under the influence of
Karaelsur was unlikely to increase Kiri's protections. And Ash had
no way to warn her.
Not finding it in themselves to say
anything more, Ash and Carlyon floated in the dark. Ash's various
hurts faded thanks to the cold, and were replaced by a bone-deep
ache. While not inflicting the icy shock of Luinhall's glacial main
river, the well was still too cold for health, and the infrequent
surge of warmth from the bathhouse became a necessity, a brief
revitalisation that Ash began to look forward to with an edge of
desperation. She tried to think of Thornaster, displaying himself
in the sunlight, but the memory didn't seem real any more. There
was only water, and darkness.
"Lenthard?"
"Mmm?"
"I think you may, perhaps, be correct
about my losing consciousness."
"You feel faint?" She grasped his
arm.
"I can barely keep my eyes open." He
said this evenly enough, but his voice was hollow.
"This cold isn't helping any."
"No." His voice was breathy.
"Lenthard?"
"Yes?"
"I don't want to die."
"No." Ash faltered, unable to find
something more substantial to say on the subject. She didn't want
to die. She'd never felt less inclined to die in her life. "I can't
think of anything else to try."
"I can try following the feeding stream
out – should have tried that sooner."
"If you can fit through whatever
opening there is at the bottom of this shaft. If it stays wide
enough for you. If it doesn't take you directly into the Milk." She
shivered, and shifted her grip on him, taking his hand. "It would
be even worse, trapped down there, beneath all that weight of rock,
unable to go any further, unable to turn back. Horrible."
"Quicker."
"Quicker doesn't fit with not wanting
to die, does it? It must be long past sunset by now. They'll be
searching for both of us."
"They'll think I killed you and
fled."
The weary matter-of-factness of his
words made her wince. And it was true. Lauren Carlyon, perfect
first seruilis, son of a monster. No matter what he did, no matter
how many hard-earned honours he won, suspicion would fall on him at
the first opportunity.
"Only people who don't know you," Ash
offered, which was a very feeble response indeed. "I, uh–"
"You flinched the moment you heard my
name," he pointed out. "Was that simply at the Rhoimarch's
bogeyman, or had my father directly harmed you?"
Strongly suspecting that the last thing
Carlyon needed right now was an announcement that she was his
nearly-stepmother, Ash briefly repeated the same half-truth she'd
told Heran. Carlyon listened without comment, then said:
"I loved my father."
A black, bitter announcement, filling
Ash with dismay. She could hear in the words Carlyon's need to
speak, but this was not a conversation she wanted to have.
"He was everything that a father should
be. Strong and wise and accomplished. Never, not once, did he raise
his voice to me. His punishments were always fair, designed to make
me understand the error of my ways. He spent time with me, taught
me to understand the Balance, to defend myself, to believe in
honour. I worshipped him."
"You don't have to tell me this."
"
Don't I
?
" he asked, then
added, just audibly: "Who else can I tell it to?"
"I – you–" Ash grimaced. She'd known
that she didn't really want to see behind the perfect first
seruilis mask. Holding hands with Lauren Carlyon in the dark,
waiting for death or rescue, and talking about the man who
frightened her most. But she didn't let go, and eventually the
words began again.
"I spent most of my early life out at
Morncriffe, was due to start attending the Mern after my thirteenth
birthday. It had been a strange few weeks leading up to that,
because Father had abruptly married a girl my own age, who had
immediately been killed in a fire. I couldn't understand it, and
Eman, the only person who I could bring myself to ask, would only
say that it was better not to talk about it. And then word arrived
that Father had died.
"We went into Luinhall immediately. The
day I arrived one of the servants, a woman who had never even
spoken to me before, took great pleasure in destroying my father's
memory for me. She said, oh, the most monstrous things about him
and called me a fool when I didn't believe her. She told me he'd
beaten my mother to death."