“Like Karzov?” Rafe asked quietly.
Her breath came out in a hiss. “Like Karzov.”
“Well, then,” Rafe rose to feet and held his hands out to Isabella. “What say you to moving to more congenial quarters?”
Isabella lifted her eyebrows in question.
“There is apparently no way out to the rest of Mirados’ mansion from here, aside from the metal door we cannot budge or burn or hack. Correct?” He waited for her nod before he went on. “But there is the rest of this corridor we haven’t explored, and presumably there is a way going… underground.”
Isabella shook her head. “There might be, or there might not be. The krin don’t need space to travel the way we do.” She struggled for words. “It’s not like they can go wherever they want, or glide through rock and metal and wood. It’s… complicated.”
“But,” he persisted, “there must be cellars here. Tunnels under the cellars. Sewage pipes. Machine ways. There must be, even in Shimmer.”
Isabella gave a small tilt of her head, as if she didn’t want to assent, but couldn’t bring herself to lie, either.
Rafe crouched, took her slender cold hand in his. Face close to hers, foreheads almost touching, he whispered in her ear, soft as a lover’s endearments, “I don’t want to die here, with everything turned to ash around me, waiting in the dark and the cold for them to find us. If we are to die, let’s do it fighting. Are you with me?”
He felt her breath catch, heard the rustle of fabric as her chest expanded, then constricted. Her cheek nearly touched his. “They will sneak into every open place of your mind. They will take your emotions and memories, twist them, corrupt them, throw them back in your face. I have spent years building up my armor against them. What will you do when they come to you with the faces of your loved ones and whisper to you the love song of death?”
“Run like mad. Scream. Grab your hand and try to hide behind you.” Rafe rocked back on his heels. A rueful smile twisted his lips. “I won’t be of much help. But you may have a chance. If the worst happens, you can run and leave me.”
“Oh, I plan to.” Isabella smiled, too, all irony and softness and steel. “There are things greater than you and—I have obligations. But, knowing what you do about the things in the dark, the things they do, that I might have to leave you, will you still do it?”
Rafe left the meager shivering circle of light, crossed over to the doorway. He stared in the direction of the closed door, not able to see it, and tried to imagine it opening. Would Mirados come to gloat over them, or rage in fury and judgment? Would Rafe himself beg and mewl for mercy?
Would Mirados or Raman or any of the partygoers care enough to personally carry out the punishment?
No.
Shimmer was beyond caring, beyond concern, beyond judgment. Let things happen for good or ill outside their borders, let men kill or forgive, it mattered not. Let someone else take care of the unpleasantness, the passions of the younger nations, the work of judging and redeeming. As long as their gardens were frost-free and their parties full of novelties, they were content.
Rafe turned, set his face down the corridor, towards the unknown. “Yes,” he said.
“So speaks one who has no idea what is to come,” said Isabella. “You’re crazy, you know.”
Something, a small sound, caught at his attention. “Probably. But could you please get that wood and the flames and come over? They’re here.”
Sighs in the dark, soft, wordless, regular, like the drip-dripping of a leaky tap. Rafe curled his fingers around Isabella’s hand. The light of his pathetic torch—a block of wood wrapped in cordage—barely lit his feet. He held it close, almost hugged to his chest, as if to protect it. The belt around his waist had once strapped down prisoners. Now it held wood, paper, lighter, whatever fuel they could salvage. Beside him, Isabella held her torch almost carelessly, less as if she needed it and more as if she were providing him with assurance.
It was a good thing that he walked with someone who could face the krin without the light, right?
For the first time he wondered who could be so terrible that even the krin feared her. Who—what—was Isabella that she could hear the whispers and feel the ice and not be driven mad?
He was hardly reassured. He made to loosen his grip on her hand, but Isabella’s nails dug deeper.
“Listen,” she breathed.
The soft sighs rose in volume, became a small wind that touched Rafe’s skin with cold and played with the tiny flames in his hand. Rafe pushed his chin downward, as if to guard the fire. Heat bored into his skull, forced painful tears from his eyes.
“Keep going,” muttered Isabella. “It will only get worse. The thing is to go quickly.”
Thanks for the cheerful words.
Even with his own sardonic voice speaking to him, Rafe found it hard to move. His feet were fixed to the floor, as if a mixer had come around while he stood and poured cement all around his ankles. Isabella pulled and his feet stumbled on, wading through slush before they hit their stride again.
Bossy, that one. It’s not really so hard to see that she’s Rocquespur, after all.
Resentment kindled in his chest. Resentment that she was so strong while he was so weak. That she was rescuer and protector, walking as if she were in light while he stumbled in the dark.
She had dumped him in the Barrens.
She had tried to steal from his uncle, and provoked him into destroying Leo’s house and killing his neighbors.
She’d had him arrested and sentenced to hard labor.
She’d lost him his friend.
And even when he thought he was free of her, there she was, as Rocquespur. With a sense of shock, Rafe realized she had known him and he her long before that night in the old theater in Blackstone. They had been rivals for antiques and art objects. They had fought the battle with money and wit and tenacity and sheer dumb luck, barely meeting face-to-face, but competing always.
Forget that Leonius was the one funding Rafe’s expeditions, forget that Leonius had started him down the path and that Rafe had surrendered his prizes to his uncle’s possessive hands. It was the hunt that had mattered, fighting against Rocquespur’s network of informants, Rocquespur’s money, Rocquespur’s influence. Losing the prize to him again and again and having to smile and tug his forelock, say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and bow and scrape…
Rafe pulled his hand free from hers. Isabella gave him a sharp sideways look. He made a show of fumbling in his pocket with his free hand.
“Ah, sustenance!” He held up a tin of peppermints, the can dented and the paper peeling. Rafe popped open the lid. “Care for some?” He tossed three into his mouth. The combined mint taste, strong and sweet, with a punch of bitter, brought water to his eyes.
“No, thank you,” said Isabella. “I am not fond of mint.”
However does she manage to sound like a spinster aunt? Or is it a Sister of Selene?
“Oh, I forgot that you liked snuff better.” Rafe patted his pockets. “Want me to see if I have some?”
“Not that, either,” said Isabella wearily. The sigh at the end of her sentence made Rafe feel like an exasperating child.
“So, tell me, Isabella,” he asked from around the mints in his mouth. “How does it feel to be a badly-dressed yellow-toothed old man?”
“Rafe—”
“I was not aware that we were on such close terms.”
“Rafe.” She stopped, turned, put her hand on her hip. “They’re getting to you.”
“Maybe
you’re
getting to me.” In spite of his waspishness, Rafe did pause. He did not
feel
presences in his head, could not hear voices. Yet this belligerence was unlike him, too.
On the other hand… “You’re changing the subject.” He continued walking the corridor, sloping steadily downward, leaving her behind. “You’re not telling me anything. Again.”
Her light flickered as she jogged back into place by his side. “What’s there to say? I do what I have to.”
“And what is it that anointed you as the Savior of the World, Defender of Mankind?” He was skeptical and jeering, and he knew it. It felt good to be a jerk, and he shut out the tiny voice in his head that had raised its hand and was trying to get his attention.
“Tradition. The Rocquespurs have always been Slayers.” Isabella lifted her light higher. “Ah, an opening out of the vault, no doubt leading further below. You were right.”
How had she seen it? Rafe barely made out the opening until they were upon it. A crack in the wall to their left, just wide enough to admit them. Provided they turned sideways and sucked in their stomachs as they slipped through.
“There is still the way ahead.” Rafe gestured with his free hand, still cradling the torch.
Isabella tilted her head. “No, I think it will lead it us back to where we started. Shimmer mazes are like that.” She stepped through the crack.
Rafe hesitated. His earnest words of a while ago seemed foolish now. How were they to find their way out? They could wander the caverns below forever. Was it really better to be caught by the krin down there than up here?
“Coming?” Isabella called.
Stop ordering me around!
His mental tone was savage. Rafe fought the thought down.
Don’t jump down her throat for everything.
Were the krin messing with his head? He heard nothing now, no wind, no sighs, just the rasp of his own breathing. Even Isabella’s movements had ceased.
“Isabella?” Rafe inserted himself through the opening, scraping against rock.
“Here.” Her hand found his. “My light went out.” She said it calmly, but behind her words, Rafe heard the echo of a conversation long past, dug up from his memory.
What is it, soldier?
The lights, sir, the lights have all gone out. And Lang cannot raise anyone on the wire, sir. The generators, sir, have all gone out. It’s coming, sir, it’s coming! The fire is coming!
Hold on, private, hold on. Don’t assume the worst just yet. Tell Lang to get out the signaler. We hold our positions still.
Rafe blinked it away. No. That war was over. He was not a soldier anymore. “Here, take mine.” He thrust it into her hand, fumbled with lighter and wooden block. Another meager flame twinkled in the blackness, and he felt all the better for having the pair.
“Take care. The footing here is not the best.” Isabella started forward. Rubble crunched and turned underfoot. Walls crumbled on either side, leaving just the support beams, like the bones of a ribcage, vaulting overhead. This tunnel had lasted hundreds of years, maybe; surely it could last a few moments longer.
“How will we know which way to go?” he ventured.
“I’ve studied maps of Shimmer,” she responded. “We’ll stay below ground until we get closer to the hills, and then we’ll take the sleigh out to the Gathering Place.”
“Take?”
“Commandeer,” she amended.
“I hope you have a plan for that.”
“Actually, I was going to leave it up to the soldier to figure that out. Didn’t I vote for you to be awarded a medal for capturing that Blackstone convoy?”
Rafe snorted. “You voted against it. You and Verney. The only two.” He thought about it, then added the extra four votes Rocquespur controlled. “Actually, that was six votes against.”
“Did I, really?” Isabella’s voice hollowed and echoed, and the quality of air around them changed from dense to light, as if it were now allowed to expand. “It must’ve been a political thing.”
“No doubt.”
Her fingers touched the back of his hand lightly. Prickles ran down Rafe’s spine. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. He should know better than to expect apologies or explanations from her.
They only gave you the medal because of what you were born.
The voice was sneering, slightly like his uncle’s.
Others deserved it more than you, but their last names were not Grenfeld.
The old guilt rose again.
This is just a trick of the krin, he told himself. Just a trick. But his mind was not master of his body. His heart sped, shame dragged at his ankles like a leaden chain.
Remember Shorty and Ember? Remember how they ran in to face the enemy fire…?
Shots cracked in his ears. Once again, Rafe saw the trundling trucks of the convoy, the tiny figures of his men as they slid down the rocks in a mad ambush. The flash of grenade, the heated exchange of fire. Then, the light cleared and in its ebbing tide, the two bodies…
He was the officer, the leader. He could not expend his life thus.
I volunteer.
Shorty squinted up, looking earnest and young and nearsighted.
I will go.
Me, too, sir.
Ember stepped forward. Neither of the two was anything to look at, but even the famed Ambersius statue did not look nobler than these two did at that moment.
I volunteer.
While I hide,
Rafe thought, then stumbled, confused.
Or hid. Didn’t it already happen?
Ember and Shorty stared at him, and then the convoy swept in again, rock-crushing grind, engine-whine. Shots, light flash, crackle.
The dead bodies.
The bodies.
There, just ahead! Shorty and Ember! Must get them out, must get them back.
Something fell from his hand as he started forward.
Something grabbed him from behind. He backhanded without thinking, heard the smack of flesh on flesh.
Wait. Someone from behind. He had other men. An officer didn’t hit his men without cause. He turned.
Isabella held the back of his jacket with one hand, the torch in the other. She stared at him, then let go. “I see you have returned.”
Rafe looked around, confused. “I thought I was…” He shook his head.
“Yes.”
“I… how can they do that?” He looked into the dark, as if expecting something to materialize. “How can they get into my memories like that and twist them? I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t… my body, my ears, my eyes…” His breath came out in short gasps, and his shirt stuck to his chest. Every muscle was tense, ready ro spring. He put a hand to his belt, almost able to feel the phantom saber at his side, the pistol in its holster on his other hip.