Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (11 page)

Together, they waited quietly for
an answer: Who was their newcomer? Predator, or prey?

*           *          *

The talking had been split evenly
between the pair for at least half an hour. It was conversational, calm enough
to be inaudible.

The woman's voice soaring in pitch
was so unexpected that it brought him upright. Ty cocked his head, raising an
ear to catch anything she said. Her male companion returned fire. As the fight
approached fever-pitch, their voices merged into one indistinct hum like a
colony of swarming bees. Something collapsed, rattled across the floor. A
table? He glanced to Olivia, staring wide-eyed up at the ceiling, her face
silhouetted by a rising moon.

A scream. Olivia jerked forward,
ready to stand. He pulled her back with two fingers on her wrist, shaking his
head.
No
. Whatever the fate of either person upstairs, charging in now
could only spell danger.

Then it was just the woman and
sounds of a struggle. She yelled the same sounds, a phrase, three or four
times. They were fighting; he recognized meaty thuds from his time in the
boxing ring, flesh against flesh. A heavy wooden thud shuddered through the
walls. Whatever it was rolled a short distance and stopped. Then it was just
the man's voice uttering a few words here, and there with no reply. Sweat
chilled on his spine at the silence. Olivia's fingers gripped his shoulder.

Steps and a thump reached his ears,
then more steps, more bumping. The pattern repeated a few times in a circle
overhead.

Boots stomped back down the stairs,
passing their landing, a reassuringly continuous sound until it reached the
entry hall. There followed another brief pause, and finally the front door
slammed shut.

Ty exhaled, temples pounding. “Hold
a moment,” he whispered when Olivia grew restless. “Let's be certain he doesn't
intend to come back.”

She relaxed beside him, no stranger
to the waiting which comprised so much of their work.

After a moment, more creaking
sounded overhead. Not the long groan of a footstep but short, quick cracks like
a board being twisted. Then a whoosh, another sound he could almost place,
similar to opening a furnace door on its roaring flames.

Flames.

As if reading his mind, a tendril
of smoke curled in beneath the door, hooking into a finger and beckoning them
out.

“Ty!” Olivia darted to her feet,
grabbing for his sleeve.

“I see it.” The question was, up or
down? Did they go in search of Elena and risk the fire or run hell-bent for the
door? He groaned, already knowing the answer. “Upstairs, double quick.”

Jerking open the door was a
mistake. What had he been thinking? Fire eating its way up from the hall bit
greedily at old wood, and searing heat tingled against his face. He turned into
his sleeve, coughing.

To her credit, Olivia didn't make
the mistake of pausing and waiting. She clambered ahead, gaining the third
floor in a heartbeat. He followed, eyes watering, throat raw as he searched his
pockets for a handkerchief.

Olivia stopped at a door directly
across the landing, leaned in and pressed her palm to the wood. She jerked it
back just as quickly. “It's hot.”

“Stand back.” The kick jarred his
teeth, splintering the door. He stood away, pressing Olivia behind him. The
inferno devoured fresh air, roaring its satisfaction, then tempered. There
would be no going into the room. Flames had climbed the plaster to the roof's
pitch and glowing ash floated from above like burning snowflakes. Smoke danced
in wide swirls, obscuring half the room.

Above a raging line of flame that
nearly cut the room in two loomed a figure. Unmistakably female in shape, her
limp arms dangled, chin pressed to her chest. She swung left and right in an
unhurried motion, frustrating opposition to the chaos all around. A stool, its
legs charred black, lay against the floor nearby. Tongues of fire licked at the
rope, ready to drop Elena's body any moment. A shoulder pushed beside him, and
he pushed back. “Olivia, don't!”

He turned and threw out his hands
too late. Olivia pressed to his side, eyes darting above the sleeve covering
her mouth and nose. “Don't what? What did you –” She stiffened against him. “Oh
my God.”

“Just … turn around. Leave it. We
have to get out.” He grabbed a fistful of her coat, propelling her back out
onto the landing.

He was following suit when
something caught his eye, a glint against the floorboards just inches from the
smoldering stool. Bracing one hand on the door frame, he arched a leg out,
extending every inch of muscle. Heat seeped through his trousers, stinging his
calf like a sunburn. He got a toe over the object and raked backward. It
clattered, metal and glass over wood, stopping when it struck the threshold. He
would have guessed a watch by the sound. Bending for a closer look, he found
spectacles instead. Darting forward he grabbed them, unthinking. The metal frames
were searing; dropping them with one hand, he caught them in his sleeve. One
lens was shattered, and glass triangles pinged off of the floor as he
transferred them to his pocket.

“Tyler!” Olivia's cry was muffled
by her coat. “Tyler, we can't go down anymore!”

Pressing the handkerchief back to
his face, he turned to her. Smoke belched up the stairway. Flames already
wreathed a doorway below, where they'd hidden minutes earlier. The fire spread
quickly, jumping floors.

“This way!” Olivia's fingers bit
into his arm, pulling him toward the last door at the end of the hall.

Her hand came up, he had no idea if
to test it or just to push it open. At this point they didn't have much choice
but to go in.

Fire had eaten a wagon-wheel sized
hole through one wall, but otherwise the room had been spared, save for the
smoke billowing in. Flames from next door offered illumination, enough to warn
of missing floor planks. They toed their way along different paths, picking
towards a narrow window set below the eave.

Olivia reached it first. She
grabbed the sash and heaved.

Nothing. Not so much as a creak.

“Dammit all,” he croaked through a
round of coughing. Leaning over her shoulder, he examined the frame. It had
been painted, nailed, and painted again, then neglected for decades. He jammed
a boot against the pane. It wasn't a conscious decision; more like a reflex
borne of self-preservation. It took more kicks than he cared to count before a
line ran up the glass and it finally splintered. The pane shattering nearly ate
up a ripping sound behind him. Blinking against watering eyes, he glanced back
to find Olivia tearing her gown from bodice to hem. “What in the hell are you
about?”

Still trying to cover her face,
Olivia jammed a finger at the window, kicking away a heap of silk and velvet.
“I'll never fit!”

Of course. There was certainly no
time to unbutton or unlace. He stuck his head out through the opening, sucking
in mouthfuls of fresh air that burned nearly as much as the smoke. There was a
ledge below but he couldn't see where it ran. Wherever it went, it would put
them outside, and for now that was preferable to being inside.

He turned back to Olivia and held
out a hand. “We're three floors up. Prepare to do some climbing.”

Grabbing her discarded dress, he
wadded it, folding it over jagged shards clawing out from the frame. Olivia
hung one leg out, ducking, flinching with every movement. She fit through the
window without her clothes, but had no protection from the glass. He winced,
watching her wriggle through.

A crash thundered from the room
next door. Flames roared louder, and wind sucked faster through their new-made
opening. The floor was falling in.

Ty wedged himself into the frame.
Cold night air stung the lines it sliced along his neck and scalp and a hot
rivulet trickled into his collar. Flesh throbbed along his left thigh, swelling
around each puncture.

Panting, he joined Olivia on the
ledge. His temples pounded from smoke as much as primal fear. He laid palms
against the cold stone, anchoring against a wave of dizziness. When it passed,
he looked to Olivia, assuming almost the same posture. Her head was back, her
eyes pressed closed, and he wondered if she knew how much blood saturated her
shift. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, still not opening her
eyes. “I'll be better, once our feet touch ground.”

Glancing both directions along the
ledge, he took stock of the geography. “Let's see what we can do about that.
And let's hope that no one stayed to admire their handiwork.”

A cloudy sky winked with red and
orange stars, embers blowing overhead from a roof nearing collapse.

Olivia had observed him weighing
their choices. “The balcony,” she offered. “Front side of the house. It should
be stable. We can sort it out from there.”

Her confidence bolstered him, even
if it was an act. Nodding, he worked his boots to get better purchase on the
ledge. “Off we go.”

The house groaned and snapped,
protesting their escape. A flaming maw at the roof's peak insisted that one
life was not enough to satisfy.

Bits of limestone sloughed off
beneath their feet, weakened by rain and winter freezes. As they fell, he
registered a chillingly long space before an impact echoed back from the yard
below. Three floors might not kill them, but they'd wish it had.

Reaching a corner, they paused their
shuffling. It was going to take some doing, negotiating from one face of the
house to another. Quoins jutting out at the corner offered hand-holds, but the
towers of stacked bricks also ate up their footing.

A wall shuddered at their backs;
something had given way deep inside the house. Over the roar, he caught the
first shouts of alarm from the far side of the square. When the fire brigade
arrived to find one dead woman inside and two people hunkering on a ledge,
there would be questions.
Questions
were what got spies like him and
Olivia executed.

She was holding still beside him,
not showing the slightest awareness that they were about to have company.

“Olivia?”

“I hear them. Just...” She sighed,
frowning over her shoulder at the corner. “Here, I have an idea.” Bracing her
outside arm perpendicular with the quoin, Olivia flipped her body back to
front. He swore that for a moment she hung in midair. Then she swung around,
smacking into the corner face first and grabbing its opposite side with her
other hand. Grit scraped beneath her feet; she balanced, then was still. With
two side steps, she disappeared from sight around the front of the house. He
would applaud under different circumstances.

He doubted his ability to follow
suit, body dense where Olivia's was graceful. Above, the roof heaved its final
sigh, crashing into the belly of the mansion. Tongues of flame and molten ash
belched out through shattering windows below.

He would have to learn to be deft,
and learn quickly. Shoulder to the corner, he tensed, pivoted on the ball of
his right foot and lashed out for a second handhold. Where Olivia had struck
the wall and seemed to stick, his chest resisted the impact. For a moment he
was certain of falling. Her palm slamming his shoulder kept things from going
horribly wrong. Resting a cheek against the rough stone, he panted. “Thank
you.”

“Thank me when we're down.” Olivia
took up a position above the balcony, scooting, glancing over her shoulder,
judging distances through deep shadows cast by the fire. She crouched, grabbed
the ledge and without warning dropped in a single fluid movement.

He startled, grabbing for her
before it registered that the move was purposeful.

“Oof!”

“You all right?”

“Mostly,” she groaned. “Tuck your
legs in.”

Understanding dawned when he
landed, nearly catching the balustrade on his descent. The balcony was not much
deeper than it was wide, a small half-circle of marble. If he'd appreciated the
size of their target while still above it, Ty wasn't so certain he could have
stomached the jump. It was a credit to Olivia's bravery as much as to her quick
thinking.

She was already outside the
balcony's iron railing. Palming its supports, her hands slid until she hung
from the lip. “Wish me luck.”

He wished she would stop doing
things without warning and held a breath.

Her thud was soft. “I'm all right.
Not as far as I expected.”

She was right. The impact hardly
winded him, landing him in the one part of the door yard not entirely heaped
with old stone or downed trees.

Shouts rippled out beyond the gate,
growing exponentially and carried by hammering footsteps. He grabbed Olivia's
arm. “Back. Run for the back.”

“I don't think we can scale it,”
she huffed, loping breathless beside him and pointing toward the wall.

He scowled at the jagged spine of
blocks. “Then we had damned well better be able to burrow under it.”

As it turned out, neither path was
necessary. There was a u-shaped hole from the top of the wall to its base, the
last act of a dying oak whose roots still reached skyward, skeletal in the
moonlight. They jumped the low threshold with ease.

Beyond the wall, a sandy bank fell
away, barely covering its foundation stones. It heaped into dunes at the bank
of a canal nearly twenty feet below. Normally a muddy trench, it was filled
with days of rainwater and whatever awful things flowed through the Paris
gutters. Ty braced; none of what they were about to do would be pleasant.

Beside him, Olivia nodded, more for
her own reassurance than his, it seemed. “We can slide down. I think we can slide
down.”

“We'll make it. And if we do
not...” He glanced between his clothes and hers, “We'll leave some poor soul
very confused.”

Something occurred to him, watching
the water drift past far below. He unholstered his pistol, tightened the flint,
and tossed it by the butt in a wide arc. It landed on the canal's far side,
gripped by mud. He committed its location to memory and met Olivia's wide eyes.
“We may need that later. I'm trying to remain optimistic, but I have the
sinking feeling we are about to get wet.”