So this is what it was like to be “truly human,” as Miss Scarlet had so often warned me. I thought of Justice; but while the image of his face, his long hair and blue eyes, made my heart clench again, for the first time I did not feel grief clawing at me; only a sad, soft ache. It was the memory of Jane’s face that made me desperate with love and helplessness; the thought of Jane coming to harm that made me want to rush downstairs and confront whatever was there, Aviators or no. From the tiny wedge of open window a breeze crept inside, smelling of wild roses and grass. The keening of the frogs grew higher, sweeter, clearer as the wind brushed my face. On the sill beside me a ladybird landed and began to crawl determinedly toward my chin.
“Fly away home,” I whispered. It raised its lacquered wings and disappeared into the night.
I thought of the stars then, of the men and women who were rumored to walk there: the Aviators, the Ascendants’ ruthless guardians. Were they all like Margalis Tast’annin, madmen and -women? Would they really kill Jane if they found her? Had they already, and were they downstairs even now, laughing and talking with Trevor and Giles? I sighed and turned from the window.
The narrow dark chamber was quiet now, with that air of awakening excitement that fills a room that has finally been opened up to summer. In her bed Miss Scarlet breathed softly, while at her feet Fossa whined in his sleep. In the middle of the floor our plates and the empty wine bottle were piled like the remains of an encampment hastily abandoned. I felt wide awake and wished there was more wine. It came to me suddenly that I must be drunk. I was accustomed to drinking, but not to getting drunk—a holdover from my days at HEL, where my medication and peculiar mind chemistry had made it difficult for me to absorb alcohol.
But I felt different now. I felt reckless, and powerful, and angry: how dare Giles and Trevor and Miss Scarlet abandon Jane like this? At least I wouldn’t do so—and before I knew what I was doing, I had stumbled to the door.
It had been locked from the inside: of course, to keep anyone from finding the slaves or refugees hidden there. I opened the rusty hasp and stepped into the outer closet, trying to keep from falling over the linens heaped on the floor. The sagging rod with its load of coats and cloaks blocked my way. I pushed them away, rough wool and leather brushing my face and the smell of bay leaves and cedar making me want to sneeze. But then I was through. With heart pounding I stood in the darkness with my hand on that other door, the one that opened onto the corridor; and then I crept outside.
In the hallway all was still and dim. There were no electrified lights here, not even any of the small gas lanterns that illuminated some of the less-used corridors in other parts of the inn. Beneath my feet the bare wide boards groaned alarmingly. I took a deep breath and hurried down the passage. When I reached the stairway, I crept down with one hand on the brick wall, feeling the crumbling mortar give way under my fingernails. It smelled cool and damp here, as though it shared the air with the basement. At the bottom of the steps I stopped, listening for voices.
Very faintly I could hear them: Trevor’s drawling laugh and Giles’s nervous, somewhat hesitant tone. And others, a man and a woman. For a moment my heart raced—Jane!
But it wasn’t Jane. This woman had a chilly, careful voice, and a way of phrasing that reminded me of someone. It was a moment before I realized that who it reminded me of was Margalis Tast’annin.
I couldn’t make out their speech, only the unfamiliar pattern of strained conversation, as though they spoke in a language I did not understand. I took a few more steps down the passage, to where the brickwork gave way to old soft wood. Beneath my fingertips it felt damp, a moldering touch like coarse fur. Then my hand snagged against an old square-headed nail. A tiny dart of pain jarred me from my drunken reverie.
Of a sudden I realized how overwhelmingly stupid this was—dangerous, perhaps fatal. If there were Aviators here, they might even now be preparing to search the house. With even the most cursory glance down this corridor they’d see me, leaning against the wall for balance and glaring blearily into the dimness. Although of course Trevor and Giles had assured me the Aviators would never find our hiding place…
But what if they are betraying us?
A jolt of adrenaline raced through me. Through my mind flashed images of myself strapped helpless to a gurney at HEL; fleeing the flames at Winterlong; captured and bound and thrown before the Mad Aviator…
No! my mind shouted; never again!
And at that moment I felt it, like a faint current surging through me from spine to fingertips, a flame that leapt within my brain. A rage, a power that cut through fear and doubt and drunkenness, until I wanted to throw my head back and shout, with joy and terror—
I could do it all again. If I had to, I could find them all, Giles and Trevor and the others, seek them out and with a touch, a kiss—a look, even—drive them to madness and suicide, as I had done before. I could kill them; and this time there was nothing there to cloud my mind, no ghostly image of the Boy in the Tree, no fleeting revenant of Aidan Harrow to spur me on only to mock me and send me spinning back into my own madness. I felt calm, as calm as I had ever felt in my life; and suddenly I knew what to do.
I took a few more steps, until I reached a spot where the crumbling wooden wall gave way once more to brick, and my feet knocked against broken bricks and heaps of crumbled mortar. Through the wall the voices sounded more clearly. I caught a word here and here, but not enough to put together a conversation. I knew where I was now: in a secondary passage that ran directly behind the main living room. I ran my hand over the rough surface of the wall beside me. Even though I could not see it, I knew what it looked like. It looked like the brick from the fireplace, the pit-fired clay grown brittle and the color of faded deerskin, the mortar filling the chinks nearly black with age.
All winter Giles had complained of that fireplace—how the bricks needed replacing because the mortar was rotten, and as a result the chimney didn’t draw well. In places, the masonry had crumbled until the once-massive edifice was only one brick thick. On the coldest winter nights Giles had stood glaring at the flames, imagining their heat roaring out through hundreds of tiny cracks and holes.
That was why I could hear them so well. And, if I was lucky, soon I would be able to see them, too.
It took me a few minutes to find a spot where the mortar had left gaps in the wall. The smell of mildew nearly made me sneeze, and once I almost tripped over a tall stack of bricks reclaimed from the cellar, put there by Giles in vain hopes of repairing the masonry some day. But by listening and feeling, I finally located the chimney. I patted it triumphantly, then leaned against the wall opposite and slitted my eyes, trying to gauge where the chinks were in the masonry.
After a few minutes I found them. Pinpricks of light, as though a few grains of glowing sand had been cast upon the brickwork. One hole was nearly large enough to poke a pencil through. I attacked that one, with my fingernails set to scraping away the rotten mortar, trying to make no sound. On the floor I found a nail twisted and caked with rust. After a few minutes I was able to gouge a little tunnel through the mortar, large enough for me to peer into the next room.
At first I could see nothing more than bright blurs. Then gradually my eye picked out the back of Trevor’s chair, with Trevor in it leaning forward as though listening closely. Beyond him on the far side of the room facing me, two figures perched on the divan—uneasily, it seemed to me, as though at any moment they might take flight. One was a woman. She had blond hair cut short around a thin, leonine face. One side of her forehead was gone, replaced with a plasteel plate that conformed to the shape of her skull. On the floor beside her booted feet was the helmeted enhancer that usually covered her face, and the stiff plasteel curves of her body armor. Her hands rested on her knees. She held a long black tube, some kind of protonic weapon—so much for Trevor’s insistence that this visit was a mere formality. Her fingers gripped its barrel tightly while she scanned the room suspiciously. I drew back for an instant, my heart racing, certain that she had seen me.