A bundled and hooded shape was moving down the hill, carrying a pack on its back. Beneath the swirling raincoat, two rod-thin legs were visible.
Antigone stepped down the hill to follow him.
“Hold on,” Diana said. “We’ll tell Rupe where he is. He’s heading to the harbor.” She looked down at the screen in her hand, and then over at Antigone’s. “Check your water ball again.”
Antigone dug into her pocket. The Quick Water glowed in her hand, but the wind and the rain made it impossible to see anything clearly.
“It’s lighter than it was,” Antigone said. She tucked her hand under the bottom of her coat and ducked her face down inside the neck.
A moment later, she popped her head back out. “It’s Cyrus. He’s tied up. And those might be Dennis’s feet!”
She held out the neck of her oversize coat. “Quick! Where are they?”
Diana Boone only needed a second.
“That’s Sterling’s subpantry,” she said, popping her head back out and squinting down the hill at Sterling. “It’s under the kitchen floor.”
Sterling was slipping on the wet grass, sliding down to the airstrip.
“The guards will stop him,” Diana said. “Come on.”
With the wind pounding their backs, Antigone and Diana turned up the hill and began to climb.
Benjamin Sterling braced himself and slid, staggered, braced himself, and slid again. The storm was more than just another thunder banger, blowing in off the lake. This was one to remember, and he would remember it.
The boats were bobbing and rocking in the harbor. Spray was washing over the jetty. The two little guard shacks were glowing, but he couldn’t see any motion inside. He hadn’t expected to.
His bag was heavy, but he hadn’t taken as much as he was owed. Just a few trifles from the collections — things stolen by the Order and then tucked away and forgotten. Some spices. His books of recipes.
How much were two legs worth?
The O of B wouldn’t miss any of it. They wouldn’t be missing anything. And Phoenix wouldn’t notice, either. His eyes would be searching for a different prize.
Sterling stopped. He’d reached the first body. Jenkins. Facedown in the grass. An old guard. A good guard. Sterling stepped over him and continued on. He couldn’t walk by the guardhouse. Not without looking in.
He slipped forward. A moment later, he pulled open the door.
Four armed men had fallen into a tangle on the floor. A fifth was facedown on the small table. Guns and flickering dragonfly screens had been useless. All five had been good men. But Phoenix had no use for them, and they had no use for Phoenix.
Guilty meat, guilty bread, a guilty thermos of coffee sat innocently on the table.
Sterling moved on.
Hobbling out on a dock, he stopped at a pretty little teak skiff. It had belonged to Cecil Rhodes. Now it would belong to Benjamin Sterling.
The angry lake and the rushing wind were killers, but the legless cook could only smile at the storm. The wind was an old friend promising freedom. And the seething water was nothing like as dangerous as the North Sea in its winter fits or the Caribbean in a hurricane or the Cape of Storms when the boneyards beneath the cliffs were hungry.
He drew the anchor and unfurled the small sails, tacking starboard, out and around the jetty. Close-hauling the sails, he put his nose as tight to the wind as he could, plowing and bouncing through the heavy freshwater waves.
When his course was steady and his beard was dripping like a loaded sponge, he reached into the deep pocket of his oilskin coat, and he smiled.
A tiny ball of liquid perched on his thick fingertips, glowing — the small ball he’d pinched from Cyrus’s Quick Water. Ben Sterling would see what happened. He’d know the end of the story. The kitchen always knows.
Above him, he heard the sound of muffled engines. Green and red lights blinked in the air.
Phoenix was descending.
Nolan sighed. He hadn’t eaten all day, his sticky new underskin still stung whenever he moved, and he was hungry. Hungrier looking down on a dining hall full of armed people inhaling their dinners between nervous whispers. Only the monks seemed unaffected by the mood of the place, mounding their plates and talking loudly about judgment and divine protection.
At first, he hadn’t fully understood why Rupert had wanted him to leave the hospital and hide. Now, after a day of playing fox and beagle, he knew perfectly well.
Nolan had watched men hunt for him; he’d tucked himself in dead-end ducts while clumsy groundskeepers stumbled sneezing through the dusty tunnels, searching for Nikales the thief and cursing Sterling. Sterling? The legless cook was right at the center of whatever was unfolding.
As soon as the Smiths had arrived in Ashtown, Nolan had known that Phoenix wouldn’t be far behind. He’d had his theories about Phoenix. With the Solomon Keys in hand, creeping through the most sealed of the Sage collections, he’d confirmed them.
He’d found a naked wooden mannequin.
According to an official note pinned to the naked chest, the mannequin should have been wearing the Odyssean Cloak. The cloak, originally a talisman to protect and enhance Odysseus’s mind and vitality against the wrath of various gods, had been collected and abused by Keeper John Smith some five hundred years ago, resulting in his Burial.
Thirty years ago, a nameless Sage had added a scribble to the bottom of the card: “Presumed stolen.”
Nolan had told Rupert. The long-missing cloak might explain the mind and abilities of Phoenix, but even if it did, what made Mr. Ashes, he couldn’t even guess.
Today, he’d crept into the document wing of the Sage library looking for a stack of old handwritten notes he’d seen once before — transcripts of interviews with a troubled young Acolyte, detailing the horrible experiments his father had performed on him and their various effects on his body and mind.
He had rolled the transcripts into a tube. The tube protruded from his pocket.
And now he was wedged high in a vent, wondering what doom would fall on Ashtown, sure that whatever had been planned, no bullets could stop it.
Beneath him in the dining hall, glass crashed and silver clattered to the floor. Men and women yelled in surprise and horror as the first diners slipped out of their chairs, twitching where they fell.
Dragging Antigone, Diana Boone quickstepped up the kitchen stoop, past the trash cans, and banged through the door.
The room was in chaos.
Pots were boiling over. Smoke was pouring out of unattended ovens.
The floor was a tangle of bodies. Cooks and waiters and busboys sprawled motionless on cold stone tiles.
Gunner, tall in his long, wet coat, pale and sick, was holding a large revolver in each hand, pointing at the only two cooks still on their feet, and at four surly groundskeepers. His legs were shaking. Little Hillary Drake, the girl from Accounting, was curled up, quivering on the floor beside him.
“Who did it?” Gunner yelled. “Where’s Sterling?”
“Gone,” said a cook. “He just walked out. Don’t shoot. We had nothing—”
“Shut up!” Gunner yelled, and he staggered backward into the island of simmering pots.
He moved the guns to the groundskeepers. “Phoenix’s lads, aren’t you?” He was slurring. “All of you. Embarrassed you couldn’t hack the Order? Well, me too, but I didn’t turn to murdering for a clown.”
The men didn’t say anything. They only had to wait. The tall Texan wouldn’t last long.
Dripping, Antigone threw off her coat. “Gunner!” she said. “What’s going on?”
Drawing her own revolver, Diana ran across the room and dropped to her knees beside Hillary.
Head lolling, Gunner lowered his shaking arms. Two of the groundskeepers jumped forward, but too soon. Both of Gunner’s pistols rose and cracked. Both men tumbled.