Kara came forward, reaching up to hold his head. I watched her and realized it made no sense. “If Skilfar wanted the key why didn’t she just take it when Snorri was right there before her? It’s. . you who wants it?” Kara’s own greed or Skilfar using her to steal it so as to avoid the curse? In the end it made no difference.
“Get the shackles off.” She gestured with her head.
“I can’t, they’re held with rivets. It needs a blacksmith.” I kept my eyes on her, looking for signs of treachery.
She turned from Snorri, concern hardening into something else. “You still haven’t understood what you have in your hand. Use it! And use your head.”
I bit back a curt response and decided not to remind her who the prince was here. I had to stand on tiptoes to reach the manacle on Snorri’s wrist and expecting little I took the key, still shaped for the cell door, and pushed its end to the first of the two iron rivets that had sealed it shut. The thing resisted. I applied more pressure and with a screech of protest it slid out and fell to the floor. I repeated the operation and broke the manacle open. Snorri slumped forward.
“Where’s Tutt?” He managed to raise his head but whatever strength had kept him battling the chains had gone.
I let Kara answer him while I removed the manacle on his other wrist.
“Valhalla.” She turned away and went to stand by Hennan, setting a hand to his shoulder. The boy flinched but didn’t shake her off.
Free of the second manacle, Snorri collapsed to his knees and fell forward to rest his head on his arms against the floor. I removed the manacles on his ankles and reached out to set a hand on his back but withdrew it before I made contact. Something about him made me think I might be safer putting my hand into a box of wildcats.
“Can you walk?” I asked. “We need to get out of here.”
“No!” Snorri thrust himself off the ground with a roar. “We’re not leaving until they’re all dead! Every last one of them!”
Kara stepped up to him as he got to his feet. “And where does it end? Which is the last one? A jailer from the ground floor? The man who delivers food to the Tower? The banker who signed the arrest order? His assistant?”
Snorri pushed her away, snarling. “All of them.” He pulled the short sword from my belt, too quick to stop.
I held the key out before him. “Tuttugu died so you could use this. He stood against hot irons because they thought him the weaker man, the man they could turn from his course.” I pressed it into Snorri’s palm, though careful to remove it again-it was, after all, all I had. “If you stay clockwork soldiers will come-you’ll die here-Tuttugu’s pain will have meant nothing.”
“Pain never means anything.” A growl, head down, face framed by dirty straggles of black hair, a glimpse of burning blue eyes behind. He made to leave.
“Tuttugu remembered your children,” I told him. “Perhaps you should too.”
His hand seized my throat, so fast I didn’t see it coming. All I knew was that somehow I’d been pinned to the wall and breathing had stopped being an option.
“Never”-the point of his sword stood just inches from my face, aimed between my eyes-“speak of them.” I thought he might kill me then, and in the surprise of it I hadn’t time to be scared. But my words seemed to reach him-perhaps because I couldn’t add any more-and a moment later he let go, his shoulders sagging. I found that my feet had left the ground, and dropped down, jolting my spine.
“Enough now?” Kara glanced between us, frowned and led on out of the cell. Hennan followed, then Snorri, with me to bring up the rear.
We got as far as Tuttugu’s cell. Edris’s long sword still lay on the floor close to the entrance. I picked it up, tentative, half expecting it to bite me. The thing had bitten me before.
“A pyre.” Snorri pointed in at Tuttugu’s corpse. “We build a pyre. Big enough so his smoke reaches Asgard.”
“Where in the hell-”
“Doors.” Snorri cut me off. “Open the cells. Use the key to undo the hinges. Bring them in here.”
And so we did. Door after door opened and taken down. A tap of the key had the hinge pins flying out. Kara enjoined each occupant to find keys on any dead jailer and to release the prisoners on the upper floors. They all agreed, but then again they were all in for fraud so whether any of them did put their own escape second and fellow prisoners first I’ve no idea.
Within ten minutes Tuttugu lay on his table surrounded by a sea of doors. Snorri took rags and straw, doused them with lamp oil, and set the flame. Snorri said the words as the fire took hold and smoke began to coil thick above us, louring beneath the ceiling in a dark blanket.
“Undoreth, we. Battle-born. Raise hammer, raise axe, at our war-shout gods tremble.” He drew breath and carried on in the old tongue of the north, Kara joining him on the litany’s refrain. The light of the fire flickered across them both. Snorri touched his fingers to the tattooed runes picked out across the thick muscles of his arm, set there in black and blue, still visible beneath the dirt. It seemed as if he were spelling out his farewell to Tuttugu, and perhaps to the Undoreth too, now that he stood the last of their clan.
Eventually with the smoke thick across the ceiling, low enough to touch Snorri’s head, and with the flame blistering our cheeks, he finished.
“Good-bye, Tuttugu.” And Snorri turned away.
I stood a moment longer and watched Tuttugu through the wavering haze of the flame, his clothes starting to burn now, skin withering before the heat. “Good-bye, Tuttugu.” The smoke choked me so I couldn’t speak the words unbroken, and got into my eyes making them water. I turned away and hurried after the others.
We found Guardian waiting, victorious but too damaged to accompany us into the city without drawing undue attention. But I decided to keep him close until we were ready to leave.
• • •
On the ground floor the inmates had done a thorough job of looting, but one heavy door resisted them. I hurried across to unlock it. We needed whatever assets we could gather.
“Come on!” Snorri heading for the main exit.
Kara grabbed my shoulder then stopped to stare. “What in-”
The room beyond held shelves floor to ceiling, deep and partitioned, each laden with all manner of goods from paperwork to vases, silver plates to odd shoes. “Praise the Lord for Umbertide’s bookkeepers!” I reached out for a gilt urn gleaming close by. Even as they tortured the fraudsters in the cells above, all their possessions lay ordered, catalogued, and untouched down below, waiting for the full process of the law to be completed.
Snorri strode past me, knocking my greedy hand aside. Kara behind him. The place, although cluttered, held very few weapons, both Norse made straight for them. Kara snatched a spear from its place on the far wall, Gungnir, her own work.
“You don’t still think that will scare Kelem, do you? It didn’t even keep the city guard from taking you!”
Kara cocked her head at me then looked over to Guardian in the doorway. She pushed by Snorri and slowly moved the spear until its point engaged with the solitary hole in the clockwork soldier’s armour. A perfect fit. “They had two soldiers with them. The one that took Snorri came from behind us, through the wall, and wrapped its arms around him.”
Snorri continued his inspection of Hel’s blade. His father’s axe had been hung among the other weapons. Satisfied he looked up with a grim smile, the first since I found him. “Now we’re ready.”
THIRTY-THREE
A crowd had started to gather by the time we left through the Tower doors. The whole top half of the Frauds’ Tower belched smoke through its windows. Before we left I set Guardian to checking the building for Edris Dean and explained how many pieces he was to tear the corpse into. “Oh, and let everybody out,” I added. The idea of leaving anyone to fry didn’t sit well with me, but mainly I wanted as many fraudsters let loose on Umbertide as possible. That way the authorities might have too much on their plate to put great efforts in recapturing me.