The moon descended. From the trees of this ungodly, fetid swamp there croaked, trilled, shrieked and buzzed the insects of the night. As Minx and Matthew progressed, great bubbles of noxious swamp gas bloomed up beneath them like hideous flowers and made such explosive sounds they feared it would be heard by any listening ear. But no torches showed in the darkness nor were there voices, and the two determined travellers slogged onward.
“Careful,” Minx whispered, “there’s a snake in the water to your right.”
Matthew caught the movement of something over there, but it veered away. One snake seen, probably dozens lurking around their legs underwater. What use was there to think of that? Matthew looked up and could see a few stars through the thick treetops. New York seemed as far away as those. But here he was, waistdeep in muddy filth with snakes aslither around his ankles, likely tasting the blood on his shins. Delightful. What he must concentrate upon was not falling into the water, and keeping the tinderbox dry.
The ground began to rise and the water shallowed. Minx and Matthew got out of the muck onto sandy earth wild again with vegetation, and as Matthew brushed a low tree branch something made a noise like the clicking back of a pistol’s hammer and—whether exotic bird or treefrog—the thing jumped for its life into the thicket.
“Stop,” Minx whispered, and Matthew instantly obeyed.
She reached out into what appeared to be another wall of vines and thorns. She pulled some of the foliage aside and pressed her hand inward.
“Stones,” she said. “We’ve arrived.”
Matthew felt for himself. It was, indeed, the fort’s outermost wall. Looking up, nothing could be seen of how high the wall was in the overhang of trees. But all was silent save the croak and hum of frogs and night-sprites, and in the distance the note of a bird making a sound like the fall of an executioner’s axe.
Now came the problem of finding a way in, and the problem-solver was in the dark. He followed Minx to the left, her hands entering the vines to search the stones. There were no windows, barred or otherwise, and no gate to be found. At last Minx stopped, pulled on a sturdy-looking vine that snaked down along the wall, and said, “This will have to do.”
“I’ll go first,” Matthew volunteered, and Minx let him. He started up along the vine, which swayed precariously but did not give way. Matthew’s boots afforded him traction on the stones, and after a climb of some thirty feet he reached the top and hauled himself over onto a parapet. Minx followed with admirable agility, and together they took stock of where they were.
The parapet was deserted, but a single torch burned in a wooden socket on the left about fifty feet away. Beyond that another fifty feet, a second torch flamed. And on and on, around the fort’s huge perimeter. Below them stood several buildings of white stone with roofs of gray slate. Far away, toward the center of the dirt-floored enclosure, was a larger building with a chimney, where the gunpowder’s chemicals must be cooked and combined. So far there was no sign of any human occupancy though an occasional torch was set out and burning. Matthew looked for what he thought might be the powder magazine. Over on the right there was a long white building with wooden shutters closed over the windows and, telltale enough, banks of dirt built up about six feet high on both sides to act as blast walls. That would be where the powder was kept until it could be shipped out. But where might the fuses be found? Matthew reasoned there had to be fuses here, as the bombs that had destroyed the buildings in New York were fashioned here and if not directly fitted with fuses in this location, then fuses ought to be on the premises somewhere. Unless they’d been made aboard the Nightflyer, but Matthew thought the raw materials must be stored here in a safe place. The question being: exactly where? It had taken him and Minx over two hours to cross the thicket and swamp to reach the fort. They were quite simply pressed for time, as the Nightflyer would fly at first light with or without them.
Minx said, “I want you to wait here.”
“Wait here? Why?”
“In this case,” she answered, “one is better than two. I can move faster than you. Trust me when I say…you will do better to let me be your…” She frowned under her hood, searching for the words.
“Providence rider?” Matthew supplied.
“Whatever that means. You stay here. I’m going to find out where the guards are.”
“You can do that and I can’t?”
“I can do that,” she said, “without getting us both killed. Stay,” she said, and then she turned away and strode purposefully off along the parapet.
Matthew eased down on his haunches alongside the wall. This was a damnable thing to let her take such a risk, he thought; yet he had the feeling Minx Cutter was perfectly capable of getting in and out of places he could not, and it might be the ungentlemanly act to let her go alone but it was probably the most sensible.
He waited, listening to the night and watching the torches flicker in the same breeze that stirred the forest’s treetops.
He waited longer, and sat down on the stones.
After what seemed like twenty minutes he decided he could wait no more. He was keenly aware of the passing time and the lowering moon, and if Minx had been caught he was going to have to do something about that. He stood up and started along the parapet in the direction she’d gone, and in another moment he came to a stone staircase leading down. He descended to the dirt floor, passed two empty wagons, and continued on beneath a stone archway into an area not quite fully revealed by any torchlight. He moved through a territory of shadows with his back against a wall. It seemed to him his back had been against a wall now for many months. His heart was beating hard and the air felt oppressive. He could smell the bitter tang of chemicals and cooking vats. He came to a corner and paused, peered around and found the way forward clear and so he started off again. He passed under another archway and on between two stone walls leading him somewhere though he had no idea where.
And just that fast, a figure turned the corner before him, took two strides in his direction before he realized Matthew was there and then stopped.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“I’m new here,” was all Matthew could think to say, stupidly.
“The hell you are.” A wooden whistle was lifted to the man’s mouth.
Before Matthew could kick the man either in the stomach or the groin, which he was considering, there came a solid-sounding thunk and the man shivered like a leaf in a high wind. The whistle dropped from his hand, to hang about his neck on a leather cord. The man took another step toward Matthew and then his knees crumpled. As the body toppled forward, Matthew saw the hatchet buried in the back of the man’s head.
Minx Cutter was standing behind the now-fallen guard. She put a foot on the man’s back and pulled the hatchet loose. The man thrashed on the ground as if trying to swim through the dirt, and Minx hit him again in the right temple just behind the ear.
This time he was still.
“I told you,” Minx said as she pulled the weapon free, “not to leave there, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but I was concerned about you.”
“Hm,” she said, and she put the blood-wet hatchet’s blade up under Matthew’s nose. “I entered the professor’s employ as an assassin. I killed three men before I decided the job wasn’t to my liking. Lyra Sutch trained me for that role. She was as near a mother to me as I could find after my family threw me out.” The blade dripped blood upon Matthew’s shirt. “I understand you killed Lyra, who helped me grow from a confused girl into a confident woman.”
Matthew said nothing; he could not say that at the end of Lyra Sutch’s life she was a wretched, demented sack of broken bones and axe-torn flesh.