In Templeton, the town was illuminated by the blaze of torches and the street was crowded with citizens if not fully terrified then well on the way. Here and there a brave soul tried to calm the throng, but there was the sense of entrapment on an island doomed by its own history. Wagons were pulling out, loaded with family belongings, on the way to the local harbor wherever that might be. Minx motioned Matthew over to a wagon that was for the moment abandoned by its owner, and within another thirty seconds she was cracking a whip over the team’s heads and the horses were carrying herself and the providence rider away from Templeton toward the castle of Professor Fell.
The moon sat on the horizon. Early light stained the eastern sky. Minx’s whip was urgent. The castle came into view, also torch-lit. Matthew clutched his own torch and the sword, and he was thinking furiously that he might have to slash some Thacker flesh to get Fancy loose from their grip.
They pulled up in front to find the entry unguarded. The tremors obviously had sent the servants off to tend to their own families. Matthew saw fresh cracks in the white columns of the porte-cochere. Minx dropped the reins and drew her remaining knife, for she had business this morning with Aria Chillany.
Augustus Pons, Toy and Cesar Sabroso were in the candle-lit foyer, wearing their night clothes and expressions of terrified bewilderment. “What’s happening out there?” Pons asked the two arrivals as they went past to the staircase. He had seen the sword and the knife and their swamp-dirtied clothes, and he added to this question another query in the voice of a frightened child: “Is it safe?”
“No,” Minx said. “It is definitely not safe. Where is Madam Chillany?”
“Upstairs. All the way to the third floor. She and the Thackers.”
“And Fancy?” Matthew asked.
“With them. They were going to the library’s balcony for a view. Something exploded. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Yes,” Matthew said, his hearing still an issue of bells ringing. “We did hear it.”
“The whole place shook,” said Toy. His eyes were huge. “It was like the end of the world.”
“For some,” Minx said, like a grim promise. With candlelight glinting from the blade of her knife, she started up the stairs two at a time with Matthew at her heels. Matthew saw that a number of fissures had appeared in the staircase wall, and the stained-glass window depicting Temple with his bloody and haunted eyes had collapsed upon the risers as so much meaningless debris. Before they reached the top, another tremor made the castle groan like a sick old man in an uneasy sleep, and somewhere in the walls there was a pistolshot crack of stones breaking under God’s own pressure.
Matthew figured only the Thackers would be stupid enough to get to the highest balcony of Fell’s castle while an earthquake was in progress. Madam Chillany was obviously still addled in the head from the doctor’s loss of head. As Minx pushed open the pair of polished oakwood doors, Matthew found exactly what he knew must be happening: the Thackers in rumpled clothing, drinking from the bottles of wine and spirits that had been replenished on the table, and Fancy in a dark green gown standing between them, staring through the open balcony doors at the somber gray light that advanced upon the sea.
“Oh ho!” said Jack, wavering on his feet with a bottle tipped to his lips.
“Boyo,” Mack added, sitting sprawled upon one of the black leather chairs with a bottle in one hand and another on the floor beside him. Obviously neither brother turned away the opportunity to drink, even at the end of the world.
Matthew noted that the shaking of Castle Fell had dislodged a few dozen volumes from their shelves. The treasures lay underfoot. They had been trampled on by Thacker boots, for ripped pages and torn bindings were in evidence like so many wounded soldiers.
“Where is Aria Chillany?” Minx demanded.
“Was here,” said Mack.
“Ain’t now,” said Jack.
“I have to find her,” she told Matthew. “I have to finish it for him. Do you understand?”
Matthew nodded. “I can handle this. Go. But for God’s sake be—”
“I am always careful,” she interrupted. “For my own sake.” Then she turned and left the library, and he was in company with the two animals and the young woman he must set free from their grasp. “Didn’t you hear that blowup?” Jack asked. “Place shook like a whore with the crabs.” His bleary eyes aimed toward the cutlass. “What the fuck are you up to? No good?”
“Actually,” Matthew replied, “I am up to good. I am leaving this island within the hour, and I’m taking her with me.” He motioned with the torch at the Indian girl, who had turned toward him. She was expressionless, her beautiful face perfectly composed. Her raven’s-black hair moved slightly with the breeze that came through the balcony’s entrance. She was waiting, and she knew he was not leaving without her.
“Damn,” said Jack. He shook his head. His smile was bitter. “You are one piece of work, Spadey.”
“My name is not Nathan Spade. I am Matthew Corbett, and I want you to remember who bested you.”
That statement caused a shock of silence. Then, slowly, Mack stood up one of the bottles in his hand. The flesh seemed to have drawn more tightly over his facial bones and his eyes glittered. “Corbett, ya little shit…I say…you ain’t takin’ Fancy nowhere…”
“…boyo,” Jack finished, with a gritting of his teeth.
“Will you come over here, please?” Matthew asked the girl.
With that, Mack Thacker broke the bottle on the table’s edge. Gripping the back of Fancy’s neck he put the jagged edges to the side of her face. She winced, but otherwise did not move.
“Come take her,” he said. “‘Cause in another minute, she ain’t gonna be good for nobody.”
And so saying, the younger Thacker began to draw the broken glass across the beautiful girl’s cheek and the blood welled up bright and red.
Jack snorted a laugh. The girl shivered, her sad gaze on Matthew; one hand pushed weakly against Mack’s arm, but she had seemingly come to the end of her rope and was all played out.
Matthew gripped torch and cutlass and stepped forward to the fight.
Minx Cutter knew which door belonged to Madam Chillany’s room. She knocked on it, waited for the knob to turn, and then she kicked it as hard as she could kick.
The door flew open and Aria Chillany fell backward into the room, toppling over a white-upholstered chair. Minx walked in, taking note that the other woman was fully dressed in a gray gown and upon the bed was a bag she’d been packing. It appeared Madam Chillany had been about to leave the castle, possibly to find any safer place she could. By the eight tapers of the overhead chandelier cracks had appeared in the walls and chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aria sat up, rubbing a bloodied lip bitten by a tooth. “Are you insane?” Then she caught sight of the knife.
“No, not insane. Just determined. Madam Chillany,” Minx said, “I’m going to kill you.”
“What?”
“Kill you,” Minx repeated. “For murdering my Nathan.”
There was a harsh inrush of breath.
“Yes,” came the reply to that statement. “Nathan was my lover. My love,” she clarified. “You killed him. Matthew told me so.”