Wintercraft (15 page)
Silas stood unflinchingly before her, neither of them willing to give the other an inch.
‘You already know that there are far worse punishments than a simple death,’ said Da’ru. ‘The half-life of the veil is a torturous place and immortality lasts a long, long time.’
Silas glanced in Kate’s direction, just once, so quickly that she might not have noticed it. He relaxed his shoulders a little and the tension in the room lifted as it looked like he was about to back down.
‘Return to the chambers,’ he said to Da’ru. ‘I will deliver the girl. Assemble the council and tell them we shall perform the first procedure tonight.’
‘The council does not waste its time upon empty promises. She should be ours already.’
‘Leave her to me,’ said Silas, bowing his head a little and taking a small step back. ‘Trust me, my lady. Everything is going to plan.’
Kate backed away from the door. Silas knew she was there! But she couldn’t leave. Not with Edgar still in there somewhere. She ran as softly as she could back between the display cases. The boy was searching upstairs, he mustn’t have found Edgar up there. Then she remembered the footsteps in the cellar. The second door was still hanging open, waiting for her.
The steps beyond were tight and cramped, leading down into a huge dark space broken only by pillars that held the main floors up. Sunlight crept in through flat windows squashed against the ceiling, but it was still too dark to see anything near the middle of the room. Kate followed the wall, staying close to the light, and walked past high tables stacked with specimen jars; some empty, but most sickeningly full. There were birds, frogs, fish, spiders, beetles and flies, all dried and pinned to stands inside the green glass, or drowned in thick choking liquid that kept them preserved against time.
Something rattled on the other side of the enormous room.
Kate froze.
‘Edgar?’ Her whisper was lost in the darkness.
Stuffed birds hung down from the ceiling and old feathers covered the floor, their spines crunching beneath her feet as she followed the edge of the table towards the noise. Then the sound came again.
A line of doors were set into one of the longest walls and one of them rattled hard as she made her way towards it. They looked like storage cupboards, but the one that was moving still had a key sitting in its lock.
Kate crept cautiously to the door and whispered through the keyhole. ‘Edgar? Is that you?’
‘Kate?’
Kate turned the key quickly, the door swung open and Edgar - who had leaned against it to listen to her voice - flopped straight out on to the floor.
‘Ow! You could’ve warned me!’ he moaned, trying to stand up. His wrists were tied behind his back and Kate knelt down to free them. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘Shhh! They’ll hear you.’
‘Silas … he just left me in there!’ said Edgar. ‘I was almost out though. One of my thumbs was loose, and that door would’ve given in eventually. Not bad, I’d say.’
‘We have to get out of here,’ said Kate, helping him up once she was done. ‘It’s not just him any more. There’s a woman here. I think it’s the councilwoman. She’s right upstairs.’
‘Da’ru is here?’
Kate clamped a hand over his mouth. ‘Yes. Not so loud. I know the way out. So just follow me and keep quiet.’
Edgar nodded and she let him go. ‘Lead the way,’ he whispered.
Kate followed the tables back towards the cellar steps, trying to ignore the eerie faces of the dead creatures glaring out at her from the jars. The silence was frightening and she was just about to say something to break it when Edgar grabbed her arm.
‘Kate,’ he breathed. ‘Stay still.’ But it was too late. Kate looked over to where the steps began and saw a tall figure standing there. Silas. His grey eyes shone with an eerie light. His voice echoed powerfully around the cellar.
‘There is no way out, Miss Winters,’ he said, stepping into the dappled sunlight. ‘The rules have changed. You are in my world now.’
9
The Collector’s Room
There was a loud click, a buzzing sound in the wall and a thin fuse burned along a glass tube in the ceiling, lighting a row of lanterns that illuminated the room with a faint orange glow. Kate looked for another way out. There were at least a dozen doors scattered around the room, but no way of telling which of them led out of the cellar or which were unlocked.
‘I should have anticipated what happened at the station,’ said Silas. ‘Edgar Rill is well known for his inventiveness, though not for his success. The fireworks were an interesting choice of distraction, but failure is a habit your friend cannot seem to break. As it stands, your “escape” was both temporary and convenient.’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ said Kate.
‘Then you clearly do not understand your position. I am not giving you a choice.’
‘You stay away from her!’ said Edgar.
‘There are only a few hours before I must deliver you to the High Council,’ said Silas, walking towards them. ‘We have work to do. We shall begin now.’
That was too much for Edgar. He grabbed Kate’s hand and pulled her towards the first door he could find, leading her on to a staircase that led even deeper into the depths of the old museum. The steps were steep and uneven. There was no handrail, so they relied on each other to reach the bottom, fleeing through the dark with no way of knowing where they were or how far Silas was behind.
Edgar stumbled when they came across a small landing and knocked his hand against a handle in the dark. ‘Doors!’ he said, grabbing it at once. There were two, one on either side of them. Both locked. The only way open to them was down.
‘Can you hear him?’ panted Edgar, running for his life. ‘Where is he?’
Kate kept running, trying to keep her balance on the awkward steps. None of this felt right. Why were they going down? They should have been going up. Into the city, into the light. The air changed as they ran, becoming stuffy and dank, but they kept going, right to the bottom of the steps, bursting through into the only unlocked room they could find.
‘Check the walls!’ said Edgar, slapping his palms against the stone. ‘There has to be a way out.’
Their bootsteps echoed from the stone walls, but the staircase remained silent. Either Silas was still waiting for them up there, or he was lurking somewhere in the dark.
Edgar lit a match and looked around. ‘Oh no,’ he said, his face glowing in the light of the flame.
They were standing in a square room with three doors squeezed together along one side, each with a collection of switches and levers beside it. Edgar used the match to light a lantern hooked on to the wall and he held it up.
‘These must be Silas’s holding cells,’ he said, testing the first door. ‘Every collector has a couple of places where they lock people for interrogation before handing them over to the High Council.’
‘So this is a prison?’
‘Sort of.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just do. This is not a good place to be.’
‘We have to get out of here.’
Kate tried the other two doors. The first was locked, but the second swung open easily. Inside was a cell just a few feet wide. It smelled musty, as if it had not seen fresh air for a very long time.
‘No wonder Silas wasn’t following us,’ said Edgar, pushing past her and feeling along the cell walls. ‘He knew where we’d end up.’
A strong hand reached across Kate’s face, stifling her before she could scream and the cell door thumped shut, sealing Edgar inside.
‘What made you think I wasn’t following you?’ asked Silas, his voice faceless and terrifying in the dark. ‘Since you are so interested in disturbing my work, Mr Rill, it is only right that you should take a closer look at it yourself.’
Edgar’s lantern light shone out through the cell window. ‘Let me out of here!’ he shouted, banging his fist against the glass.
‘Let him go!’ Kate tried to reach the handle, but Silas held her still.
‘I warned you,’ he said. ‘This boy is not the escape artist he believes himself to be.’
Edgar rattled the door, but it was stuck tight.
‘Let him out. Please!’ said Kate. ‘He doesn’t know anything!’
‘It’s not him I intend to question,’ said Silas. ‘You are coming with me.’
Edgar’s face was pressed up against the glass, watching them as Silas dragged Kate away.
‘We can’t just leave him in there!’
‘He has served his purpose,’ said Silas. ‘It is time for you to serve yours.’
Kate struggled against him as he dragged her back up the staircase as far as the first landing, where a door now stood open.
‘After you,’ he said, forcing her inside.
Kate blinked in the bright light of a lantern that was already lit upon a low table and Silas picked it up, leading her through a maze of rooms linked by archways. The museum may have been huge on the surface, but those main floors were only the uppermost levels of a much deeper space. Most of the lower rooms held storage crates filled with forgotten pieces of bone, metal, coins, books and everything else Kate could imagine, but the further they went, the neater the rooms became, until they reached some that Silas had obviously claimed for himself. There were chairs to sit in and old paintings and weapons displayed on some of the walls, suggesting that this wasn’t just an ordinary collector’s hiding place. It was Silas’s home.
Soon they reached a large room that looked much older than the rest. A fire crackled under an ancient stone mantelpiece set into the main wall and the air hung with the warm smell of old leather. Silas’s crow was there, perched sinisterly upon a bookshelf in the corner, watching Kate keenly as she stepped inside.
She tried her best to look calm when Silas pointed to a chair by the fire.
‘Sit.’
There was no hope of escaping this time. The museum’s lower floors were like a maze. She would only get lost if she tried to run, so she did as she was told.
Silas took a plate of food from a table and passed it to her. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘I have no interest in food any more, but I find prisoners usually require it.’
Kate’s stomach growled at the sight of fresh bread, biscuits and cheese, and the crow skittered closer, watching every mouthful that she ate.
Silas pulled over a second chair and sat down. ‘It is time for you to understand. Your life as it was is now over,’ he said. ‘Your home is gone, your uncle has been taken and you are only just beginning to recognise the lies that have been told to you all these years.’
‘What lies?’ asked Kate. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘That is because you have been encouraged to be ignorant. There are those who have tried to protect you by hiding the truth about what you are, but I will not lie to you. Being one of the Skilled brings nothing but persecution, fear and death. You can accept it or try to hide from it, but you cannot escape it.’
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