The Blood Debt (40 page)

‘Glad you could make it,’ Kemp said, helping Skender upright with a tight, almost pained expression. His colourless eyes took in the fog. ‘This is your doing, I presume?’

‘The best I could manage under the circumstances.’

‘Well, it helped. Got me close enough to clock the guy trying to tie Skender’s neck in a knot.’

‘I hope,’ gasped Skender, ‘you gave him a thump from me.’

‘Don’t worry. He won’t be getting up for a week.’

The fog thinned further. Sal looked down at the ground, but could see no fallen man. ‘Are you sure about that?’

Before Kemp could answer, an indistinct figure approached. Sal stiffened, bracing himself for Pirelius, then recognised the fluid outlines of the Homunculus. The last dregs of the Change drained out of him like water from a leaky tank.

Creation of my father,
he thought.
Does that make you my brother?

‘It’s okay,’ said Skender, taking his arm. ‘They’re on our side.’

‘“They”?’

‘It’s a long story. Let’s just get out of here.’

Sal was shocked to see a massive bruise forming on Skender’s cheek. Other marks discoloured his arms and throat. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I have to be.’ He turned to Kemp. ‘Open the other cages. If we can wake up Mum and Behenna, we can be on our way.’

‘Don’t forget Mawson,’ said Kemp, hurrying off through the last wisps of fog.

‘Shit.’ Skender wobbled unsteadily. ‘We can’t carry everyone — and Chu’s wing, too. You did bring it, didn’t you?’

‘It’s where we left it, safe and sound.’

‘I hope so, for your sake. She’ll be very unhappy if it’s damaged.’

A mewling sound drew Sal’s attention to an open cell where the pigtailed bandit he had seen earlier lay writhing on the floor. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He got in our way.’ Skender didn’t waste time explaining. Kemp had opened three cage doors and was bent over the inert body of Shorn Behenna. Skender hurried to another cage.

‘Mum! Wake up!’

Abi Van Haasteren moaned and raised her head. Sal winced at the sight of her bloodied features. She looked as though she had been used as a punching bag. ‘Skender? Is that you?’

He knelt next to her and helped her sit up. ‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to find you. Dad sent me.’

‘You —’ She put her tied hands to her temples. ‘Your father shouldn’t have done that.’ Her eyes clearly weren’t focusing properly, but they tried to look at him anyway. ‘I’m glad you’re here, though.’

‘Can you stand? We need to get moving.’

‘Sal. You too?’ Abi Van Haasteren’s gaze fixed briefly on him as she clambered feebly to her feet. Sal cut the bindings on her legs and ankles with two swift cuts. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘What’s
that?’
she asked, looking behind them both, to the Homunculus.

‘When I was in the Haunted City,’ Skender said, ‘I told your friend Iniga about meeting someone in the Void Beneath. Don’t pretend you didn’t hear about that.’

His mother looked uncertain for a moment, then nodded. ‘I remember something. It was a long time ago, though.’

‘Sure. Well, this is that person — actually two people in one. They helped us escape.’

‘Thank you too, then,’ she told the ghostly figure. The Homunculus’s form shivered, then firmed.

Sal, his mind reeling, hurried off to help Kemp. The albino was still trying to rouse Behenna.

‘I can’t wake him,’ said Kemp, smacking the ex-warden’s cheek hard enough to leave a mark on the man’s dark skin. ‘I’d offer to carry him, but there’s Mawson as well. I don’t think you’re strong enough for either of them.’

‘That’s okay. Kail can help.’

‘Who?’

Sal could have kicked himself. There had been no sign of the tracker since they had separated in the corridor outside the antechamber. Kail had said that he would hold off the bandits bringing up the rear while Sal looked after Skender. Now everything outside the dungeon was very quiet.

‘Goddess.’ Sal stood and ran out of the cage. The antechamber was empty. Two unconscious bandits lay face-down in the corridor outside. Sal followed the tunnel back to the room with the stalagmite. The glowing fragments had faded in brightness. Sal briefly acknowledged Kail’s guess that the sink might stop working if the piece he had taken was far enough away from the rest. Breaking the natural charm had effectively returned the Change to the Aad, allowing him to call Shilly and summon the fog.

The tracker’s pack lay abandoned near the stalagmite. Kail himself was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Pirelius. Both absences worried him. If the bandits regrouped and tried to take Skender and the rest captive again, Sal wasn’t sure any of them had the skills to mount much resistance.

He felt the Change returning now he was away from the Homunculus. He considered calling Shilly again, but precious time was passing. Reluctantly, Sal picked up the pack and hurried back to the dungeon, hoping that everyone was ready to move.

To his relief, they were. Kemp had Mawson — a granite bust that definitely weighed far too much for Sal to lift — cradled in his arms, while Skender helped his mother stay upright. Shorn Behenna, still unconscious, hung like a child in the arms of the Homunculus, much as Sal’s father had a day earlier.

‘Are you okay with him?’ Sal asked the Homunculus. He sounded as uncertain as he felt. He wasn’t quite ready to accept the idea of the creature being an ally, although he had never been entirely convinced that it was an enemy, either.

‘This body isn’t natural,’ it/they responded with familiar discordant tones. ‘It doesn’t need food or water, and it doesn’t tire or sleep. Everybody should have one.’

Was that a joke? Sal couldn’t tell. ‘Well, let us know if you need a hand. I’m happy to help.’

‘After you, Sal,’ Skender said. ‘You do know where you’re going, don’t you?’

‘I think so.’ Sal took one last look over the ragtag group he would be leading out of the dungeon, and caught sight of the injured man on the floor of the cell behind him. The agonised squirming had ceased, but one hand still scrabbled spastically at the dirt. Sal didn’t know what had happened to the man, or what he wanted to do about it, but the fact that the others had paid him no mind at all told him that perhaps he shouldn’t worry.

‘This way,’ he said, and they were moving at last.

* * * *

Skender followed Sal up the tunnel with his mother leaning heavily on his arm. Abi Van Haasteren was taller than him by a good thumb’s length, but she was so stooped and weakened by her tribulations that she seemed much smaller. Skender could feel her wincing every time she put her right foot down. He could smell her blood.

‘You shouldn’t have come, Skender,’ she said again. ‘You broke the Code.’

‘I know, but I didn’t swear to uphold it. You did.’

‘Indeed. Stop here for a second.’

They had reached a rough-hewn chamber with a squat stalagmite in the centre. She leaned away from him and studied something sticking out of its smooth, water-polished side. It looked like part of a fossilised spine. Her eyes were wide and voice hushed.

‘Yes, I thought so.’

‘You know what this is?’ asked Sal.

‘It’s the Caduceus. I glimpsed it as Pirelius brought us to the cells.’

‘It’s the source of the sink, right?’

‘Yes, only it doesn’t seem to be working now.’ Her broken-nailed hand stroked a hole in the side of the stalagmite. ‘Part of it’s missing.’

‘Kail has it.’

‘What’s
he
doing here?’ asked Skender.

‘Marmion sent him to keep an eye on us.’

‘Well, he’s not doing a very good job.’

‘I don’t know where he is, but I’m sure he’ll catch up eventually. He can handle himself.’ Sal looked uncertain for a moment. ‘Come on. Through here.’

Skender’s mother pulled herself away from the stalagmite with obvious difficulty, her need to study the artefact stronger than her fear of being recaptured. Skender took her full weight again as they resumed their hurried exit.

‘Dad always said that your curiosity would get you into trouble one day.’

‘And I’ve always known he was right.’ She laughed softly. ‘But it worked out in the end, didn’t it? We found what we were looking for. Our understanding of the world will increase accordingly.’

Skender glanced behind him at the twins toiling steadily under the weight of Shorn Behenna. He was keen to find out how she had known about their return to the world and what she had hoped to learn from them. But just then wasn’t the time for an interrogation. She obviously wasn’t keen to talk about it with everyone around.

‘I hope it was worth it,’ he said.

‘Absolutely.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘You’ll have to tell me later how you got past Pirelius and his thugs. When they ambushed us, we didn’t stand a chance.’

Skender was about to say that he hadn’t, in fact, got past her captors at all, and that he had the bruises to show for it, but Sal made shushing noises from the head of the party and he took the hint. They were still in enemy territory and could easily be captured again if they weren’t careful.

The route they followed led along exactly the sort of tunnels Skender had been looking for under Laure. He was gratified to that extent, but he still felt slightly stupid for searching the wrong side of the Divide. If he’d had Tom with him from the start — or just Tom’s ability to glimpse the future — things might have gone very differently.

He idly wondered what it would be like to go through life experiencing occasional flashes of one’s fate. He had once read in a biography of a seer that prophecy was like having memories of the future, and that these future memories were no different to having memories of the past. Ordinary people lived with vast amounts of information from their younger days, but not all of them remembered it correctly or used it when they should. People forgot things and disagreed with other people about what had ‘really’ happened. Skender could see how having some knowledge of the future could be problematic under those circumstances. If people couldn’t always agree on what had happened in the past, how could one person be certain all the time about what would happen in the future?

Skender came from a long line of Skender Van Haasterens, all of whom possessed perfect memory, all of whom had taught at the Keep. He knew exactly where he had come from, and he had a pretty good idea where he was going. Once that had seemed stifling; now he considered it a blessing. Unless something utterly unexpected came along and threw his life completely off-track, he would soon be back where he belonged.

Something utterly unexpected like Pirelius, he thought; or Lost Minds from the Void Beneath, back in the world for unknown reasons; or Chu, if she would ever talk to him again after he stole her wing, crashed it and possibly lost it forever ...

The exit from the tunnels glowed with daylight. This threw Skender for a moment: the last thing he remembered of the outside world was utter darkness, when he had been following a faint thread of smoke to the entrance of the bandits’ hiding place. Now the sun had risen and he could smell hot dust in the air. He could also hear shouting and the sound of stone breaking.

Sal stopped at the base of a crack leading upwards through raw, unfinished rock. A series of natural steps led to fresh air and clear sky. It looked dauntingly blue. Sal hurried up the steps to check the lie of the land.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this complicates things.’

Skender eased his mother into a sitting position and edged his way past Kemp and Mawson. ‘What? What can you see?’

‘Man’kin.’

‘In the Aad?’

Sal nodded grimly, and Skender climbed to see for himself.

The sun-baked ruins, visible from his elevated position, were spread out before him. The crack partly severed a retaining wall on the edge of the city, where it abutted the sheer cliff face. Below was a series of low buildings that might once have been barracks or stables. Their roofs had collapsed long ago, leaving just stubs of walls pointing at the sky. Through these stubs walked a stone creature fully three metres high. Vaguely insectile, with a huge, tilted head and long, blade-like arms, it didn’t seem to notice the bricks it sent tumbling. Cutting a swathe through the ruins to Skender’s right, it angled up and back into the ruins proper.

There, Skender caught sight of people running. These were the source of the shouts. Now that they had lost the cover of the Change-sink, Pirelius’s goons were coming face to face with the inhabitants of the Divide.

So would the escapees from the dungeon, Skender thought, if they emerged at the wrong time.

‘We need to get Mawson up here,’ said Sal, ‘away from the Homunculus and its wake. We might be able to talk to the man’kin through him — at least find out what they want.’

Skender scurried down the stairs to convey the request to Kemp. The albino, who had just put the bust down so he could rest, feigned irritation. He hefted Mawson into the crook of one arm and slowly eased himself up the crack. Skender, determined not to miss out on anything, followed.

‘There are plenty of hiding spots,’ Kemp said, leaning Mawson on the lip of the crack and peering out at the ancient walls. ‘I can make a dash for one while you keep an eye out.’

Sal nodded. ‘Take Skender with you. He can watch for my signal and act as a runner.’

Skender nodded, although the thought of breaking cover amongst the man’kin made his bowels turn to water. The ruins looked awfully open under the bright light of the sun.

Kemp levered himself up onto the edge of the wall and jumped down. Skender helped Sal slide Mawson into Kemp’s waiting hands, then jumped down after him. The sudden exposure was alarming. He could hear the man’kin crashing through walls and buildings all around him. The sound of their destructive vigour echoed off the cliff face and surrounded him with the clamour of breaking stone. He could almost feel the gleeful violence the man’kin wrought through the ground under his feet.

Kemp scrambled twenty metres to a relatively sheltered corner and managed to put Mawson down without dropping him. Then he fell back against the wall and wiped sweat from his brow. His barrel chest rose and fell.