“He seems to think a trial isn’t going to get him anywhere.”
“And this is?”
“If he finds the killer.”
“In twenty-four hours,” Marlowe told me harshly, “Louis-Cesare will be declared a fugitive, and the Senate will rule against him. Flight is as good as an admission of guilt. If you want to help him, you will tell me where he is.”
“He’s a first-level master. He’s wherever the hell he wants to be.”
Marlowe glanced up at the huge guard looming behind him. “Search the house.”
He looked at me, like he was waiting for a reaction. I just stood there and dripped at him. For once, there were no big dark secrets to find. The only ones I’d had, I’d already chucked at the fey.
“He’ll trash it, just to be vindictive,” Radu said darkly, as Marlowe gave up and stomped off.
I shrugged and started after him. “Too late.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Marlowe glanced at me suspiciously as we passed through the front door, but I wasn’t interested in checking up on him. I assumed that he’d bug the place, and that I would remove them as soon as he left. I just wanted something dry to wear.
I headed for the stairs before I remembered—we no longer had any. So I swerved into the living room for a blanket instead. I found one that didn’t smell too much like troll, wrapped it sarong-style around me and started back for the hall. And stopped.
My eyes had focused on a tiny movement near the door. I bent down and found myself looking at a lone warrior, all of two inches high. It was one of Olga’s chess pieces.
That in itself wasn’t unusual; they ended up scattered about everywhere. But they didn’t usually carry small torches that they waved around wildly. And, once it had gotten my attention, the tiny thing started off across the forest of clothes and bedding.
It finally paused at the top of the stairs going down to the basement. It looked up at me, the minuscule faceplate gleaming in the torchlight. When I stayed where I was, it started waving again impatiently, and pointing down into the blackness.
For a minute, I just stood there, swaying a little on my feet and wondering how paranoid a person had to be before she decided the toys were out to get her. But in the end, I shrugged my shoulders and just went with it. I picked the little thing up and carried it down the stairs.
At the bottom, another small warrior was doing something near the rusted hulk of Pip’s still. There was no light in the basement, and the tiny torch cast wavering shadows on the walls that confused me further. But when I got closer, it became obvious that he was pushing around small sticks and bits of moss, arranging them in some sort of pattern.
The first small warrior started poking me in the side of the hand with his sword, so I put him down. He made his way across the peeling paint of the floor and touched his torch to the end of the nearest pile of kindling. Fire ran across the old concrete, forming jagged letters for a brief instant before the tiny fuel was exhausted: OPEN.
I stared at them and then at the wavering imprint they’d left on my retinas. The message was clear enough: it had been left in front of the wall where Pip’s conduit to Faerie manifested. But if Claire was on the other side, she could open it for herself. And if she wasn’t . . .
Butsubrand would never leave a message like that. And the only time he’d been in the cellar, he’d been too busy trying to kill me to rig something up. At least, I fervently hoped so.
I reached out, wondering if I was about to make a huge mistake, and pressed the small talisman that powered the link between the ley-line sink and the portal. I jumped back, but not fast enough. A swirl of light and color appeared on the wall, flooding the ugly old basement with a rich golden light. And something huge tumbled out of nowhere and smacked me to the ground.
My skull hit the floor hard enough to have me seeing stars. But it was difficult to concentrate on that while the life was getting squeezed out of me. The massive weight shifted slightly, and while I was still crushed, I could breathe.
And that was worse.
My lungs had room to fully inflate, but they were cowering in my chest in fear. I’d once been buried under a pile of decomposing corpses, with jellylike flesh and gangrenous limbs, and it hadn’t reeked like that. I retched, but my stomach had nothing left to bring up. Lucky I never got that sandwich, I thought, as someone started slapping troll flesh.
“Get off her! Move, Ysmi! Dorina, are you all right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could talk, and anyway, I was afraid to open my mouth and let in more of that hideous stench. But I looked up.