Prilkop started toward us, his face full of worry.
The White shuffled closer. ‘I am Cora, a collator. I studied in the scroll-library. I had a lovely little cottage. But I spilled ink on an old text. I knew I must be punished. But I also knew that one day I would go back to my ink and pens and fine vellum. To evenings of rest and wine and songs by moonlight.
‘But you came. And you destroyed it all. ‘She shrieked the last words and flung herself at Bee. Bee screamed in fury and fear, and stood to meet her. My knife clashed against Bee’s as they drove into the woman’s body at the same moment. She went down under our combined weight as I fell onto her. The Fool gave an incoherent cry over Per’s roar of rage. The killing wrath that rose in me obscured all else. Bee was fast. She withdrew her knife and sank it again before I could finish the woman. Cora bubbled a whine that became silence. We sprawled on the filthy floor, my hands slick with blood and my leg searing with pain. Bee rolled off the woman and struggled to rise. The blood on her clothes terrified me. She was not hurt, our Skill-thread assured me. She retrieved her knife and wiped it on Cora’s dirty trousers.
Prilkop reached us, crying, ‘Cora! Cora, what have you done?’ He tried to pull me off the White’s body, but I snarled at him and he drew back. Per darted in and pulled Bee to his side as Prilkop demanded, ‘Did you have to kill her? Did you really have to kill her?’
‘I did,’ Bee confirmed. Her eyes blazed at him. ‘Because I am going to live.’
Per had hold of her upper arm and was staring at her with a mixture of awe and horror. I rolled off Cora’s body and tried to rise but could not. The wounded leg would not bend and my other leg was shaky. Lant came to us. ‘Step back,’ he warned Prilkop in a deadly voice and hauled me to my feet. I was grateful for his roughness. I wanted no gentleness now.
The Fool’s cry cut through the simmering tension. ‘Why?’
Prilkop spoke before I could open my mouth. ‘Why, indeed, did your Catalyst and his daughter murder Cora? You recall Cora, do you not? She smuggled messages for us.’
‘Cora,’ the Fool said quietly, and his face sagged and aged in that moment. ‘Yes,’ he said in a shaky voice. ‘I recall her.’
‘She attacked Bee!’ I reminded all.
‘She had no weapon!’ Prilkop objected.
‘We have no time!’ Lant shouted the words. ‘She is dead, as are many others. As we will all be dead, unless these stones come out. Prilkop! Come and work. Fool, you also. No time for recriminations or fond reunions. All of you come to the wall. Now!’
I looked down at Cora’s body and felt no regret. She had tried to kill my child. I tilted my head toward the nasty black knife that lay by her body. One of their torture tools. ‘There are tools for slicing human flesh on that rack near the table. Take what will work best on mortar.’ I nudged Cora’s knife feebly with my foot. ‘Here’s one for you, Prilkop.’
He gave me a stricken look and I almost regretted my words. But Bee stooped and took up Cora’s black knife. She carried it to the wall and began scraping the mortar around the lowest block. The Fool made to follow.
‘Fool. Will you help me?’
‘How bad is your leg?’
‘Not terrible. It’s worse that my body is sapping my energy to heal it.’
‘So the half-blind will lead the mostly lame?’
‘It’s supposed to be the other way round.’ I set my arm across his shoulders. ‘Watch your step,’ I warned him and steered him around Cora’s outflung arm.
‘She was not a bad person,’ the Fool observed softly. ‘Bee destroyed her life. Everything she had ever known, the only task she knew how to do, all gone.’
‘I don’t regret it. Bee sprang like a hunting cat.’
Like a wolf.
‘More like a wolf, I am sure,’ the Fool said, and his echoing of Nighteyes put a shiver up my back. It was a shiver that made me smile.
Lant looked up and motioned us away from the work area. ‘I didn’t mean you. No room,’ he said. As he spoke, Per and Spark rotated a heavy block of stone. It moved but did not come free. They went back to scraping. Working tools into the crevices to cut the mortar was slow work, as was dragging the freed block out. Above us, we heard something fall. I looked up at the ceiling.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’ the Fool asked.
I didn’t need to ask who. ‘Dwalia and Vindeliar, yes. Bee killed Symphe. Fellowdy is a dead man, sooner or later, if he touched anything in his chambers. And I think Bee stabbed him, at least once, in the corridor. Per cut Coultrie’s throat. And Capra was still bleeding from your knife when last we saw her.’ I said nothing of all the nameless people who would be dead in the fire.
He was silent for a moment. ‘Two for Per: Vindeliar and Coultrie. Two for Bee: Symphe and Dwalia. Perhaps three, unless I claim Fellowdy. She only knifed him, but if they take him back to his chambers, he’s sure to die.’ His laugh was shaky. ‘None for you, Fitz. My fine assassin.’
‘And Spark set off the firepot that killed the guard troop. And Bee scared off the others.’ I didn’t mention the guardsmen I’d taken down in the melee. ‘I’ve lost my edge, Fool. As I feared I had. Perhaps it’s time to admit that. I should find a different line of work.’
‘Nothing to be ashamed of in that,’ he said, but it did not make me feel better. ‘Later,’ he added.
‘Later, what?’
‘Later, perhaps, when Bee is somewhere safe, we shall come back and be sure of all of them.’
‘If a dragon does not do them first.’
A smile of pure pleasure broke over his face. ‘The dragons may have them, if we have Bee.’
I nodded to that. I was so tired, and I had feared that his hunger for vengeance would still be unsated. But as he watched Bee scraping at mortar he seemed only pleased. As if having her with us had driven all other ambitions away from him.
I had seldom felt so useless as I did then. My hunger grew, and my thirst, but I tried to leave our scanty supply of water for those who laboured. When Lant dragged another stone out, I called to him, ‘Can you see anything beyond the opening?’
‘Lots of darkness,’ he replied and went back to work.
At one point, the Fool helped me hobble over to the seats near the torture table. From there, I could better watch the work.
As soon as we moved, the three remaining Whites came to claim Cora’s body. They carried her back to her cell and composed her on the straw mattress. Prilkop joined them and they spent a few silent moments standing by her body.
When I quietly commented on it to the Fool, he sighed. ‘Our Bee is the Destroyer to them. They mourn the dead, here and above in the fire. Even more, they mourn the loss of generations of knowledge. So much destroyed. So much history gone.’