Charlie unlaced his shoes and rolled the cuffs of his trousers and left his cloak folded beside a drainpipe. Komako hadn’t followed him across the courtyard and when he turned to look for her he couldn’t see her.
He took a step back, peered up at the dark manor. Berghast’s study was at the top of a crenelated feature of bay windows, three stories up. There was a balcony to the left and a covered entrance with slate tiles on the ground floor, left of that. All along the facade loomed stone sills, ancient brickwork, iron drainpipes.
It would be easy to fall.
Charlie blew out his cheeks, grimaced. Then he stepped lightly forward and reached up and swung himself onto the narrow slate roof of the entrance. He could feel Komako watching him from across the darkness and he tried to move slowly, confidently, like he knew what he was doing.
Except he didn’t, he wasn’t much of a climber, never had been, and he had the bad feeling that he was going to make himself ridiculous, climbing the outside of a building in the dark.
At least it isn’t raining, he thought.
He should have been more afraid of someone, anyone, walking past a window in the west wing and peering out and seeing him creeping spiderlike over the walls. Or someone crossing the courtyard for some ungodly reason and hearing the chink and click of the slate tiles under his feet.
He pressed himself flat against the wall and leaned out, far out, reaching with the tips of his fingers for a handhold on the next sill. He could just reach it. He firmed up his grip and dragged himself, heavily, awkwardly, out over the gap, scraping the side of his body against the bricks, gasping, heaving himself up.
There was a kind of corner beside him and he pushed his shoulder into it and reached around and seized the iron spikes on the windowsill above and then he twisted his lean body and walked his feet up and slithered—there was no other word for it—one knee, then the second, until he could kneel and rise unsteadily and stand.
He was maybe thirty feet off the ground now. It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. He’d need to climb to the third story and work his way out across the building to the bay windows. He eyeballed a leap to a balcony, four feet away, and the spiked railing there. Trying to be quiet, not knowing what was in the windows he would pass.
But as he made to jump, something went wrong. His toes slipped sideways, and though he lunged out with his fingers splayed, somehow, impossibly, he felt the edge of the balcony just miss his grasp, and then he was falling, the cold night air rushing past.
He thought: Charlie, you’re just a damn—
And then the thought was cut short as the dark cobblestones rushed up to meet him.
* * *
A figure came around the corner in darkness, tall, hatless, in a frock coat, and Ribs saw at once who it was: Bailey, the manservant of Dr. Berghast.
Though invisible, still she shrank back against the wall. She thought: Charlie, wherever you are, just don’t come up yet, don’t.
Bailey frightened all of them. The man hardly spoke and glowered out from his skull-like head as if he’d gladly strangle anyone, kid or talent alike. He was part servant, part secretary, part ape. Ribs wasn’t sure exactly what the man did for Dr. Berghast. Nothing pleasant, surely.
Bailey stopped outside Berghast’s study door and slowly picked through a ring of keys. Then he paused and looked around, frowning. He stared at where Ribs was lurking, almost as if he could see her, and slowly he reached a big hand out, feeling the empty air.
Ribs pressed herself back against the wall, just out of reach. His fingers were millimeters from her face. But he seemed satisfied, and turned back, and found the key and unlocked the study door.
Ribs barely let herself exhale. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She was used to people sensing her presence, even peering around in suspicion, but rarely were they so precise in finding her.
Anyway, she thought. You wasn’t doing nothing wrong. You can stand in a hallway if you want to. It ain’t against the law.
While she was thinking this, letting her heart rate subside, Bailey had ducked his head and gone through into the little antechamber. Ribs slipped noiselessly to the entrance. Within stood the small desk where Bailey worked during the days, the two armchairs for visitors to wait in. And directly across stood the door beyond, the door to Berghast’s study.
It was open.
Why bless your cold little heart, Mr. Bailey, sir, she thought, with a sly grin. She looked all around at the hallway and then back at the antechamber. Then she thought of Charlie. If he climbed up while Bailey was in the study—
She set her jaw. She’d have to warn him, somehow.
Invisible, on silent feet, Ribs slipped inside.
* * *
Charlie winced in embarrassment. Komako was kneeling over him, afraid to touch him, hissing his name. He could feel his shattered tibia already beginning to stitch itself back. Something was wrong with his hip. He had landed badly on his side and one shoulder had popped from its socket and he sat up in pain and wrestled it back into place and felt his body crunch and twist and shape itself anew.
Sweet Lord, it hurt.
There was blood on his face and hands and in his eyes and he wiped it away with his shirt. Komako fell back, watching him from the shadows. He saw fear in her face but also something else, fascination, and he was surprised that he kind of liked it.
“Charlie?” she was whispering. “You’re okay, then?”
“Sure.” He shrugged, tried to smile. “That balcony just doesn’t like me much. Nobody heard?”
“No.”
He got to his feet, grimacing. There was that, at least. His bare feet were damp and there was grit stuck to the soles and he wiped his feet on the inside of his trousers to clean them before starting climbing again. This time he went more quickly, with less dread, feeling as if he’d already done the worst and so there was less to fear. He scrambled from sill to balcony to sill, working his way steadily across in the darkness. There was in one window a candle left burning and when a shadow passed in front of it he stood with his back pressed to the wall, waiting. But when no further movement came he slid silently across, continued climbing.
Later still, his feet kicked an old lead drainpipe, as he made his way past where he’d fallen before. He listened to the rattle and clatter of it roll in the courtyard below, so loud that he was sure someone must hear. But no one came. No windows opened.
He climbed on.
* * *
Ribs watched Berghast’s manservant at the desk, slowly going through the drawers. He’d lit a candle and the orange light cast its flicker over the desk and the surrounding carpet and the big man’s features. He was taking out ledgers and papers in his enormous hands, stacking them, unhurried.
Ribs crept noiselessly to one side of the door. She made no other movement, breathing softly. Even the stir of air could make a target sense her presence. And Bailey, whatever else, seemed eerily aware of his surroundings.
She’d been in this study only twice before, both at Berghast’s instruction: the first time shortly after arriving at Cairndale, by way of a kind of introduction; and later, amid the chaos and panic after Jacob Marber’s attack, all those years ago. She remembered Berghast’s pale gray eyes, as if lit from within, how he had studied her carefully as if looking inside her heart. She shivered, remembering.
His study was dim, oppressively furnished, very cold. A fireplace stood at one end, carved out of white stone, and near it the desk and several armchairs arranged in a half-moon. There were doors on three of the walls, too many doors, doors mismatched and strange and unlike any others she’d seen at Cairndale. She wondered where they led. On one wall hung a long strange framed painting, in ink, all slashed lines and overlapping circles. It resembled somehow the complicated inner workings of a vast tree. In one corner stood a tall birdcage with two bonebirds clicking and shifting inside. Last of all, her gaze fell on the bay window, its curtains open, the spiked iron bars on the ledge outside clearly visible despite the candle’s reflection.