The Kingdom of Bones

his way down there.

Behind the scenery at the back of the stage there was a lifted section of the floor. It was about four feet square, and there was a ladder going down into the darkness below it. Without any hesitation, Sebastian descended.

There was lighting down here: a few weak electric bulbs casting a dim yellow glow, enough to move around by but nothing more. The underside of the stage was a maze of wooden beams and cross bracing, as if the floor above was built to support far more weight than could ever be required of it.

“Sayers!” he called up the ladder. “Did you hear me? Whitlock is trying to reach the orchestra pit!” He heard a scuffle in response to his voice; the noise might have been made by rats, because the movement that caught his eye was from another direction altogether.

There was Whitlock, clambering through the timberwork toward the front of the stage. He was finding no way through. Those who had sealed the theater to protect the mysteries above the stage had taken similar care to protect the further secrets below it. Now Sebastian understood the reason for such a complicated understructure. The entire stage floor above them was a grid of squares, any one of which could be lifted to give secret access or escape from a piece of magical apparatus.

Whitlock had a grip on Louise and was dragging the young woman along with him: his one prize, his last asset, his bait. But she was slowing him down. The new dress was so full that it was getting caught up almost everywhere. Sebastian moved to follow, and immediately banged his head on a low bulwark.

The blow was a glancing one and not too hard, but it was enough to disorient him for a few moments. He used his few seconds of unbalance and uncertainty to draw the empty pistol from his waistband.

“Whitlock!” he shouted, and raised the pistol. He held it level as if he would fire. A man might take a while to climb through the understage timberwork to reach a fugitive. A well-aimed bullet would make the same journey without interference.

Had he a bullet. His gun was empty. But Whitlock could not know that for sure.

He saw Whitlock turn his head and spy the firearm. With a terrified jerk, the actor-manager thrust Louise around into the line of fire so that her body shielded his. She had to catch hold of one of the wide timbers to prevent herself from falling.

“You coward, sir!” Sebastian called to him. “You cannot hide behind a woman! Surrender yourself. You have no way out!”

But the move was only meant to buy Whitlock a moment or two of time. He had an escape in mind, and now Sebastian could see what his plan was. Fixed under one of the floor squares was a movable apparatus of pulleys and counterweights. Its purpose became clear as Whitlock stepped onto the platform in the middle of the frame.

“Sayers!” Sebastian shouted, hoping that wherever he was, the fighter might be warned in time to prevent Whitlock from making his way back to the pass door. “He’s on the star trap!”

Whereupon the actor-manager threw a release. The counterweights dropped, instantly speeding the platform and its occupant up toward stage level.

Sayers had heard every call that the policeman had made, beginning with the very first, but had been unable to reply. He dared not take his attention from the Mute Woman. She was before him now, one of Maskelyne’s trick swords in her hand; whichever way he tried to feint or dodge, the blade was there before him. He knew the blade was sharp. She’d cut him once already.

She’d stepped out from a collection of wooden crates and illusionists’ properties, confronting Sayers as he was searching the scene dock beyond the wings. Sayers had never really paid her much attention before now; back in the Purple Diamond days, she’d been the sewing woman’s lowly assistant. He’d paid out her wages every week, but had very little to say to her. If asked for an impression, he’d have described a dark- complexioned woman, one who avoided all company and never met one’s eye, a menial worker bundled up in so many layers of old clothes that her shape was indeterminable.

She’d shed her coat, so that she might move with greater ease. Now her eye was fixed on his. Seeing her as if for the first time, Sayers realized that she was far from the bent harridan of his imagination. She was not a young woman, but her frame was trim and strong and she stood and moved with uncommon grace. She held the sword with a confident hand.

Her purpose was plain: She was here to buy time for her master. She would hold Sayers’ attention until Whitlock had escaped to safety, and if Sayers would not be held, then she would almost certainly cut him down. Sayers had made one attempt to disarm her, and was now bleeding freely as a result. She’d backed him out onto the stage, and he dared not turn away. One thrust would end it if he did.

He could hear Sebastian Becker shouting somewhere down below, but it was impossible to be sure of what the policeman was saying. He heard him call out Whitlock’s name, and then he heard his own—Becker was trying to warn him of something. But Sayers dared not move his gaze from the Mute Woman, and she did not take her gaze from him.

What came next was unexpected—there was a rumble of weights and pulleys almost directly under their feet. Neither meant to look down, but both of them did. Sayers knew the sound well. It was the machinery underlying a star trap.

A star trap offered the most spectacular—and potentially the most dangerous—entrance that a performer could make. Coupled with a flash of magnesium powder, it could make a player seem to appear out of thin air. A heavily counterweighted platform shot the actor up from the basement through a star-shaped trapdoor. The trap’s hinged leaves would flip upward, opening like a flower. Once the body was through, they would drop back into place to conceal the point of emergence.

A good star trap took about half a second to do its work.

Half a second was just enough time for Sayers to place his foot upon one of its sections.

The floor jumped. Sayers felt the full force of a body hitting the trap, only to fall back again. Some of the pointed sections flew up. Even the one that he was standing on bounced an inch or two.

Then nothing, until the Mute Woman started to scream.

TWENTY-SIX

Cartaphilus!” she screamed at the floor. “Salathiel!” And she would have screamed more had Sayers not taken advantage of her distraction to floor her with a neat right-cross clip. In some secret and shameful corner of his heart he’d always wondered what it would be like to hit a woman, in the way that the mind tends to dally with the taboos it most ought to shrink from. Like defiling the cross, or dissecting a fairy. It was the thought that could not be entertained, the awe that one sensed before a door that one never dared to open.

Yet when the moment came, it gave him no trouble at all. He responded as he would to any armed man who had cut him and now threatened his life. Only as she hit the floor, with the sword clattering away from her outflung hand, did he recognize the wrong in it. But by then she was down, and he was safe.

He tried to prize open the leaves of the trap, but the stage carpenter had done his work well and they were too close a fit. From the stalls, an onlooker would detect no sign of any device. Sayers crossed the stage to where the sword had fallen, and picked it up. The Mute Woman was stirring slightly, but was no threat to him for the moment. Using the tip of the blade, he levered out one of the star sections and then was able to lift the others and so open up the trap completely.

The first thing that he saw when he looked down was the body of Edmund Whitlock, sprawled across the apparatus. The platform had jammed about halfway up and his limbs were hanging over its edges. There was little blood, but by the look of him his neck was broken. Sayers swung himself down into the hole and, placing his feet with care so as to bestride the body, he lowered his weight onto the platform. With a load of two grown men on board, it slowly descended in its runners. When he could reach the lever that would lock off the counterweights, Sayers secured it.

Whitlock was dead. There was no doubting it now. But where was Louise? When he’d seen the two of them last, they’d been together. He looked around in the gloom of the stage basement, but the only face that he could see was Sebastian Becker’s. The policeman was sitting on the ground a few yards away, with his back against one of the hefty wooden pillars. There was soot and dust everywhere, but he seemed not to care. He was staring at