too obvious.
“Weexil’s lady love?” I asked.
Gertriss nodded, moved to stand with Lady Werewilk and I. I caught her eyeing the ravaged table, and felt a pang of guilt that she’d missed supper.
“She was,” said Gertriss. “Had been, the whole time he was here. Love at first sight. Songs under the moonlight.” She gave Lady Werewilk an accusing eye. “The locks on both barns need to be replaced. They weren’t the only ones disturbing your hay.”
I didn’t need a catfight, so I chimed in before Lady Werewilk could do more than inflate.
“She shoved his things in the oven? Was there a note?”
“She did, and there was. She burned it too. I love you, but I have to go. I’ll never forget you, but you should forget me. And there’s more.”
She was grim-faced. I didn’t think I’d have to guess more than once.
“She’s with child.”
“She thinks so. I think it’s too early to tell, but she’s convinced.”
“Had she told Weexil?”
“She hadn’t told him outright, but she’d hinted. She thinks that’s why he left.”
I cussed. Because if Weexil was just a rake who’d fled at the first sign of fatherhood, then he wasn’t a link to the crossbow on the road or the stakes in the yard.
Gertriss gave me a look that said she didn’t like me very much right then.
Lady Werewilk sighed. “I suppose this-event was inevitable,” she said. “Still, I had hoped it wouldn’t be Serris. She has a rare talent.”
“Seems all your artists have a rare talent,” I said. “Isn’t that unusual, Lady Werewilk? So many absolute geniuses, all here at once?”
“You’ve seen their work?”
“I’ve seen a few. All were marvelous.”
She beamed.
Screams broke out from down the hall. Screams and shouts, though I couldn’t make any sense of the shouting.
I was already at the door when Marlo charged through it. “Lady,” he boomed, ignoring me completely. “It’s Serris. She’s on the roof.”
Lady Werewilk blinked. “On the roof?”
I put myself between Marlo and the lady. “Show me. Right now.”
“Go,” said Lady Werewilk.
Marlo turned and charged. Gertriss and I followed, clambering up the stairs, darting down twisting halls, shouldering our way through thirty assorted artists, and finally bursting up into the attic via a narrow spiral stair and a warped trap door.
The attic was finished, in at least there were plain plank floors and even plaster on the walls. Junk haunted the corners-crates and chests and old saddles and old tools.
There was a lamp burning in the middle of the floor. Blankets and empty bottles littered the place, evidence of many a late-night tryst. Moonlight streamed through a panel in the wall that was open and creaking in a breeze-a panel that opened into nothing but a few inches of ledge and the long, deadly drop beyond it.
I cussed. That wasn’t a door, never had been. Some impatient carpenter a hundred years ago had just sawed a hole in the wall and stuck a crude hinged cover over it, making an opening a kid might fit through, probably to scurry up on the slate roof and replace a few broken tiles.
I cussed him for not nailing the damned thing shut and plastering it over fifty years before my parents were born.
I raced to it and dropped to my knees and exhaled, hoping I could get at least my shoulders through.
My head fit, and part of one shoulder, but that was it.
I could see her legs. Serris was barefoot and wearing a nightgown, and I could hear her crying. Her toes hung over the narrow ledge, and I heard her fingernails scratching on the slate roof tiles at her back, and I knew that even if she didn’t jump in the next few minutes she’d probably lose her balance and fall.
She painted her toenails the same shade of red as Darla used.
“Say something,” hissed Gertriss.
“Miss,” I said. “Please come back inside.”
She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out her reply beyond “no”.
Mama, I thought, where are you when I need you?
The girl’s feet shifted and jerked, whether from nearly slipping or working up the courage for a jump I couldn’t tell.
“Tell her he ain’t worth it,” whispered Gertriss. “Tell her something, dammit!”
“Miss. Please. It’ll all seem better in the morning. I promise it will.”
Gertriss punched me in the back. I heard the girl on the ledge take in a long, deep breath.
“I don’t care to live,” she whispered. “Not anymore. Not now.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She spat the word. Her legs began to tremble. “I mean it.”
“We’re probably sixty feet off the ground,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “You’ve chosen a good spot. It’s high enough to kill you, all right. Trouble is, Miss, it won’t kill you all at once.”
Gertriss grabbed my right arm and yanked. “Mister Markhat,” she whispered. “What the hell are you doing?”
She said it loud enough that I figured Serris heard.
“I’m just explaining a few things about falls to Miss Eaves. I once saw a Troll fling a man named Other Albert off a cliff about this high. Other Albert landed on sand. But even that broke him up inside. Took Other Albert all night to die, hacking up blood the whole time, when he wasn’t screaming.” I kept my tone cheerful, as though I was retelling a favorite Yule story. “If Miss Eaves decides to die like this, fine, but I think she should have all the facts before she jumps, don’t you?”
Miss Eaves didn’t speak. I thought I could detect a lessening in the volume and intensity of the sobbing.
“Sixty feet. It’ll take a while to fall that far, Miss. Long enough to count to five or six. Long enough to feel death coming. Long enough to realize what you’ve done. Maybe long enough to change your mind. But that’s the thing about jumping off roofs. There’s no changing your mind, once you take that leap. You’ll fall, and you’ll hit, and you’ll die. Bleeding out your mouth and your nose and your ears. And screaming, of course. Just like Other Albert. ”
“He left me,” she said. “He left me.”
“I know he did. And I’m sorry for that, I really am. And maybe right now you honestly don’t want to live, and I’m sorry for that too. But, Miss, it’s one thing to wish you could make the pain go away. It’s another to fall sixty feet. I know. I’ve seen. Come back inside.”
Serris quit bawling. Her feet stopped shifting, her toes curled uselessly around the ledge, and at last she spoke to me, in a very faint whisper.
“I can’t get back,” she said. “I’ll never make it back.”
“You don’t have to move at all,” I said. “Just be still. Take a deep breath. We’re going to come get you. Don’t look down. You hear me? Be still.”
She didn’t answer.
I popped out of the hole and back into the attic.
“Rope.” And hurry, I added, silently. She’s not going to last.
Marlo appeared, lunging out of the trap-door, a coiled rope already in his hand. I could have hugged his grizzled ugly face.
“You are never going to fit through there,” said Gertriss.
I was ready with half a dozen useless arguments, but they died on my lips. She was right. Too many years of good beer and Pinford ham sandwiches had passed.
I handed her the rope. She took it, tied a competent sliding loop in the end of it, was kneeling at the opening when we all heard the howl.
