hearty smile. But what was down there? What game was the guildmaster of thieves playing this time?
Only one way to find out.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Malden lowered himself through the trapdoor by his hands. He swung his feet back and forth until they came in contact with a solid surface that felt like it would hold his weight, then jumped to crouch atop it. He pulled a candle from his tunic and lit it with steel and flint. When the wick caught, he placed the candle in a tin reflector that Slag had made for him. It gave him a good beam of yellow light he could direct wherever he liked.
Aiming the beam downward, he saw that the inside of the steeple and much of the spire was open space, some of the floors below having fallen away over the years so that he was inside a high shaft leading down into darkness. He crouched atop one of the few remaining support beams that hadn’t rotted or burned away over time.
He could hear gears churning below, and a rhythmic whirring sound as of something very large spinning very quickly.
The interior walls of the spire provided ample footholds and handholds to make an easy descent, at least for the first fifteen feet down. Where the floors had fallen away, little more remained than narrow ledges now fringed with broken bits of floorboard. As rudimentary as they looked, they would give him plenty of purchase. Beyond that the space opened out and became far more regular. He could see little more than that by candlelight. He climbed quickly down to a place where a corner of ruined floor remained, still braced by rotting beams. Looking down farther, he finally saw the source of the whirring noise.
Where the spire ended and the main building began, a wide circular opening separated the two. Filling that opening was a massive iron blade that spun around and around, forbidding all access to the lower floors. It moved so quickly he could not see how many vanes this obstruction possessed. Not that it mattered. He knew if he tried to jump through it he would end up shredded.
Yet there had to be a way to pass it.
He found a place where the plaster had come away from the wall. Underneath, the laths that once held the plaster were exposed. He was able to tear one free, a good strip of wood an inch wide and six feet long. Creeping down as far as he could get, he thrust the lath into the whirling blade.
He was not surprised when it was torn out of his hand and then cut into splinters. It had not been thick enough to jam the mechanism. He wondered if this blade explained the vanishing of every thief who’d tried to enter the Chapterhouse before him. Then he rejected the idea. He’d spent enough time around Slag to know that such complicated devices couldn’t remain in working order for two hundred years, not without someone to periodically clean and repair them.
Cutbill had put this blade in motion, not the long-passed monks who’d built the Chapterhouse.
Malden still needed a way to stop the blade. He had Acidtongue at his belt, and supposed it would be strong enough, but he didn’t want to risk the blade on such a risky enterprise-especially since he thought he might need it later. There must be something else, though, something he could use. He sought around him for something better than a lath and quickly found it.
A series of stone columns ribbed the interior of the spire, some of which had cracked and broken. One had fallen away entirely and lay in pieces on a corner of broken flooring. It almost looked like it was left there intentionally for him to find.
That wouldn’t surprise him. When Cutbill created a puzzle, he always managed to leave the solution somewhere in plain sight. This was not simply a way to keep trespassers out of the Chapterhouse. It was a test.
The broken section of pillar was too heavy for Malden to lift. It was three feet long, as thick as his arm, and made of very solid stone. He considered rolling it over the edge to crash down on the blade, but knew he would only get one chance at this-if the stone fell through the gaps between the vanes of the blade he would be out of luck. He needed a way to lower the pillar into the blade, a way he could control.
He had brought along a length of rope-he never went climbing in new places without a line. Now it was kept coiled around his waist like a sash. It was strong enough to hold his own weight, but he wasn’t sure if it could support the pillar. There was, as usual, only one way to find out. He lashed one end of the rope around the fluted end of the pillar, then carefully rolled the stone over the edge of the broken floor. The rope creaked and complained and started to fray almost at once. In a few moments, Malden knew, it would snap.
Perhaps not before he made use of it, however. He paid out the rope as quickly as he dared, careful not to let the pillar jerk too much at its end. Foot by foot, second by second, as the rope twisted and frayed, he sent the pillar down toward the deadly blade.
It made contact just as the rope broke. The pillar bounced off one vane of the blade and then fell away into the darkness below. Malden cursed in rage for a moment-then stopped himself as he saw what happened next.
With a horrible clanging whine, the blade slowed and then ground to a shuddering stop. The pillar had bent the blade out of true, and it no longer fit inside its prescribed mechanism. Still it tried to turn, but could only grind slowly around its arc as it dragged against its own rim.
Malden scurried down through a gap between two of the blade’s six vanes before it could start again. Underneath the blade was a small square room almost entirely filled with huge iron gears and an enormous coiled mainspring that drove the blade. A lever stuck up out of the floor, clearly a controller for the deadly engine. Had Cutbill stood here only minutes before and pulled that lever to start the whirling blade?
Thinking it best to stop the blade for good and all-he might have to climb back out this way-Malden grasped the lever and pulled it toward him.
He had only himself to blame when the entire floor of the small room fell away on a hinge, dropping him into darkness.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Malden’s candle fell from his hand and flickered out instantly. He could just see the last orange ember of its wick tumbling away from him. In the last guttering flare of the light he’d seen chains hanging around him, but beyond that nothing.
He was falling, weightless, a condition he knew could only end in a sudden stop-and very soon.
Desperately he lashed around him with his arms. His fingertips brushed the rough surface of a chain and sent it flailing away from him. His left leg hit another chain and he grabbed at it with his feet, trying to tangle himself in its length. It slipped free of his grasp-but not before he twisted around and got one hand on it.
He stopped falling with a wrenching jerk that nearly pulled his arm out of its socket. His fingers started to tremble but he managed to get his other arm wrapped around the chain so it would hold him up. Powdered rust sifted down across his face but he held on, just held on, until he could breathe again.
He couldn’t see a thing. There was no light at all inside the Chapterhouse. He couldn’t hear anything either. Not so much as wind whispering through abandoned eaves.
He could smell something, though. A sharp odor of stale oil. Perhaps it was just the smell of grease on the chains, gone rancid over the years. He didn’t like it, though.
Slowly, once his hand had stopped shaking, Malden began to climb down the chain. It swayed and shook as he moved-clearly it wasn’t attached to anything at the bottom. He had no idea what awaited for him at the bottom of the chain. Perhaps common sense indicated he should climb upward instead. Head back up through the whirling blades, get out of the Chapterhouse altogether.
But he had to know. He had to find Cutbill, and get his answer. The mystery was like a demon at the back of his brain, goading him forward. So he climbed down.
Eventually he reached the end of the chain, and had no idea what to do next. Stretching himself downward
