He steadied himself. He looked down. The floor, far below and in shadow, lay littered with broken stone. Near the door, the bodies. But not mine. Fitz closed his eyes, and opened them again on the Sad King. He sprang; but this time, hurling a shout from his throat as he stepped to the far ledge, he pushed against it even as he reached it, propelling himself arms forward towards the beam and the first of his handholds. His fingers slapped against it and he clutched them tight against the wood, seating his palms snug against the dark oak eye.
Above the floor, catching his breath, he dangled. Beneath him, the bust of the Sad King rocked on its plinth, and was still.
Fitz reached for the next handhold. His arms tore with pain. He tightened his grip, pulled into his shoulders, and swung for the next. And the next. Lifting himself across the ceiling by swings he raced to the centre. The albatrosses, clucking, parted above him as, from the last of the beam’s looped eyes, he swung his feet on to a ledge, writhed into a flip, and pushed himself up. One of the birds clicked at him, and from its turned head – at once both facing and ignoring him – it watched him breathe.
Fitz looked towards the tower. Already the north door had swung open, and in the rectangular void it made, his little lamp glowed with a fierce and unbreakable constancy.
It’s too far.
The cable would cover the distance, but he would miss the target. It was smaller than he had imagined, and tighter. He climbed into the cupola, and stood against one of the stone columns that supported its little roof.
I can’t make it.
Navy’s face appeared, for an instant, in the black void of the door. Her gaze seemed to dart past the Heresiarchy towards the lawns, then return to the dome, scanning it, searching for him. He looked down at the roof of the tiled dome. From this side, from the outside, it seemed to slope away precipitously. He imagined jumping down on to it, trying to get closer to the Rack’s tower, closing the distance; but it was impossible. Slick and steep, he would fall before he took two steps. He looked again at the crescent light where it glowed with serene intensity in the tower door.
And then the albatross, the nearest of them, still watching him, trilled another barrage of little clicks, opened its wings, and sprang into the darkness. Its flight was true and even, its bright white wings against the dark of the night as clear as a beacon at sea. It hardly moved its wings at all, but rose in a single, steady arc from the dome of the palace towards the north door of the Rack’s tower, settling as lightly as Fitz’s own eye, and as silently, beside the light that lay there. A plumb line could not have described the space more truly, the required arc of the arrow’s flight with more precision. Etched on his gaze like a searing white trail in the night, the path lay clear for Fitz to follow. He unslung the coils of cable from his shoulder, laid them neatly on the wall beside him, and drew out the free end. With quick, delicate fingers he paid out an ample length, drew it round the column, and hitched it firm to the stone. He took the crossbow from his back, fitted the single bolt, and winched it tight against the coil.
The albatross had hopped away from the door. The trail it had made, remained. Fitz snugged the wood in his shoulder as he had seen Dolly do, sighted along the bolt, and closed his eye. He pulled the catch.
The bolt, a slug of iron, disappeared in the darkness. Fitz, recoiling from the discharge, struggled to retain his balance on the narrow inner ledge of the cupola. But the cable paid out freely, and he knew his shot had hit home. He watched the spent cable, willing it to go taut, willing it to rise into the position that would mean Navy, or the Master, stood at its other end, and had lashed it down for the crossing.
He waited.
At long, agonizing, last, it rose, snapping taut. Five albatrosses huddling on the opposite side of the cupola stood.
Beyond the tower, the first of the torches were crossing the last stretches of the valley. They were almost at the walls, almost at the lawns – the dark lawns, heaving with dark forms. Fitz thought of Clare and Ned, surely at the front of the tide as it swept towards the walls, thought of the clubs and fires, the staves and knife-edges that awaited them.
No.
One of the albatrosses shrieked. Fitz looked to the tower, and saw the Master sliding along the cable, head first like a piece of meat trussed and strung over a fire, breaking his speed by dragging on the cable with his crossed legs. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, he began to slide across the void between the tower and the cupola.
Let it hold.
It held. No sooner had the Master touched the stone arch of the cupola than he unhooked his legs, suspended for a moment from the hook by which he had crossed, and then swung his body safely on to the wall.
‘Well sprung, child,’ he said – but his eyes were already on the cable, on the tower, on Navy, who was sliding at speed out of the door of the tower. Halfway between the tower and the cupola, she threw her legs over the cable, crossed her shoes on it, and bore down, hard, to brake
