He heard the sound of soft Turkish boots on the stone steps.
Two doors.
He slipped through the nearest.
It was dark. He tried to feel his way – silently – around, hoping against hope that there was a trunk, a barrel, anything to give him a chance. He began to consider fighting.
He stubbed his toe. Hard.
Fell against cool stone, and smelled . . .
Water.
A well cover.
Open. Why not? It was indoors.
Turkish voices. Ten feet away. Two of them.
He jumped into the well.
If you ever want to understand the true meaning of
Swan fell.
His right shoulder impacted heavily on something that hurt him, and then he was in water – deep, cold water. He struck it badly, and it knocked the wind out of him, and he went too deep, sputtering. It was all he could do not to breathe.
He didn’t know which way the surface was. He didn’t know if he had enough air in his lungs to allow him to float.
He was losing it.
A great bubble escaped him – a gob of air lost. It rippled past his face . . .
He reversed himself, let out another tiny bubble of air, and swam – a panicked, wild, thrashing swim.
But his head broke the surface.
And smacked into something stone, in pitch darkness.
He took three breaths. Then he had to swim, and his fingers hit stone over his head. When he tried a shallower stroke, he hit his head again.
It finally came through.
He took another breath, and reached up. He ran his fingers across the stone, using his buoyancy to press him against the ceiling.
He scraped an elbow, bumped his shoulder, and the feeling of the air on his face changed.
His head bobbed free.
There was something under his left hand, and he held it – an edge. For a very long time, he simply clung to the edge, resting. Breathing.
It was a ledge. It was quite wide, and under only a few inches of water.
He reached up as far as he could reach, and there was no ceiling.
He got a knee up on the ledge. It seemed the hardest thing he’d ever done.
He half lay on the underwater ledge for many, many breaths.
Then he got the other leg up. He knelt.
The drug had finally worn off, he was pleased to note.
He crouched on the ledge. He wasn’t dead, but that was about all he could say. He was now bitterly cold and very tired. It was completely dark. Utterly dark.
He began to explore, cautiously. His rational mind said that he would be weaker later.
His questing arms found a column. He put his back against it and stood cautiously, waiting for the feeling of stone against his head all the way, but when he was standing tall, he felt as if there was still a great deal of space above him.
There was another ledge above the one he was on. It was six feet above him, and he only found it because his hands were feeling for the ceiling. He got his fingers over the edge, and then his hands, and then his arms.
He didn’t make a conscious decision. He jumped, pushed with his arms, and he was lying on cool, dry stone. He instantly revised his chances of survival. This was . . . intentional. This shelf – it was like . . .
A path.
He crawled six feet and felt the drop just in time. The shelf ended abruptly. It fell away to the water.
Swan knew that, at this point, if he went back to the water, he’d die. He was just barely managing to keep the panic in check, but under the clarity of his thinking was an abyss of pain and fear. He was close to losing it. The thought
He turned, with infinite patience, and crawled very slowly back the way he’d come. He knew he was on ‘new ground’ when he came to rock with no water on it. He crawled.
And crawled.
After ten minutes, he knew that he was going – somewhere.
Further, it occurred to him that the air was fresh.
At the next column, he pulled himself into a crouch, and then sat with his back against the pillar. After a while, his back warmed the pillar. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
He tried to think of Khatun Bengul’s body. Of her lips. Or Violante’s or Tilda’s.
But the darkness was all around him, and he was cold, and it is very hard to be brave in the dark, alone, when you are cold and wet.
But he must have slept.
Because he woke.
And there was . . . light.
Not much light. But after hours of complete darkness, it might have been direct sunlight.
He wasn’t in a well – he was in some sort of underground canal. The canal had a ledge underwater – probably for workmen to stand on while they cleared obstructions and pollutions. Above that was a walkway, on which he’d crawled. He looked back. He could see the end, about forty feet behind him.
He’d crawled forty feet.
He sighed.
He looked down into the water. It was only about six feet deep.
It had a current.
And a few yards away, it flowed out from under an arch. So he’d . . . swum? Been floated? Under that arch.
Somewhere, there would be an entrance. If workmen came here . . .
He got to his feet. His arms were covered in bruises, and he had tender places on his head. His hands looked as if he’d been in a fight.
He started walking.
After what had to have been a mile – an incredible distance underground – there were steps, and then . . .
The tunnel split. The water came down a small waterfall – he flashed on the blood running down the steps, and suddenly he thought,
None of it made any sense.
Or rather, it all made a scary kind of sense. Like the sorts of dramas that had played out at England’s royal court.
He turned right, because he had a feeling about how the canal ran. He’d read his classics. The water must come from an aqueduct. That meant – since water flowed downhill – that he was now going east, towards the Venetian quarter.
He had begun to look at every light-hole. They were evenly spaced, for the most part – twenty feet or more
