The Masked City (34 page)

They stopped at the edge of the square, and Irene looked across at their target. The Campanile tower stood alone in a corner of the square, a good three hundred feet tall. She could make out the pale marble belfry, the pyramidal spire at the top and the weathervane glinting in the starlight. A set of thin marble-framed windows marched up one side of the brick of the bell tower in a dotted line. It was far enough away from any of the surrounding buildings that she and Vale wouldn’t be able to get to it over the roofs. And, more importantly, a squad of eight guards stood by the only gate at the bottom. ‘Let’s hope they don’t have a shoot-on-sight policy,’ she concluded.

‘If we get close enough, can you use that trick of yours?’ Vale queried. ‘The one where you convince them they’re seeing something else? If not, we’ll have to pretend to be bringing a message.’

Eight people was more than she’d ever tried to work on previously, but it wasn’t as if they had much choice in the matter. ‘You’re going to have to prop me up when I do it.’ She finished the pastry and dusted crumbs off her hands. ‘It’s going to exhaust me, at least for a few minutes. But you’re right, it’s the best option. I wish we could see what’s inside.’

‘I could only see stairs when I looked earlier,’ Vale said. ‘Disguised as a beggar, of course. It allowed me to get close enough to see through that archway. Any impediments are likely to be further up.’

And likely to be something that I’ll have to manage.
Irene nodded, bracing herself. ‘We’d better get on with it then, before Lord Guantes catches up,’ she said. She stepped boldly out, Vale’s arm still pseudo-affectionately around her waist, and tried not to look over her shoulder or listen for pursuit.

When they reached the guards, two stepped forward, crossing their pikes in front of Vale and Irene. ‘Not tonight, friend,’ one of them said. ‘If you’re a stranger to the city, come back tomorrow and you can be in the Piazza to hear the bell ring.’

Vale glanced to Irene, and she knew that it was her turn. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
‘You perceive myself and the man beside me as people who have a right to be here and to enter the Campanile,’
she said, pitching her voice to carry to all the guards.

She felt the compulsion take, tightening like a fishing line caught in reality, and staggered as the impact hit her. Her nose was bleeding again, the blood trickling down her face under her mask, and for a moment her head was pounding so loudly she could barely hear Vale’s voice as he ordered the guards to open the door. Apparently it really was worse when you tried to affect several people at the same time. Good to know. Though hopefully never again. But the way things were going, it would probably be tomorrow morning, without the benefit of coffee.

The guards saluted and stood back, grounding their pikes. ‘Certainly, sir,’ the first guard said, his expression abruptly all deference. ‘We are at your service.’

Vale gave a curt nod to the men and his arm tightened round Irene’s waist, straightening her as she swayed. Then he led her forward and into the arched marble entrance. There were gods carved into the stone, and the lantern light played tricks with her eyes, as the figures seemed to leer at the pair of them accusingly. Another pair of guards threw open the delicate bronze gates, letting them into the building proper.

Irene wondered, through the swimming pain in her head, who the guards thought they were. The Guantes? The Council of Ten? Regular Campanile inspectors here to check for bats in the belfry?

It was very dark inside the Campanile. The narrow windows allowed what moonlight there was into the hollow structure. But its slanting light only fell as far as the walls, leaving the central iron staircase in comparative darkness as it spiralled up the centre of the otherwise empty tower. There were no guards in here.

‘Can you stand?’ Vale asked, releasing her.

Irene wobbled, but stayed upright. ‘I think so,’ she said. She pulled her mask away from her face enough to blot with her sleeve the blood running from her nose. It had pretty much stopped, but the headache remained.

‘Then we had better hurry. That was too easy for my liking.’

You aren’t the one who had to do it,
Irene thought, but she had to agree. They had been incredibly lucky to escape Lord Guantes and get here first. That sort of luck didn’t last. Paranoia immediately suggested that it was a trap; but she and Vale headed up the wrought-iron stairs, Vale going first. Each step creaked and rang under their feet, uncomfortably loud in the confines of the bell tower. The stairs were guarded on the outer side by curving panels of thin lacy ironwork, but the steps themselves were reassuringly solid under her feet.

About a hundred and fifty feet off the ground, Vale came to a stop. They both caught their breath for a moment as he pointed upwards. There was a ceiling directly above them, and the staircase spiralled up through it.

Irene listened, but there was no sound from above, and the air had the particular deadness of empty space. While they were both on their guard as they headed upwards, there was nobody in the belfry. But the staircase continued to climb further up above them still, spiralling through the ceiling. Up there, the bells hung above them from the rafters in great terrifying masses of metal. Moonlight fell through the four deep arches in each wall, picking out the detail in the tiles of the belfry floor, so at least they could see better now.

Vale looked around, frowning. ‘Now is it here somewhere, or is it further up? Winters, do you perceive anything of value?’

‘I …’ Irene hunted for words to try to describe what she felt. ‘This whole place feels as if it is a nexus of some sort. I can tell that much, but no more. Can you sense anything?’

‘I’m only human,’ Vale said. He caught the look she was giving him, even through her mask. ‘Frankly, Winters, given our surroundings, I’d think you should be
glad
of that.’ He stepped through the archway into the small room and began prowling across the floor, casting a professional eye across the tiles. ‘Unfortunately, the bell-ringers have confused any evidence that might have been useful. All I can be sure of is that some people have ascended further up these stairs.’

Something was pricking at Irene’s mind, beyond the place’s general aura of power. She had the feeling that she was missing a connection. She looked down at where Vale was prodding at the tiles, then at her own feet on the iron staircase, and it clicked. ‘Interesting,’ she murmured.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Vale said.

‘The iron.’ She gently tapped one toe on the staircase. ‘Every Fae I’ve met dislikes the substance. Why put a wrought-iron set of stairs as the main entrance to a private prison?’

‘Architectural necessity?’ Vale offered, but his heart wasn’t in it.

‘No.’ She was thinking about the purpose of the prison. ‘This, all of it - the location and the guards, and this iron staircase - it isn’t just meant to stop intruders. It’s meant to stop
Fae
intruders.’

‘It makes one wonder about the nature of the prisoners.’ Vale stepped back onto the staircase. ‘But I don’t think there is anything more to learn on this level.’

‘I agree,’ Irene said. ‘We’ll have to go on up.’

The staircase passed uncomfortably near the bells as they drew level with them, close enough that she could have reached out and touched the dark bronze. They were both climbing more quietly now, after their earlier fast but noisy pace, trying to keep as silent as they could. There was a light on the level above them, the yellow of lantern-flames. But there was no sound of talking or movement.

Then a shot suddenly rang through the air, cracking against the metal of the staircase. Irene flinched back, looking for cover, except that there wasn’t any.

‘You will place your hands above your head.’ A voice came from above them in Italian. It was tense, the voice of a man who was going to react badly to surprises. ‘You will advance slowly and without making any moves that we might misinterpret. Remain on the staircase and don’t try to step off it. And we know there are two of you, so don’t try to pretend otherwise.’

Vale gave a nod, then raised his hands. ‘We’re coming,’ he called up the staircase. ‘We won’t try anything.’

‘See that you don’t,’ the voice called back.

The small roof-space at the top of the tower was cramped. There was little room for the four guards waiting above them with drawn pistols. Irene, a couple of steps behind Vale and peering around his waist, could see them rather too well. Two lanterns burned on either side of the staircase, hanging from the rafters, and the guards had a good field of fire. They were positioned behind the only exit from the stairway into the roof. And, trapped between the tightly woven iron safety rails, there was no room to hide.

But the staircase itself kept on going up. It didn’t stop at the roof, where by all rules of logic and common sense it should have done, but continued its impossible climb. A cool breeze drifted down, laden with the smell of water and stone.

The
Carceri, Irene thought.
We must be at the border.

‘Identify yourself,’ the first guard said. ‘If you’re carrying authorization, show us, but keep your movements slow.’

Bribery or intimidation wasn’t going to get them past these guards - they were alert and professional. Beguilement was a possibility, but this time there was a simpler resolution. Irene turned her head till her lips were against the protective iron wall of the staircase and murmured,
‘Iron panels, close to encircle the staircase and block all entry from outside it.’

The metal seemed to scream as it moved, creaking and straining against the frames of the outer panels and the rods that held it in place. The sides of the stairway warped out of shape, forming a barrier between them and the guards, wrenching the interior designs of the openwork panels out of true and twisting them into scrap.

But it was protective scrap. Vale jolted into movement, scrambling further up the stairs - past the guards in their rooftop space and into the part that shouldn’t even exist. Irene was just a step behind him.

One of the guards sprang into action, firing his pistol. The bullet bounced off a panel, cracking against the stone wall. Another guard had more sense and ran round the staircase until he found a gap between two warped panels, thrusting the muzzle of his pistol in and aiming it up towards Vale and Irene. The bullet winged Vale’s upper arm and rang off the iron post at the centre of the staircase, then fell to rattle down the steps in a succession of pings. Blood spattered and Vale cursed, clutching his arm, but they kept running.

The staircase broadened impossibly as it rose and they left the furious guards behind. In practical terms they should have moved past the roof of the building by now, but the staircase kept on climbing. The walls were further away now too, barely visible in the darkness, with only the outlines of large blocks of stone being clear.

Irene wasn’t sure where even this small amount of light was coming from. She decided not to think about it, except to hope it didn’t vanish. Climbing a fragile wrought-iron staircase at an unknown height in near-darkness with guards somewhere below them was bad enough. Climbing it in total darkness would be even worse.

A heavy gust of wind came down the staircase, making the metal creak and shiver.

‘It’s getting darker,’ Vale called back over his shoulder.

Irene really wished he hadn’t said that. ‘Maybe they usually bring lanterns,’ she answered. ‘How’s your arm? Is it bad?’

‘Merely a flesh-wound,’ Vale said dismissively. ‘Can’t you use your Language to seal it?’

‘You’re a living thing,’ Irene explained, in between panting for breath. ‘I can tell it to close, but it won’t necessarily stay shut. I’d need precise anatomical knowledge to hold it together. Bandages are going to be of more use.’

And then it was getting light again. The walls were far away now, and the staircase was a single metal spiral in the middle of a frighteningly large space. There was still no clear way to define from where the light was emerging. When she looked out through the spaces in the iron panelling, Irene could see distant walls and a far more distant ceiling, but no sky or artificial lights. She was breathing heavily now, and her legs were aching.

Another stronger gust of wind made the staircase tremble again. This time both she and Vale slowed their pace, and she saw Vale’s hand tighten on the central post as he steadied himself. Blood streaked his sleeve and had spattered across his jerkin.

‘Wait here,’ Irene said firmly. ‘We’ve enough light. I need to bandage your arm before you lose any more blood.’

Vale peered through the panelling. ‘I can see something a little further up. Perhaps we should reach that first?’

‘If there is danger up there, I’d rather we stopped your loss of blood before we run into it.’

‘Oh, very well,’ he said pettishly and sat down on the stairs, bracing his arm on his knee. ‘It doesn’t feel that serious.’

Irene wasn’t sure whether to ascribe that to a casual disdain for injuries - being shot might be an occupational hazard - or simple unwillingness to admit weakness. Rather than get into an argument, she sat down beside him and peeled back his sleeve. A thin, sluggish line of blood oozed down from where the bullet had ripped through the muscles of his upper arm. ‘You’re lucky,’ she said calmly. ‘It didn’t hit an artery.’

‘I would certainly have noticed if it did,’ Vale muttered.

‘Do you have any brandy on you?’

‘No. But I doubt we’ll have time for it to go septic in any case.’

Time, yes. Time was a voracious clock eating up the minutes and forcing them closer and closer to disaster. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, bringing out her knife. A few seconds’ work turned Vale’s blood-stained sleeve into a couple of pads, one for each side of the arm, and the bottom of her skirt was repurposed into a bandage.

Vale looked at the ungainly wad of fabric. ‘Did you ever train as a nurse, Winters?’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Only basic first-aid and life-saving. You know, sprains, fractures, bullet wounds, sulphuric acid, that sort of thing.’ She tucked her knife away. ‘I wonder if there’ll be more guards at the top.’