The Masked City (37 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

All three of them hit the floor with varying degrees of style, and Irene desperately hoped the bridge’s marble railings and pillars would block any but the luckiest of shots.

Crawling forward on her belly, she peered through its railings in the direction of the shooting and could see a squad of half a dozen disciplined-looking guards. They were on a ramp that curled up the side of a pillar, level with the centre of the bridge, giving them a rather too convenient firing point. The one who had fired his long gun was reloading with cool efficiency, while the others were kneeling, ready to fire.

‘Those look like muzzle-loaded rifles,’ Vale hissed.

‘What do you mean?’ she muttered.

‘I mean that they are very accurate, Winters.’ Fresh blood from his exertions had stained his makeshift bandage. ‘That shot was not meant to hit me. It was meant to frighten us.’

‘If I hadn’t knocked you down, it would’ve hit you!’ Irene snapped, having to raise her voice now, for it to carry above the sound of crashing rock. ‘Vale, they definitely want to take Kai alive, they might even want to take me alive, but I don’t think they mind killing
you
! For heaven’s sake, stay down!’

‘Hells,’ Kai muttered. He wriggled sideways, lifting himself up a fraction to check the other end of the bridge. ‘And the railings cut out, once we get to the far end, which means we’d be an open target. But if they’re not trying to bring us down, they’re here to keep us trapped …’ He swallowed.

Until someone else gets here to deal with us.
Irene’s right wrist throbbed from a remembered grip, and she rested it against the cold stone. ‘Can we go back?’ she asked.

‘We were less than ten minutes from the entrance,’ Vale growled. ‘If we turn back now and take a different route, we may not be able to find the entrance again, and we’d lose more time anyway.’

Irene tried to think. They’d made it this far. She would
not
accept failure. ‘Kai, if you change form—’

‘I’d be a sitting target before I could take flight,’ Kai said quickly ‘And even if they’re holding fire on me right now, we can’t assume they’ll continue to do so.’

Irene sighed. She hadn’t even reached the part about
and then you escape on your own, while Vale and I make our way out separately
, but she suspected he’d seen it coming and rejected it.

‘We are likely too high up to try dropping from the bridge,’ Vale said, peering round a pillar to see what lay beneath them. ‘Hmm. Another of those vast artificial reservoirs. It looks like it holds plenty of water, which could break our fall, but there’s no way of knowing how deep it is. And the pillar those soldiers have claimed is pretty much touching the far side.’

Irene wondered if his calm was a front. They were caught between the destruction behind them and the men in front, with a razor pendulum counting down the time they had left. She needed to run, to hurry, to try
something
, if only she knew what.

‘Wait.’ Kai’s voice was suddenly commanding. ‘Let me have a look.’ He snaked along to the next pillar, pulling himself up to inspect the water below. ‘Hmm. A good hundred feet down. That wouldn’t do for you, no. But that body of water is huge - it looks big enough. And deep enough.’

‘Deep enough for what?’ Vale demanded.

‘To rouse it. There’s nothing living there to stop me.’

‘Kai—’ Irene began, but he was already moving.

‘Stay down.’ With a nod to her and Vale, he rose to his feet, swinging over the rail in a single motion. A bullet, fired too late, hit the stone and chipped it.

Irene bit back a near-scream, leaning between the pillars and watching as Kai fell. He converted the jump into a dive as gracefully as any professional athlete and plunged into the water. It seemed to rise to receive him, flashing like liquid mercury as he vanished into its darkness.

For a moment nothing happened. Her throat closed up and she was barely able to swallow. Vale’s hands gripped one of the pillars, and she could see his knuckles showing white through the flesh.

Then the water bulged upwards in a dome, and Kai rose within it. He drifted upwards with no apparent effort until he stood on the dome’s very tip, the water seemingly as solid as glass. Irene found it hard to watch, as the soldiers suspended against their pillar seemed all too close. But Kai raised his hand as they aimed, and a wave rolled across the vast sunken reservoir towards them. It uncoiled like a serpent’s tongue, gathering speed as it rose. It reached up and outwards in response to the movement of Kai’s hand, crashing down on the soldiers’ small platform with an unnatural weight. The wash of water sent them scattering, and the hollow boom of its falling echoed around the cavern, drowning out the sound of falling rocks for a moment.

‘Move, Winters,’ Vale snapped, as though he hadn’t been flat on his face and watching Kai a moment ago. He caught her elbow to pull her to her feet, and the two of them ran along the bridge to the stairs at the far end, clattering down them without any attempt at stealth.

Kai came strolling across the surface of the water, now raised to their level, to greet them. Water streamed down his clothing and hair and dripped from his hands, until a last rivulet rippled around him like a snake and flowed back into the main body that supported him. ‘The guards are unconscious or injured,’ he reported, lifting his hands to run them through his hair with a sigh. ‘Ah, that feels good. I don’t think the waters outside will be as pleasant. They will have too much of a Fae touch to them.’

‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ Irene said, at a loss for words. She was feeling light-headed. Perhaps they even had a chance now. She could have kissed Kai - and then her common sense cut in. This was not the time.

And when is the right time or place?
an internal voice put in unhelpfully.
He just saved your life. He’s standing there with his clothing clinging to him. It’s not as if he would try to stop you. In fact, the way he’s looking at you …

‘Can you do it again?’ Vale said urgently.

‘Oh yes.’ Kai rolled his shoulders, the muscles in his chest flexing. ‘The waters will obey my will - here, at least. I may have more difficulty outside.’

‘I don’t think that you’ll be able to assert your authority against the Ten in Venice,’ Irene warned him, and the moment passed.

‘I was thinking of here, not there,’ Vale said, beckoning them into motion again. A piece of rock shivered and cracked away from near his feet, and Irene caught his arm to steady him. ‘Winters, if I remember correctly, there was another large body of water close to the staircase leading into this place?’ She nodded in agreement. ‘Well then, what if Strongrock can move the water from its basin and raise it up to the level of that staircase? And carry us along with it? I know he can keep us safe in the water, as he’s done it before. The Ten might be able to stop a few humans coming down the stairs, but they might have more difficulty with an oncoming tidal wave clearing our path.’

‘I suppose that gravity will take care of most threats,’ Kai agreed.

Irene imagined it. Water sluicing down the stairs into St Mark’s Square in a great torrent. She
liked
it. But despite Vale’s casual optimism, she couldn’t help feeling there might still be some personal safety issues. ‘We’ll still need to exit the Campanile into Venice itself,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It would be astonishing if guards weren’t waiting for us outside. But yes, if the momentum of the water is great enough after it’s flooded down the length of the tower, they’ll be unable to stand in its way. Kai, can you do this while actually keeping us - well,
alive
?’

Kai took a moment to think about it, which wasn’t quite as reassuring as Irene would have liked, but then he nodded. ‘It may be uncomfortable, but you’ll be safe,’ he said.

‘Excellent,’ Vale said. ‘Ah, we are almost there. Strong-rock, once we cross that open area, we will come to that final lake I mentioned. There is a last high bridge across it, which will take us almost to the exit. They might well have armed guards posted there - it’s what I would do. You may need to rouse the water to wash them away first. Do you think you can do it?’ He turned to meet Kai’s eyes.

‘It will be my pleasure,’ Kai said. ‘But this place is coming apart. What if I end up damaging the exit?’

‘It’s still our best option,’ Irene said firmly, deciding to keep her worries to herself. ‘Besides, have you noticed that the earth-tremors have slacked off a little? Maybe their purpose was to drive us into the ambush—’

More rubble fell - nearly on top of them this time - and the marble paving shivered under their feet, cracking into fragments. A huge gust of wind made them all stagger.

‘Or maybe not. Let’s get this done fast,’ Irene said hastily. She didn’t add
Because it may be listening
, but she could see it in their faces.

They moved forward together at a run. Caution was pointless now, for the crashing stone and the wind drowned out any noise they made - and there was no sign of guards or snipers as they mounted the last bridge.

Almost no sign. Irene caught a flash of red, a sleeve hastily pulled back into cover, violently obvious against the colourless marble.

‘You think it’s clear?’ Kai asked, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard.

‘No, look
there
,’ Irene said, pointing, her voice equally low. ‘They’ll be sitting on top of the entrance, just waiting for us to come to them.’

‘It was all too likely,’ Vale agreed. ‘Now, as we planned, Strongrock.’

Kai nodded. Leaving wet footprints behind, he sprinted to the edge of the bridge and threw himself into the lake below in a running dive, vanishing beneath the surface. The water began to swell into a growing wave, sweeping forward and upwards, growing higher with every moment.

The arched length of bridge shook beneath them.

If they went forward, they might be running into an ambush. If they stayed where they were, she and Vale could end up crushed.
‘Stone, hold together!’
Irene shouted as loudly as she could. Her voice wouldn’t carry to the ceiling, but if it could just keep the bridge together for long enough, Kai could deal with the soldiers.

Screams carried over the noise of falling rocks from ahead of them. Beneath Irene’s feet a long crack ran through the bridge, black against the white marble, tracing across it like a child’s scribble. The bridge groaned underneath them in a long roar of fracturing stone, but it stayed in one piece.

Irene and Vale exchanged a glance, then decided that an ambush was the lesser danger. The marble paving was a heaving surface under them as they ran, still holding together but trembling against the forces threatening to shake it apart. It was barely possible to hear anything now, above the shuddering tumble of stone and the screaming wind.

‘Over here!’ Kai roared in a voice almost too loud for human lungs. ‘I’ve cleared our path!’

There was a clear
ping
as something rang against the marble rail beside Irene. At first she thought it was a fragment of stone, then she recognized it as a bullet. ‘Oh no, he hasn’t,’ she muttered.

‘It may be the best he can do,’ Vale shouted through the wind. He had paused at the sound of the bullet, like her, and was looking around desperately. ‘Winters, there’s no other way out of here, we must risk it. Come on!’

It was quite true. But a Librarian couldn’t speak fast enough to stop a bullet. They were about halfway across, so the considerable remaining length of bridge was downhill, but that wasn’t much help …

Oh yes, it was. ‘Kai, get ready to catch us!’ she screamed.
‘Marble bridge surface, become a hundred times more slippery!’

She launched herself into a desperate skid, and the next tremor tumbled her onto her rear. That only speeded her velocity. Like a child coasting down a hill, she skimmed helplessly and unstoppably down the curve of the bridge, far quicker than if she’d been running. The shuddering stone also pitched her unpredictably from side to side. She hoped that would foil the snipers as she shot forward. From the curses behind her, Vale was just as unable to control his motion, and a scatter of bullets cracked against the stone a few yards behind them.

Kai was standing on the now-ruffled surface of the sunken reservoir, where the end of the bridge met the paving. And he was surrounded by a moving coil of water, which had formed itself into a shield around him. Half a dozen guards were strewn unconscious on the ground, or groaning in the aftermath of being hit by the giant wave. No doubt their gunpowder was as soaked as they were. And twenty yards further on their goal was in sight at last: the metal stairway that had brought them here from Venice, standing upright within the yawning dark chasm that became the Campanile. The metal bridge that spanned that abyss to join the paving lay before them. Kai nodded as he caught sight of them, his posture braced and ready, and as Irene and Vale came skidding towards him, he flung his arms high in the air.

The water came shooting upwards around him, encasing him in a rising pillar of water. Like an unnatural tornado, the water moved upwards towards the far-distant ceiling with a roar that was audible even against the falling stone. Then it stopped, its power harnessed on the edge of breaking. Within its grip, Kai’s hair floated around his head as if blown back by a wind, and the sleeves of his shirt rippled from the strength of the flow.