It all happened while Gertrude was still turning; she did not see.
“All clear?” Gertrude whispered.
Were they? Would Monoceros betray them? Was he playing some game? For now Claude could only hope that he would not give them away.
Claude did not answer but crept forward towards the door of the Chatelaine’s chambers. He had been inside them once before. It seemed a lifetime ago; he was different now. Desperate. Let me have desperate men, Janos had said, once. Desperate men can be trusted. He pulled his knife out. The last time he was here, there had been a porter in the antechamber. If the forged mace-key were in those chambers, there would no doubt be a porter there now, perhaps more than one.
But the main thing he was worried about was the lock. He made a fist of his weak right hand, and winced in pain.
The interior doors of hell all opened to one key only, and it was on the Chatelaine’s arm. It was certain that she had locked her own chamber, if the treasure were inside. But Claude hoped for only one thing, that the locked door was on the inside of the antechamber, after the guards, where he could pick the lock in peace—having first dispatched the guards.
He was not so lucky.
The outside door had a great lock on it, a shining scar set into the flesh of the beast. It matched the pattern of the flanges, like a cruel reminder of what Claude did not have.
He pulled Gertrude toward him and whispered in her ear.
“I’ve got to get that door open but I can’t make a sound. You stand here and cough or something if someone comes.”
Gertrude nodded like a frightened coney. It was strange to see her quiet, for once.
Claude crept to the door and put his withered right hand out, felt the flesh of the beast meet his own flesh. Between them there should have been a key, and he felt the lack of it, and the beast felt the lack of it, too. A shudder went through the skin of the door.
“Shh,” Claude said softly.
He moved his fingers against the scar, feeling the polished uneven surface against the skin of his fingertips. Pain lanced through each of his fingers. He sheathed his dagger, gritted his teeth and used his left hand to prop up his right arm, under the elbow. He could feel the scar tissue shifting, closing in on itself, the keyholes tightening against his efforts. He gritted his teeth so as not to swear.
It wasn’t working. The beast knew what he was doing, and was working against him. And what would it do if he kept at it? Bellow? Vomit him out? Claude had never been quite sure whose side Hell was on, and this seemed like the worst possible way to find out.
Gertrude came to his side.
“Not working?” she whispered, not quietly enough.
“You’re supposed to be on watch,” he said.
“Can’t we cut our way through or something? It’s not like wood or stone, is it?”
Bloodthirsty woman.
“Not without letting the guard on the other side know we’re here.”
Gertrude looked at him.
“There’s a guard on the other side?”
He nodded.
“Then why not let him open the door?”
Claude shook his head. He wanted a quick, silent throat-cutting in the antechamber, not a fight out here in the hall that would call all the chimeras to them.
He concentrated again on the lock but it was even worse with Gertrude looking over his shoulder. Hadn’t he told her to keep watch? He should have come on his own. He should never have made common cause with these women.
Gertrude coughed.
The lock moved and the door started to swing open.
“Speak,” came a voice in French. “Friend or foe?”
Claude’s dagger was already in his left hand and he thrust it up into the place where he expected the throat to be, but it was a Mantis-Man, and the throat was higher than Claude’s head. So instead of shutting up the guard, it made a sound like a great chittering insect as black blood bubbled out of the wound.
“God’s nails,” Claude muttered, but Gertrude was down on the ground, pulling the legs of the Mantis-man. The Mantis-man fell backwards, and Claude pounced on its narrow green chest and felt something chitinous snap beneath his weight. A poor choice of guard. The Chatelaine should have left someone like Monoceros behind; but she had probably thought the danger was above, not below. And Margriet now was doubtless caught, and soon they would be bringing her down, deeper, for questioning.
The Mantis-man was struggling; its razor pincers snapped. Claude slit the Mantis-man’s throat and rolled off him, through the door, Gertrude crawling behind him.
Margriet was in shackles by the time the Chatelaine and her horned lackey came through the door of the smithy. Margriet stood tall, her blood pounding, her hands shaking.
She had a terrible idea. It had taken hold of her, been building in her since—when? Since Beatrix’s first vision, or since the day Jacquemine told her about the hellfire that destroyed the Smedenpoort? Or perhaps since the day she saw the gonners blow themselves and their yappy dog to pieces?
The Chatelaine came to her and walked around her sniffing, as Margriet were some vermin brought in by her hounds.
“Explain, and do it quickly,” she said. “If I lose patience you lose your viscera.”
“I am offering you my service,” Margriet said. “I would like to become a chimera.”
The Chatelaine came closer, spoke more quietly.
“And why would you do that?”
“Because I am destitute, thanks to you,” she answered, hewing as close to the truth as she could, knowing she was a rotten liar. “Because I do not wish to be a burden on my daughter, and because I would go sour in a convent.”
“You’re sour now,” the Chatelaine muttered, walking around her. “And why this performance? Can you explain, then, why my revenants ran out of here like rats fleeing a ship?”
“I did not know the best way to knock on your front door. I was afraid I would be killed outright by one of your guards. So my dear daughter called the revenants, to give me a chance to get in, and get your attention and make my case.”
“Hmm,” said the Chatelaine again. “A strange way to earn my trust.”
“I don’t want your trust,” Margriet snapped. “I want you to make me into a weapon.”
“Truly? Well now, and what sort of weapon would you be?”
“Something with power. Something like the thunder weapons I saw at the walls of Bruges.”
Margriet thought of the visions Beatrix had, the wars she had seen that had not yet come to pass. If Margriet could succeed, perhaps those infernal wars never would happen. Perhaps that gift she could give her daughter, a life with no more of those horrible visions in it.
The Chatelaine drew away from her, frowning.
“But more powerful,” said Margriet. “I don’t want to just make a sound like a little fart and throw some smoke. If I’m to be a weapon, make all of me a weapon. Make it count.”
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” said the Chatelaine with a cruel smile. “I could make the thunder come out of your mouth. I could make a furnace of your belly. I could make you a Hellbeast on wheels. Would that suit you?”
“It would,” said Margriet, with her stomach lurching and her skin cold.
The second door was locked, too. And this time there would be no one on the other side of it. Or so Claude hoped. He and Gertrude pulled the Mantis-man’s body into the small antechamber and stood there in the darkness, lit only by the red flesh of the Hellbeast, by the fiery blood that coursed through its body. How old was it? Claude would have liked to speak to it—or to speak to the Chatelaine’s husband, who some said was still alive, and kept here in the deepest oubliette. He could free him—that would be a fine revenge.
But that was not why he was here.