“Alas, that seems unlikely. But at least you can die with a clean soul.” He paused, feeling Vincent’s gaze on him.
“A clean soul,” the spirit echoed, his voice cool and biting like a winter wind. His uncanny eyes seemed to flare momentarily.
“Tell me where Los is,” Lenoir repeated, gently this time.
He could always tell when a man was broken. Sometimes it was the posture—a bowed spine, or slumped shoulders. Sometimes it was the voice, weighed down by resignation and despair. Mostly, though, it was the eyes that gave it away, and this time was no exception. The young man looked up at him dully, all traces of defiance wiped away. All that was left was a flat surface in which Lenoir saw nothing but his own reflection.
“He’s in the cathedral,” the man said. “The abandoned cathedral at the far end of town.”
Relief crashed over Lenoir in a dizzying wave. “And the boy—is he there as well?”
“For now, but he’ll be gone by tomorrow, one way or another.”
Lenoir frowned. “What do you mean, one way or another?”
“Lady Zera said tonight is the night. If they get it right, the boy won’t be himself anymore. If they get it wrong . . .” He did not finish, but he did not have to. Lenoir was already heading for the stairs.
“Do you know where the cathedral is?” Vincent called after him.
“I do.”
“What do you want me to do with this one?”
Lenoir paused on the stairs. “Do you have a choice, Vincent?” He spoke in a voice so low it was all but inaudible, even to him. Somehow he knew the spirit could hear him.
“No.”
“Then do not ask me.”
Lenoir hurried down the stairs and out into the night. He did not wait for Vincent. He knew there was no need.
CHAPTER 24
It had stopped raining. A sharp wind nudged the clouds aside, leaving the moon stark and hard-edged amid a scatter of stars. Standing water pooled along the street, shivering liquid silver under the glare of the moon. The cathedral seemed to rear up from the water like a kraken, vast and dark and disfigured. Lenoir wondered that it should look so sinister to him now. He had taken little enough notice of the place before. It was not a particularly grand building, dating from a period known more for pragmatism than aesthetics. Perhaps that explained why it had been left to hibernate, forgotten and forsaken, for over a century.
He found it strange that Los had chosen this place for a hideout. Lenoir could scarcely imagine a more conspicuous location for criminal activity, or one so supremely inappropriate for performing witchcraft. He knew little of Adali religion, but they were generally considered believers, practicing a hybrid form of worship that blended their native traditions with the Hirradic faith of their southern neighbors. It surprised Lenoir that Los and his followers would risk God’s wrath by bringing heathen witchcraft to His very house. Then again, Los was risking a great deal already. Perhaps conscription into the armies of the damned was just one more item on the list.
Lenoir scanned the grim structure uneasily, wondering how many enemies it sheltered. Would it be possible to gain entry without alerting the kidnappers to his presence? Stealth had never been his gift.
“Do you have a plan?”
The voice in his ear made Lenoir jump. Cursing under his breath, he turned to the spirit. “Our first priority must be the boy. We do not know what they might have done to him, and we do not dare kill his kidnappers until we are sure he is safe, in body and mind.”
“That is an objective, not a plan.”
Lenoir scowled, but he knew the spirit was right. “It would be ideal if we could find the boy without being discovered.”
Vincent considered the cathedral. “He is in the crypts, belowground.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him.”
Lenoir opened his mouth to seek an explanation, but decided he did not want to know. Instead he asked, “Is he well? Are the kidnappers with him?”
“He lives. His captors are with him.”
“How many?”
“I saw five, plus the boy.”
Lenoir could scarcely control his impatience. He had found Zach at last. All he had to do was separate the boy from his captors and the day would be won. “Assuming the kidnappers are all together, it should be safe to enter through the front door.”
Vincent disappeared, and Lenoir headed for the main doors. He waited for several agonizing minutes before there was any sign of movement. Thumps and scrapes sounded softly from the other side, as from a great distance. The doors were obviously massive in girth as well as height, and Vincent seemed to be having difficulty opening them. Eventually, however, there came a great, cavernous creak, and one side of the door drew inward. Absinthe eyes flashed in the gloom.
“The nave is empty,” Vincent said, “and I do not smell anyone nearby. They are all in the crypts.”
Lenoir shuddered. Perhaps the location was not so inappropriate after all. Over the course of centuries, an unknown number of Kennians had been entombed in the network of catacombs beneath the cathedral. It made a grim kind of sense that Los would surround himself with the dead while attempting to call forth one of their own.
“The entrance is at the base of the tower,” Vincent said, “through the vestry.” Seeing Lenoir’s surprise, he added, “I have been here before, more than once.”
“Lead on, then.”
It proved difficult to follow, for it was almost pitch-black inside. Lenoir sensed, rather than saw, the vastness of the room around him, seeming to stretch in all directions. He caught only glimpses of Vincent, for the spirit’s hair and clothing were as black as their surroundings; only the occasional flash of his eyes marked his location. Lenoir kept to the center of the aisle, or so he judged, his fingers groping the shadows for potential obstacles. The last thing he needed was to shatter his knees against the invisible pews.
“This way,” Vincent called softly, and Lenoir turned awkwardly to his right. The door to the vestry was unlocked, and he moved through it to a room that was, impossibly, even darker. “The stairway is here.” Vincent spoke in a whisper now. “Above us is the tower. Below is the way to the crypts.”
Following the sound of Vincent’s voice, Lenoir found a door that stood ajar. He nudged it aside. A faint glow from somewhere below sketched the outline of stone steps leading down. Lenoir could just make out another set of stairs leading up from his right, curling in a tight spiral to ascend the tower.
He headed down, moving as silently as he could. He could sense Vincent behind him. Cold, damp air seeped from the bowels of the cathedral, clinging to his skin like a wet rag. It carried a faintly metallic smell, and beneath that, the scent of paraffin.
The stairs curved gently as they descended, eventually disgorging him into a well-lit room of rough and ancient-looking construction. A thick stone wall with several archways divided the room into two naves, each of them containing a barrel-vaulted sanctuary. There had once been some kind of adornment in the sanctuaries—frescoes of Durian, Lenoir guessed, or perhaps the Generals of the Host—but the paint had long since worn away, leaving only scraps of color. The lower half of the wall was built from huge slabs of unremarkable gray stone, but the archways had been lined with fine red brick. Cassiterian, Lenoir judged, salvaged from whatever temple had once stood on these foundations. He knew little of architecture, but the crypt clearly dated from the early classic period. Still, it is younger than Vincent, he thought, and he could not suppress a giddy laugh.
At the far end of the room, a set of steps descended into a long hallway. “Where does that go?” Lenoir whispered.
“It leads to the dead,” said Vincent, “and also to the living.”