Sara and Victor joined our charge. Victor took the fore, while Sara guarded the rear.
We got down to the second floor before the mob ascending the stairs collided with Victor.
Shouts turned to screams. I saw a couple of bodies go flying over the banister, arms flapping all the way down. I shouldered my way to the front and knocked a hatchet out of some terrified kid’s hand and pushed Victor’s blade aside as it flashed toward the throat of poor Scatter.
They kept coming. Their faces told me Scatter and his brethren at the front of the charge would’ve run rather than face a trio of halfdead, but the mob behind them pushed them on.
Victor snarled at me. I shoved my way in front of him, lashed out with a vicious toe-kick in some unfortunate’s groin, and just as Scatter flung his dagger at Victor and dived headlong over the rail there was a new blast and something struck the House below us with enough force to send us to our knees.
Victor dropped his blade and simply grabbed and threw. I used knees and elbows and together we cleared the stairs.
Smoke billowed, rising up. Another thunderous blast rang out, and another bone-jarring explosion sounded deep inside the House. There was a crash like a landslide and the wall beside us buckled so badly the shattered ends of timbers protruded suddenly through the cracked plaster.
Evis joined the fray, surging ahead with such abandon he outpaced us all and was quickly surrounded by the men we’d just been fighting. All fled down the stairs, fight forgotten. They scarcely acknowledged each other as another blast and explosion added to the smoke and the panic.
Darla’s hand slipped into mine.
The House shook. Somewhere very close, parts of it collapsed with the sound of mountains breaking.
“Well?”
“We will,” I said. “If we get out of here.”
“Promise? No delaying, no excuses, no years and years of waiting?”
Another blast. The stairs tilted. I grabbed Mama, who nearly went off.
“No waiting. Promise.”
We ran. The stairs buckled and the walls leaned. Shafts of bright light sliced through the dark, here and there, and when I remembered there was no daylight I knew they must be from fires.
We reached the foot of the stairs. The room was mostly buried in debris. The hall that led to the kitchen was choked nearly shut by the remains of the collapsed second floor.
An arrow zipped through a gap in the wall and went skittering by my feet.
A dozen of the staff were trying to open a path through the wreckage. Scatter was among them. He turned to me, his bloody face imploring.
“All of you,” I said. “Follow us. If you so much as spit, Victor here will gut you. Got it?”
Another blast, another sudden fall of stone and wood.
Nods all around. Those with weapons dropped them.
“Good. The rest?”
“Either in the tunnels or dead,” said Scatter. “Seen Lank head down when the first catapult threw.”
“The Lady?”
“Down there, I reckon.”
Shouts sounded outside. I could hear them plain through the many gaps in the walls.
Evis came charging up, trailing smoke and ashes. “We can still reach the other tunnel,” he said, coughing. I’d never seen a halfdead cough before. “Need to go now, though, while they reload.”
Darla’s grip on my hand tightened.
“Forget the tunnels. They’d just dig us out. Got thirty artists in there too. Can’t just leave them there.”
“Finder, listen to me. We need to get underground. Right now.”
“Take your people and go,” I said. “I wish you luck. But we’re not taking to the tunnels.”
“You’d go where the Corpsemaster won’t dare?”
“Can you think of a better hiding place?”
Evis snarled, muttered something to Victor and Sara, and stalked off toward the gallery. He did not take the door that led to the second tunnel. He did give it a damned good kick as he passed.
Darla found me a sooty half-smile. “Please tell me you’ve thought this out.”
“In detail,” I lied. I grabbed her briefly, held her close. “Trust me,” I whispered. Forty pairs of eyes looked to me for salvation.
“There’s another way out,” I shouted. “It’s magical. It’s dangerous. You can follow us, or try your luck with the other tunnel. We’re leaving. Keep up if you can.”
I grabbed Darla’s hand and charged.
They followed, one and all.
I hoped I wasn’t merely adding to the numbers of the dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
The gallery was largely intact, though the ceiling sagged and the walls bulged and a steady rain of plaster fell.
The artists, bless them, still slept. I set Scatter and his fellows to moving them out of the way while Evis and the halfdead darted to and fro, arranging the paintings in a rough circle about the room.
I took the canvas I’d painted.
Mama was grasping every bird she owned. Gertriss was muttering with her, her voice too low to hear. Darla held Buttercup in a tight hug and stayed close by my side.
Evis and his halfdead finished arranging the paintings.
“Whatever it is you plan to do, it had better not take long.”
“It shouldn’t.” I moved to the middle of the room, kicked a fallen easel aside, and laid my canvas on the floor.
The strange symbol I’d left upon it did nothing. The other paintings followed suit. Outside, we heard the thunder of hooves, and shouting, and the smell of smoke was thick in the air.
“Dammit, Finder, hurry this up,” muttered Evis.
The canvases watched us, unmoved.
“Knock knock,” I said, aloud.
Ropes creaked and groaned, the wall beside up began to tilt. I hadn’t heard the grappling hooks hit, hadn’t heard them swat the oxen, hadn’t heard them start to pull down the damaged walls.
But I was hearing it now.
“Me again,” I said. Darla locked her eyes on mine. She smiled.
“You said you would open a door for us. It’s now or never. They’re about to pull the House down on top of us.”
Nothing.
I put my right hand on the symbol.
“Please let us in”
The soldiers outside fired their iron weapons again, in a tight-spaced volley. The wall to my right erupted in splinters and stones, and Darla opened her mouth to draw in a gasp, and Mama opened hers to shout something.
Mama’s word was never born. Darla’s gasp went unbreathed. The splinters and the stones that erupted from the breached wall simply halted, hanging in mid-air, stilled, engulfed in newborn flames, chaos frozen, gone inexplicably peaceful.
And then it all simply faded away. All of it-the walls, the cracked ceiling, the tangle of easels and chairs and stools. Painters and halfdead and Markhats remained, surrounded for a moment by mists, and then we were somewhere else.
It was bright and sunny. Birds sang. Butterflies flitted past, riding a breeze that was scented with honeysuckle. There was a marble floor below, and a wide blue sky above, and lush rows of green ferns set around a wide shallow fountain.
The water in the fountain burbled and splashed. Great gold fish the size of dinner plates swam in it, and when they saw me they poked their heads through the surface and began to speak to one another in chirps and whistles and quick wet laughs.
Behind me were rows of easels, exactly like those I’d just left behind. On each easel was a portrait, and when I saw them I shivered and the crowd of fish whistled and hooted.
Darla was portrayed on one canvas. She was standing in the doorway to my room at Werewilk, her hands on her hips, her face in that bemused expression she’d worn the instant before she’d spoken when she’d walked in on Buttercup’s ill-fated first bath.
The artist had somehow captured that twinkle of razor-sharp wit in her eyes, and the devastating humor in the lift of her eyebrows.
A portrait of Evis was beside her, gaunt and tragic, his halfdead face finally able to reveal the compassion and charm that refused to die within him.