Squinting, I felt my way to the rope and gave it a tug. It pulled down loosely in my hand. A pulley, or something. The end of the rope on the ground was heavily weighted. So it was some kind of escape route. One end of the rope was tied to the ground, the rest hooked over a pulley high above with the weight dangling from it. Run up to it, cut the rope, and hold on as the weight dragged you up. Simple, and completely oneway. I tugged the rope once more, hard, and the other end of it cleared the pulley high above and fell heavily to the ground. It was a lot of rope. She could be anywhere up there. Sighing, I felt my way to the nearest platform, then reluctantly put away the blade and started to climb.
The way was tough. It might have been easier with more light, but even then the handholds were irregular and ramshackle. The Fellwater was very difficult to power up once it had been snuffed. There was something in the story about spies dousing the spare torches in swamp water, so that the army had been blinded when they tried to switch the blazes out. Details of history could be inconvenient sometimes. I cut my hands on raw iron, and scraped my cheek and shins on loose stone that slid free when I put my weight on it. The framework tower creaked and shifted around me.
Thirty feet up, I paused. I sat cross-legged on a platform, my tired hands resting on an iron pipe that served as the bottom rung of a rickety ladder. Still trying to convince myself that this ladder was worth climbing, that this was the way Cassandra had come. She could have cut the rope and then hidden, and how would I know? A false path, maybe? Or did the Amonites have some sort of technology that deadened the sound of a stack of lead smashing into the ground? Who knew? Who knew what those bastards were actually capable of doing?
At the very least, I was curious where all this structure had come from, and where it led to. Curiosity was losing out to grim practicality, though. The girl could be anywhere by now. She could have kept running straight through the alley, past the false path of the elevator. She could have just hidden, waiting for me to get high enough before dashing back out into the street and away. Even if she was up here, if she had taken the makeshift elevator she could have gotten awfully high awfully fast. It just didn't seem likely I would catch up with her. I sighed and started preparing myself for the descent. Owen would be along soon, with his patrol and his wagon with its spotlights. We could surround the building and conduct a tedious, pointless search. Maybe even find some evidence that Cassandra had been here, hours ago. It was the best I could hope for, once the quarry had been lost.
I was considering if it would just be easier to shield up and jump when the girl's face resolved out of the shadows across the way like a half-moon sliding from behind the clouds. She was sitting on an intersection of iron braces, her legs tangled in the crossbars, her arms looping casually over her head. I jumped up into a low squat and went for the bully.
It was the fastest I had ever heard the Cant of Unmaking invoked. The girl whispered a heavy chant that rolled across the chasm in waves of power. The pistol began to come apart in my fingers even as it cleared the holster. Bolts shivered free of the weapon, jangling like loose change as they were joined by the cycling rod, the hammer, finally the cylinder itself. The barrel followed the quick trajectory of my draw, spinning like a knife across the alley and smacking into the girl's shoulder. Cassandra winced and stopped her cant, but all that I held was a loose collection of familiar pieces that wouldn't jigsaw back into a bullistic, no matter how tightly I gripped them. Let them go and drew the blade, yelling.
My first step found the weakness in the tower, my boot kicking free a bar of metal, quickly followed by an avalanche of metal pilings that shuffled into the yawning darkness below. I gasped, trying to steady myself, but everything I touched loosened and slid away. Across from me the girl looked terrified, her wide eyes watching each piece fall. Cassandra's own perch began to falter, and she scrambled higher. I was too busy with my own gravity issues to watch her go.
The Cant of Unmaking must have clipped the tower, because the structure that had supported me all the way up here now folded away like a magician's trick knot. My platform tipped and I was falling, dropping a few feet before I slapped against another platform which in turn clattered free. Soon I would be swallowed by an avalanche of loose boards and spinning pipes. I looked across the alley and saw that the other structure was still standing, its platforms and struts loose but in much better shape than my own tower. A long way, but no other choice. I screamed and jumped and fell and closed my eyes as the air whipped past my head and I was falling, falling, crunch.
My teeth sang with the impact of the tower. I crashed through a thin wooden railing and onto a platform several levels below where Cassandra had been sitting. Blood filled my mouth and the air left my lungs, but I pushed myself up to a kneeling position. Across the alley my former tower collapsed like a castle of dust, the roar of metal and wood deafening in the tight canyon between the two buildings. A cloud of debris swirled up from the ground, choking me and stinging my eyes. I covered my face and spat. The platform under my feet swayed but did not give way. I looked up for the girl.
The structure was starting to lose hold of itself. Bits of it clattered down into my face. Wooden planks folded and spun as the bolts that held them shriveled away. Through the rapidly growing openings above me, I could see a door into the building that had been left open. There was light. A pale hand slipped out and pulled the door closed, rusty hinges flaking as it squealed shut. The structure around me groaned and leaned into the open alleyway.
I scrambled higher, reaching the door in half the time I thought possible. There was a narrow iron balcony around the door. I stepped onto it, my fingers grasping the door's round handle. My boot wasn't off the ramshackle ladder for more than two panicked breaths when the structure shuddered and shuffled off into the darkness, collapsing in on itself in a horrible cacophony that roared in my head long after it had joined its fellow tower in the alley below.
I turned to the rusty door, laying my hand against the rust-spotted paint, listening. There were voices, many of them, yelling and arguing and making demands. Asking questions. I heard fear in those voices. I heard terror.
My hunter's heart roared to life, and I began to invoke the Rites of the Blade.
I am outside of myself in moments like this. The deeper I dig into the heart of Morgan, the more of his life and his story I let flow through my blood, the less Eva I feel. The less… civilized. There is a raw fire in it, the invokations wrapping around my bones and burning through my flesh as the heart of my god flares into me. It's like dying of joy.
I wreathed myself in Everice, the Hundred Wounds, the Rites of the Winter War. Smoke and sparks of red and hate roiled off me. I chanted the warrior's dedication, and the steel framework of the balcony sang as the air collapsed around me, hardening in coils of power. Hunter's Heart grabbed me, and I howled in perfect happiness. The sword was in my hands, the enemy was before me. But first, the door.
Steel splintered and brick tore under my boot. The passageway beyond was narrow and dark. The force of my passage dug runnels in the walls, and waves of angry light whipped in my wake. The voices had become… urgent. I pushed through the hall and into the cheap wood-frame door at the end. It burst like a dry leaf. They were beyond it. Screaming.