Inside was another darkened room, illuminated by the city lights seeping through the windows. This time it was a study chamber, with rows of heavy desks and bookshelves lining the walls. Crake went in first. He’d barely taken a step into the chamber when he felt the floor sink by a fraction, and heard a soft click from beneath him.
He went cold and still, warned by instinct not to move.
‘What is it?’ Frey hissed.
‘I think I stepped on something,’ he whispered.
They listened and waited. Nothing happened.
‘Shift it!’ said Frey, nudging him. Crake stepped off the sinking tile, expecting something terrible to result; but it simply resumed its position with another click. Frey and Silo slid into the room and closed the door behind them, shutting out the light from the corridor, and the footsteps of the nearby guard.
‘Pressure plate,’ Silo murmured, kneeling down next to it. ‘Prob’ly linked to an alarm.’
‘I don’t hear an alarm,’ Crake said hopefully.
‘Guards around here. These ain’t armed, case the guards set ’em off.’ He stood up, and his eyes glittered in the gloom. ‘When you don’t see no guards, then you worry ’bout the traps.’ iv rds around
Crake nodded, an uncertain look on his face. There was something faintly menacing about Silo these days. An edge to him that hadn’t been there before. Crake had always rather liked the Murthian, and had never minded his tendency towards silence. But lately his quietness seemed more like dangerous brooding.
They crossed the study area to another corridor. On the far side, across the marble floor, they could see a wide, curving stairway. Silo made a quick check and they crossed to the stairs.
The stairs bent back on themselves as they climbed, ending in a small landing at the top and a carved door inlaid with swirling motifs. Overlooking the landing was a huge portrait of the Archducal Family: Archduke Monterick Arken, his wife Eloithe, and their son Hengar. Monterick tall and athletic, wearing a high-collared uniform, his hair and neatly trimmed beard a dark, rich red. Eloithe small and dark-haired, but with a fierceness in her eye that had made her beloved by some of her people and loathed by others.
And then Hengar. Earl Hengar, who’d inherited his father’s fiery hair and bright blue eyes. He was a handsome man, but he wore an enigmatic smile that made him look cruel. At least until Frey had accidentally blown him up aboard the Ace of Skulls, almost two years ago.
Crake glanced at Frey, who was looking at the painting. ‘I always thought he had brown hair,’ he whispered.
Crake frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Ferrotypes don’t come in colour, do they? Never seen a painting of him.’
Silo, who had no interest in the painting whatsoever, had quietly moved to the door at the top of the landing. It opened inwards, towards him. He peered out through the gap he’d made, then turned back to his companions and put an urgent finger to his lips.
They crept over to see what Silo had spotted. As soon as Crake peeked out, he saw the problem. The door was set halfway along another corridor. There was a shaven-headed guard sitting on a chair a half-dozen metres away, leaning up against the wall. His eyes were closed, but his hands were behind his head, and his foot was swinging lazily. There was a gun in a holster strapped to his thigh. He didn’t look asleep, just bored.
There was no way they were getting past him unseen. Crake pointed back down the stairs.
Silo cupped a hand to his ear. They heard a humming from down below, the simple stepped melody of ‘Little Bright Star’.
Crake began to feel a growing sense of alarm. They were trapped on this staircase. Maybe the humming guard would just walk on past, but maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d come up the stairs, rounding the curve until they came into sight. And then the shooting would start.
Silo was hurriedly yas hRomnking off his boots and socks. That done, he motioned at Frey, who didn’t understand him until Silo reached into the inside pocket of Frey’s coat and took out the bottle of chloroform. He pulled off the rag that it was wrapped in, wadded and soaked it, then gave the bottle back to Frey.
He’ll see you, Crake mouthed, well aware that the guard was only a few metres away through a door that was ajar.
Silo took off his earcuff and showed it to Crake meaningfully, although Crake wasn’t sure what the meaning actually was. He followed at Silo’s shoulder as the Murthian went barefoot to the doorway, aimed the earcuff, and tossed it down the corridor.
It flew silently past the guard, hit the floor on the far side of him, tapped and skittered. The guard’s eyes flew open at the sudden noise and he leaped to his feet, hand going to his holster. In doing so, he turned his back to the door. Silo broke cover, running silently on the pads of his feet. The guard heard him at the last moment, but wasn’t quick enough. Silo seized him from behind, clamping the chloroform-soaked rag hard to his mouth, using the other hand to stop him drawing his revolver. He struggled and jerked, making muffled cries, but Silo was surprisingly powerful for someone so lean. The strength leaked out of the guard in seconds, and his eyes fluttered closed, having never even seen his assailant.
Crake and Frey slipped through the door into the corridor. Frey was carrying Silo’s footwear at arm’s length, his nose wrinkled. Crake closed the door quietly behind them. Silo propped the man up in the chair, so that it looked for all the world like he was asleep.
‘You know,’ Frey whispered to Crake. ‘It occurs to me that I don’t know shit all about that feller.’
‘He is surprisingly, um, I believe the term is bad-arse, for someone who’s spent their whole life as a slave,’ Crake observed.
‘He can handle a shotgun as well, and he sure didn’t learn that from any of us.’
‘ It’s all veeeeery mysterious!!!’ said Jez in a spooky voice, making them jump.
Frey and Crake exchanged a weary glance. ‘Sometimes I hate these bloody earcuffs,’ Frey said, as Jez cackled at them from the cockpit of the Ketty Jay.
Silo had retrieved his own earcuff by now. He returned to his companions and put his socks and boots back on. Then he looked at them both as if to say: Well?
‘That way,’ said Frey, pointing in a direction which Crake assumed was random.
The next door took them into a small, barrel-vaulted chamber with bronze busts in alcoves to either side. At the far end was a metal door, set deeply into the wall beneath a great stone lintel. Its surface was decorated with several sturd seew Roman"›y guild crests in bronze and gold and copper.
‘Now that looks like the kind of door a feller might keep something behind,’ said Frey.
Silo put his palm on Frey’s chest as the Cap’n stepped forward. ‘No guards,’ he said.
Crake listened. They couldn’t hear any footsteps anywhere.
‘Right,’ said Frey, catching on. ‘Everyone, stay sharp. And watch where you’re stepping.’
‘Edge of the room,’ said Silo. ‘Any pressure pads, they’ll be in the middle.’
Crake took the engineer’s word for it. They stayed close to the wall. Crake let the others go first, and trod where they stepped. He didn’t want to be the one to bring everything down on their heads.
They reached the door without incident. Frey tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. A large keyhole sat within a flower of moulded metal. Silo tapped Frey’s arm and pointed up. Crake looked. No wonder the door was set so deep. There was a gap in the lintel overhead, and the bottom of a gate could be seen within it.
‘Ah,’ said Frey.
‘Best guess, they got triggers inside,’ said Silo. ‘Trip one, gate come down. Traps you inside ’n’ the guards come.’
‘Let’s not trip any, then,’ said Frey. ‘Mr Crake, if you please?’ He swept his arm theatrically towards the door.