‘The cell first,’ Rye said. ‘Then the rest.’
For it had come to him that the key could save them all. It could save Sonia, and Bird’s people, and it could save him and Sholto as well. It could free them from the Harbour. It could give them a chance to escape the horror in those swollen, red-rimmed clouds.
Sholto’s door wand, soaked through, was dead and useless, but the entrance door slid open at a touch of the golden key. Water surged into the dressing room, and the door did not close again. The hanging black garments floated and tangled in the rising tide as the brothers waded waist-deep to the outer door, and opened it as well.
And then there was nothing to stop the sea. It surged through the short passage, and spilled into the larger corridor. Straw, weed, and dead skimmers floated with it, bobbing and swirling. Rye and Sholto splashed through the debris, turned to the left and began to run.
‘There!’ cried Sholto, pointing as they ran. ‘There, Rye, there!’
And for all his eagerness to reach the cell, whenever Sholto called and pointed, Rye reached out and touched a place on the wall with the golden key. Then he would see a door slide open, and water spill into the room beyond.
Every moment he expected to see grey-coated figures dart, startled, from the gaping doorways. Every moment he feared the sight of guards pounding along the streaming passage.
But no one appeared. Rye’s heart began to sink.
By the time he and Sholto reached the cell, he knew what he would find. He knew what he would find, but he looked anyway, hoping against hope.
As he had feared, the cell was empty.
This was why they had seen no guards. This was why no one had come to investigate as doors opened and water flooded into the workrooms.
The underground floor was deserted. The prisoners had been taken, and everyone else had gone to witness the test.
‘We are too late,’ he said bleakly.
Without a word Sholto turned and ran. Rye did not call after him. He knew where his brother was going. He knew what he would say when he came back.
Too late.
Rye closed his eyes. He was remembering the cry of fear that had come to him when the sea first gushed through the wall. He had thought Sonia was feeling his panic, but it had been the other way around. He had been feeling hers. That had been the moment when the guards came for the prisoners sooner, far sooner, than any of them had expected.
Too late. The terrible words were clanging in his brain, on and on, like the tolling of a great bell.
Like the bell of Oltan summoning the people on Midsummer Eve, Rye thought. And into his mind drifted the memory of Hass the fisherman’s dark, anxious face, and Hass’s earnest voice begging him to be still, to keep hidden, to accept that he was powerless to stop what was going to happen.
It’s begun, Hass had said. The bell is tolling. Nothing will stop it now.
But I did stop it, Rye thought. I stopped it. And I can stop this.
He heard splashing behind him and turned round. Sholto was plodding back, his head down. When at last he reached Rye and looked up, his face was sagging with despair.
‘The workrooms are flooding. The bases of the cages are dissolving in the salt water, as I had hoped. The skimmers there will die. But the skimmers chosen for the test have gone. They are safe. I cannot believe it. We came so close …’
‘It is not over,’ Rye said. His voice sounded harsh and strange, even to himself. ‘Where is the testing room?’
Sholto shook his head. ‘On the upper level of the building somewhere, but where I have no idea.’
‘Show me the nearest way to the upper level!’ Rye begged. ‘Show me, Sholto!’
Sholto stared at him. Then, without a word, he turned and led the way past the deserted cell. He pointed to the wall. A door slid open at a touch of the golden key, but behind it there was only dark, echoing space.
‘There is usually a lifting chamber here, but the guards would have used it to take the prisoners and the skimmers up to the test,’ Sholto said, as water rushed past them into the dark space. ‘No doubt it waits at ground level, blocking the shaft, and I have no means of calling it down. Its twin on the other side of the workrooms is certainly in the same state. The supervisor and the others from the workrooms would have gone that way.’
He took a breath. ‘So we are stranded down here,’ he went on in a level voice, his eyes on Rye. ‘The water is rising quickly—even more quickly than I had hoped. All that remains for us is to escape the building through the gap in the Dispatch Area wall. Better to drown quickly, under the sky, than slowly between these cursed walls.’
We would not drown, Sholto, Rye thought, touching the smoothness of the serpent scale with a fingertip. The scale was beginning to loosen, but it would soon sink into his palm again when it felt water.
And for a moment he imagined bearing Sholto through the oily swell of the Harbour, dragging him to shore, and hurrying with him back to the Saltings. The speed ring would aid them. The hood would hide them. The armour shell would protect them. In no time they would catch up with Dirk. Then they could all, all three of them, find their way back to Weld.
Leaving Sonia to be torn to pieces without lifting a finger to help her. Leaving Bird and her people to suffer the same fate. And leaving the worst of the daylight skimmers alive, to breed at the Master’s evil will.
No. Rye thrust the idea of flight aside, hating himself for even allowing it to cross his mind. But what if he and Sholto escaped into the sea and then circled back and tried to get into the building by one of the outer doors?
No. That would take too long—far too long. He could feel it in his bones.
‘We must find another way to the upper floor,’ he said aloud.
Sholto shook his head. ‘There is no other way. Believe me, Rye. I have searched this level from end to end. I have found and mapped every door. I have entered every room except …’
Rye pounced. ‘Except what?’
‘Except the room where the guards sleep,’ Sholto replied reluctantly. ‘My door wand would not open it. The guards’ area is strictly forbidden—that was one of the first things I was told when I came here. But I am certain there is no way out from there. The guards use the lifting chambers like everyone else.’
‘Where is the door?’ Rye said urgently. ‘Where, Sholto?’
Sholto looked down pointedly at the water eddying around his knees. Then he sighed as if he no longer cared what he did, and led the way further along the passage till they reached a sign on the wall.
Rye put the golden key to the sign, and a door began sliding open.
The stench that rolled out of the widening gap was so vile that he jerked back, his hand pressed to his nose and mouth.
Then his heart thudded as he realised that something was driving the smell. There was a draught—a draught of cool, sea-smelling air. And there was light!
Water was already pouring through the doorway. Rye felt it tugging him on as he stumbled forward, dragging Sholto with him. And the door, like all the other doors they had opened, did not close behind them.
Rye had the impression of enormous, echoing space, but for a moment all he could do was stare straight ahead. The wall facing the door was in two sections, one set above the other. The bottom half, as tall as the wall of a normal room, was made of dark, oozing stone. It was like the walls in the dungeons beneath Olt’s fortress. Plainly it marked the end of the underground part of the building.
The top half of the wall was the usual grey. Smooth and sheer, it stretched up towards a flat roof so high that it made Rye’s head spin. But it did not quite reach the roof. It stopped short, leaving a gap screened by black iron bars. The light of early morning was flooding through the bars, as if the space on the other side was open to the sky.