A spike of terror, one that came from the other rather than from her own soul, rooted her in place. An involuntary cry escaped her lips.
One of the Guardsmen craned his neck upward, seeking uselessly to penetrate the shadows that clung to the ceiling in the lantern-light. Pushing back the brim of his plumed hat, he shook his head irritably. These new oil lamps were better than torches, but you still couldn't bloody well see a damn thing when you needed to.
When the sound failed to repeat itself, he shrugged and, with a muttered, “Rats, I suppose,” resumed his grisly work.
“Now see what you almost did!” the girl hissed at her unseen companion, slowly edging her way across the beam. “When we get out of this, we're going to have a serious talk as to who's in charge here. I-”
“Sergeant!” The voice reverberated from below. The rafter-borne figure tilted her head, gazing down at the young constable who'd identified the body of Robert Vereaux.
You think this is horrible now, she thought at them bitterly, blinking back tears. Where were you while I watched it happen?!
A swell of sympathy and understanding washed over her from the unseen presence.
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped quietly.
“What is it, Constable?” This, weary-voiced, came from the older Guardsman.
“Sir,” the young man replied, “I've found a loose stone in the wall here. There's a lever of some sort hidden behind it.”
“Oh, figs,” the young woman breathed.
With an old, practiced eye, Chapelle studied the large brick that lifted easily, despite its apparent mass, from its housing; the lever, perhaps a foot long, concealed behind it; and finally, took a single all-encompassing glance around the room entire, as though trying to discern what the mechanism might do.
“Well,” he said eventually, his tone even, “adventure fiction aside, nobody actually builds traps this obvious, just in the hopes that someone may be curious.” Nobody sane, anyway. “All the same, I want everybody to leave the chamber and step back into the hallway. Just in case. Bouniard!”
The young constable snapped to attention. “Sir?”
“I want you waiting in the doorway. If something untoward does happen, I expect some modicum of effort to get me out of it.” The sergeant smiled tightly. “I'm not expecting miracles, of course, since someone gets a promotion if I die in here. But at least make it look good.”
Julien Bouniard smiled faintly. “I'll certainly appear to do my damnedest, sir.”
“That's the spirit! All right, move!”
In moments, the room was emptied of all living inhabitants save the sergeant himself, and the unseen watcher above. A quick glance at young Bouniard-gravely returned with a nod-and Chapelle yanked on the lever.
A low grinding sounded from beneath the bloody tiles; deep, ponderous, as though they were witnessing the gestation and birth of the thunder itself. The room shuddered, sending faint showers of dust spilling from the rafters (and eliciting a second involuntary yelp that, thankfully, went unheard amidst the rumbling). Agitated from beneath, a few dead limbs flailed about in a profane dance.
The center of the floor opened up, revealing a hollow almost ten feet on a side. Several corpses dropped into the gap, landing with a symphony of wet thumps on whatever lay below. Chapelle, his face gone pale, realized that they had just lost the bodies of five or six of the city's elite.
But the procedure, whatever it was, was not complete. Something emerged, in rapid fits and starts, from the newborn pit.
The statue rose to its full height of eighteen feet, its horns almost brushing the rafters. It was carved in a crouch, as though it might leap to attack at any moment, bringing to bear the wicked axe slung over its left shoulder. Bedecked in furs that were carved with exquisite detail, sporting a beard so finely sculpted that it seemed possible to go and pluck a hair, it stared down at Chapelle with narrowed stone eyes. It looked for all the world to be a warrior of the ancient northlands, save for the horns that jutted from its otherwise bald scalp.
There was nothing inherently religious about the sculpture, but Chapelle knew an idol when he saw one; every citizen of Galice knew an idol when they saw one.
“Sir?”
“I'm fine, Constable. Bring the men back in here.” Trusting that his orders would be obeyed, he continued his examination of the towering form.
It clearly wasn't one of the 147 gods of the Pact-or at least, not in any iconography recognized by the High Church. Sure, worship of an unrecognized god wasn't technically illegal, but every city, every government organization, every guild, and every noble house of any repute claimed as their patrons a member of the Hallowed Pact. For all of these victims-each one claiming a different house and thus, most probably, a different patron-to have participated in rites devoted to an unrecognized deity was another blemish to fuel an already scandalous situation.
Yet again, Chapelle heaved a sigh from the very depths of his soul. “Search the statue,” he ordered, indicating a trio of guards, including Constable Bouniard. “The rest of you…keep counting bodies.”
In the rafters above, some eight feet from the leftmost horn, the filthy young woman again glanced over her shoulder. Pushing her matted and reeking hair from her face, she asked quietly, “This doesn't actually change your situation, does it? Them seeing your idol, I mean?”
A resounding sense of denial ran through her body. She grimaced.
“All right,” she said, shifting her attention back to the events below. “This is bad. Still, I think we can talk our way-”
“Sergeant! I've found something!”
“This keeps getting better,” she mumbled.
Chapelle appeared beside the young constable, who was pointing toward a carefully concealed catch at the rear of the idol. “You seem to have a knack for finding these things, Bouniard,” he said gruffly. He looked over the constable's find: a simple switch, set flush with the stone, just beneath the lip of the platform. With a leather-gloved hand, the sergeant flipped the switch.
A drawer, so expertly crafted as to have been all but invisible, slid from the stone. Within lay several small candles, a long quill, a jar of ink, and a wood-bound and velvet-wrapped ledger. Without so much as a pause for breath, Chapelle snapped up the book and flipped it open, eagerly scanning the pages for answers.
Even the most casual examination suggested the book could be nothing less than a roster of membership for this strange little cult, each page devoted to one individual. There were no names-gods forbid they make this easy! — but it did include dates, titles of rank or seniority that were pretty much meaningless to the old Guardsman, and a monetary value listed in gold marks, perhaps indicating donations.
Chapelle was quite sure that he'd just found the motive for the horrific crimes: The sheer quantity of gold in the sect's coffers must be staggering. Why, the first eight or nine entries alone totaled up to more than ten thousand marks!
More importantly, though, his men had managed a tentative count of the dead while he'd searched the statue and perused the ledger. And if that count was correct, the room contained twenty-six corpses-to the ledger's twenty-eight entries. At least two members were unaccounted for.
“Inside job,” he said to Bouniard. “I suppose it would almost have had to be. I…”
“Sir,” Julien pressed as Chapelle's brow furrowed in thought. “What is it?”