Mum, I don’t know what they’re going to tell you when they find me, but I’m sorry.
A pair of tears slides down my cheeks to soak into the tight, thick gag. My jaw aches and the rope around my neck itches like hell—minor irritations compared to everything else. With my legs half asleep and my hands tied behind my back, any movement could make me lose my balance. Once more I consider just leaning forward and getting it over with, letting myself fall and have the noose catch me, but I’m scared. I don’t want to die. There was so much I was going to do.
The graceful curves of the bronze in front of me are green with age. Magister Thomas says a young, polished bell sounds bright and hard, like a town crier, whereas “Eirish moss” gives it the deeper intonation of a learned statesman, but I always thought of it like the difference between harsh sunlight and soft moonlight.
I snort. Death makes a man wax poetic, apparently.
How many swings will it take before the bell is high enough to knock me over the edge I’m sitting on? That’s a morbid calculation. It probably depends on which religious brother’s turn it is to yank the rope. Old Martin might take a dozen pulls to get it going, but Brother Vincent could probably have it ringing in two or three.
I’ve avoided looking at the moon, not wanting to see how far it’s moved, but my eyes are drawn to the window like a moth to a flame.
Will you cry, Cat? Will you miss me? Will Lambert be the one to—
I leap for the moon as soon as he focuses on it. Remi’s surge of anger and the thought of Lambert drags on my mind like an anchor, disorienting me. Rather than return to myself, I view mybody from the outside first, with Simon holding me in a close embrace, the moon shining like a halo around his head.
“Cat,” Simon pleads. “Please—oh Light.”
—Simon. That penniless, half-sane bastard. Why? Why him?—
My head snaps backward like I’ve been struck, and my knees give out. I feel myself being lowered to lie across Simon’s legs as he kneels. His face comes into focus over mine, white as bleached linen in the moonlight. Relief floods into his eyes, and a second later his lips are on mine. “Hell beyond,” he gasps. “I thought you were dead.”
I blink. “Dead? Not yet, but it’s only a matter of—” I stop. Those are Remi’s thoughts.
Simon helps me sit up. “You were stiff as a corpse,” he says. “I thought you were having a seizure. What happened?”
Oudin and Lambert are watching us with wide eyes from the top of the stairs. Lambert has his hands on his brother’s arm as though to hold him back. “Did it look that bad?” I ask.
“It actually looked like you were enjoying it,” says Oudin sourly.
I scramble to stand. “Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for Remi,” Oudin replies. “We got separated a couple of hours ago.”
Lambert blinks like he’s coming out of a trance. “I told him we were looking for him, too.”
“He also said Simon has convinced you Remi is the killer,” Oudin growls, and Lambert tightens his grip on him.
Simon rises to his feet beside me. “Cat thinks it’s Remi, but I’m certain her reasons are solid.” He touches my elbow and lowers his voice. “Did you… see him?”
“Yes.” I push Remi’s lingering emotions aside and try to recall what he saw. A long tall window. Shadows. Wooden beams like a spiderweb. A bell.
He’s in the tower at the far end of the Sanctum. When the bells are rung for prayers, he’ll die.
His fear and despair. His thoughts of his mother. Of me.
“Remi!” I throw Simon’s hand off my arm and dash for the far window. “Remi, I’m coming!”
At the edge I take a flying leap onto the Sanctum roof, landing lightly on the rounded peak. Behind me, Oudin swears and Simon frantically calls my name as I sprint along the crest of the transept arm to the squat, boxy tower in the middle. When I reach it, I skirt around its narrow ledge until I get to the longer ridge leading to the western facade.
The moon shines on me from the gap between the two towers as I run toward them—the one to the left is where I’d spent that glorious hour with Simon, to the right is the bell tower, where Remi waits for his death. I’m not sure I’d dare doing this in daytime, but in moonlight like this, with so much magick flowing through me, it’s easy. Natural. I have no fear of misstep.
As I near the end, I stretch out my hearing. Lambert, Oudin, and Simon didn’t try to follow me, instead going down and making their way to the front of the Sanctum from inside, but I’m way ahead of them. Shuffling footsteps on the tower stairs are a bigger concern. The bell ringer is coming.
Between the towers is a walkway with a low stone wall which I hurdle over and turn right. The tower door is closed and locked, and I pound on it, screaming, “Remi! Don’t move! I’m coming!”
A muffled sob echoes back.
Lambert won’t get here with his keys in time. I move to the front of the walkway and throw a leg over the railing to climb into the decorative alcove with a wingless chimera inside. Clambering over its back, I find the distance to the arching windows risky, even for me, until I see the storm cable tucked in the corner. Like a buttress redirects the force of thousands of pounds ofstone, the metal wire draws the explosive energy of a lightning strike from the rod on top down to the ground. I grab ahold of it and swing around, stretching my leg and arm until they reach the edge of the window.