CHAPTER 62
“Where are you going?” Remi tries to follow, but he’s stiff and slow, and I can’t afford to wait or answer as I scramble down the framework. My sight is as good as it would be in here during the day, but the moon is gone from the window and full power is literally just beyond my grasp.
I jump the last several feet to the floor, landing next to Oudin, who groans and rolls over. There’s no time for apologies or explanations as I dash to the opposite corner of the tower and the trapdoor. At the bottom of the steps, a Brother of Light holds a lantern to the frayed end of a cut rope. “Who are you?” he demands as I come flying down the stairs. “Did you do this?”
Simon and Lambert are nowhere to be seen. “Where are the two men who were just here?” I gasp.
Neither of us care about the same thing. He drops the rope and comes at me, shaking his fist. “The high altum will hear about this.”
Before he can grab me, I seize his robes and shake him, shouting, “Where did they go?”
Startled, the brother smacks at my hands and points at thedoor leading to the interior of the Sanctum. “That way! Now get out!”
I release him without a word and bolt in the direction he indicated, cursing my partial blindness.
Down another set of stairs and I’m on the triforium, the balcony level over the gallery walkway. Though mostly decorative, it’s the highest passage that goes the length of the building. Lambert could have taken it on either side all the way to the other end of the Sanctum or gone down. I move to the center of the facade, my back to the circular window, bright with the glow of the moon behind it. The colored glass blocks any chance of regaining my more powerful senses, but I can hear movement echoing off the stone walls. I close my eyes and listen.
Footsteps. One set. Treading heavy, especially on one leg. After years of working at a construction site, I know the sound of a person carrying something bulky. Lambert is heading toward the unlocked door in the transept tower, probably with Simon slung over one shoulder. I can’t hear any indications of struggle, so Simon must be unconscious—and alive, otherwise there’s no reason for Lambert to have taken him. I hope.
Trotting swiftly to the other side of the nave, I peer down the triforium walkway, striped with the shadows of the arched columns in groups of three. A hulking shape vanishes at the far end. I sprint at it, my mind trying to put the pieces together in a way that makes sense.
Simon was right that Lambert fit the description of the killer he’d built—even I can admit that now—but what I can’t understand waswhyhe did all this. He had everything most people strive for: money, power, and soon would have a marriage that increased both. What was it he wanted? Like before, I feel I’m missing something vital, though it may be because I’m running so hard I can barely think at all.
My lungs are ready to burst by the time I reach the transept arm. I swing around the corner to the stairs, gasping for breath, and stop to listen again. Pigeons rustling above. Disturbed by something.
Lambert went up, toward the place where I crossed into Remi’s mind. I hold one hand to the stitch in my side as I follow. Now I realize when I’d tried to go back to my own body, I’d passed not through Oudin’s thoughts but Lambert’s as he stared at Simon holding me in his arms. He’d been stunned and angry at what he saw. He hated Simon, and it hadn’t started tonight, either.
Lambert’s attempt to kill Remi may have failed, but he won’t leave anything to chance with Simon.
The stairs open to the first landing, where the windows are level with the bottom of the main roof. I pause to extend the voidstone wound on my arm into the moonlight, letting the magick flood into my bloodstream again.
To my surprise, rather than going higher into the tower, Lambert walks along the wide gutter at the bottom edge of the roof toward the east end of the Sanctum. Simon’s limp body hangs over his right shoulder, and, thanks to the moonlight, I can hear he’s still breathing. He’s alive, but one heave of effort is all it will take to cast him from a fatal height.
Yet somehow I know that simple end won’t be enough for Lambert, not after seeing what his rage made him do to his other victims. Ironically, that works in my favor.
Simon’s weight slows Lambert down, but he still reaches the end ahead of me. Sliding behind Pierre, he continues along the covered portico over the stained glass wheel which matches the one at the western facade. Unlike the walkway in the front of the Sanctum, however, this has no railing. One could step off the edge as easily as stepping from the street into the gutter, only the fall here is eighty feet. Below are the forges oftwo blacksmiths with vertical racks holding dozens of iron and steel rods for making nails and hooks. No one would survive the landing.
I grab onto Pierre at the corner to stop my momentum. “Lambert!”
He turns around from halfway across and smiles. “Yes, my dear Catrin?”
Like the voidstone in my pocket, his tone has a sharp and cruel edge as it did the night he pressed the cold blade against Ysabel’s throat.I want you to die.
I slow my breathing with effort, keeping the statue between us. “Where are you going?”
The wind whistles through the arched columns like Perrete’s last cry for help as Lambert glances around idly. “I suppose this will do.” Almost casually, he slings Simon down off his shoulder. There’s a thud as Simon’s head connects with the stone walkway.
I grip Pierre’s stone wing to keep myself from running to him. “And now what will you do?”
He stares at Simon’s pale face. “I will end this.”
Fury twists in my gut like a knife. “Rather unsporting to kill the winner of your sick game, don’t you think?”
“He didn’t win.” Lambert raises his gaze to meet mine. “I simply realized the prize wasn’t worth having.”
Prize? There can’t be a prize unless both sides want the same thing. I’d assumed the contest was between hunter and killer, with the loser either caught or wrongly blamed. Lambert had been playing a different game entirely, but for what?
It’s not until I see the loathing in his eyes that I understand. “You wantedme?”