‘Now look at me,’ said Will, and Cyprian’s eyes opened, circles of green. They were still a little blank around the edges – but he was Cyprian again.
‘If there are survivors, we’ll find them,’ said Will. ‘But to do that, we need to keep ourselves alive. Can you do that?’ Cyprian nodded.
‘I will not fail my Order,’ Cyprian said, the words raw but steady. ‘My training will hold.’
Slowly, Will released his grip. Then he turned and looked.
The last time a slaughter had taken his home from him, he’d been the one stupid with emotion, stumbling through it, making mistakes that had gotten others killed. Now he knew: don’t grieve. Move. One foot after another, that’s how you survive.
Beside him, he heard Violet say, ‘It’s like an army came through here.’
‘Leda was one of the strongest Stewards in the Hall.’ Cyprian’s voice was strained but steady, still threaded through with disbelief. Underneath both their words lay the same terrible question:
What could kill this many Stewards?
Will’s eyes were on the bodies, their eyes staring open and turned towards the gate.
‘They didn’t sound the alarm,’ said Will. ‘They didn’t even have time to draw their swords.’
It had been the same outside. Leda had died at the gate and given no alert to the people inside the walls. Whatever had happened here had taken a hall full of Stewards by surprise.
‘These attackers were fast, and strong,’ Will said, his eyes lifting grimly to open doors, like a dark, yawning cave. ‘They came in from the gate then moved inside. That’s where we’re going. Stay behind me, stay quiet, and stay out of sight.’
Inside, the bodies took on an anonymised sameness, though certain images stuck. A Steward impaled on a wall sconce. A severed hand near a shard of pottery. A smear of blood across a white column.
Will led, as though by seeing everything first, he could somehow protect the others from it. Cyprian followed, his expression determinedly blank as he stepped over the bodies of those he knew. Violet brought up the rear.
Around them, the hallways were silent. No voices. No chants. No bells. That was the eeriest part, along with the lack of light. Here and there, torches still flamed, but many had been knocked over or had burned out, so that the corridors were dark with only flickering patches of light. Once, they saw a torch overturned onto a floor covering, a fire burning across the ground and partway up the wall. Violet moved quickly to put it out.
Deeper inside, they saw the first signs of real fighting. Here the Stewards had died with swords, standing in basic formations, all facing a single direction. No one had tried to break or run. They had held their ground and fought. They were brave, and strong, and they had trained to fight every day of their lives. But it had made no difference.
‘This way,’ Will said, at a corner. He didn’t need to ask where to go. He was following the path of the dead, trying not to think that he was being led towards some dark heart at the centre of the Hall, or about what he might find there.
It brought him to the doors of the great hall.
Violet was already striding forward to try to push them open, her palms flat against the carved metal. They didn’t budge, despite her formidable strength. ‘They’re barricaded from the inside.’
‘That means someone’s in there,’ said Cyprian.
Will took a step forward to stop Cyprian doing something foolish, but it was Violet who turned back to the door and started pounding on it with her fist. ‘Hey! Hey in there!’
‘Violet!’ Will grabbed her wrists, but not before the pounding on the brass doors created a vast booming sound that echoed through the halls.
The three of them froze as the sound faded into silence, waiting as if some terrible creature might now be following the noise to where they were. Will could hear his own heartbeat in the silence.
But there was no answering sound from the hallways, no attackers bursting out towards them … and as thick silence settled back around them, they each looked back at the doors.
Because there had been no sound from inside the great hall either.
‘I’ll try again,’ said Violet, and then, at the alarmed looks of both boys, ‘Quieter.’
This time she set her shoulder against the doors and threw her whole weight behind it, but even her strength couldn’t budge them. She broke away, panting.
‘Maybe one of the windows,’ said Will.
They weren’t exactly windows, more like high thin slits, but Violet looked up and nodded, fixing her eyes on one of them. ‘I’ll need a lift.’