I looked at Leah. “Did you understand him?”
She nodded. Her face was dead pale. The sore through which she took nourishment stood out like a birthmark.
I turned to Eris. “Did you?”
“Flight Killer,” she said. “Four others. And the bitch. Or maybe it was the witch. Either way I think he must mean Petra, the cunt with the mole on her face who was next to him in the box. He said the princess knows the way. And something about Bella and Arabella.”
“They kiss soon,” Jaya said, and Percival nodded.
“Take care of him, Jaya. Get him out of here.”
“I will if he really knows the way. And make sure I see you again. All of you.” She bent and gave Radar’s head a quick goodbye stroke.
3
Leah led us away from the circular stairway and into a different corridor. She paused at a door, opened it, shook her head, and went on.
“Does she really know where she’s going?” Eris whispered.
“I think so.”
“You hope so.”
“It’s been a long time since she was here.”
We came to another door. No. Then another. Leah peered into this room and beckoned. It was dark. She pointed to the cup of matches I’d taken from the kitchen. I tried to scratch one on the seat of my pants, a cool trick I’d seen some old-time cowboy do in a TCM movie. When that didn’t work, I scraped it alight on the rough stone beside the door and held it up. The room was paneled in wood rather than faced with stone, and filled with clothes: uniforms, cooks’ whites, overalls, and woolen shirts. A heap of moth-eaten brown dresses lay below a line of wooden dowels. In the corner was a box of white gloves, going yellow with age.
Leah was already crossing the room, Radar trailing her but looking back at me. I lit another match and followed. Leah stood on her toes, grabbed two of the dowels, and pulled. Nothing happened. She stepped back and pointed at me.
I handed the cup of matches to Eris, grabbed the dowels, and yanked. Nothing happened, but I felt some give. I pulled harder and the entire wall swung outward, bringing with it a gust of ancient air. Hidden hinges squalled. Eris lit another match and I saw cobwebs, not whole but hanging in gray tatters. Added to the heap of dresses pulled down from the dowels, the message was clear: someone had been through this door before us. I lit another match and bent down. In the dust were overlapping tracks. If I’d been a brilliant detective like Sherlock Holmes, I might have been able to deduce how many had gone through this hidden door, maybe even how far ahead of us they were, but I was no Sherlock. I did think they might have been carrying something heavy, based on how the tracks were blurred. As if they’d been shuffling rather than walking. I thought of Flight Killer’s fancy palanquin.
More steps led down, curving to the left. More tracks in the dust. Far below was dim light, but not from gas-jets. It was greenish. I didn’t like it much. I liked the voice that whispered from the air in front of me even less. Your father is dying in his own filth, it said.
Eris drew in a sharp breath. “The voices are back.”
“Don’t listen,” I said.
“Why don’t you tell me not to breathe, Prince Charlie?”
Leah beckoned us. We started down the stairs. Radar whined uneasily, and I guessed she might be hearing voices, too.
4
Down we went. The green light grew stronger. It was coming from the walls. Oozing from the walls. The voices grew stronger, too. They were saying unpleasant things. Many about my dismal exploits with Bertie Bird. Eris was crying behind me, very softly, and once she murmured, “Won’t you stop? I never meant to. Won’t you please stop?”
I almost wished I could face Hana or Red Molly again. They had been horrible, but they had substance. You could strike out against them.
If Leah heard the voices, she gave no sign. She descended the stairs at a steady pace, back straight, her tied-back hair brushing between her shoulderblades. I hated her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Flight Killer was her brother—hadn’t we heard his cronies shouting his name at the Fair One?—but I loved her courage.
I loved her.
By the time the steps ended in an arch overgrown with moss and torn cobwebs, we had to be at least five hundred feet deeper than Deep Maleen. Maybe more. The voices faded. What replaced them was a dark humming that seemed to come from either the damp stone walls or from the green light, which was much brighter now. It was a living light, and that humming sound was its voice. We were approaching some great power, and if I had ever doubted the existence of evil as a real force, something separate from that which lived in the hearts and minds of mortal men and women, I didn’t now. We were only on the rim of the thing generating that force but getting closer to it with every step we took.