His arms were sore. His stomach was sore. He was standing on a ledge, near the roof of the manor, and he could still feel the little fires in his flesh from when he’d fallen the last time. But he was close now, so close—he could see just around the edge of the wall where the bay window of Berghast’s study loomed. The spikes looked vicious. He’d thought he would maybe have to scramble up onto the roof and work his way across, but he saw now a thin, nearly invisible ledge of brick between where he stood and the sill of the bay window.
There was nothing to hold on to, of course. But it wasn’t far—he was thinking maybe, just maybe, if the momentum was right, he could propel himself across the gap using the penny-thin edge and hook himself onto the spikes, without falling past it.
Maybe.
He could see Komako now, standing with her hands loose at her sides, her face fixed upward on him. He wondered briefly how he must look.
Go on, he told himself. It’s not going to get any closer if you wait.
He closed his eyes a moment and breathed and then he wet his lips again and crouched and leaped. He ran sidelong with two quick strides across the tiny ledge, not balancing so much as controlling his fall, and then he was reaching out for the window ledge and catching the iron spikes with his arms and puncturing his flesh on them and in this way catching himself, suspending himself bloodily in the air.
His legs kicked out over the gap.
He could feel the meat in his upper bicep and his hand and forearm all tearing. The pain was immense. There was blood soaking through his shirt and when he struggled he felt the spikes go through his wrist, through the small birdlike bones there. A wave of nausea passed over him.
And then he was up, somehow, through sheer force of will, up and clambering and ripping his arms free of the spikes and holding them close to his chest. He was kneeling and leaning against the window when he heard the hasp of the window turn, and the latch pull back, and the window was swinging outward, nearly knocking him off.
There was no one there.
But then he heard a voice, low and urgent: “Took your time, you did. Reckon you could make any bloody more racket out there?”
And something grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him through and he fell in a bloody heap onto the carpet while Ribs muttered some unprintable blasphemy.
* * *
Fact was, Ribs had been thinking they were done for. Or Charlie was, at least. When Bailey rose like a walking tombstone and lumbered over to the window she was sure—absolutely sure—that it was Charlie the man was hearing.
But it wasn’t, somehow it wasn’t. A bird, a bat? Not Charlie. It was like he had twice the luck and half the dice to roll it with, she thought. He just always seemed to be slipping out of a bother.
It was one of the things she liked about him, truth be told.
Bailey had returned to the desk, collected the papers he’d been seeking, stuffed all the others back into their drawers and locked them fast. He snuffed the candle between his thumb and forefinger and in the sudden darkness Ribs held her breath, silent, invisible, listening. The door shut, and locked; his footsteps receded through the antechamber, and out into the hall, away.
She sighed.
Always it was something.
That was when she heard Charlie, the real Charlie, grunting and slapping and scraping his clumsy way up onto the window ledge. And she hurried over and unlatched the window and hauled him in.
A mess, he was. Ragged and bloodied and his arms all ripped clear up. But even as she watched she could see the cuts and punctures closing in around themselves, healing. He was holding them at strange angles, trying not to get the blood on the carpet or anywhere else. But there was a lot of it, even on Ribs’s hands, and this was visible though the rest of her wasn’t.
“How’d you get in?” Charlie was whispering, staring at the two bonebirds in their cage. Ribs was standing off to the side and she cleared her throat and he looked wildly in her direction. “Ribs? You’re over there?”
“Keep your shirt on.” She grinned. “You’s lucky as a cricket, Charlie. Berghast’s man were just in here, lookin for some papers. I reckon you’d of got to meet him directly if you was just a minute or two faster.”
She watched as Charlie took this in. He nodded in that uncertain way he had. “I fell,” he said. “Else I’d have been here faster.”
Ribs laughed. “Then thank God you ain’t agile like me. Else I’d of had to poke old Bailey with the fire sticker and run for the ladies’ toilets.”
* * *
The study felt eerie in the half darkness.