“You are mad,” she said, opening her eyes to the barrel of the musket hovering ever closer.
“Call me mad if you like,” Ianto said, and as he stepped forward, the chains rattled, “but all I see before me are a drowning foundation and two fatherless children.”
The gun was jammed against her back before Effy had even made sense of his words. Preston was stammering out protests as Ianto herded them back out into the hallway, around the holes where the floorboards had at last given way, and down the stairs. Water was dripping down the ruined faces of Saint Eupheme and Saint Marinell, making it look as though they were weeping.
A torrent of water slid down the steps beside them, carrying the shattered painting of the Fairy King with it. The glass had cracked, but the painting was untarnished behind it, the features of his face still sharp and clear. It was as if the water couldn’t touch him at all.
Ianto stopped them in front of the door to the basement. He shook the end of the musket as if he were giving a reproachful wag of his finger. “I noticed that my key was missing, Euphemia,” he said. “You hardly needed to be so deceitful about it, you know. I would have given it up to you, for a price.”
His hand grasped at her face then, cupping her chin and turning it up toward him. His eyes were cloudless, crystal clear. He held her face so tightly that it hurt, and Effy gave a quiet whimper.
“Don’t touch her,” Preston snarled.
Ianto let go of her roughly, fingernail scraping down her cheek and drawing blood. “I’ve heard quite enough from you. Smug and smarmy since the first day I let you into my home. I think this will be a fitting way to go—just like your father. A death by water.”
“No!” Effy cried as Ianto swung the door open. Black water was pouring in from all the cracks in the wall, inching farther up the steps.
Without letting go of his musket, Ianto shifted the chains from his shoulder. Effy saw now that there was a stake tied to the end of them. He seized Preston by the arm, swinging him forward toward the dark water. Preston’s boots scrabbled against the slick stone, hands flying out to catch himself on the threshold, but Ianto grabbed the front of his shirt and held him so he didn’t fall.
Effy realized only then that he wasn’t going to hurl Preston down. Instead, he began wrapping the chains around Preston’s wrists.
“Stop!” Effy threw herself against Ianto’s back, but she was like a small wave lapping at solid stone. He shrugged her off with a mindless twitch.
Though Preston struggled against his bindings, Ianto’s grip was tight, and the musket was still aimed at his chest, barrel gleaming in the half-light.
Ianto jerked Preston by his chains down the steps, where he took the stake and drove it into the wall, then began hammering it into place with the blunt end of the musket. Time seemed to bend and slow around Effy, like river water around a rock, and there were no thoughts in her mind, nothing but the pure and brilliant surge of adrenaline in her veins.
She splashed down the stairs after them and took hold of Ianto’s wrist, making him fumble with the musket and stumble backward, nearly plunging into the dark water.
“You stupid girl,” Ianto growled as he righted himself. Water was pouring through the walls, between the cracks in the brickwork, like hundreds of weeping eyes. “You have no idea what you’re playing at.”
And then, with one huge, sweeping arm, he hurled her against the wall, so hard that her head hit the stone with a terrible crack. Effy felt the pain in her teeth and jaw, and then a hot, blooming agony seeped throughout her skull and down to her throat.
She managed to reach up with one numb hand and feel the back of her head. Her fingers came away smeared with blood.
Ianto was a large man, but not that large. Not large enough that two people couldn’t wrest the gun from his hands. The strength he had was impossible. Inhuman.
Preston was shouting, but she couldn’t hear him. She was deaf to everything but the roar of blood in her ears. Legs trembling beneath her, Effy slumped down onto the steps, submerging her lower body in the sleek, dark water.
“Please,” she heard Preston say, when her hearing briefly returned to her. “I’ll do anything—just let her live.” His voice was shaking, syllables dropped between his sobs.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Ianto said. “The foundation only needs one fatherless child. I have no intention of letting her die.”
Effy tried to pull herself back up, but the pain was obliterating. Her vision was starry and fading. She heard the sounds of the musket beating against the stake again, grim metallic clangs, and the brief rattle of chains.