Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [175]
On the far side, I could hear the pounding sea, and naught else. No way to know but to try it. How much worse could it be, if they caught me?
A great deal. I knew that already. But that would happen anyway. Swallowing my fear, I drew open the shutters.
Night air blew in and the wail of Asherat's grief filled
my ears. In the darkness that lay beyond, I saw the bright sparks of torches moving here and there across the island, working in pairs. Too far away to see, I thought. A torch casts a pool of light some fifteen feet in diameter, mayhap; no further. Beyond the circle of light, the bearer is sightless.
The night skies were clouded, no moon or stars to betray me. Even if they were looking—and they were not, they were seeking an intruder, not watching the fortress—they would not see.
All of this I knew to be true. Still, it was a terrifying thing, to clamber out the window, rendering myself vulnerable, dropping, exposed, to the stony path below. For a moment, I merely crouched at the foot of the fortress wall, breathing hard.
I could not stay. Above me, the service window gaped open, a breach waiting to be discovered. I gathered my wits, assessing my position. I was on the inland side of the fortress, furthest from the cliffs. To my left lay the rear of the fortress; to my right, the front, and the steep, rocky path to the bridge.
It was in that direction that the most torches were concentrated, and periodic faint shouts were audible over the sea. I listened hard for the clash of arms, and heard naught. Well, I thought, if I cannot go that way, I must go around the other, and pray for an opening. Whatever has passed, they have not found the intruder. Someone had taken the watchtower on the mainland, that much I knew; whether or not the warden's men had reclaimed it, I did not know. If they had not... there was a chance.
I had to gain the bridge. There was nothing else for it.
When we were children, Delaunay would set up courses for Alcuin and me, mazes that we must negotiate blindfolded, until we could move silently and swiftly in the dark. I dreamed then of exploring the quarters of some wealthy patron while they slept, searching out Elua-knows-what dire secrets. I never used those skills, then, but I used them now, making my way around the base of the looming fortress.
How long it took, I could not say. It seemed forever, although I daresay it was no longer than it took to heat water for the bath. Once a pair of guards passed close by me, forcing me to retreat noiselessly beyond the doubled circles of torchlight they cast. The volcanic rock of the island had sharp, jagged edges that bit painfully into the bare soles ofmy feet, but I bit my lip and kept silent, letting the pain sharpen my focus.
Sometimes it is an advantage to be an anguissette.
The guards were nervous, I could hear it in their low voices. "... grandfather saw it, and never spoke another word," one of them was muttering. "If you ask me, nothing human could cross that sodding bridge without being seen."
"Pascal saw it," the other said shortly. "It ran off before it finished him, and he was still alive when Gitto found him. He died trying to say what he saw. It didn't come over the bridge, it crawled under it."
"Yar, like a giant sodding spider!" the first retorted. "I tell you, whatever we're looking for, it's not human. No man could do that."
As I crouched in the dark, scarce daring to breathe while they moved out of range, I tried to imagine it—crawling beneath that deadly bridge, clinging to the underside, fingers and toes wedged between the knot-joined planks, moving one torturous plank at a time, suspended upside down in the howling winds, above the raging cauldron of sea and rocks ... who would even dream of attempting such a thing?
I knew only one.
Joscelin.
Don't dare to hope, I told myself, watching the torches recede; don't even think it! It was too much, too impossible. How could he have even found out where I was? It must be something else, some