The Honours (26 page)

Delphine clattered past them, wheelchair ploughing into the embedded javelin shafts, snapping them under its tyres. The Great Hall was wretched with monsters. Light flickered as splayed wings flashed past the portico windows, so that when she glanced directly at them it was like looking up at the projectionist's booth at the pictures. When she looked back, Lansley and Propp were disentangling themselves and struggling to their feet. She slowed to wait for them, the wheelchair handles tugging at her arms as it tried to keep rolling.

Lansley saw her stopping and his face exploded with fury.

‘Go!' He shook the gore-spattered poker at the east corridor. ‘Run, damn your eyes!' He threw an arm round Propp's shoulders, helping the old man up. He looked at her again. ‘Are you deaf?
Go
!'

Something on the ground floor caught his attention. He let go of Propp, who began hobbling away, and turned to face the front door. His expression went slack. Lansley held up his palm,
stop
, like a traffic policeman, then sidestepped in front of Propp. Delphine heard a thunderclap; Lansley looked up sharply.

The Doctor stared at the alabaster frieze. Delphine almost let go of the wheelchair to run to him. A thick finger of wine lengthened from a spot on his brow. It coated his open eye, his trim moustache.
With something like relief, Dr Titus Lansley dropped and rolled down the long, carpeted stairway, finally coming to rest at the boots of a scar-nosed beast in black riding coat and breeches, holding the walnut grip of a smoking flintlock duelling pistol.

The thing was bat-like, but big as a man, muscled, too heavy to fly. Lowering the pistol, it glanced back at the open Great Hall doorway. There stood a tall figure in the broad-brimmed hat, heavy ankle-length overcoat and skull-white bird mask of a Venetian plague doctor. Coloured glass lenses flashed in the eye sockets as the white beak moved slowly up and down.

The figure raised a leather-gauntleted hand and pointed directly at Delphine.

Something brushed Delphine's shoulder and she snapped back into reality. Propp was at her side.

‘Come.'

She ran.

A vesperi blocked the entrance to the east-wing corridor but she dipped her head behind the back of the chair and accelerated. The old lady cawed softly from beneath her blanket. A hiss, a flicker of movement then a
badump-badump
and the chair jumped as it ran the creature down. One of the vesperi's wings caught in the spokes, dragging it several feet down the corridor before the leathery membrane split, leaving the thing a ragged bloody heap against the wall.

She risked a glance back, saw Propp gasping and staggering, bronze-black vesperi heads gaining on him. Her palms were slick with blood and sweat. Her lungs ached. Several doors were open; ticking, bubbling and the sound of breaking glass came from inside. At every noise she braced herself for the dagger raking her throat, the puncturing blow, the close, pungent breath. The door to Lord Alderberen's parlour was the last on the left. If she had to scrabble to fit the key in, they would be on her before she could turn it.

As she approached the door, she saw it was ajar – which was worse. Vesperi were probably inside. She dug her heels into the carpet, shut her eyes and mouthed a prayer. As the chair slid to a halt she mule-kicked the door. It swung open and crashed against the wall.

The room was empty.

The red leather club chair lay upside-down, with the matador painting impaled on one of its legs. Fragments of something white, porcelain perhaps, shone against the royal blue rug. The door to the master bedroom was closed. She tilted the chair onto its back wheels and rolled it in after her. She was about to slam and lock the door when she remembered Propp.

While she waited for him, she tried the door to the bedroom. It opened.

She let it swing wide.

The room was smaller than she had expected. She collapsed against the end of a four-poster bed that took up most of the floor. Alderberen Hall's pervasive musk of stale smoke and sweat intensified as she tried to catch her breath. She scooped hair out of her stinging eyes. The bed was covered in a red silk quilt edged with tassels of dirty gold. On the bedside table lay a straight razor crusted with white stubble and shaving cream, a little oval mirror, a brown bottle containing Lord Alderberen's tincture of silver, and an ivory rook from a chess set. A pine hatch was set into the wall. Above her head, a showy oriental lampshade hung like a colossal glowing spider. The plush carpet was the colour of tonsils.

Her lungs burned. Beside the Chinese lampshade hung a second, darker lampshade. It shuddered and jawed open.

She fell. Her legs were gone. The hanging vesperi dropped. It touched down, wings spread, with a soft
whumph
.

When it rose, there was a grace to the motion, as if it had just been knighted. She scrambled onto her knees.

Its muzzle was a lattice of pink frills that flexed in time with the creature's breaths. A bloom of white pin mould brindled the corner of its mouth. From its belt swung a loop of black rope. It regarded her through sharp amber eyes, waving its hooked dagger side to side. Delphine watched the blade, remembering how the mother stoat had danced to lure the rabbit. She clasped her pocket knife.

One stroke. Snick. Across the windpipe
.

The room was too bright. The vesperi stepped towards her. To pin the thing down and slice open its throat, as Lansley had told
her, would be to accept it as real. And Lansley was dead. Oh God, he was dead – she had fantasised about it for so long and now it had happened. She tried to feel terror but none of it had any weight. She was riding pillion in her own body.

The vesperi took another step. She felt a nauseous fascination. The thing was breathing, pulsing with life. She could see the stitching in its cut-off trousers, the silvery hairs twitching in its outsized ears. Worst of all, she could see it watching her, could feel the workings of mutual intelligence – it looking at her looking at it looking at her looking at it.

What does a soldier most fear to see when he looks into his enemy's eyes?

She looked away. Under the great bed, tartan slippers sat next to a stoneware chamber pot decorated with elephants roaming the savannah.

The knife wobbled in her grip. She inhaled through her nostrils and opened her mouth to cry out –

The vesperi's open hand swung for her throat. She swiped with the pocket knife but the hooked dagger caught it, easily flipping it from her slick grasp. Delphine snatched at air, desperate.

The skinwing ducked under her guard, brought the hooked dagger to her throat and swung round behind her. Its thin fingers dug into her shoulder. A slow, wet breath condensed inside her right ear.

From the adjacent parlour, she heard Propp's voice: ‘Hello?' He would see his sister in the wheelchair, alone, and the door, ajar. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Hello?'

She tried to inhale; the blade bit into her windpipe.

One stroke. Snick
.

The vesperi hissed,
ssss, ssss
. The edges of her vision were closing in. This was it. The pocket knife lay on the puce carpet, just out of reach. She was going to die like Lansley. She drew a thin breath, gagging.

She heard a floorboard croak in the next room. She tried not to flinch in case she panicked the creature into slitting her windpipe. She could hear Propp's exhausted breaths beneath the closer, thinner breaths of the vesperi, and a metallic scraping, as of someone sorting pennies.

He was reloading.

The vesperi held its breath. A faint shadow appeared at the threshold. The door swung inwards.

Propp stepped into the room. The grip on her shoulder tightened; the blade pressed into the soft flesh of her neck. He looked her up and down, blinked languidly. His hypnotic grey eyes glanced past her shoulder. Beneath his white moustache, his lips puckered.

‘Let her go,' he said, with a slow nod.

At her ear, the vesperi pop-chirruped a response. Propp plucked at a thread on his shirt sleeve. Dried blood had crusted in the wrinkles under his jaw. It streaked his face like war paint. He raised the revolver. She felt the vesperi duck behind her, using her as a shield.

‘It is me,' Propp said. He touched a finger to his cheek. ‘It is Ivan. Let her go.'

He was a dreadful shot. Surely he wasn't planning to . . .

He closed one eye.

‘No!' she said. She felt the sting of the dagger breaking skin. Propp straightened his pistol arm. The room was receding.

She threw her head to the left. The Webley punched. The dagger dropped to the carpet at her knees. She sunk forward, gasping, kneading her throat. Her hands came away wet, dark red blood picking out the creases of her fingers. The ringing in her ears was louder than ever, her nostrils full of salty, gammony fumes.

She lifted her head. Propp lowered the pistol. His arm was shaking. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a thing of twitching gristle, a blackberry splatter painting the embossed cloverleaf wallpaper.

He had risked it. He had taken the shot.

Propp wheeled his sister in from the parlour, shut the door and, with difficulty, slotted the bolt home. Delphine stared at him. He smeared a fist across his moustache, snorted.

‘We have perhaps one minute.'

Delphine could barely speak. ‘You could have killed me.'

‘I could have. I did not.'

‘Where are these things coming from?'

‘Through channel,' Propp said. From next door came clattering, ticking. ‘Ah. They arrive. You . . . ' Tenderly, he peeled the blanket
from his sister. Her head hung to one side, fine white hair spilling over a shrivelled cheek. She chewed at the air. ‘Both of you must go now.'

‘And you'll head for the gun room?'

Propp shook his head.

‘What?' Delphine got to her feet, steadying herself against the four-poster bed. ‘But you said . . . you have to!'

‘Come.' He guided her towards the pine hatch beside the bed. He tugged the handle. The hatch slid up into a recess with a rumble of counterweights, revealing an empty shaft and a cable. Propp reached over the bedside table to a button panel. He pressed the top one. An electric motor began turning an axle that wound the cable. Mr Propp placed a hand on Delphine's shoulder. ‘I never reach gun room alone.'

‘You're not alone. I'm here.'

Fists began pounding the door. Propp smiled.

‘You must take her.'

‘No.'

Propp put the revolver to Delphine's forehead. ‘You have no choice.'

She swatted it away.

‘Don't be so stupid! You're not going to shoot me. Stop being such a coward. This is your fault. We need your help.'

‘I am trying. Please, take her. She cannot protect herself.'

Into the open shaft rose a wooden dumbwaiter car.

‘Ivan!' An unfamiliar male voice sang out from the corridor.

Propp pressed an index finger to his lips. He nodded at the dumbwaiter.

‘Quick,' he whispered.

Propp pushed the wheelchair to the hatch. Delphine helped him lift his sister. They took an armpit each. She was heavier than she looked. Delphine grunted. Together, they rolled the old lady into the car.

Propp turned to Delphine and whispered: ‘Now you.'

‘What about you?'

‘There is no room for three.'

‘But Mother. Daddy.'

Propp looked at her for a long time. Trying to read his big grey eyes was like trying to read the wind.

‘I will do what I must to protect those who remain.' The banging on the door grew louder. ‘If you fail to escape, everyone in this place will die in penalty.'

Delphine climbed into the dumbwaiter car, lying beside Propp's sister, who was humming tunelessly to herself.

He handed her the spool of black rope from the dead vesperi. ‘Perhaps useful.'

Delphine hugged it to her chest. It was slightly sticky.

Propp held up a bloody palm. ‘Farewell.' He closed the hatch.

The dumbwaiter car had been built for holding multiple platters of food, plus side dishes, condiments and wine orders from the cellar, but with two passengers it was cramped. She lay in the darkness with her cheek against the cold wood. From the other side of the hatch, she heard two great blows shake the bedroom door.

‘Ivan?' The unfamiliar voice was nearer. ‘Open up, old friend. What's the matter? This is no way to treat me in my own home!'

The grinding electric motor started up; the wooden car began its rattling descent.

‘Come on, man, don't be a silly ass! Open the door.'

As she sank into the shaft, Delphine listened for Propp's answer.

A single pistol shot rang out. Delphine jumped; behind her, Propp's sister gave a little moan. After that, there was only the rumble of the motor, and the car scraping against the walls of the shaft as they went down, down, down.

The wine cellar was bog-black. She crawled around on her hands and knees, too exhausted for tears.

She couldn't find the trapdoor.

‘Please,' she murmured. ‘Please.'

It had to be here somewhere. Vesperi might burst in at any second. Her knuckles brushed against the corner of a wooden box, its surface furry with splinters. She felt out its dimensions. It was an old tea chest, a sack draped over the top, which meant . . . she backed up
a few feet, swiping at the floor with her palms. Her fingertips found a groove. She ran her hand along it till she came to a familiar notch, like a big keyhole, deep enough for two fingers. She wedged her index and middle finger into it, squatted on her hams and pulled. The trapdoor resisted. She heaved. The trapdoor began to lift. Her fingers slipped from the notch but she caught the lip of the trapdoor with her other hand and shoved it open.

The shaft leading down smelt of rotten eggs. Delphine felt her way over to Propp's sister. She tied the black rope round the old woman's stomach, then used a rolling hitch to fasten the other end to the iron hasp of a heavy trunk. The rope's tacky surface made it hard to pull the knots tight. Feeding the rope over her shoulder, she began to lower the old lady down into the tunnel below.