Toymaker, The (23 page)

Stefan slipped out of the lamplight into the darkness. When he came back, he was carrying the pack. Koenig undid the straps and, pulling a metal bar from it, settled himself over the stones and began to lever them up, one by one. Stefan dragged each one away as it came free. They had moved only a few when they uncovered a step, and then another one below it, but the rest was filled with rocks.

‘It must lead to the crypt,’ said Koenig.

It took time to clear away the rocks. Katta pulled her coat about her and sat with Mathias at the edge of the pool of light – he had hardly any strength left. It was like watching the grave of Gelein Merlevede being opened again. She tried not to think of the dead woman in the dark, or what it was that had been hidden here, but it was no use.

‘Make them stop,’ she said.

But Mathias just shook his head. It was too late for that now.

The patch of moonlight that fell through the roof crept slowly across the floor. Stefan had taken off his
thick coat and, breathing heavily, was holding the lantern for Koenig. A huge pile of stones lay on the ground behind him. He looked up at Mathias.

‘
Voy
,’ he said.

Stiffly Mathias stood up and walked to the edge of the hole. Koenig was standing at the bottom of a shallow flight of steps. There was a low doorway in front of him. It was barred with a thick metal grille. He was prising the ends of it from the stone.

Katta came and stood by Mathias. As she did so, the last bar of metal came free and the grille swung heavily sideways and dropped with a clang onto the steps. Stefan handed the lantern down to Koenig, who put his hand to the door and pushed.

As it opened, stale cold air breathed out of the darkness and the lantern flame guttered.

‘Come on,’ said Mathias quietly and, taking hold of Katta’s hand, he led her down the steps.

In the shadows of the lantern light, beneath a low vaulted ceiling, lay the empty stone coffins that had once held the abbots of the monastery of St Becca the Old. Their bones, along with the relics of that saint, had long since been taken to the churches of Felissehaven. Each stone lid lay cracked and broken on the floor next to its coffin. Then the flame
guttered again, and Mathias began to back towards the door.

Gustav’s secret was in here, and it wasn’t treasure.

‘Them two have still got lids,’ said Katta. Her voice was no more than a whisper.

Koenig held up the lantern. In the furthest shadows of the crypt, two of the coffins had been closed again. He put down the light and fitted the end of the metal bar into the crack beneath the lid of the nearest one. It was too heavy for him to move.

‘Stefan.
Vasi
.’

Stefan pushed past Katta, and she watched as he and Koenig leaned all their weight on the metal. There was a slow grating sound and the lid moved. The small room filled with a foul stink.

‘Again!’ said Koenig.

Inch by inch, they worked with the bar, levering the lid aside. When it had moved enough, Koenig picked up the lantern and held it over the open coffin.

The man had been dead for a long time, but his face, taut and transparent, had hardly decayed at all. The cold, airless crypt had seen to that. There was a deep, bloodless gash from one side of his neck to the other where his throat had been cut.

Katta stared.

She had seen that face before. Hard and empty and merciless. It had stayed in her mind long after the procession had gone.

It was the face of the Duke of Felissehaven.

‘The other one,’ said Koenig.

Stefan jammed the metal bar into the other coffin and they began to lever at the lid. This time the stone cracked, and they tipped the broken part onto the ground.

Another man lay there, and Katta recognized him too. It was the tall churchman she had seen walk from the opera house with Dr Leiter on the night of the Festival of the Angel, mask dangling from his fingers by its ribbons.

‘But they’re alive,’ she said. ‘I se—’

Koenig didn’t let her finish what she had begun to say. He closed his hand so hard across her mouth that she couldn’t breathe. She began to struggle, but then she heard it too.

The click of stone on stone.

Someone was in the chapel above them.

Koenig took his hand slowly away from Katta’s mouth and closed the lantern shutter. He drew the pistol from his coat – in the darkness Katta heard the
click as he cocked the hammer. Then he slipped past her, into the spill of blue moonlight that fell onto the bottom of the steps, and stopped and listened.

Nothing moved in the empty chapel. There was not a sound. Stefan’s pack lay untouched next to the heap of stones. But Koenig knew what he had heard. Quiet as a cat, he went up the steps.

Katta and Mathias came slowly up the steps behind him. Stefan followed, still clutching the iron bar. Koenig motioned to them to wait. He was searching the darkness. As they watched, he began to walk across the floor, sweeping the pistol through every shadowed place. He had got halfway to the chapel door when some sixth sense made him look up, and in that instant Valter dropped from the rafters, hitting Koenig like a ton of rock.

The back of Koenig’s head cracked against the stone floor as he fell and the world exploded in blinding light. Valter was on him instantly, pinning him to the ground, beating the hand that held the pistol against the floor until Koenig’s fingers cracked open and the pistol skittered away across the stones into the darkness. Koenig was trying to drive the heel of his hand under the dwarf’s chin,
but effortlessly Valter pulled it aside and smashed his head down into Koenig’s face.

It had happened so quickly.

Stefan stood at the top of the stairs, eyes wide, stupidly clutching the iron bar.

‘Help him!’ shouted Katta.

But Stefan couldn’t move. It was as though he was suddenly rooted to the spot. He was shaking, staring at Koenig and the dwarf. Katta tried to pull the bar from his hands, but he only looked at her wild-eyed; the more she pulled, the more he gripped hold of it.

She screamed at him, ‘Give it to me!’

Koenig was on his feet, his face thick with blood. Valter had drawn a long curved knife from his coat and the two of them were slowly circling in the moonlight.

‘Stefan!
Lavti!
’ shouted Koenig.

But still Stefan couldn’t move. It was Katta who wrenched the bar out of his hands and threw it across the floor towards Koenig. It rang like a bell as it landed on the stones midway between Koenig and Valter. As Koenig bent to pick it up, Valter slashed at his face, but in one movement Koenig dropped beneath the blade, his hand closed around the bar and he brought it slamming upwards into Valter’s
body. The dwarf staggered backwards.

‘Run!’ shouted Koenig.

Katta grabbed Mathias’s hand and they fled towards the door. She could hear Stefan behind her. As she reached the doorway, Stefan pushed past, pulling Mathias after him, but she stopped and looked back.

‘Run!’ shouted Koenig again, and swung the bar at the dwarf.

She didn’t need telling again. She lifted up her skirts and ran. Stefan and Mathias were already amongst the tumbled stones in the cloisters, Mathias bent double, Stefan pulling him along, but even as she ran after them, a noise like an angry wasp started in her head.

‘No!’ she whimpered. ‘No!’

Running and whimpering, she reached the archway and stumbled into the moonlit cloister beyond it. All around her the world was breaking into flickering pinpricks of light.

‘No!’ She pulled herself to her feet and ran again.

The end of the passage had been blocked by a fallen wall. Stefan had climbed up into the narrow gap at the top. He was dragging Mathias after him, pushing him down into the darkness on the other
side. He saw her and reached his hand down to pull her up.

But then he stopped.

In that moment she saw his face. She could see the long, ugly wound where she’d drawn the knife across it, and she knew what he was going to do. Pins of light were shimmering like a halo round his head.

‘Please?’ she said, and reached her hand up towards him.

But he’d already gone. She stood staring dumbly at the place where he’d been, and at the flickering lights that were closing in and filling it.

It had happened again.

She didn’t know where she was. She could feel hard, cold ground against her cheek. Her skirt was soiled and wet against her legs. Then she saw a light, floating like a moth towards her. She tried to lift her head, but it was so heavy. She lay and watched as the moth light came nearer.

It was a lantern. Someone was holding a lantern.

He was almost on her. As he bent over her, a face slowly appeared out of the darkness and she closed her eyes, because she had no strength to do anything else.

Holding the lantern was Dr Leiter.

Valter and Koenig circled in the moonlit chapel, their eyes following each other’s every move. Valter held the long, razor-edged knife in his hand. Neither made a sound; each silently watched the other.

Then Valter suddenly turned, and the knife came slicing through the air towards Koenig’s face. It was so fast. In that frozen instant Koenig saw the blade edgeways on and, behind it, Valter’s filthy hair flung across his face. But Koenig was already swinging the iron bar upwards: it caught Valter on the side of the head and the dwarf went down, the knife skittering from his hand. Koenig was on him at once and, with the iron bar in both hands, he put it around Valter’s throat, his knee in Valter’s back, and began to choke the life out of him.

But Valter was strong. He put his hands to the iron bar and with sheer strength prised it inch by inch away from his throat. There was nothing Koenig could do to stop him. Like a circus wrestler, Valter suddenly jerked himself downwards and forward. The speed of it caught Koenig completely off balance and, the iron bar still in his hands, he went over Valter’s shoulders and crashed into the hard stone floor.

Valter picked up the knife. Koenig was only just on his feet when Valter came on again, feinting and ducking beneath the swinging bar, driving Koenig backwards across the chapel with sweeping slashes that opened the thick Burner coat like paper.

For a moment they stood apart. The front of Koenig’s coat was sodden with his blood. He was breathing hard, but he wasn’t hurt as much as he pretended to be. He let the bar seem heavy in his hands, but all the while he was tensing his body, choosing his moment.

A slow grin spread across Valter’s face, and that was when Koenig moved. The bar was only a blur through the air, but the dwarf saw it coming. He ducked beneath it and drove the knife hard into Koenig. Koenig reeled away. This time there was no
pretence. Instinctively he put his arm across the wound. He tried to swing at Valter again, but the dwarf sucked himself back away from the bar and the knife passed across Koenig’s chest and back with incredible speed.

Then Valter stood back, crouching, faintly weaving, watching Koenig’s eyes. This was the part of the game he enjoyed the most. Watching the person die. He had played it a hundred times before. He knew what death looked like when it came, and he could see it now.

Koenig put his hand to the wound. It came away sticky with thick dark blood. He wiped it on the side of his coat and began to back slowly away from Valter, but his legs folded crookedly beneath him and he crumpled to the floor. He still held the bar in his hand, but now it felt like lead.

Valter slowly straightened and stood up. He stepped quietly forward and pulled the bar out of Koenig’s unresisting hand as though he were a child and the bar a toy. He threw it away into the darkness. It rang as it hit the wall. There was a sudden brilliant light in Koenig’s head as Valter bent down and hit him with the back of his hand, sending him sprawling across the chapel floor.

Koenig landed in a heap against a pile of fallen stones. He could feel their chill cold against his cheek. A voice in his head was telling him that he had to get up or die, but it was so far away. He opened his eyes. Valter was walking slowly towards him through the moonlight, the long, razor-edged knife in his hand. Koenig pushed himself to his knees. Tiny dots of light swam across the stone floor in front of him. But there was something else amongst them. He had been half lying across it. He looked at the shape stupidly, not knowing what it was. Then he understood.

Valter walked behind him. He leaned down and wound his short, stubby fingers in Koenig’s hair, forcing his head back ready to cut his throat. As he did so, Koenig brought the pistol up from the floor, jammed it under Valter’s chin and pulled the trigger.

The pistol ball blew the top of the dwarf’s head clean off. The knife clattered to the floor. In the ringing silence that followed there was a sound that Koenig didn’t understand, like falling confetti of a thousand tiny metal bells. Valter swayed, dropped to his knees and toppled forwards onto Koenig.

Koenig pushed the dead weight away. He put his
hand on a block of stone and struggled to his feet. His coat sagged with the weight of his blood. With his hand pressed to his side, he walked unsteadily towards the open chapel door, leaned against its broken frame and breathed in the freezing night air.