Long May She Reign(56)

No. Madeleine had barricaded the door. He knew I was afraid of him.

“I take no pleasure in this,” he said. “But justice must be done. You understand that, don’t you?”

I shifted Dagny’s weight, trying to free one of my hands. There was a heavy candlestick on the table on the side—if I could just reach it, if I could use it as a weapon . . .

Milson stepped closer again, and something glinted between us. A sword.

I couldn’t fight a sword with a candlestick. But I wasn’t going to go quietly, either. I took a small step to the side, trying to make out the shape in the corner of my eye without looking away from him.

More men would come. More people to drag me away. I couldn’t fight them all. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. I snatched up the candlestick, feeling its weight, holding it between us.

“That isn’t going to help you.”

A loud crash shook the room, and he staggered forward.

Madeleine stood in the corridor, a candlestick raised above the guard’s head, ready to strike again. I ran. The guard struck out with his sword, but his aim was slightly off, dazed by the attack, and I swung my own makeshift weapon wildly. It hit the blade with a shriek of metal on metal. The force of the blow knocked it from my hand, but I didn’t pause to care. I twisted past him, and Madeleine grabbed my arm, hauling me away.

More shouting from down the corridor. If the guards had had any hope of being subtle, that crash would have destroyed it. More attackers would follow now.

Madeleine dragged me back into the room we had entered before. The lock clicked behind us.

“It won’t hold them for long,” Naomi said. She was pushing a huge shape forward, her voice straining with the effort. Madeleine darted forward to help. The furniture—some shelves, I thought—scraped against the floor. The door thudded as someone tried to open it from the other side. And then the shelves were wedged there, and we were running again, through the next door, and the next. We stopped in a room full of strange shapes—a storage room, maybe—slamming the door closed behind us. I clutched Dagny tight as Naomi and Madeleine maneuvered a cabinet in front of it.

“Is there a way out from here?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Naomi said. “But it’s safer than being out there.”

“There has to be some sort of passage,” Madeleine said. “We have to look.”

But the darkness was everywhere. I bashed my leg on another piece of furniture as I pushed farther into the room and felt the walls for any kind of door, anything useful for hiding.

“You went back for the cat?” Madeleine said in disbelief. “You risked your life for the cat.”

“Of course I did. She’s my cat.”

I hit my hip against the corner of a table, and fought the urge to swear. We couldn’t hide in here. The attackers had seen us come in, they’d find us. How long would it take for the rest of my guards to realize something was amiss? Until morning? Or did they already know? Were they all against me?

I hoisted Dagny into the crook of my elbow so I could hold her with one hand, and began to search the room. Dagny meowed in my ear, her claws kneading my upper chest.

My fingers brushed behind worn tapestries, but I only found more stone. I found a wardrobe, but it was slightly away from the wall, with no secret passageways behind its doors. If there was another way out of this tower, it wasn’t in this room. And the longer we spent searching, the less chance we had to form another plan, to hide, to do something . . .

“We have to go out of the front door,” I said. “That’s the only way out.”

“But they’re out there,” Naomi hissed. “They want to kill you.”

“And I won’t hide in here until they break in. You heard Madeleine. No one’s coming for us.” I began to pace. “They won’t expect us to burst out and run toward them—”

“Because it’s suicide!”

“It’ll give us an advantage.”

“Against swords?”

“We have to do something.”

“Can you make something?” Naomi said. “A—a weapon, or a bomb, or something?”

“Not without my equipment. Not in the dark.”

I glanced around the room again. The window was tiny. None of us would fit through it, even if we weren’t high in the air. Even during daylight hours, the room would be dingy, too dark to properly see. “There have to be lanterns in here somewhere,” I said. “And a way to light them. We have to find them.”

We scrabbled against the walls again, hands sweeping over the tables, looking for any strange shapes that might provide light.

A metallic thud, and a hissed cursed from Naomi. “Here. But I knocked it over, I think the oil is pouring out.”

“Then pick it up,” Madeleine hissed back. “And light it.”

“I can’t see—”

I scrambled over, trying to balance Dagny with one hand as she began to squirm. The lantern was the usual oil sort, like thousands of others in the city. I reached under the base, brushing over the sandpaperlike material that coated it until I found the small compartment of matches. One scrape against the base, and the match was lit. Even that small amount of light seemed too bright in the darkness.

The glass door on the side was already open, so I tossed the match inside and slammed it closed against the rush of fire. It singed my fingers, and I flinched, but the lamp was lit, there was light in the room.