Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(84)

You’re in a hole, Peter, Lesley would say, there’s nothing helpful you can do for anyone until you’re out of the hole, is there? Escape first. Then you’ll be able to be all compassionate and thoughtful.

But I’m not Lesley or Nightingale, or even Neblett, am I?

‘I know them,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid they’re both dead.’

It took a moment to register and then her eyes widened and her lips parted in dismay. She took an involuntary step backwards and clutched the sketchpad to her chest. I tentatively held out my hand but she flinched back, her face suddenly broken in its grief. She half turned and took a couple of steps towards her bed. I took a step to follow, but she threw up her hand to stop me.

I stayed where I was and watched as, bent over in pain, Foxglove stumbled back to her bed and lay down curled around her sketchpad, face towards the wall. Not knowing what else to do, I retreated to my bed and sat down to watch over her.

The light began to dim and I called out her name, but even to me my voice sounded flat, dull and unhelpful.

I became aware of a smell of dampness and mildew and old brick. The smell of cellars – the smell, I realised, that the oubliette should have had from the start. Once I thought to look, I sensed the bubble beginning to fray.

I called Foxglove’s name but she didn’t respond.

This was my chance, I realised. Quickly I pulled the sheet I’d nicked and stripped the second one off the mattress. Then I pulled off the duvet cover and ripped it apart at the seams so that I ended up with two separate sheets. You’re supposed to tear the sheets into strips and braid them to make a proper rope, but I didn’t think I had that much time. So I knotted them in the traditional cartoon fashion and hoped for the best.

I conjured a werelight and this time the forma stuck – a bit hesitantly, but I could feel the fairy bubble shivering and failing. It looked like magic was back on the options menu.

You can’t lift yourself with impello. Nobody knows why. You also can’t hold on to something or wear a harness attached to something and lift that with impello. Once, Nightingale had discovered me experimenting and he gave me a couple of notebooks which detailed the numerous ways the wizards of the Folly had tried to get round this limitation. Many of the contraptions in the notebook looked like something Dastardly and Muttley would pilot, and provided a good laugh, if not any actual hope that I was going to fly any time soon.

But I didn’t need to fly. I just needed to fix one end of my bedsheet rope to the lip of the hole firmly enough for me to climb it. And I had just the spell for that. All I needed was something separate and robust enough that I could use to pin the top of the rope to the brickwork. I picked up my copy of The Silmarillion – that would do nicely.

I took rope and book to the landing pad and tried another werelight – this time it burnt brightly – the bubble was almost gone. I extinguished the light and concentrated.

Then I threw my copy of The Silmarillion upwards and used impello to guide it and scindere to stick it upright on the edge of the hole. I’d fashioned a noose at one end of the rope and reckoned it should be a simple matter to throw it up and over the book as if it were a mooring bollard.

I looked back at Foxglove, who was a dim shape in the darkness.

‘I’m going to get help,’ I said.

I got the noose around The Silmarillion on the third try and put my whole weight on it as a test. Totally solid – which did surprise me a little bit.

I looked back again at Foxglove, who still hadn’t moved. Just to be on the safe side I went back to check.

She was completely still and I couldn’t hear any breathing. I cautiously touched her neck – the skin was cool and I couldn’t find a pulse.

I was CPR qualified but I’d never had to do it for real and even if I did, it’s a temporary measure to maintain oxygen supply to the brain until help arrived. But if I didn’t escape help wouldn’t arrive.

Common sense said I should scarper. But as anyone will tell you, me and common sense have always had an open relationship. And anyway I was remembering Simone and her sisters when I found them quiet and cool amongst the shadows of the Café de Paris.

Duty of care and all that.

You can’t do CPR on a mattress, so I grabbed Foxglove’s arm and dragged her off the bed. I rolled her onto her back, and as I did that I saw a definite flicker of expression. I pushed her sketchbook downwards and out of the way so I could put my ear to her chest. There it was. A heartbeat, clear but slow.

Whatever ailed Foxglove, it was clearly psychosomatic. And the speculation about how it worked so quickly would give Doctors Vaughan and Walid months of fun. If I could just bring them a live subject.

‘We need you, Foxglove,’ I said. ‘For science.’

She was still clutching the sketchbook to her stomach.

If Foxglove was literally dying of despair then the answer was obvious.

‘Foxglove,’ I said, ‘you know the two friends who were separated from you at the beginning? I think I know where one of them is.’

I was actually expecting a pause, but instead Foxglove’s eyes flew open. Her face was a pale oval in the darkness, registering surprise and anger.

I heard a slithering sound from the entrance followed by a thump as my copy of The Silmarillion hit the landing mat.

‘Bollocks,’ I said.

Then Foxglove was on her feet so fast I was thrown onto my back. I swear she trailed a weird luminescent wake behind her as she ran to the centre of the oubliette and jumped away.