THIRTY-NINE

The graduation exercise of Kate’s short-lived climbing experience with Tom had been the climb of the Third Flatiron, a giant limestone slab that lifted above Boulder like a piece of broken sidewalk tilted on end. That climb had taken most of a Saturday morning; Kate figured that she had five minutes maximum to make this traverse.

There were more footholds and handholds on the castle wall than there had been on the Flatiron. Kate continued sliding to her right, slowing frequently but never completely stopping. She remembered from climbing with Tom and from watching Tom climb that sometimes speed itself substituted for friction, the very act of moving quickly over rock allowing one to cling like a fly where there was not enough friction to hold one on if the climber stopped.

Kate did not stop.

Fifty feet out and the pitch of the wall increased, becoming true vertical and worse than vertical in places. The torches above shed some light here, but what might look like a promising foothold often turned out to be a millimeter-thin ledge of rotting rock, an apparently sturdy handhold would become a weed with two-inch roots. But Kate kept moving, climbing when she had to get above some obstacle, reluctantly dropping lower when she had to pass under an overhang or avoid a smooth stretch of stone. At one point she felt the hilt of the silly little dagger cutting into her waist, but it was too dangerous to leverage her body in such a way she could get at the knife to throw it away. She left it poking her and continued moving.

Her mistake was thinking that it would be faster halfway across to follow a four-inch ledge of soil where ice had fissured the stone. For a moment it was, and then the ledge slid away with the noise of sand collapsing and she was sliding down the wall with no points in full contact, no handholds, and the toes of her cheap shoes rattling uselessly against stone.

Kate closed her eyes and curled her fingers into claws. Her right hand slammed into a narrow ledge where a block of stone had been displaced an inch by some forgotten earthquake, three of her fingernails snapped off, but she kept her fingers curled and hung on, all of her weight supported by three fingers of her numb right hand.

Kate slapped the wall with her left hand, but there were no handholds. Her toes scrabbled without finding a crack or ledge. Finally she remembered Tom’s technique of wedging the toes and palm and just finding a friction point to balance gravity.

She pulled her knees up, forced her feet against the near-vertical stone, pressed her left palm tightly against rock, and was able to lift some of the weight from her cramping right hand. She was panting so loudly now that she was afraid they would hear her on the terrace twenty-five feet above, but no sounds came down to her except the crackle of torches and the incessant chanting, rising to some peak now. She did not turn her head to look at her watch.

The friction point would not hold for long. Two feet to the right of her tiny handhold, another stone jutted farther out, offering a hypothetical hold for both hands. Cracks four feet below that should serve for her feet. If she could only shift her left hand across her body …

She could not. Any movement of her palm or arm put all of her weight on the bruised fingers of her right hand. Her toes were slipping and she did not have enough grip anywhere to lift her feet again. The only thing she could do was let go of her one hold and try to scrabble the two feet to her right.

One, she thought, two … her legs were beginning a sewing-machine shake, her fingers were surrendering the grip … fuck it. Kate shifted her hand, slipped, kept all four points in touch as she scrabbled to her right, slipped again … too far!… and then caught one of the “toeholds” as she started to slide past it. It was deep enough for eight fingers to wedge full length between the stone. She set her chin against the tiny fissure and gasped into it. A bat exploded from the hole, its leathery wings brushing her face. Kate did not even consider letting go.

I could stay here a few minutes. Rest.

The hell you can. Move!

She opened her eyes. Another thirty feet should put her where she wanted to be under the edge of the terrace where the ceremony chanted on. She carefully turned her head and looked at her watch.

12:19. She did not have time for the rest of the traverse.

What if my watch is slow? Kate shook with sudden giggles until she used her wrist to wipe her nose and bring her out of the hysterics. Her arms were shaking again.

She looked above her, picked out a route from crack to crack, stone to stone, and began climbing.

*   *   *

Kate came up over the battlements less than twenty feet from where she wanted to be. All eyes were on Radu Fortuna, who was holding Joshua above him like an offering. A strigoi with a black hood stood next to Mike O’Rourke with a curved blade lifted to the ex-priest’s throat. The chanting was very loud.

Grunting despite herself, Kate leveraged her body up and over the last stone block and swung her scraped and bleeding legs off the battlement and onto a low ledge that ran along the inside of the wall. She did not take time to feel relief at being off the cliff face.

Heads turned her way. Some of the chanting halted. But Radu Fortuna and the man who called himself Vernor Deacon Trent were too intent on the ceremony to turn their heads.

Before anyone else could move, Kate sprinted toward Fortuna. Her legs, shaky from the traverse, almost went out from under her once but she gritted her teeth and covered the last ten feet in a flat run. She did not pause to think what she must look like to the hundreds of assembled strigoi—this wild-eyed woman coming over the castle wall, her face still smudged with Lucian’s blood, her hands bleeding, her clothes ripped and in disarray.

Vernor Deacon Trent saw her first, his heavy-lidded eyes widening, one hand rising from the carved arm of the heavy chair, and Radu Fortuna turned and saw her a second later.

Not in time.

Kate hit Fortuna hard with her shoulder, slamming into his rib cage and hearing the air whoosh out of him. He dropped Joshua.

Kate caught the baby and backed away. Joshua was not much heavier than when he had been kidnapped; his skin was pasty, his eyes too wide, too dark, and terrified. He began to wail.

The strigoi were assembled row on row. Now black and red cowls were shoved back, guards shouted and pushed forward from the rear wall fifty feet across the terrace, there were screams and curses from the crowd, and hands reached for Kate and the baby. She glanced at her watch. 12:20.

Kate hurriedly backed to the low ledge, leaped on it seconds before Radu Fortuna reached her, and then jumped to the lower ledge of the crenellated battlement wall.

Radu Fortuna and the others slid to a stop three feet from the wall.

Kate calmly stepped up on the higher stone and held Joshua out over the edge with both arms, her bruised and bleeding fingers tight under his tiny arms. The outer layer of red silk fell away, fluttering on the wind blowing up the castle wall.

“Not a step!” she shouted. “Or I drop him.”