The lock just wouldn’t give. Rémy cursed under her breath and glanced down at Dita. The little girl was holding onto the bars, her knuckles white where they gripped the metal.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Dita asked, her face a brave mask despite the fear in her eyes. “You can’t get me out.”
“I’ll get you out,” Rémy told her firmly. “I promised I would, and I will. I’m going to open this lock, and we’re going to use the chain to go back the way I came. All right? Simple. Everything will be just fine, you’ll see.”
“But —” Dita stopped and bit her lip.
“What?”
“The belt,” said Dita, “I can feel it slipping …”
Rémy glanced down to see that the ancient leather was beginning to split with the strain of holding Dita’s entire weight. She held in another curse and tried the lock again. It wasn’t like any mechanism she had ever seen before — it seemed to have cogs within cogs, as if it were operated not by a key but by something else entirely.
“I don’t think I can hold myself up,” Dita told her. “Not if it breaks. I don’t think I’m strong enough.”
“Hey,” Rémy told her, “don’t worry. I’ll have you out of there long before that happens, d’accord?”
Dita nodded and tried to smile. Rémy smiled back, hoping that the gesture met her eyes well enough to hide the worry that must be lurking there. Even if Rémy did get her out, where were they to go? With the statues dealt with, the pit was once again becoming surrounded by the soldiers of the Sapphire Cutlass. It would take a miracle to get them out of there at all, let alone in one piece.
A shriek from below her brought Rémy’s attention back to Dita. With a ripping sound, the belt tore in two. Dita clutched herself closer to the rungs, forcing her feet through the bars so that she could use her ankles as hooks. Rémy flung herself down and reached through the bars for the girl, clutching her tightly to her chest. A split second later Rémy saw something plunging down through the cage, a cascade of tiny silvery implements catching the light as they fell, bouncing against the metal and spinning one by one down into the pit. Her lock picks. Too late to worry about them now.
“I can’t hold on,” Dita sobbed.
“It’s all right,” Rémy shouted over the noise of the cult. They had started to chant again, a dull, droning echo that got inside the skull. “I’ve got you.”
Rémy tried to sound more confident than she felt. With every passing second she could feel Dita slipping from her grasp. Rémy readjusted her hold and felt Dita’s grip on her shoulders weakening.
“I’m going to fall!”
“You’re not!”
“It’s no good, Rémy, I can’t …”
Dita’s sentence was cut short as they both felt the cage move. She heard the chain fastened to the hook not far from her face rattle. Lifting her head, Rémy saw it moving. A few seconds later, she felt the cage swaying as it was lifted slowly from the pit.
“Do you feel that?” Rémy cried, “Dita? I told you we’d get out of here!”
Dita sobbed again, tears escaping the little girl’s eyes.
Rémy twisted around and looked up the slope. Through the murk she could just see the figure of Upala, using the winch at the top of the stone slope to lift the cage. Rémy’s muscles were tiring fast — she could feel Dita’s weight growing heavier and heavier below her, but the cage still wasn’t clear of the snakes.
Just a little longer, she prayed silently. Just let me hold on a few more minutes and she’ll be safe …
The cage jerked to a stop, the jolt hard enough for Rémy’s remaining grip to fail completely. Dita screamed, scrabbling for something to grab onto as she fell. She crashed to the bottom of the cage, hitting her head against one of the rungs.
“Dita!” Rémy screamed.
Then she realized that there were no snakes to writhe around the little girl’s body. The cage had lifted just clear enough of the bottom of the pit. She was safe, after all — still imprisoned, but safe all the same.
Rémy, breathing hard, jumped to her feet on top of the cage and turned to see Upala battling one of the cult members. Sword to sword they fought along the narrow walkway, until the pirate woman bettered her opponent and sent him plunging back down to the cavern floor. More cult members poured past the fallen figures of the statues, kicking up stone dust in their wake as they charged after Upala. Pausing, she turned to look at Rémy across the chasm of space between them.
“Go!” Rémy urged her, pointing one arm in the direction that their friends had fled. “You can’t help us now. Go!”
Upala can’t have heard her over the noise rolling around the room, but she understood Rémy’s gesture well enough. She hesitated again, as if loath to leave Rémy and Dita alone. But the soldiers were swarming toward her, just as they were toward the pit in which the cage now swung gently on its chain.
The pirate woman raised one hand toward Rémy — a gesture of both apology and goodbye — and then fled through the archway, the cult members surging after her like dogs chasing a fox.
Rémy looked down at Dita, still lying prone in the bottom of the cage, and then at the cult members who had come to stand around the edge of the pit.
There was no way out, for either of them.
“Rémy,” Dita called up to her with a shaky voice. “What are we going to do now?”
“Don’t worry,” Rémy said. “Everything is going to be —”
A sudden yelp of pain cut her words short.
“What?” Rémy asked, worried. “Dita? What happened?”
Dita shook her head. “I don’t know. Something …” she reached down into her skirts and her face grew pale as she drew something out of the folds of fabric. It writhed and wriggled in her hand until she dropped it through the bars of the cage.
A snake.
“Dita!” Rémy cried. “Have you been bitten?”
The girl looked dazed. “I … yes … I think …” She glanced up at Rémy, her face white and her eyes glassy as they lost focus.
“Dita!”
The girl slumped to her knees.