Chapter Nine Gold, and Gold #4
They went down the fifteen wooden steps to the floor below.
Another dim bulb showed doors along both sides of the corridor, each with a small shutter like a letter box at eye level.
There were five doors altogether, and beside each one there was a light switch.
The floor was bare concrete, and Lyra couldn’t hear a sound.
She looked closely at the first door, examining the handle and the shutter box.
While she was doing that, Asta moved to listen outside each of the other doors.
Lyra tried the handle: it was fixed, which meant there probably wasn’t a handle on the inside, and that the lock was accessible only from the corridor.
Asta came back and whispered, “They’re all empty except the last one on the right. There’s a man sleeping in there. But how—”
“I can open it. You’ll have to keep guard.”
Lyra went to the last door and put down her cleaning things, very quietly, and tapped on the little shutter. The plywood cover was designed to slide in a groove, but it was stuck.
“Mr. Ionides,” she whispered at the shutter. “My personal sorcerer. Are you in there?”
No reply, no sound at all. Then came a murmur: “Miss Silver? That you?”
“Yes. I’m going to open the door,” she whispered. “It’ll take several minutes. Be quiet, and don’t be surprised. Just keep watch.”
She took a much-folded piece of paper from her breast pocket. Her hands were trembling: that wouldn’t do. She took several deep breaths and wiped her hands on her dress.
“Asta,” she said, “the light’s very bad here. You’ll have to help me see. I’m going to use something very delicate, and if I drop it I’ll never find it again. Don’t take your eyes off it.”
She took out the slender silvery needle. Why on earth had she thought this might be possible? But it had to be done.
She bent over to peer closely at the keyhole. There was a steel plate, greatly scratched, around it. Most of the mechanism would be inside the wood of the door; she’d just have to dig away till she got to it.
Another deep breath, and she set to work. It was really only the size of the needle that made it hard to do; the steel and the wood parted like butter. But it was no good just cutting straight in: she had to slice it away, bit by bit, flake by flake, until the lock itself was exposed.
Asta watched, at first astonished, but silent, her cat eyes taking in the slightest detail.
When the metal of the lock itself was exposed, Lyra stood up to ease her back, and folded the needle into the paper before stretching and bending from side to side.
Her eyes were stinging, her fingers trembling, and to make things worse, the light was behind her, so her shadow was always blocking her view of what she was trying to do.
“What is that?” Asta whispered, meaning the needle.
“I had to…sacrifice the alethiometer. But I kept the needle. I’ll tell you more—”
Before she could finish there came the sound of a bell, a large bell like that of an oratory, some distance away but resounding through the whole building.
It made Lyra start and nearly drop the needle in its paper, but it wasn’t an alarm; it rang three times, slowly, and then stopped.
Lyra stood quite still, and was about to reach for the needle when the bell rang again, another three strokes.
Another pause, and then another three strokes; and a further pause, and then it rang slowly but steadily and continuously.
She blinked, and shook her head. Carry on, she thought. This time she knelt instead of bending down. It was just a question of persistence, cut, cut, cut, piece by piece. She let them fall to the floor: there was no point in trying to catch them, and the sound they made was minute.
She stopped to whisper through the door again: “Mr. Ionides! Come to the door if you can hear me.”
But there was no sound of movement, no answering voice.
“You did hear his voice when I did?” she whispered to Asta.
“Absolutely. And that’s an Angelus bell. Interesting.”
Lyra didn’t know what that meant, and wasn’t in the mood to find out.
Eyes burning, fingers cramped, knees almost numb, thighs trembling, she worked away at the lock, slicing and chipping, until a pile of wooden splinters and curls of metal lay around her on the floor.
The door was still locked fast. She was having to reach deep into the thick oak now, and still there was more to get out, and still time was passing.
The bell stopped.
She looked at Asta, dizzy, blinking away the sweat in her eyes before wiping them with the back of her hand. They both listened, but there was nothing to hear. Surely some guard would come along soon to check the prisoner, to bring him food, to take him away for interrogation?
She shook her head and turned back to the task.
Tiny slice after tiny slice, oak, steel, oak; then her sweat-slick fingers lost their grip, and the needle fell to the floor in total silence.
She uttered a little gasp, but Asta had been watching closely, and touched the place among the wood-chippings where the needle had fallen.
It was invisible. Lyra would never have found it, but Asta lifted it out with her mouth while Lyra stood and stretched and took deep breaths.
“Nearly there,” said Asta, after placing the needle carefully in Lyra’s palm.
“I’m worried, though. I can’t hear anything.”
“I can. He’s breathing. He might have been beaten, but he’s alive. Another few minutes and you’ll be through.”
Every muscle ached. Her eyes stung with the sweat she kept trying to mop away. She bent down and started again.
Asta’s ears pricked. She looked back towards the stairs, and Lyra noticed and paused, but she couldn’t hear anything.
“Don’t rush,” said Asta.
“Easy to say.”
And a minute later she laid bare the deadbolt, the hardened steel bar that slid into the door frame when the key was turned. Once she was through that—
But something was wrong. The needle didn’t cut through. It didn’t even scratch the surface. A little sob of frustration, disappointment, something, shook Lyra’s throat, and she nearly dropped the needle again.
“What is it?” said calm-voiced Asta.
“It’s—I think I—” She tried again, with the same result. “It’s not—I don’t know what…”
She stood back, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and breathed again, trying to force herself to concentrate, even against the pain in every joint, the sweat, the trembling.
Such a short way to go! And there was no steel, no diamond, nothing, in any universe, that could resist the edge of the needle.
Unless they’d discovered something that did?
The broken bones in her left hand throbbed like a pulse.
One more shuddering breath. What would Will have done? What had Farder Coram told her? What did Giorgio Brabandt say?
Then she laughed. Something was funny, if only she could remember it. Asta looked up at her, curious.
“It’s not the needle and it’s not the lock,” Lyra said. “It’s me.”
Be intent and relaxed, both at the same time. Concentrate calmly. Her mind had to cut, or the needle wouldn’t. Think and simultaneously act without thinking.
Easy. One light stroke with the needle, and the deadbolt fell away, and the door hung freely on its hinges.
“Well done,” Asta whispered.
Lyra put the needle away in its folded paper and then pulled gently at the door.
It swung heavily, silently, and opened into a room with no light.
Only the faintest glimmer from the bulb at the foot of the stairs showed her anything at all, but her eyes were adjusted to the semi-dark, and as she looked into the cell she could make out a narrow bed, and a man’s body lying on it.
“Miss Silver? Why you take so long?”
His voice was hoarse and weak. But it was Ionides, and he was alive. In a moment, heedless of every kind of pain, Lyra was kneeling beside him.
“Oh, my sorcerer, what have they done to you?”
“Mr. Malcolm, he get away?”
“A gryphon took him—as if it had been looking for him—but you, now, can you move? Can you walk?”
Asta was already close in silent conversation with the little gecko daemon, whispering and nudging and licking her, gathering knowledge in the way daemons could.
“You help me sit up, Miss Silver, maybe I can walk too.”
His throat was damaged as well as his mouth. It clearly hurt him to speak. Lyra stood up and took his left hand with her right. She was a little giddy herself, and she let him take his time to pull himself upright.
As his face became visible in the dim light, she saw how badly he’d been battered. One eye completely closed, blood coming from one of his ears, his nose smashed, broken teeth; a great surge of passionate anger rose in her breast.
“Whoever did this,” she said shakily, “I will see them dead.”
He swung his legs round and set his feet on the floor, but something else was troubling him.
“Your ribs?” she said.
He nodded, but even that hurt. How on earth would they get him out?
Then two things happened at the same time. The bell began to ring again, and a shadow fell over the bed.
Lyra looked round at once. She saw the figure of a woman in the doorway, and the woman said, “Who are you, and what are you doing?”