Chapter 29 #3
Norah’s eyes were still locked on mine as she nodded.
One by one, she took her hands off me. I staggered a little, but stayed on my feet.
Norah took the box from the man, wincing faintly as she did so.
Even though she was standing at a distance from me, I felt the heat radiating from the wood.
My eyes slid past her. Victor wasn’t standing on the other side of the artefact anymore.
A second glance, and I realised he was lying motionless on the floor beside the other man.
Instinctively, I knew that one was unconscious and the other was dead.
Victor had left Jess’s body and was now …
in the glass vessel on the plinth? I narrowed my eyes, catching a glimpse of the silvery gleam that seemed to float inside it.
So that must be … his soul? I felt like laughing, somehow like crying, too, but it was taking all my concentration just to breathe.
‘Horatio?’ asked Norah tonelessly, interrupting my thoughts.
He had already taken a step towards me, but now he stopped. ‘Yes?’
Just as he turned in her direction, Norah looked at me and said, ‘Now.’
In the same fraction of a second, she lunged out of nowhere, raising the box to bring it slamming down on his head. The edge of it struck his temple, and he let out a groan. Wide eyes staring at her in shock, he sank helplessly to his knees.
Norah’s lips clamped as she struck a second time. ‘Do it,’ she hissed, just as Horatio’s body finally hit the ground.
I still wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but a switch flicked and I sprinted into the middle of the room.
The heat of the artefact was gathered like a cloud around the plinth, trying to thrust me back, but I plunged headlong into it anyway.
It had a taste: ashes and iron; a sound: a low hum; a colour: shimmering silver.
It wound itself so tightly around me that I lurched over the final few steps.
Seeing nothing, not hesitating, I reached out to grasp the vessel with both hands.
It was heavy and hot, and within seconds, a barbed pain was tearing through my skin.
Struggling, I squinted against its light.
My nostrils filled with the smell of charring as somewhere, dimly, I registered my singed hair.
Everything inside me screamed at me to put it back or let it drop, but I gazed spellbound into its depths.
Into the gleam that was a whole existence. A soul. A life. A person.
This is murder. The thought darted through my head.
You’re killing Victor. Part of me didn’t want to, despite everything he had done.
But what I’d said to Cliff before was true: logically, this was the only right thing to do.
I had a choice, and every available option made me someone I didn’t want to be.
I had to choose the version I could live with.
I narrowed my eyes until the silvery glow was barely more than a thread. I thought of the scar on Cliff’s temple as I tightened my grip on the artefact, raised my arms above my head and flung it to the ground.
The humming cut out the moment the vessel hit the tiles, escalating seamlessly into a shrill noise like a shriek.
I didn’t know what had caused it, I just knew that the sound pierced straight into my head, every thought now bristling with thorns.
My brain furrowed under every attempt to think, and I gave a muffled groan.
Something was shattering into infinite pieces, and at the edges of my perception I realised it wasn’t just the vessel itself.
It was what it had contained. Victor’s soul, perhaps every soul it had ever held, perhaps especially those sacrificed to create it.
Perhaps, in that moment, they all felt it: perhaps the wave of light that burst through the room forced that pain into every Starling in existence.
It knocked me back a little, too, more from shock than pain.
Briefly all my senses were engulfed in the cloud, which whipped up in seconds into a towering storm before – quietly, abruptly – it dissipated.
The silence was almost more painful than the din that went before it.
It crept into my brain like a roar, forcing me to my knees.
Bracing myself with all my strength against the dizziness, I turned.
Norah was kneeling next to an unconscious Horatio, whose chest rose and fell shallowly. She was doubled over, clutching her body with both arms as if trying to subdue some pain within. Or … to hold herself together?
‘Norah?’ My voice sounded as broken as the vessel, the shards of which were scattered around the room like a carpet of glass. My shoes crunched as I walked towards her and crouched down.
‘It’s really over,’ she whispered, sinking forward until her forehead was resting against my shoulder. Even through the layers of fabric, I felt the cold streaming out of her. My throat tightened, and carefully I held her in my arms.
Only for a few seconds, then she pulled away.
Staggering to her feet, she glanced around her.
For a moment, her eyes lingered on the corpse – the one she saw in the body, and the one reflected for her in the shards of the artefact.
A look of grief flashed across her face, before she hid it again behind the smooth familiar mask of determination and aloofness, which I had never fully understood.
At that moment, I thought I did understand.
It was self-protection. Norah locked away her true self from the outside world because it helped her cope, both with what was happening inside her and around her.
She was playing a part, even now. Only, this time it was one she’d chosen for herself.
‘What about him?’ I asked hoarsely, pointing at Horatio. ‘Won’t he know you hit him?’
‘I took some of his energy. With any luck, his memory will be foggy. It’ll buy us some time.
’ Still expressionless, she held out her hand to me.
‘Still, we’d better get out of here before the guards show up.
Give ourselves a head start before they start asking questions.
We’re going to need some pretty watertight answers. ’
Reflexively, I took her hand and let her draw me upright, following her out of the room and along the looping corridors of the building.
I didn’t dare ask what answers she had in mind.
Cliff and I had talked for ages about what would happen if the League found out the artefact had been destroyed – especially after a ceremony in which I was supposed to die had apparently failed – but we could never come up with a satisfactory answer.
One step at a time, I’d said eventually, with more confidence than I felt.
I knew that even with Norah’s help, there would be holes in our story.
We could do our best to make it watertight, but they’d try to drown us anyway.