53. There Is a Measure of Danger
53. There Is a Measure of Danger
The birds took wing and swirled around it as it came, crying out as if in welcome. Its movements were chaotic, unsure, like a newborn. Walls toppled and fell at its approach. Its rightmost tail swept away the ancient Maids’ Chapel. Its claws tore wounds in the sides of the Passage, and rooms spilled forth furniture, treasures, miracles, and people as if they were the seeds of poppy pods. Fire spurted from its mouths and angry columns of smoke roiled up like lesser beasts. The cloisters of Grey burned.
Hawthorn flung herself into a little alcove in the wall, pulling Frin after her. The Beast’s shadow fell over the faces of the hollowman’s two passengers. The butler caught a tress of the hollowman’s golden hair and looped it around Yarrow. He reached for another.
“Sing to it!” Hawthorn shouted at Yarrow. “Sing!”
The Beast was upon them—then, miraculously, past them. Bunching itself together like a cat, it leapt up and spread its wings to fly over the river. Birds fluttered around, behind, ahead of the Beast, as if escorting it. As it jumped, one of its tails caught Tertius’s arm and hurled the hollowman down the stairs. For one weightless moment Tertius hung in the air, tent flaps billowing like wings, and it chuckled. Then, turning end over end, it fell. Hawthorn heard it hit the first landing, but the Beast had touched down in Blue, and the noise of its going drowned out everything else.
The earth rocked under its feet, and Blue Tower tottered. A section of its north face fell away. The great dome, unbalanced, fell with a thunderous rumble, crushing the terraces with their dry trees. White plaster dust boiled up from trampled buildings as the Beast wound toward Black.
Failure, already. She could not chase it, not quickly enough. Even in that deadly urgent moment, she almost laughed at the thought of herself, tiny, striding after the monster. If only she could draw it back to Grey.
In the wreckage of the landing, Tertius righted itself. Tangled in coarse hair, Yarrow came up with it. The platform was empty. The tents were shreds of color at which the river greedily nibbled. The cargoes of wine and delicacies were scattered; amid the smoke, a delicious aroma was rising. And Peregrine—where was Peregrine?
A patch of iridescence caught her eye amid the rocks. It was not moving. He had been flung clear, broken—there was the mellified man, though. She got herself out of the hair and climbed down. She could not run to Peregrine; the rocks were treacherous. As she soon saw, crawling and slipping toward him and skinning her knees, it would have made no difference if she’d run. A bottle’s broken neck had stabbed him in the gut. There were angles to his limbs that didn’t belong there. His warm skin had gone ashy and clammy.
“I don’t know what the women do for a Butler Itinerant,” he said hoarsely. “But do it for me.”
“I will,” she said. She put her hand on his heart. The beat was weak and irregular. Mixed with the sweetness of wine and fruit was the harsh smell of blood. Little channels of the river ran under his body, carrying away the redness to wherever the river went. The sea, and beyond.
“Tertius,” said Peregrine. Hearing its name, the hollowman padded over. Its pale flesh was not visibly wounded, only dirty. “Yarrow, the Mother of Grey House, is your rider now. Obey her.”
“Obey,” said the hollowman. Its low voice rattled the stones.
The Beast roared. Its attention had turned back to Grey. Hawthorn and Frin were up there, defenseless. Yarrow had to sing.
“We had fun,” she said. “Didn’t we?”
“We did,” said Peregrine.
Yarrow kissed his forehead and vaulted up the ladder to Tertius’s back. “Climb,” she said.
Peregrine watched the hollowman swing up the canyon wall, grappling with projecting rocks until it reached the bridge. Far, far above, the sky was full of black smoke and ash. He could taste it falling. The walls of Grey were crumbling, melting away like snow in summer. Great chunks of masonry plummeted to the canyon floor, splashing in the river, showering Peregrine with water and mud.
He had never heard the frogs’ lament. But amid the chattering water and the cool earthy smells of mud and reed, he would have understood it. There was a reddish vulture in the sky, circling in the clean air left by the Beast’s passage, and beyond it nothing but blue. And as the smoke closed off the sky again and a pillar from some forgotten room fell toward him, he slipped away with the river water, sailing away to the sea.