The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

Escape needs to be a pure and solitary goal. Images of Micha and her infant kept complicating the current chase, and as I gained the roof ridge it occurred to me that in times of trouble the DeVeer sisters would seek each other out. Had Lisa joined Micha in the Roma Hall? Because if so then whatever butcher had put together the thing chasing me was undoubtedly beneath the same roof as both women. Slowly my “escape” route had been curving around on itself, back toward Roma Hall, and leading me to a series of increasingly death-defying jumps that the dead seemed to be defying better than I was.

I lay panting for a moment, exhausted. The priest crashed into the roof a few yards below my position, thrown bodily by the giant. Somehow he clung on with one hand and looked up at me, moonlit. He snarled, with a depressing amount of energy for an elderly cleric who I recalled as walking with the aid of a thick stick or thin choirboy. Up close his name came to me at last. Father Daniel.

The novice crashed home beside him, failed to keep a grip with his bloody hand, and fell away to the distant ground. My cue to run again.

Ten yards shy of the end of the stables’ roof I veered left, racing down the incline at an angle. Five yards from the lowest corner of the roof I put on the brakes, going into a prolonged skid. By the time I reached the corner I’d slowed from breakneck to breakleg and dropped off with a wail that was half-prayer and all hope.

The trick to hitting the ground is to roll. Well, mainly it’s not to break. But rolling helps. My legs crumpled beneath me, resisting my momentum as manfully as they could and pitching me forward, already rolling as I fell. I smacked into the flagstones far harder than anyone should and went arse over elbow, coming to a halt in a groaning heap several yards on.

Father Daniel landed a short distance back from me, shattering both ankles. He continued to crawl after me, sparking memories of several old nightmares, but now reduced to an even slower pace than he managed in life.

I staggered up and limped away. The thud behind me as the giant landed nearly stopped my heart. With a groan I increased the tempo of my limp, cursing my right knee, which seemed to have become filled with broken glass. By the time I reached the side of the Poor Palace, gasping out cries for help, I still hadn’t seen a single person other than Ronolo who wasn’t dead and trying to kill me.

I followed my childhood route to the roof of the Poor Palace, windowsill to window arch, two gargoyle heads—mouths gaping and ready to vomit foul water from the privies within—another sill another arch and the tricky matter of clambering over the lip of the roof from an underhang. That had been a lot easier when I weighed a quarter of what I do now and had yet to realize that I wouldn’t just bounce if I fell.

How the giant was following me I didn’t understand. It sounded rather as if it were tearing handholds out of the sandstone walls. I gained the dark slate slope of the roof with the dead thing reaching for my heels.

Running up a forty-five degree slope feels like climbing a cliff at the best of times. After the chase I’d been through the best I could manage was a steady crawl. Behind me it sounded as if the monster was breaking through the eaves of the roof rather than attempting to circumnavigate them. I found a loose slate and turned to hurl it at the dead man’s head. It sliced past his ear and arced out into the night.

I reached the base of the west spire as the giant pulled itself onto the roof, its skinned face glistening in the light of the rising moon. My brain had no advice to offer but “up” and I followed it. There’s a point where exhaustion settles in so deep that it leaves no room for new ideas. I climbed by instinct, hands finding the familiar holds that had led me up and down these spires for a decade and more. It’s an easy climb and one that offered little hope of defeating my pursuer, but I’d run out of places to go. I grabbed the first of the gargoyles and drew myself up. Technically they’re grotesques, given that they don’t spout water, but large ugly stone monsters will always be gargoyles to me, also I’m not one to care about the niceties of architecture when being hunted down by a skinless horror. Or when I’m not.

I climbed and the monster climbed beneath me.

In truth, though I had climbed down this particular tower I had never ascended it. I relied on the fact that it was twin to the east spire that stood on the other side of the grand portico, which I had scaled many times when visiting Great-uncle Garyus. The window directly above me was in fact, of all the palace’s many windows, the last one I would choose to clamber through. Only the certain knowledge that the Silent Sister was in Slov, combined with the presence of a huge and gory corpse following me up the wall gave me the impetus to keep going.