Chapter 81: The Bell Is Early

The passage beyond the arch smelled dry.

Jin found he preferred the steam. At least it announced where it wanted to hurt him.

Nell held up the lamp she'd taken from a bracket at the arch. Its light showed a narrow room divided by three stone ribs. Beyond them, steps rose toward a square of colder daylight.

“Far door?” Kessa asked.

“Too early,” Lark said.

They climbed carefully.

Beyond the first room, the passage doubled back beneath itself. Nell stopped at a cracked step and sent Lark across before she trusted her own weight to it. They passed the lamp hand to hand, then waited while Kessa found a line through the rubble that wouldn't drag her bow against the wall.

It took longer than the distance should have. Jin could hear water somewhere below them, but every turn seemed to move the sound farther away.

At the last bend, a cold draft touched his face. He lifted a hand, and Nell nodded toward the light ahead.

The square opened onto a long courtyard sunk between the ruin's walls. Water ran along its left edge. On the right, a covered gallery connected three iron doors.

Above the center door hung a bell.

Its rope had been cut.

The loose end lay across a dark patch on the gallery floor.

Jin stopped.

Nell saw it too.

She set the lamp in a niche beside the passage opening and freed the chain at her belt.

From the passage behind them came Edrin's voice.

“You found the—”

The bell rang.

Jin took out his phone.

Twenty-three minutes still on the countdown.

He looked up.

The center door burst outward.

Iron struck the opposite wall. Something round rolled through the dust, higher than Jin's shoulders, pale limbs folded around a dark central body.

One blade hit the courtyard stones.

Then another.

The spindleback came forward in a grinding rush.

“Back!” Nell shouted.

Jin grabbed Kessa's sleeve and pulled her behind the first stone rib. A blade struck the corner above his head. White chips cut across his cheek.

This reproduction of the author's NovelPhoenix chapter lacks permission; reading the posted chapter there supports the author.

The creature opened.

Three limbs planted wide. The other five unfolded around its body like knives being drawn in different hands.

It filled the mouth of the passage.

Berren stopped beneath it.

Lark caught the man's belt and hauled him sideways before the first blade came down.

The second hit the man's calf.

He screamed.

Edrin went to him. His shield caught the next stroke and split at the rim, driving him onto one knee.

Jin drew his knife.

His hall route was used up. These were different stones. He had no prepared way through them.

The spindleback's body turned between the planted limbs, following the two wounded hunters.

Nell threw her chain across the nearest leg and pulled from behind the rib. Bronze light crossed the stone beneath her boots.

The leg bent toward her.

The creature shifted its weight onto another one.

Nell's chain went slack.

“It can change its feet!” she shouted.

Kessa's second arrow of the trial struck the soft fold inside a joint.

The limb snapped inward.

For an instant there was space beneath the body.

Jin went through it on ordinary feet and cut at the exposed seam above the folded limb.

Steel bit.

Not deep enough.

A different leg drove across his path. He threw himself behind Edrin's broken shield as the blade scraped the stone beside his hip.

“Take him back,” Jin said.

Edrin had his arm beneath the injured man's shoulders.

“My crew—”

“Take him.”

Iven caught Berren's other side. Together they dragged him toward the steam hall.

Tova followed with her spear pointed into the passage.

Nell held until they were clear, then let the chain run.

The spindleback rolled toward her.

She dropped behind the rib.

The creature's outer blades struck it.

Stone cracked down the middle.

Jin heard the bell ring again.

Not from above the courtyard.

Deeper in the ruin.

He looked at the cut rope, the broken door and the narrow gallery beyond it. A bright scrape marked the door's lower hinge, fresh metal showing beneath the rust.

The mark crossed the hinge pin in a straight, shallow line. The break above it was ragged; this part looked filed.

Someone might have helped this happen.

There was no time to find them.

Lark caught his eye across the passage.

“Hall?”

Jin looked back. Edrin's crew was still moving through it. Past them lay the grilles and the steam channels.

If they ran straight back, the spindleback would follow them into the injured men.

He pointed toward the courtyard's left edge instead.

Nell looked at the water line, then at Lark. She didn't nod immediately. Lark moved his sword into his left hand and pointed to the first rib they could use for cover.

Kessa shifted to follow him.

Only then did Nell turn back to Jin.

Water. Solid stone strips. Enough room to walk if someone kept those blades looking elsewhere.

“We draw it across.”

Kessa's face tightened.

“There's no room to miss.”

“I know.”

Nell lifted the badge on her wrist, then tucked it inside her sleeve.

“Trial can wait.”

The spindleback opened its limbs again.

On the inside of the nearest one, Jin saw an iron band pressed into the pale hide. A mouth inside a little sunburst had been stamped above a single long mark.

Lark saw it too.

“One.”

Jin looked from the brand to the fresh-cut hinge.

Then he stepped out from cover.

“Merrit,” he said. “You owe us another refund.”