Chapter 275: Lucky

The side room was small and warm.

It had a low couch, a table with a coffee pot, and a rack of cups. A pile of coats hung on the wall. On the far side stood a long desk covered in screens, and each screen showed a different part of the house: the front gate, the garden, the great hall, the corridors, and the stairs. Colored lights blinked. It was a place where bored men watched the world and drank bitter coffee.

This is where they sit, Aliya thought. This is where they watch us all. She stopped in the middle of the floor. "Close the door," she said.

The heavy man did. The others crowded in behind him, laughing under their breath. He turned to her with his belt already half open and a fat, hungry look on his face.

Aliya met his eyes.

For one second, a thing passed over her face that none of them saw. It was not fear. It was something older than fear, and colder. She had stood in rooms like this before. She had done what she was told in rooms like this. And in her chest, behind her ribs, a door that she had kept locked for a long time shook once and stayed shut.

She smiled wider, and nobody saw anything at all. The door clicked closed, and the light from the hallway went out.

In the stone passage, the two guards at the steel door were still stiff.

"Lucky bastards," one muttered.

"Shut up."

"I’m only saying..." A shadow stepped out from behind the pillar.

They never even saw him. There was a dull sound, then another, then the quiet slump of two bodies sliding down the wall. Viktor caught the first before he hit the floor and eased him down. He did the same for the second. His hands were fast and flat, and his face was empty. When it was done, he stood with his chest rising and falling and looked at the archway.

Sienna was at his shoulder. "Seven," she whispered. "Two down."

"Five inside." He nodded. His eyes were hard. He crossed the hall in four long steps, put his hand on the door handle, and pushed it open without a sound.

The room was dark except for the glow of the screens.

Four of the guards sat on the couch and at the edge of the desk, grinning and loud, drinking coffee from the pot. They had taken off their jackets. Their guns lay on the table. They were laughing, waiting their turn, with their backs to the door.

They did not hear Viktor come in. He took the nearest by the collar and drove his elbow into the base of his skull. The man fell without a sound.

The second turned half around, with his mouth open, and a fist caught him square on the jaw. The third reached for his gun, too late, and Viktor’s forearm closed around his throat until his legs stopped kicking. The fourth lunged. They crashed into the desk. The coffee pot flew off and shattered on the floor. A screen toppled and went dark.

It was over in less than a minute.

Viktor stood in the middle of the wreck with his sleeve torn and his breath coming hard. Four men lay at his feet.

Then he turned his head.

A narrow door stood open at the back of the room. Sienna was already there. The last guard, the heavy one, had come stumbling out of it at the noise, with his belt hanging open and a startled look on his face. He opened his mouth to speak.

Sienna stepped up behind him.

She struck once, fast and clean, with the edge of her hand against the side of his neck. It was a point she had learned a long time ago. The man’s eyes rolled back. His knees folded. She caught his weight against her shoulder and lowered him to the floor.

He did not make a sound. For a moment, nobody spoke.

Aliya stood in the doorway of the little back room. She had already put herself back together. Her apron was straight. Her hair was smoothed. She was tucking the last pin into place with careful, steady fingers, and her face was blank and pale and shut.

She did not look at them. She did not look at the men on the floor. Viktor looked at her for a moment. He opened his mouth, and then he closed it. Sienna said nothing either.

There was nothing to say. Whatever had happened or not happened behind that door was Aliya’s, and it would stay hers. They only nodded, once, and turned away, because it was the kindest thing they could give her.

Sienna crossed to the long desk.

She looked at the screens, one after another. The gate. The garden. The great hall, where the party roared on. The upper corridors. The back stairs. Every camera in the house fed into this small room.

"Look at that," she said quietly. "This is where they spy on everyone."

Her eyes went to a screen in the corner. It showed the hallway outside the guest rooms, her own bedroom door, and the place where she and Viktor had stood only a few minutes ago. She could see the white door. She could see the handle.

He has been watching us the whole time. "Help me," Viktor said.

He was dragging the guards into the corner, one by one, by their arms. He took cords from the wall, the kind used to hang the coats, and bound their wrists and ankles with quick, hard knots. He tore strips from a curtain and tied them over their mouths. When he was done, seven men sat in a heap in the shadows, breathing slow and deep, and not one of them would wake before morning.

Sienna sat down at the desk.

She moved the mouse. A screen woke up and showed her a list of files, each one a date and a number. She opened the most recent. It was the footage from the last half hour. She watched herself walk down the east corridor, and the guard bowing, and Viktor turning the corner, and the two of them standing before their own door.

She deleted all of it.

She found the one from the stone passage, the one with the pillar and Aliya’s shadow, and she deleted that too. She found the loop for the cameras along the corridor to the lab, and her fingers flew over the keys.

A window popped open with a string of settings. She reached behind the monitor, found the cable, and pulled it out. On the wall of screens, the lab corridor went black.

She did the same for the one beside it. "Done," she said.

Her voice was quiet and level. She turned her head. The room was neat and still. The men lay in their corner. Aliya stood by the door with her hands clasped and her eyes on the floor.

Viktor held out his hand. Sienna took it, and stood. Past the open door, the stone passage was empty. The steel door at the end waited, cold and gray, with its keypad glowing.