The girl cries out again in pain, fingers to her temples. “Yes!” she cries. “Are you slow?”
“But you won’t make it that far,” says Sigrud.
She shakes her head, tears leaking out of her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
Sigrud looks down at the radio transmitter hanging from his belt. “I had an exit strategy in place, in case the building was stormed…but it will do little good here.” He does some quick thinking.
What tools could possibly be of use against that thing? What tools do we even have?
Then he has an idea.
“Can you at least get us to the first floor?” he asks. “Maybe close to the entrance?”
“Maybe. Possibly.”
“All right. Second question…” He rummages around in his pack and pulls out the pieces of engraved tin from Khadse’s shoes. “Do you know what these are?”
Her eyes widen. “These…These are the miracles the assassin was wearing, weren’t they? They kept me from seeing him properly, from following his movements. Sunlight on Mountain Snows…”
Sigrud snaps his fingers. “That’s the name. I couldn’t remember. Here. Put these into your shoes. Fast. Hurry.”
“Bu—”
“Now.”
She sits on the steps and does so, cringing and wincing as if hearing a painful noise in her ears.
“Good,” says Sigrud. “Now. Third question. Whatever it is that, uh, you are—can you be harmed by an explosion?”
She stares at him. “What?”
“I will take that,” he says, “as a yes.”
By the time they get to the bottom of the stairs it’s become so bad the girl can barely walk. Sigrud has to nearly carry her. “This is bad,” she says, woozy. “I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to run away.”
“You’re going to have to,” says Sigrud. “Just get us close to the door. Then we light the matches, and then you let the bubble fall—put us back in the present, I mean…”
“Yes, yes! I understand that!”
“Good. Then, after that, you move.”
They limp through the lower warrens of the slaughterhouse, some kind of packing and loading area, where trucks and carts once arrived and departed. The border of the bubble quivers and rattles, as if someone on the outside is beating on it, and each time the girl moans a little more.
“Who are you?” asks Sigrud. “Are you a friend of Shara’s? Of Komayd?”
The girl is silent.
“Are you…M? From Shara’s letter?”
She laughs morosely. “Aren’t you a clever one. Listen, killer—you are a tiny fish in a very big pond. Odds are if you survive today—which I think unlikely, frankly—then you’ll just be caught next week, or next month, or maybe tomorrow night. And when he catches you, he’ll pull out every secret you’ve got hidden away in your guts. I don’t intend for any of my own to be in there.”
“And if I do survive?”
“If you survive, and I see you again…Maybe I’ll reconsider.” She eyes him suspiciously. “Maybe.”
They’re near the entrance to the slaughterhouse now. Sigrud gently sets her down. Their little bubble of the past is shaking quite hard now, like gates splintering before a battering ram. “Hurry,” she whispers. “Please hurry…”
Sigrud reaches into his pack and pulls out a box of matches and Khadse’s coat. Thank the seas, he thinks, that I still smoke. He stuffs his arms into Khadse’s coat, which barely fits, but that’s the least of his problems. Then, moving carefully and smoothly, he lights one match. He hands it to the girl, then makes a bundle of half of the remaining matches and hands them to her as well. Then he strikes another match and picks up the other half of the remaining matches, so they’re both holding a lit match in one hand and a bundle of unlit matches in the other.
He looks the young woman over: she’s breathing hard, both in pain and in terror.
“Ready?” asks Sigrud.
“Yes,” she says.
“Then do it.”
She shuts her eyes. At the same time, they both hold their lit matches to the unlit bundles. The matches flare bright, sending shafts of light shooting into the darkness.
The bubble of past around them trembles. Shakes.
Dissolves.
Darkness comes spilling in, roaring and cheeping, the wild, strange sounds of the forest at night….
But it comes to a halt just around them, held at bay by the flickering matches in their hands. It’s so dark it’s difficult to tell that they’re still in the slaughterhouse, but Sigrud can see the dawn light filtering through the cracks in one of the bay doors in the distance.
The girl nods at Sigrud and slowly begins to move toward the door, the flame flickering in her fingers.
Then the high, cold voice whispers in his ear, quivering with rage: “Where is she? She’s here, isn’t she?”
Sigrud suppresses a smile. So the miracles in Khadse’s shoes are working, he thinks. He can’t properly see her….
“You are working with them,” says the voice. “I knew it. I knew it. Your little light won’t last long, you know. And then I’ll have you.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” says Sigrud. “Right now.”
A pause. Sigrud can see the girl has almost made it to the door.
“Tell me what?” says the voice.
“About Komayd. The ones on her list. I know where they are.”
This is, of course, fabulous bullshit. But the voice in the shadows seems to be considering it.
The voice purrs, “If you have something to say, say it.”
“I worked with Komayd,” says Sigrud. He makes sure to talk as slowly as possible. “I worked with her for a long, long time. Even if she didn’t know it, I worked for her and waited for her—right up until her death.”
A soft clinking and clanking as the girl slides the door open.
Then the voice speaks again, this time next to Sigrud’s other ear. “And?” it says, suspicious.
“And she was a careful person,” says Sigrud. He watches as the flame crawls down the matchsticks. “But even the most careful person makes mistakes. As you know.”
Sigrud watches as the girl slips away to safety. She doesn’t look back.
“Once we were in a safe house, doing an interrogation,” says Sigrud. “But it was interrupted. Our enemies stormed in, you see, and almost took us prisoner. And from then on, I insisted on taking precautions in case it happened again. She hated it. But it was a very simple system.”
Sigrud takes a breath.
He picks up the radio transmitter, holds it up, and says, “It looks like this.”
He drops the matches, pulls the coat up over his head with his left hand, and presses the button.
Then there’s a bang.
Sigrud does not really hear it. He hears maybe the first .0001 second of the bang. Because then he’s slammed to the ground so hard he briefly blacks out.
Light. Heat. Noise. And smoke.
He comes to, gasping and blinking, fire dancing all around him, and dimly realizes he’s not in any pain. The coat is still over his head, and his back and skull—which should have struck the floor at a lethal speed—have no pain at all. The coat must have stopped him from striking the floor, but, much like someone’s head snapping around in an auto accident, it didn’t slow his brain down any.