Dead Man's Shadow, Chapter 8

“Well, that’s not a sight I expected to see.”
Elena immediately felt a surge of relief at the newcomer’s voice. It was Felix. Valeri apparently recognized him as well, and the shopkeeper sagged in relief. This lowering of his shoulders unfortunately lowered Elena onto the rope. “Choking–!” she managed to get out, and Valeri quickly straightened up once more, easing off the pressure. The door closed behind Felix, and he moved closer to them. “Be careful,” he whispered. “They cannot see us, but they can hear us. Elena, I am about to cut you free. Don’t move.”
The cold blade of a knife slid between Elena’s wrists, and she felt the ropes fall away. The moment that her hands were free, she reached up to the noose and freed her neck. Felix reached up and helped her climb down off of Valeri’s shoulders. When her feet touched the ground, she began to rub at her neck, feeling the raw skin there. She sucked in as deep a breath as she dared, reveling in the feeling of being able to breathe freely for the first time in minutes.
Felix, meanwhile, proceeded to cut Valeri free. The shopkeeper stood and shook Felix’s hand warmly. “My friend! I am so happy to see you! What are you doing here?” He was careful to keep his voice at a whisper.
“We came for you. I wasn’t going to let you die at the hands of the Inquisition.” Felix took Valeri by the shoulder in a far more familiar gesture than Elena had ever seen from him. It seemed that he really did care for the shopkeeper.
“How did you even know that I was here?”
“I came to your shop.” Felix’s posture took on a more serious tone. “I need to get some documents from the College. Ones by M and RH, about the Syrneth ruins under Freiburg.”
Valeri nodded. “Of course. Many of those are actually at my shop, assuming that everything is still there.” When Felix told him that the shop was still in order, he smiled. “Then it is the least that I can do for you to get them.”
“First you need to get out of here.” Felix turned to Elena and produced a key from somewhere in his robes. “Take this. It’s a key to the storm drain that these catacombs drain to. You should be able to use those tunnels to get out without being spotted.”
“Where did you get this?” Elena asked as she took the key.
“I found this while you were… occupied with the others. I suspect that it will not be missed for some time, if ever. I was not able to get the key for this cell, however.” He hesitated. “I suppose that it will be difficult for you to get out. Maybe I can pretend to lock the door, but not actually do it…”
“Don’t worry, I can get us out of this room even with the door locked,” Elena said. “I’ve still got a trick up my sleeve.”
Felix nodded. “Good. In that case, once you are away from here, make your way back to the shop. I doubt that they will expect you to return there, and so it will not be watched. I will meet you there once I have finished my obligations here.”
“Thank you,” Valeri said. “Both of you. For not leaving me here.” Felix accepted the thanks with a few words. Elena decided to spare her wounded throat for the time being and instead smiled at Valeri to show him that she understood.
“Now, I must get going,” Felix said. “When you leave, take the rope fragments with you. It will confuse anyone who comes to investigate.” He turned to the door, but paused before opening it. In a slightly louder voice than he had been using up till that point, he said, “May Theus watch over you. And may you make the right choices.” He winked at the two of them once and then opened the door. Somehow, he managed to block any view back into the cell with his body without making it seem like the motion was intentional. Not for the first time, Elena got the feeling that Felix knew a lot more than his appearance suggested.
When the door had closed and locked behind him, Elena turned to look at Valeri. The shopkeeper was wringing his hands together. He flashed Elena a small smile. “Well, my wounded savior, what now?” he asked quietly.
“We should give Felix time to get away from here,” Elena said. “I don’t want our disappearance associated with him.”
“I understand. In the meantime, may I know the name of the woman who was nearly hanged trying to save me?”
“Elena Hunt,” she said, offering her hand.
“Dionís Valeri.” He shook it with both hands, and Elena could feel his gratitude in the gesture. He leaned in so close and spoke so quietly that there was no possibility that his whisper could be heard from outside the cell. “Are you a member of the College too?”
“I’m not,” Elena admitted. “Felix is a friend of a friend, and I just kind of offered to help him while I was here.” She grimaced and rubbed at her neck. “Not entirely sure it was the smartest thing to do, but so be it.”
“Well, I, for one, am glad that you did. Do you truly have a way to get us out of this cell?”
“I do.” Elena bent down and peeled off her left boot, retrieving the lockpicks from the false bottom in it. She returned the boot to her foot and stood. “These should work fine, but it would be good if I could have some noise cover while I work on the lock.” She winced. “I’m not the quietest when I try to pick open a lock, and that’s part of how I got caught earlier.”
Valeri nodded. “I believe I can help with that. Just tell me when you are ready.”
Elena nodded. She moved silently to the door and pressed her ear to the wood, listening for any sign of guards. She heard nothing. After some time, she decided that she had given Felix enough time to leave, and so she signaled to Valeri. The shopkeeper nodded his understanding and began to chant a prayer in Castillian. After a few words, Elena realized that he was saying a prayer concerning her supposed death. To someone outside the room, it would sound like he was mourning the corpse of a stranger hanging from the ceiling. She fought down a shudder at the mental image of that corpse and set to work on the door. The sounds of Valeri’s prayer completely covered up the sounds of her working, to the point that when she actually got the lock open, she had to actually try the handle to confirm that she had been successful.
She again signaled Valeri, and he began to come to an end in his false prayer. While he did, Elena eased the door open no more than a crack and peered out with one eye. Out in the main crypt was a single priest, probably left to listen to the prisoner. He was currently looking mildly bored, sitting on a stone sarcophagus and digging through Elena’s satchel. He barely glanced at the notebooks, setting them aside and digging deeper. His face showed curiosity as he drew out the fabric handkerchief that Elena had wrapped around the Syrneth crystal she had found in Eisen to hide its light. He carefully unwrapped the object, then stared at it in shock. Light from the crystal filled the crypt, bathing everything in a white glow that far outshone the candles already in the room.
Taking advantage of his distraction, Elena opened the door to the cell the rest of the way and rushed out at him. He was sitting facing her, so there was no chance for her to sneak over to him. Instead, she went directly for him, reaching out for him as she came. Noticing the movement out of the corner of his eye, he glanced up, and his eyes widened in horror. Elena reached him an instant before he could recover his senses. She slammed into him, closing one hand around his neck and pressing the other to his mouth and nose. Her momentum carried him backwards off of the sarcophagus. The Syrneth crystal clattered to the floor, making the shadows writhe and distort in the crypt. The man’s eyes bulged as Elena choked him, and he struggled for only a few seconds before he went limp. Instantly, Elena released her grip on him, checking him. He seemed to be simply unconscious. She wondered if he had fainted before she had actually strangled him to unconsciousness.
After making sure that the priest was not faking his state, Elena scooped up her crystal and stood back up. Valeri was just exiting the cell, and he recoiled in horror at the sight of her. “Theus!” he swore, clutching a hand to his mouth. After a moment, he calmed. “You look like a ghost,” he commented. “That light does not flatter the wounds on your neck.”
Elena winced. “I’m glad I can’t see it, then.” She hid the light of the crystal by wrapping it in the bottom of her shirt until she could drop it back into her satchel. She suspected that she would need it soon, but she didn’t want the light to give them away before they got out of the crypt. She retrieved the rest of her satchel’s contents and returned them to their home before slinging the bag over her shoulder. The rest of her weapons and equipment were not in the crypt. “We need to find that drain,” she whispered. “See what you can find over there. I’m going to look over here.”
Both she and Valeri began to search for any sign of a storm drain. It took far longer than Elena wanted it to, and she was beginning to grow nervous that the priest in the room with them was going to wake up or that another priest would arrive. Before either of her fears could come true, Valeri waved at her from across the room. When she crossed to where he was, she saw that he had discovered the drain. It was a very narrow hole blocked by an iron grate secured with a sturdy lock. Elena bent down beside it and judged that she would be able to fit, but not without first removing her bag. Valeri would have a more difficult time of it than she would, but should still be able to squeeze through. She unlocked the padlock and cautiously moved the grate to one side. To her surprise, the grate made very little noise as it moved.
“I’ll go through first,” Elena said. “If I don’t injure myself getting through it, pass me my bag, and then go through yourself.”
“Wait.” Valeri walked back to one of the candles in the room and returned with it. He bent down and used the candle to illuminate the hole. In the process of his attempt, he dropped the candle, which tumbled down before landing about five feet down from the hole. It went out before Elena had a chance to see more than that.
“That’s not bad,” she mused. She handed her bag to Valeri and carefully lowered herself down the hole. The storm drain was shorter than she was, so she did not have to drop any distance to reach the floor. Once her feet were touching the ground, she took her bag back from Valeri and ducked into the tunnel to make room for him. He followed her through the narrow opening, struggling a bit before getting his shoulders to fit through. Once he too was in the drain, he reached back out and closed the grate. He tried to lock it behind them, but couldn’t contort his arm to the right angle.
“Just leave it,” Elena told him. “They won’t be looking for it if they come down here.” She led the way down the drain, moving down the gradual slope. Elena hoped that the exit to the storm drains would be at the lowest point, so she made sure to follow the route that descended through the underground. She kept going without light for as long as she could, hoping to avoid drawing attention to the grate by pulling the crystal out of her bag. She felt her way through the tunnels by keeping a hand on one wall of the tunnel, as well as by the little light that managed to escape through the top of her satchel. The two of them occasionally passed another grate in the ceiling, but no light fell into the drains. More than once, another tunnel branched off of the one that they were following, but Elena made sure to keep them moving downwards each time. Their footsteps were quiet as they went, as there hadn’t been a rain shower in Barcino for more than a week now, and the storm drains were completely dry. Eventually, Valeri asked if they might get some light to see by, and Elena decided that they could probably pull the light out.
When she retrieved the crystal from her bag and held it up, Valeri gasped in admiration. “What is it?” he asked. “I saw it before, but what makes the light so steady?”
“Syrneth torch,” Elena told him. “I’m not entirely sure how it glows, but it gets brighter if I leave it in the sun.” She fiddled with it for a moment. “I’m actually not sure how to turn it down, if it even can be turned down. It’s a bit bright, and I can’t ever get it to stop shining.”
“Still, that miraculous glow…”
Elena grinned. “I know. I’m glad to have it.”
The two of them continued in silence for several more minutes. Elena focused on keeping them on what she hoped was the right track. Unfortunately, she had no way of confirming her theories about their route until they found an exit, and one was not presenting itself. She continued to hold the Syrneth crystal up, using its light to see as she led Valeri away from the church.
Eventually, Valeri spoke. His voice was filled with emotion, and Elena came to a halt at the sound. “I… I wanted to thank you again. You came to rescue a man that you didn’t even know from the Inquisition. That is more than I would ever be able to do. I don’t think I will ever be able to thank you enough.”
“It’s I who should be thanking you,” Elena said softly. “You saved my life back in there. What you did was just as great as anything I did.”
“Perhaps. But you still consciously chose to infiltrate an Inquisition meeting to rescue me. I more of just… reacted.”
Elena almost turned to face him, but couldn’t quite do it. “Even if you did, I owe you. You didn’t just save me from dying, you saved me from…”
A cold night, an empty room, a storm about to break. Terrible, terrible silence broken only by the sound of a single word, spoken in her own voice. “…Dad?” The almost-closed door, the light falling in onto the grisly sight inside.
“…my nightmare,” she finished, her voice trailing off into complete silence.

***

Felix knew Bishop Costa well enough that he could tell that the Inquisition head in the area was confused, but carefully hiding that fact. The other man was stalking around Valeri’s empty cell, eyes traveling over every single surface. He was looking, without success, for any sign of what had happened to the shopkeeper and the other prisoner.
Elena, Felix reminded himself. Her name is Elena. It was disturbingly easy for him to fall into a dispassionate mindset when infiltrating the Inquisition.
“No sign of them. And no body either.” Costa gestured up at the empty – but still in place – noose hanging from the ceiling. “It’s as if they vanished into the air.” Abruptly, Costa spun on his heel and marched out of the cell, back into the main crypt, where the man who had been left to listen into the cell was being attended to by a woman with experience in medicine.
Felix followed in Costa’s wake, seeing the forceful surge for what it was: an attempt to intimidate the poor former guard. It did not look like it would take much to intimidate the priest – the man was pale and sitting with a posture that suggested he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around himself and was only resisting the urge to avoid the appearance of weakness. “Tell me again what you saw,” Costa demanded, looming over the former guard.
“Of course, Your Excellency,” the man murmured. He did not quite manage to meet Costa’s eyes when he looked up. “I was examining some kind of pagan artifact in the woman’s bag, and when I looked up, she was there, a specter of the dead. She reached out for me, death itself in her eyes, and her cold hands wrapped around my neck…” he shuddered. “I do not believe in the vengeful dead, but that…”
“The dead seek vengeance often in Eisen,” Felix commented. “It is possible if she was dabbling in Hexenwerk that she may have come back as an undead.” It was a lie, but one that was close enough to the truth that it would be hard for anyone with only a passing knowledge of the Eisen sorcery to dispute.
The former guard shuddered again. “I was convinced that the next time I opened my eyes that I would be staring at paradise.”
Costa turned away from the man, leaving him to recover. He walked back to the cell but did not actually enter it. “Father Weiss, even if I was to fully believe that the woman was reanimated somehow, it does not answer enough questions to reflect the full story.”
“Questions such as, ‘how did she get down from the noose?’” Felix asked.
Costa nodded. “And questions like where she vanished to, how they got out of the cell, and where Valeri is now.” He gestured around the room, which was empty save for the chair Valeri had been tied to and the noose. “It seems just as likely that they simply disappeared. I do not like the implications of that.” He gestured for Felix to follow him as he stepped into the cell. Felix did so, sparing a quick glance at the other Inquisitors down in the crypt. Each of them was doing his or her best to avoid looking like they were paying attention to the two of them. Once back inside the cell, Costa turned to Felix and dropped his voice to almost a whisper. “I do not like this. The entire escape is too clean. I accept the possibility of a supernatural element to their escape, but I find that there is usually a simpler solution.”
“What do you suspect?” Felix asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.
Costa glanced back into the main crypt before continuing. “I fear that the two prisoners may have had inside help.”
Now Felix forced himself to glance back into the other room as well as though suspicious. “Do you really think that it could be someone here?”
Costa nodded. “Quite a few people in Barcino have been eager to join up with the Inquisition lately. I fear we may have been too lax in our acceptance of them.”
“Do you have reason to suspect anyone in particular?”
“Not at this time, but I want you to look into it for me.”
Now Felix blinked, only barely managing to keep his surprise in check. “Me?”
“Of course. You’ve been a faithful member of this holy calling for more than a decade now. You are one of the few that I can trust with this. Am I wrong?”
“No. I will conduct an investigation for you. If you prefer, I can report my findings directly to you.”
“I believe that would be for the best.” Costa offered his hand to Felix, and he took it in the standard version of the Inquisition handshake. “I will leave you to proceed as you see fit. Do not let the others know the true purpose of your search. If they believe that we have dissent in our own ranks, the distrust that it sows could be quite harmful to the Inquisition as a whole.”
Felix nodded his understanding. “I will be discreet.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Father Weiss. Let me know if there is anything that you require in your investigation.”
“Of course, Excellency.” Felix released Costa’s hand and glanced back over his shoulder at the other Inquisitors. Possibilities began to swirl through his head, avenues that he could use for his own benefit, as well as that of the College.
It seemed that this night was far more successful than he had originally thought.