Chapter 199: Hold My Coat

The service door opened at half past ten exactly.

Jack held it and let them out one at a time. Killian. Daemus. Blair last, in her coat, with leggings underneath and her shoes double-knotted.

Nobody spoke on the cart tracks. The mud had frozen into ridges, and they cracked under Daemus’s boots wherever he stepped. Killian walked ahead. Jack walked behind. Daemus walked beside her, close enough that his sleeve brushed hers.

At the fallen oak, he took her hand. He kept his eyes on the trees.

The cutting was worse in the dark. Killian slid down the lip without using his hands. Daemus jumped, landed in the bracken and turned around with his arms already up.

Blair sat on the edge and let him lift her down. His hands stayed on her waist a second longer than they needed to.

Jack landed behind them without a sound and walked past.

At the arch, he crouched, reached through the bars and went to work on the padlock with two thin picks. Nobody had seen him take them out. In under a minute the lock lay in his palm. He drew the bolt back, and the gate swung inward on its oiled hinges.

Thirty yards in, the black water filled the tunnel to the roof.

Blair unbuttoned her coat.

"Everybody turn around," Daemus said.

Killian had already turned. He stood facing the cutting with his hands clasped behind his back.

Jack didn’t move.

"Jack."

Jack only looked at him.

Blair pulled her sweater over her head. Underneath was a thin black shirt with long sleeves, snug at the wrists. The cold went straight through it. She folded the sweater over her coat and held them out, and Daemus took them against his chest with both arms. His eyes went down her once and came back up.

Jack held out a short steel torch with a rubber seal around the glass. A cord was knotted through the end. He put the loop over her right hand himself and pulled it snug at her wrist.

"Your hand stays on the rail," he said. "You don’t let go of it."

"Yes, Professor."

"Whoever drains it does it from the far side," Killian said to the cutting. "Look for a wheel."

Daemus didn’t say anything. He looked at the water, then at her. Then he bent and pressed his mouth to her temple, hard and quick, and straightened up with her coat crushed in his arms.

Blair walked in.

**

The gravel between the rails was dry for twenty yards. Then her shoes were wet. Then her ankles.

The water was cold. She could tell it was cold. It didn’t bother her the way it should have.

At her knees, her breathing went short. At her waist, the torch beam lay on the surface and showed her nothing underneath it. At her chest, she stopped.

She didn’t look back. If she looked back, she would walk back out.

The water touched her chin. She took the biggest breath she could, crouched, and put her left hand on the rail.

Then she went under.

The beam turned brown and full of drifting silt. She could see the rail and two sleepers ahead, and nothing else. Her wet clothes dragged at her and held her down, and she was glad of them. She walked bent double with her hand sliding along the iron.

Eleven sleepers. Twelve.

Her chest began to burn. The roof was close enough to touch. She touched it once, slick stone, and pulled her hand back.

Nineteen. Twenty.

Her lungs locked. Her mouth opened.

The water came in, and she choked. Everything in her went wild. She lost the rail. The torch swung on its cord and lit the roof, the floor, her own hand. She clawed and kicked and screamed without a sound.

Her chest pulled in another mouthful. Then another.

The burning stopped.

She was on her knees on the sleepers. She found the rail with both hands and held it, and breathed black water in and out until her hands quit shaking. It tasted of iron.

Then she stood up and kept walking.

She lost count somewhere past two hundred. The tunnel bent once to the left. A long time later, the rail under her hand began to climb.

The beam lit the surface above her. She reached up, and her hand went through it into air.

Her head came up. She crawled out of the water on her hands and knees and coughed until there was nothing left to cough.

The tunnel opened into a brick chamber. A concrete platform ran along one wall. Above it, set into the brick, was an iron wheel the width of her outstretched arms. Beside it stood a steel door, shut.

She climbed onto the platform and took hold of the wheel.

It didn’t move. She hung her whole weight off one side. It gave a quarter turn with a groan of metal, and somewhere under the platform, something opened.

She kept turning. The groan became a roar deep below the floor. Behind her, the black water began to sink.

When she let go, her palms were black. She lifted them to her nose. Grease. Fresh.

She sat on the edge of the platform with her knees drawn up and watched the water go down. A line of air opened under the roof and widened. Her shirt dripped onto the concrete. She was a little chilly. She tugged her cuffs down over her wrists and waited.

She heard them before she saw the light.

Jack came first, walking the rails with the water at his shins and his wings tucked tight. Killian came behind him, stepping from sleeper to sleeper, looking at the puddles around his shoes with open disgust.

Jack reached her and didn’t ask anything. He put two fingers to the side of her throat and held them there.

Her pulse jumped under them. He watched her face while he counted. Then he took his hand away, looked at the wheel and at her black palms, and said nothing.

Killian stopped at the edge of the platform. His eyes went to her wet hair, her shirt, the water pooling under her, and moved to the wall.

"You were gone thirty-one minutes," he said.

Blair didn’t answer.

A third light was coming down the tunnel, fast and splashing.

Killian shut his eyes. "The arch, Wolf."

Daemus didn’t answer him. He came up onto the platform in one step, threw her coat around her shoulders, pulled off his own jacket and put that around her too. Then he gathered her against his chest with both arms and held on.

He was hot all over. His heart was going hard enough for her to feel it through two coats. He rubbed her back in long strokes, then her arms, then cupped the back of her head and pressed her face into his neck.

"You’re freezing," he said into her hair.

She wasn’t. She didn’t tell him. She slid her hands under the coats and flattened them on his ribs, and felt him draw a sharp breath.

His arms tightened. He didn’t let go until Jack drew back the bar on the steel door.

It opened onto a short flight of concrete stairs. At the top was a second door with a small square window and white light behind it.

Jack went up first and looked through the glass for a long time. Then he opened it.

The corridor beyond was white. White tile on the floor, white walls, a row of long lamps humming in the ceiling. It smelled of bleach.

Blair walked past Jack.

She didn’t decide to. Her right hand trailed along the wall at the height of her hip, and at the first corner she turned left.

"Ms. Willows."

She stopped.

She was standing at the turn. She didn’t remember walking there. The others hadn’t moved from the door.

Down the corridor, on the right, was a row of doors with small square windows. She was looking at the fourth one.

Her hands had started to shake, and she didn’t know why.