They nod and touch my arm as they pass.
“Do I need to ask you to make sure they’re safe, if—?” I ask Gideon after they’re gone.
“No,” he replies. He puts his hand on my shoulder, heavily. “I swear that you don’t.”
* * *
In the space of a day, this place has aged a century. Electricity has been exchanged for candlelight. It flickers along the walls of the halls and bounces across the stone surface of the floor. Business attire is gone too; every person we pass has robed up, and each time we go by they make this gesture of blessing and prayer. Or maybe it’s a hex, depending on the person. I don’t do anything in return. Only one hand gesture springs to mind, and it just isn’t appropriate.
Gideon and I move through the maze of passages and connected rooms until we stand in front of a set of tall oak double doors. Before I can ask where the Order keeps the battering ram, the doors open from the inside to reveal a stone staircase, twisting down into the dark.
“Torch,” Gideon says tersely, and one of the people near the door hands him one. The light reveals finely carved granite steps. I expected them to be dark and wet, primitive.
“Careful,” I say when Gideon starts down.
“I won’t fall,” he replies. “What do you think I grabbed the torch for?”
“It’s not that. I was mostly thinking that you’d trip on the robe and break your neck.”
He grumbles something about being perfectly capable, but he steps carefully. I follow and do the same thing. Torch or no torch, the stairs are dizzying. There’s no handrail and they twist tightly around and around until my sense of direction is shot and I have no idea how far we’ve descended. The air is progressively colder, and damper. It feels like we’re walking down the throat of a whale.
When we reach the bottom, we have to curl around a wall, so the candlelight hits us suddenly as we walk into the large, circular space. Candles line the wall in three rows: one row of white pillars and one row of black. The center row is a pattern of both. They sit on shelves carved into the rock.
The robes are standing in the center in a semicircle that’s waiting to close. Only the senior-most members of the Order are present, and I look at their faces, all old and anonymous, except for Thomas and Carmel. I wish they’d put the hoods down. They look weird with their hair obscured. Burke is of course standing at the center like a keystone. He doesn’t make any show of warmth this time. His features are cut sharp in the candlelight, and that’s just how I’ll remember him. Looking like a jerk.
Thomas and Carmel are on the edge of the semicircle, Thomas trying not to look out of place and Carmel not giving a shit one way or the other. They give me nervous smiles, and I eyeball the Order members. At each one of their belts glitters a sharpened knife; I glance at Gideon. If this goes wrong, he’d better have some kind of trick up his sleeve, or he, Thomas, and Carmel will all be Julius Caesar’ed before he says two words.
Thomas locks eyes with me, and we glance up. The ceiling isn’t visible. It’s too high for the candlelight to reach. I look at Thomas again and his eyes widen. We hate this place. It feels like it’s underneath everything. Underground. Underwater. A bad place to die.
No one has said anything since Gideon and I arrived. I feel their eyes, though, on my face and flickering over the knife handle in my back pocket. They want me to take it out. They want to see it, to ooh and aah over it one more time. Well, forget it, ass**les. I’m going through the gate, finding my girl, and coming back out again. Then we’ll see what you have to say.
My hands have started to shake; I clench them up tight. Behind us, footsteps echo down the stairway. Jestine is being led in by Hardy and Wright, but led is the wrong word. Escorted is better. To the Order, this show is all about her.
They let her go without a red robe too. Or maybe she refused it. When I look at her, there’s still a persistent twinge in my gut saying she’s not my enemy, and it’s hard not to trust it after so long even if it seems crazy. She walks into the circle and her escorts retreat back up the stairs. The robed circle closes up behind her, leaving us alone in the center. She acknowledges the Order and then looks at me, tries to smirk, and falters. She’s wearing a white tank and low-riding black pants. There are no visible talismans, or medallions, or jewelry. But I catch a whiff of rosemary. She’s been anointed for protection. Around her leg is a strap that looks to contain a knife, and there’s a similar one strapped to her other thigh. Somewhere, Lara Croft is wanting her look back.
“Can we really not change your mind?” Burke asks without an ounce of sincerity.