Page 173

“Fine,” Julian replied tightly.

His former employer walked away, and time turned to water around Neil.

His pulse slowed. He watched Jacobs issue a calm order to someone just out of view. Heard Ellie’s distant, ferocious shout mingling with an angry protest from Constance.

A big-eared Al Saboor took Jacobs’ place in the ragged tear of light. He raised his rifle.

“Move, you idiot!” Sayyid shouted, barreling into Neil from the side.

Neil bolted as bullets cracked off the stones behind him. The toe of his boot snapped against something on the floor—a narrow object that spun over the stone before it came to rest ahead of him with another softping!

On a quick, desperate instinct, Neil snatched it from the ground as he flew by.

A bullet chinked against the wall where his head had been a moment before. Chips of debris sprayed over the back of his neck.

Sayyid grabbed the sleeve of Neil’s shirt and yanked him through a dark, square opening in the wall.

Neil was swallowed by darkness as the world around him dropped into a starless midnight as thick as ink. He stumbled to a stop, terrified of taking the wrong step and plummeting into another endless hole in the ground.

“Sayyid?” Neil was slightly humiliated to find that his voice vaguely resembled that of a bleating sheep.

“Quiet!” Sayyid hissed from nearby.

Neil oriented himself to the sound, which had come from behind him. A ghost of illumination faintly limned the edges of a rectangular doorway—and the lines of Sayyid’s face as he pressed himself to the wall to peer back the way they had come.

In the silence, Neil picked out the sound of distant, angry voices.

“Are they coming after us?” he asked in a careful whisper.

“That Jacobs fellow wants to,” Sayyid reported back, low and tense. “But I think Mr. Forster-Mowbray is refusing.”

“Why?” Neil demanded—even though it came as a relief.

Sayyid glanced back at him. Neil could just make out the frustration and contempt that briefly tightened his features. “Because he’s quite certain we haven’t any way out of here.”

Neil recalled the impossible height of the sheer rock face that led to the burial chamber, where a horde of villains waited for them.

The surrounding darkness began to feel thicker and closer.

“Let’s not wait around to see who wins,” Sayyid determined. “Come on.”

He stalked past Neil, brushing roughly against his shoulder as he moved ahead into the darkness.

“But how?” Neil burst out in panic.

He heard Sayyid’s footsteps stop, accompanied by a heavy sigh. “Keep your hand to the wall and test where you step before you put your foot down.”

Sayyid’s voice was thin with irritation. Neil’s shoulders slumped. In the excitement of discovering the tomb, he had nearly forgotten how angry Sayyid was at him. He wondered whether he should apologize, but when he tried to form the words, everything he thought of felt inadequate.

Instead, he picked his way along in Sayyid’s wake. His fingers trailed over the oddly flat surface of the wall. He tried not to choke on his own abysmal fear with every step he took.

Now that they had moved away from the oubliette, the darkness had become complete. Neil couldn’t even see his hand when he held it up in front of his eyes. He felt as though the world around him had ceased to exist, leaving behind only a dull, echoing, dust-scented oblivion that he would wander through for eternity.

The thought threatened to throw him into an even deeper state of panic. Neil kept reaching up with his free hand to adjust his spectacles as though that would make some kind of difference—which seemed very close to insanity.

The frames were bent, making them sit slightly crooked on his nose, but otherwise they had survived his fall into the pit… probably because he had landed on the back of his head.

It still smarted, as did most of the rest of him, from his aching shoulder to his scraped fingers.