Artificial Night, An - Seanan McGuire Page 0,111

didn’t think it was something you could just toss into a cell—he had to be keeping it in something more solid. A trinket or a toy of some sort, something she couldn’t escape from. So what was it?

The butterfly globe he taunted me with. That had to be Karen’s self, trapped inside the glass and beating itself to death as it struggled to get free. But where was it? He’d had it with him before. He might still have it, or he might have given it to his monstrous children as a toy. Either way, I needed to take it away. Neither place seemed more likely than the other, and I finally settled for the children as the lesser of the two evils. I might survive them and get a second chance if I chose wrong. I couldn’t say the same about him.

Crossing Blind Michael’s holdings alone in the dark is something I never want to do again. I moved from building to building, freezing and holding my breath at the slightest sound. Nothing came out of the darkness to attack me and somehow that wasn’t reassuring. There was no way to know whether I was walking into a trap, and so I just kept going, stopping when I reached the hall with the broken walls. It looked different from the outside, but I recognized it. I always know my prisons.

The outside of the hall was smooth stone. The only way in was the obvious—the broken walls were only ten feet high, and they weren’t barred in any way. It wasn’t a bad climb. I could make it.

An old water barrel butted up against one wall. I climbed on top of it and stuck my candle between my teeth, careful not to bite down too hard as I started feeling around for handholds. There was one clear path, a series of shallow indentations leading up the side of the wall. It made sense. Kids always find a way out, but in Blind Michael’s lands, that didn’t mean getting away. They also needed a way back in.

The climb was slow, painful, and one of the most nerve-racking things I’ve ever done. There was no way to run if anyone found me before I was over the wall; if I got caught, I was as good as dead. The cuts on my hand burned when they pressed against the stone, my knees ached from fighting gravity, and hot wax spattered my cheek and neck every time I moved. But I made it. I reached the top of the wall, my candle still burning a steady blue, and no one sounded the alarm.

The Children’s Hall spread beneath me in an unmoving patchwork of stillness and shadows. The children were gone, probably still searching for me back in the “real” world. That was a good sign. A tapestry hung a few feet to my left, anchored to the top of the wall with rusty metal loops. It looked as decayed as everything else in Blind Michael’s kingdom, but it would do. Inching along the wall, I grabbed the tapestry, intending to climb carefully down.

The decayed fabric had other ideas. It tore under my hands, and I fell, grabbing for a less tattered section of the cloth. This time I got it right. The tapestry stretched but didn’t tear, and I slammed against the wall hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, nearly biting through my candle in the process. I hung there for a moment, breathing rapidly through my nose. When I was sure I wouldn’t fall, I started to descend.

The tapestry ended about three feet above the floor. I let go, landing hard but upright. I’d made it; I was in the hall, and the children weren’t, although I knew better than to count on that to last. I needed to keep moving.

There were a few makeshift toys scattered around the floor. Sticks, stones, and some bones I didn’t look at too closely; a teddy bear without a head and a doll’s head without a body; shards of wood and plastic. None of them looked as if they were used very often, save perhaps as weapons. I searched until my candle had grown shorter still and didn’t find anything but garbage. “Damn it, where is she?” I whispered. The darkness didn’t answer. Wherever she was, it wasn’t here, and it was time to get moving.

The tapestry I’d used to break my fall looked like it would hold me. Putting my