the door of a closet, nearly invisible in the shadows by the coal bin.
"Through there. We have a few minutes. The fire's just caught."
The door was locked. Ernchester ripped the entire mechanism-lock plate, handle, bolt- free of the wood without visible effort and threw it clanging to the brick floor, then vanished like a moth in the darkness.
Asher had been in the crypt many times. Like the subcellar beneath the scullery, Fairport used it to conceal people who weren't supposed to be in Vienna or who had to leave the town in a hurry. Because of its remoteness from the main house- and the patients who usually resided there-it had also been used for meetings, if instructions had to be passed along with minimum risk of being seen.
He'd felt his way halfway down the boxed-in stairway when yellow light glowed at the bottom. Through the doorway he saw Ernchester setting on the table a newly lighted oil lamp and turning back to the coffin trunk that filled half of the room.
"She's in here," the earl said softly and knelt beside the trunk. He passed his hands along the lid, pressed his cheek to the leather. His eyes closed. The flesh around them rumpled and compressed, like an old man's. Then he moved his head and looked up over his shoulder at Asher, standing in the doorway. "Can you take an end?"
It was awkward, getting the trunk around the corners of the stair. Even in the few minutes they had been in the crypt, the air in the boiler room had heated, and the smoke there was growing thick. Like the house, the stable was wood, the roof and walls went up like tinder. When they dragged and manhandled the trunk upstairs, they found the ground floor suffocatingly hot, filled with blinding smoke under a vicious rain of cinder and sparks. Asher coughed, gasping for breath, his grip on the trunk slipping. As his knees gave under him, he wondered suddenly what chemicals Fairport had in the laboratories here and what fumes they might be adding to the miasma of smoke.
He tried to get to his feet, and fell.
Above the roaring of the fire overhead he heard the scratch of the trunk's brass- bound corners as Ernchester-unbreathing, undead, desperate to save his wife at all costs-dragged it toward the door and safety.
Black unconsciousness rolled over Asher like a wave. He tried to stand, then realized that the air was a little cooler down near the floor. Inhaling was like trying to breathe kerosene. Kerosene, he thought dizzily. When the roof goes, it'll take the floor with it, and the whole place will turn into a furnace... The thought that he'd probably be killed by the falling roof before the kerosene scattered the building over half an acre of the Vienna Woods was not much of a comfort. At one point he thought he was crawling, but a moment later realized he was lying with his cheek to the superheating linoleum of the floor, a fallen cinder burning the back of his left hand.
Hands as cold and strong as machinery took hold of his arms, lifting and dragging him as if he were a bale of sticks. The smell of smoke seemed stronger outside, perhaps because his lungs were working again. He stumbled, trying to get his feet under him, and clutched at the shoulders that supported his arm. He felt them flinch.
Silver, he thought. The chain on his wrist would sting through Ernchester's coat.
The trunk lay just within the compound gate. It was still shut. Ernchester must have turned back the moment he'd dragged it out of range of the fire.
"She's asleep."
Asher raised his head, his brown hair hanging in his eyes, his face burning in the cold air under a film of sweat, soot, and grime. Ernchester knelt beside the trunk, one arm resting along its lid, the reflection of the flames imparting gory color to his narrow face, glittering in his close-cropped fair hair, his haunted, weary eyes.
"Drugged, I think," Ernchester went on softly. "That is... as well. Thank you."
Asher looked back across the gardens. The front part of the main house was in flames. The rear wing, where Fairport's office and his own rooms had been, was still intact. By the flaring light two bodies were clearly visible on the gravel paths.
He fumbled in his pocket for Fairport's keys, found two that would open the trunk's heavy latches. Ernchester touched his hand lightly as he would have opened