The tour of the ground floor was accomplished without incident. The windows had all been marked, and there was no sign of the freak anywhere. The large rooms, designed for entertaining were easy to search, and the open, well-lit corridors offered few hiding places. Jamie led the group up the curving stairs to the first floor, which was mainly bedchambers and bathrooms. Everything was still and quiet, the only sound their own echoing footsteps. Hawk felt like a child sneaking through his parents’ quarters while they were out.
The endless quiet and occasional false alarms began to gnaw at Hawk’s nerves, but he just shrugged it off and kept going. He had to set a good example to the others, who were all starting to show signs of strain. Jamie was getting jumpy, and showed an increasing tendency to check things twice or even three times before he was satisfied. Alistair’s scowl was deepening, and he’d taken to hefting his sword impatiently, as though anxious for a confrontation. And Marc had withdrawn so far into himself he seemed to be walking alone through the empty corridors.
The rooms were lavishly appointed, and would have interested Hawk greatly under different circumstances, but as it was, each gorgeously finished room blended one into another as the tour continued. The first floor passed in a blur of empty rooms and silent, deserted corridors, and they made their way up the stairs to the second floor. Hawk began to wonder if they’d underestimated the freak. They’d all been talking about him as though he were nothing more than an animal, all instinct and ferocity, but that was wrong. The freak was a man, and cunning enough to hide his dead victim in such a way that the body wasn’t found till hours after the murder. The more Hawk thought about that, the less he liked it. It was more than possible they were doing exactly what the freak wanted: wasting time trying to find his lair while he planned ways of attacking them ... or those they’d left behind....
The second floor consisted of servants’ quarters; clean and fairly comfortable but essentially nondescript. The only exceptions were Greaves’s and Brennan’s rooms. The butler’s room had a bleak simplicity that suggested he spent as little time there as possible. Everything was neatly lined up and squared off as though for inspection, and Hawk knew without having to be told that woe would betide any maid who moved anything an inch out of place while dusting. Brennan’s quarters, on the other hand, were littered with a lifetime’s collection of keepsakes and souvenirs, most of them military in nature. There were daggers and swords mounted on the walls, and trinkets and mementoes brought back from a dozen campaigns. Hawk looked them over briefly, and frowned as he realized how dated they were. It was as though Brennan’s life had come to an abrupt halt when he came to the Tower; that there was nothing from his new life worth the keeping....
The third floor was storage; endless storerooms packed with the accumulated clutter of generations of MacNeils. Few of the rooms had any windows beyond the narrowest arrow-slits, but Jamie marked them as best he could, and they moved on.
They tramped wearily up the final set of stairs and stepped out onto the open battlements. Hawk took a deep breath as the cold wind hit him, blowing away the cobwebs of fatigue from his mind. The view was magnificent, from the dark labyrinthine sprawl of Haven to the great jagged cliffs that surrounded it, to the vast expanse of the open sea. Gulls hung on the sky far above them, keening on the rising wind like lost souls banned from heaven or hell. Hawk felt he could stand there forever, just drinking in the view.
Alistair stared about him with obvious nostalgia, while Jamie was predictably blase, having seen it all before. Marc, on the other hand, looked once at the sea and the cliffs, and turned away, apparently uninterested. And then he looked out over Haven, and couldn’t tear his gaze away. Hawk shrugged inwardly. No accounting for taste.
Finally Jamie led them back down through the Tower to the ground floor. There was still no sign of the freak anywhere, and Hawk could sense they were all beginning to relax a little. The general feeling seemed to be that the freak would have attacked them by now if he was going to. Hawk distrusted the feeling. The freak was up to something, he was sure of it; something so obvious Hawk couldn’t see it for looking. It was as though the freak didn’t care whether they found his lair or not ... which would seem to suggest he’d found a better place to hide. Hawk scowled ferociously and chewed at his lower lip as Jamie led them through the entrance hall and out the main door.
The gusting wind caught Hawk’s attention again, and he looked around him. Even after the unobscured view from the battlements, he’d still been half expecting to see some shimmering mystical barrier cutting the Tower off from the rest of the world, but everything seemed perfectly normal. The cliff edge stretched away before him, and the wind ruffled the long grass on either side of the trail that led back down to Haven. A sudden thought struck him. He only had Jamie’s word for it that the wards were actually there. If by some chance Jamie himself was the spy’s contact, what better way to draw attention away from himself and Fenris than by concocting the story of the murderous freak? Or could Jamie be Fenris? Either way, it would explain why the spy had headed straight for Tower MacNeil.
But, on the other hand, if the freak was real and the wards were real, that would have thrown the spy completely off balance. Being trapped in the Tower by the wards would have been the last thing he’d expected. He’d have to be getting pretty desperate by now. And desperate men make mistakes. Hawk pursed his lips thoughtfully. So, it all came down to whether the wards were actually there. Either way, the answer to that question would tell him something important. Unless Fenris had let the freak out for some reason.... Hawk decided he wasn’t going to think about it anymore for a while. It was all getting too complicated. All that mattered for the moment was checking whether the wards were actually there. He walked casually forward. He hadn’t made half a dozen steps before Jamie called urgently after him, and came running up behind him to grab him by the arm.
“Don’t go near the wards, Richard, it isn’t safe.” He bent down, picked up a clump of grass and threw it forward. It flew a few feet and then flared up suddenly, burning soundlessly with a brilliant, eye-searing flame. Within seconds there were only a few particles of ash, which were carried away on the wind. Jamie wiped his hands on a handkerchief, then tucked it neatly away in his sleeve. “Sorry about that, Richard. I should have warned you.”
“That’s all right,” said Hawk steadily. “I wasn’t thinking.”
They both turned away from the wards and joined the others in circling round the Tower, searching for an empty window. Curtains and clothing and other markers flapped fitfully at the many windows and arrow slits. An excited shout went up as Jamie spotted an unmarked window, only to quickly fall away as Alistair and Hawk pointed out two more. The four men stood quietly together a moment, looking at the Tower and each other.
“Three?” said Jamie. “How the hell can there be three windows?”
“Presumably there are two more hidden rooms,” said Marc.
“And with our luck, two more freaks,” said Hawk.
Jamie winced. “Please, Richard. Don’t say that. Not even as a joke. Things are bad enough without tempting fate. No; whatever those rooms are, they can’t have anything to do with the freak, or Dad would have mentioned them in his notes.”
“Not necessarily,” said Alistair.
“We’re wasting time,” said Marc. “The quickest way to find out why there are two more hidden rooms is to go and take a look.”
“He’s right,” said Hawk. “We have to know what’s in those rooms. One of them’s got to have the answers we need.”
“Very well, let’s go,” said Jamie, staring up at the windows. “All three rooms are on the third floor. They shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”
He led the way back into the Tower and up the stairs, moving at a fast walk that threatened frequently to break into a run but somehow never quite did. Hawk admired Jamie’s self-control. It was only the MacNeil’s example that kept him from taking the steps two at a time at a dead run. They were getting close to the answers now; he could feel it in his water. He was still cautious enough to keep a watchful eye on his surroundings, but nothing moved in the shadows and the only sound on the quiet was their own hurried footsteps and harsh breathing. Hawk kept a firm grip on his sword hilt. It was all too easy. Somehow, in some way Hawk didn’t understand, the freak was leading them around by the nose. They had to be doing exactly what he wanted, or he’d have attacked them by now. It was the only explanation that made sense.
They burst out onto the third floor, breathing heavily from the stairs, and Jamie strode briskly down the corridor, counting off doorways as he went. He stopped before a featureless stretch of wall, and waited impatiently for the others to catch up. Hawk studied the brickwork dubiously. It looked no different from any other stretch of wall. He looked at Jamie.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Of course I’m sure! I grew up here; I know every floor and every room of Tower MacNeil like the back of my own hand. For example ...” He walked back a dozen paces, and pressed a piece of stone scrollwork. There was a faint grinding noise and a section of wall swung slowly open on concealed hinges, revealing a dark, narrow passage. “It’s one of the old secret stairways; ends up in the library. One of the more useful shortcuts built into the Tower.” He pushed the section of wall shut with a grunt, and it locked silently back into position, with nothing to show it had ever opened.
“Very impressive,” said Hawk as Jamie came back to join them. “I’ll remember it if I’m in a hurry. In the meantime, if there is a room behind this wall, how do we get in? Break the wall down?”
“That may not be necessary,” said Alistair. “Look closely. This particular stretch of brickwork seems more modern than the rest.”
They all looked. Hawk was damned if he could see any difference, but didn’t say so.
“Look for a hidden catch or lever,” said Alistair. “Something that doesn’t quite fit, or that seems somehow out of place.”
They pressed in close to the wall, running their fingertips across the bricks and mortar, and staring intently at every crack and crevice. In the end, Jamie was the one who found the lever. It was disguised as one of the lamp brackets, and Jamie had noticed it was a slightly different design than the ones on either side of it. He gave it a good hard tug, and it tilted out of the wall. There was a hesitant rumbling of hidden machinery, and then a section of the wall swung open. Jamie stepped forward to look inside and Hawk moved quickly in beside him, sword at the ready.
The room was small and featureless, lit only by daylight filtering through a narrow slit window. It was completely empty. Hawk scowled and lowered his sword as Marc and Alistair crowded in behind him.
“Why go to all the trouble of setting up a concealed room and then not use it? That’s crazy.”
“Not really,” said Jamie, taking a few steps into the room. “This was probably meant for use as a last-ditch bolt-hole, in times of trouble or unrest. There was a time, not that many Kings ago, when the MacNeils weren’t too popular at Court. They made the mistake of telling the King the truth instead of what he wanted to hear, and had the impertinence to stick up for their friends, even when those friends had fallen out of favour. The MacNeils always did have more loyalty than sense. Anyway, this was probably intended as a hiding place for guests the MacNeils weren’t supposed to be talking to, or maybe as a refuge for women and children if the Tower was ever put under siege. We MacNeils haven’t survived this long without learning a few tricks along the way.”
“Damn right,” growled Alistair. “Never trust in the gratitude of Kings or politicians. They all have bloody short memories when they feel like it.”
Hawk nodded politely, disguising his interest. He hadn’t known the MacNeils had a history of bad relations with the Court. That might explain why Fenris had gone to ground at Tower MacNeil in the first place.
“This is all very interesting,” said Marc, in a tone that implied it wasn’t, at all. “But do you think we could please get a move on? We have two more rooms to find, and the less time we spend on our own up here, the better.”
“The lad’s right,” said Alistair. “We’ve left the women alone too long as it is.”
“They’re protected,” said Jamie. “They’ll be all right till we get back.”
Alistair sniffed. “Some protection; a dandy, a drunk, and two old men. There’s no telling what might have happened while we’ve been gallivanting about up here.”
“Then let’s stop wasting time arguing and look for the other two rooms,” said Hawk, cutting in quickly to head off the row before it got out of hand. “Jamie, is there a tool cupboard, or something like that up here?”
“Of course,” said Jamie stiffly. “Why?”
“Well, it just occurred to me that we might not be able to find the hidden mechanisms for the other two rooms, and we might have to get into them the hard way—with sledgehammers and crowbars.”
“Good thinking,” said Alistair, nodding approvingly. “Well, Jamie?”
“This way,” said the MacNeil. He stepped out of the room and started off down the corridor. “Leave the door open,” he said over his shoulder. “We might need to find the room again in a hurry.”
They found the tool cupboard easily enough, but sorting through the contents took some time. Jamie had never actually looked into it before—that was what servants were for—and he found the contents fascinating, discovering all kinds of things he didn’t know he had. He rummaged away happily while everyone else helped themselves to what they wanted. Alistair and Marc both chose crowbars, hefting them with obvious unfamiliarity, while Hawk went straight for a short-handled sledgehammer with a large flat head. He liked the feel and weight of it. It reminded him of his axe. He swung it easily a few times, and stuck it through his belt. Everyone then had to wait while Jamie searched for a hammer just like Hawk’s. He swung it a few times, raised an eyebrow at the weight, and then led the way back down the corridor to the next hidden room.