Page 65 of Tattered Huntress
I went over and pushed myself on tiptoe. At first I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at, but then I realised and bilefilled my mouth. ‘I figured it was a prison,’ I said as horror rippled through me. ‘But I didn’t think it would be this bad.’
‘Now do you see?’ Hester demanded.
Horrified, I nodded. ‘We need to find a way in – and a way to get them out.’ I rubbed my eyes; the image from inside the pavilion had burned into my retina in all its grim horror.
‘It’s reinforced with iron,’ Otis muttered. ‘Pure iron. We can’t touch it and neither can you. But there’s a door. If we can work out how to get it open…’ His voice trailed off and he gazed at me with wide, hopeful eyes.
I didn’t know if I was up to this task, but the brownies needed to see confidence. ‘Show me,’ I said. ‘We’re not leaving until this building is empty.’
He nodded. Hester addressed me in little more than a whisper. ‘Thank you, Daisy.’
We all pretended not hear the anxious wobble in her voice.
I wetted my lips and straightened my spine. I preferred angry Hester; desperate, trembling Hester really scared me. ‘We are going to do this,’ I said firmly. ‘Let’s not waste another second.’
The door was at the front of the pavilion, set a metre or so back from the porch and visible to anyone who wandered down the path. I didn’t enjoy the prickle of danger at my back, so I sent Otis off to keep watch and warn us if we were about to have visitors.
I examined the door. Alisdair Greenwood, who had presumably commissioned the pavilion, certainly hadn’t stinted on the iron. There was a lot of it and even from a metre away I could feel its cold throb. Even so, I suspected that getting past it would be easier than breaking through the salt circle. I certainly hoped so.
Hester fluttered anxiously by my right ear. ‘Can you burnit? Melt the iron?’
I shook my head. ‘The melting point is too high and I couldn’t create a magical fire that would be hot enough. Even if I could work magic against iron – which I can’t – the building would go up in flames and kill everyone inside.’
We needed a low-tech, non-magical solution. I tapped my chin thoughtfully, then asked, ‘Why did you two throw yourselves through the salt ward? You must have known it would knock you out. You were lucky it didn’t kill you immediately.’
‘We knew it would be bad but decided it would be worth it,’ Hester muttered. ‘Sometimes, even when you know there will be painful consequences, you still have to go for it.’
I considered her words as I crouched down and examined the door knob. I didn’t touch it. It was clearly made of iron but it had neither a key hole nor a padlock. Unless the pavilion was bolted from the inside – and that seemed highly unlikely – there was no lock at all.
I swung my bag off my shoulders and rummaged inside. ‘Do you have something in there that will help?’ Hester asked hopefully.
I didn’t smile as I pulled out the small ziplock bag that contained my remaining spider’s silk pills. ‘I do.’
‘This is not the time to get high!’ she protested.
I didn’t take spider’s silk because it got me high, I took it because I was addicted. I’d become addicted because it gave me control – and control was exactly what I needed right now. I counted the pills. Another ten days’ worth, if I were careful. I wasn’t going to be careful.
‘Someone’s coming!’ Otis reappeared at high speed. ‘Two men are walking down the path.’
Burly One and Burly Two, no doubt. I guessed they were doing the rounds, treading the same path over and over again. I wondered if they’d noticed that the gardener they’d passed earlier was no longer there. I certainly hoped not.
I had to move. I fished out three pills and tossed them into my mouth, swallowing them dry. The drugs worked fast; in seconds the adrenaline fizz started. I bared my teeth at the brownies, who looked even more alarmed. ‘Now!’ I hissed. And then I ran at the door.
‘Daisy!’
I ignored Otis’s panicked plea. I had to act while the triple hit of spider’s silk was at its strongest. I pulled my cuff over my left hand to use as a barrier between my skin and the iron door knob. It didn’t do much to mask the pain – even the spider’s silk didn’t seem to do much and the agony was excruciating – but I didn’t stop. I twisted the knob, heard the brief click as it turned and burst into the pavilion with Hester and Otis right behind me.
Then I slammed the door shut, just before the Burlies appeared.
Blood was pounding in my ears and my body felt like it was on fire. I wasn’t foolish enough to look at the damage to my hand; instead, I simply pretended it wasn’t there. I was invincible. I could do anything.Anything.
I heard the Burlies’ voices drifting in from beyond the closed door. ‘He’s on his way. Five minutes’ tops.’
‘We’d better hurry, then,’ came the reply.
Indeed. We’d better hurry, too.
I gazed around the pavilion. Now I could see the inside clearly, it looked horrific. There were numerous cages – iron-clad, naturally – of different sizes; one thing they had in common was that none of them was large enough for its occupants to stretch out comfortably.
