The dark before dawn, p.1
The Dark Before Dawn, page 1
The Dark Before Dawn
Jaima Fixsen
Big E, little e, what begins with E?
A sweet, small boy who is dear to me.
* * *
This is also for Blake, who does not want a book dedicated to him, but gets one anyway.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Author’s Note
Also by Jaima Fixsen
Chapter 1
Vienna, 1814
Night was better for keeping secrets, but cold, even in the middle of September. Kasper shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders. He was late.
Over cobbles slick with evening rain, he crossed the plaza to St. Stephen’s. Though the rain had stopped, thick clouds blanketed Vienna, muffling sound and blotting out the moon. In the dark, the great doors of the towering cathedral frowned as he passed. A stone lion, carved into a corner and worn smooth by time, watched with legs bent, ready to pounce.
This isn’t a time for fancies, Kasper reminded himself. Though unpleasant, tonight’s errand was unavoidable. If Theresa didn’t have money soon, there was no knowing what she’d try next—stealing watches and stickpins from her gentlemen, perhaps. Tonight’s scheme was enough trouble. Kasper didn’t need more.
Past the south tower, a small door hid on the quietest side of the square. This entrance also lurked behind a gate of wrought iron, but—Kasper let out a sigh of relief—the gate was open, and only Gunter was about, waiting just inside, leaning against the short stone pillars. A large black key swung from his callused hand.
“You’re late,” Gunter said, unperturbed.
“There’s still time.”
“Not much.”
“It will be enough.” Kasper had planned for a half hour, but the ten minutes he had would suffice. “Let’s hurry.” Olsberg would be here soon.
Gunter separated himself from the pillar and unlocked the door. When he moved, a fusty smell of decay swung around him like a cloak. “You’ve a light?”
“Here.” The empty lantern hung from Kasper’s arm. He set it on the step to grapple with flint and tinder, balancing his walking stick under his arm. He dropped the tinder twice but finally conjured a wavering flame. “Take me below.” Shifting his stick and lamp to one hand, Kasper fumbled in his pocket for the rest of the money and laid it in Gunter’s open hand. The instant the silver touched his dirt-creased palm, it vanished.
“This way.”
Down the worn-edged stairs they went, into numbing cold, the lantern’s glow bobbing along the brick walls. It was too dark in the crypt to see more than a few yards ahead, but the bones of St. Stephen’s didn’t require light or comfort, and the men who toiled here scraping and stacking were gone to their homes—save Gunter. He nudged Kasper’s arm, directing him down a smaller passage, past shadowed vaults that mocked the puny lamplight. The sandy floor whispered as they went.
At the next turning, Gunter stopped, motioning with a blunt forefinger. “Just down there. On your left. Better air, if you’ll be doing much waiting. No flesh on the bones, and they’re stacked, tidy-like.” He folded his arms, his hands disappearing into the tattered sleeves of a worn coat that couldn’t do much against this cold.
“My friend should be here before long. Go back above. Just bring him once he comes,” Kasper said.
Gunter made an indecipherable sound that might have signified skepticism or assent. Friends didn’t meet in places like this, but he’d been paid for silence and the use of his key. He melted into the dark.
“You don’t need a light?” Kasper called after him.
A laugh echoed down the tunnel. “I know my way out.” Within seconds, all sound of him was gone. Kasper took a steadying breath but repented quickly. This sour air was best taken in shallow sips.
At least he wouldn’t have to wait long. Kasper raised the light to cut a path through the shadows. On his right, a wide arch yawned over a tumbled heap of bones. Staring at the gray, broken pieces, Kasper nearly stumbled on a spade left behind by Gunter’s crew.
Steadying himself on the brick wall, Kasper turned from the gruesome sight, heading for the tidier vault Gunter had indicated. Light spilled ahead of Kasper’s advancing feet, lapping against the far wall. It was stacked high with skulls, neat as a tray of baker’s buns, except these were gray and pale. Kasper shivered, unable to look away.
Something moved behind him.
He swung his lantern but only discovered the source of the sound when heavy arms wrenched him backward, forcing the air from his lungs. A sharp point nestled against his belly. Kasper went dead still.
“Do you have it?” Count von Olsberg whispered.
“You’re early,” Kasper said. “I didn’t expect you this soon.” His stick with the hidden blade was gone, dropped in the surprise of the attack. The lantern, swinging in his outstretched hand, cast its erratic beam over the wall of leering skulls.
“My papers,” Olsberg said. “Give them here.”
“You have the money?” Kasper shifted, his boots crumbling the gravel—or bone dust—beneath. Olsberg’s blade slid closer, stopping Kasper’s breath. “I must reach inside my coat,” he managed.
Olsberg’s grip slackened. “Slowly.”
Seconds stretched as Kasper’s fingers crept into an inner pocket. He had a knife too, thin as a playing card. It would be invisible behind curved fingers, but with Olsberg’s knife ready to slide beneath his ribs…
Quickly, before he could think himself out of it, Kasper whipped his blade down, tearing at Olsberg’s thigh. His other hand hurled the lantern at the wall, killing the light. A hand raked down his back, seizing his coat. Kasper lurched and pulled away, pitching headlong to the ground. Something struck him as he clambered to his feet; he tried to evade a flailing arm and collided with a heavy shoulder. With a grunt, he shoved once more and was free, spinning in the blackness, unable to remember the way to the door. He moved left, heard an answering footfall, and stopped breathing. The silence was absolute. Olsberg had stopped breathing too.
Feet still, Kasper swept a hand in front of him, afraid of what he might touch. Instead of cloth and outraged muscle, he grazed brick, shaving skin from his knuckles. Something clattered—Olsberg blundering into the bones—so Kasper ran, his hand trailing against the wall until, without warning, it vanished beneath his fingers. He’d found the door of the vault.
Like a fish loosed from the line, Kasper fled down the passage as fast as he could go.
“Gravedigger! I need a light!” Olsberg’s shouts reverberated down the low tunnel but faded quickly. Kasper paused at the sound of a crash and a sharp curse. Olsberg had probably knocked over the spade left in the tunnel. Kasper had taken the wrong way. Olsberg and Gunter were between him and the only way out.
“Bring me a light!” Olsberg roared, summoning a shuffle of footsteps and a glow that forced Kasper to shrink deeper into the tunnels. There was, he knew, another set of stairs that went up into the cathedral, but he might wander all night in this black labyrinth without finding it, and the door was surely locked. Evading Olsberg and the gravedigger long enough to creep past them was his only chance of escape. He must find somewhere to hide and remember the way out.
Kasper ran, counting turns, clutching his burning side. His coat was wet and sticky. He was bleeding, but there was no time to tend it now. He hadn’t expected betrayal. Olsberg must have offered the gravedigger more money. Kasper should have thought of that—if a secret was worth paying for, it was worth spilling blood for too. He walked on until, unexpectedly, blessedly, the air tasted sweet again. Another door?
Pulse quickening, he rounded a corner, following the clean air into a high vault. Deep within was a grating, small and remote, set in the ceiling, a black fretwork against the lighter dark of the sky. Beneath lay a pile of dry bones—plague victims, dropped from the street because there were too many to bury. Kasper scaled the pile, slipping this way and that, but the bars were impossible to reach, and climbing was noisy. The network of passages and vaults was vast, but they’d find him if he kept making a racket.
He needed a place to hide. Kasper felt his way back to the passage, heard voices, and broke into a run, counting strides so he wouldn’t lose his way. The wall beneath his left hand stopped, and he plunged into this newfound void. It too had bones, judging from the smell. Newer ones.
No sound of Olsberg or Gunter, so Kasper risked bringing a spark to tinder. The lint in his fingers flared, revealing a tangle of greasy, blackened limbs. Kasper recoiled, stumbling over something on the ground and dropping the light. It winked out before reaching the ground, stranding him in the dark—hands splayed, too afraid to move because of what he might touch.
Kasper edged sideways, striking a hard corner with his shin. Not bones,
A hard tug pulled the nails loose; a second pried the broken board off. No time for squeamishness. Feeling his way to the other end, Kasper raised the coffin, spilling the contents to the sandy floor, kicking them in the direction of the gruesome pile. The new body wouldn’t be so different from the others, merely adding to the general horror of the place. He pointed the intact end of the coffin toward the door, then knelt at the opening and crawled in.
The box closed in on him, brittle wood creaking every time he moved, the silk lining shredding and clinging like cobwebs. Kasper quivered, gasping for air—there wasn’t enough, not with the silk and the stink. Every breath he took, the space shrank, until it was all he could do not to scream and kick his way out.
Count your breaths. Think of ordinary things. There was no way to see, but he kept his eyes squeezed shut. The only way to measure time was by his growing aches—no matter how he shifted, he couldn’t escape the lump boring into his back. The blood seeping from the cut on his side grew stickier, then stiff and tight. Then he heard voices.
“This way.”
A pause, some shuffling.
“You must have wounded him.”
Fear pierced Kasper, sharp and cold. Hiding was no good, not when you left a trail. He was trapped. It was too late to run.
“Might be mine. Look at the way I’m dripping.”
Olsberg was bleeding too. Kasper had forgotten.
“Can’t be yours. We never came this way.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know this place,” Gunter told him. “We’ll find him. You’ll see.”
“We’d have him by now, if it hadn’t taken you such an age to bring a lantern.”
Gunter said nothing. The sound of their footsteps came closer.
Kasper braced one hand on the lid, the other tightening around his knife. Light lanced onto him through a crack in the wood.
Someone retched. “Disgusting! I don’t know how you stand this.”
“We can’t all be born to the purple.” Gunter spoke evenly.
“No one would stay here,” Olsberg said. “Come on.”
“Do you see more blood?” The light flickered over Kasper again.
“No. Even if there were, how’d we see it in this mess?”
Kasper listened to their footsteps fade deeper into the tunnels. He counted to thirty, the muscles of his limbs coiling tight.
Unable to keep still a moment longer, he heaved against the lid. It splintered with a tremendous crack, but Kasper was already sprinting from the vault. With a hand on the wall to guide him, he raced down the passage, counting each stride, marking each turn. Shouts echoed behind him.
Faster.
He passed the first vault. Nearly there—but his foot struck something, and he stumbled, crashing to the gritty floor. The cut on his side burned. Pushing up on scuffed palms, he bumped against the wooden shaft that had tripped him, hefted it, and discovered it bore a handle and a weight on one end. The spade. Kasper grinned. He was almost to the door, and this was a better weapon than a knife.
Pocketing his blade, Kasper raced on, gripping the shovel, slowing only when he came to the steps. They were uneven, shallow, and worn low in the middle. It would be easy to trip again, and the count and Gunter were drawing close. He couldn’t see their light, but he could hear them, louder and louder.
Surfacing at last in clean air, Kasper threw himself at the iron gate—and fell back, bruised. The bars didn’t budge. Desperate, fumbling for the latch, he let out a choked sob as his fingers closed around a heavy lock. No wonder Gunter hadn’t worried about losing him.
Shouts floated up the stairs. They were coming. Olsberg would kill him, then comb his pockets for the papers. They’d strip his body and hide him with the bones. No one would ever find him.
Raising the spade, Kasper slammed it against the lock—once, twice, and again. He must get out. Behind him, he could see a glow at the bottom of the stairs. He was raising the spade for a final, frantic blow when he heard the ring of metal on stone. The lock was broken.
With a monumental clanging, Kasper pushed through the gate and threw aside the shovel, before even his thoughts caught up with him. He shot across the plaza and into the sanctuary of the nearest alley, free as a fledgling who’d discovered his wings—but blind to the hooded shape untangling from the cathedral’s thick shadows and following him out of the square.
Kasper ran, darting in and out of passages at speeds that scattered the flimsily gowned grabennymphen loitering in the street. They flew away from him like startled birds, petticoats flapping. Veering west, Kasper ran past the battered city walls all the way to the Rathaus and collapsed in the shelter of the arched stone colonnade. There were lights inside the town hall and in the nearby houses. He wanted lights and their warm comfort, but they were dangerous to him now.
With stumbling steps, Kasper aimed for a slimmer, blacker street, steadying his breath and probing tentatively at his side. The touch did nothing to tighten or loosen the pain; it throbbed just the same, a hot pulse every time his lungs moved. In this dark, all he could tell for certain was that the bloodstained patch of his coat was bigger than his hand.
He heard singing, warning him that there were drunks ahead, just around the corner. Four of them came into view—students who slowed instead of walking past. It might be wise to draw his knife.
“What’s that stench?” the closest asked, grimacing.
“Filth. Must be French,” the tallest suggested. “Not the kind we want here.”
Kasper had seen reports of lone foreigners beaten by student gangs. Mumbling apologies in German, he backed away, escaping down a side street. He was exhausted, bleeding, and stinking, but there was no sign of Olsberg or Gunter. He’d best take himself home, or who knew what new trouble would find him? He’d run so far that he now had a long walk ahead of him. He glanced over his shoulder at every corner all the way back.
Kasper’s rooms were in a house off the Fleischmarkt, in a street so narrow the entrance was almost invisible. Shouldering his way into the passage, he winced as he took out his key. Shaking hands forced him to spend more time coaxing open the lock. It was a relief to bolt the door behind him. He tiptoed up the stairs. His landlady, though long abed, was a light sleeper.
The lock on the door to his rooms gave less trouble than the one to the house, and no lights were burning inside. Good. Levi hadn’t outlasted the candle, though it looked like he’d tried, judging from the long shape stretched out in the one good chair. Kasper stepped over Levi’s sprawled legs, listening to his breathing. It was easy to forget he was old, except when you watched him sleep.
It would be better to deal with this injury on his own, if he could, so Kasper closed himself in the bedchamber without making a sound. Easing out of his coat, he struck a light. The sight in the mirror made him grimace. Pale and shadowed with dirt—or worse—his waistcoat defaced with a broad, dark stain, it hurt just to move. Stripping away the waistcoat was agonizing, for it stuck to his shirt, which was glued fast to his skin. Kasper tackled the buttons one-handed, pressing the other against his side, hissing with pain. By the time he tossed the waistcoat to the floor, he was white, sticky with sweat, and panting. The shirt would be even worse. He wouldn’t attempt removal without dampening it first.
Unfastening cravat and cuff buttons, Kasper rolled up the sleeves, baring his arms. The water on the washstand was so cold that when Kasper held a wet cloth to his side, it temporarily overpowered the pain. He soaked the shirt, softening the crust that held it to his skin until it gently peeled away.
