Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

if anything. Explosives had clearly been set in vulnerable spots to try to bring the place down, but the thick solid stone walls had defeated them. The walls still stood, though much holed and scarred, and there was rubble everywhere. Floors and ceilings were slumped and ruptured, but still held together. Deathstalker Standings had always been designed and built to take punishment. Deathstalkers led dangerous lives, and they had long memories. Jesamine followed Lewis as he wandered through rooms and corridors, stepping around or over the general destruction. Furniture had been smashed and burned, bookcases overturned, and centuries-old tapestries and portraits torn down and trashed. Everything of obvious value was gone, taken, and everywhere there were signs and stains where Finn’s creatures had relieved themselves, like dogs marking their territory.
    “Finn knew this would hurt me,” Lewis said, almost casually. “Almost as much as losing my mum and dad, and my Family. Back when we were friends and the world still made sense, he and I often spent long weekends here. He was my guest, and I showed him everything. He had to know how much this place, its history, meant to me. I told him. I told him everything, and why not? He was my friend. What will Owen say, when he sees this? This was my Family’s duty, to keep the Standing in trust, for him, when he returned. This place was always more his than ours. And we failed him.”
    “He’ll understand,” said Jesamine. “He knew what it felt like, to be betrayed.”
    They climbed a crumbling, broken stairway to the next floor. There was a wide gap in the middle, several feet across. Lewis and Jesamine jumped across it easily, without thinking or effort, and only afterwards realized what they’d done, and looked back at the gap. Jesamine leaned over to look down into the long drop, and then gripped Lewis fiercely by the arm.
    “Wow,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t believe we just did that!”
    “Jes, you’re cutting off the circulation in my arm.”
    “Look at that drop! Look at that gap! And we jumped it like it was nothing . . . Back before the Maze, I couldn’t have made a jump like that if you’d goosed me with a cattle prod.”
    “Jes, my arm . . .”
    “Oh, sorry.”
    “We’re changing,” said Lewis, rubbing at his arm. “All the time, we’re becoming something else, something better, in little ways we don’t always notice.”
    And then suddenly he and Jesamine sprinted forward, charging up the remaining stairs at more than human speed. They reached the landing and looked back, not even breathing hard, and watched the steps where they’d just been standing slowly tear themselves away from the wall and plummet to the floor far below. They hit hard, breaking apart under the impact, and the sound drifted up, along with a cloud of dust. Lewis and Jesamine looked at each other.
    “We knew that was going to happen,” Jesamine said slowly. “We . . . sensed it. Now that is seriously spooky.”
    “I’d be hard-pressed to name anything in our lives that hasn’t been, for some time now,” said Lewis. “No doubt eventually we’ll get used to it.”
    “I hope so,” said Jesamine. “I don’t know if my nerves can take much more of this. It’s worse than opening night.”
    They walked on, unhurriedly, through the devastated castle. The only sounds were the wind whistling through the many holes, the occasional groan from floor or wall, and the quiet sound of their own footsteps. They looked into every room, but nowhere had been left untouched, unsullied. Finn’s creatures had made a thorough job of their desecration.
    “You should have seen it in its prime,” Lewis said finally. “It was . . . magnificent. The accumulated treasures and wonders of centuries. Family history that went back to the First Empire. Paintings and antiques and objets d’art. Some of them so old even we weren’t sure what they were, or what significance they might once have held. One day, it would all have been mine, to enjoy and preserve. I wanted to share it with you, Jes.”
    “And you will,” said Jesamine, hugging his arm tightly and laying her golden head on his shoulder. “This can all be rebuilt, restored. I’m seriously rich, remember? I have money in accounts all over the Empire, that Finn’s people couldn’t find if they used an uber-esper and a dowsing rod. I have more money than even I can spend in one lifetime, and it’s about time I put