Kushiel's Chosen

there was a chance.
    I had to gain the bridge. There was nothing else for it.
    When we were children, Delaunay would set up courses for Alcuin and me, mazes that we must negotiate blindfolded, until we could move silently and swiftly in the dark. I dreamed then of exploring the quarters of some wealthy patron while they slept, searching out Elua-knows-what dire secrets. I never used those skills, then, but I used them now, making my way around the base of the looming fortress.
    How long it took, I could not say. It seemed forever, although I daresay it was no longer than it took to heat water for the bath. Once a pair of guards passed close by me, forcing me to retreat noiselessly beyond the doubled circles of torchlight they cast. The volcanic rock of the island had sharp, jagged edges that bit painfully into the bare soles of my feet, but I bit my lip and kept silent, letting the pain sharpen my focus.
    Sometimes it is an advantage to be an anguissette.
    The guards were nervous, I could hear it in their low voices. "... grandfather saw it, and never spoke another word," one of them was muttering. "If you ask me, nothing human could cross that sodding bridge without being seen."
    "Pascal saw it," the other said shortly. "It ran off before it finished him, and he was still alive when Gitto found him. He died trying to say what he saw. It didn't come over the bridge, it crawled under it."
    "Yar, like a giant sodding spider!" the first retorted. "I tell you, whatever we're looking for, it's not human. No man could do that."
    As I crouched in the dark, scarce daring to breathe while they moved out of range, I tried to imagine it-crawling beneath that deadly bridge, clinging to the underside, fingers and toes wedged between the knot-joined planks, moving one torturous plank at a time, suspended upside down in the howling winds, above the raging cauldron of sea and rocks ... who would even dream of attempting such a thing?
    I knew only one.
    Joscelin.
    Don't dare to hope, I told myself, watching the torches recede; don't even think it! It was too much, too impossible. How could he have even found out where I was? It must be something else, some political coup, enemies of Marco Stregazza launching an attack on one of his strongholds. Who knew what intrigues lay behind the other prisoners of La Dolorosa? It must be, and I dared not dream otherwise.
    And yet I could not help myself. Hope, faint and tremulous, stirred in my heart. It strengthened my resolve and lent me new courage as I picked a path around the benighted fortress to gain the cliffside. There, at ground level, were the narrow, barred windows of the prison cells, peering out across the stony cliff toward the sea. A faint light emanated from them, but no sound. I knelt beside the first and looked inside.
    It was empty. They were all empty, even mine, which I knew by the guano on the ground outside the window where I'd fed the seagulls. The light came from the corridor beyond the open cell doors, where I'd left the lantern. I stood up and moved away from the cell windows, into the deeper shadow of the fortress wall.
    Asherat's wind was stronger here, moaning in my ears. The cliffside was deserted for now; there was nowhere to hide between the fortress and the cliff. I could feel the rock tremble under my bare feet from the impact of the waves. So Fabron was free, and they knew I had escaped.
    Where were the other prisoners?
    I stood still, straining my ears against the roaring wind. There, yes; toward the front, I could hear faint wind-whipped cries and the clash of arms. Slipping quickly past the low windows, I made my way forward.
    I'd not gotten far before the battle came to me.
    At whatever point the prisoners of La Dolorosa emerged, it is a safe bet that they caught the garrison in disarray. No one who served in that place but was wraith-haunted in the first place; it must have shocked them, this outpouring of eight gaunt, wild-haired apparitions, roused to a furor of madness that knew no fear.
    It was a melee that spilled around the corner, full of confusion and panic. At least half the prisoners were armed, with short spears wrested from the first guards they'd encountered. I daresay the full garrison of La Dolorosa was no more than thirty or forty men at best, and only a handful had been left to ward the fortress proper.
    Others had been sent to comb the island, and it was they who came at a run, torches streaming, illuminating the incredible scene. Knots