Episode CXXXVI - The Spaces Between

Dark and musty, the cavity stretched ahead of Sarah like the world's narrowest alleyway, complete with the litter... and the vermin.  Her shoulder brushed against a piece of some kind of wooden support and something scurried over her.  It was too dark to see what it might have been and with Diana pressing her onwards from behind she had to control her involuntary shudder and just keep walking.

It was tight, uncomfortable, and each second seemed to stretch out like the shadowy eternity ahead of them as they inched along.  Sarah had no idea how being trapped within the walls of the museum was going to help them reach Doctor Barkham, but she assumed that Diana must have some kind of plan.  Diana always seemed to have a plan and, just like Frostfire before her, she never spoke a word about any of them.

Frostfire.  She wondered what had become of him, whether, even now, he was still lost on the seabed somewhere.  Perhaps it was best that he never made it to Fracture to see what had become of Dimsun, and yet, was it not Frostfire’s assumed demise that had led Dimsun to make the sacrifice he had?  Sarah couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened had all four of them made it into the city alive.  Would anyone have died in that collapse?  Would it have been her?

She gave herself a mental shake.  As much as she might want to linger on memories of Frostfire and Dimsun - as much as she might need to -

now was not the time.  There was a job to do and it required focus.  She looked ahead along the narrow caviity and tried to direct her thoughts to the vanishing point: their destination.

"Do you know where we're going?" she whispered, but Diana remained characteristically silent.  Further back, bangs and rattling noises indicated that the men still hadn't managed to get past their makeshift barricade.

How is it taking them so long? Sarah wondered, then, glancing back, realised that they hadn’t travelled all that far yet.  Time really was dilating for them in this space.  It was unbearable.

Suddenly Sarah felt the press of wood, plaster and stone lessen to either side of her.  She was in a new space and it took her a moment to work out what had happened.  With so little light to see by she hadn’t noticed the cavity running perpendicular to the one they were traversing and now she stood at a crossroads of sorts, a point between the corners of four rooms.  She turned around in confusion and then suddenly Diana was standing in the space with her, her lumpy shoulder vying for room.

“Right,” she said, before squeezing past and taking the lead.

Sarah watched the other woman retreat into the darkness of the right hand cavity before the sounds of men breaking through their barricade in the store room behind them finally made her slip in after her.  With the sounds of pursuit growing ever louder, their progress became suddenly much faster, despite the tight space.  Sarah found herself clawing at the rough walls to either side, practically dragging herself forwards and ignoring all the cuts, scraped and splinters she was getting along the way.

“They must have gone this way,” came a familiar voice from behind - the Captain - and Sarah felt her heart seem to leap into her throat.  She glanced over her shoulder, saw a beam of light just turning the corner behind them and then-

“Left this time,” Diana growled and this time she grabbed Sarah’s shoulder and yanked her along behind her, so that Sarah turned the corner backwards, just in time to see the vanguard of pursuit reach the last junction.

“Hurry,” Diana whispered, then clawed her way along the next cavity.  She was moving with such purpose, Sarah wondered if she really did have a plan – some key to the layout of this building she had never seen before, which was probably built whilst she was trapped in Frostfeather.  Or maybe it was just the desperate decisiveness of the hunted fox, darting into undergrowth and foxholes alike, all simply to evade pursuit, avoid the inevitable.

Is there any hope?

They turned another corner, this time with no immediate sign of their pursuers right on their tails, but Sarah could still hear them, their rough voices echoing through the cavity walls and they seemed to be drawing closer still.  Diana was gaining ground ahead of her and then suddenly she was rising upwards.  Sarah had no idea what was going on at first, her mind was clutching at straws of imagination trying to come up with an explanation, and then she saw Diana’s careful movements, and after that, the ladder.

“Up,” Diana said as she continued climbing and, looking back only briefly to check on their pursuers, Sarah obeyed.  She had no idea what the ladder was there for, or why the builders might have left it behind, but it led upwards through a hole in some floorboards between two beams, where Diana waited, crouched, ready to help her through the hole.  Sarah smiled at the implicit offer, but was able to make her own way out and was soon standing firm on the new level, where her companion met her eyes briefly.  “We keep going up,” she said, then turned and began to walk away.

“Wait!” Sarah called in a whisper and Diana half-turned back towards her.  “Why up?  What’s the plan, Diana?”

“My mother will have an office on the top floor of this building, because her ego wouldn’t allow anything else.  It will be towards the front, so that it can overlook the plaza outside.  She won’t want to rely on reports from her guards, she’ll want complete control.  So up until we can’t go up anymore, then we make our way towards the front.”

“And you know where that is, still?”

Diana merely raised an eyebrow in reply.  Of course the huntress of Frostfeather would have a good sense of direction in all these enclosed spaced.

“How do you know where the next ladder is?”

Diana shrugged.  “There must be one around here somewhere,” she replied.  “Come on.  They’ll make their way up here soon enough.”

And on cue, Sarah suddenly heard the shouts of the men below and new that Diana was right.  They had to keep moving and quickly.  But it was a relief to finally know where they were going.

Through the second level they went, squeezing through the cavities just as before, Sarah following Diana’s lead and taking each turning as it comes.  The sound of pursuit grew dimmer, but never faded away and there was signs of chaos in the rooms beside them as they passed, as if people were keeping an eye on their possible emergence.  Sarah drowned it all out with thoughts of what might happen when they finally found Doctor Barkham.  What would they do?  Would there be time for questions?  Recriminations?  Would she even have a chance to be involved, or would Diana just go berserk?  There was a pot of boiling rage fuelling that poor woman and Sarah wasn’t sure just how under control it was.  Diana was a very tricky book to read.

Eventually there was another ladder and then another after that which brought them to what seemed to be the top of the building.  Then Diana was leading them through the various cobwebbed junctions in what Sarah assumed was the right direction.  They moved slower now.  The sounds of pursuit had dwindled to the most distant commotion and Diana stopped often to listen in beside walls.  Muted conversations could sometimes be heard and once a guard humming tunelessly filtered in through the cracks, but these weren’t what they were listening for.  This was:

“This is the calm before the storm Commander.”

Sarah had only heard Doctor Barkham the once before – the voice over they had heard only a few hours earlier as they entered the city, but it was unmistakable, the same deep confidence and authority, the same arrogance.  Diana froze the moment she heard it and Sarah was sure she could hear her grinding her teeth.  She was definitely clenching her fists.

“If Tiberius is withdrawing his troops from across the city then it can only mean one thing,” she continued, “the skirmishes are over and a full-scale assault will soon be underway.  We cannot afford to be under-prepared.  Get the men off this ridiculous goose chase and back onto the perimeter.  Rouse the barracks and put everyone back on duty while you’re at it.  I will not have us caught sleeping!”

“Yes ma’am,” came the reply.  There was the sound of footsteps retreating, a door closing, then silence.  Diana let out a gasp of pain as her nails dug into the flesh of her palm and Sarah winced at how loud it sounded.

“You can come out now,” came Doctor Barkham’s voice beyond the wall, “I know you’re in there, whoever you are.  Just push the third block along from the beam next to where you’re standing and the door will open.”

Diana turned, glanced briefly at Sarah with eyes which burned like black sand, and then pushed the block.

The door did indeed open and Diana stepped through into the opulent study of her mother.

“Diana,” came the doctor’s voice, suddenly sounding slightly choked, “I never expected… I…”

Sarah took a deep breath, counted to five, then followed and as she stepped through the hidden doorway into the study beyond, she saw something she had never expected.

Rosetta Barkham was crying.

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