Chapter 17: The Other Cellar

The hall emptied in a wave of coats and screaming.

The Kell men closed on the side door, and from behind it Lukas's voice came, bright and shaking.

"Back off, or the old man goes first."

Matthias stood in the middle of the aisle with his left hand clamped over his arm and blood running between his fingers.

"Nobody moves," he said to his men. "Nobody."

"He wants a hostage swap," I said. "He wants the pen."

"No."

"He wants me."

"Ilse, no."

"Send Ilse down," Lukas called, "alone, in the dress, or the next one is in his head. Cellar stairs, behind the kitchen. You have a minute."

I looked at Matthias.

I had given him three terms that morning, and the last one was that he not ask me why.

He didn't.

He held my eyes, and his were gray-green and wild, and then he stepped aside.

"I'll be at the top of the stairs," he said.

"Don't come down."

"Then I'll be at the top."

I took off the veil and left it on the floor.

The cellar stairs went down behind the kitchen, steep steps of old brick.

At the bottom the air was cold and smelled of wet stone.

It was a wine cellar, long and low, lit by one bare bulb, and my father sat in his wheelchair in the middle of the floor with Lukas behind him.

Lukas held the pistol loosely against my father's collar.

"There she is," he said. "The bride."

"Let him go."

"After we talk."

"Talk, then."

He laughed, and it was a young, tired sound that I had never heard from him in six months.

"You want to know why," Lukas said. "You've been wanting to ask since the suite. Ask."

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