We left the stairs. The axe-blows stopped. I followed Petey’s stiff-legged stalk to an intersection of halls, laid myself flat and careful against the wall. After making sure I wouldn’t dislodge any decorations-this was no time to knock down a portrait of old Aunt Hattie-I sidled up to the corner and pinched my nose hard one last time and listened.

“You idiot,” hissed Elizabet. “Why didn’t you just get the key?”

“She never let it out of her sight,” replied Othur. “How was I supposed to get it? Why didn’t you?”

“I’ll be through it in a minute,” spoke another voice, one I didn’t know. “Damned door must be two feet thick.”

Judging that they were sufficiently far away, and that the hall between us was dark, I peeped around the corner.

Othur and Elizabet stood together, an axe-swing’s distance from a bald behemoth of a man, who stood panting, leaning upon his axe.

I pulled my head back before anyone saw.

“Get back to work,” snapped Elizabet. “We don’t want them waking up before we’re done.”

The big man grunted, and an instant later the axe fell.

“Talo and Abda ought to be back by now,” said Othur. “Think they had any trouble?”

“With who? Jefrey, or that idiot from the Narrows?’ Elizabet snorted. “They’re both as dead as Daddy by now,” she said with that same laugh I’d heard that first day on the stairs. “Think they’ll come back to get you, too?”

Othur giggled.

Petey licked my hand. You might not believe now, I thought. But I bet you will before sunrise.

Petey whirled and growled, and I heard footsteps-booted, hurried footsteps from at least two men-sound down on the stairs.

We scooted out of there. Petey led the way, and I followed. Just like old times.

We wound and we wound and we wound, until the halls got narrow and the doors got smaller and the storm felt like it was just inches above our heads. The axe continued to fall, and I heard snatches of a brief argument, and then all the voices but those of the hex fell silent.

Petey led me to a door, stopped. And though he was nothing but hex and poison and memory, he wagged his tail, and I saw.

The door-latch turned, the door opened and there stood the widow, wide-eyed.

I raised a finger to my lips, and she bit back her words. I stepped inside, pushed the door shut. Lightning flared, and the widow’s eyes went wide, and I knew she was seeing the blood on my face.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Good to see you. Why aren’t you in your room?”

“Mrs. Hog warned me to seek a secret place tonight,” she whispered. She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “Have you seen him? He’s out there. Can you hear him?”

I shook my head. Maybe she didn’t know. “I’m more concerned about your sons,” I said. “You know they’re at your door. With an axe, and at least two men.”

“I cannot,” came the cry again. “I cannot!”

The widow did not hear; instead, she nodded. “I know,” she said in reply to me. “I heard the sounds, went out. I saw.” She set her jaw, and did not cry. “What are we to do?”

“You must,” came a voice in the thunder. I pinched my nose and the widow winced.

“We’ve got to get downstairs,” I said. “They’ll be through the door shortly. When they find you gone, they’ll go room to room. We’d better not be here for that.”

“But-outside-Ebed is there, outside.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said. “He’s dead. He’s gone. The man with axe is very much alive.”

She shook her head. I heard the cry again ignored it.

“We’re going to go downstairs,” I said. “We’re going to get Jefrey. Then we’re going to a neighbor.”

She started to argue. I cut her off.

“What did Mama tell you?” I said. The axe blows fell faster now. Even House Merlat’s pre-War, solid oak doors weren’t going to hold them back much longer. “What did she say?”

The widow said nothing, but she looked me in the eye, nodded once.

“Let’s go,” I said. I stepped into the hall and let Petey lead the way into the dark.

We made it down the stairs. We hid once, at the top of the second floor landing, while Abad and a hireling-a man even bigger than the axe-man upstairs-trotted past, cussing and panting.

Abad’s friend had a crossbow. Not a big fat Army-issue Mauser, but a sleek black rig narrow enough to slip easily through doors and poke around corners. Probably had a killing range of only thirty feet, but that’s just fine for the odd bit of murder in our better stately homes.

We all held our breath. Mama’s hex showed me faces in the walls but was quiet while Abad and his crossbow-fancying friend passed.

We waited until the sound of their passage and the last faint glow from the lamp they carried was gone, and then I took the widow’s hand and we darted down the stairs. She moved well, and the soft-soled shoes she’d chosen were as quiet as my socks. And at least her customary black garb let her blend in well with the shadows.

At the foot of the stairs, I listened, heard only cries and moans. I led the widow to the shadowed alcove by the stairs and motioned for her to be still.

“Jefrey,” I whispered, and pointed toward the door to his closet. “Wait.”

I went, Petey at my side, ghostly dancers twirling about me. Blink they were there-blink again, gone. I put my ear to the door.

“I cannot, no, I cannot.”

Petey growled.

“Quiet,” I hissed. Then I heard Jefrey snore, and I opened the door.

While I gathered him up, I pondered my next move. It seemed simple enough-just sneak out the front and wake the Watch. The storm would hide us. Once away, we’d be impossible to find. With luck, they’d not know we were gone until the Watch came and told them.

I slung Jefrey over my shoulder and stepped back out into the ballroom and blinked away the phantom dancers about the time a crossbow clicked and sent a bolt all the way through my left arm, just above the elbow.

The widow shrieked and thunder boomed, loud enough to rattle windows. I dropped Jefrey and went down on one knee, trying to find the man in the shadows so I’d know which way to run.

Lightning flared and I found him, crouched in the dark on the other side of the staircase, five steps from the widow.

He lowered the crossbow, grinned, pulled out a long knife. He shouted something to his friends, but it was lost in the thunder.

Petey snarled. I’d heard that same snarl only half a dozen times, down in the tunnels. It was pure wolf, pure rage, sudden promise of a torn throat, of a leap and a bite and a wet red gush of blood.

The man heard it too. He heard it and he whirled, seeking its source, and a sudden rush of shadows broke from my side and threw itself full upon him.

He fell. He flailed and kicked for a moment, long knife whipping and slashing and striking sparks off the tiles.

I rose. Blood ran down my arm, kept running, and I could feel it rush out new with each heartbeat. But I rose and stumbled toward the man, halfway there before I realized my own knife was gone, dropped, probably under Jefrey and too damned far away.

The widow stepped out of the shadows, a red-on-yellow Hang fish-urn in her hands. Without ceremony, she lifted it high above her head and hurled it down upon the man still wrestling emptiness on the floor at her feet.

He rolled. She missed. The urn shattered, and the man cursed and rolled and caught her right knee with his hand. The widow screamed and kicked him hard in the face.

I leaped. He hadn’t seen me coming. Lightning cracked and burned, just past the stained-glass windows set high up in the walls, turning the floor red and green and a dark royal blue. I had just enough light to land a punch hard in his throat and shove my right knee hard into his groin as I fell. He gasped and I hit him again and then the widow pressed a long thin knife in my right hand and I buried the narrow blade deep in his throat.