There was no way she could pick that lock in the time she had, nor could she smash it open with anything at hand. She was going to have to focus her efforts on the chain and hope for the best. But when she tried to pull the long loops away from Roux’s body enough for him to slip free, she found they were wrapped too tightly to budge even an inch.

Roux continued to thrash frantically beside her and one of his feet lashed out, connecting with her thigh, sending a wave of numbness shooting down its length, but she ignored the injury and swam in close against the shaft. She held on to the chain with her left, opened her hand and summoned her sword.

She felt the solid weight of it against her palm. She jammed the blade down between the first loop of the chain and the pole itself and then pulled against it with all her strength.

For a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that she wouldn’t be able to get enough torque, but she was surprised when the link snapped quickly.

Annja wanted to shout for joy, despite being several feet underwater, but she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She still had several more lengths to go before it would be loose enough to free Roux.

She shot for the surface, filled her lungs with another gulp of cool spring air, and then dove back down. Annja could see that Roux had stopped struggling; he was just hanging there in the chains, his mouth open and filled with water.

Annja had run out of time.

She wasn’t ready yet to give up the fight, however.

She repeated what she had done before, sliding the sword between the pole and the links of chain. Planting her feet against the pole, she hauled down on the sword with all of her might.

As if in answer to her prayer, several links of chain parted and Roux’s body began to slip downward toward the bottom of the pond.

Annja dropped her sword and grabbed for him before he could drift out of reach. Hugging him to her, she kicked for the surface.

Below her, the sword flickered and was gone.

29

With her arms wrapped around his chest from behind and his head resting in the crook between her shoulder and neck, Annja struggled to get Roux to shore. The minute she stopped kicking with her feet, their combined weight would start to drag them down and she’d have to heave him upward with her arms to keep his head from going under again. It was tough, tiring work. Eventually her feet found the bottom and she stood, relieving her back of some of the burden. She dragged him up and onto the shore and laid him flat on the ground.

He was a mess. His face had been severely beaten and the right side was so swollen that his eye was barely visible. The fingers on one hand were broken and it felt as though his shoulder was dislocated, as well, though whether that happened before he went into the water or when struggling against the chains that bound him, Annja didn’t know.

It had taken so long to get him across the pond and out of the water that she feared for the worst. Would CPR even work after this long? If she did get his heart beating again, would his brain be damaged by the lack of oxygen it had sustained? What was the longest someone could go without oxygen, anyway?

She didn’t know and, as usual, it was the lack of knowledge that scared her the most. Things did not look good. Still, she would give it her best. She wasn’t one to quit before she even began.

She rolled him on his side to let some of the water drain out of his lungs and then set to work. It had been a while since she’d had any formal CPR training, so she quickly found herself repeating the steps aloud to be sure she didn’t miss anything.

“Tilt the head, pinch the nose and breathe.”

His lips were cold and hard beneath her own. She could taste the brackishness of the pond water.

“Check for air.”

She put her ear in front of his nose, hoping for an exhale.

Nothing.

“Hands on the chest. Pump one, two, three, four,” Annja continued the count to fifteen.

Nothing.

“Come on, old man.”

She went back to breathing again.

Tears streamed down her face as she worked, afraid that for once she hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t been quick enough.

“Pump one, two, three…”

Roux couldn’t die like this. Not drowned while chained to a pole in a public park. Not sacrificed so that someone else could be the new bearer of Joan’s sword. Not because she had failed him when he needed her most.

“Breathe.”

She was crying so hard that she couldn’t even see. Not that she needed to. Her whole world had devolved down to three simple activities.

Breathe.

Pump.

Check for air.

“Don’t die on me, Roux. Not yet.”

In a way she was surprised at the depths of her grief. Roux could be an infuriating, stubborn, old-fashioned pain in the butt, but he was also her friend and her mentor and until now she really hadn’t understood what he meant to her.

She pumped harder.

“Breathe, damn you!” she said.

As if in response, Roux suddenly convulsed, coughing up what looked to her to be half the water in the pond behind them.

She quickly rolled him on his side and pounded his back, helping him evacuate the water from his lungs. He gasped for breath several times and then settled into a more normal rhythm.

After a moment, he opened his eyes and blinked up at her.

As always, he was direct and to the point.

“Did you kill her?” he croaked.

“Not yet,” she said, and the cold gleam of justice danced in her eyes. It wasn’t a question of if,but simply a question of when.She would not let this go unpunished.

Roux went through another fit of coughing, then said, “I heard them talking. Before they…”

He waved his hands vaguely at the water and Annja understood. Before they tried to drown me, he was saying. Continuing, he said, “The shrine is the rendezvous.”

“The one behind us here in the woods?”

He nodded, then turned his head and spent a few minutes spitting up more pond water.

When he had cleared his throat and realized she was still there, watching him, he asked, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

Annja nearly laughed. Save him from drowning, drag him out of a lake, pound on his chest until he starts breathing again and he wants to be critical of her choice in priorities?

“You sure you’ll be all right?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said, and then retched up more pond water.

She reached for him but he waved her off. In between coughs, he said, “Go. She has to be stopped.”

He was right.

Annja went.

The sun had set while she had been in the water with Roux and it was fully dark. The old-fashioned street lamps that lined the walkways had come on with the growing dark and now lit the path with a soft light. Yet despite their ambience, the calm, tranquil feeling she’d experienced earlier was gone, replaced by a sense of imbalance, a disruption in the flow, as if the landscape around her was reacting to the events playing out upon its surface.

She followed the path a short distance until she came to a fork in the road. A little sign stood nearby, with an arrow pointing down each arm of the fork. The first was directed to the right and the word Shrinehad been etched into its surface. The second pointed farther along in the direction she’d been traveling and read, Esplanade.

Annja chose the right-hand fork.

It didn’t take her long to spot the small structure set back in its own nook amid the white pines. It was made from wood and had a green tiled roof that made it seem as if the structure itself had simply grown out of the ground rather than having been built by human hands.