The tack-less soles of Nikolai's assassin slippers padded silently down the corridor. His sickle tick-tocked comfortably at his hip. From ahead came the scuff of the impostor's feet. The ever-quickening scrape of the breath in his throat. The cat-soft patter of Nikolai's brother priests as they closed in.

  The Fool had fallen for Nikolai's trap after all. Andrei had allowed himself to believe he could escape, and so revealed that he would escape. Would the Wealthgiver run? Would the Shrouded One botch the attempt so badly? The Unseen One allow Himself to be seen?

  The Russian doctor was no vessel of Hades. No reincarnation of Asclepius. The other priests knew now that they had misread the signs and allowed themselves to be fooled. The Maiden would soon know it, too. Andrei was nothing but another victim.

  Brother Murad padded ahead of Nikolai. A tongue-click revealed he had pulled out his sickle, running toward the top of the stair. Yes, let the master poisoner have this kill.

  "I echo," said Andrei, the utter idiot. He painted himself in sound! His neck shone in the darkness for Murad's sickle, which whispered out.

  And struck nothing. Murad fell, somehow, as if the floor had vanished. As if the Earth had become a pit. His blade went spinning down the corridor, casting echoes that showed Andrei standing at the base of the steps.

  The Fool had spoofed Brother Murad. Carefully, Nikolai descended the steps, sickle raised, fury throbbing in his teeth. He would rip out Andrei's throat for this. How dare he? How dare he?

  His anger was a mistake. It suffocated Nikolai, distracted his mind from the sounds reflecting off the smooth object above Andrei's eyes, obscured Nikolai's own memory of the miner's lamp that he had himself given the treacherous doctor.

  Too late, Nikolai's ears caught the hiss of gas. Flint scraped against metal. Andrei obliterated the corridor with light.

  Curses from all sides. Nikolai took an involuntary step back, eyes throbbing under the protection of his inner elbow, and his shins struck the stairs. His sickle clattered to the floor, and for a moment the sound of the corridor was as dazzling as the light.

  Nikolai could not see, could not visualize, but still he knew that Andrei was smirking at him.

  "Oh, there you are," the outsider said. "Thank you for coming to help guide my way. As you see." He paused as if to chuckle, the pig. "I got lost, even though I brought a lantern."

  Metal slid against metal. Nikolai lowered his arm, trying to blink away the indigo image burned into his retinas. Andrei's smug expression, like a boy who'd put a bug in his father's coffee. Nikolai would rip the Fool from one side to the other.

  "Would one of you please help me, well?" Andrei hummed as if thinking to himself. "No, the Maiden's summons can wait, I suppose. Must wait. I have to deal with this injured man first."

  Nikolai dropped, groping for his sickle.

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  "The Maiden summoned you?" asked Brother Theodoros, walking up the corridor from beyond Andrei.

  "Yes. Some kind of medical emergency. But now this fellow has a concussion."

  Theodoros clicked in confusion. Nikolai looked up to see Andrei kneeling by Murad, as if in medical concern.

  "The Maiden did not summon you anywhere," said Nikolai. "Liar!" There was his sickle. "There have been no messengers in your corridor, and no use of the speaking tubes in hours."

  Andrei sighed in consternation. "Well, you see…"

  Nikolai drew breath to give the order to kill.

  "I received a vision."

  Nikolai's breath growled back out again.

  "A what? Did the darkness speak to him?" That was Brother Bogdan, hobbling up from behind Andrei. Madness take him! Did everyone in the Sacred Depths converge on Nikolai's embarrassment?

  "Damnedest thing," the Fool continued, prodding at Brother Murad's neck. "I saw a knife—I mean a scalpel, and a flame. An injury in the chambers of the Maiden. I rushed into the corridors, where I'm afraid I got lost. And I've injured this poor fellow badly. Neck seems all right, though. Nikolai, come help me lift him."

  Nikolai slowly stood. Did the capering clown think he was fooling anybody?

  "Seize him," he said in Good.

  "No," said Andrei. "No, you come here and help me, Nikolai Igorevich. This man got a nasty crack on the head when he fell down the stairs."

  "Fell? Nonsense," said Nikolai. "None of the dwellers in the Sacred Depths would be so clumsy."

  "So how did he end up on the floor at the foot of the steps with pupils that don't focus?"

  The priests looked at each other. From the ground, Murad wheezed in Good. "He called upon the stone, and it moved."

  "Of course not! You, you spoofed him." Nikolai realized they'd all been speaking in French. "You played a trick."

  Andrei raised a hand, casting horrible claws shadows on either wall. "A Fool defeating a Good in single combat in the dark? Ridiculous."

  Nikolai glared at Andrei. Looked away from the light. "He says you made the stone of the corridor move."

  The kneeling doctor should have looked like a supplicant before Nikolai, but his voice was as cold and unamused as a waiting crypt. "Is that what I did, Kolya?"

  "Don't call me Kolya. And put out that blasphemous light!" How had this Fool so disturbed Nikolai's calm? Again? Every moment talking to him was agony.

  "We must help Brother Murad," said Brother Bogdan in Good.

  "So help me," said Andrei as if he understood. "If your high priest won't sully his hands. Come here, the two of you, and help me roll this man over. No, not like that! Don't let his neck twist. Carefully! There."

  Nikolai was disturbed to see Brother Murad's face had changed since he'd last seen it. The young man was bonier now. Gawky, with jutting cheeks, nose, and Adam's apple. A big red splotch marked his forehead.

  "What's your name?" asked Andrei him, still in the wrong language.

  "Murad. Brother Murad. Master p—." Murad grimaced. "Poisoner. I feel sick."

  Andrei tilted his head back and forth, throwing shadows across one side of the face of Nikolai's friend and ally.

  "No immediate crisis," Andrei told them. "Assuming, that is, that the skull and spine haven't been fractured. The right elbow certainly has. He needs to be watched, kept awake, and kept from drowning in his own vomit. You two, help me carry the patient to the infirmary."

  "You two" hadn't included Nikolai, but he swept forward anyway, glaring aside Brother Theodoros and Georgi, another newcomer. They were gathering a crowd. How frail the brothers all looked in the light. How frightened.

  They should be. Andrei should have been killed days ago, and now here was Brother Murad lying, nearly killed. Were these the actions of a vessel of the Unseen? Were they? No. Andrei was the enemy of the Good, and now all the brothers knew it. Only Kori would remain unconvinced. The Maiden.

  Brother Theodoros was looking at him. "Why are you smiling, Elder Brother?"

  Again, the light betrayed him! With a guilty start, Nikolai took control of his expression. And the situation. And his own mind! There were no bats here.

  "Yes," he said. "Take Brother Murad to the infirmary and make sure no further harm comes to him. But you, doctor," he sneered. "You told us that you had a dream of the Maiden. Someone injured in her rooms, you say? Then we must go to her immediately. We cannot doubt the truth of your revelation."