The Son In-law They Mocked Found The Lost Vault

CHAPTER 27: THE ROPE

Adrian did not think.

There was no time to think. There was no plan. There was only Helen, hanging in the air over the black hole, with a broken rope falling down on top of her like a dead snake. And there was his body, moving before his mind could tell it anything.

He jumped.

Not along the path. Not stone to stone, the safe way. He threw himself straight across the corner of the hole, flat out through the air, with his arms stretched in front of him like a man diving into a river.

For one second, there was nothing under him. Only dark. Only cold wind coming up from the deep belly of the tower. He heard Marcus scream his name. He heard the old rope hit the stone. He heard his own heart, loud as a drum.

Then his chest hit the edge of the floor.

The air went out of him all at once. Pain exploded through his ribs, the same ribs the thief had hit on the roof three nights ago. His body slid. The stone edge scraped across his stomach. His legs were hanging over the hole now, kicking at nothing.

And his right hand was closed around something warm and thin.

Helen's wrist.

He had caught her.

She was hanging below him, over the dark. Her whole weight was pulling on his arm, so hard that he felt his shoulder screaming. Her face was turned up toward him. Her eyes were huge. Her free hand, the one with the bronze feather in it, was pressed against the stone wall of the hole, scraping for something to hold.

"I have you," Adrian gasped. "I have you. Do not let go."

"I will not." Her voice was shaking. "Do not let go of me."

"Never."

But he was slipping.

He could feel it. Inch by inch. The edge of the floor was smooth and cold and wet from the wind, and there was nothing for his other hand to grab. His body was sliding backward toward the hole, pulled by Helen's weight and his own. His legs were already over the edge. His hips were going. His stomach.

He was going to fall with her.

And the strange thing was, in that moment, he was not afraid of that. If he had to fall, at least he would fall holding her hand.

Then something grabbed his ankles.

Two hands. Thin and bony and very strong, closing around his legs like iron. Pulling him back.

"I have you!" Marcus shouted from behind him. "Adrian, I have you! Pull! Pull her up!"

Adrian pulled.

Marcus pulled.

Helen kicked her feet against the wall of the hole and pushed herself up, a little, then a little more. Her free hand found the edge. Then her elbow. Then Adrian let go of her wrist and grabbed the back of her shirt, and with one last great pull, all three of them fell backward in a heap onto the solid stone at the side of the room.

They lay there in a pile, breathing hard. Nobody could move. Nobody could speak.

Then Helen started to laugh.

It was the same strange, broken laugh she had laughed on the hillside after the fire. Half laughing, half crying. She was lying on top of Adrian with her face pressed into his neck, and her whole body was shaking, and she could not stop.

Adrian put his arms around her and held her as hard as he could. He did not care that his ribs were screaming. He did not care about anything.

"You are alive," he kept saying. "You are alive."

"So are you," she whispered. "You stupid, stupid man. You jumped over a hole."

"You bit a man with a knife."

"He deserved it."

Marcus was lying on his back beside them, staring up at the bell, tears running down his face. He was laughing too. "You are both crazy," he said. "You are both completely crazy."

Then Adrian remembered.

He sat up fast, pulling Helen up with him. He looked across the room.

The two big Han men were still pressed against the far wall. They had not moved. They were staring at the black hole in the floor as if it might reach out and swallow them too.

But Shen was gone.

There was nothing where he had been standing. Only a few drops of blood on the stone where Helen had bitten him, and his thin silver knife lying on the floor.

"There," Marcus said, pointing.

One of the big open windows on the side of the tower. Through it, Adrian saw a shape moving across the pointed wooden roof outside. Black on black. Quick and light, like a cat. It ran along the edge of the roof, jumped down onto the top of the tower wall, and dropped out of sight over the side.

Gone. Into the dark, again. Like the first night.

From somewhere below, voices began to rise. Many voices. Angry voices, shouting in the mountain language. And under them, footsteps. Many, many footsteps, coming up the narrow staircase. The light of burning torches was moving on the curved stone walls of the stairs, coming up, getting closer.

"The town," Helen said. "The whole town is coming up."

"Good," Adrian said. "They can take these two."

"Adrian." Marcus grabbed his arm. His face was white. "Listen to them. Listen to what they are shouting."

Adrian listened.

Someone rang the bell. Find who rang the bell. Find them. Find the city people who rang the bell.

He went cold.

The old woman at the tea house. Whoever rings the bell will die. That is what we say here. We tell it to our children. And the young man from the city, long ago, who hit the bell three times with his hammer and fell down the stairs the same night.

The town did not know who had rung the bell tonight. They only knew city people had come, and fire had come, and the bell had spoken. And now they were coming up the stairs with torches, frightened and angry, looking for someone to blame.

And there were three city people standing in the middle of the room with dirt on their faces. Right beside the bell.

"We need to go," Adrian said. "Now."

"Where?" Helen said. "The stairs are the only way down."

"Not the only way."

The voice came from the window.

All three of them turned.

A woman was climbing in over the stone sill. She swung her long legs inside and jumped down onto the floor without a sound. A long red coat. Black boots. Sharp black hair. The smell of jasmine, faint in the cold wind.

Mei Lan.

She looked around the room. At the black hole. At the two frightened Han men. At the three of them sitting in a heap on the floor, smoke-blackened and bleeding.

"Well," she said. "You have been busy."

Helen was on her feet in one second. "Where were you?"

"Outside."

"When the tea house was on fire, where were you?"

Mei Lan looked at her calmly. "Watching the guest house. Someone had to. I saw Victor's black cars leave this town an hour before midnight. Both of them. And the ambulance." She turned to Marcus. "I am sorry. The girl is gone. They took her down the mountain."

Marcus made a sound like he had been hit in the stomach. He sat down hard on the stone and put his face in his hands.

"And then," Mei Lan said, "I saw the smoke."

"How convenient," Helen said.

"Nothing about tonight is convenient." Mei Lan's eyes went sharp. "But we can argue later, Princess. There are forty angry farmers on those stairs, and they are carrying fire, and they want to know who woke up their bell. You can stay here and explain it to them. Or you can come with me."

She went back to the window. Adrian followed her and looked out.

Tied to the stone sill was a rope. Not an old rope. A new one, thick and strong, with knots tied in it every arm's length. It went down the outside of the tower wall, straight down into the dark, all the way to the rocky hillside below.

"My way in," Mei Lan said. "I was coming up when the bell rang. I heard everything from the window." She looked at Adrian. "The song about the crane. That was clever."

The voices on the stairs were very close now. Adrian could see the orange light of the torches dancing on the top step.

He looked at Helen. She was looking at Mei Lan with her jaw tight. But she did not argue.

"Marcus first," Adrian said. "He is the weakest."

They went down the rope one by one. Marcus, shaking and slow. Then Helen, quick and angry, with the bronze feather pushed deep inside her shirt. Then Adrian, with his burned hands screaming on every knot. Mei Lan came last, so light and fast that she reached the bottom almost before he did.

Above them, in the tower, they heard the farmers burst into the bell room. Shouting. Then the Han men shouting back. Then the sound of a fight.

Mei Lan led them away across the dark hillside. Not down the path toward the town. The other way. Around the back of the hill, over rocks and through tall grass, to a small flat place under a pine tree, hidden from the tower and the town. There, finally, she let them stop.

They fell down on the ground under the tree. Nobody spoke for a long time. They just breathed.

Far below, the fire at the tea house was almost out. Only a thin line of smoke still rose into the stars.

"Old Lu," Adrian said suddenly. "I left Old Lu on the hillside."

"The townspeople took him into a house," Mei Lan said. "I saw them carry him. He is safe. For now."

Adrian closed his eyes. Safe. For now. That was the best anyone could hope for these days.

Helen sat down next to him. She reached inside her shirt and took out the bronze feather. She held it out to him in the starlight.

"Here," she said. "I think this belongs to you."

He looked at it. Then at her.

"You took it," he said. "Even while you were falling. You did not let go of it."

"Your grandfather died for it." She pushed it gently into his hand. "I was not going to let a man in a mask have it after all that."

Adrian could not speak. He only closed his hand around the feather and her fingers together, and held them.

Across from them, Mei Lan was watching. Her face was unreadable in the dark.

Marcus had not said anything since the tower. He was sitting with his back against the pine tree and his knees pulled up to his chest. His broken glasses were in his lap. He was staring at the ground.

"Marcus," Adrian said gently. "We will find Lily. I promise you."

Marcus did not look up.

"Adrian," he said. His voice was strange. Very quiet. "I have to tell you something. I should have told you at the pier. But there was no time. And then I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe I dreamed it."

Something in his voice made the hair stand up on Adrian's arms. "Tell me what?"

Marcus lifted his head. In the starlight, his bruised face was white, and his eyes were full of something that looked like fear.

"One month ago," he said, "Victor took me somewhere at night. He tied a cloth over my eyes in the car. When he took it off, we were in a graveyard. The old one on the north hill, outside the city."

Adrian's whole body went cold.

He knew that graveyard. He had stood in it twelve years ago, in the rain, sixteen years old, watching a coffin go down into the wet earth.

"There were men with shovels," Marcus said. "They were digging. Victor made me watch. He said he wanted me to see something. He said, 'This is how much the old man lied, Marcus. Even about this.'"

"What did they dig up?" Helen whispered.

Marcus looked at Adrian. Tears were running down his face.

"Your grandfather's grave," he said. "Adrian, they opened your grandfather's grave."

He took a shaking breath.

"And there was nobody inside it."