"We are leaving," I said.
Captain Arthur looked at the urgent note in my hand, then at the red bell resting inside its fractured glass casing. The Cantor remained pinned to the floor between two Sonomi knights, blood dried at the corner of his mouth, his blindfold slipped around his neck now, revealing those unsettling eyes of his. The black veins beneath them pulsed faintly whenever the bell below the reservoir gave one of its weak, trapped tremors.
He was listening. Not to us. To something farther away.
"The chapel isn't secured yet," Arthur said.
"I'm aware."
"The palace is under attack."
"I'm aware of that too."
"Then I should accompany you."
I looked at him, and he looked back with the particular expression of a man already prepared to argue with his superior until either he won or someone struck him unconscious. Admirable. Also exhausting.
