"It's time." Stroking his mustache, he frowned at the destruction in his ballroom. "It's a good thing too. Any longer and I don't think I'd have a standing house."
"Good deeds seldom go unpunished," said Priyanka.
Zayn had a light sweat built up. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The others looked similarly lubricated.
"I'll take care of Marilyn while you're gone," said Halfdan. "There are supplies downstairs, things you might find useful in the Bastille."
Since it was night, it was easier to move about the city, especially because Deathbird had no moon. What few lights glistened in the city were distant, barely even reflecting off the crystalline forest.
They used spells that Priyanka had taught them, which used the darkness like a cloak. They made it to the outbuilding where Allgood and Noyade had dug the tunnel without incident, finding a hole going into the earth inside.
With the door closed, Priyanka addressed them. "This is your last chance to back out. If you enter the tunnel with me, you have agreed to see this through to the end, no matter what the consequences. I want your answers, one at a time."
"I am ready to die trying," said Portia with a tight-lipped intensity that brought a raised eyebrow from Priyanka.
Skylar took a deep breath before nodding her head, as if she'd just finally come to the conclusion that she was willing to die. "I'm in."
When everyone looked to Vin, he answered, "Well, duh."
They all chuckled, relieving the tension of the moment.
Keelan caught his gaze. There was some emotion Zayn couldn't quite read, but his cousin looked back to Priyanka and said, "I'm in."
Last, Priyanka looked to Zayn. He was going to give a brief answer like the others, but then he remembered it was more than just his patron looking at him. His teammates were as well. He wanted to give them something more than what seemed like an inevitable answer.
"For our friends in the Academy, our families who want to see us again, and for everyone in the Hundred Halls. Let's do this."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Deathbird, April 2015
Not everyone makes it to the end
The interior of the tunnel looked like it'd been blasted into existence with searing flame. A mix of burnt hair and charred wood smell permeated the long tube that meandered in the general direction of the Bastille. It looked like the two instructors had to constantly change directions to avoid the crystalline root structures.
Priyanka led them through the tunnel, carefully pointing out the occasional glimmering tendrils hanging from the black earth. Zayn examined one section closely as he passed. The root structure had a million tiny facets, and a surface that reminded him of metal filings on a magnet if they were rainbow hued. When he moved his hand too close, his skin tensed up as if there were a forcefield around it.
When they reached what they thought was the end of the tunnel, they found Instructors Allgood and Noyade in a small natural cavern that they had intersected, lying on the ground nearly motionless except for the slow rise and fall of their chests. They were covered in dirt and other, darker, materials—especially Allgood—like coal miners after a twelve-hour shift.
The tunnel continued ahead. The sound of water falling echoed through the opening, but the way was partially blocked by a curtain of crystalline roots.
Instructor Noyade opened her eyes and struggled to sit up. Her arms were trembling. It'd only been five hours, but the exhaustion in her eyes made her look like the survivor of a lost expedition.
"Is he...?" asked Skylar, eyes wide with concern.
"Mercifully unconscious," said Noyade, leaning heavily on her bent knees. She was a lithe woman with sea-green hair, but that color was lost amid the muck. "We'd been avoiding the worst of the roots until this last section. The soil blasted away, but what hit the roots rebounded on him. He's going to have a few more scars."
"Are you well enough to continue?" asked Priyanka, with a motherly tone that surprised Zayn.
Tears formed in Instructor Noyade's eyes, streaking through the mud on her face. "I'm sorry, Pri. I'm spent. That last hit took it out of me keeping Carron alive. It was like being struck with the tuning fork of the Universe. Even my bones feel thin."
Priyanka put a hand on Noyade's shoulder. "No worries. You performed admirably. No one could have done what you did and in the time that you did it, except you two."
"But we didn't complete the job," said Noyade, voice cracking. "There's no room to squeeze past those roots. It isn't finished."
With a wave of Priyanka's hand, Noyade's eyes rolled back into her head. Priyanka caught the lithe instructor and gently laid her onto her back, next to Carron.
His respect and admiration for his patron was growing. She clearly cared for her instructors and students, which led them in turn to fierce loyalty. It made him regret some of his actions in his first year, when he had ignored the needs of his team until it was almost too late.
Priyanka sent a message sprite careening back the other way through the tunnel.
"Halfdan can collect them and bring them back to clean them up and pour some healing magic into them," said Priyanka. "Thank Merlin for his help in this."
The whole time Priyanka was dealing with the other two instructors, O'Keefe was standing before the crystalline roots.
"What do you see, Maggie?" asked Priyanka, over her shoulder.
"Cleavage to make a man tremble," said O'Keefe, rooting around in her shirt. "The only problem is a damn centipede dropped down the front."
After a brief tussle, she yanked it out and threw the insect onto the soil before stomping on it.
"As for the roots, I think we can scoot by them if we're careful," said Instructor O'Keefe as she eyed Vin. "Except for the big man over there. Unless you know a shrinking spell, and then I'll hide him in my cleavage, which is now a centipede-free zone."
A rosy hue bloomed on Vin's cheeks. "If they can get through, then I can get through."
Zayn was worried about himself, and Vin had another hundred pounds on him.
"Follow me, then," said Priyanka. "If you bump one, try not to react, or you might cause a chain reaction. We'll go one at a time to minimize the risk. Follow my path."
Priyanka went first. She moved as if she had jelly for bones, contorting her body like a Tetris game to slide through the openings. When she was on the other side of the roots, she said, "That was relatively simple. Let's get through this so we can focus on the real challenges ahead."
Skylar went next, and though she lacked the grace of the patron, she had the size and flexibility to make the passage look easy. Then Portia went through in a herky-jerky manner that made Zayn tense up every time she moved, expecting her to hit a crystalline tendril.
Before making his attempt, Vin went through a series of stretches. Zayn had seen the big man limber up before a dojo session with Allgood, but Vin really pushed himself this time. As Vin went through the maze of roots, Zayn held his breath waiting for the inevitable mistake. It seemed impossible that Vin could fit in the gaps, but he contorted his body in no less an impressive manner than Priyanka.
"You go next," Zayn told his cousin, who looked like he was going to object before stepping to the passage.
Keelan took his time, carefully slanting his body to get past the dangerous plants. He was nearing the end when the ground rumbled slightly and a section of the tunnel fell in, dumping dirt onto Keelan.
He cried out in pain. When the tunnel finished collapsing, Keelan was standing still with a chunk of root sticking into his shoulder. More roots had spilled around him, leaving him in a crystalline cage.
"Don't move, Keelan," said Priyanka. "You didn't hit it, so it didn't react too badly. If you can pull away slowly, you'll be fine."
"It's in my arm," he said through gritted teeth.
"Let me get to him," said Zayn. "I can help."
"I can do it," Keelan said calmly. "Stay back."
"If he jerks and knocks into the
other roots, you're both dead," said Priyanka.
"I'm coming, Keelan," said Zayn.
His cousin scrunched his forehead. "Stay back."
Zayn didn't bother answering. He stepped through the roots carefully until he reached his cousin, whose forehead was damp with sweat and smudged with dirt.
"If you crouch down slowly, letting the root slide out, you won't hit the ones behind you. I can reach through this gap and keep you stable," said Zayn.
Keelan's breath was labored. Clearly he was in a lot of pain. He made the tiniest of nods.
"On my go—one, two, three," said Zayn.
Keelan lowered himself, and the crystalline root made a sickening noise as it pulled out of his arm. The jagged edges of the plant were worse than a broken bottle.
When it was finally out, Keelan nearly stumbled into the roots behind him, but Zayn held him up.
"Thanks, cuz," said Keelan. "But I could have gotten out."
The partial tunnel collapse had created an easier passage through the final section, so they were able to reach the others. Portia tended Keelan's shoulder with a tiny gold beetle that stitched and cleaned the wounds with its mandibles.
Under normal circumstances, Zayn would have been fascinated by the device that Halfdan had given them, but he was too awed by the scene before him. They stood at the back of the Bastille, which was no less impressive than the front.
The solid gray stone stood sentinel on the back of the hill, which dipped into a depression. The falling water that he'd heard before was from a large tube sticking out of the base of the structure, splashing into a pool below. The water sparkled clear under the floating magelight.
"Mierda," said Portia. "It's a lot more impressive up close."
Priyanka winked. "Wait until we get inside."
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Bastille, April 2015
Strange time for a lesson
"Looks so good you could drink it," said Skylar, staring at the glistening pool of water below them. "Or at least a few laps before we go."
The pool was about fifty feet wide and forty feet below them. While the tube was at their level, it was about eighty feet from where they were standing.
Instructor O'Keefe pulled a handful of shiny metal spheres from a pouch and handed one to each of them. They were the size of a marble and cold to the touch.
"Can anyone guess what these are?" asked O'Keefe.
"The world's worst gum balls," said Vin, holding it up as if he were going to bite into it.
Without answering, O'Keefe lobbed the sphere in her hand at the water pipe. Before it reached the pipe, it impacted something in midair, sending tendrils of electricity in a wide arc. The pristine scene before them disappeared, replaced with a swampy sewage land. Brown, chunky water splashed out of the pipe, tumbling into a seething mud pit below. The water didn't seem to flow as much as it oozed.
The reek hit Zayn's nose, bringing up bile in the back of his throat. The stench made his eyes water.
Skylar, holding a fist over her mouth, said, "Please tell me we're not going through that. I think I preferred the illusion."
"Use your imbuement to stifle your sense of smell," said Priyanka. "It'll make this much easier."
Zayn had practice with the technique, so he got it right away. The relief of not having to smell that wretched quagmire was palpable.
Priyanka pulled a rope from her backpack, tied a heavy metal ball to the end, and handed the whole thing to Skylar.
"We need to get over there and disarm any wards in the pipe," said Priyanka. "You're going to help me."
Skylar looked like she was going to protest, but then she remembered Priyanka's earlier comment and nodded her head. By the look on her face, it was clear she realized her previous statement had earned her the job.
"That ball on the end will attach to the metal pipe. Throw it over, and we'll use it as a bridge," said Priyanka. "Don't worry, the rope is unbreakable."
Skylar got it on the first try. The ball connected to the pipe with a thud. They tied it off to a spike pounded into the ground. Both Skylar and Priyanka nimbly walked across the taut rope, their imbuements making it a trivial challenge.
There was enough room inside the pipe for both women to stand. Priyanka made a few arcane gestures, and glyph lines appeared inside the pipe, blocking their way.
Zayn expected their patron to disarm the ward, but then it became apparent Priyanka was teaching Skylar how to do it.
While they worked on the ward, everyone else milled around. The sky occasionally flashed with light, announcing the approach of the storm, though it was too far away to hear the thunder.
Zayn moved next to O'Keefe. "Isn't this a strange time for lessons? There's a lot on the line."
Judging by the smirk that curled O'Keefe's lips, he knew what her answer was going to be. "What better time? Even bright young men and women like yerselves are like porn stars at work, going through the motions making noises you think will fool us. In moments like these you learn to keep a laser focus when you could kill yerself and all your friends."
Zayn crossed his arms and looked across the gap at Skylar, who looked frustrated by the task. Impotent sparks flew from her fingertips at the failed spell.
"It's her way, laddie," said O'Keefe. "She's been doing it this way for as long as I've known her."
"It just seems like a trivial thing to be teaching in a time like this. There are lives on the line. The Hundred Halls will fall apart without magic."
"There's always a new crisis. Always," said O'Keefe. "The quest for power is as old as my underwear. People will screw things up faster than you can put them back together. But if you don't take the time for the future when you can, you'll never do it."
"It just seems...strange is all," he said.
"She won't always be here to save us," said O'Keefe. "Either you'll be on a job on your own, or she'll have finally made a mistake and joined with the eternal dirt."
He mulled her words as they watched Priyanka and Skylar work on the ward. But after several failed attempts, Skylar dispelled the protective magic, and the glyph faded from the air.
They each crossed the taut line in turn. Zayn tried to ignore the muck tugging on his ankles in the pipe. He did his best to not imagine what could be in the goo, but it was hard when it was sucking on his boots each time he stepped forward. When they were finished crossing, Priyanka tugged on the rope, and it untied itself and zipped back to her hand. She unhooked the ball, put it in her pouch, and handed the rope to Skylar, who wore it like a bandolier.
The pipe led into a small square room with no visible entrances, except for the way they'd come in. Sewage in a pit at the center of the room seeped over the edge and into a trough, which led to the pipe.
They stepped out and cleaned their feet with spells, though Zayn didn't think he'd ever get the feeling of squishiness between his toes out of his mind.
"Remind me never to complain out loud again," said Skylar, shivering as she spelled away the grime.
"You did marvelously," said Priyanka. "Now everyone look around for a way out of here. Check the walls for hidden doors. There has to be a way into the main structure."
Searching took about five minutes. Portia found faint grooves in the wall as if something had been scratching across the length of it.
While Zayn was examining the fetid pool at the center of the cube-shaped room, he noticed Keelan wasn't moving as quickly as before. A sheen of sweat had broken out on his cousin's forehead.
"You okay?" Zayn asked quietly, away from the others.
The stitched cut on his shoulder leaked pus, and around the wound his skin was blotchy red.
"I'll be fine," said Keelan, though it was clear he wasn't. "Don't say anything. I don't want to be a burden, and there's nothing we can do until we get out of here."
Zayn glanced at the others before nodding.
"I found something!" said Vin, pointing to a small hole in the wall that he'd revealed behind a hi
dden panel. "There's a switch inside."
After Priyanka examined it, she gave the room a long look.
"Before we trigger that, let's keep looking. That felt too easy to find."
They searched for another ten minutes. Zayn thought it was a pointless task, since they'd already found the hidden lever, but Portia called out from the opposite side from the lever.
"It looks like there's a big door here. Or at least the outline of one. I found it with my fingernail," she said, holding up her hand.
The door wasn't visible to the eye, even with imbuements turned up, but scratching across the surface with a fingernail caught on the edge. No one could find the top of the door, which suggested it was extremely tall, or possibly went up to the ceiling.
"Do you think that lever opens this door?" asked Skylar.
"Probably not," said Priyanka, lips pursed into a concerned frown as she stared at the wall.
Instructor O'Keefe was digging through a pouch on her hip. It seemed like her hands were going much deeper than the suggested size of the pouch. She produced a pair of large suction cups with handles and handed them to Priyanka.
After applying an alchemical solution to the suction side, Priyanka stuck them to the hidden door along the bottom edge. Then she wiped her hands on her shirt, before grabbing the handles and pulling upward like a weight lifter doing a clean and jerk.
When the door shifted upward a few inches, they shared a round of pleased smiles, until a grinding noise rumbled beneath them. The grins turned flat and everyone glanced around the room, trying to figure out what was making the noise.
"The ceiling is closing," said Skylar, right before Keelan added, "And the pipe is gone."
Seven heads snapped in the direction of the pipe, which was mysteriously missing. They were trapped in the room.
"We have to go out this door," said Priyanka, grunting as she lifted the door higher. The tendons in her neck strained like steel support wires on a bridge as she yanked upward, but the door was moving slow, and the ceiling was much faster.
The Reluctant Assassin Boxset Page 43