The City Darkens (Raud Grima Book 1)

by Martin, Sophia

  “Are you certain you have everything you need?” Alflétta whispered as I buttoned up the leather vest and pulled the hood over my head.

  After tying on the mask, I nodded. “It’s all here.” I patted the bag. “You shouldn’t wait too long tonight, Jarl,” I added after a moment. “If I don’t return by midnight, go back to the palace without me.”

  His eyes, dark in the night, narrowed as his eyebrows drew down. “I dislike this plan, Jarldis. It seems you yourself think it too risky.”

  “Risky, yes, and even more so if it succeeds—the results will be quite… disruptive. It wouldn’t do if you were caught in the aftermath. I’ll come back by midnight if for any reason I decide to abandon the plan. Otherwise, whether I succeed or fail has no bearing. You must not wait for me.”

  “Do you—do you believe you’ll succeed?” he asked. “You—you trust what these prisoners have told you?”

  I gazed at him through the slits in the red silk. “I do.”

  I’d returned a few nights before to Grumflein Prison, and scaled the wall again. The inmates assured me that they sent inquiries about Lini Madr through the prison’s grapevine, and received news in return. Madr was still alive, and still at Grumflein. He, like most prisoners of noble or religious stock, dwelt in a cell on the upper floors.

  It was, of course, possible that they lied. It was possible that they anticipated the conclusion I would come to: that in order to free Madr, I would have to free everyone beneath him first. If they had lied about Madr’s presence, there was nothing I could do about it now, however, and I intended to proceed regardless. I would no longer stand idly by knowing that the vigjas and vigjadises of Frigga, Baldr and Alfódr languished in Grumflein. The inmates had told me all about the torture the vigjas and vigjadises suffered when I went back that night, confirming the horrors Dihauti had awakened me to. I hoped to free Madr, for Alflétta’s sake, but freeing everyone else would do as a consolation prize if I could not do that.

  Alflétta settled in the usual dark pocket in the depth of the alley that he chose to hide in, and I set out at a jog. I had to preserve my strength. No sprinting. There was plenty ahead of me tonight to challenge my endurance. Despite reserving some of my strength, I pushed my jog to a loping run. I’d checked as thoroughly as possible that no one followed. I had no time to spare. I could not be sure how long each step in this plan would take, and I needed the cover of night to make it work.

  When I reached the base of the tower, I put goggles on over the mask. They weren’t necessary now, but they would be later. Once those were on, I pulled the thin chain web of cleats over my boots, which also adorned the tips with sharp claws. I changed into different gloves as well. I’d requested these new accessories from Spraki with the icy stones of Grumflein in mind. The gloves had metal hooks at the finger tips and cleats in the first pads of the fingers, and as I began to ascend without a pause, I knew immediately that they would make a great difference, as would the talons on my feet. My first climb had been slow and slippery. Now, I scaled the wall with confidence, rapidly leaving the street below and reaching the dark window of the same cell as before within minutes.

  I grasped the iron bar nearest me with one hand, and swung the bag from my back to my front so I could rummage through it with the other hand.

  “Hey!” I called. After a moment, pale bearded faces appeared.

  “Raud Gríma!” someone said.

  “Or the fool that dresses like him,” said another.

  I tossed three items through the bars. The clatter as they hit the floor echoed a bit in the darkness.

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s throwing things!”

  “What things?”

  “Guns,” said the man nearest me as he picked up one of my gifts.

  “Loaded guns,” I clarified. “I ask only that you wait for my signal to use them.”

  Five faces were visible to me. The last time I’d come they told me there were eight of them, but three were in shadow. The five I could see stared at me, until one of them asked, “Your signal? And what’ll that be?”

  I held up a bronze-barreled flare gun. “Just watch the window. There’ll be a nice bright light.”

  “And then what?” another one asked. “You expect us to shoot our way out?”

  “You won’t be the only ones,” I said. “I’ll be handing out gifts to every cell I pass on the way up.”

  “Up? Up where?” the same one asked.

  “He’s going after his friend. That Madr fellow,” said another.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And we’ve more of a chance of succeeding if you all cause a nice ruckus on your way out. Do you think you can do that?”

  One of them grinned, and the others saw it, and grinned as well.

  “Very well, then, off I go,” I said, and began scaling the wall again. True to my word, at every new cell window I stopped. As I got higher on the wall the wind became more and more violent, and despite my special gloves and the chains on my boots, it became more and more difficult to keep hold of the slick stone. Even if I had wanted to risk letting go of a hold to press the nub by my eye, I knew the cells were so dark I wouldn’t see much of anything. Reaching a window was a relief. I clung to the iron bars, called into the room, and if anyone showed a face, I tossed one or two guns in. It helped my climb that the bag lost weight as I went. I stopped at a total of eight more windows after the first.

  The trouble with the bizarre architecture of the prison was that after the point that I determined corresponded to the twelfth floor, the building suddenly widened. Even with cleats I would have no chance of crawling upside down along the bottom of this wider floor in order to make my way to the window above it. Instead, at the eighth window I came to, rather than simply tossing in a weapon, I grabbed the iron bar with my left hand and pulled out a jar of paste with the right. It held primarily muriatic acid, according to Spraki, who refused to discuss any other ingredients it contained. The goggles and the heavy gloves I wore were essential in handling the stuff; I’d explained what it was for and Spraki had obliged me with what he termed a “strong concentration.” Balancing the open jar on the sill of the window, I scooped out a large dollop of paste using a trowel. I smeared the stuff on the cement that held the iron bars on the right side of the window. Inside the room, someone spotted me. I heard murmurs and shuffling.

  “Who the Hel are you?” a man asked. As he moved into the dim light of the window, I saw that he looked like all the other inmates I’d seen. Pale, underfed, dirty, and bearded.

  After dropping the trowel into a thick bag made of some substance that Spraki assured me would withstand the acid, I put the whole thing back in the sack. I screwed the lid on the jar of acid paste and put it away as well. I had to wait a bit for the acid to eat through the cement, so why not idle the time away with a little conversation?

  “Raud Gríma, pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said, pretending that I wasn’t hanging from one iron bar over a hundred and twenty feet above the ground.

  “Raud Gríma?” the man echoed. Another gaunt, hairy face jointed his.

  “What by the Gods are you doing there?” the second one demanded.

  “Waiting for this muriatic acid to eat through the cement so I can pry off two of these bars.”

  “Whatcher want to do that for?” the first asked.

  “Are you mad?” the second one asked.

  A third and fourth joined the first two.

  “Well, I hope not,” I said, the muscles in my arms burning as I clung with both hands to the bar.

  “We’ve no use for removing the bars,” said the first. “None of us wants to jump.”

  “Or climb down, neither,” said one of the two new ones.

  “Who said anything about anyone jumping or climbing out?” I asked.

  They stared at me. Then a new one appeared and said, “You’re not trying to come in, are you?”

  “I most certainly am.”

  “He i
s mad,” said the second one.

  “Why? You think two bars isn’t enough?” I asked, eyeing the rapidly dissolving cement. It was old stuff and it needed only a bit of encouragement to crumble. “You might be right, I might have done better to smear some on the third bar, but I was concerned that might weaken the one I’m holding on to.”

  Digging out the trowel again, I began poking at the damaged cement, chunks coming away.

  “He says he’s coming in,” said one of the inmates.

  “But why?” demanded the fourth—or perhaps it was the third, I was losing track.

  “Business to attend to,” I said, as the last chunk of cement from the upper end of the middle right bar fell. I stabbed at the lower end.

  “Business?” echoed a prisoner. “What sort of business does Raud Gríma have in Grumflein in the middle of the night?”

  “You say that as though I might have business at any other time of day,” I noted as I continued chipping at the cement. The second bar was almost clean of it.

  “Well, whatcher doing here?” the first one, who had quite a distinct voice, asked.

  I braced myself, clinging with my left hand to the same bar I’d been grasping from the start, and pulled the middle right bar, yanking it back and forth. With a satisfying metal grating noise it came away in my hand, and I swung away from the wall with the momentum of it. My heart flew into my throat and I squeezed my eyes shut for a breath. With a tug of my left arm I pulled myself back into the wall. Opening my eyes and releasing my held breath, I tossed the iron bar into the cell and retrieved the trowel from the bag again, attacking the second bar.

  Almost the second the iron bar hit the cell floor, one of the inmates swiped it. I hoped the denizens of this particular cell weren’t unreasonably violent, but I had prepared for that eventuality.

  “And why should we let you into our—our humble home?” asked one of the prisoners, as if reading my thoughts. I guessed, without looking, that it was the one who’d retrieved the bar.

  With a sigh I continued worrying the cement, driving the point of the trowel into the cracks the acid had made in it. “Because if you do, I’ll give you something,” I said at last. A large chunk came away and fell from the window, plummeting down, down, until I barely heard it hit the pavement below. A shiver traveled through me, and I had to pause for fear I’d lose my grip on the bar.

  “And what’ll you give us?” Jarl Iron Bar asked.

  As I freed the last of the cement from the upper part of the bar, I said, “Your freedom.”

  Jarl Iron Bar barked a laugh. “You? Against all the guards in the tower?”

  If he had been able to see my face I might have given him a withering look, but as it was, that wasn’t an option. I yanked the bar free, this time without swinging away as I did, and chucked it into the cell, scrambling up before they had time to decide whether to grab it or attack me first. I twisted as I thrust my feet through the gap I’d made and landed on the floor of the cell. I’d scraped my sides and shoulders going through, but the leather vest protected me from injury.

  “Me,” I said, producing the flare gun and pointing out the window and downwards. “And about five or six dozen of your fellow inmates.” I shot the flare, and was rewarded with a loud pop and a bright red streak.

  The prisoners in the cell didn’t see the flare, but they heard the pop, and they all took steps back from me when they first saw the pistol. I put it back in the bag, which I let drop to my feet. It was the third such bag I’d gotten from Spraki; before this night was over, I would abandon this one as well. First I tugged on a harness of heavy leather straps with special buckles that would be useful to me later, then I pulled two of the last guns from the bag and held them up. From below, the sound of gunfire cracked, followed by distant shouting.

  “So,” I said, one gun in each hand. “Who wants a pistol?”

  Their eyes widened and then they started elbowing each other. I lobbed a gun at one prisoner on each side of me and retrieved the last one in my sack, and a thick coil of narrow, synthetic silk rope, which I slung over my shoulder.

  “Well, come on, then, who’s got the bars?” I asked, scooping up the very light bag as I advanced on the cell door.

  Between the acid paste and the iron bars, we made short work of the door’s lock. We all squinted and blinked against the electric lights in the corridor outside. As I’d hoped, no one was in the hall; no doubt if anyone had been stationed there before, they had rushed off to see what the commotion was below. We dashed forward, and soon came to a junction.

  “Anyone know which way to go further up?” I asked.

  “That way,” one of the prisoners said, pointing left.

  “Best of luck,” I wished the men, and bolted down the hall in the direction he’d pointed, still carrying the almost-empty leather bag. I meant it; I hoped no one came to an early death because of my scheme. But it was up to them now.

  The inside of Grumflein gave the same feeling of ancient stone as the outside, but the electric lights, installed with long cords tucked into the jointures of the walls and floor, added a strangely jarring quality to the interior. The light here was similar to that of the palace—bluish white, cold and stark. I passed through a doorway and found a spiral stair headed only upwards. Behind me, I heard cries and the sound of pistols firing. My new friends had run into some guards. No time to lose. I rushed up the stairs.

  According to the prisoners in the lower cell I’d visited, Madr was locked in an individual cell on the third level of the upper prison. I passed two doorways on my way up the winding stairs and stopped at the third. My heart beat hard in my chest and my breath came in gasps. Taking a moment to rest, I peered around the edge of the doorway, down the hall.

  Unlike the lower corridor, which had bare stone, these corridors were carpeted in red. The walls were upholstered in gray velvet. With the blue-white lights, the colors were nauseating. Gazing at the carpet and the walls, I saw many signs of wear. This area might be for the more “important” guests of the prison, but no one had renovated in a long time, nevertheless.

  My heart rate slowing to a more manageable hammering, I began my slow, careful creep through the corridor. Beside each door, on the upholstered wall, hung a small brass sign with a number. At door number 320, I pressed the nub by my eye and looked in. The cell was mostly dark, but I saw a figure sitting on the floor under the window. I knew which cell held Madr, so I didn’t have to see the prisoner’s face, but I wondered who he was—or maybe she, I couldn’t tell.

  There was no time to try to ascertain the prisoner’s identity. I must free as many as I could and make my way to Madr. Starting with 320, at each door I stopped long enough to smear a dollop of acid paste on the lock. Moving to 319, 318, and so on, I treated each lock. My friends below asserted that Madr resided in cell 313. I chose to see that as a lucky sign; 13 was Frigga’s sacred number. When I reached 313, I stuffed it with paste, then ran back to the beginning of the doors I’d treated. Using a knife—the last of the tools I’d brought—I pried open each corroded lock and pushed the doors open wide, not waiting to see if the occupants inside reacted.

  As I worked the knife into 313’s lock, I listened. Down the hall, in the first cells, people were beginning to stir. I wondered how the prisoners in the common cells were doing, too. I was too far up now to hear the commotion going on below.

  At last, I pried open the broken lock and pushed the door open wide. The cell was dark but light poured in from the corridor. I knew I must look like a dark silhouette to Lini Madr, who sat up on his narrow bed, shielding his face with one hand, palm out.

  “Luka’s chains! What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  Madr’s messy hair looked dark brown in the strange light. He was younger than Alflétta—perhaps not very much older than I, in fact. I was surprised. I’d expected graying hair and frail joints. This would be better.

  “Are you ready to leave this place, Jarl Madr?” I asked as I strode into th
e room.

  “What in the name of all the Gods…?”

  “Raud Gríma,” I said with a quick bow. “We have a mutual friend. He’s been a great help to me. In return, he asked that I take you from this place. Shall we go now?”

  Madr scrambled from the bed. “Alflétta? Is he yet free? Is he well?”

  “You’ll see for yourself soon enough, Jarl, if you’ll just consent to come with me.”

  Madr paused. “I cannot.”

  “Why not?” I asked, an urgent need to be gone building in all of my limbs.

  “If I were to escape, everyone would know it was Alflétta’s doing—”

  I made a frustrated noise. “Not with half a dozen others escaping as well, and that’s just this floor!”

  His eyes widened and darted to the door. “Oh. Well, then. By all means, let’s go, without delay!”

  The windows at this level were not barred. After all, whoever wished to die plummeting to their death was really quite welcome to take the initiative and jump, and no one expected anything to come in from the outside due to the shape of the building. I slipped my arm out of the coil of rope. Holding up one end, I evaluated the few furnishings in the room. The bed, I deduced, had an iron frame and was bolted to the floor. It would do.

  I took my time with the knot. I had tied many solid knots in my years in Söllund, but none had the importance this one did, for it would support two bodies for as long as it took me to descend the rope—I estimated the distance to be at least a hundred and fifty feet, maybe more. Finally satisfied with the knot, I took the other end of the rope and wrapped it round Madr as Spraki had suggested I should, then turned my back to him and secured the rope, which had regular knots down the length of it, through the leather straps and metal buckles I wore. As I did, I handled the small metal device Spraki called a “descender” with a kind of reverence. It was hard steel and looked a bit like a number eight with wings. Spraki claimed it would be the difference between rescuing Madr and both our deaths. I’d only had time to practice once with all of the gear, and I hoped the Luka would enjoy my performance now so much that He would gift me with some extra strength and luck for the last act.