Prisoner of Ice and Snow

by Ruth Lauren

  Nicolai wipes his shaking hands down his trousers. His eyes flit around the group and then return to me. “Are you seriously thinking of doing this now?”

  I look at him. I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore. Little stabbing nerves pinch at my stomach.

  My sister takes my arm. “Valor, this is no less dangerous than your first plan. Getting caught means exactly the same thing no matter how or when we go.”

  “She couldn’t be more right,” says Natalia.

  “I know,” I snap at her.

  And what choice do we have after what Natalia did to the Peacekeeper? But this pipe has to come out somewhere, and there’s no time to find out more, no time to trust or not trust. There’s only now and a chance to go. I look around the team. Each of them looks back, and I know it’s time to get them out of here. “Can you run?” I ask Sasha.

  She nods.

  I nod back. “Let’s go.”

  Natalia turns to Nicolai. “Are you with us or against us?”

  “I’m with you,” he says to her, but he’s looking at me.

  “Let’s not waste any more time, then,” I say.

  We all pull our furs on. I hope we won’t have to ditch them anywhere. We won’t survive outside for long without them.

  I pull the grille fully clear of the drain and get down on my stomach. The opening drops away into darkness, but I can see white suds floating about six or seven feet below. They trail off along another pipe. It will be a tight fit for us—especially for Natalia—but it’s just big enough. I don’t know where the pipe goes, though, and I have a moment of fresh doubt.

  “Happy to go first,” says Natalia, pulling my shoulder and rolling me out of the way. She sits at the edge of the open drain and then drops away into the pipe with no hesitation. Feliks scrambles after her. He drops to the bottom and lifts his face to peer back up at us, then disappears into the pipe. Katia goes next, fear widening her eyes as she falls.

  “You next,” I say to Nicolai. I want to get Sasha out of here so badly that it’s almost a physical need, like being thirsty. But I want him in front of us. Between his cautious nature and the way he’s struggling now, he might panic and give us away if I leave him behind.

  He chews on his lip and then disappears silently down the pipe.

  “Now you.” Sasha nods, and suddenly crushes me in a hug that almost knocks me over.

  I squeeze her back, then pull her arms from around me. “We have to go.”

  She drops, and I sit at the edge of the drain myself. I take a deep breath and follow her, my stomach flipping. The wall of the drain, slick with water and slime, flashes past, and I land with a bone-jarring thud at the bottom. The pipe in front of me is small and dark. All I can see are the soles of Sasha’s boots. It smells faintly of the soap we use in the laundry, but mostly of something dank and cold.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper. My voice sounds strange in the cramped space.

  “I’m fine,” she calls back. There’s no room for her to turn and look at me.

  I don’t care if I have to crawl all the way to the city on my hands and knees, as long as this works. Everything inside me tingles, part horror and part hope. I shuffle forward and wish I’d put my mittens on first as my hands sink into inches of sludge in the pipe. Our little convoy crawls forward into the dark, hands and knees sliding through something I don’t wish to think about, our breathing loud in the tight space.

  My knees start to hurt. Natalia’s moving quickly, setting a pace I would be happy with if I couldn’t hear Sasha panting with effort.

  “Keep going,” I say to her. I try not to think of anything but putting my hands one in front of the other. Fear will freeze me if I let myself think about Warden Kirov. However hard I try to keep them out, though, thoughts edge into my head. Peacekeepers are much too big to fit into the pipe. But other prisoners aren’t. Prisoners who might be given knives or crossbows. I hold back a shudder in the dark and keep moving.

  After a while, I lose all sense of time and direction. My hands and knees are numb, my arms aching, legs cramping. The air is stale and reeks of mold. It feels like we must be in the center of the city by now, right under the palace. But we could just as easily be a mile under the frozen earth with nothing but a wasteland of snow and snarling wolves above us. I can’t hear anything but the tiny echo of panted breath.

  What seems like hours later, Natalia calls out. It might be my imagination, but it does look lighter ahead. My arms are shaking and my knees are tender. I’m sure they must be bruised black by now.

  And then I hear a rushing noise behind us, like wind blowing through trees, or … water.

  CHAPTER 19

  The sound is distant at first, like the sea from the shore, but it grows louder fast. Rusting flakes of iron scratch my arms as I close the gap between Sasha and me. The sound becomes a roar, and the space in the pipe seems to vibrate. Cold sweat breaks out across my skin. My hands and knees scrabble beneath me, but I can’t make them go fast enough.

  “Valor?” Sasha’s voice is raw with panic.

  “Hold your breath,” I tell her desperately. Someone ahead lets out a sob, and then the roar fills my ears. Katia screams.

  Freezing water surges up and covers me in the blackness, drenching my clothes, knocking the breath out of me as it drags me forward into Sasha. The cold is shocking, constricting my chest, stopping every thought before I can form it.

  Something hits me hard—a boot, maybe—and I lose whatever air is left in my lungs. I panic, my arms flailing against the tight space of the pipe. I’m going to drown. I’ve made it this far, and Warden Kirov is going to drown me. We’ll be stuck in the pipes forever; no one will know what happened to us. I need air.

  I open my mouth, and freezing, scummy water rushes in. Then just as suddenly as it washed over us, the water passes, and I drop in a heap, gasping and coughing. Water floods down my nose, burning, and I cough and cough, heaving air into my lungs in between.

  “Sasha? Sasha?”

  “I’m okay.”

  I wipe water from my face, sucking in huge, ragged breaths. “We have to get out of here. Is everyone okay?”

  Scared voices answer me. Someone is sobbing. Nicolai coughs so hard it must be painful, and Feliks curses. But we either move, or Warden Kirov pours more water down the drain and we die.

  “I think there’s a way out ahead,” calls Natalia, and even she sounds shaken.

  “Then go,” I yell back. “Go. Go!”

  My chest heaves, and I’m shaking. My clothes are sodden, weighted down and making me slow, but I push myself on. I won’t let Sasha down now. Ahead of me, Natalia cries out. Katia calls back, “We made it!” I can hear the relief in her voice, and I crawl faster. Air blows on my face, and then I sense Sasha disappearing from in front of me. Hands reach out and grab my arms, pulling me into a place where I can stand.

  “I think we’re in the sewage system,” says Sasha from somewhere near me.

  “I do too,” I say. “At least, that’s what I was hoping for.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Katia.

  “Well, if we are,” says Sasha, “then, logically speaking, there should be …” A few scuffling noises come from close by in the dark.

  A tiny, bright light flares, and I see Sasha’s face, her braids dripping down her chest, before I blink and shield my eyes. She had a fire inch-stick in her fingers. The light changes and I look back, my eyes watering at the sudden brightness. She’s holding an oil lamp. The others are standing with expressions ranging from delight to confusion, all of them breathing hard, all soaked and shivering.

  “Where did you get that?” asks Feliks.

  “There,” says Sasha, holding the lamp up behind her. The circle of light shows a shelved alcove in a stone wall just big enough to hold the lamp. “If these are maintenance tunnels, then there have to be workers to maintain them. And workers have to have light, don’t they?” There’s stunned silence. “Well, any of you could have thought of that,”
she says.

  Feliks and Katia exchange looks, their mouths open in little circles.

  “She’s right,” says Nicolai, shaking water from his hat. “And I know there’s a water plant outside the city. Maybe ten miles from here.”

  Natalia steps forward. “Fascinating as this is, we need to move. Any idea which way we should go?”

  Sasha holds her lamp high. The weak glow shows an arched tunnel built of stone, cold and damp, but big enough to walk upright through. Another gush of water blasts out of the pipe, making me jump into Katia. Sasha pushes forward with the lamp, and we watch as the water blasts into the middle of the tunnel and flows away. “We follow that to the water plant,” she says.

  My teeth are chattering, but I smile. We run in the direction the water flows, our boots echoing in the tunnel.

  Along the wall, there are other little alcoves, and at each, Feliks makes it his job to stop and hurriedly light an oil lamp. After a few miles, we have four, including the one I’m holding. We’re running close to the wall when something that I recognize flashes past in the dim light. I jolt to a stop. Nicolai, bringing up the rear now, runs into me. “Wait!” I call ahead.

  The others turn and gather around.

  “What is it?” asks Sasha. She looks tired, dark shadows flickering under her eyes. Worry flashes through me. I wish we could slow or stop to let her rest.

  I lift my lamp to where a smaller tunnel with bright mosaic tiles covered in cobwebs leads off to the left. I recognize the patterns—they’re the same as those in the tunnels under the tower in Tyur’ma.

  “I think this is part of the tunnel I was planning to use before the tower burned. If it is, we can get straight to the city this way.”

  Finally—finally my plan is going to work. “Come on.” Cobwebs stick to my face as I tear down the tunnel, everyone following me. My legs burn, but my heart is soaring now. And when I see light ahead, I laugh out loud.

  We burst into a tunnel that’s obviously been swept clean. A few oil lamps burn on the walls. The light is dim, the oil almost burned down. There are spaces where some of the lamps have gone out altogether.

  I look to the left. In the distance a pile of rubble blocks the entire space. It’s the cave-in that happened when the tower was destroyed. And it means Warden Kirov can’t follow us. I don’t even pause to regain my breath. I ditch my lamp and run in the opposite direction, the sound of five pairs of boots following me.

  The bright colors of the mosaics fly past. My breath becomes ragged, and my still-wet clothes rub my skin and make me feel like I’m running through mud. But I’m running, and my sister is next to me, her braids flying out behind her, bumping on her back.

  I check over my shoulder. Katia is lagging behind, but her head is up, and she has a determined look in her eye. Feliks is flying along, his thin frame bouncing with every step.

  The tunnel branches into four in front of us. I memorized where each one leads from Father’s plans. Straight ahead leads to the palace, and right leads to the docks. I hold out an arm to point the direction to the others and turn right. I have to slow down, though, because this tunnel isn’t in use and there are no lamps.

  I take Sasha’s hand. “Make a chain,” I say. Natalia’s still got her oil lamp, so she leads the way. Sasha links her other hand with Feliks’s, and he links with Katia, and we’re running again, Nicolai at the back, until I see light—real daylight slanting down in broken shafts as if through bars.

  I hold onto Sasha’s hand as if it’s a life raft. We’re going to make it. We’re the first people in three hundred years to escape from Tyur’ma.

  “Put out your lamp, Natalia,” I whisper. “We can’t risk being seen now.”

  She snuffs the flame, and we creep toward the exit of the tunnel above us. Light streams in through the iron grille. The salty tang of sea air blows into my face, but there’s something not far above the bars. Slats of wood. Water sloshes nearby. I can’t see enough to work out exactly where we are.

  “Here.” Natalia shuffles through the group and offers me her back to climb up on and see. Hands reach out to steady me as she lifts me to the grille. I wrap my fingers around the bars, frightened for a moment that they won’t give. But black flakes prickle my fingers and rain down to the floor of the tunnel. The iron has been corroded by the salt air.

  I push up, the weight of the grille sinking onto my arms. Underneath me, Natalia shifts to one side and then rights herself. The whole cover moves, and the grating of it sounds loud in the tunnel. I freeze, holding my breath. Katia has one hand over her mouth, the other clinging to Feliks’s shoulder. I ease the bars to one side and peek over the edge. Above me is a dockside building built on small wooden stilts. We’ll have to crawl along the ground through the gap to get out. Ahead, though, I see a slice of blue sea beyond stone walls, a collection of boats rocking gently on the water. Closest to us is a group of small fishing boats with nets strewn around the sides, and on the other side of the harbor sits an enormous, elegant sailing ship with towering masts and yards and yards of furled sails.

  “Okay, let me down,” I say. I’m just about to describe the scene to the others when there’s a voice from down the tunnel. A flash flood of panic washes through me. Katia’s eyes are wide, her breathing fast.

  I point to Sasha. You first.

  She shakes her head, pushing Feliks in front of her. I open my mouth, but there’s a faint noise from somewhere that makes all our heads whip toward it. Nobody moves; everybody’s poised, waiting. I take shallow little breaths.

  There it is again. No mistaking the source: boots echoing in the tunnels. I lock my fingers together to make a foothold, but Natalia shoves me out of the way and makes her own, her broad back filling half the tunnel. Feliks gives me an anxious look, his eyes big in the dim light, and hops up onto Natalia’s hands. She lifts him easily. He scrambles through the gap, and his boots vanish.

  Sasha pulls Katia forward next, and I don’t argue. A few weeks ago I thought I would have stepped over anyone to get Sasha and Sasha alone out of Tyur’ma. But if I got out and any one of my friends didn’t, I know how I’d feel. They are all Sasha now. We help lift Katia up. She struggles for a moment before she’s pulled forward from above.

  The footfalls get closer, heavy boots echoing on the stone floor. A male voice says something, and another answers. They’re so close; everything inside me is screaming to run, run, run.

  Natalia offers her locked hands to Sasha. I would love with all of my heart to push my sister up there and leave Natalia. But I look at her and she looks at me, and just for a second I see that she’s realized she might not be able to get up there without help. She’s heavy, and the tunnel grille is high.

  I offer her my hands. She blinks twice, then puts her boot into them and steps up. I’m almost knocked down, but the voices at my back make me strong with desperation. I heave as hard as I can, Sasha helping, and Natalia grabs the lip of the opening and slowly, agonizingly, pulls herself up.

  Out of the gloom behind us, men dressed in black appear. One of them shouts, and they all run straight at us. I turn around, but Nicolai has vanished. Where did he go? When did he leave? I don’t have time to think about the sting I feel.

  “Move,” I scream at Sasha. She shoves her boot into my hands, and I barely feel her weight. I fling her up at the hole, and she clings to it and climbs out. She made it. I jump higher than I have ever jumped before, and my fingers grasp the edge on the first try. Sasha grabs my wrists, her face frantic above mine, and I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it too.

  An arm wraps around my waist. I kick out and pull up. But whoever has hold of me is a dead weight dragging me to the ground. My fingers slip. I drop down into the tunnel.

  “Run,” I shout before I even look to see who holds me. “Run, Sasha, run!”

  “You can’t help her now. Come with me,” I hear Natalia say from above. It sounds like there’s genuine desperation in her voice.

  I struggle against t
he grip on me, but my arms are pinned by my side now.

  Sasha’s face appears above, twisted in anguish. “I can’t go without you, Valor.”

  “Run, Sasha! Get away!”

  I hear Natalia above us. “Come with me, Sasha!”

  Sasha’s chin juts. “I won’t leave without you.” Her face disappears and I pray she ran, even if it’s with Natalia, but then her boots come into view. As she drops back down into the tunnel next to me, I sag against the arms that are locked around me, hurting my waist.

  “Take them both,” says the person holding me. “You know where to put them. I have to go.”

  I stiffen and buck against him. I know that voice. It’s Prince Anatol.

  “Come on, Nicolai,” he says.

  I wrench my way out of his grip and swing around to face the prince. “You’re a thief and a liar,” I yell. “You can’t do this to us.” I turn on Nicolai, my face flaming, anger raging. “And you, you traitor. You’re working for him. You sneaked off to inform on us? To bring him here? I hate you. I hate you both! I—”

  “We don’t have time for this,” the prince cuts in. He turns to one of the men in black. The blue sashes on their uniforms match his tunic. His own personal guards. “Take them. Keep them quiet. I’ll deal with this later.”

  Two guards grab me.

  I kick and scream until one of the guards shoves something in my mouth and ties a gag around the back of my head, and then I slump to the floor and refuse to walk at all until one of them takes hold of Sasha’s arm and drags her in front of me. After that I sink into a sullen silence as they bind our hands and lead us back the way we came.

  There are four guards, two on either side of us. They make Sasha walk behind me so I can’t even see her. We walk back to the where the tunnels branch, and they march us down the one that leads to the palace. All I can think about is how close we were. I tasted the sea air. I felt the breeze rolling in from the harbor. And now the prince has won, thanks to that traitor, Nicolai.

  Eventually we reach a grille that I wouldn’t have noticed if we weren’t yanked to a halt beneath it. There’s no light coming from above. I try not to think about where the prince could want us held, or what he meant when he said he’d deal with us later. My throat keeps pushing against the gag in my mouth. I wish I hadn’t screamed so loud before. I might need to again before long.