Sometimes, smaller chisel marks warn about what sort of tunnelers make their homes in the alcoves of a given branch. But these are inconsistent and just as likely to lead into a trap as steer you away from harm. I pay them no mind—except when I feel I must. Again, it’s something that must be learned by instinct, and explaining it to my companions would be like describing the color of the sky to a blind man.
We march single file up the slope, the thick stone walls swallowing up the dull echoes of our steps. We only cross paths with a few rag-laden maids, their gazes caroming away from mine, until we’re almost ready to turn off the main trunk line. A line of tunnelers coming back from work clogs the path as they surrender tithes. “Tithes,” I whisper to Marez. “Pass me some coin.”
He fumbles in his pockets for a few moments, then distributes coin to Kriza and myself. I barely manage to catch the coin as he overshoots my palm. His eyes aren’t used to tracing shapes in the near-dark. The enforcer holds out his sack, and each tunneler drops their tithe inside and shuffles along. That’s how it’s meant to work, yes. But too many times I’ve seen an enforcer call someone out for cheating; he could be trying to skim a profit for himself, or to add to his boss’s wealth to make himself look better to the gang. There’s a rhythm to avoiding getting scammed, of dropping your tithe not too slowly and not too quickly, of staying invisible to the enforcer. I pray I can remember the rhythm.
I’m next. I drop the coin in the sack. Don’t make eye contact. The enforcer grunts—shifts his weight, bag jangling with metal and wood. I start to walk away, shoulders taut as I wait for him to call me out. But it doesn’t come. He lets Marez through, and then Kriza.
I heave with relief and motion to the Farthingers. “Come on. Stick with me.”
A young man appears before me: I hear him in the shuffle of his soles against the stone ledge and the rushing water’s echo, warping to accommodate his form. His faint shape emerges from the darkness, revealing lanky, soiled locks of hair and an expression like it was carved into him. Kriza, though, doesn’t see him until he, walking on the wrong side, nearly plows into her, and she yelps like a beaten animal.
“I should cut you,” he snarls at her, pale fists glowing in the false moonlight from the luminous paint. “What did you steal from me? Huh? Give it up!”
“They’re with me. Run home to your enforcers,” I tell him.
“And who the nightmares are you?” He leers toward me, all knobby elbows and knees. “I’ll cut you both!”
His leather sheath creaks as he pulls a shiv from it, but in a flash I grab his wrist and crack it against the tunnel wall. He twists and jams his heel into my shin. But my boots are thick and drink up the blow.
“I told you to run home,” I growl into his ear as I twist his arm further than necessary to keep him immobile.
“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” he gurgles through fresh tears. The bluster is gone in an instant, revealing the too-young child beneath. I drop him before I can stop myself—he’s only a kid—and he takes off down the nearest branch.
My heart races from the rush of the encounter. I haven’t used that kind of force since I joined the Ministry. I whirl on Kriza. “I told you to stay sharp.” Really I’m disgusted with myself, for letting the boy go, for how soft I fear I’ve become. I can defend myself against a little boy, perhaps, but what of gang enforcers? Of rogue priests of the Dreamer?
She rolls her eyes. “One way or another, we could have handled him.”
“Him, maybe,” is all I say. “There’s plenty more like him to come.”
I catch sight of Marez’s eyes gleaming in the false light. To Kriza, he says, “Listen to Silke. We’re on her territory now.” Heat flares in my gut. “I didn’t know you had that in you,” he murmurs into my ear.
We reach the symbol I was looking for, directing us from this branch to the central chamber that spans underneath the Dreamer’s Square. I used to visit the shadowy market stalls of the chamber to bargain for scraps of food or fresh rags cut from discarded aristocrats’ shifts for my cleaning duties. If the Farthingers can behave themselves, we should be able to traverse the stalls relatively unscathed, but I don’t know which gang controls the market; I don’t know how its dynamics may have changed.
The secondary tunnel we take brims with ghosts, half people who drift past us with the same vacant stares my mother always wore. A rank, festering odor, like a seeping wound, hits me as the crowd thickens. Am I dreaming again? If ever there was a Nightmare smell, this surely is it. But despite the strange shadows passing us, nothing erupts from the walls; no one turns into a murderous beast.
As we step into the great chamber, I catch the telltale signs of the Harvest Moon gang patrolling the market—full moon tattoos, yellow-and-black scarves wrapped at their biceps. They’ve never gotten along with the Stargazers, and it’s a small relief to see they run this hall. A shriveled woman lounges in front of her stall, following us with her gaze as she polishes a wicked-looking blade. I avert my stare from her, but watch her from the corner of my eye. Her bodyguard leans over her and she whispers something to him.
“Let’s move quickly,” I say, and weave deftly through the crowd until I lose the meaty bodyguard in the mass. Then I push on even farther into the market, to be sure. Braziers ring the circle, and stubby chandeliers dangle from the arching roof. Not half a league above us, the aristocracy and their servants shuffle between the temple and respectable shops, while down here, the tunnelers barter with goods pinched from aboveground. The stink grows stronger as we wade into the throng of people. “Dreamer’s Square is just above us,” I mutter to Marez. “Those stairs at the far end lead up to the temple complex.”
A stall stuffed with severed chicken legs is to our left. Half-burned candles, no doubt swiped from an aristocrat’s house, on the right. One woman up ahead ladles watery, bile-colored broth into a man’s cupped hands. But all I smell is rot, seeping up out of the ground, spreading like a tumor through the air all around me.
Marez’s hand darts behind him and reappears, a little girl dangling from it, her fingers clenched around a coin pouch. “I’ll be keeping that,” he tells her, and then shoves her back into the crowd.
“Here—here’s the entrance to the Temple,” I tell them as we approach the far archway.
“Excellent. I’ll scout ahead,” Kriza says. She darts through the mob, her bucket hat easily merging into all the rest. I’m on alert, scanning the crowd to make sure we haven’t attracted any further attention from the tunnelers. But Marez slides his arm around my waist and pins me to him as we follow in her wake. I glance up at him, smiling, warmth unfurling in my chest.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” he murmurs, lips against my ear. It shoots a thrill like lightning up my spine. “I can’t wait until we’ve dealt with the Commandant and are free of our respective obligations.”
I’ll be freer than he knows—citizenship papers in hand. Brandt out of my life—I needn’t see him every day and mourn for what could have been. “What, exactly, do you have in mind?” I let myself melt into his side.
“I think you should see Farthing for yourself.” He grins. “I’m more than happy to give you a grand tour, when this is all over.” Marez steers us after Kriza into the twisting subbasements of the High Temple. But my mind is racing far away, imagining sailing off with Marez, leaving my troubles behind. “Our land, our libertine ways. See that life needn’t be the way Barstadters insist on living it.”
“I’m…” My throat closes up as we pass another noxious smell. The maze of tunnels and stairs that lead into the High Temple narrow into a shaft running along the complex that drops into the sewage tunnels far below us. “I want it, too. I’ll go. Once we’ve dealt with the Commandant.”
Kriza whirls back to face us, a slippery grin on her face. Have I ever seen her smile? Maybe when we were burning down the alehouse. I try to smile back, but the tang of the sewers beneath us is nauseating. How did I ever live with that, day in and out?
Marez pressing against me is making me dizzy, and I can barely even focus my gaze.
“Thank you for navigating the tunnels,” Kriza purrs. “I’ll slip in through the acolytes’ quarters and find our traitor. You two stand guard down here.”
I nod, scarcely listening, and she vanishes up the narrow, coiled stairs.
Marez and I duck under a low rough-stone doorway that leads to a narrow alcove, and Marez backs me into the wall. My pulse thrums in my ears. The wall is cold and sharp against my back, but Marez feels dangerously warm—soft and inviting. He leans close, eyes gleaming, his muscular form blotting away the chaos of the market. His lips brush against my cheek. “Silke,” he says, his breath fierce against my neck. “Come back to Farthing with me.”
“I … I will,” I manage to say, my legs wobbling beneath me. Between the smell and his aggressive heat pressing against me, a nod is about all I can handle. I want to relish this feeling, but the smell is distracting—I try to look back at him, but my eyes water.
“Ever since I met you, I’ve been dreaming of you,” he whispers.
My breath falters. What girl wouldn’t be reduced to gelatin at such words? Whose heart could help but race under this man’s touch, soulful gaze, and desperate tone? I admit I am lost in the fantasy, the promise of what more he may say and do to me. I am lost.
But not forever.
Perhaps it’s the smell. Were it not for that foul stench distracting me, fraying my nerves like overstretched rope, then maybe I could lose myself wholly in Marez’s attention, his silky-smooth whispers in my ear. He’d command my every fiber, and I’d be swooning and melting into him. I’m certainly on the brink. His nose traces the edge of mine, and his eyes flutter as he breathes in deep.
But that smell—that smell brings me back to myself. To the Livia who loves Brandt Strassbourg, and dreams of a life serving the Dreamer. When I hung rapt on every word of Brandt’s and Hesse’s teachings.
Brandt’s first rule of spy work, the first thing he ever taught me: there are no coincidences.
“Silke,” Marez murmurs in my ear, almost like he believes it could really be my name. “Come away with me.”
Second rule: anyone showing too much interest in you is almost certainly doing so for the wrong reasons.
“Your talents are wasted on these people,” he purrs, hands closing around my shoulders. “In Farthing, you could be limitless.”
Third: flattery will get you everywhere.
“Sail the seas, avoid Barstadt and its foolish constraints.” He sighs. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
Fourth: anyone you could describe as “your newest dearest friend” is anything but.
I twist my head away just as his lips crash against me, hitting my jaw. “Please,” I whisper, trapped between him and the stone, between nausea and the shackles of panic. “Please stop.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he growls. His façade is crumbling. He’s tired of this game. I don’t have long if I want to escape from this unscathed.
Because the fifth rule is: once they know that you know, you are living on borrowed time.
Marez is strong, but I’m experienced. Like evading the gang lieutenants, my size works for me. I dart out of the way of his elbow as it swings for my cheek. I slip to the ground and pop out between his legs.
“What is it?” I cry. “Why are you after me?”
“Your Dreamer is a fool, leading a land of cowards.” Marez stalks toward me with an unsettling calm to his gait. “You don’t deserve your gift. You’ll never seize upon its true power.”
My gift? I nearly lose my footing as I back away. He knows what I am? But of course he does. He and Kriza both—it’s why they’ve been hounding me, why he’s been working so hard to seduce me, to make me feel cherished, revered … It’s what they’ve been after this whole time. Dreamer, I’m such a fool.
Behind me, far below, I hear the trickle of the sewage canal. If it’s set up like the others, then it feeds into a branch tunnel, and hopefully washes out into the trunk line. Brandt taught me to always have an escape in mind, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t manage to pay attention somehow, despite the stench and Marez’s heat.
“What is it you’re after?” Keep him occupied, Livia—keep him focused on talking so he’s not watching you closely.
“Balance,” he says in the same tone someone would speak of a religious dream. “What I’ve long been due. Barstadt has reigned long enough. Your Dreamer needs to be deposed, and the Emperor with him. The Barstadt Empire is a bloated, mangled corpse ready to be put out of its misery.” His eyes are impossibly dark. I don’t know how I ever found that snarl and those eerie shadows on his face attractive. “If that idiot Hesse had surrendered when he had the chance, it wouldn’t have come to this. But I’ll make better use of you. I serve the real savior of our world—myself. And Nightmare will aid me.”
Footsteps race toward us from the upper stairwell, and Kriza darkens the doorway. “I’ve got it,” she says. “Come on, we haven’t time to waste.” Nightmare’s breath, the smell is overwhelming. Is it radiating off her?
Marez looks between the two of us. I edge backward, but there’s nowhere for me to go, save that sheer drop.
“What did you do?” Kriza shrieks at him. She storms past him and snatches me up by my collar. “What did he tell you?”
Her frothy spit flecks my face, but I’m too overwhelmed with revulsion to care. That stench, that smell that has swallowed me up, it’s coming from her—or something on her. Like a body left too long to rot in the sun. Like curdled, rancid milk being poured down my throat. I claw at her hands; it’s all I can do not to vomit. Can’t they smell it, too? Why aren’t they incapacitated, like I am?
“I made a mistake. I thought she was ready to be persuaded, but I misjudged her, all right?” Marez clamps a hand on Kriza’s shoulder. “We don’t need her gift anymore. We’ve got what we need to finish the ritual.”
She shrugs him off and drags me to the precipice of the canal, gripping me by my collar. Somewhere, the metal tang of sewage finds me under the fog of deathly stench. It’s not only water in the canal. But I’d suffer it. I’d endure that, to get away from these traitors and their stink.
“We have to kill her now, or take her with us. Give me the cloth,” Kriza says. “I’ll knock her out.” I scrabble to keep purchase on the ledge with my toes. Loose pebbles give way underneath me, tumbling into the stream below.
“I don’t have it,” Marez mumbles.
Kriza’s hold goes slack, and I nearly slip over the edge. “What?”
“I don’t have it, all right?” He charges toward us. “The dealer never delivered the next batch, so unless you fancy pilfering some of that, too—”
I’ve crawled my way out of enough pits and wallowed in enough filth. I never wish to return to a life marked by rags scrubbed until they are threads, a corner of the tunnels claimed, violations successfully avoided. But the tunnels are my native language, whose rules flow in my blood even if I can’t explain them. The Imperial architects of the tunnels are my kindred souls. I can trust them above anyone else.
I twist free from Kriza’s grip and plummet over the ledge.
Marez shouts above me. Kriza is surely staring openmouthed. They do not hear a splash, but perhaps the stream is too far down. No luminous paint lines the canal’s chute; they cannot see the slotted stonework in the near wall, where I cling desperately, like a rider to a spooked horse.
The Farthingers bicker back and forth with furious, blunted words. “Let her die. If she won’t work with us, she’s of no use to us,” Kriza says.
But they don’t leave. Footsteps shuffle above, but they’re coming closer, not retreating. My arms are burning; my hands form desperate claws against the stone holds. Dreamer, please, make them leave!
“You two is spendin’ too much time in my alcove,” drawls a gravelly voice. “I guess you must be wantin’ to make a trade of some kind. What do you think, Bee?”
/>
“I’m thinkin’ their lives is a fair trade for their belongings.”
Brandt. Brandt! And the other is Jorn. Again I’m grateful we’re not in Stargazers territory—Jorn must have guided them safely through the market. Oh, nightmares, whatever they’re playing at, let them play it out soon!
“We saw you nickin’ from the temple.” Jorn again, his slow, heavy speech no less frightening to me than the day I first heard it. “What did you take, girlie?”
More frantic scuffling. “Nothing of importance,” Kriza says, her cold tone more flustered than usual. “I’m sure we can work something out…”
A flurry of noise. Did Jorn seize them? Did they get away? I can’t hold out much longer. My left arm wobbles; my fingers burn as they start to slip.
And then Jorn’s head appears over the ledge. I could cry, I’m so relieved to see him, even in his gang flunkie disguise. “Give me your hand,” he says.
I pry my fingers from the stone, though their vise grip is the sole thing keeping me here, and I reach for him with my right hand. Jorn’s massive palm circles my forearm. He hoists me up and over the ledge in one swift arc, like he’s executing a hammer toss, and dumps me in the dirt before a very ragged, soot-smeared Brandt.
“Livia.” He pulls me into his embrace.
“Dreamer bless you for all eternity.” I’m shaking, clinging to him for dear life; shame skitters through me on spidery legs. “I’m so sorry…”
“That was a damned foolish thing to do,” Brandt says into my hair, but he doesn’t let me go. “Not informing the Ministry you were heading out with them.”
My heart is still thudding against my ribs like a trapped rodent. “They told me the Ministry had an informant. And Durst said to keep my eye on them through any means necessary—”
Brandt takes a step back, giving me room to stand up. “Through any means necessary,” he says, voice laden. “You certainly took that to heart.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “And what do you mean by that, Lord Strassbourg?”
Dreamstrider Page 23