by Sam Hawke
My brain recalled the steps but my body fumbled through the old form: left foot in front, left index finger pointing toward the target, three fingers on my right hand drawing the string, arrow between them. It was harder to draw than I expected. The alcohol didn’t help my focus, either. My arrow sailed pitifully past the straw dummy; Marco’s face was a study in politeness. “Try again, Credo. No need to rush.”
By the tenth round my arm burned and my fingers ached, but I was hitting the target. Marco’s smile looked genuine as he passed by me. A shout came from the group working with cane swords farther along, and the Warrior-Guilder excused himself to deal with the scuffle that followed. I took the opportunity to fall away from the archers to look about.
Ectar and his servants were dotted around the field, obvious with their elegant movements and their pale skin exposed by training tunics. Marco had enlisted all of them to help teach. Squinting, I eventually identified Credo Pedrag, the Craft-Guilder, all but unrecognizable as he hacked away with a cane sword at a dummy, long hair tied back and plump form surprisingly powerful.
To have arrived at the ration station at which he’d been poisoned, Tain must have left the field there, through the gate, then gone left down the nearest street. Anyone at the grounds or watching them could have seen and followed him; no one was taking rolls and in the confusion of the different training groups it would have been easy to slip out unseen.
It took only a few minutes to reach the ration station, a converted dressmaker’s shop. A woman and a girl, official city sashes swung across their shoulders, sat half-hidden behind vats and baskets at the table in the store. Colored cloth fabric rolls stood like bright soldiers at attention in the corners.
Again, Kalina’s secret purse found a use. In an alley I bit into a lavabulb, then spat out the seeds, and my face beaded as the burn took over my mouth. I wiped sweat into my hair and rumpled my clothes, then trudged out of the alley and to the station. “Can I help, Credo?” the woman asked, her tone deferential as her eyes traveled over my tattoos. “Have you come for rations?”
It wasn’t an official distribution time, and nor would it have been when Tain had been here, but no one would have refused the Chancellor food. “Is that all right?” I asked her, exaggerating my stiff gait and approaching the table. “I’ve just been training—I know it’s too early for the next rations.”
“Yes, Credo, of course,” she said, opening the closest basket. “We haven’t received our next shift delivery yet, but there is bread and dried fruit here.” She pushed it toward me and I noticed the smallest two fingers missing from one hand. Inside the basket simple rounds of flat black bread nestled in piles between dark goa berries and peach slices. Where was the poisoned oku? I took a round of bread, sniffing and letting a hint of disappointment show through my smile. “Thank you. Much appreciate this—I’m starving.” The girl touched her companion’s arm, whispering. Both looked at my tattoos again, then the first gave me a wink. “We have some oku out the back,” she said. “If you want something a bit more substantial than fruit.…”
I nodded eagerly.
“Wait here, Credo.”
As she ducked behind the heavy curtain separating the front of the store from the back, I gave the baskets, table, and room behind a surreptitious examination. Nothing registered as suspicious. Other than bolts of cloth, the space was empty—no room for someone to hide. The bread was cool and hardening, but the smell made my stomach grumble just the same. Other than Tain’s tainted food, I hadn’t eaten anything since last night, and the kori sloshed about in my empty stomach.
“How long’ve you been here?” I asked the girl, trying to sound casual and sympathetic.
“All day, Credo.”
“I guess it’s pretty busy. And then people like me come in and make it even harder for you, right?”
A flicker of a smile. “The new Chancellor came in before,” she said proudly. “He’s nice.”
“I bet he brought a whole lot of extra people for you to feed.”
Another smile, this one wider. She looked up through her lashes. “He was by himself,” she said. “And he said thank you and he was sorry to put us out. It was no trouble. We usually get all kinds of people asking to be fed outside distribution times, but today it was just him.”
So no one else tracked in with him and poisoned the meal on the spot. “And at least you get to miss school and spend time with your mother, huh?”
Mischief dimpled her plump cheeks. “It’s better than school,” she agreed. Then her grin dropped off. “Uncle went off to the walls. I like seeing Mother, but I’d rather my Tashi be home.” I saw the accusation in her dark eyes, and couldn’t think of a thing to say to make it better. Unless things changed, many children would be left without their Tashien and mothers forever.
“Is this your family’s shop?” I asked. She nodded and I looked at the curtain separating the front of the shop from the back. Like most on this street, it was multistory; the family who ran the business probably lived upstairs, with one or more other families. Which meant it certainly had a back entrance for the occupants.
The girl’s mother pushed back through the curtain, wringing her hands. “Credo, I am so sorry. We had a little oku out back before, but it’s gone.” Her sweaty forehead and fidgety posture spoke of nerves, but from embarrassment or dishonesty?
“Credo Bradomir always says to keep a little extra aside for the Credolen,” she continued. “I haven’t been serving it to regular folk, I promise. The whole tray is just gone.” Her hands wrung together with apparent sincerity and she shook her head. “My deepest apologies, Credo.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “The bread is fine. You’ve got a back entrance, right?” She nodded, hesitant. “Keep it locked from now on. There are bound to be thieves as rations run shorter.”
Frustration boiled inside me as I left. I circled surreptitiously around the store; it opened into a back alley with no facing windows. Tain’s visit had been unplanned and our enemy couldn’t control every ration station. No one had come in before or after him via the front of the store. But a careful person, who knew stations were holding back particular food for Credolen, could have followed Tain and added the slumberweed oil to the reserved stocks. Tain’s heart would have failed and he’d have died, probably on the training fields or while otherwise exerting himself, without suspicion. We had come so close to disaster, it made me shiver.
* * *
I didn’t want to return to the Manor yet. Kalina would be there with Tain; she could look after him. Head churning, I thought instead of what my sister had learned. We could set others to combing the city for Batbayer, but that might alert him. Though I hated that she had taken such risks, Kalina’s strategy had been sound. If we carefully monitored the sewer site, we might catch the Doranite trying to make an exit.
I headed that way now, using the long walk north to think. The rain had stopped again, and my muscles enjoyed the calm repetition of walking. Deliberately, I went through poorer neighborhoods, often observing the silence and abandoned feeling Kalina had described. I walked quickly and kept to the sides of the roads. I felt like a target, walking alone, though I could not have articulated the danger.
At the sewer entrance I didn’t speak to the guard, just observed from the shadows at a distance. I also traced back along the minor sewer lines; their underground passage was marked by brighter grass poking out between the stones of the walkways. There were other small access points along the way, but only a child could have fit along those narrow routes.
Eventually I came to the north edge of the city. The wall rose above me on one side of the street, gray and marbled with lichen and insect trails. Though the air carried distant sounds of industry, no noise came from any of the nearby homes; perhaps they too were deserted, or all their occupants were on duty. A few birds chirped from a perch on the iron railing of someone’s balcony, and a muddy rain puddle by the wall rippled rhythmically. There was something almost h
ypnotic about it, the ebb and flow of the water, the reflection of the sky above it distorted into shards each time the water flexed.
I shook my head, forcing myself to move—I couldn’t avoid Tain forever. Heading back to the Manor, I had walked perhaps six paces before the oddity sank in. Rainwater rippling in a puddle. Except it wasn’t raining anymore, and hadn’t been for a while. So what’s causing the rippling?
As I crouched beside the puddle, concentric circles sped across it, small but clear. I pressed my hand into the mud below it.
Vibrations. I drew my hand back. The cold from the mud seemed to penetrate my whole body as I sat back on my heels, head reeling. The vibrations were too faint to feel through my shoes, but they weren’t imagined. Something was happening beneath the surface. I looked across the street. If any of those houses had basements or cellars under the buildings, getting below the surface to take a look would give us a much better idea of what was going on. I tapped on the nearest door.
No answer. A few weeks ago it would have horrified me to even contemplate, but now it seemed almost natural to glance around and then test the lock. I didn’t have much of a knack for fine motor tasks like lock-picking, but I did have a phial of Malek’s acid in my purse, a few squirts of which dissolved the lock with a faint hiss. The door opened without protest and I slipped inside.
The room was cold and empty, stillness lying over furniture in disarray. Thatched reed matting covered the floor. There was a place in the corner where the edges of two intersecting mats looked tattier, and prying them up revealed a trapdoor. It covered a ladder, crudely made, leading down into the darkness. My quick search of the house failed to turn up a lamp, but I made a serviceable torch from the flare oil and igniter in my purse and a pilfered bowl. After a moment’s hesitation, I climbed down.
The air temperature dropped as I descended, and the faint light from the hatch above me barely penetrated the darkness of the shaft, let alone the room below. My injured shoulder made my one-armed progress jerky and painful. It took only a minute or so to walk the entire footprint of the cellar, bumping into barrels and shelves, stubbing my toes and bashing my shins a dozen times even with my little light. I found a bare section of wall and pressed my ear up against it.
The sound was clearer here than above, loud enough that I fancied I could still hear the chick-chick even as I took my ear from the wall. My heart beat faster.
Digging.
Someone was digging underground. While we’d been covering the walls and worrying about siege weapons, the rebels had somehow gotten a team of diggers close enough to the wall without being detected, and had made enough progress on their tunnel that I could feel and hear them from here. How close we were to disaster made me shiver.
Turning back to the ladder and stepping in what I hoped was the right direction, I cracked my knee on the corner of something hard. I swore, hopping back, and crashed into a set of shelves. Flimsy as it was, the whole thing tottered away from the wall and fell to the ground with a shuddering crash of metal, glass, and the fortunes knew what else. I swore again and tripped, arms reaching out to steady myself on the wall … which wasn’t there.
My mishap had revealed a hole in the wall, taller and wider than me, which had been concealed by the shelves. A hidden passage? I chewed my lip, my hand lingering on the edge of the bricked section where it turned to earth, trying to decide whether to go for assistance or investigate further.
Curiosity won. The oil had nearly burned up, but the remaining flames would be enough to heat the strip of ardorol tucked into my pouch, and adding dried ek leaves would slow the burn. The resulting white flare momentarily blinded me, then settled quickly into a warm glow.
Fifteen paces in, the tunnel opened up, and I found myself in a round space connecting what looked to be another tunnel and metal ladder, leading down. This one felt rough and rusty under my fingers, ancient. I paused. The logical step was to turn around and return to the surface, but the urge to continue and find out where these strange passages led compelled me. Just a little farther.
From the bottom of the ladder it became obvious this was a different kind of underground area. The ground was hard-packed and smooth, worn from passage over time, and the ladder affixed to a carved rock wall. The air smelled different, too, wetter and older. This was no man-made cellar, but a proper underground cavern system. I suspected it must be at least partially natural, given the scale of work to construct an entire artificial system would have required a huge endeavor by the Builders’ Guild and would have been hard to keep a secret. I passed not just one, but four or five entryways into other caverns or tunnels.
With one last glance at the ladder, I took the passage to its right, which led me into a smaller chamber. I took another right and found another chamber, then did the same again. Each space was still, silent and empty. The sound of my breathing and the stream of thoughts in my head sounded unnaturally loud. Stopping in another little round chamber, the initial buzz of my reckless decision fading, I gave it a cursory sweep with the shallow halo of my light. There was nothing down here, or at least nothing worth immediate concern. Somewhere on the other side of the wall—or even maybe on our side—our enemies were digging into our city. It had been stupid to waste time here when others needed that information.
Turning to retrace my steps, I glimpsed something at the edge of my pocket of light. This chamber wasn’t empty after all. A rough pallet sprawled against the farthest wall, made from gritty, unbleached fabric and stuffed with straw. I crouched beside it, feeling the impression down its middle. There was a sack, knotted and grimy, at the base of the bed. Inside were clothes: several colored shirts in the country style; cotton trousers; poorly made leather sandals. A bone comb was wrapped in a red scarf, its carved inscription too worn to make out. A sudden sound startled me from somewhere in the distance. Grabbing my light, I slipped back out of the chamber, listening.
Someone was moving through the caverns, approaching from the direction I’d come. The focused beam of a proper oil lantern swept in big arcs. Though the holder lay in shadow behind the light, his steps were confident as he moved through the chamber. I backed away. Impulsive I might have been today, but I had my limits. We could return later, or send someone down here to investigate after we dealt with the tunneling from the other side of the wall. I slipped into a corner, hoping the man would go in a different direction.
Only moments later, the beam of his light appeared from the opening I’d just come through. I slipped through the opening to my left, hoping to be well out of his sight. It was a slight risk to take a different tunnel, but one I was happy to take to stay out of his way. The rocky walls of the tunnel were suddenly illuminated, and my breath caught in my throat. Then, just as suddenly, the walls were dark again as his lamp moved on. Tension drained from me. No reason to be frightened.
Except, my brain chimed in, as the light returned to my tunnel, indicating his return toward me, except, he seems to know I’m here. My heart beat too fast and sweat ran into my eyes and down the back of my neck as I found another entranceway and ducked through it, barely taking two steps before the probing light swept around the previous chamber. This tunnel wound round to the right, and sloped sharply downward. I glanced back as he rotated the lamp, and it briefly lit up his own hands.
My chest turned to ice.
In his free hand, my pursuer carried a knife; a wicked curved blade as long as my forearm.
The passage continued down, going lower and lower. His search was thorough and methodical rather than hurried; it wasn’t clear whether he knew the trail he followed was only moments old. I recalled the unhurried pace of the “Speaker” down on the battleground at the foot of the ladder, the way she had followed me, and the fear from that weird experience, which I had been suppressing in the time since, returned doubled in force. The memory of the gritty hand around my ankle that had seemingly fallen away when the woman had. I didn’t believe in Darfri superstitions or spirits. I didn’t believe.
And yet.
As I emerged from the tunnel into yet another chamber, the air felt different: colder and cleaner, almost wet. The angle and length of unbroken wall beneath my scrambling fingers suggested a much larger space. Still the bobbing beam of light followed behind me. I moved along the wall, found another gap, and flung myself through it.
I hit solid wall, cracking my head; the impact knocked me onto my back and my glowing bowl upended. I’d run into not another tunnel but an irregularity in the wall, an alcove of some kind. I felt blood run down my forehead and nose as I found my feet. My pursuer entered the room, his light falling short of where I cowered against the wall. My rib cage blew in and out like a set of bellows straining under my skin, my breathing too loud.
I scurried to what looked like the blackest space in a sea of darkness, and this time no solid wall greeted me. I flung myself into the dark passageway and ran, hands outstretched on either side of me to feel the route, beyond caring that my steps might be audible. I felt the path rise beneath my feet, the upward gradient giving me an intoxicating taste of hope. I staggered out of the passage and into a chamber so small there was barely time to stop myself from hitting the far side of it. Behind me, rising out of the stillness, came the unrelenting tap tap tap of footsteps, like the beat of a song, signaling my end. Trapped. There was only one way in and one way out of what seemed likely to become my tomb.
My little cage lightened from black nothingness to gray shadows as he ascended, still with that disturbing lack of haste. I crouched, waiting. My fingers were unable to distinguish between the contents of my purse and the space was too small to safely throw powders, but I would risk poisoning us both if it came to that.
As the lamplight crescent crept over the threshold like some sinister moon, I glanced at the other side of the chamber, and there it was. My salvation.
A ladder.