by Sarah Remy
He didn’t smile, but his eyes gleamed in dark amusement.
“My men know how to hold their tongues,” he confirmed. “And the desert priests are too busy counting the dead and dying to pay mind to walking effluvia.”
“Effluvia.” Peter went white. He reached up and tore the plague mask from his nose and mouth. “No. Blood of the King, you can’t be serious. Renault surely doesn’t expect us to crawl into his city by way of the sewers.”
Lory laughed, loud and merry. The woman smiled without mirth and, one-handed, drew a hacksaw from a bag alongside her saddle.
“Dismal measures for dismal times,” she said, then pointed the nose of the saw at Avani. “Unless, of course, our new vocent can witch us in.”
“Nay,” said Avani, her own horror dawning. “I’m very much afraid I cannot.”
THE NORTHMOST CURVE of the wall abutted high white cliffs and hedges of gorse and bramble. The kingsmen dismounted and hastily stripped the tack from their horses. Peter did the same, with less haste. Bearded Lory had Avani’s chestnut unsaddled almost before her feet hit ground. He passed her the journey bag she’d carried from the Downs. The chestnut gelding snorted and danced when he was freed from girth and bit, and then squealed outrage when Lory slapped his hindquarters.
“Off you go,” the bearded man urged. “Go and be free before you’re locked in the castle with the rest of us.” He clucked his tongue. The chestnut galloped off along the base of the white cliffs, weaving through the undergrowth. The other horses soon followed.
“That’s a loss of good horse flesh,” Peter said. “Some enterprising homesteader will snatch them up and put them behind his plow, or sell them for a good bit of coin.”
“They’ve the king’s brand,” the woman said. “We’ll find them again, easy enough, new home or no. They’re safer gone. If the temple doesn’t open the city again soon, they’d like be eaten. Trade quarantine wears on the belly.”
Avani remembered the cartloads of fresh produce heading west, and the cages of poultry.
“Surely there’s plenty laid away for siege or disaster?”
“We’re coming out of a long winter,” Peter said. “Larders need replenishing. Even the castle cupboards run low. Hunger and fear don’t mix well; the Masterhealer may regret barring the gates.”
“Not the temple’s gates to bar, are they, then?” the bearded soldier retorted. “His Majesty’s done the priests a courtesy, bending his ear, but courtesy only goes so far. Trade will be back to normal in a day or three.”
The woman scoffed and shook her head, but didn’t argue. Peter and the kingsmen secured the horse tack behind a plump gorse, hiding it best as possible with thorn and leaf and branch. Then the woman led them between wall and cliff. It was more of a crevice space than an honest path. Twice Avani had to turn sideways to scrape and squeeze forward. The ground beneath her feet was white, sandy with the remnants of fallen cliff.
She smelled the sewer before they saw it, even through the silk of her mask. The crevice widened to comfortable, and she heard the cascade of rushing water. She’d expected the slow trickle of collected wash water and chamber-pot refuse, but found a brackish river instead.
“Maiden’s Spring,” Peter said into Avani’s ear, making her jump. “Underground cataract. It flows beneath the city, disappears beneath the cliffs. In Ra’Vadin’s time it was used for drinking. Wilhaiim’s pocked with wells. Now it’s used to carry the city’s effluvia away. The force of the water varies, in late summer it’s little more than a fetid sludge.”
“It was a clever idea, three generations ago,” the woman said. “Now it’s naught but a cesspool beneath our streets. This is one of two places the spring surfaces before running underground again.”
Maiden’s Spring ran from a half-moon opening in the wall, boiled across the space between graystone and cliff, and then fell again through a gaping cavern at the base of the precipice. A lattice of rusting metal fingers grated away the hole in the wall; debris and sludge collected in ugly streamers at the waterline.
“No wall is impenetrable,” Avani muttered. “A hole in Wilhaiim’s walls. And Renault doesn’t count it a liability?”
The gap-toothed soldier laughed.
“Nay.” He looked pointedly up the wall, squinting in the heat. “No point of entry is so well guarded as Wilhaiim’s sewers. Even if army or assassin were eager to try their luck at the Maiden.”
The afternoon sky was a thread of blue between cliff face and wall. Avani had to blink twice before she glimpsed the five armored kingsmen peering down from the battlement. The guards held pike and spear and shield, but seemed disinclined to sound alarm. Instead they watched with interest, faces unreadable behind plague masks.
“I still think the wes’most hole is a better bet, Corporal,” one of the five called down. “Right below the throne room, that. The king’s shit has gotter smell better than our’n.”
“Hush up,” the woman hissed back. “Don’t draw attention, you great oaf.”
The men on the wall laughed, but quietly, and with obvious sympathy.
“Right, then, Russel,” the gap-toothed man sighed. “In you go, and we’ll say a prayer for your soul. Don’t slip and lose the saw. Keep your boots on, who knows what trash is lurking underfoot.
Russel nodded. She stripped away her leather armor and sword belt, tossing them onto the sand. Clad only in short-shirt, leggings, and boots, she waded gingerly into brown water. The spring parted and rushed about her thighs. As though disturbed by the intrusion, a new stink rose from the water. Bearded Lory gasped, while Peter clasped hand over nose and mouth. Russel blanched and bit her lip, but she held the hack saw above the water and didn’t falter or fall as she sloshed toward the grate.
“Not as deep as it looks,” she said between quick, panting breaths. “Current’s not so bad, either. But—pah! The feel.”
“Aye, and we’d toss you the rope,” one of the guardsmen called from above. “But ye’d never make it over the dead man spikes, Russ.”
“Hush up,” Russel hissed, vehement. Her inhales were growing short, and her cheeks had gone a visible green. She reached the metal lattice, tested the bars; then she selected the most decrepit-looking of the bunch and began to saw, metal against metal. The muscles on her arms bunched and flexed, while the saw began to shriek and groan.
“Vocent’s bone cutter,” Lory explained. He watched Russel’s progress with interest. “Lord Malachi’s got quite a collection. It was His Majesty’s idea, wasn’t it? Insisted there’s no better tool for the job.”
“The grate’s metal, not bone,” Peter pointed out. He unlaced his own leather padding, tucked it beneath a scrawny hedge. He kept his sword firmly in hand. “Better to pull it out at the mortar than saw through.”
“Go on in and try, then,” the gap-toothed man replied without kindness. “I’ve seen lads with more muscle than you, haven’t I? Metal’s near rusted through. Bet you a silver Russel’ll cut through before you crack the mortar.”
“Done,” Peter snapped, red-faced. He splashed into the channel, disturbing more stink, and walked against the current, sword held in one hand above the water. Russel looked up in surprise, then shook her head and continued with the bone cutter, metal shrilling against metal.
“Be easier if you could spell us in,” Lory suggested again, pursing his lips at Avani.
Avani sighed. “I’d like to see Lord Malachi manage it.” She tied her journey bag on her shoulders, gripped her own sword overhead, steeled her gut, and stepped off the embankment and into the spring. The current, while not dangerous, caught at her ankles. Surprised, she held out her arms for balance, and nearly lost her weapon to the effluvia.
“God’s balls!” she swore in fair imitation of Mal, bobbling sheath and sword belt. Lory chuckled, and Avani wished briefly she was indeed a powerful magus, to turn the irritating s
oldier into a frog.
“Scuff your feet on the riverbed,” Russel cautioned without looking around. “Martin’s right, there’s debris all over the bottom. Trip and you’ll be swallowing shit, or worse.”
Avani scuffed toward Peter. She stubbed her toe on something that gave, then on something that didn’t. She gasped as more fetid gas rose.
“Smells like death,” she said, breathing shallowly. She reached the grill and clung to the latticework with one hand. The current tugged against her boots and trousers, an incessant plucking. The water was warm through the fabric of her clothes, and she couldn’t help but think of blood and piss and other unpleasant things.
“There’s a ledge above the water on the other side,” Peter said. “Wide enough for a man to walk. Help me, will you? As I thought, the mortar’s loose here, and here. Pull.”
Avani wrapped her sword belt several times around her neck, securing sword and sheath across the back of her shoulders, well above the water. She took the grate in both hands, wincing at the slick of rust and slime against her fingers.
“Russel,” Peter said. “Lend us your strength.”
The soldier shook her head, amused. “The five of us could tug from dusk till sunrise and it wouldn’t matter. Gate’s spelled, see?”
“Is it?” Avani paused in fighting the grill, curious. “How do you know?”
Russel had unruly dark hair and freckled cheeks, and when she grinned under her mask, her dark eyes narrowed to slits.
“It’s Wilhaiim,” she said. “Built by magi, served by magi, beloved of the magi until the magi ran near extinct. Everything about this city is inscrolled. Also”—she winked—“there’s a sigil.”
She pointed through the lattice with the nose of her saw. Avani had to press her brow against the grate before she saw it, and when she did she drew a breath in astonishment, coughed on stink.
“A ward,” the gap-toothed soldier mused. He’d crept up behind without so much as a splash, and fairly knocked over Avani. “Of course there’d be a ward. You, witch, what use are you at all? Russ saw the enchantment and you not even knowing it was there?”
“It’s not a ward,” Avani retorted, lattice pressing lines into her cheeks, as she tried to get a better look. “That’s a sigil.”
“Healers’ mark,” Peter agreed. “Katie had a book full of the healers’ alphabet, when she was still studying the art. I think she memorized more than half of them before she gave it up. She used to paint her herb jars with the most common glyphs, for identification. I recognize that one, it’s commonly used.”
“What does it mean?” Avani asked, because she recognized it, too, and not from the king’s dead mistress’s herb cupboards.
“I don’t recall.” Peter rattled the grate. “Fennel, mayhap? Or green thyme? I don’t expect it matters. It’s only happenstance, it’s got nothing to do with the gate.”
“Ai, doesn’t it?” Avani lifted the true-gold chain hung around her neck, let Andrew’s ring dangle next to her sidhe key. The yellow stone in the vocent’s ring flashed and flickered and then burned a steady amber. An answering chill brought goose pimples to Avani’s forearms.
“The temple’s been here before us,” Lory groaned. “We’ll have to brave the deadman spikes, use the rope after all.”
Russel shook her head and drew the bone cutter more rapidly across the bars. Rust fell in clumps to the water, then rode the brackish flow away toward the cliffs. On the bank the gap-toothed soldier was folding abandoned leather armor into his cloak, knotting the bundle to a rope tossed down from overhead.
“Nay,” Peter said. “I’ve not brought Avani back to accidently pike her like a fish on the battlements. Russel’s imagination is running away with her.” He tugged at the grill again, muscles straining. “There’s no reason to believe that mark has anything to do with the sewers.”
“Prick,” Russel returned without animosity. “You’re so clever, Shean, why—”
She broke off with a small cry, staggering as the saw broke through the lattice. She nearly lost the bone cutter on the other side of the grate; only Avani’s quick grab kept the tool from slipping into the spring.
Russel’s jaw dropped. “Oh.” She handed Peter the blade. “Those bars, there and there. Quick. And you”—she jerked her chin at Lory—“help me push. In, you oaf ! I said push, not pull.”
Peter ran the bone cutter over metal with new enthusiasm. Lory and Russel and Avani set hands on the freed bar and shoved. It bent, groaning in protest, and Russel whistled in triumph. Avani heard answering whistles from overhead. The gap-toothed soldier watched from dry land, leather armor disappeared, hands folded behind his back.
“It’s glowing,” Lory said, drawing Avani’s attention back. He stared at the sigil on the wall. “Glowing’s probably not good.”
“I’m never wrong,” sighed Russel. “Now what?”
“I’ve got another free,” Peter said, panting. “Push.”
Lory grasped the second bar, and cursed and shoved. When he was done, there was a hole in the grate large enough for a small child to pass through. Russel regarded the opening, then the gleaming glyph. She looked at Avani.
“It hasn’t burnt us where we stand. May be an alarm of some sort. You’re small. Get over and stop it before the tonsured brothers take notice.”
Avani opened her mouth on a protest, than changed her mind.
“Help me through,” she said. “Cut myself on the grate and I’ll be dead of blood poisoning before the week is over.”
Lory picked Avani up by the back of her shirt and popped her through the hole, holding her steady until she found her balance again against the current. Beneath her feet the spring bed felt uneven, cracking and shifting; unseen refuse dammed against the gate. The stink was almost overpowering. Avani felt sweat bead on her brow. She feared she might be sick.
“Climb onto the ledge,” Peter said. “Get out of the water.”
Avani could feel the glyph now, a thorn-sharp whisper of power in her head. Andrew’s ring flashed, sending yellow starburst over the tunnel wall. The ledge ran two handspans above the surface of the spring. Avani had to place her palms flat on the shelf and hoist herself upright. She floundered and flopped, and almost fell, but she’d always been agile, and she wanted nothing more than to be out of the effluvia. She dug her fingertips into cracks in the ledge, and wriggled sideways until she lay on her side, precariously balanced, beached on dry dirt like an overzealous island seal.
“God’s balls,” Lory said. “I take it back, witch. You may be of use after all, if only for your pigheadedness.”
“Got it!” Peter said, a shout. “Push!”
As Avani struggled to her feet, she heard metal grind, followed by a flurry of splashes and yelps. The sewer wall was man-made, graystone brick piled upon graystone brick. She clung to the cracks between bricks for balance as she pulled herself upright. The apex of the half-moon wall brushed the top of her head. The bricks were cool, and dry, and smelled of earth instead of waste. She pressed her nose against the wall, closed her eyes, and breathed.
“Witch?” Russel prompted from below her feet. “No rest yet. The sigil?”
“Ai.” Avani opened her eyes, turned her head, and regarded the softly glowing mark on the wall. “I’ll try.”
Chapter Twelve
“WELL,” RENAULT SAID as he looked down from above, torch held low against the bars. “I daresay I should be grateful you’ve arrived in one piece, Shean. The city’s become a dangerous place.” His close-clipped beard creased as he grimaced. “I think you’d best bathe before I require formal audience.”
“ ‘One piece’ is subjective,” Peter replied, squinting against torchlight. “For God’s sake let us up, if it pleases you, Majesty. I’m half dizzy with fumes, and Russel’s nearly fainted twice.”
“Haven’t,” Russel muttere
d, but she leaned hard on Avani’s arm.
The soldier was breathing in shallow, static bursts, and the flickering torch showed the slick of sweat along her face, although it was cold beneath the king’s cellars. Avani’s own head throbbed. Her nostrils burned. They all four were covered crown to toe in muck; no one had managed to avoid falling into the awful spring. They’d lost themselves in the sewers twice, and only Lory’s apparently innate sense of direction had saved them from running in circles.
“As you say.” Renault clicked his tongue. The torchlight receded, then returned, doubled. Two young men in page’s uniforms bent over the grille. One held a torch in each fist, the other strained and gasped until the king himself was forced to lend his strength. Rust fell in a shower as the king and his pages dragged the grate free.
Fresh air rolled through the opening. Avani lifted her head and gratefully breathed it in. The king and his lads winced and reared away from the opening, coughing.
“Bring the light back!” Peter called, muffling a curse. “There’s a ladder in the wall, but the rungs are coated and slick. Give us some light!”
One of the pages edged back into view. He plugged his nose between thumb and forefinger, and held his torch over the square opening.
Peter clamored up the short ladder, knocking more flakes of metal free. He slithered free, then lay on his stomach on the cellar floor, stretching a hand down into the sewer.
“Pass me your blade, Corporal. You’ll not manage to climb and carry it at the same time.”
Russel looked as if she wanted to protest, but Lory made a cautionary sound and she subsided. She passed her weapon up, then attempted the ladder. Avani stood below, ready to catch the woman if she slipped. Peter reached down again, this time with both hands, and grabbed Russel’s collar, half lifting, half supporting as the soldier squirmed her way to freedom.