Solander stepped into the range of their lanterns, breathless. She’d been running. “I was lost until I saw your lights go on.”
“Have you seen Grizelda or the bourgeois?” Jamin said.
“They’re gone?”
Katarin and Mitchell nodded.
“I was with Grizelda, but then I lost her. I hoped she was with you.”
“All right, so what do we do?” Jamin squatted down with the other Undergrounders as Solander came over to join them.
“We have to call it off,” said Katarin. “There’s not supposed to be people down here!”
“We don’t know for certain yet that anything’s wrong,” Laricia said. She waited a moment, then continued. “Grizelda and Toby could just be lost. Here’s what I propose: Keep with the plan until we know for sure what’s going on. The ratriders will fan out and look for the two of them.”
Undergrounders and ratriders nodded, though Kricker looked oddly pale.
“Geddy, you stay back and guide the kids to the holding cells. Kricker, Tunya, you take the north end; Willis and Bline take riverside. Let’s go!”
Laricia kicked her bat, which sprang off Mitchell’s shoulder and circled up and away. A few seconds later, the other ratriders followed her.
For a while, Grizelda ran blind. She scraped into walls, skinned her arms, tripped over unseen blocks in the dark, went sprawling, picked herself up and started running again. But as she got over her panic, gradually she slowed. She came to a stop and listened. There was nothing but the sound of her own heart pounding, and beyond that, darkness and ear-muffling silence, like being inside a velvet bag. Oh, lord, God, she was back in that human kennel again, when they’d taken the lantern away from her. The darkness had run into her, tried to choke her…
But it wasn’t completely dark.
From the bodice pocket of her dress came a dull green glow, steady as cave fungus. It was Tunya’s lantern stick, still there. Cautiously, she took it out.
She was at an intersection of four passages. They were too wide, the ceiling too high to be part of the ruined goblin mines. The walls were plain and the floor was clean. None of it was at all familiar. She was lost.
She held up the lantern and looked in each of the four directions, trying to choose. None of them seemed any different from the others.
It was then she heard the noise again: footsteps. Unlike the even clacking of the steps that had caused the Undergrounders to split up, this person sounded in a hurry. He paused every few seconds, as if he couldn’t quite decide whether he should be running at all. The light coming toward her was wobbly, swinging back and forth so much she was sure its bearer must be about to spill his lantern. She quickly stuffed the lantern-stick back in her pocket and hid around one of the corners.
The steps came closer, and the place where she was hiding brightened. She wasn’t going to try her usual trick, not until she saw who it was. But she held her breath and pressed herself farther back. When the person passed into her view, she relaxed. She’d recognize that distracted, gangly form anywhere.
“Toby?”
Toby jumped, and this time he really did drop the lantern. It went out.
“Is that Grizelda?”
She took the lantern-stick back out and the two of them looked at each other.
“Where are we?” he said.
“I don’t know. I think we’re lost.”
He turned around slowly, looking at the four paths available to them. Each one was identical, fading into invisibility.
“Each way is as good as another, right?”
“I don’t know. I guess so,” she said.
“Then let’s go!”
He picked a direction and started to run. To her surprise, he snagged her by the arm, almost making her trip. She caught her balance and ran alongside him.
Toby was in his element: he barely had to duck to get under the crossbeams. He had the chance to really pick up speed, eat up distance with that long-limbed jog of his. Poetic justice, she guessed, for her mad dash through the sewers earlier. Grizelda had to run as fast as she could just to keep up with him. Her legs were sore in minutes. And where were they going?
“I don’t think this is the right way,” she gasped.
“You’re right,” he said.
Then he actually turned her around like he was steering a cart. She was about to object, but then they both froze.
Footsteps. The real footsteps this time, the clacking ones. There was a bend in the tunnel ahead of them, and someone, or something, was coming towards them.
“I think I heard something over here! Come on!”
Tunya darted around the corner on her bat.
When Kricker didn’t reply, she looked left, where he had been flying alongside her all this time. He wasn’t there.
“Kricker?”
The first thing she thought was that a cat must have eaten him. It couldn’t be, there weren’t any cats this far underground. That’s what she tried to tell herself, anyway, as she turned back to look for him. But oh, it would be like him, ever since that belling the cat incident.
No. Kricker wouldn’t be dead. Please. She sped on.
She didn’t have far to go before she found Kricker and the bat both, sitting on the floor of the tunnel.
“Are you hurt?” She landed and ran over to him.
He definitely didn’t look great. There was a sheen of sweat all over him, and he was turning a bad shade of green.
“I can’t do it anymore.” He stared at nothing, some point on the opposite wall.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s the heights,” he said in an utterly miserable tone.
“What?”
He didn’t reply.
“You’re afraid of heights?”
“It’s not funny.”
“I never said it was funny,” she said, irritated.
“You’re still thinking it’s funny.”
What was the matter with him? He was the one who’d screwed up and now he was looking at her like he was furious. “You think it’s funny because I’m supposed to be the big ratrider daredevil and now I’m afraid of heights. Just go on without me.”
“No, I can’t just leave you here.” She was starting to seethe. “Big shot you are! You can’t finish the breakout and you’re not even hurt!”
“Leave me the heck alone, Frizzface!”
She gasped. For a moment she was unable to speak, digging her nails into her palms. Then she turned around and hopped onto Snapdragon’s back.
“I’m going to go get Laricia so she can save your sorry ass!”
And she flew off.
Toby grabbed Grizelda’s wrist tight and started to run. She stumbled along behind him, her breath coming ragged now.
“You’ve got to slow down! You’re hurting me!”
“We can’t afford to slow down! We’ve got to find a corner – a niche – something. I–”
“No.” She stopped, and her hand tore out of his. She stood doubled over in the middle of the passage, aching.
“Come on, Griz, you can make it!”
“I can’t.”
Toby went back and stood by her. He couldn’t stop fidgeting. He looked behind them – whatever it was was coming closer – the way they’d been going, to her, back to the way they’d been going. She could tell he wanted to go on without her, but he didn’t do it.
In a matter of seconds, the thing with the clacking steps would come around the corner and see them. She looked ahead at the tunnel, knew she would never make it. There was only one thing to do, and she had to do it now.
She clapped a hand over Toby’s mouth and pointed to the wall. He looked at her like she was crazy, but she held a finger up. Silence. Together they pressed themselves flat against the side of the passage, not moving.
She could too do it under pressure. She had to. Grizelda took a deep breath, and then she froze – totally froze; not even her eyes moved but stared, unblinking, up the passage. She didn�
��t breathe. She willed herself to blend into the stones. And somebody came around the corner.
It was a gendarme, she could tell that by the dark blue of his uniform. He walked with an unhurried pace down the corridor, looking at nothing in particular. Clack, clack. He was middle-aged and edging towards portly. For several agonizing seconds, he walked toward them.
When he was right up next to them, he turned his head and looked straight at her. For a terrifying moment she was afraid it hadn’t worked. But his eyes were unfocused; his gaze slid past them and away. There was no hint on his face of any concern. And then he started to whistle, of all things. Whistling, he walked on, and then he was gone.
They stayed frozen in terror where they were for several minutes more. Finally Grizelda limpened, pulled away from the wall. All of a sudden her legs turned to jelly and she found herself on her knees.
“Are you okay?” Toby said.
“I don’t think so.”
“What was that?”
She pulled a damp strand of hair out of her face. “I don’t want to talk about it. We need to go.”
“Was he blind? He didn’t see us.”
Toby helped her up, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She was exhausted. She didn’t want to go into this, not now, not knowing that Toby would never be her friend again afterward.
“I made us invisible,” she said.
His look was blank.
“I’m a witch.”
“No, you’re not,” he said automatically.
Oh, here it goes, she thought.
“Then what do you think this means?” She tore off her headscarf and pointed at her hair.
“You were framed.” She could tell he didn’t quite believe it, though. He was starting to look at her funny. “The Committees took a disliking to you – maybe it was something you said – and they used your hair and you were framed.”
“They arrested me because I really am a witch. Somebody caught me making living origami and turned me in.”
He was starting to put it together now. Grizelda, not a revolutionary but a freak, a traitor to the Republic. The look in his face was … she couldn’t look at him.
“Don’t you know what they did?” he said finally.
She only winced.
“They ate people.”
She still couldn’t look at him.
“The blood tax. The platform in the middle of the square… The Auks were on top of it, the sorcerers and sorceresses were on the stairs. They helped the people up … pushed them. Then the Auks … the Auks ate them.” His voice had gone distant, like he was remembering something, but he snapped back. “Do you even remember this?”
“How could I? I was three years old when the revolution came.”
“I was five. I watched the whole thing from my attic window. You helped them kill your own people!”
“I didn’t do it!” she cried.
“All this time you talked about freedom. You talked about the Republic.”
“Damn it, Toby!” She glared at him, pushing back the hair that had fallen into her face. “Do you think I wasn’t hurt by the Auks? I’m a war orphan!”
That made him speechless. She took a sort of vicious delight in it, watching him gape at her like a drowning fish. She brushed past him, going back down the hall the way they’d come.
“There isn’t time for this. We have to go.”
Chapter 24
Laricia went as fast as Apollo would carry her, careening down the tunnels, cutting her corners dangerously close. Wit the air whistling past her ears, she went through her mental map of the tunnels around here. This was way too far out. The kids would have to be halfway to the Fish District if they were here. She would have to turn back soon.
Just as she had that thought, she spotted something moving up ahead. It wasn’t necessarily friendly, so she took what measures she could to avoid being seen – rose up so she skimmed the ceiling, pulled her lantern in.
When she got into close enough range to see it, her heart leapt. It was Toby and Grizelda. They were walking along the tunnel toward her, side by side, looking exhausted. Neither of them would look at the other. Something was up there, but this was no time to ask.
She joyfully swooped down to their eye level.
“Grizelda! Toby! We’ve been looking for you. This way!”
Grizelda and Toby finally reunited with the rest of the Undergrounders on the river side tunnel Laricia had designated as the place to enter the cell blocks. The mood was subdued. The Undergrounders welcomed Toby and Grizelda back in, but there were no shouts of joy, no claps on the back. Everyone had the sense that something had gone terribly wrong with the breakout.
And it had gone wrong. More than she could ever tell the other Undergrounders. Grizelda told Jamin what had happened to them, leaving out the part about turning invisible. Toby beside her was silent. Like he didn’t really have anything to do with her anymore, she thought painfully.
“This place is swarming with gendarmes,” Jamin said. “My group had to dodge three guys just to get here. Mitchell says he ran into them, too.”
“The goblin tunnels were supposed to be unguarded,” she said.
“I know. I don’t get it.” He shook his head.
“Jamin, something weird happened at the train station. Now there’s all these gendarmes down here that aren’t supposed to be here. Something’s going on.” She didn’t want to mention her vague sense of foreboding. It would sound too much like some unnatural psychic power.
He took a long breath, looked down. “The breakout plan was your baby, Griz. If you want to call it off … you be the one to say so.”
How many people were there trapped in Promontory? The cell blocks were three stories high, and deeper than she’d been able to tell by that gendarme’s lantern, when he’d taken her down there, three long weeks ago. Maybe fifty cells all in a row. Times six because the three stories were on both sides of the aisle. The Committees had managed to start filling the fourth block like this back when she was arrested. And that was some time ago. More men and women joined them every day.
“No, we’ll keep going,” she said.
At least all the human members of the Underground were accounted for and safe. Laricia’s fliers drifted back to the group in ones and twos. After a quarter of an hour, Tunya and Kricker still had not come back. Finally, Tunya came alone. She didn’t look grief-stricken, more angry than anything else. She landed and spoke to Laricia briefly. Grizelda wanted to ask them where Kricker was, but the two of them flew off without saying anything to the rest.
Even getting into the cells did not do much to lift the Undergrounders’ mood. An excited whispering rose up among the prisoners as soon as they got there. They drifted up against the bars, trying to get a better look. When Jamin explained to the prisoners what was going on, their excitement grew. This was it. This was supposed to be the Underground’s heroic moment, the point where they changed history. But as Grizelda looked at these mere shadows of human beings, she could only feel revolted.
The first time she’d seen the cell blocks she couldn’t believe any place could be so geometrical. When the gendarme led her into the first staircase, his lantern had lit them up suddenly, hundreds of blinking eyes. Shadows moving around inside. When he’d slid open the cell door for her, what was it? “I can’t do this! I can’t go in there!” That was what she had screamed.
Katarin grimly started handing out crowbars and they set about prying open locks and bashing in cell doors. They helped the prisoners to their feet and guided them into the aisle.
“Grandpa!”
On the other side of the cell block, a middling-old man struggled out of his cell, helped by two Undergrounders. Toby dropped his work and ran over to hug him fiercely. Grizelda couldn’t help but let her crowbar go slack, turn and watch the joyful reunion. She had been looking forward to being introduced to Toby’s grandfather, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen now.
She tried to focus on
her work, focus on the jerking and twisting of the metal in front of her. But after a while it got mechanical and her mind wandered. How soon would Toby tell the others? Not while they were still in the cell blocks, no. This was his mission now, and he wouldn’t derail it. But with such a supposed traitor to the cause in their midst … he wouldn’t wait long.
“Grizelda?”
Her thoughts crashed into each other at the sound of that voice. She could not believe it. She dropped her crowbar and turned.
Elisabet. It was Elisabet. She stood there in the aisle with her hands clasped in front of her, head cocked. She was as moon-faced as ever, though a lot thinner than Grizelda remembered.
They rushed to each other and embraced, laughing, crying, she didn’t know. Grizelda felt the torrent of words pouring out, words she’d saved up in the weeks they’d spent apart, lying awake at night and imagining all the conversations she would have with Elisabet if they ever saw each other again.
“Are Miss Hesslehamer and the girls safe? Did anybody get targeted because of me? Oh, but maybe they did, you’re here–”
“I’ve been so worried about you!” Elisabet cried.
“It’s okay! I’m all right, I’m safe.” She pulled back to look at Elisabet better. “But what are you doing here?”
“Well, this was after the raid–”
“There was a raid, then?”
“It was a couple of days afterwards,” Elisabet said. “Nobody was home. When Miss Hesslehamer found out, she and a couple of girls made it over the border to Salinaca. The rest of us have had to fend for ourselves.”
“Is that how you got here?”
“I got arrested for stealing a necklace. Me, of all people!” There was a ghost of a smile on Elisabet’s face.
They hugged again, and it was like they were back to their old selves again. Back to those days when they would whisper to each other across the beds after lights-out, hushing whenever the mistress came near. Despite everything, Grizelda began to feel hopeful.
That hope was quickly dashed when Stevry came running down the stairs.
Grizelda Page 18