A moment later, she climbed the handholds into the darkness. Reaching the grate, she tied the explosives in place with a length of rope, then climbed back down to light the match. As soon as the flame hit the string, she and Teo ran for cover around the corner at the end of the hall.
The explosion went off, shattering the grate to pieces. But a different sound came with it now, like nails scraping on a sheet of metal. But it faded away just as quickly, most likely a noise from the construction site.
Aina led the way to the handholds in the wall and moved first, with the flare gripped between the smallest fingers of one hand. It provided a reddish glow of light as they made their way up the shaft.
But then, the same scratching sound she’d heard before came again from above them. Little scraping noises followed it, growing closer with each passing second. Hair rose on the back of her neck as a suspicion struck her.
Her breath caught in her throat when she looked up. Yellow pinpricks stared down at her.
Eyes.
39
Claws as sharp as her blade and the length of her forearm appeared in the red light of the flare.
Then a leg appeared, twice as long as the claw and covered with thick brown hair. More legs and then the massive body of the cave spider appeared. The beast threatened to take up the entire width of the ventilation shaft with its body. Teo swore loudly below her.
The image of the dead cat wrapped in a cave spider’s webbing slipped through her thoughts and made her hands turn clammy with fear. Her first instinct was to leap off the ladder and hope she landed without breaking her legs, but there was no time for that.
Instead of fleeing, she squared her shoulders, tucked the flare under her arm, and withdrew a dagger.
“Let’s see how this spider fares without its eyes,” she whispered.
She slashed at the spider, scraping one of its legs with her blade and drawing dark blood that dripped on her.
It crouched back into the shadows, then jumped.
With a sharp intake of breath, she slammed the hilt of her weapon into its head. Horrible clicking and sliding sounds echoed around her as the beast struggled to regain its tread on the walls.
One of its claws swept underneath her, piercing Teo in the shoulder. She risked a quick glance down to make sure he was still on the ladder. As the claw moved away, Teo took out a gun and fired at the spider.
The bullet pinged off the wall and ricocheted toward a spot a few inches from her fingers. She dug her fingers into the handhold. The dynamite in her pack weighed her down, making her clench her jaw with the effort to hold herself on the ladder.
“Don’t shoot anymore!” she yelled down to Teo. Her voice echoed, joining the clattering sound of the spider’s claws against the walls.
Just then, one of its long, hairy legs wrapped around her shoulders. The breath left her body. Her grip on the handhold loosened as the beast tried to tug her off.
She tightened her grip again, knuckles straining as she fought against the spider’s force. With her other hand, she lifted the dagger again and swept it across the leg holding her, barely missing her own neck. Then she buried her blade deep into one of its bulbous yellow eyes.
It jerked backward, releasing her, and her feet slid with the sudden movement. She cried out as her hands grasped for purchase on the ladder, but as she did, the flare tucked under her arm fell—breaking with a loud crack on the tunnel floor below.
Shadows fell around them.
For a moment that seemed to last hours, she simply clung to the wall and wished she could disappear into it like she’d used glue to detach from her body, her fears, her memories.
She couldn’t see Teo, she couldn’t make out her blade in front of her, and her own hands were invisible in the darkness.
The only light came from the spider’s yellow eyes. Its legs scratched against the wall, its eyes moving closer to where she clung.
If it got another leg around her, it would rip her from the ladder, and she would fall to her death.
She’d join her parents in the mass graves. Kohl and Bautix would win.
With a sharp exhale, she ripped her dagger from the spider’s eye. It jerked wildly. One leg dealt a blunt hit to her face. A claw scratched her elbow. Warm blood cascaded down her arm, but she hardly felt the pain.
Aina swept her dagger across the spider’s face. It lost its balance, legs scratching against the walls to try to grab on to something. She swung out her blade again, and it connected with a hairy limb.
Gritting her teeth, muscles straining, she sawed her blade through the leg until it detached. Blood drenched her arm, hot and thick.
Then the spider fell, crashing onto the tunnel floor a moment later. Its shell broke with a resounding crack.
Aina sucked in air as if she’d just come up from underwater. She imagined hundreds more spiders descending on her from above and she froze on the wall, fingers clinging to the handholds so tightly, she feared they might break. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. The blood from her wound trickled down her arm, but she felt no pain. Her pulse still pounded as loudly as the spider’s claws had scratched against the wall.
“Did it hurt you?” Her voice echoed, oddly loud in the aftermath of the spider’s attack.
“It clipped my shoulder, but it’s nothing that won’t heal. Are you okay?”
“No,” she said immediately, then winced. “Wait, yes. I’m fine. It just scratched me.”
She shook her head to clear the image of the spider crawling toward her. She’d beaten the monster. And if she had to, she could do it again.
“I’m fine,” she repeated, believing herself this time. “Let’s go. That took too much time.”
In minutes, they reached the landing of the prison’s fourth floor. It was nearly pitch-black except for a shred of light pouring through the crack of a window set in the door at the end of the hall. Dust motes swirled in its silver streak.
Before moving any farther, Aina reached into her pack and withdrew bandages, passing some to Teo.
“The last thing we need is a trail of blood following us through the prison,” she muttered before wrapping a bandage tightly around the wound on her arm.
It was hard to work in the darkness, but they managed to bind their wounds within a few minutes, and then moved on. Thick dust on the floor helped mask the sound of their footsteps. Past the door ahead, a staircase wound up the opposite wall toward the higher levels of the prison.
Instead of going through the same door as last time, they took the staircase. They climbed quickly, and for a few minutes, the only sound was their measured breaths. The windows and cracks around doors on each landing provided a bit of light as they climbed higher and higher.
But when they approached the sixth floor, hair stood up on the back of Aina’s neck. There was a third set of footsteps. They were nearly soundless, but still audible between the quick beats of her pulse. Someone else was sneaking through the prison’s outer corridors.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw no one and nothing except the worn stone of the stairs behind them. Where the staircase curved back down to the lower floors, there were only shadows.
But the sound had been unmistakable. Someone was following them, likely a Diamond Guard.
Tapping Teo on the shoulder, she whispered, “I’ll handle this. You go up.”
He left with a nod, his footsteps fading away toward the seventh floor.
Keeping her own steps light as the sound of the person following them grew closer and closer, Aina raced to the sixth-floor landing, then shrank into its shadows.
She withdrew a dagger, and waited.
Their breaths grew close, and then they were mere feet away.
She lunged out with her knife, but just then, a hard punch hit her in the ribs.
With a sharp exhale, she dodged the next strike on instinct alone, brushing into the attacker as she moved. She slammed her knee into their stomach, threw them into the wall.
He
r attacker grunted in a familiar voice. Silver and sapphire flashed in the dark as they moved again.
It wasn’t a Diamond Guard.
It was Kohl.
40
A footstep sounded on the stone to the right.
Aina shifted, moving left, and struck out into the darkness with her blade.
He moved with a sharp intake of breath. Her strike missed, and she hit the wall instead, her knuckles scraping against stone.
She tried to listen for him, but he moved without a sound. And then his hand wrapped around her elbow. She tried to jerk out of his grip, but he wrenched her backward.
His leg swept under hers, and she fell to the ground, her elbows and knees slamming into stone.
Before she could roll out of the way, he grabbed her. One of his hands hooked under her jaw. He was going to break her neck.
At the last second, her shoulder shifted to block the movement. She shoved his arm away and spun out of his grasp, then punched forward into the darkness. A sharp crack sounded as her fist collided with his face. Blood dripped from his mouth onto her hand as he stepped back, the shadows enveloping him further.
He was the one who’d taught her how to fight to kill, how to protect herself, how to survive on Kosín’s streets.
But the biggest obstacle to her survival had always been him.
She took advantage of his injury now and fought like she’d never fought anyone before, using all the skills he’d taught her.
Bringing out a knife and keeping her other hand free, she worked with the sound of his footsteps. They shifted around each other, striking out with fists and blades, their movements a blur with quick breaths, careful footsteps, and flashes of steel in the dark corridor.
She wondered why he hadn’t shot her yet, and why he hadn’t killed her when she’d confronted him at the Dom. Even something about his movements now felt hesitant.
He took another step to his right. She shifted to her left and struck with her blade. It slipped, scraping against his side rather than stabbing into flesh, but he still hissed in pain.
Before she could attack again, he sped past her, his footsteps flying down the corridor.
She followed for a few steps, then stopped, panting heavily from the fight. Her pulse pounded as loudly as his footsteps fading away.
The Blood King had never run from a fight before.
She could go after him. But this was bigger than a fight with Kohl. If she continued on to meet Teo and got back to the job, they could free the Inosen who’d been imprisoned for nothing more than wanting freedom. They would take down Bautix and Kohl in one shot.
She turned and sprinted up the stairs. When she reached the seventh level, she peered through the small window set in the door.
The seventh floor of the prison was identical to the lower floors where they’d broken out Teo. A narrow walkway lined the four inner walls of the prison with a pair of stairwells winding up and down to the other floors.
But now, all along the walkway, Diamond Guards were lying in the corners. Five in total, they were paralyzed by her poison darts that Teo had used. Uniforms had been stripped from two of the guards, leaving them in white undershirts. Her eyes flicked to the cell doors. Each had a stick of dynamite tied to one of the bars. A collection of wires led out from under the door she stood in front of and traveled up the stairs toward the upper levels.
She raced up the next staircase to peer through the window of the eighth floor and saw the same thing. When she reached the ninth-floor landing, she found Teo standing right outside the door, holding the rest of the explosives and the rope.
“You work fast,” she whispered, walking up to him.
“So does your poison,” he said with a grin. “Was it a guard following us?”
She shook her head as he handed her the uniform he’d stolen from the guard below. “It was Kohl.”
He scanned her once, as if searching for injuries. “Are you okay?”
With a stiff nod, she said, “I think he’s working for Bautix to take out the princess, so he ran before either of us could do much damage. I stalled him at least, but we only have a couple of hours left. Let’s do this fast and catch up to him.”
She threw the shirt over her head and checked that the badge was still pinned on. The shirt was big, so she tucked it in and made sure her weapons were within easy reach, then took several of the dynamite sticks, tied together by long wires, along with rope and a set of matches. Then she loaded her own blowgun with a poison dart and placed the other darts within easy reach.
With a quick nod to each other, they walked through the door onto the ninth floor as if they owned the whole prison.
She turned left, and he turned right just as the floodlights above shifted to the lower levels, leaving them with only the dim orange lights spaced out along the walls. The less light, the better.
A guard stood at the corner. Aina nodded at him. Before he could do any more than turn to look at her, she lifted her blowgun and fired the dart.
Before it even struck his skin, she pivoted, catching sight of the next guard halfway down the balcony. The guard’s eyes widened, and she raised a whistle to her lips, but Aina fired a dart into her neck and she dropped to the floor with a dull thud.
Moving quickly, she shoved both guards into the corners of the walkway where the floodlights’ beams wouldn’t fully reach.
On the opposite side of the walkway, Teo had just taken out the last guard and shoved his unconscious form into a corner. When he glanced over, she signaled to let him know she had also finished.
She began unraveling the sticks of dynamite, counting out ten, which would cover half of this floor’s cells while Teo took the other half.
Separating the dynamite to only place one stick on each door would still result in a strong enough explosion to shatter the cell doors, but hopefully not strong enough to collapse the entire walkway like last time. The prisoners would need the walkways in place to be able to escape.
The floodlights shifted then, nearly exposing her. She twisted out of the way and held her breath for a few seconds until they changed once more.
Approaching a cell door, she knocked lightly on the bars. It was nearly pitch-black inside, but she could make out the slight shift of a shape near the bars. The prisoner lifted his head, eyes widening when he saw her.
“We’re breaking you out,” she said in a low voice. “Stand back before this dynamite blows, then run to the fourth-floor south stairwell. You’ll find a ventilation shaft leading to the subway tunnels. Head down the tunnels and you’ll find flares lighting a path to an exit east of the Minos River.”
She repeated the message at the entrance of each cell, not waiting around to see who listened. Most prisoners were awake, and she had no time to rouse the ones who weren’t. The explosion would rouse them and, if they were smart, they’d run.
All of them would stand a chance, and that was what mattered. Those who managed to escape could expose Bautix for what he was.
Even if all of them were recaptured, the explosions and the breakout would cause a distraction and hopefully draw Bautix’s attention away from the Linasian princess.
But she wanted these Inosen prisoners to escape. Saving these people wouldn’t negate all the lives she’d taken, but freeing them would at least avenge her parents, who’d only died for their own freedom.
Life is precious, like her parents had used to say.
Within five minutes, she and Teo regrouped near the door they’d entered from. He passed her one of his guns wordlessly.
Her fingers shook around the handle as she recalled all the times Kohl had made her practice shooting and reloading, regardless of her asking to stop, no matter how strongly the memories of her parents’ deaths flooded back.
Back then, she’d swallowed her fears and convinced herself that Kohl was doing her a favor. She’d taken all his lessons and honed herself into a weapon, another thing to plunge this city into darkness.
Maybe mons
ters could be made, like her and Kohl, but they could also be unmade—they could choose to work against corruption and terror instead of with it.
She and Teo moved to stand at the walkway railing and gazed down at the courtyard nine floors below. A few guards stood on the glass-covered floor of diamonds, talking in low voices, while others sat in chairs in the center of the courtyard. All of them were oblivious to what was happening above.
Aina and Teo nodded at each other, then struck a handful of matches each and lit the wires, their hands moving at the same steady pace. The wires were connected to all the sticks of dynamite lining the cells of the ninth, eighth, and seventh floors.
It would take a few minutes for the flames to reach all the cells, but the ensuing chaos would at least give the prisoners plenty of cover to get out.
They stepped away from the wires, withdrew grappling hooks from their packs, and tossed the hooks upward to the landing of the tenth and highest floor. The hooks latched on with dull clinks.
Then they raised their guns and aimed at the round floodlights above. The lights shifted within a breath, leaving her and Teo covered in shadows. They fired.
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Glass shattered, falling to the courtyard below. Darkness cloaked the whole prison. Guards shouted below and above, but it was too late for them to figure out what was wrong. The dim orange lights on the walls were hardly any help without the floodlights from above.
Amid the shouts and scrambling footsteps, the flames along the wires surged toward the sticks of dynamite and struck them one by one. She cringed as explosions shattered the air, one every other second.
Smoke began to climb up the walls of the prison. Orange flames curled along the cells below, their light guiding the prisoners to freedom.
Aina and Teo jumped onto the ropes hanging from the grappling hooks, then aimed their guns downward. Ears ringing from the explosions, she could hardly hear the shouts from guards and prisoners. It all blended together in one wild cacophony.
Diamond City Page 26