by Martha Wells
"You’re right, it’s only bruised. You’re lucky." Halle noticed Madeline’s torn sleeve and looked up at the constable still waiting near the door. "Get this lady a coat so she can leave."
He was impatient to return to the argument and defend his friend Ronsarde but he still had time to think about her modesty. "Thank you," Madeline whispered, keeping her voice pitched low.
Halle met her eyes and hesitated, but said only, "You’re welcome, young woman," and got to his feet.
Madeline grabbed her carpetbag, accepted the young constable’s uniform jacket to cover her torn dress, and made her escape.
Nicholas knew they had to move now, while the prison was still in a state of chaos.
The room they stood in was bare and empty, lit by a solitary gas jet high in one lime-washed wall, and obviously intended for no purpose other than as one more obstruction to the way outside. The floor was stone-flagged and there was one other door, a solid oak portal with heavy iron plates protecting the lock. Nicholas looked at it and felt a twist in his stomach. He didn’t have the proper tools with him to drill through those plates, even if he had had the hours necessary to do it. If that’s locked, we’re done for right here and now. He stepped forward and seized the handle and felt almost light-headed from relief when it turned. He pulled it open, cautiously, and found himself in a corridor, narrow and low-ceilinged, lit by intermittent gas lamps and leading in one direction toward another heavy door and in the other roughly paralleling the outer wall.
"That’s mildly encouraging," Reynard said in a low voice, stepping into the doorway after him. "That we’re not trapped in here for the pleasure of whatever’s after us, I mean. As to what we do now . . . ?"
Nicholas hesitated. Ronsarde’s presence made the situation several times more problematic. "We could try the main gate, or throw ourselves on the mercy of the first official we meet, but. . . ." He glanced back at Ronsarde.
The Inspector smiled grimly. "But explanations would be difficult? At the moment I also prefer a more unobtrusive exit." He would not be able to move with much haste. He was bleeding from a cut on the head and one eye was already swelling and he limped with every step.
Very well, Nicholas thought. Then we do it the hard way. His eyes still on the Inspector, he asked, "Do you know this place at all?"
"No, only the public areas, unfortunately."
Crack was watching Nicholas worriedly. Of all of them, Crack had spent the most time here, but his experience had been limited to the cellblock. Nicholas preferred not to get any closer to that section of the prison than absolutely necessary. "Give me a moment," he said, half turning away and shutting his eyes in an effort to concentrate. "I’ve been here before under similar circumstances." Not here, exactly, but on the upper floors.
He had committed a map of the place to memory when he had arranged Crack’s escape, but that had been years ago. Of course, you were dressed as a guard then, and you had keys to the connecting passages, and Crack was pretending to be dead. Doing it without keys, a suitable disguise, or an apparently plague-ridden corpse to fend off casual interest would be considerably more difficult. Sections of the map were coming back to him. He knew where they had to go; it was getting there that was going to be the problem. He said, "That open way looks easier, but it actually leads toward the warders’ barracks and the stairs up to the governor’s quarters and the other offices. Straight ahead toward that door will take us to a point where we can get down to the level below this one, which will be much easier to move through." It was made up of the old cellars and dungeons, connected by a criss-crossing warren of corridors and passages. That was where they needed to go, where there would be far less chance of detection. The lower levels were inaccessible from the cellblocks and not well guarded. "The only problem is that past that door is likely to be a guard point."
"How many guards?" Reynard asked.
"At least two." Nicholas eyed the door. Crack’s pistol was empty, its bullets expended on opening the outer door. The weapon Nicholas had taken from Ronsarde’s abductors had only five shots left. "Do you have your revolver?" he asked Reynard.
"No. I didn’t think it necessary in the Magistrates Court," he answered, glancing speculatively around the bare room. "Crack, hand me your pistol."
"It’s empty."
"They won’t know that."
While they were settling that, Nicholas took his scarf and tied it around the lower half of his face. He didn’t want to make it too easy for the guards to recognize him later. He waited until Reynard had done the same, then he went to the door. "Get ready to force your way in behind me."
It was sheathed in heavy iron; there would be no way to force it with the materials they had at hand. Nicholas approached it quietly and listened but could hear nothing through the layers of wood and metal. He drew a deep breath and pounded on it. "Open up, quick, it’s right behind us!" he yelled, pitching his voice toward the edge of hysteria.
He heard something from the other side, someone shouting about what the devil was going on, and he continued pounding and yelling. Moments passed, enough time for the men within to make a decision, to realize this door led away from the cellblocks, not toward them, and that this couldn’t be an escape attempt, and to fumble with their keys. The door jerked and started to swing inward. Nicholas set his shoulder and slammed his weight against it.
The man on the other side of the door staggered back and Nicholas caught his coat collar and shoved the pistol up under his chin, snarling, "Don’t move."
This was directed at the second man in the room, caught just standing up from a desk. Reynard pushed through the door behind Nicholas, caught the other guard by the arm and slung him to the ground.
Nicholas stepped back so his man wouldn’t be able to grab the pistol and said, "Turn around and lie face down on the floor."
"What— What do you—"
He was an older man, with thinning gray hair, gape-faced with astonishment. The one Reynard had flung down looked to be barely out of his teens. Nicholas found himself hoping he didn’t have to shoot them. "Just do it," he snapped.
The two guards were unarmed, since unless there was some emergency, prison warders only carried clubs. When both men were lying face down on the floor, Nicholas motioned for Crack and the Inspector to move on through the room. He tore the keys off the first guard’s belt and handed them up to Crack as the henchman helped Ronsarde past.
"Their uniforms?" Reynard suggested.
"Yes, at least the coats," Nicholas said. "You take—" They both heard it at once, pounding footsteps echoing against the stone walls, coming from the corridor they had just passed through. "No time," Nicholas snapped. "Just keep moving."
Crack had unlocked the other door. Nicholas waited until the others were through and then backed toward it himself, saying, "Don’t move, gentlemen, and no one will get hurt."
"You won’t get away with this!" the older one said.
"Very likely you’re right," Nicholas muttered. He stepped back through the door and gestured for Crack to pull it to and lock it. Without the keys, the two guards would have to wait for their fellows before they could open this door again. Not that that was likely to be more than a few moments. Nicholas looked around, trying to get his bearings.
They were in another small dim antechamber with two more doors and another corridor branching off. Nicholas hesitated, thinking hard, then took the keys from Crack and stepped to the first door. He unlocked it and yanked it open, revealing a narrow staircase twisting down into darkness. He gestured the others ahead, then turned back to unlock the other door, the one that should, if he remembered correctly, lead to the long straight corridor to the lower cellblocks. He flung it open and turned back toward the stairs. Just let their pursuers believe they had taken that route, just long enough to let them lose themselves in the catacombs below. They should have no trouble thinking us confused enough to go toward the cellblocks, Nicholas thought, starting down the stairs and pulling the heavy
door shut behind him. He shook it to make sure the lock had set again. We’re breaking into a prison, after all.
He almost tumbled down the stairs in the dark, catching himself on the wall at the bottom under a barely burning gas sconce and almost falling into Reynard. They were in a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor of dark stone patched with old brick, passages leading off in three different directions. There were a few gas sconces visible, obviously new additions, with their pipes running on the outside of the walls. Crack was supporting Ronsarde. Nicholas motioned for them to be silent, though he doubted that would do any good if the guards decided to check down here.
The moments stretched. They heard a muted thump as someone tried the door above to make sure it was locked, then silence.
"It worked," Ronsarde said, quiet approval in his voice. "Simple but elegant."
Reynard looked at Nicholas. "Well, which way? Or do we flip a coin?"
Good question, Nicholas thought. He didn’t know this level as well as the others. It had been a backup route for him in his original plan to engineer Crack’s escape years ago, but he hadn’t had to use it. "We’ll try this way first."
The others followed, Reynard immediately behind him, with Ronsarde coming after, supporting himself with one hand on Crack’s shoulder and the other on the slightly greasy stones of the wall. In the narrow corridor there was only room for one of them to help him at a time. That was going to tire Ronsarde more quickly and slow the rest of them down. Worry about it later. Keeping his voice low, Nicholas explained to Reynard, "What we have to make for is the southwest corner. That’s the old chapel and mortuary and there’s an outside door there for removal of the bodies. That’s our only choice besides the entrance we came in and the main gate."
"Rather appropriate, if you think about it," Reynard commented, and Nicholas couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. The further away from the outer door, the more stale the air became. Stale, and with a foulness under it that made the back of Nicholas’s neck prickle.
His voice strained from the pain of his injuries and from trying to keep up, Ronsarde said, "If events turn any further against us, this may be our only opportunity to pool our resources. You saw the gentlemen who were pursuing me; I take it the sorcerer who animated the Courts’ architecture is interested in you?"
"I suspect they may have been sent by the same person, whether they know it or not." Nicholas glanced back over his shoulder. "Do you know who arranged your arrest?"
"Within the Prefecture, no. Halle is currently attempting to uncover that intelligence, but since he can no longer risk trusting our former allies, it will be difficult. As to who ordered my arrest, I can only suspect Count Rive Montesq."
Nicholas stopped dead, for a moment all thought suspended, hearing that name. Count Rive Montesq. . . .
Reynard thumped him in the back then, saying, "Escape first, revenge later."
Nicholas started forward again. Careful, careful. He would have to reveal a little to get more information, but he didn’t want Ronsarde to realize how deeply he was involved. The Inspector must have recognized him as Nicholas Valiarde, or he would soon enough. If he recognized him as Donatien. . . . You would have to kill him. As ironic as that would be, after risking his life as well as Reynard’s and Crack’s to rescue him. There would be no choice. Not when going to prison meant taking Madeline and the others with him. "Do you know anything about the sorcerer who is involved in this?"
"I know that there is one, that he is practicing necromancy, and that he is completely insane," Ronsarde said. "I might have discovered much more if I hadn’t been interrupted so precipitously by my arrest."
"It’s very possible he—" believes himself to be Constant Macob, Nicholas started to say, but the scream echoing down the corridor from somewhere ahead cut off the words.
They halted in startled silence and Nicholas felt for the revolver in his pocket but the sound wasn’t repeated. After a tense moment, Reynard said, "I know people must scream somewhat in the normal course of things in a place like this, but—"
"But not normally this far below the cellblock," Nicholas finished for him. "There shouldn’t be anyone down here." Of course, Octave’s mad sorcerer had gone to great lengths to get to them already, he wasn’t going to let prison walls stop him.
There was another scream, startling out of the deep silence of the place, and Nicholas could tell it was much closer. "Back the other way," he said.
Madeline hurried down the street away from the Prefecture, but instead of turning toward the warehouse she took the other way, working her way closer to the plaza. When the official had mentioned the men who had run into the prison with Ronsarde she had had a distinctly sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was no guarantee it was Nicholas and the others, but. . . . If he had sent someone for help, he would have sent to the warehouse only a few streets away and that meant Cusard and Lamane.
She scouted the streets and alleys bordering the plaza, passing confused, fleeing people. Finally she spotted Cusard’s wagon on the roadside, the horses tied to the rails of a public water trough. She approached cautiously, but then she saw Cusard and Lamane, standing near the front of the wagon in agitated conversation.
They looked relieved at the sight of her and Madeline suspected that meant they were about to hand her a tricky problem. This thought was confirmed when Cusard greeted her with, "We’re in trouble."
"Nicholas and the others?"
"In the prison."
Madeline swore a particularly vile oath, a luxury she usually didn’t permit herself in front of people. Lamane even looked startled. She said to Cusard, "That’s what I was afraid of. How?"
Cusard glanced toward a group of constables moving up the street, then gestured her toward the nearest alley. They moved a few paces down it, Madeline catching up her skirt out of habit to protect it against the filth-covered cobbles. The alley was open-ended and they could see a black wall across the street at its farther end. The prison wall.
"The Inspector was set-on as they brought him out of the Prefecture," Cusard said. "There was a huge crowd gathered, a mob. Himself smelled a trap and he sent Devis for us, only we didn’t get there in time to do nothing but watch."
"What did you see?"
"Some bullyboys took the Inspector off the constables and were going to hang him at the old gallows. I lost sight of where Nic and the captain and Crack went until they popped up there. They took the Inspector off the bullyboys and chased them away, and I thought, now they’ll want a quick escape, but then the sorcery started."
"Those stone things off the buildings, yes, I saw those. Then what?"
"Then they ran in the prison, with those living statues right behind them. Just like Lethe Square, it’s us this sorcerer’s after, all right."
"Miss."
Madeline flinched and turned, badly startled. Not five paces away was Doctor Cyran Halle. He must have stood just out of sight, around the corner of the alley.
"I heard your conversation," he said.
Lamane started to reach for something in his coat pocket and Cusard caught his arm. No weapons, for God’s sake, Madeline thought. We haven’t done anything wrong, not that he’s witnessed. This was Ile-Rien, not Bisra, and thoughts and talk didn’t count for as much. "What do you mean?" she choked out, trying to sound indignant.
"I followed you here from the Prefecture and I heard everything you said," Halle answered. His brow was furrowed with worry but his voice was calm. "I must speak with you."
"You can’t prove nothing," Cusard spoke almost automatically. "It’s your word against all three of ours."
Halle held up his hands, palms out, and Madeline wondered if he was asking to be heard out or showing he was unarmed. He said, "I recognized you. You were the nurse, in the morgue that day."
"That means nothing," Madeline managed to say. Her throat was dry. Pretending to be offended was no use. The circumstances were too suspicious.
Halle took a step closer, halte
d when Lamane shifted nervously. "I heard you just now," he repeated. "Your friends are the men who saved Ronsarde, who ran into the prison to get away from the sorcery. You want to get them out without the Prefecture being involved. I want to help you."
"Why?"
"You were in that room just now, you heard them. Someone arranged for that mob to be present and ordered the constables to take Ronsarde out on the steps instead of across the bridge, so the hired thugs could get to him. If he’s taken by the Prefecture, it will just give whomever it was another chance to kill him." Halle hesitated. "If you are who I think you are. . . ."
Madeline caught her breath. She felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Next to her, Cusard made an involuntary noise in his throat, but didn’t react in any other way. She said, "Who do you think we are?"
"Ronsarde hypothesized your existence. He knew that this rogue sorcerer was encountering resistance from some person or group, and that there had to be something preventing that person or group from coming forward and reporting the sorcerer’s activity. The incident in Lethe Square seemed to confirm this." Halle paused deliberately. "As to whatever it is that kept you from coming forward when the sorcerer attacked you, I don’t know what it is and I venture to say that at this stage it hardly matters."
Madeline exchanged a look with Cusard. They were both too well-schooled at keeping appearances to show relief, but he looked a little white around the mouth. Madeline turned back to Halle. He doesn‘t know about Donatien— yet. Ronsarde would recognize Nicholas as the son of Edouard Viller, but that would be all. I need to come up with a story, something to explain what we’re doing and why. . . . He doesn’t want to know now, or thinks he doesn’t, but he will soon. . . .
"Please," Halle said urgently. "The streets are in confusion, the Prefecture is helpless, we need to do this now or we will lose our chance."
Madeline bit her lip. Her instincts said to trust him but it was her instincts that she didn’t trust right now. It came from knowing your enemy too well. She had heard all the stories Nicholas told, of Ronsarde and Halle at Edouard’s trial, she had read Halle’s accounts of the cases they had been involved in before that pivotal point, the cases since. The times she had tricked them herself, the disguises she had worn or designed for others specifically to fool them, the plots she had participated in to circumvent them; she had become far too familiar with them. God help me, I almost think of them as colleagues. She had been startled when they had encountered Halle at the city morgue, but now standing here and speaking to him felt almost natural. And you told Nicholas he wasn‘t wary enough; this man could have you sent to prison for the rest of your life. She looked toward the dark stone wall, just visible through the open end of the alley passage. No, not that. She would put a pistol to her head before that.
