by Claire Luana
“Anything else?” Wren asked, trying to keep the man talking. She didn’t know what else to do. She felt an irrational need to grasp the heavy key hanging on the chain around her throat under her dress but clasped her hands together, stilling them. The key was there. If they could figure out a way to escape from the camp without getting killed, they might have a way back into the city. But that was a big if.
“There might be a few other odds or ends as we work out the terms. But that’s the basics. I know you may feel that Aprica does not have Alesia’s best interests at heart—”
Wren couldn’t stay silent. “You’re laying siege to Maradis. People will die.”
“Unfortunate casualties of war. There must be sacrifice sometimes in the furtherance of the greater good.”
His words chilled her.
A bell began to ring outside the tent, loud and insistent. Shouts and the sounds of movement permeated the tent’s canvas walls. Sim Daemastra was on his feet in a flash.
“What’s that?” Hale asked.
“The camp is under attack,” Daemastra said. “Stay here. You will be safe.”
And then he was gone.
Chapter 21
Hale risked a glance outside, peeking through the tent flap. He heard a scream, then the clashing of steel on steel. “I can’t see a damn thing,” he said, frustrated.
“Would the king be foolish enough to take their bait?” Wren asked, her hands clutched in the fabric of her cloak.
“Maybe he thought he could make a precision attack under cover of darkness. I don’t know.” Hale turned in a circle, throwing his hands up. “This might be our only chance to escape, but I don’t want to walk out with you into the middle of a war zone. It’s not safe. I don’t even know how we’d get back into the city.” There was no way they could walk up to a gate and expect not to be killed. In his mind, Hale turned the city around from its various angles. The walls stretched miles and miles—could they skirt all the way around the city without being spotted and killed? Could they make it to the harbor and try to sneak back in the way they’d come? But they had no boat…Hale didn’t like feeling this unsure, this powerless. But war was out of even his league.
“We go,” Wren said resolutely.
“I appreciate the reckless abandon, but how would we get in, though? We’d be shot on sight before we got within one hundred yards of a gate. The Cedars won’t give us the time to explain the situation.”
“It won’t come to that,” Wren said, reaching down the front of her dress and pulling out a silver chain. “I have a way inside.”
Hale leaned in, inspecting the ornate silver key. It looked heavy and old. “What is that?”
“Lucas told me about some old escape tunnels that run under the city. There are apparently tunnels paralleling each of the gates. He gave me his key.”
“And why are you just telling me this now?” Hale asked, excitement welling in him. Maybe they could salvage this mess after all.
“It wasn’t relevant,” she said defensively.
“Well it’s sure as hell relevant now,” Hale said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the tent’s entrance. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not sure where exactly the tunnel leads—” Wren began.
“Who cares where it leads?!” Hale said. “It could lead into Callidus’s bathroom and I wouldn’t care, so long as we’re back in the city.”
Wren wrinkled her nose. “What side of the city are we on?”
Hale peeked out into the darkness. The sounds of battle were growing closer. They would need to risk it. “Northeast side, I think. I saw the Lyceum towers. Did Lucas tell you anything about how to find this tunnel?”
“There’s a tunnel close to each of the gates,” Wren said. “Marked by a stone falcon. I say we try to work our way west, towards the People’s Gate.”
“So we need to find a tiny stone falcon on a dark section of wall in the middle of a battle?” Hale groaned, his elation dimming slightly. Still, it was better than nothing.
“That’s not a huge stretch of wall,” she said with obviously-feigned optimism. “We can find it.”
Hale grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Stay behind me. Be safe.” If anything happened to Wren…his chest constricted at the thought. Nothing would happen. He would protect her. They’d make it home.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she mumbled, heaving in a breath.
They thrust through the tent flap into a melee. The dark night was filled with torches, flashing steel, and screams. Apricans in pale blue and white uniforms wielding great broadswords clashed with dark uniformed Cedar and Black Guards, who appeared to be barely holding their own. The Apricans fought like berserkers.
Clutching Wren’s hand in his, Hale dodged between the tents, heading towards the blackness of the looming wall. To their right an Aprican speared a Cedar Guard, his sword sliding all the way into the other man with a squelching sound. Hale’s stomach seized, and images of the last battle he’d been in threatened to surface in his mind. His brother, Cal, bleeding on the ground, his skin growing paler and paler. Hale shook his head, ridding himself of the images. He couldn’t risk being distracted.
The circle of torches where the Aprican king had staked Prince Casius was visible in the distance. Men swarmed the area, doing desperate battle. The prince had been helped down, and two men in black uniforms were hauling him towards the city wall.
“They came for the prince,” Wren said, stumbling over something and falling to her knees. Hale hauled her, practically lifting her bodily off the ground.
“Come on,” he said.
They wove between tents, cutting a diagonal path towards the wall that kept them away from the main mass of the fighting. They stumbled into a clearing, a square of sorts between tents. Two Cedar Guards stood across a cookfire, their eyes wild, their swords drawn.
Hale stopped cold, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Wren stumbled to a stop beside him. “We’re friends….” Hale began, but the bloodlust of battle had taken the soldiers. Flame it! He didn’t want to fight these men. But it seemed he would have little choice; one of the soldiers let out a battle cry and raised his sword, darting towards them.
Hale kicked his booted foot out and connected with the cookpot, sending embers and scalding stew all over the charging soldier.
The man screamed and fell to his knees, releasing a keening sound that Hale was sure to hear in his nightmares. The other soldier jumped across the mess at him, swinging his sword.
Hale pushed Wren out of the way, realizing too late that that the force of his shove had sent her tumbling into the grass a yard away. Thoughts of Wren fled as Hale ducked to miss the soldier’s swinging sword. Hale moved on instinct, swinging his fist into the man’s gut, followed by a powerful blow to his temple. The Cedar Guard fell to the ground, the sword dropping from his unconscious hand. Hale let out a breath, willing his thundering heart to slow. Just because he was big didn’t mean he liked fighting. Because fighting involved possibly dying.
Hale offered a hand to Wren, who took it with an expression in her eyes that seemed like awe mixed with something else. Fear. Guilt surfaced as he remembered the feeling of his hand grasped around her delicate throat, the rage that had flooded him at the thought that she had poisoned Sable, drowning out all reason. She had every right to be afraid. “I’m sorry I shoved you. Are you all right?” he asked as gently as possible.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice small. “Thank you.”
Hale leaned over and picked up the sword, then took a knife from the unconscious man’s belt. He flipped it and handed it to Wren, who took it in shaking fingers.
Hale picked up her hand, twining his fingers through her thin cold ones. He resumed jogging towards the wall, towing Wren along behind him. The sounds of the struggle were growing fainter as they got farther from the Alesian attack.
“They were ours,” Wren mumbled behind him. “Why didn’t they just listen to us?”
> “Men don’t listen when their blood is up,” Hale said. “There’s no ours right now but you and me.”
They continued through row after row of tents until they emerged onto a broad strip of green grass paralleling the wall. “Back,” Hale whispered, holding his arm out. They retreated into the shadow of a tent, peeking out to look either way. In the distance, they could see torches on the ramparts and hear the twang of bowstrings.
“Covering their withdrawal, most likely,” Hale said.
“I can’t believe the king sent his men out like that,” Wren said. “What if he sent Lucas out with the attack? What if he’s out here?” Wren started forwards, and Hale gently grabbed her shoulders, steering her back into the shadows. “The king wouldn’t risk his own flesh and blood. And even if he did, what good could you do throwing yourself in the fray to find out?”
“We need to get inside,” Wren said, biting her lip. “I have to know he’s all right.”
“Fine by me. We head to the right, towards the People’s Gate? We think it’s that way?” Hale pointed along the dark stretch of stone.
Wren peered up at the stone expanse, looking one way, then the other. She squinted. When looking towards the right, the torches from the wall were blinding. “I think so. I don’t like exposing ourselves against the wall.”
“It sounds like the Alesians have retreated. If we stay low, we should be okay,” Hale said with more certainty than he felt.
“Let’s go.”
They darted towards the wall, staying low to the ground. The night had grown chilly, a cold wind blowing off Spirit Bay. Hale’s boots and socks were soaked in the wet of the grass, his shirt soaked through with the cold sweat of fear and adrenaline.
They made it to the wall and crouched alongside it, Wren practically hugging it. “Good wall.” She patted its rough stone. “Reveal your secrets to us.”
“Sweettalking it?” Hale whispered. “I’m not sure that’s going to get us where we need to go.”
“It can’t hurt. Sweettalking has got you through just about every scrape, hasn’t it?”
Hale let out a low chuckle. “Fair point, my little raven.” He made a kissing sound.
“I didn’t say seduce it,” came Wren’s wry voice.
“Come on,” Hale said. “Before I betray Sable with this statuesque lady. Stay low.”
They half-crawled, half-walked along the stretch of stone, Hale’s knees and back aching in protest. If they lived through this, he was definitely getting a massage. He ran his hand along the wall’s length, letting its familiar roughness calm his raging nerves.
They cleared the edges of the Aprican camp until Hale could only see darkness, and the lights of a few small homesteads in the distance.
“We’ve got to be close to the People’s Gate,” Hale said. “We’ve been walking for a while.”
“What if we missed it?” Wren said, looking back in the darkness.
“We didn’t miss it. This old girl will show us the way.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, but then she stopped in her tracks. “Wait,” she hissed.
Hale crouched, and they were both silent for a moment while Wren felt the wall to the left and the right. “Does this feel like a carving?” Wren took his hand and placed it on the wall.
Hale explored with his fingers, feeling around the piece of stone. There. There was an opening. A hole. “Yes! And I think this is the keyhole.”
A low murmur of voices sounded in the distance, and Wren and Hale looked at each other in alarm. The whites of her eyes gleaming in the moonlight. Wren had tucked the knife he had given her in her belt while they’d walked, but she drew it out again now.
Wren pulled the key out as well while Hale peered into the darkness where the voices had come from. A row of buttons glinted. Another. He could just make out two men walking along the wall. “Patrol,” he whispered. “I think Aprican.”
“It’s not turning,” Wren said, looking nervously over Hale’s shoulder at the approaching men. They were perhaps a few hundred yards away. They’d be upon them in another minute.
“Just our luck,” Hale said. He didn’t relish killing those two men, but he would if it came down to it. “Let me try.”
Wren relinquished her position and Hale grabbed the key, wiggling it in the hole, trying to turn it this way and that. “Hmm,” he said, removing the key and looking at it in the moonlight.
“Hale.” Wren let out a panicked hiss as the men walked closer. They were practically upon them.
He blew on the key, said a prayer to the Beekeeper, and shoved it back in again, turning it. Wren was pressed to the wall next to him, her hand drumming on his back frantically.
Finally, blessedly, the key turned in the lock with a creak of protest. The wall swung open, causing them both to tumble into a dark passageway.
Chapter 22
The patch of wall swung shut as fast as it had opened, leaving them in utter, overwhelming darkness. “Hale,” Wren said, her voice echoing in the black. She had landed on her hands and knees, and now she searched around blindly, her hands coming into contact with nothing but dirt and rocks. Then, blessedly, soft skin.
“Ugh,” Hale groaned, placing his hand on top of hers where it rested on his forehead. He kept hold of her hand, getting to his feet.
“Well, this leaves something to be desired,” he said. “I can’t see a blooming thing.”
Wren’s heart thudded in her chest, so heavily she pressed her hand to her breast, as if to keep it in. It would be okay, she tried to tell herself, but she knew she was a liar.
“You don’t happen to have any flint, do you?” Hale asked.
“Do you think I have any flint?” Wren snapped. “It’s not the type of thing I carry about.”
“Just examining the options,” Hale said. “There must be a torch and flint in here by the entrance. What if someone were to come in this way?”
“It’s probably at the other end.” Wren moaned. “These were meant to be escape tunnels. They’d be coming from the other end.”
“Maybe whoever designed this tunnel liked to be thorough. I sneaked one of Callidus’s chocolates yesterday. I’m feeling lucky.”
“So lucky we got captured by the Aprican navy,” Wren grumbled, knowing she shouldn’t give in to negative thinking, all the while wallowing in it like a pig in mud. But Callidus’s luck was supposed to be the luck of location—and they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time when it came to the Aprican ship. Why did Hale think it would work out any different with the tunnel?
“We did get captured,” Hale said, moving them in one black direction. Wren shuffled along behind him. “But we also escaped. Ah ha!”
He let go of her hand, and her panic swelled.
“Hale?” Her voice squeaked.
“I found a torch and some flint. You hold this.” A familiar object was thrust into her hand, and she took it in both hands, backing away. She didn’t want Hale striking the flint right at her.
She heard the telltale snick of flint against stone and saw a blessed spark. After three more tries, the torch caught, flaring to life. She sagged in relief and saw relief mirrored on Hale’s face, illuminated by the flickering light. He took the torch from her and held it aloft, examining their surroundings. A dark passageway stretched before them, so low that Hale would have to duck much of the way. Gauzy cobwebs adorned the walls and ceiling, hanging like tinsel at yuletide.
Wren’s skin began to crawl. “So many spiderwebs!” she moaned, brushing her hands along her body to unseat any eight-legged interlopers. “There’s one on you!” she exclaimed, brushing a black spider the size of an Alesian crown from Hale’s shoulder. It fell to the floor and she smashed it with her foot while Hale turned in a wild circle, looking for more on his shoulders and back.
Wren let out a giggle and Hale grimaced. “I’d rather the spiders than Sim Daemastra,” Hale said, his mouth twisted in distaste. He took her hand and they marched forwards.
&nb
sp; The trek through the tunnel was one of the longest hours of Wren’s life. Their spider companions were joined by the skittering sounds of rats. The echoing of the tunnel amplified the sounds until it seemed that a horde of vermin surrounded them. Wren had never been bothered by rats; they seemed to mind their own business for the most part, but the prospect of being trapped in a tunnel with them brought all sorts of nightmarish scenes to mind. When they finally reached the door at the other end, Wren fell upon it with a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank the Beekeeper.”
“I don’t think the Beekeeper has much say down here,” Hale said, shuddering and brushing imagined spiders from his shoulder. “This is the Huntress’s territory.” Wren couldn’t help but agree. The Huntress, goddess of the underworld, who brought souls to the dark afterlife.
“Where do you think it lets out?” Wren felt around the door for a hinge or lever.
“As long as it doesn’t let out in the middle of the king’s throne room, we’ll be fine.”
Wren’s exploration bore fruit, and the door let out a deep grinding noise, swinging open. Wren and Hale poked their heads out and, seeing nothing but a storeroom, darted out of the tunnel, both doing a little dance to shake off any lingering spiders.
The door swung shut, and they found themselves in a dusty room filled with stacked furniture and office supplies. The far door was locked, and while Wren reached into her messy curls to see if she had any pins left, Hale simply wrenched the door off its hinges.
Wren raised an eyebrow. “That’s one way to do it.”
The hallway outside the storeroom was broad and long with polished marble floors. The lamps were dark and their echoing footsteps were the only sound.
“Where are we?” Hale whispered.
They turned to the left and began walking, passing gilt-edged paintings of black-robed magisters.
“I know where we are,” Wren said quietly. “The municipal courthouse. This is where I was tried and…” She trailed off, remembering the smooth feel of the vial on her lips as Killian had moved to pour poison down her throat.
