He made a face. “Stay close. They may have guards inside, too.”
She followed him downstairs, grateful there were no guards to evade inside the shop. At the door, he made short work of the lock and oiled the hinges with a tiny can from his pouch. It swung open silently and they slipped inside.
“Ye need light?” he asked as the door closed behind them, plunging them into deep darkness.
“No. You?”
“I’m a gnome,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Dunno quite what ye are if ye can see in this.”
“I’m a monster.” She grinned maliciously. “Now hurry up! Eighteenth barrel on the left.”
The Gnome muttered something in gnomish and led the way. At the eighteenth barrel, they stopped. Mya stepped forward and pressed the Grandmaster’s ring into a niche in one of the support wedges, and the huge tun rolled aside to reveal the passage beyond.
“Go ahead. I’ve got to close the door.”
“Aye.” The gnome slipped through the narrow opening and waited patiently in the small room.
When the barrel rolled back into place, she turned to find him examining the walls despite the utter darkness. “Do you see the door?”
“I see two doors.” He pointed to the one Mya knew of. “One there, and another there.” He pointed to the adjoining wall, which looked featureless to Mya. “Which one we usin’?”
“Huh. I only knew of one. This one.” She pressed her ring to the secret catch and the door she’d used before slid aside without a sound.
“Dwarf work these.” He stepped through and didn’t flinch when soft white light blossomed around him, sourceless and casting no shadows.
“Yes.” Mya stepped inside and closed the door. “They were probably built when the palace foundation was laid.”
“Or before.” The Gnome ran his fingers over the wall and shrugged. “Wondered how the beards came and went. Now I know.”
Mya started out at a steady pace. “You think the dwarves use these to come and go from the palace?”
“Well, not this one, but if there’s one dwarf tunnel in this rock, there’s dozens.” He matched her pace until they arrived at the end of the tunnel. “Now what?”
“This opens into the dungeons.” She nodded to the door. “The last time I was here, two of the emperor’s blademasters were stationed there waiting for me, so I know at least some people knew about this passage.” She shrugged. “Now that the blademasters are gone, I don’t know if anyone does. Seems like they would have sealed it if they knew, but it looks just like it did before.”
“From this side. They could’ve walled it up from the inside. Try that ring ’o yers and we’ll see.”
“And if there are guards?”
“Then close it again. I know another way in.”
She knew without asking that he wasn’t about to tell her what it was unless it was necessary. “All right.” She raised her hand to press her ring into the niche, but he stopped her with a tug at her shirt.
“One thing about guards. If we’re spotted, we run. No fightin’ and no killin’.”
“With your short legs, I don’t think we’re going to be outrunning anyone.”
“I’m faster than ye think, lass.”
“Call me Mya. I’m not a lass. And if we get cornered?”
“We don’t get cornered.”
“Fine. If we have to run, you go as fast as you can and I’ll follow.” She lifted her hand, then stopped again to look down at him. “Or I could tuck you under my arm and carry you.”
“Don’t even think about it, la—er, Mya.”
She grinned at him and pressed her ring to the niche. The light winked out, and the two heavy stone slabs slid aside.
The corridor beyond was blissfully empty.
“Now I’m following you,” she whispered as they stepped through. She closed the door.
“Right. This way.” He turned to the right and she followed.
He opened the same locked door she and Lad had passed through with the emperor, his hands moving so fast that she barely had to pause, then moved down the corridor lined with cells. The odor of confinement was less rank than she remembered, and there were lamps at regular intervals. Many of the cells were full, but everyone slept, and their passage made no stir. To Mya’s horror, he continued on until they stood before the two very familiar doors of the emperor’s torture chamber.
“Bugger!” The Gnome peered at the heavy padlock that hung from twin ringbolts set into the stone beside the door. “Well, we’ll have to use another way up.”
“Can’t you unlock it?” She regretted her words as soon as she said them. She had nearly died in that room, and would sooner have walked into a dragon’s den than step into it again.
“O’course I can unlock it, but we can’t lock that chain behind us, and the jailor on rounds might see. Then we’d be double buggered, so it’s no good. Not to worry. I know another way.”
Mya said a silent thanks to whatever sympathetic deity seemed to be watching over her. She suppressed a shiver as she turned her back on the door and followed him. They retraced their steps all the way, then continued on to the room where she and Lad had dined with the emperor. Instead of a dining table set with silver and porcelain, however, the room was bare.
The Gnome strode across the far wall and eased a slim metal blade into a tiny crack that looked like a seam in the stonework. Something clicked, and a panel slid up. The opening was barely two feet square.
Though less cunningly hidden than the dwarf doors, Mya hadn’t detected it. Immediately, she knew its purpose. “A dumb waiter?”
“Aye. Didn’t plan on climbin’, but you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“And if I couldn’t climb it?” She looked up the narrow shaft. It wouldn’t be as difficult as climbing across the portcullis bridge with Lad.
“I know other ways, but not so easy on the other end.” He slipped climbers onto his hands and feet, ingenious little devices with metal tines for fitting into the seams of brick or stonework. “Next stop, the kitchens. Come along.”
He scrambled in and up the shaft. Mya followed.
A half hour later, she was completely lost. They’d traversed the kitchens, two more secret passages, and a bedroom with a sleeping couple, evaded a strolling pair of imperial guards, slipped into a library, and finally into another secret passage behind a bookcase. She wondered how he kept it all in his head.
“Now we’re back on the right track.” He patted the dusty stone wall and grinned. “This’ll take us right to the royal chambers. All seven.”
“Seven?”
“Aye, the emperor’s, the empress’, and five more for princes and princesses. They called this passage the Emperor’s Eyes. Word is, he spied on his family usin’ this.”
“Which emperor?
“Dunno. One of the early ones, when they were still buildin’, I guess. Come on.”
They tried two bedchambers to no avail. At the third, he stopped at the door and glanced at Mya. She pressed her ear to the stone and heard breathing.
“Someone’s sleeping inside.”
“Right. Quiet now. Not a sound.”
She nodded, and he worked the catch that opened the door. It swung silently inward. Dim lamplight revealed a wide fireplace, a four poster bed, several dressers and cabinets, and a small bookshelf. It also revealed a sleeping crown prince.
Finally!
Mya eased forward and retrieved the note she’d prepared from the list Lady T had given her. She’d included a few details about Hoseph as well.
The prince half reclined against his pillow, a book open in his lap. The flame in his bedside lamp barely sputtered.
Mya regarded him for a moment. He looked younger close up, his beard lighter, the lines around his eyes smoothed in sleep. She placed the bound note against his book and eased her hand away.
The Gnome tugged at her sleeve and jerked his head toward the secret passage, impatient to go. She hadn’t known he
was right behind her, probably ready to lop her head off if she tried to assassinate Arbuckle. She nodded, but looked back at the crown prince again, wondering why this man was so different from his father, the tyrant?
The crown prince stirred in his sleep. The book shifted, and the note rolled away. His eyes fluttered in the dim light, and one hand groped for the lamp.
Shit!
Without willful thought, Mya’s hands moved. One extinguished the lamp, and the other clapped over the waking prince’s mouth.
Chapter XXII
Shadows invaded the darkness and coalesced into a man.
Hoseph stood perfectly still, an ear cocked close to the building’s back door to listen. Other than a persistent ringing in his ears, he heard only a faint murmur of voices from inside, but not loud enough for them to be just inside the door. He didn’t know if this was a school, orphanage, or if Mya had simply invited street children to live there as cover, but he had little doubt that she would post a night watch of some kind. There were no lights to be seen now, but earlier, from the burned-out building across the street, he’d watched three lights on the third floor wink out. He felt sure that Mya slept in one of those rooms. None of the drapes had been open, and the old man had closed the shutters on the first floor at sunset, so Hoseph had gained only a bare glimpse into the back hallway when one of the children returned. A glimpse was all he needed. Steeling his nerves, he stepped into the Sphere of Shadow, then into the inn’s back hallway.
After a brief bout of dizziness, he heard a clink of crockery and a whisper from an opening to his left. The kitchen, no doubt. At this time of night, the cook wouldn’t be working. Hoseph didn’t care who was making the noise unless it was Mya was sneaking a midnight snack, but, he had to make sure. He’d check every room in the place until he found her.
Invoking the talisman, he rematerialized just beyond the kitchen door. Waiting until another surge of dizziness and a stab of pain behind his eyes subsided, he peered around the corner.
Low lamplight revealed two rough-and-tumble children at the kitchen table. They tore chunks from a loaf of bread, trading a knife back and forth to slather on butter from a pot. Happily, they munched away and chatted in whispers.
Some sentries. Hoseph suppressed a sneer. If this is the best Mya can do, killing her will be easy.
The memory of the fight in the emperor’s interrogation chamber tempered his confidence. There would be nothing easy about killing Mya. Anyone who could survive a fight with blademasters could murder a priest of Demia in an instant. He needed to remain vigilant.
Hoseph took a step down the hall, and a floorboard creaked faintly underfoot. He froze. The two children in the kitchen seemed not to notice, but he couldn’t risk discovery. Despite the effects invoking his talisman was having on him, he had to use it.
Hoseph flicked in and out of the shadows to the bottom of the servants’ stairs, then again up to the first landing. There he steadied himself, pressing his thumbs to his temples to massage away the pain behind his eyes, and listened again. Nothing penetrated the persistent ringing in his ears that seemed to grow louder now in the silence.
Leaning out into the hall of the second floor, he saw no one in the faint glow of a street lamp through the draperies at the end of the hall. Foregoing his talisman for now, he crept down the hallway, testing each board as he put his foot down. The first doorknob turned easily in his hand, and the hinges creaked faintly as he opened the door. The room was too dark to see anything, so Hoseph flared Demia’s pearly radiance in his palm. Empty. The bed was without linens, the curtains drawn closed.
Hoseph checked every room on the second floor. All were empty and unused. This wasn’t a school or orphanage after all, not with so many empty rooms. Mya was simply using a few street children as cover and cheap security.
Back at the stairs, he doused the glow of magic and flicked in and out of shadow to the next landing. At the top, he paused again until the pain faded, then peered into a hallway lit by a wall lamp turned low. The doors here were farther apart, the rooms apparently larger.
Naturally, she’d pick the best for her own.
He considered the lighted windows he’d seen from outside and discerned which of the doors must belong to those rooms. Three rooms: Mya, the old man he’d seen earlier, and…who else? The only other adults he’d seen were the two servants who had left with the setting of the sun. No matter. He would find Mya. If the others got in his way, he’d kill them as well.
He blinked through the shadows to the nearest of the three doors and put his hand on the knob. It wouldn’t turn. Bending, he peered through the keyhole. The dim lamp on the bedside table illuminated a bed. The coverlet draped across a sleeping body topped with a mop of dark hair.
Mya!
Movement drew his gaze to a small boy sitting cross legged beside the bed. He rocked gently forward and back as he bent over something in his hands. The child was watching over her, a human guard dog to alert Mya if anyone broke into her room.
What a vile creature you are to use children so.
The child presented a problem. He might be small, but he could not doubt sound an alarm, waking Mya. Hoseph saw only one solution.
It’s her own fault, he rationalized. A woman who uses children to guard against assassins must expect them to be treated as combatants. She left him no choice.
Hoseph flicked into the room behind the boy and invoked Demia’s blessing. May your soul find its final home.
A quiet gasp of surprise and a brief stiffening were all the boy could manage before his soul fled his body. Hoseph lowered the tiny corpse to the floor. He had done what he had to do. The child was in a better place now, free of pain and the life of ridicule and prejudice that he would have had to endure.
Hoseph felt no such pity for Mya.
Stepping over the child’s body, a floorboard creaked faintly underfoot. He winced, but Mya didn’t stir. Demia’s blessing flared in Hoseph’s hand as he prepared to send her soul to whichever of the Nine Hells best suited her. But as he reached out, the pearly light illuminated the angular features and strong nose of a man.
Not Mya!
In fact, Hoseph recognized the man as Lad’s assistant. The man who had foiled his attempt in Twailin to kill the traitorous Sereth.
How did he get here? Where—
“Knock!”
Hoseph whirled. In the pearly light of Demia’s power, he glimpsed a hellish face, contorted and snarling. Then something smashed into his shoulder with stunning force, pulping flesh and snapping bone. His magic faded, and the darkness of the room spun around him for an instant before he hit the wall and slid to the floor. Pain blazed through his shock as the broken bone in his arm grated. He heard a shout, then the dreadful creature loomed out of the darkness.
“Knock!” it screamed as it raised a club high, ready to smash Hoseph’s skull.
The invocation of soul searching burst from Hoseph’s lips as if Demia herself raised a hand to intervene. Divine magic pulsed outward from the priest, lashing through the fearsome creature. Its scream rattled Hoseph’s ears, but the club fell from its grasp and it stumbled back. Hoseph struggled to stand, and noticed Dee flailing in a tangled blanket. If he could dispose of these two quickly, he might still be able to kill Mya when she came running to help her friends. Death glowing in his hand, Hoseph stepped forward.
Arbuckle stirred as the book started to slide off his chest. He’d fallen asleep reading again.
Oh, bother… Barely awake, he struggled to open his sleep-gummed eyes as he reached out for the bedside lamp. Before he could touch it, the room plunged into darkness and a hand clapped over his mouth.
Terror lanced through the prince like a bolt of lightning, wrenching him to total wakefulness. He drew breath to scream, clawing at the hand on his mouth, but couldn’t budge the iron grip. Grabbing the slim wrist, he strained to pull it away, but it moved not an inch. At any moment, he expected a knife to slit his throat.
“Quiet,
prince!” The bare whisper so close to his ear fueled the fear already ripping through him.
Arbuckle lashed out blindly, but another hand caught his wrist and forced his arm down to his side. The sheer strength of his attacker chilled his blood. What was this creature?
“Stop that! We’re not here to kill you, just to deliver a message.” The grip on his wrist eased and let go. “If we wanted you dead, you would be, so just hold still.”
The prince froze, his mind racing. We? How many intruders were there? And if they weren’t here to kill him, then what? Kidnapping, torture, ransom? He could see nothing in the darkness, only sensed the shape beside the bed. If he could knock over the lamp on the bedside table, maybe his guards would hear and come to his rescue. Before he could act on the plan, the voice whispered again.
“We didn’t intend even to wake you, but brought you a note.” He heard the rustle of paper beside the book on the bed, and a roll of parchment was pressed into his hand. “It lists those involved in the plot to assassinate you.”
That stopped Arbuckle cold, and he stopped struggling. Assassination? There had been two attempts on his life already, and this person knew who was behind them. He reached up and tapped the hand covering his mouth. He had questions…so many questions.
“No, prince. I can’t stay to chat.” The voice was clearer now, feminine with a sardonic lilt. “You must martial your allies, keep them close, and trust no one on that list!” The iron grip on his mouth eased a trifle. “I’m going to release you, but if you cry out, we’ll have a problem. Trust me, prince; we’re here to help you. Nod if you agree to remain quiet.”
Arbuckle didn’t want to know what she’d do if he refused, so he nodded.
“Good. So long, prince. Try to keep that royal head on your shoulders.” The hand slipped away, and the shadow in the darkness moved.
“Wait!” he whispered. “Who are you? What—”
No answer. No sound of a footfall or a door closing, either.
Weapon of Fear (Weapon of Flesh Trilogy II Book 1) Page 32
