Isabel had told her to keep her efforts a secret from everyone, even her, and Wren had dutifully, though reluctantly, obeyed. She wanted to tell Isabel about her progress, describe the musty old basement where she’d hidden the gear … she wanted to hear Isabel tell her that she’d done well, but she told herself that this was part of the growing up that Isabel said she needed to do. So she kept her work secret.
In the few weeks since she’d arrived, Wren had watched Isabel become more detached and distant, often waking in the night screaming, then crying quietly. More than anything, Wren wanted to help her, but she didn’t know how, and Isabel had begun to withdraw, seeming to spend as little time with her as possible. She told herself that Isabel was afraid she might lose control and hurt her, that she was just trying to protect her the only way she knew how, but that didn’t take away the loneliness and isolation she felt.
She had just added a length of rope to her hidden cache of equipment when she heard an odd noise, muffled and distant. She froze, listening intently, holding her breath until she heard it again. Very quietly, she tiptoed across the room, away from the light of day streaming through the door she’d left ajar and into the shadows. She heard it again, coming from the corner of the room. Holding her breath, she crept closer until she walked on a section of floor that felt different.
Searching the darkness on hands and knees, she found a trapdoor. She pulled on the ring, gently at first, then harder when it didn’t budge, and then with all her might. All at once it broke free and she fell backward, knocking her wind out and leaving her sitting on the floor struggling for breath. When she was finally able to draw air, she nearly vomited from the fetid and rotting stench emanating from the hole in the floor.
She sat still for several minutes, regaining her breath and listening. The noise she’d heard didn’t come again, but the passage she’d found was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to pass up. As unpleasant as it smelled, whatever lay below might be the best chance she had for discovering a way out of the city. That task had been ever in the back of her mind-find a way to escape.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the faint glow of green lichen growing on the walls of the shaft provided just enough light to make out the ladder leading down into the stench. Fear crept into her mind, poisoning her resolve with all manner of foul possibilities, but she set it aside, choosing instead to remember Isabel’s lesson on courage. They needed a way out … she couldn’t abandon that necessity out of fear.
She tested the first rung and it held, then the second. Slowly, testing each rung before committing her full weight to it, she descended into the bowels of the city. The putrid air burned her eyes and turned her stomach, but she held her course until she reached the last rung and stepped onto a ledge that ran along a canal filled nearly full with slow-moving sewage. The light offered by the glowing lichen wasn’t enough to see by, so she picked a direction and began to feel her way along the wall. When she heard a noise echoing from behind her, she reversed course, her heart hammering in her head and her breath so loud in her chest that she was sure it would give her away.
In the dark, she couldn’t be certain of her direction but she thought she must be moving toward the city wall, and it seemed that she was following the flow of sewage, though it was difficult to tell because it moved so slowly.
When the wall she had been following abruptly disappeared, she stopped in her tracks, straining to see in the dark, then feeling for the wall and finding that the passage had turned, or perhaps intersected with another, though she couldn’t be certain. Cautiously, she reached out with her foot and found cold, hard stone. After several minutes of feeling her way in the dark, she found a bridge across a smaller canal that fed into the long canal she’d been following. Not long after that, she saw light … not the eerie light produced by the lichen, but white light.
She slowed her pace even further, focusing on moving without a sound, stopping when she heard voices. One was raspy and hoarse, the other merely a whisper. Light was coming from an open door in the passage wall. She crept closer, reaching the doorframe and peeking around with one eye. There were two figures standing in a small room with several large levers and hand-crank wheels set into one wall.
The first was a man wearing a Regency uniform with the rank of captain. He was holding a lantern. Wren edged an inch further and froze in fear when she saw the other figure. She was hunchbacked, leaning heavily on a stout cane with an oversized hand covered in scales, hooked bone spurs protruding from each knuckle. Her head was oversized and looked as if it had been sculpted from wax and then just slightly melted on one side, creating a hideous deformity. Warts and sores pocked her face and a forked tongue darted between her lips when she spoke.
“Lady Reishi is of no consequence … for the time being, anyway,” she said, her voice raspy as if it took a great effort to speak. “Kill the princess and bring me the black box she carries.”
“Yes, Lady Druja,” the man whispered, bowing respectfully to her. “Would you like her to suffer?”
“Yes, but it isn’t necessary,” Druja said. “Of utmost importance is that she not be allowed to open that box for Phane. Also, take care to avoid being caught.”
“I understand. Do you have any other tasks for me?” he asked, his eagerness to please such a creature beyond understanding to Wren.
“I would meet this Wizard Enu,” Druja said, “but not yet. For now, watch his movements, identify his patterns of behavior and learn his habits. Once I know his routine, it will be a simple matter to place myself in his path.”
“As you wish.”
“Go now, and close the door,” Druja said, turning away from him. He bowed deeply.
Wren withdrew into the shadows, panic welling up in her chest. She crouched in the dark, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t notice her … and he didn’t, turning away from her and lighting his way down the narrow ledge, opposite from the way she’d come.
Wren was torn, fear told her to retrace her steps, return to Isabel and tell her about what she’d heard. Isabel would know what to do. But another part of her told her to follow the man. Isabel had said that she should make her own decisions, base them on rational thought, especially when she was afraid. She was afraid now. After a brief internal struggle, she set out to follow the man, staying well behind him but keeping the light of his lantern in sight.
He seemed to know where he was going, turning this way and that, crossing over a narrow bridge at one point before coming to a ladder leading to the surface. Wren waited until he’d ascended into the shaft before hurrying to catch up.
She reached the base of the ladder just in time to hear him slide the sewer grate back into place, then she waited for the sound of footsteps before she started climbing, nearly falling when she trusted a rung without testing it first and it gave way. She clung to the ladder, her heart pounding and her breathing heavy while she struggled to regain her courage. After a few moments, she continued until she reached the grate. Only then did she discover that it was heavy, too heavy to lift with her arms, especially at such an awkward angle.
Her mind raced. The man was getting away. If she didn’t reach the street soon, she would lose him and someone-no, not just someone-a princess would die. She wasn’t sure why the distinction seemed to matter, but it did. She tested the rungs at the top and found them sturdy, then braced her back against the grate and pushed up. It lifted a little. With a heave, she raised it a few inches further and twisted her shoulders, sliding it off her back.
She emerged in an alley between two buildings occupying one block. Looking this way and that, she saw several boot prints leading away from the sewer grate, fading with each successive step. She raced out to the street looking for the man and found him rounding the corner a block away. She ran after him. A soldier frowned at her, scrutinizing her closely before deliberately looking away. She turned the corner and slowed to a walk, her quarry only half a block ahead.
She hadn’t explored this
part of the city yet, but she could guess at her location from the position of the black tower. She followed the man through the streets until he turned into the courtyard of a beautiful estate occupying half an entire city block. The wall around it was painted white and stood only four feet high. The gardens within were well cared for and the house itself was ornate and ancient, yet looked to be in pristine condition.
Wren climbed over the wall, keeping a bush between her and the man, darting to another bush that was closer still. He was chatting with a guard at the main door.
“Good talking with you, Captain Erato,” the guard said just before the man entered the house, clapping the guard on the shoulder.
Wren skirted the main entrance, slipping past the lone guard, using the ample foliage for cover on her way to the kitchen entrance. She was familiar with the inner workings of a kitchen and knew how to blend into the background. The staff didn’t even seem to notice her, especially after she scooped up a tray of food and slipped out of the kitchen into the hall, where she stopped, looking this way and that until she saw a guard at the end of the hallway sitting lazily in a chair.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, looking down timidly. “I’m new to this house and I can’t remember the way to the princess’s quarters. Would you help me, please?”
“Take the service stairs up two flights … it’s the door at the end of the hall,” he said, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes before he even finished speaking.
Wren raced up the stairs, slowing to a fast walk once she came to the top floor, nodding respectfully to an elderly cleaning lady she passed in the hall, while watching Captain Erato enter the princess’s quarters and close the door.
Wren wasn’t sure what she was going to do once she reached the room, but she found herself setting the tray down on a small table along the wall and slipping her knife out of her boot, flipping it around in her hand so the blade ran up against her wrist, just the way Commander P’Tal had shown her back in Blackstone Keep.
She opened the door a crack.
“Where is the box?” Erato said, quietly but threateningly.
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” a beautiful woman with fair skin and strawberry-blond hair said, backing away from him. “When Prince Phane finds out about this …”
“He’ll never know,” Erato interrupted.
Wren slipped into the room on her tiptoes, carefully closing the door behind her and turning her knife back around in her hand.
The woman looked past the man, frowning in confusion. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Nice try, Princess,” Erato said. “We’re all alone here and I can kill you long before any help will arrive.”
Wren put her finger over her lips, holding Lacy’s eyes urgently, drawing closer with each passing moment, sacrificing speed for silence. Commander P’Tal’s voice played over and over in her mind: If you have to stab a man in the back, aim just above the belt and to the side of the spine. Wren picked her target, focusing her mind, trying to remember every detail of her brief knife-fighting instruction.
“Tell me where the box is and I’ll make this quick and painless,” Erato said.
Lacy shook her head. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Who’s going to stop me?” he asked, mockingly.
Wren lunged, stabbing with all her strength through Erato’s leather armor, the blade of her knife thin and sharp. Her target was standing still and unaware, then he stiffened in shock, unable to utter a single word, frozen on the end of her blade.
“She is,” Lacy said, drawing her dagger.
Wren pulled the knife sideways, just like Commander P’Tal had taught her, slicing through the side of the man’s back. He toppled over into a growing pool of blood.
Everything caught up with Wren in that moment. She slumped to her knees, dropping the knife in a clatter and burying her face in her hands, crying uncontrollably. All of the bottled-up fear came pouring forth, overwhelming her deliberately self-imposed courage and reducing her to wracking sobs.
“Hush, it’s all right,” Lacy said, laying her trembling hands on Wren’s head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” She knelt next to Wren for several minutes until her crying subsided and she looked up, sniffling and wiping the tears from her face.
“I’m Wren,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’m Lacy. I don’t know how I can ever thank you. He would have killed me if it weren’t for you.”
Wren sat up, frowning first in confusion and then in growing realization. “Wait, you’re Princess Lacy? Lacy Fellenden?”
Lacy frowned back. “How do you know my name?”
Wren shrugged. “Sometimes the adults talk about important things while I’m in the room. They’ve been trying to find you. They said you’re in danger and that you may hold the key to something called the Nether Gate.”
Lacy grabbed her by the shoulders. “You know about the Nether Gate? Who are your friends? Where are they?”
Wren blinked, somewhat taken aback by Lacy’s sudden intensity.
“My friends are Isabel and Abigail. Isabel is here in the city; Phane’s holding her prisoner. Abigail is on Fellenden, fighting Zuhl’s army.”
“Abigail-Phane’s cousin Abigail?” Lacy said, letting Wren go and frowning in confusion. “Phane said he sent her to protect my people against Zuhl’s aggression.”
“What?” Wren said. “Phane didn’t send Abigail to Fellenden, Alexander did-her brother, Lord Reishi.”
Lacy put her hands on her head. “I’m so confused. Phane showed me Abigail in his magic mirror-tall, silvery blond hair, blue eyes.”
“That’s her, but she would kill Phane in a heartbeat. She hates him.”
“But … he’s been nothing but kind to me. He healed my broken hand and saved me from Zuhl’s men.”
Wren stopped, blinking again, her mind racing. She didn’t know what to think, didn’t know if she should trust Lacy or not, didn’t know if Lacy would betray her to Phane.
“I should go,” Wren said, getting to her feet and backing away.
“Wait, I won’t hurt you. You saved my life,” Lacy said, looking down at Erato’s corpse. “I don’t even know why he attacked me. He was supposed to be the captain of my guard detail.”
“I saw him talking with something in the sewers,” Wren said, “something that wasn’t human … something evil. He called her Lady Druja. She told him to kill you and take the box. You’re not safe here, Princess Lacy. Don’t trust anyone.”
She turned to go.
“Wait … I don’t know what to believe.”
“Please don’t tell Phane I was here,” Wren said before she opened the door, then she turned back as if remembering something urgent. “If you open the box, the world will die,” she said, then slipped out the door.
Lacy sat down on her bed, trying to process everything that had just happened. Coldness seeped into her bones as the very real possibility that she’d been duped by Phane began to sink in. All of the old stories said he was a deceiver, that he’d unmade whole countries with nothing but a well-told lie. What if everything he’d said, everything he’d done was a lie?
She didn’t even know the waifish girl who’d appeared at just the right moment, her moment of need, and saved her life, but she knew with perfect certainty that Wren had saved her. Whatever she did, she wouldn’t repay her with betrayal.
She looked down at the corpse and nodded to herself, drawing her own dagger and stabbing him in exactly the spot where Wren had, drawing her blade out his side just as she had only slightly deeper. She took Wren’s knife and wrapped it in a scarf, then hid it under her bed before going to the door.
“Guard!” she shouted.
***
After some very suspicious and threatening house guards disarmed her and sat her down at the end of a sword, they called for Phane. He arrived half an hour later, casually strolling into the room, then stopping in his tracks, assessin
g the situation in a glance.
“Why are you holding the princess with weapons drawn?” he snapped.
“Prince Phane, she killed Captain Erato. We thought …”
“Silence!” Phane said. “You are dismissed. You will wait for me in the courtyard. If I find that you have mistreated the princess in any way, you will pay dearly.”
Both men turned white, snapped to attention, saluting crisply, if not a bit forcefully, before scurrying from the room.
“Princess, I hope you will accept my sincere apology for the unacceptable behavior of my men.” He had gone from stern and angry to contrite and remorseful in an instant. “Please, tell me what happened.”
“I’m not really sure,” Lacy said, her voice shaking. “Captain Erato came into my room and drew his sword, leveling the point at me. I could see in his eyes that he meant to kill me.”
“It’s all right, you’re safe now,” Phane said. “Take your time.”
She nodded, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. The residual fear of the brief struggle was still with her, but more than that, she was planning to lie to Phane and lying always made her terribly self-conscious.
“He lunged at me, but he tripped on the edge of the carpet and fell forward into me, knocking me down against the bed. Before he could get up, I stabbed him in the back.” She looked up from the table. “Prince Phane, why would he try to kill me?”
“I don’t know, Princess, but perhaps I can discern something by examining the body.”
Lacy remained where she was, terrified that he’d seen through her lie, but relieved that he seemed to believe her.
“Quite a well-placed strike,” he said, almost to himself before he started murmuring a few words under his breath. “Interesting.” He pulled away Erato’s collar and nodded.
“Well, this is certainly disturbing,” he said, motioning for Lacy to come closer. “See here, these bite marks? Captain Erato wasn’t acting of his own accord. He was doing the bidding of another, a very dangerous enemy of mine called the Sin’Rath.” Phane stood abruptly, pausing to think for a moment. “At the end of the Reishi War, I banished a very powerful demon known as Sin’Rath, the Succubus Queen. What I didn’t know at the time was that she had spawned offspring. Apparently, her line survives to this day.
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