Serrin Vroi.
Birdie shoved it out of sight in the satchel and reached for the last item, a balled up scrap of cloth. It came unrolled in her hand, revealing an enormous crystal, larger than the pommel of Artair’s sword. Firelight shot through the crystal, casting golden rays across the floor and painting her hands crimson.
“The Star of the Desert?” Sym tore the crystal from her hand with the speed of a striking hawk, eyes burning with wrath intense enough to kindle a blaze. Brandishing the crystal like a weapon, she spun to face Inali. “How came you by this?”
Her voice was quiet—dangerously so.
“It . . . I …” The blood had fled from Inali’s face. Birdie half feared he would collapse. But he shook himself and thrust his chin in the air with the manner of a princeling challenged by a lesser. “What business is it of yours? It should be mine by rights.”
“This is the Matlal’s stone. It is an heirloom of the desert. How is it yours? You were never to be the Matlal.”
“No, but I was to be Mahtem of the Sigzal tribe!” Inali shouted. He slammed his good fist down on the hearth and leaned forward, muscles strained and tendons standing out like cords along his neck. “I was the eldest son of my father. The inheritance should have been mine! But what better dowry to offer the Matlal than the Sigzal tribe? Itera and Quahtli took everything from me. They owe me this, at the very least.” He sank back against the hearth. “It is a poor price for a birthright.”
Sym did not respond immediately. She stood with her jaw clenched and her brows lowered, gazing at the crystal in her hand. Birdie carefully placed Inali’s repacked satchel on the table. Matters of desert rule and Saari custom were beyond the range of her knowledge. She had seen the crystal set in Matlal Quahtli’s throne and could only guess at its worth, but Sym’s expression told her all she needed to know about the severity of Inali’s crime.
“I do not understand you, Inali.” Sym closed both fists around the Star of the Desert. “Even after helping Hawkness and the Songkeeper escape, you could have returned to the desert in time. But for this, you will be branded a traitor . . . I will be branded a traitor with you.” Her voice shook. “Were it not for the Khelari amassing on the border, the Matlal would have already hunted you down.” She bent, plucked the scrap of cloth from the ground, and covered the crystal. “You are but a foolish boy.”
“Aye, foolish an’ twice accursed.”
Birdie spun around at Amos’s voice. His broad form filled the doorway, forcing Brog to stoop behind him to peer between his shoulder and the doorframe. Judging from the thunderous look on the peddler’s face, he had overhead Inali’s confession.
Or at least enough to be truly riled.
“Ye’ve been lyin’ t’ us about yer purpose, lad.” Amos stormed into the room and towered over Inali. “If ye know aught at all o’ Hawkness, then ye know I’m not a man ye want t’ deceive. Why are ye really here?”
“You know why I’m here.” Inali jerked from Amos to Sym to Brog and finally settled on Birdie. “I haven’t deceived you. I swear!”
The desperation in his eyes begged her to believe him.
At her side, the peddler whistled a breath between his lips, considering, then seized Inali’s good arm and dragged him to his feet. Inali screamed and doubled over, curling in around his injured side. But Amos just started toward the door, hauling the stumbling Saari behind him.
“Beware the stitches!”
“Easy, Amos, don’t hurt the boy.”
Brog’s rumbled words jolted Birdie to action. “Amos!” She darted forward and grabbed his arm. He looked straight at her, but she wasn’t sure that he really saw her. His breathing came hard and fast, muscles taut, face redder than his wild shock of hair. “Please, he’s been injured. Wounded trying to save me. I think we can trust him.”
“Bilges, Birdie, I won’t hurt the lad.” Amos sounded offended at the suggestion. “I’ll even thank him for savin’ ye, but there’s questions that’ve needed answerin’ since first we visited the Hollow Cave. Now that young Inali”—he shook the cringing Saari warrior, eliciting another groan—“has the use o’ his tongue an’ his wits again, he’s got some explainin’ t’ do.” He slung Inali’s good arm around his shoulder and hefted him half off his feet, then nodded at Brog. “The door, if ye don’t mind. We’ll be in the donkey shed. Don’t disturb us.”
The tavern keeper slung the door shut behind Amos, settled the bolt in place, and turned around with arms crossed over his barrel chest. “It’s, uh, best to do what he says when he gets like that.” He rocked back and forth on his heels a moment, muttering to himself, then shuffled to the table and eagerly accepted a bowl of soup from Sym.
Birdie slipped over to the door. She didn’t dare follow, not when Amos was in a fury like this, but she could listen. If she held her breath, she could hear Inali on the other side, insisting that he had nothing else to explain.
“Look, lad.” Amos cut him off. “Ye can’t lie t’ me. I’ve been t’ Serrin Vroi. I’ve wandered the paths beneath Mount Eiphyr. I’ve stood in the Pit. An’ if ye were lyin’ about seekin’ Tal Ethel or about what you mean t’ do, I’ll know. Ye’re goin’ t’ tell me everythin’.”
The peddler’s footsteps stomped away.
Amos spun the dirk through his fingers, sitting lengthwise along the top rail of Balaam’s stall with one leg dangling, the other propped up. He brought the dirk down with a thunk into the rail. Tugged it loose and flipped it again, waiting until the shed door clattered shut behind Sym and Brog as they helped Inali back to his bedroll and the warmth of the hearth.
The interrogation, such as it was, hadn’t taken long. All that bluster and shouting had been more for intimidation than aught else. True, he had been honestly riled at the lad’s deception. It rankled him. In the old days, a runt like Inali would never have managed to slip anything past Hawkness. He must be slipping.
But runt or not, the lad had stuck to his story with a tenacity Amos hadn’t expected.
“Lad’s got guts.” Amos released the dirk, caught it backhanded, and stabbed the rail again. “Hides it well though.” He tipped his head up to look at Gundhrold.
The griffin was perched in the hayloft with his neck craned over the edge, which meant Amos had to look straight up at his murderous sharp beak. Not the most comfortable position to be in, but for a man who had stared upon death itself in the face of an old friend, it made little difference.
“Do you believe he was telling the truth?”
“Aye.” Amos whipped his dirk free. “He was tellin’ the truth.” A man did not simply dream up horrors like those in the Pit unless he had seen them with his own two eyes.
A pause. “Do you trust him?”
That was the question of the hour. “Do I trust anyone?” He chuckled, though it sounded grim even to his own ears. One dark night long ago had taught him all he need ever know about the foolishness of trusting anyone.
He could still hear the screams.
“I don’t doubt that he intends t’ help us enter Serrin Vroi in search o’ this Tal Ethel place, nor that he cares about helpin’ the wee lass. He spoke true about that.”
“Indeed.” The griffin dipped his head, a quick, bird-like movement. “I thought so also. The truth of a man may be seen in his eyes.”
“However …” Amos tossed the dirk up, end over end, slapped it in mid-air with his right hand, and caught it by the tip with his left. He sheathed it and swung down from the rail. “I don’t doubt that young Inali has an agenda all his own too.” He paused in the doorway to straighten his overcoat and flip the collar up to guard his neck. “Best we keep an eye on him.”
18
After three days of back-breaking work, digging was starting to lose its appeal. Ky pushed his shovel into the dirt, careful not to exert too much pressure on the cracked handle, and swiped the sweat from his brow with his e
lbow. His damp jacket clung to his back, and the chill was slowly seeping beneath his skin. He worked from the top of the pile with others below clearing away the earth he dislodged. Another heave, another tug, another twinge of sore muscles, and he dumped another shovelful into the waiting wheelbarrow, topping it off, and Syd—Paddy’s assigned little brother—trundled it away.
Right about now, he’d seriously consider trading his right arm for some of Hawkness’s ryree powder. If anything could make clearing this passage a cinch, it was that. Of course, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t also bring the ceiling down on his head.
“Oi, Ky.” Paddy’s shout offered a welcome distraction from the continuous rhythm of bending and lifting. With a grunt, Ky straightened and turned. The red-head stood below, arms crossed over his chest, something bundled under one elbow. He jerked his chin. “Somethin’ for y’ to see.”
It was the first time they’d spoken in three days . . . might even be the first time they’d seen each other since Ky threw himself into digging and Paddy took charge of the street project. Trailing the shovel behind, Ky skidded down the pile past five runners working at various heights with shovels and pick-axes. Three days of careful digging and shoring up behind had cleared another twenty feet of what seemed to be a continuing passage—progress that was both encouraging and disheartening at the same time.
Twenty feet done.
No telling how many left to go.
But the runners had greeted his half-formed plan with astonishing enthusiasm, throwing themselves completely into the work. In a way, it spoke more of their desperation than anything else. Some dug, others carted dirt back through the cavern to reinforce the seals over the other tunnels, while still others slipped into the city above as singles or pairs and paced out the streets between them and the wall.
All things considered, Ky reckoned it a mighty fine operation.
One Cade could have been proud of masterminding.
At the base of the wall, clear of the line of traffic, Paddy squatted and unfolded a scrap of cloth peppered with a tangled mess of gridlines, squiggles, and all manner of scribbles and mathematical equations, the like of which Ky couldn’t hope to interpret. Fingers splayed, he smoothed the edges with a meticulous care that spoke of pride and accomplishment.
“Runners finished pacin’ out the streets today, and I’ve mapped out this quadrant of the city and the tunnel beneath. It’s not perfect, but it’s accurate enough. I don’t think you’ll like what we found though.”
Was that a touch of satisfaction in his voice?
An unspoken I told you so?
Ky crossed his arms. “Go ahead.”
“Don’t bother yourself with the calculations”—this in an offhand way; Paddy knew well enough that Ky had no head for figures—“but near as I can figure it, your cave-in is still a good hundred yards from the wall, while the watch-fires are located another forty yards out and the patrols cover a goodly distance beyond that.” Paddy rocked back on his heels. “In three days, you’ve cleared what—ten feet?”
“Twenty.”
“Fine, twenty. S’posin’ the tunnel is blocked for a good distance . . . s’posin’ there is no more tunnel and that cave-in is actually the end . . . s’posin’ there is a tunnel and it winds on for miles and miles and doesn’t come up anywhere . . . or comes up in the middle of the bloomin’ Khelari army—”
“I get it,” Ky gritted the words between his teeth. “You’ve made your point.”
“Well what then? This”—Paddy gestured at the diggers—“is useless.”
Ky shoved to his feet and clutched the haft of his shovel, ignoring the sting of raw blisters against rough wood. “No, this is hope. You have any plan, any ideas at all, other than slowly starving and waiting for the dark soldiers to get bored and move on? You know well enough that’s not their way and sitting’s not ours.”
A dry chuckle sounded beside him. “No, Ky, you never were able to sit still for long.”
Ky tightened his grip on the shovel. A heavy feeling settled like lead in the pit of his stomach. He slowly turned around. Cade stood with one forearm propped against the wall, breathing heavily. His face looked thin, almost skeletal, and dark shadows smudged his cheeks and the hollows around his eyes. But his skin was no longer the ghostly white of the soon-to-be dead, and his voice carried the same strength and command it had on the day the Khelari attacked the Underground.
“Cade, you’re up—”
“Don’t sound so shocked. I’m not dead yet.” He coughed into the crook of his arm, but it was a short, dry cough. Nothing like the desperate hacking of three days ago. His eyes flickered over Ky, calculating and judging him lacking. As always. “What of Hawkness? Did you run off and leave him too? Running away seems to be your specialty.”
And Ky had no answer. After everything he had faced, Cade could still silence him with a word, make him feel like he was nothing with a look. He’d been so focused on keeping his promise to Meli that he hadn’t spared a thought for how Cade would welcome his return.
But if anyone had a long memory it was Cade.
Ky should have known it would take more than a few months for Cade to forget what had happened to Dizzier or who was responsible for the Khelari discovering the Underground.
“And what is all this?” Cade turned a circle with his hands spread wide then moved toward the digging, forcing Ky to fall into place behind. “Digging your way out, are you? Like rats in a hole.”
By now, all activity in the tunnel had ceased, and Cade’s voice grew to fill the silence. He always had been good at speech-making and crowd-wielding. The runners hearkened to his words like starving men begging for bread.
“Running isn’t the Underground way. Out on the streets, it may be every man for himself because that’s what we have to do to survive, but not here—not in our stronghold. Here we stand and fight together. Here we are free. We cannot run away and leave our home behind!”
To Ky’s astonishment, a murmur of approval ran through the runners. Some dropped their tools with a clatter. One even cheered outright.
Ky grabbed Cade’s arm. “This isn’t our home anymore. It’s a tomb.”
“Maybe not your home anymore, but we fought hard to keep it, and we won’t abandon it now.” With a careless sweep of his arm, Cade knocked him aside. The blood pounded so hot in his ears it almost drowned out the rest of Cade’s speech. “Put aside your shovels and pick-axes. We have better work to do—work that will fill our food barrels and enable us to stand and fight for what is ours!”
The Underground had little. So much had been taken from them during the rule of the dark soldiers. But they had each other, and they had their pride. And somehow, Cade had managed to summon both to his side.
Ky watched as the runners shouldered their tools, turned away from the digging, and began to stream back toward the cavern. Biting his lip, he clenched his fists around the haft of his shovel, almost welcoming the sting of raw flesh, and marched in the opposite direction.
Toward the cave-in.
Halfway up, he planted the shovel. It looked a bit like a battle flag, wobbling there with its haft cracked above the blade. Arms crossed, he spun to face Cade.
“Staying here is madness.” He hammered every ounce of force into his voice that he could, and it got the runners’ attention. The retreat halted, and one by one, they began to turn. “If starvation doesn’t get us first, the white fever will. Leaving is our only hope. We’re close—I know it, but I need your help.”
No one moved.
Amidst the dense silence, Ky slowly made his way down the pile to stand before Cade and looked up into the older boy’s face. He pitched his voice to reach Cade alone. “Please, you must know this is best.”
The old mask had fallen over Cade’s features, hard as stone and impenetrable as steel. He gave no indication that he’d heard Ky. “We’ll s
ettle this matter as we always have.”
The Ring . . . he means in the Ring.
The thought wasn’t as frightening as it used to be. For half a second, Ky actually wanted to face Cade. He wasn’t the same desperate-to-please runner, struggling to find a place, who had been beaten soundly again and again. It was beyond time to show it and knock Cade down a peg or two. But out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the tremor that seized Cade’s hands. The shallowness of the older boy’s breath struck a nerve. Just the day before, he’d been lying on what could have been his death bed.
It wasn’t right.
Ky turned back to the cave-in. “I don’t want to fight you.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Cade rasped. “The challenge has already been made.”
The hair on his neck rose in anticipation of an attack, but before he could move, a fist slammed into his side, doubling him over just in time for a punch to land below his right eye. He staggered back, head hanging, gasping for breath, but Cade had him by the hair.
Two more blinding, earth-shattering punches landed before he managed to pull himself together enough to draw his fists up to block. He dropped into a crouch and then pushed up with the force of his legs, slamming the fork of one hand up against Cade’s forearm, breaking the grip on his hair and tearing out what felt like a sizeable chunk in the process.
The sting steadied him.
He lashed out with his free hand, landing a blow that glanced off Cade’s ribs. Jarred the bones all the way up his arm too. Cade backed away, stumbling a little, granting Ky a moment to huddle over his knees, fighting to regain his breath.
The unreasoning panic brought on by the suddenness of the attack was wearing off, leaving pain raw and saw-edged in its wake. His mind fell into the rapid-fire pattern of vague thoughts and images unleashed by adrenaline: Runners crowding around. Tunnel walls pressing in. No room to maneuver. Tools—weapons—scattered just beyond reach.
Then his vision narrowed, and he could see nothing but Cade.
Songkeeper Page 18
