Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) Page 18

  She glanced over her shoulder and put a hand on its knob. It didn’t budge. Locked.

  “Sky and stars,” she muttered.

  Loren kneeled to look at the lock—a massive thing, made from well-wrought iron that bore no trace of rust. That was odd—the thing should have been rusted through from all the air’s moisture. Loren felt a prickling along the back of her neck. Could it be some form of enchantment? Some firemage’s spell to keep water from metal?

  That was neither here nor there. Loren claimed no expertise with locks, but Bracken had taught her something about them. In his tales, Mennet wore a belt of tools: small, intricate spikes and twisted prongs that could best any lock.

  A lock consisted of tumblers, small metal levers that one had to push in the proper order to open. Bracken had once carried a big padlock in his pack and had let Loren toy around with it, using the end of his twisted knife. She had opened it once or twice but only after much prodding and a great deal of Bracken’s time. And that lock had been a much larger, cruder affair than the one before her now.

  Still, she did not appear to have much choice. “Let us see what I remember.”

  Loren drew the knife from her boot. It had a broader blade than Bracken’s and did not twist. Mayhap she could fix that. She thrust the tip of it into the lock and pulled it to the side. The metal bent obligingly—almost too well, and Loren eased off for fear of it snapping.

  She inserted her new poker into the lock, shoving a bit to force its fit, and felt around for the tumblers. The dagger skritched against the iron, and Loren grew suddenly aware of the silence. Only trickling water sounded in the hallway behind her. She glanced over her shoulder but could see only the blinking torchlights stretching down the tunnel.

  Loren turned back to the lock and probed until she felt something give. A small piece of metal, hardly anything at all—but it had to be a tumbler. She sighed and probed for another. Her knife scraped back and forth, seeking them out.

  Perhaps she had probed too far. Loren withdrew the knife slightly, almost to the entrance. She heard another snik and felt something give. She nearly cried out in triumph.

  SkreeeEEE!

  Loren looked up just in time to see the ceiling falling upon her. She barely dropped to the ground and covered her head before something snatched at her brown cloak and yanked Loren onto her side.

  THOOM!

  The sound was deafening. But nothing slammed into her back. No rocks or boulders crushed her where she lay.

  Loren opened her eyes and raised her head. A large, spiked iron grate had swung down from the ceiling to skewer the door with its prongs. Had Loren remained on her knees or, worse, stayed standing, she would now be impaled on a dozen jutting protrusions.

  The bottom spikes had snatched at her hood as the thing fell, and were now embedded in the wood. She tried tugging it free, but it would not move from the door. Growling in disgust, she loosened the ties at her throat and freed herself from the cloak.

  Now the grate stood between her and the door. Through its holes, Loren could still reach the lock, and the door opened inward. If she could get the thing open, mayhap she could lift the trap enough to slide beneath it. She bent to the task, again sliding the tip of her hunting knife into the lock. But now the gate blocked her way, the grid making each movement awkward, blocking her arms as she sought to twist and turn them in her hunt for the tumblers. Loren gave another frustrated growl.

  She must move the gate. Mayhap she could prop it up with something. She looked around but saw nothing. Very well, she would push it back to the ceiling. If it stuck, she would carefully continue her picking. Loren now knew what to expect—if she tripped it again, she could always get out of the way.

  Loren wrapped her hands around the bottom of the grid and pulled upward.

  SKREEEeeee!

  She dropped it like white-hot metal. They would hear her across the nine lands, and the thing weighed so much that Loren doubted she could reach the ceiling with it. Frustrated, she knelt again and went for the lock with her knife.

  “Loren!” A hand came down on her shoulder, pulling her back.

  Loren screamed and whirled, slashing wildly with the knife. Gem cried out and tumbled backward, crashing hard into the stone floor.

  “Gem!” What under the sky? I nearly killed you.”

  “You couldn’t have cut me if you tried,” said Gem, his nose in the air even as he found his feet. “I came back to warn you—they’re on their way. You must go.”

  “I have not got in.”

  Gem glanced at the door. “In or not, they will be upon us in a moment. We must flee now before our chance is gone.”

  Loren gave the door another look. “If I could only . . . it is in there, Gem! Do you know nothing of locks?”

  He tugged at her hand. “I told you, only the older boys learned that. We must go. I think one of them has gone for Auntie. Come. Now!”

  Loren growled and followed Gem, running again into the sewer’s gloom.

  twenty-nine

  They found their way back to Markus’s shop just before sundown. The cobbler’s granddaughter let them in the back door without a word to a pair of straw pallets waiting in the cellar. The blankets were threadbare, and Loren saw no pillows, but still the pallets seemed like a slice of heaven. She realized with shock that she had not slept in more than a day—since the last morning she woke with Damaris’s caravan on the road to Cabrus.

  Without a word, she and Gem collapsed on the pallets. Sleep claimed her before she smelled the straw.

  Terror made a poor aid for sleep. Loren dreamt of fleeing through the streets of Cabrus while Gregor and Bern chased her on horseback and Damaris leapt across rooftops. The merchant fired at her with bow and arrow, sending darts ricocheting against every wall, rebounding from the cobblestones, always an inch or two from the mark. Gregor and Bern swung their swords just above or beside her head, and Loren felt them toying with her, like cats after a mouse.

  She fell to her knees, lungs burning and heart threatening to burst through her chest. Take me, then, she cried inside. Have done with it.

  They smiled, but did not advance. Instead, Auntie emerged from the shadows, fingers wrapping the hilts of her strange knives. A smile frosted her lips as she stepped forward, and her eyes glowed as she changed to the woman in the pink dress. Then to Annis, and then to Loren’s mother, her father.

  He leapt forward, knives swooping down to plunge into her chest.

  Loren started awake on the pallet, her heart refusing to still.

  Gem snored across the room like a beast. Pale light filtered in through a narrow crack in the wall. From its color and angle, she guessed that not an hour had passed since dawn. Down the stairs from the house above drifted the slow, lazy scent of bacon. She heard the clunk of silverware on wooden bowls.

  She thought of nudging Gem awake to come with her, but the boy’s face looked so placid, his mouth open and air roaring as he sucked it in through his nose. Loren could not bear to wake him, so she climbed the stairs alone.

  Markus’s eyes snapped toward Loren as she emerged from the stairway. “Good morn,” he said.

  She waited for him to ask after her success, but the cobbler said nothing, merely returning his eyes to his meal.

  She rubbed her stomach, which gurgled sudden and loud. Like a wraith from the mist, Markus’s granddaughter appeared at her side. She held a small wooden plate with two thick and juicy strips of bacon.

  “I would not impose,” said Loren, flustered.

  The girl only smiled and pressed the plate forward.

  “Thank you,” said Loren, taking the plate. “I fear my manners have been lax. What is your name?”

  “Enough of that. Tend to your chores,” said Markus. The girl vanished as quickly as she had appeared. Markus fixed Loren with a hard eye. “You’ll forgive me of course, but I keep from my grandchildren the names of those what often pass through here. I have no knowledge of what you have or have not done, and in thi
s it is best. If you come back through here with Xain, then you can meet her. Most come through once and never again.”

  “Of course,” said Loren in a small voice. She almost took the stool opposite Markus, but thought better of it. Instead, she turned and headed for the corner.

  “Oh, do not be ridiculous,” said Markus gruffly. “Sit. You are no animal, either.”

  “Thank you.” She sat and picked up the first piece of bacon. It tasted so good, Loren thought she might faint.

  “Have not you been eating?” said Markus.

  “Not often, or well, no.”

  “It shows.”

  Markus finished first, standing and vanishing through his workshop door. Once she had eaten, Loren returned to the cellar for Gem.

  The boy woke reluctantly, and only after many tries. Each time Loren woke him, he shot up, swearing he was awake. Then he would lapse back under the blanket and slip from consciousness again. Finally, Loren dragged him up and onto his feet. Fortunately, the boy weighed no more than a bundle of sticks.

  “Errm, what? I am awake.”

  “You look it,” said Loren. “Now come.”

  “Why? The door is locked, and we have no chance of opening it. Why not just leave? We stayed, we fought, and from what my eyes have seen, we lost.”

  Loren glowered. He tried to meet her gaze defiantly but in the end only looked at his feet. They went upstairs, where Markus’s granddaughter appeared again with a plate for Gem.

  Her mind raced as he ate. The problem, she thought, is that he might be right. She hadn’t the first clue how they might find their way into Auntie’s hidey hole, and thus no idea how to retrieve her dagger. Yet neither was she willing to slink through the city’s gates with her tail between her legs.

  “Tell me,” she asked Gem. “You said the older boys, when they labor the hard jobs, learn to work locks. They must use tools.”

  “Of course,” said Gem, looking as though Loren had named the sky blue.

  “Where do they get them? Mayhap we can fetch some of our own.”

  Gem emphatically shook his head. “No good. I would not know where to get them. Even if I did, those merchants sit in Auntie’s pocket and would send her word before we left the shop.”

  “We could steal them.”

  Gem eyed Loren with scorn. “Did you not hear me? I know not where to look. Besides, the boys have no doubt told Auntie about last night’s escapade. Guards will line the sewer for miles. You will not reach the door again.”

  Loren felt helpless. She had not seen a boy in Auntie’s employ shorter than herself, and all strongly muscled besides. She would have wagered herself better in wrestling or boxing, and thought she might take one in a fight. But they would not come one at a time. And Auntie owned many.

  Why should the weremage wish to plague her so? She had to know what it was to be alone in the world, seeking a place for oneself. Auntie had found hers, caretaker of an army of children who would obey her without question. Why did she hate Loren with such fury?

  She thought further, and a chilling notion struck her. “Gem,” she said carefully. “Why does Auntie have only boys?”

  Gem stopped chewing. He did not answer.

  “Her fighters,” said Loren. “The children are both boys and girls. But the older ones, the children who fight and rob for her. They are all of them boys.”

  Gem pushed his plate away. “The girls leave.”

  “Leave where?”

  “I don’t know.” He picked at his fingernails. “Once they reach a certain age, they just . . . leave. Somewhere else.”

  “You never asked where?”

  He cleared his throat and gnawed at his nails. “I knew one of them once, a girl named Tam. We were friends, or so I thought. But one day she was no longer there. I asked Auntie about her. She said that Tam had gone but would not tell me where. After I asked too many times, Auntie got mad and asked me how would I like to join her, where no one would ever see either of us again. I said no, and she let it go. I asked no more after that.”

  Loren swallowed hard. “Do you think she—”

  “I do not think about it at all, nor will I.”

  They sat in silence until there came the steady plink, plink, plink of a cobbler’s hammer from the workshop.

  A thought struck Loren like a thunderclap. She raised her head, hands tensed on the table.

  Gem must have seen it in her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Jordel.”

  “The big man in the red cloak? What about him?”

  “Jordel said he would help us.”

  Gem pursed his lips. “He said something like that, yes, but I see this as far from his meaning.”

  “He can help.”

  “How?” said Gem, spreading his hands. “Will he storm the sewers alongside us, swinging a mighty sword? I do not see him as the type to cut down young men who have cast him no harm, and I would not wish to see him again if he were.”

  “He . . . knows things. There is wisdom in him, and something else I do not understand. But you can hear it when he speaks, see it in the way he carries himself.”

  “You sound like some sunstruck priest raving about gods.”

  Loren frowned. “I suppose you have a better notion?”

  “Yes. As I have said before, and often. Leave. Flee Cabrus, and never return.”

  “No.” Loren shook her head. “We must try this, at least, else I cannot live with myself. Come. We shall find him at the—”

  Loren froze, her throat constricting. The Wyrmwing Inn, Jordel had said. Damaris, too, stayed at the Wyrmwing, and Loren knew she would not yet have left. Not without her daughter.

  “What?” said Gem.

  “Nothing. Only, we must wait for him to come to us. But finish quickly. The sooner we are off, the sooner our task will be done and we can leave this place behind.”

  They dressed as lepers again. Loren had grown to hate the rags, smearing shoe polish along her skin, smelling strong enough to water her eyes. She would have given much for clean rags, but such as that lepers could not afford.

  It grew worse in the bright light of day. Summer steadily advanced, and the city streets stank. Shoe polish baked on their skin, and Loren thought she might faint from the heat cooking the reek upon her body.

  She told Gem to follow back alleys and side streets. She dared not risk the sewer again, and the roofs seemed too exposed. So he took her on the widest, most winding route he knew. Sometimes, they snuck into building basements that held passages to other underground rooms before emerging back upon the street. Loren could not imagine how Gem had learned of all these places, but then she thought of the Birchwood. To her mind came every hidden hollow, every secluded copse, all the secret ways and paths she knew through the woods that had been her home for so long. It must be the same with Gem and his city.

  They soon left the maker’s district for the wealthier section of Cabrus. Crowds thinned, and Gem struggled more to keep them from wary eyes. Constables here would not take kindly to lepers wandering among the city folk. The wealthy had no taste for beggars or diseased.

  After they ducked down yet another dark alley to avoid a pair of women in red leather armor, Gem growled his frustration and kicked a broken bucket. “One cannot take two steps without bumping into the King’s law. What I would give to have rooftops again.”

  Loren considered it. Auntie could hardly expect them to enter this part of the city, where constables were plenty amid Damaris’s men. Mayhap she would post fewer guards, or none at all. In any case, it seemed less risky than the army of constables plaguing the street. Gem spoke truly; their trip suffered immeasurable delay.

  “Let us take them, then,” said Loren. “And if fortune strikes us down, at least it will be swift.”

  Gem’s face lit up. Together, they shucked their leper’s rags. A low-hanging roof drooped above an obliging rain barrel, and within minutes they had gained the shingles. Loren drew a deep breath, free at last from the choking polish.
A whiff still lingered and likely would for a while, but Loren felt as though she drank her first breath of clean air in years.

  “Come,” said Gem. “I will have us there in minutes.”

  He darted along the rooftop, laughing in the morning air. Loren grinned as she chased him, and for a time they made it a game. Loren overtook him and then stopped to let him pass her. She would allow Gem to cross a few roofs, and then work hard at catching him again.

  It ended too soon, as Gem had said. He pulled her to a stop at the edge of a roof three stories high. They sidled to the lip, Loren peering cautiously down. She did not fear heights—a forester’s daughter spent too long in trees for that—but in the woods she had branches to grasp and soften her fall. Here she saw only air between herself and the ground.

  “There is the Wyrmwing.” Gem pointed to a three-story structure, its walls purest, unmarred white, its roof painted green. Every inch boasted wealth and luxury. Colorful banners draped its length, and its twin front doors hung wide, allowing air to flow freely within. Outside those doors stood two guards, both in light shirts of mail and armed with long blades.

  “The finest inn in Cabrus,” said Gem. “Or at least, no other will make the claim for fear of retribution from the Wyrmwing’s owner. Darius is a hard man and does not take kindly to the less fortunate sullying his business.”

  “A fine place indeed. And now, we wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For Jordel, of course.”

  The roof’s edge offered no comfort, for the shingles grew hot beneath them. So they moved to another roof in the shadow of a taller building. There they sat, keeping one eye upon the Wyrmwing’s front doors, and allowed the time to crawl.

  As hours wore on, Loren grew increasingly fearful of discovery. Mayhap Auntie would not send her children here, but then again she might. Even if she sent a patrol to sweep the area once, they could not miss Loren and Gem sitting in plain sight. Her hope for Jordel’s aid grew slimmer. Why should the man help them? Loren and Gem were nothing to him. At best, she served as a means to find Xain.