Chapter 38 #2
I didn’t realise we’d passed the first bend until Durlain held Smudge back to ride beside me. His accent was his own again as he muttered, ‘That went reasonably well.’
‘Quite,’ I said faintly, and then, although we should be discussing next steps and strategy, ‘Even I didn’t know you could be that much of a bastard.’
He grimaced. ‘Oh, yes. Aunt Gon raised me well.’
I blinked at him, a little owlishly.
‘Not to her own servants,’ he quickly added, seeing the question on my face. ‘But you should have heard her argue with my father’s advisors. The word kindly would have haunted your nightmares for weeks.’
Something reasonably close to a laugh escaped me.
He gave me something reasonably close to a smile in return. It didn’t erase the lines of tension around his eyes, visible even with the magic distorting his almost-familiar features; his gloved hands were tight around the reins.
‘Horses,’ I said, to reassure myself as much as him – because we had a plan, and at least I could cling to that, riding into the lair of a cruel, witch-hunting king. ‘Then dungeons, bluffing our way through another gate, finding Cimmura, running for our lives. Yes?’
Another stilted smile. ‘Yes.’
I slowed down to take my place behind him again, since we were nearing the end of the tunnel and there was little more to be said.
Durlain delivered our horses to the stables as a timid, rather gawky young man by the name of Lanval Garnot, which would hopefully keep the guard corps from linking Lord Thevenin to Pain and Smudge once word of the intruders spread.
Then we were inside the Garnot palace – me, a runewitch on the run, inside the Garnot palace – and no one was killing us.
The urge to laugh lingered, mixing in nauseating ways with the urge to crawl into a shadowy corner and count my knives until the end of days.
There were a lot of shadowy corners here, far more than in Mount Estien, which had gardens and expansive halls and large, open windows.
The heart of the Garnot kingdom, on the other hand, had been half-carved from the mountainside and half-built on top of it with the same dark rock, so that the place felt more like a particularly opulent badger’s burrow than like the home of a king.
Even the mirrors and the wine-red lichen cultivated for oxygen on the walls couldn’t lift the oppressive weight of all that bloody stone …
and of course the temperature didn’t help, the sweaty, sweltering heat that was eerily similar to the air in the halls of Estien.
Keeping the ice away.
And at the same time, lending almost limitless power to every fireborn mage in the place – and to their king most of all.
Surrounded by horned, purple-haired nobles, that thought was enough to make me almost, almost reach for my knives.
But I was just another guard following her lord through the castle, which meant I had no reason to draw a weapon except for that persistent, snaking doubt that followed me wherever I went, whispering that my knives might no longer be there at all.
Eyes on me, Durlain had said. So I kept my gaze on the back of his dark head, almost unblinkingly, as I fought the cramped compulsion tugging at my fingers. Not here, not yet, not now.
Even if I had been paying more attention to my surroundings, I would have lost track within minutes.
The Garnot palace, curled around its mountain on three sides, was more labyrinthine than even the slums of Maresse; everything went up and down, straight lines did not appear to exist, and the longer we walked, the more I began to suspect that Durlain was just confidently walking in roughly the right direction.
Yet another stuffy gallery. Yet another dimly lit parlour.
The only upside was that the corridors grew quieter as we walked; I was gathering courage to make use of that little advantage and start asking questions when the dark walls abruptly receded and revealed a corridor unlike any I’d seen so far.
The light was so suddenly bright I missed a step.
No cave-like halls here, no smothering tapestries and stifling heat.
A long stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows unfolded before me, offering a perfect view of the roiling fumes outside – a churning, oily grey interspersed with streaks of amber, fingering the glass like a living thing.
There was no one else to be seen, and I couldn’t blame the members of the court for staying far away; it was unnerving, staring into the face of that all-encompassing poison, knowing that nothing but a layer of molten sand separated me from certain, blood-gurgling death.
‘There we are,’ Durlain said under his breath, sending a swift glance back and forth across the corridor. He didn’t slow down. ‘Brace yourself for the greatest attraction of Lesceron’s court.’
‘What—’ I started, inching closer to the windows … and then I saw.
We had to be standing on the southern side of the mountain.
To my left, in the east, I could just make out the flat horizon of the sea through the smoke; on that same east flank, the lava would still be flowing.
But beneath the rows of man-high windows lay no molten rock, not even a flat obsidian plain as I’d expected.
Instead, there was a vast circular formation so out of place I had to blink a few times to understand what we were looking at …
A theatre.
A colossal round theatre, carved from the foot of the mountain, its tiered rows descending in perfect concentric circles to the heart of the structure.
Once there might have been a stage down there.
A fighting pit, perhaps. But the bottom half of the arena was filled with dark seawater now, like a grotesque version of the pools that would stay behind on beaches at low tide, and beneath that blue-black surface …
Long grey shapes.
Fins. Triangular fins.
My breath caught. ‘Is he keeping …'
‘Sharks.’ Durlain’s jaw was knife-edge tight. ‘A little spectacle for the court to witness whenever he needs to rid himself of troublesome prisoners. They call it the Maw, I’ve been told.’
These high windows, offering a perfect vantage point without ever touching the smoke … I took an unthinking step back, as if the tempered glass itself might be stained with blood and desperate screams, and said, ‘Fuck.’
He didn’t respond.
I had to avert my eyes. The menacing circling of those three grey shadows beneath the rippling surface was tying my guts into knots. ‘Why are we here, Dur?’
‘It’s the only route I have memorised in this hell-cursed place.
’ His voice was as level as the mirror-smooth glass.
‘Between the main gate and this corridor. Lesceron brought me to this spot after he had Muri dragged off – just a little warning before he had me escorted off the premises, I suppose.’
I stared at him.
His eyes shot from the Maw to the smoke, to the other side of the corridor and back to the Maw – to everything but me, really, and I doubted that was a matter of coincidence.
Because I should have been cursing Lesceron, I should have been pondering important strategical matters and the full extent of the danger I’d walked right into …
but the only screeching thought circling my mind was, he would have left her here.
Circling sharks, choking fumes, and yet Durlain would have risked leaving his little sister in this hellhole – for me.
Judging by his expression, he was not in the mood to discuss the finer nuances of that choice. I cleared my throat, hoping I sounded sympathetic yet pragmatic, and warily said, ‘You told me you’d be able to find your way to the dungeons?’
‘Oh, I am.’ He jerked straight back into focus, all haunted, high-strung darkness. ‘See that little door outside, down there by the base of the mountain? That’s where they drag their prisoners into the theatre, Lesceron kindly informed me.’
Through the thick fog, it took me a moment to find what he was pointing at – a narrow ledge protruding a few yards into the water.
It ended at a low door nestled in the mountain slope, the wood yellowed and eroded by the constant assault of the poisonous air; I could easily imagine the Garnot guards shoving their victims out, then slamming the gate shut again, leaving the poor sods to the mercy of smoke and predators.
‘Which means the dungeons have to be close to that door,’ I said, narrowing my eyes.
‘Exactly.’ A taut twitch of a smile on his stranger’s face – for whose benefit, I wasn’t sure. ‘Shall we walk on?’
I followed.
There was a flight of stairs at the end of the panorama gallery, leading down to another row of windows, and yet another one below – room enough for all of the court to witness Lesceron’s executions if they so wished.
I wondered how often those took place and how many people bothered to come take a look.
The corridors seemed markedly unpopular right now.
We only came across a single servant boy on our way down, who stood scrubbing the windows with the hollow look of a child raised not to think beyond survival.
I had to press my nails into my palms to walk on without pausing or looking.
The dungeons proved almost laughably easy to find, in the end.
Just as we reached the bottom of the stairwell, three armed men came marching past with a fourth in chains, bellowing at him to keep up despite the cuffs around his ankles; two turns later, we heard the three of them exchange orders with another group, followed by the creak of a door opening, then the heavy slam of it falling shut.
Durlain was rigid as a statue beside me. I put my hand on his arm without thinking, and a jolt went through him at the contact – the prince of many faces, tight enough to shatter.
Hell, what had I been thinking yesterday?
Of course he’d been tense about my promise not to use magic in this place; he was rightfully tense about everything.
To see that as a sign of lies or secrets …
What else had I expected him to do? Calmly make plans while he imagined his sister dangling over a pool full of hungry sharks?
‘Ready?’ I mumbled.
‘Yes.’ He sucked in a slow breath, then added, as if he’d read my thoughts, ‘Don’t—’
‘—use runes,’ I finished, remembering just in time that it might be a little callous to roll my eyes. ‘I won’t. Don’t get us killed.’
He didn’t bother with a reply.
Between one eyeblink and the next, the agitation was gone – no more strained shoulders, no more jittery fingers, his rune-masked face showing about as much emotion as the black stone walls surrounding us.
He fell into an impatient stride without waiting.
Carried himself around the corner with seven generations of royal Garnot pride and a bad mood to boot, forcing me to hurry after him.
By the time I arrived in a dark, vaulted hallway with a barred prison gate on the far side, the scuttle of guards posted there had already snapped to attention.
‘My lord?’ the only fireborn one among them enquired loudly – high-ranked, I realised with a sinking feeling, if his refined features and the elaborate embossment on his armour were any indication. Not as easy to bluff. ‘Anything we can help you with?’
‘I’ve been sent to extract the smuggler girl from Estarel,’ Durlain informed them, with just the right note of frustration to clarify that he considered the task far beneath his own dignity and would be all too happy to take out his bruised pride on anyone unwise enough to get in his way. ‘If you would be so kind?’
The fireborn guard wasn’t so kind, even though two or three of the men behind him had already started shifting under the force of that demand. ‘Your permit, my lord?’
Durlain glared at him. ‘Beg your pardon?’
‘Your permit.’ A small pause, as if to offer Durlain time to pull the document in question from a pocket. ‘I’m very sorry, my lord, but I can’t let prisoners be moved without written permission. Orders from the king.’
‘I’m hardly moving her,’ Durlain said testily. ‘My aunt simply wants a word with—’
The guard leaned forward a few inches, armour clanking faintly. ‘Your aunt?’
‘Lady Thionne, yes.’ It was clear from the indignant tone that he considered the man’s failure to recognise him a grave insult, and the guard’s small wince didn’t escape me.
Durlain pressed on without a pause. ‘The girl was captured on the Estarel lands, for flame’s sake.
Surely the lady is allowed to see her own criminals whenever she damn well pleases? ’
Judging by the other helmed faces around the hall, that was considered to be a pretty solid argument.
The tall guard didn’t budge, though, as he folded his hands behind his back and smiled a smile of pleasant resolve. ‘I expect the king will agree with Lady Thionne, my lord. I will be overjoyed to assist once you have the necessary documents for me.’
It held an edge of finality.
Fuck.
‘If you think I’ll wait three days for a single bloody stamp—’ Durlain snapped, and the other man held up a steel-plated hand without waiting for the end of that sentence.
‘Bendik?’
A freckled man behind him looked like he’d been hit by the abruptest bout of constipation in the history of mankind. ‘Commander?’
‘Accompany his lordship to the chamberlain’s office, will you? You can pass on my orders that he is to be assisted promptly.’ A performative smile at Durlain. ‘I expect we’ll be able to help you within the hour, my lord.’
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
As if failing wasn’t bad enough, we had to fail with a guard on our trail?
I expected Durlain to press or object, but he stepped back without further argument, glaring at the unlucky Bendik like one might at a poorly cleaned chamber pot. ‘I see. Thank you very much, Commander.’
He snapped around and stalked off without waiting for a reply.
Bendik trailed awkwardly after him, although he was not awkward enough to notice my presence and suggest I go first. I joined the little procession last, and that was how we made our way out of the hallway: Durlain, an unsuspecting Garnot guard, and me, on our way to imminent failure.