CHAPTER TWENTY
"Can we trust her?" Alaric asks, as we both stand in the living room of what was once a merchant's house. Cesca is there, looking relieved to be away from the colosseum, while Thalia shows her around the place.
“I can’t feel any signs of deception in her,” I say. Cesca’s fear seems real, and my powers don’t catch any hints of other things that suggest she might be preparing to betray us.
“But you still brought her to this safehouse, rather than the main one,” Alaric points out.
I nod. If I’m wrong, and Cesca decides to turn on the resistance, I don’t want her to be able to give away the location of our main safehouse. It’s better if she stays here, at least for now.
“I’m just being cautious,” I say. “But given what she’s told me, we can’t afford to just ignore her.”
Alaric looks worried, but he nods. “I want to hear her tell us all of it again.”
We go to her. Thalia is sticking close by, and I don't know if that's for support or as a guard.
“Tell me about Selene’s plans again,” Alaric says.
Cesca shrugs. “There isn’t much to tell. She wants to free Domitian from his imprisonment.”
“But why?” Thalia asks. “Selene’s setting herself to be empress. Why would she free a man who wanted to make himself the emperor?”
I can think of several reasons. “Maybe Selene wants to show she’s loyal to her supporters,” I say. “Or maybe she thinks that Domitian will fall into line and serve her if she frees him. He could be a powerful ally for her.”
“And a martyr for her cause if he dies in the escape attempt,” Alaric adds. “Either way, she strengthens her position. I’m more interested in the details of her plan. How much did you learn before you backed out, Cesca?”
“Some of it,” Cesca admits. “I’ll tell you as much as I remember.”
We go to sit at a roughly crafted wooden table. Thalia takes out a sheaf of parchment, getting ready to take notes with a stick of charcoal.
“Do you know the location of the prison?” I say.
Cesca nods. “A little way from the palace, deep underground. There are connections to it through the dungeons beneath the prison tower, but there are other routes, through the catacombs. One of Selene’s people found a route into that section. We all had to memorize the map.”
She takes the charcoal from Thalia, starting to sketch it out.
“There are traps along the way, magical alarms to let the guards know if someone’s coming.
” Cesca starts to mark them on the map, along with as many details as she remembers of how they work.
“Some need patterns of light to disarm, while others can be circumvented by overwhelming them with particular magical energies.”
“Meaning we either need to bring people with us with every magical skill we’ll need or find some way to store bursts of power,” Alaric says.
“That can be arranged,” Thalia assures him. “The same way stones can store the magic to produce light, they can be constructed with flickers of other powers.”
“We were told that when we got in, there would be guards,” Cesca says. “We were going to avoid as many as we could, then kill any we couldn’t avoid.”
She says that in a flat tone, but the prospect of all that death horrifies me. Selene is preparing for a slaughter below the city’s streets, all so she can free a man who can give her still greater support than she already has.
Cesca is still making marks on the map, noting everything she remembers about the guards and their movements.
“That’s it,” she says. “That’s all I remember. The original plans were for two nights from now, but I don’t know if that’s still going to be the case.”
I can feel the worry in her as she says that. I realize Cesca fears we’ll betray her now, using her the way so many people have used her in the past, the way she would probably have betrayed anyone in her position. She’s given us everything she knows, so she assumes we’ll cast her aside.
“Thank you, Cesca,” I say. “You can stay here as long as you need. You don’t have to get involved in the resistance’s work, but if you choose to, let Thalia know. She’ll come to check on you regularly.”
Cesca looks confused, but relieved, that we aren’t going to throw her out of the safehouse now, or just kill her.
Alaric and I leave, hurrying through the streets and then heading back to the main safehouse.
We have Cesca’s map with us, and as soon as we get to the inn, Alaric is heading down into the catacombs.
“I want to check everything she told us,” Alaric says. “I need to know how accurate these maps are.”
“I can do that,” I say. “At least, if I can get close enough.”
Alaric nods, and we start to move through the depths of the city.
“I don’t like this idea of a secret prison,” Alaric says. “It isn’t the kind of thing the city should have kept after the fall of the empire.”
“It’s kept plenty of things it shouldn’t,” I point out. “The games, for one thing.”
“But this… Rowan could have gotten rid of it. He could have shut it all down. Instead, he chose to put Domitian in this place.”
I must admit it’s troubling. This was a place the emperor used to use for the torture and punishment of his enemies, so I can’t imagine why Rowan would want it. Except that maybe, just maybe, it’s the only place that can contain some people.
“Are we heading the right way?” I ask.
Alaric nods. He’s lighting the way with an illusory glow, letting us see at least a little way ahead as we take turning after turning through the catacombs.
“We’ll get to the fringes of it soon enough. The question is what we do when we get there.”
“We can’t do anything today,” I say. “We’re just gathering information, and in any case, Selene’s people won’t attack the prison until tomorrow.”
“But then what do we do about it?” Alaric asks. “We can’t just send a message to Rowan about this.”
“You think he wouldn’t act to stop Selene?”
"I think he wouldn't be able to," Alaric corrects me. "You heard him when he came to see us. Selene has almost complete control over the Senate. She has guards on her side, and plenty of others through the city and beyond."
“With something like this, the senate might move against her,” I say. “Any who aren’t controlled outright will be horrified by the idea of her trying to break Domitian out of prison.”
At least, I hope they will. There are still those on the Senate and in the nobility who were happy to support Domitian during his brief uprising. Perhaps there are those who'll welcome him.
"Even if some would, they'll require proof," Alaric says. "Cesca's word won't be good enough for them. I barely believe her as it is. Our only hope is to catch Selene's people in the act, to stop them and then throw them down in front of the Senate to denounce her."
I realize what Alaric is suggesting.
“You’re saying we need to break in there to be able to stop them.”
Alaric nods. “It’s the only thing I can think of that might work.”
It's a dangerous plan, one that could put us both in grave danger.
The guards won't hesitate to attack anyone they see breaking in.
We get closer and closer, until finally I'm in a position where I can reach out with my powers, looking through the eyes of rats and beetles, the spiders hanging in the corners, and the sharp-toothed hounds that patrol with the guards.
Some of what I see is cruel, even brutal.
There’s a torture chamber there, set with implements designed to inflict pain in every conceivable way.
There are people weeping in despair in cells.
The stink of too many people crammed into too small a space fills the air.
This is clearly isn’t a place just reserved for one or two special prisoners now.
I make careful notes, forcing myself to think in clinical terms about the timings of guard patrols, the placement of magical runes and sigils.
I draw those where I can, giving Alaric as much information as possible to add to the map Cesca drew.
I hear people crying out in pain, and I see a guard beating a hooded prisoner.
My guess is that the Republic has kept the same guards who worked here under the emperor, and they’re going about their jobs the same brutal ways.
Finally, I think we have enough information, so the two of us slip back to the resistance’s safehouse in the inn. I head with Alaric to his room there, letting him wrap his arms around me as I try to forget about some of the things I’ve seen.
“Are you sure you want to break into the prison?” I ask. “If we fail...”
“If we fail, at the very least we could be captured by the senate’s forces, maybe even by guards who own Selene as much loyalty as them,” Alaric says. “We could be killed outright. But I think we need to do this. And… I think it needs to just be us.”
I frown as Alaric says that. I was expecting some large group of resistance fighters with us, some overwhelming raid of the kind they’ve tried before. I was at least expecting the dozen or so fighters we took to the Salis estate.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because if we take more, it will be too obvious. We need to go in unseen. You and I can do that, and together, we can handle one or two guards at a time. But if we take more, it will turn into a fight against every guard there. We’d lose people.”
And Alaric wants to protect the members of the resistance. I can understand that need, and I hope that together, we’ll be enough to stop what Selene has planned. Can we really do this? Can the two of us break into the city’s secret prison and stop Selene’s team before they can get to Domitian?
I hope so, and as I lie there in Alaric's arms, I can almost believe we can do anything together.