Chapter 35 #2
The floor with the private rooms on it was, frankly, boring.
The staircase had one landing and let out into a wide common area with rugs on the floor and a low-burning lantern.
A window notch had been cut into the stone and covered with wooden shutters.
On the far side of the room, a doorway led to a long hall.
All the doors were on the left side, which, if the Dervish’s mental map was correct, meant that they would have windows.
A quick examination of the one carved into the wall showed that even Dog Violet would have been hard-pressed to fit through, never mind an adult human.
The Dervish set off down the hall, wondering how he was going to find the correct door.
He had a nightmarish vision of wandering through bedrooms, checking the heads on the pillows, until he finally located Edmund.
Edmund’s door will be locked, though, and from the outside. That should narrow it down, right?
In fact, it did. The third door down had a bolt on the outside. The Dervish held his breath, slid it back, and slowly opened the door, pausing every time he heard the hinge creak.
He took a single step inside, nearly tripping over a heap of clothing, and froze. In the dim spill of light from the hallway, he saw the curve of a familiar cheek, the dark line of eyelash, and realized that the heap of clothing was actually Edmund, and he was sprawled unconscious on the floor.
“Edmund, are you alive? You better be alive.” Obviously he’s alive, you’d know if your wielder died, but why is he collapsed on the floor?
The Dervish sank to his knees, lifting the other man into a sitting position.
Edmund’s skin was clammy but he did not have the stiff heaviness of a corpse. “Edmund.”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Edmund, say something.”
The scholar’s eyes slowly focused. He stared at the Dervish as if he couldn’t recognize what he was seeing. The Dervish’s heart sank. Concussion? Amnesia? Oh ancestors, what if they hit him on the head a few too many times?
Edmund’s lips moved. “Dervish…?”
“Yes! Yes, it’s me, it’s me.” He slapped the scholar’s cheeks lightly with his fingers. “Come on, Edmund, wake up. I know you’re in there somewhere.”
Edmund closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Am I dying?”
“No. You are not dying. Nobody is dying.”
“That’s nice.” His eyes started to roll back in his head again.
“Stop, stop.” The Dervish pulled out the waterskin and dumped some over Edmund’s face. Some of it probably got in his mouth as well, although it was hard to tell. Edmund groaned and focused again.
“Dervish?”
“That’s right, it’s me. Come on. We need to get out of here.” The Dervish jammed his shoulder into Edmund’s armpit and got him halfway to his feet. “Talk to me. What have they done to you?”
“Drugged … poppy…”
“Bastards.”
“Should never … have taught you … that word…”
The Dervish laughed with relief. Edmund was still in there somewhere. “Come on. We have to get moving.”
They lurched down the hall together like drunks. Edmund got the idea and tried to help, but he was unsteady on his feet. He seemed to have grasped the idea of secrecy, though, and kept his voice to a whisper.
The stairs down were brutal. Edmund’s weight pitched against the Dervish at every step and nearly sent them both tumbling.
The Dervish gritted his teeth and endured.
By the time they reached the bottom, he was dripping with sweat and his right shoulder felt as if someone had knotted the muscles into a rope and jammed nails into it.
There was no one in the hall. The Dervish looked both ways, grabbed Edmund from where he sagged against the doorframe, and began hauling him toward the door at the far end that, if Anthony had told the truth, contained stairs going to the top of the cliff.
Part of him said that this was too easy. The rest of him asked what, exactly, had been easy about the dog and the stairs and carrying Edmund? Human guards would have been easier. He could have killed those without straining his back.
The staircase was exactly where Anthony said it was. It was, if anything, taller than he’d described. The Dervish looked up at switchback after switchback of rough-hewn steps. Edmund made a snuffling sound against his neck that might have been a snore.
“Wake up. We’ve got to go up.”
Edmund groaned softly. “Up?”
“That’s right. Foot on the first step, come on. Good, good. Now the next one…”
A subjective eternity later, they reached the first landing.
The Dervish leaned against the wall, still holding Edmund up, because if either of them sat down, he was pretty sure they’d never get up again.
Edmund seemed marginally more alert, possibly because the exertion was forcing the poppy out of his system, but his balance was still shaky.
The scholar tilted his head back and looked up. “Where are we?”
“Staircase out of here.”
“Oh. That’s good.” Edmund considered this. “Wait … you weren’t here before.”
“Came to rescue you.”
“Oh.”
“Ready for the next set of stairs?”
“Do we have to?”
“Afraid so.”