Chapter 31 #2
“Well, it can’t be helped right now,” Verrin said, sounding impatient. “We have limited time. We’ll clear this up once we’re done.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you fix this.”
Verrin sighed. “Very well. What’s his name? I’ll have a guard bring him to meet us.”
“He’ll answer to Ravel,” I said. That was Darion’s alias.
Verrin opened the door and whispered something to one of the guards, then shut it again. “It’s done. Do you need help with your shackles?”
“I’ve got it,” I said. I triggered the secret unlocking mechanism, and the chains dropped to the ground.
“Good. Take that off,” he said, pointing to my prison garb.
“That was a close call back there,” I said. “We were five seconds away from a fight.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” Verrin said. “You’re lucky I made it at all. The schedules are all mixed up tonight. Something is happening within the prison that I haven’t been made aware of.”
“Will that interfere with the plan?” I asked.
“No,” Verrin said as he took an alchemist’s robe from a chest and threw it in my direction. “Put that on. Quickly!”
The two of us headed toward the alchemy labs as fast as we could without drawing suspicion. Guards patrolled the hallways, but with Verrin by my side, none of them even gave me a second look.
We twisted and turned through the corridors. I was happy to have memorized the maps Garrick had sent so I could anticipate each turn. I hated not knowing where I was going. Even so, I let Verrin guide me to our destination. He didn’t need to know I had memorized the entire floor plan.
Verrin opened the door, and we walked into a room filled with a dozen alchemy stations, with many experiments underway. Smoke rose from vials, and cauldrons bubbled. Crystals, herbs, and reagents covered every surface.
“Excellent, there’s no one here,” Verrin said. “I’ll stay by the door and distract anyone who tries to come in. You grab the vial of Emberbane.”
The room was filled with hundreds of vials of various sizes, shapes, and colors.
“Do you know what it looks like?” I asked.
“In the very back, you’ll find a rack with dozens of amber-colored vials. Only the vials that have a subtle shimmer to them are Emberbane. Take only one. Any more and they might notice.”
“I’m on it,” I said.
I wove my way to an alchemy station near the back, where I found the rack Verrin described. Of the dozens of vials, there were only a handful whose contents twisted and shimmered. I could sense the Ember within them.
Verrin watched from the front of the room. “Be very careful with that. It’s extremely volatile. If you drop it on the ground, it will explode and take this entire room out with it.”
“Good to know,” I said flatly. I slid the vial into the belt under my robes.
As I approached, Verrin said, “Perhaps it’s better for me to hold on to the vial in case someone gets suspicious. They might search you, but they would know better than to search me.”
“I think I’ll hold on to it myself,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Verrin said with a frown that cut just a bit deeper than it should have.
A noise came from down the hall. “Quick! Someone is coming,” Verrin whispered urgently. “We need to go!”
We hurried out of the lab and made it around a corner just before a group of alchemists spotted us.
As we continued through the prison, we encountered several more people heading in the opposite direction, all of whom appeared to be in quite a hurry. However, none gave us a second look. I gave Verrin a questioning glance, which he ignored.
Our destination was one of the body chutes.
There were four of them in total: long, steep tunnels through which the prison disposed of its dead.
The chutes emptied directly into incinerators.
Tonight, three of the incinerators were running, and one lay dormant for cleaning.
From there, we were to climb the ladder to the top of the smokestack, which towered high over the prison.
And that was where the plan took a somewhat unusual turn, thanks to Sprocket’s inventiveness.
“So my friend will meet us at the chute?” I asked.
“If he’s not already there when we arrive, he should be there shortly,” Verrin replied.
As we approached the chute, a gnawing worry built in my gut.
Not only did the complication with Darion bother me, but Garrick had provided me with Pyrehold’s incinerator maintenance schedule.
Verrin was leading me toward one of the active incinerators.
Perhaps it was an honest mistake. Perhaps Garrick’s documents were incorrect or outdated.
But just in case, I carefully slipped a smoke vial out of my belt and palmed it.
We turned into a room at the top of the body chute.
No Darion.
Then the overwhelming smell of rot hit me. Corpses lay in piles covered with stained white sheets. Flies buzzed around everywhere. I held back a retch at the gore. I’d seen death before—plenty of it. But something about the stacks of nameless bodies made my throat tighten.
The chute itself took up the entire far wall; the floor simply dropped away at a sharp angle. Most disturbing, however, was the smell of soot rising from it and the golden glow flickering far below. The incinerator was actively burning. My heart kicked into overdrive.
“Turn around slowly,” Verrin said. He was suddenly holding a one-handed crossbow small enough to conceal beneath his cape. He pointed it directly at my heart. “Hand over the Emberbane, now.”