Night Swimming
They pushed hard for two days.
The terrain grew steeper as they climbed into the foothills, the Ember Route narrowing to little more than a dirt track winding between ancient green oaks and moss-covered boulders.
Streams crossed their path with increasing frequency, fed by snowmelt from the peaks above, their waters so cold that Lark’s teeth ached when she drank from them.
The air thinned and sharpened, carrying the scent of pine and wet stone, but beneath it all, something faintly awry that made Noctis whine and press closer to her legs.
Dark aetheria. She could smell it now, or perhaps she was only imagining that she could. The Ashen Enclave’s magic left traces wherever it was used, blackening the earth and twisting everything it touched. They were getting close.
On the second evening, as the sun began its descent behind the western hills, Darian called a halt.
“We should stop here,” he said quietly. “Rest until full dark. We don’t want to approach the Citadel while there’s still light.”
They had found a hollow between two large outcroppings of rock, sheltered from view on three sides and offering a clear line of sight down the slope they had climbed.
Lark scanned the terrain below, searching for any sign of scouts or patrols, but saw only the endless green of the oak forest stretching toward the river valley.
Somewhere in those hills, the Ashen Citadel waited.
They did not risk a fire. Instead, they ate cold rations, drank from their waterskins, and spoke in low voices about what lay ahead.
Allyn had told them the drainage grate was on the eastern wall of the fortress, where the moat curved closest to the river that fed it.
The sewers would empty there, he had said, because that was the logical place for drainage to flow.
He had never seen the grate himself, but the guards had mentioned it in passing, joking about the fool who might try to enter that way.
Lark hoped he was right. If the grate were elsewhere, they would have to dive repeatedly to find it, and every moment in the water increased the risk of discovery.
Darian unbuckled his armor, setting each piece aside with the regret of a man who knew exactly what he was leaving behind. The leather breastplate. The pauldrons. The greaves. He laid them in a neat pile beside his pack, covering them with his cloak to protect against the night dew.
“You’ll be unprotected,” Pippa said quietly.
“I’ll be alive.” He pulled the last buckle free and rolled his shoulders, adjusting to the unfamiliar lightness. “Armor and water don’t mix. I’d sink like a stone before I made it halfway across the moat.”
Pippa nodded and turned to her own pack. She pulled out her satchel of devices and stared at it, her fingers tracing their weight, as though she was drawing strength from it. Then she tucked it beneath the pile of Darian’s armor.
“We’re coming back this way,” she said, as though reminding herself. “For Noctis. For our things.”
“We are,” Lark agreed, as reassuringly as she could.
As the others prepared, she dug to the bottom of her own pack.
Her fingers found the small leather roll by touch, the shape unchanged despite the turns since she had last held it.
She drew it out and unrolled it on her lap, revealing the lock picks nested in their individual pockets.
Steel and silver, each one crafted for a specific purpose, the tools of a trade she had thought she had left behind in Summerbright.
She had not touched them since the night she fled the Order of Blight.
Had not wanted to touch them. These picks had opened doors that should have stayed closed, had granted her access to rooms where people slept, unaware of the death that walked among them.
So many jobs Isolde had given her that had ended in blood had begun with these tools in her hands.
But tonight they would open a different kind of door. Tonight, they would free someone instead of killing them.
She tested each pick, checking for rust or damage, and found none. She had always taken care of her tools. That much, at least, had not changed.
She rolled the picks back into their leather case and tucked them into the inner pocket of her jacket.
Full dark came slowly, the sky fading from deep blue to purple to black, the stars emerging one by one until the heavens blazed with cold light. There were no moons tonight, which was fortuitous. They would need all the darkness they could get.
Darian got up first, his movements as efficient and quiet as a soldier before a battle.
Without his armor he looked somehow both leaner and more dangerous, his movements unencumbered by the weight he usually carried.
He buckled his sword around his unarmored waist, though.
He would go unprotected but never unarmed.
Pippa had stripped down to her lightest clothing, leaving behind everything that was not essential. She looked vulnerable without her satchel, her hands empty of the devices she usually carried like talismans. But her face was determined, and her eyes were clear.
Lark had little to prepare. Her lock picks were secure, her daggers ready to be summoned at a thought. She wore dark clothing that would blend with the shadows, her silver hair braided and pinned close to her head to keep it from catching the light.
She knelt beside Noctis.
The wolf looked up at her with his golden eyes, tail wagging slowly, clearly expecting to follow wherever she led.
Even though he was Rion’s, Noctis had been with her since Wintersorrow, a constant presence through all the miles and all the danger.
She couldn't remember the last time she had gone anywhere without him.
“You have to stay here,” she said quietly.
Noctis’s ears pricked forward. He didn’t understand the words, but he understood her tone, and his tail stopped wagging.
“We’re going into the water. Into the fortress. You can’t follow.” She scratched behind his ears the way he liked, feeling the softness of his fur beneath her fingers. “We’ll come back. I promise. But you have to wait.”
Noctis whined, a sound of confusion and distress that made her ache. He pushed his nose against her palm, then looked toward Darian and Pippa as if seeking an explanation from them.
“Stay,” Lark said more firmly. “Guard our things. We’ll be back before dawn.”
She stood and turned away before she could change her mind. Behind her, Noctis whined again, and she heard him take a few steps to follow before stopping, torn between his training and his instinct.
They descended the slope in single file, moving with as much stealth as three people could manage on unfamiliar terrain in darkness.
Darian led the way, his instincts guiding him around the patches of loose stone and dry leaves that might reveal their passage.
Lark followed close behind, and Pippa brought up the rear, her footsteps surprisingly quiet for someone who spent most of her time in workshops.
The forest thinned as they approached the edge of the foothills, the green oaks giving way to scrubby brush and exposed rock. The ground leveled out, and Lark caught her first glimpse of the Ashen Citadel.
It rose from the darkness like a monster carved from a nightmare.
The walls were black stone, forty feet high at least, their surfaces slick with moisture from the river mist that hung in the air.
Torches burned at intervals along the battlements, casting pools of orange light that did nothing to dispel the oppressive shrouds of shadow between them.
The single gate faced west, a massive construction of iron-banded wood flanked by guard towers, and even from this distance Lark could see the figures of sentries moving along the walls.
The moat surrounded everything, a dark ribbon of water perhaps thirty feet across. It reflected the torchlight in broken fragments, its surface disturbed by the current that flowed from the river feeding it.
From somewhere within the walls, a sound drifted across the water.
Low and guttural, not quite a growl, not quite a scream.
A creature that had once been an animal, making noises no animal should make.
Another voice joined it, and then another, becoming a howling dirge that raised the hair on Lark’s arms.
The experiments. She could not see them behind those high walls, but she could hear them, and somehow that was worse.
Somewhere below all of that, in dungeons carved into the stone foundations, Rion was waiting.
They circled wide, keeping to the shadows, until they reached the eastern approach. Here the moat curved closest to the river, just as Allyn had described, and the current was stronger. The wall rose sheer from the water’s edge, with no visible entrance, no obvious weakness.
If the grate was there, it was below the surface.
They found cover behind a tumble of boulders at the water’s edge, close enough to see the fortress walls clearly but far enough to avoid the reach of torchlight. Lark studied the moat, trying to judge the depth, temperature, and the distance to the wall.
She caught Darian’s eye and held up four fingers, then pointed down at the water and then at herself. Four minutes. She would find the grate and open it. If she didn’t signal in four minutes, something had gone wrong. Darian nodded once. Pippa’s face was pale in the darkness, but she nodded too.
The signal acknowledged, Lark moved to the edge of the moat and lowered herself in.
The cold hit her like a fist.
She had expected it, but nothing could truly prepare the body for water of this temperature.
Her lungs seized, her muscles clenched, and for a terrifying moment she could not move at all.
She could only hang there in the darkness with the current pulling at her legs and the cold driving needles into every inch of skin.