Night Swimming #2
Then the shock passed, and her training took over. She forced her breathing to slow and her limbs to move, beginning her swim toward the wall with steady, silent strokes.
The stone loomed above her, slick with algae, offering no handholds. She tread water, orienting herself, then took three deep breaths and dove.
Darkness swallowed her.
The water was black beneath the surface; the torchlight from above barely penetrating the first few feet.
Lark swam downward by feel, one hand trailing along the wall, searching for any irregularity in the stone.
Her lungs began to burn almost immediately.
The cold was making everything harder, slowing her movements, eating away at the air she had stored.
Her searching fingers finally found a crevice in the stone.
She explored it quickly, tracing the edges.
Metal bars. A grate, just as Allyn had described, perhaps three feet square.
Large enough for a person to squeeze through.
She felt for hinges, for a lock, and found what she was looking for on the right side: a heavy padlock securing the grate to a ring set into the stone.
She surfaced as quietly as she could, gasping for air, and found the dark shape of the boulders where Darian and Pippa waited. She raised one hand, gestured for them to wait, and dove again.
This time she went straight to the grate, her fingers finding the padlock from memory. She pulled the lock picks from her jacket and selected the right tools by touch: a tension wrench and a rake, the same combination she had used a hundred times before on locks just like this one.
Her lungs were already burning. The cold made her fingers clumsy, turning the delicate work of picking into a battle against her own body. She felt for the pins inside the lock, applied pressure with the wrench, and worked the rake back and forth.
One pin set. Then another.
Her vision was starting to spark at the edges, oxygen deprivation mixing with the cold to create a dangerous combination. She forced herself to focus, to ignore everything except the lock in her hands.
The third pin set.
The fourth.
The lock clicked open.
Lark pulled it free, letting it fall from her numb fingers into the blackness below, and shoved the grate inward, pushing against the resistance until it finally swung open on rusted hinges. Then she kicked for the surface, her lungs screaming, her muscles cramping.
She broke through to the surface and hauled in a ragged breath, then another, clinging to the slick wall while the darkness receded from her vision. She found the boulders again and beckoned once, a sharp gesture that meant follow.
Darian and Pippa slipped into the water moments later. She saw Pippa’s face contort with the shock of the cold, saw Darian’s body stiffen against the same. But neither of them made a sound. They swam to her in silence, and she led them to the grate.
One by one they dove and pulled themselves through the opening into the darkness beyond.
The sewer tunnel was so much worse than the moat.
They surfaced in a space that was barely large enough to stand in, the ceiling pressing down above their heads.
The water here was waist-deep and thick with things Lark didn't want to identify.
The smell was indescribable, a miasma of human waste, stagnant water and rotting vegetation that coated the back of her throat and made her eyes water.
Pippa gagged silently, pressing her hand over her mouth and nose. Darian’s stoicism did nothing to hide his disgust.
Lark pointed forward, and they began to wade.
The tunnel curved and branched, so she was forced to choose their path by instinct, always moving upward, always following the faint current of air that suggested an opening ahead. Things brushed against her legs beneath the water. She didn't want to think about what they might be.
Behind her, Pippa’s breathing had gone shallow and quick, the sound of someone fighting not to be sick. Darian moved with a grim doggedness, his hand occasionally steadying Pippa when she stumbled on the uneven footing.
The tunnel widened gradually, the ceiling rising, the water growing shallower with each step. Ahead, Lark could see faint light, the first illumination they had encountered since entering the moat.
She held up a hand and the others stopped.
Then she crept forward alone, her movements silent despite the water, until she could see the source of the light.
A grate above her head, larger than the one in the moat, opened into what looked like a stone corridor. Torchlight flickered somewhere beyond, casting the faint glow she had seen. She listened, straining to hear any sound of movement, any sign of guards.
Footsteps. Distant, but present. At least one person, maybe more, patrolling somewhere in the dungeon above.
She returned to the others. Darian leaned close, his lips near her ear.
“Guards?”
She nodded and held up two fingers. Maybe two. Hard to tell.
“Can you handle them? I can come.” His hand instinctively reached for his sword.
She met his eyes in the darkness.
"I can do it," she whispered.
Then she moved back to the grate and shoved it aside. The metal scraped against stone, and she froze, listening. But the footsteps continued their steady rhythm, unchanged. She pulled herself up and out of the tunnel, emerging into the dungeon of the Ashen Citadel.