“You know what?” I said, as I plunged my dagger into the back of his neck. “Fuck honor.”
* * *
Neither of us seemed to know what to say. We stood in the dark for a time, Marco’s body between us. The only sound to punctuate the darkness was Tain’s heavy breathing.
Then, “Is he dead?”
“I think so.” I bent down and checked the pulse in his neck with hands shaking like a seizure. His skin was warm. No heartbeat. I stepped around the prone figure and fumbled in the dark to find my friend. He was slumped in the corner, and when I tried to help him stand, his side was slick with warm blood. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Not sure.” Tain laughed, a bark devoid of humor.
I helped him to the bed then found and lit the main lamps in the room. I tried not to look at the knife protruding from the back of Marco’s neck. There wasn’t much blood; he’d died instantly. Should have tried to knock him out. Now we’ll never know why he did it. But there was nothing to be done now. I’d killed him. I’d killed other people, but this was something I had done to someone I knew … and had liked and respected. And I didn’t feel sorry about it: I felt nothing. No satisfaction, no regret. Just emptiness.
I checked Tain over. The main wound was a deep, clean slice to his side, just below his ribs. “Put pressure on that,” I told him, and he obeyed, eyes dull. I didn’t know how much blood he’d lost, or whether his stunned silence was due to emotional shock or physical injuries. I sliced up a sheet with the spare knife and bound the main wound, then the smaller ones on his arms and shoulders. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
He nodded, eyes already shutting as he sat back. Or maybe I should get a physic here first, I thought. I could send Argo.… And then I remembered Marco’s taunt, and my throat clenched. “Argo,” I said. A surge of hatred toward the dead man on the floor made my knees wobble. “Tain, can you stay here? I’ve got to go see if Argo … I have to check.”
His eyes snapped open and he lurched to his feet. “I’m coming,” he said, waving away my protests. “I have to get to the hospital anyway. If there’s a chance Argo’s still…” Neither of us wanted to say it aloud. “I’ll follow. Go.”
I ran. The route to the front entrance took me past Salvea’s room and I thumped on the door. “Salvea! Tain needs help!” I didn’t wait for a response, but hurried on. Come on, I thought, my steps feeling heavy.
I skidded to a stop in the main entrance hall. Argo lay slumped over the desk, his wrinkled brown head bare as a nut, his body motionless. My chest tightened. How many more innocent people had to die for Marco’s insane war? Argo had never harmed anyone in his life. I reached for his neck, testing for a pulse.
And then caught my breath as I felt one. Weak but steady. “Argo? Honor-down, Argo, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open. “Fortunes-damned upstart Guilder,” he muttered, trying to focus on me as he raised his head feebly. “Tried to kill me. The Chancellor! Credo, the Warrior-Guilder’s going for the Chancellor!”
“He’s all right,” I said, helping the doorkeep sit up. “Marco’s dead, and Tain’s all right.” I touched his neck gently and the old man winced. “He choked you?”
Argo nodded. “Brash as could be,” he said. “Said … said—” He broke off with a cough. “Said everyone would just think I keeled over,” he wheezed. “Like I’m some kind of decrepit old thing, about to expire!”
I patted his back as he coughed again. “Thank the fortunes he underestimated you.”
By the time Argo had found his feet, Tain hobbled into the entrance hall with Salvea’s help. Davi followed behind, sucking his thumb, eyes wide. “Argo!” Tain staggered over and embraced the old man. “Honor-down, I’m glad to see you breathing.”
“And I you, Honored Chancellor,” he croaked, looking embarrassed.
“I want the physics to check you over, too,” I told Argo. I tried to scoop Davi up to pass to Salvea, but the boy backed away, shaking his head, and I realized what a sight I must be, bleeding from small cuts and strewn with Tain’s blood and my own. “Salvea, can you run ahead to the hospital and warn Thendra that we’re bringing them in to check them over?”
“And you,” Tain said. “You’re hurt, too.”
I tried to rub the blood away with a corner of my tunic. “I’ve got something else to do,” I said.
* * *
Loaded with a good lamp and basic medical supplies from the hospital, where I’d made sure Tain and Argo were in safe hands, I went back to Red Fern Avenue and through the sewers into Eliska’s tunnels. I tried not to think about what was going on at the lake. No further alarm bells had sounded, so I had to assume we still held the bridge. But I dared not wait any longer to find out if some harm had befallen Hadrea in the labyrinth below the city.
The caves lay silent and menacing as I descended. Calling out, I heard only my own voice, echoing back from the darkness. I tried not to think the worst. The system was huge; chances were she could be fine and still not hear me. She had moved confidently underground when she had followed me.
I found signs of her passage past Eliska and Dara’s secret room, footprints in the dust and dirt visible with my lamp. They led deeper and lower, east toward the lake. This time I was prepared for any eventualities; my pouches were refilled and I had my supply of moonstone paste in hand to mark each doorway I moved through with a smear. Even if something happened to my lamp or I had to run back, the faint white glow from the moonstone would guide my way home. Sometimes Hadrea’s tracks were heavier and deeper lines than normal footprints, and I wondered if she had been using a crude version of the same system, marking her way home. The air grew heavier, and the walls seeped liquid. When the ceiling started dripping heavy ice-cold splotches, I suspected I was under the lake itself. It didn’t improve my feelings about the prospect of cave-ins. I called out again. Nothing.
The darkness seemed to thicken as I went lower and lower, as though my lamp’s light couldn’t match it. My breathing sounded louder and each footstep echoed, eerie. “Hadrea?” I tried again.
Was that something? I raced ahead, the lamp swinging wildly. “Hadrea?”
A sound, there was definitely a sound then. A cry? It sounded faint, weak. Was she hurt?
I rounded the corner, thrusting my lamp into each of the tunnel entrances I passed. In the third I thought I glimpsed something.
The light from my lamp spilled into the tunnel, showing a floor littered with rocks and dirt. The roof was bracketed and looked sound; no sign of a collapse. The rocks were spread out and, strangely, many were caked with dirt on one side and smooth on the other, with no discernible pattern. I had no time to puzzle that out, because moments later the edge of my light caught a brown sheen, and I leaped over the rocks to where Hadrea lay, her hair concealing her face, unmoving.
As I dropped down beside her, she propped herself on her forearms, easily tossing her hair back with a puff of breath. “You took a long time, Jovan,” she said, and relief rendered me speechless.
She jerked her head behind her, gesturing to the pile of rocks covering her feet. “I was caught,” she said. “It was clumsy, but I had been moving rocks for a long time. I was not quick enough.”