I scurried to what looked like the blackest space in a sea of darkness, and this time no solid wall greeted me. I flung myself into the dark passageway and ran, hands outstretched on either side of me to feel the route, beyond caring that my steps might be audible. I felt the path rise beneath my feet, the upward gradient giving me an intoxicating taste of hope. I staggered out of the passage and into a chamber so small there was barely time to stop myself from hitting the far side of it. Behind me, rising out of the stillness, came the unrelenting tap tap tap of footsteps, like the beat of a song, signaling my end. Trapped. There was only one way in and one way out of what seemed likely to become my tomb.
My little cage lightened from black nothingness to gray shadows as he ascended, still with that disturbing lack of haste. I crouched, waiting. My fingers were unable to distinguish between the contents of my purse and the space was too small to safely throw powders, but I would risk poisoning us both if it came to that.
As the lamplight crescent crept over the threshold like some sinister moon, I glanced at the other side of the chamber, and there it was. My salvation.
A ladder.
I dove for it and hurled myself up with all the remaining strength in my good arm. My hand hit something solid—a metal hatch above me. Pressing my body tight against the rungs I shoved it open and scrambled up through heavy blankets into a paved room, panting. Relief flooded me as the dim light revealed furniture, baskets: the ordinary contents of a cellar. I hurried up the stairs and out of the house into the same residential district I’d begun from. Staggering across the street, I took cover in the narrow space between two houses, waiting for my pursuer to emerge.
He never did. I waited until the sweat soaking my face and neck turned icy in the breeze and I could no longer ignore the fiery wetness spreading across my shoulder. Whoever had chased me would not come above ground, it seemed. And this time, nothing in the world could have convinced me to do anything other than the sensible, logical thing. So I limped off, bleeding and dizzy, to find Tain.
Rabutin
DESCRIPTION: Woody shrub producing clumps of yellow flowers. Green parts of plant, flowers, twigs, sap, and pollen are all toxic if ingested or smoke from burned branches is inhaled. Handling of leaves and sap causes skin irritation.
SYMPTOMS: Include excessive swallowing and salivation, frequent defecation, eye watering or blurred vision, cardiac distress, seizures, death.
PROOFING CUES: Strong, astringent, woody taste, earthy smell in the fumes.
10
Kalina
All signs of the rain had gone. We worked in silence, or close to it; too much activity above the tunnelers and they might realize we had detected them. Eliska and a group of her engineers stood a short distance away. They pored over drawings and calculations, talking and gesturing as they tried to refine their estimations of the path of the tunnel and its likely exit point. Tain and Marco strategized about the best way to handle the situation—collapse the tunnel, wait to see what the rebels used it for, try to capture the tunnelers to question them … and beside me, Jov sat, clearly only half-listening.
My brother seemed far more shaken than his discovery warranted; I could see he had left something out of his hurriedly relayed story. There had been no chance to speak privately, and whatever had happened, Jov obviously didn’t want to disclose it in front of other Councilors.
“It all depends what they’re planning to do with it,” Tain was saying. “What do you think, Jov? You’ve been quiet.”
The Chancellor—strange, how easy it was now to think of him that way—laid a hand on Jov’s good shoulder and peered at him, concern wrinkling his brow. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, and suddenly he was our friend again. “You should get some rest.”
Jov shook his head, stubborn.
“At least sit,” I urged, and that much he was willing to comply with. I sat cross-legged with him next to the rough diagram Marco had drawn in the dirt, while the Warrior-Guilder indicated various points in the wall with a long stick.
“Here, and here,” Marco said, pointing to long sections of the old city walls. “Strip our defenses right back on these less vulnerable sections. We can use Credo Jovan’s cloth sentries to keep up appearances. If we keep normal movement on these sections”—here he traced along the northwest wall, where the army was most concentrated—“they should not be aware that we have detected their tunnel.
“We position a force inside the caverns, as near as possible to where the Stone-Guilder’s engineers predict the tunnel will reach. If the rebels attempt to use the tunnel for a nighttime attack, we will be ready to box them in, or collapse the tunnel on top of them.”
“I don’t think that’ll be possible,” Eliska interjected. “Not unless we have far more time to prepare. We know where they’re digging right now, but it will take much more investigation to determine the layout of the existing tunnel.”
“Can we send scouts out to figure out where the tunnel begins?” one of the engineers asked.
A pause. We still hadn’t let the public know what had happened to our last messengers, both because of the gruesome nature of their deaths and because we wanted there to remain hope that the army would soon come to rescue us. Jov’s hand found mine in the shadows, and I knew we were sharing that terrible memory. Though I had only seen the six heads carefully and respectfully wrapped at the private burial, somehow those cloth-bound shapes were as dreadful as the bloody images I invented in my dreams.
“No. Too risky for the scout,” Tain said. The jut of his chin and the defensive look exchanged with Marco and Jov told me they had again been arguing about attempting to send out new messengers; despite the others’ urging, Tain had refused to risk anyone else being slaughtered so brutally. “It’ll be some hummock or patch of rocks hiding the entrance, and they’re shifting men and dirt overnight when we can’t see.” He studied the crude dirt map for a moment, then looked up at the distant wall, chewing his lip. “It’d take too long to build anything big enough to get a sizeable force through into the city without detection. If I were them, I’d use it to sneak small groups in, infiltrate our defenses, then open one of the gates at an agreed-upon time.”
Marco nodded. “That is what I would do, also. We would have no way of distinguishing between the rebels and our own people.”
“If they know about the caves, they might also try to move a force inside the caverns and hide them there,” I said. “Then they could attack from both fronts.” It would be impossible to defend against the army pouring in through a gate and rising from below our feet.
“Or the tunnel could be designed to be destroyed,” Eliska said. “They might be digging with the intention of collapsing the tunnel below a section of the wall. If the ground beneath a section were destabilized, the wall above could crumple.”
“So what do we do?” Tain asked.
The Warrior-Guilder rubbed his head, frowning. “Intercept the diggers, collapse the tunnel outside the wall. That would stop the rebels from using it to gain access to the city or weakening the wall. Then be vigilant about monitoring for other tunnels, in case they try again.”
Jov’s keen observation of the rippling puddle gave me an idea. “What if we put big containers of water at intervals around the wall as a warning system? It’d be easier to detect digging if we can see it.”