It took every bit of control she possessed not to lurch away from him. She’d helped cover cesspits cleaner than this man. He didn’t let go of her arm but dropped the whip to free his other hand so he could unlace the placket at the front of his breeches.
“Aren’t I lucky that the stupidest one in the cell was also the prettiest. Too bad you’ll burn later, but I’ll make good use of you now.”
The startled squeak he emitted when she suddenly stepped closer to him would have made Gilene smile if her skin wasn’t threatening to peel itself off her bones and flee of its own accord. This close, and his reek nearly made her pass out. She rested her hands on his shoulders and smiled into his eyes.
“Today you will burn with me.”
The fire had surged against the cage of her will for so long now, it needed no coaxing to surface. She simply let it go, and the magic of flame burst out of every pore, enveloping her and the guard in a conflagration that doused the floor, ceiling, and walls around them in a tight radius before roiling back toward its source and its victim.
The guard died instantly, that surprised squeak the last sound he made before Gilene’s fire immolated him in a flash of heat and light, leaving him nothing more than a pile of ash and charred bones at her feet once the flames died around her. She bent to retrieve the key ring, glowing hot but not yet melted. To any other but a fire witch, the metal would have fused into her palm.
Gilene blew gustily on the key ring to cool it before kicking aside the cremated ruins of their jailer. She cast her illusion spell once more, returning to the nondescript appearance the other women recognized. They pressed themselves against the cell’s back wall as she drew closer.
She had felt nothing except triumph when she killed the guard, but the sight of her cellmates’ terror made her cringe. “I mean you no harm,” she assured them and held up the smoking key ring. “You must hurry if you want to get out of here.”
She used the still-hot key to open the lock and swung the door wide, stepping to the side so as not to block or intimidate the fearful women. The shade speaker and the redhead were the first to walk across the threshold, both encouraging the others to follow. They were an interesting pair standing together, the fragile-looking bird woman with the big eyes that saw the dead, and the statuesque redhead with the fearsome gaze that reminded Gilene a little of Tamura.
The shade speaker waved them all out, gave Gilene a low bow of thanks, and hurried away toward the passage she claimed led to the tunnels. The red-haired woman paused. She, too, gave Gilene a quick bow. “May the gods remain merciful to us all this day, fire witch. Thank you.”
A sudden thought occurred to Gilene, and she caught the other woman’s arm. “If . . . when you make it out of the city, and if you face the steppe warriors, tell them you are all of Beroe. That Azarion Ataman keeps his promise.” At the other’s confused expression, she shook her arm for emphasis. “Just do it. Don’t forget.”
The redhead’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t coming.”
“Not yet. Remember, I need to stay behind and take care of any guards so you can reach the tunnels in time.” Gilene offered a rueful smile. “And now you know how I can hold off Kraelian guards by myself.” She gave the woman a light push. “Go on. You can’t linger.”
She watched until the last woman disappeared into the passage’s clot of shadows. If fate was merciful, they would escape the city unharmed to return to their families. If it wasn’t, they’d die in those narrow spaces or beneath a hail of Savatar arrows. Gilene had either saved them from death in the Pit or sent them all to their deaths beyond Kraelag’s walls.
The ash and bone pile that had once been a man was now nothing more than a soot mark on the floor’s wet stone, trampled by the feet of fleeing women. The bones lay scattered in every direction, and she took a moment to kick them all into a corner where none could see them unless they actively searched.
The catacombs’ hush thrummed in her ears, occasionally broken by the cheers of the crowd as they enjoyed bloodshed with their breakfast in the arena above her. Gilene ventured farther down the corridor’s run, past the empty gladiator cells to the stairs leading to the street level and another less squalid passageway dominated by arches and columns.
Kraelian guards called it the Last Journey or the Last Walk. Gladiators marched down its length, prepared to fight to the death, and the Flowers of Spring were carted the distance in a cage pulled by horses. At its end, a pair of gigantic doors stood closed and barred, guarded by Kraelian soldiers. On the other side, the roofless arena known as the Pit, with its baying spectators, waited.
Scuttling noises at the end of the hallway sent her sprinting to a shallow alcove, where she squeezed herself into its space.
A pair of guards appeared, their shadows stretched across the walls where the torches cast sickly coronas of light. They paused, and from her hiding spot, Gilene clearly heard two sharp inhalations.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Those fucking cunts got out somehow!”
A second voice joined the first. “Where’s that fucker Molt? I’ll kill him if he’s drunk in a corner again!”
The sound of running feet warned her they drew closer. Gilene held her breath and stepped into the hallway. The two guards almost stumbled in their surprise. She darted past them, into the passage the women had taken earlier.
“Catch that bitch!”
She reached the hall’s end before it forked in two directions, and waited. Her pursuers rounded the corner, their features promising murder when they caught her. Magic surged through her, a beast leashed on a fragile tether. For a second time, Gilene set it free.
Torches, mounted on either side of the hallway’s entrance, flared bright, their flames stretching toward Gilene as if pulled by a lodestone. At a hand gesture, flames exploded out of the torches, white-hot flares erupting off the twisted wicks as if they’d been dipped in draga blood instead of tallow.
Fire danced in mimicry of Gilene’s hand motions, filling the tunnel with a bestial roar. The guards shouted and turned to run, only to be cut off by a barricade of flame. A final slash of her hand through the air, and the fire consumed the two men in one bright gulp, leaving nothing behind but soot.
Torches guttered and died, plunging the hallway into a thick blackness scented with the caustic odor of cremation. Gilene leaned against the passage wall with a shudder. The urge to retch almost overpowered her. She clenched her teeth against the impulse and pulled the neckline of her tunic up over her nose to breathe. After days in the company of slavers and guards who didn’t care whether the Flowers of Spring had food much less a bath, she didn’t smell particularly sweet, but it was better than the sting of charred human flesh in her nose.
She allowed herself a moment to shiver in the darkness before straightening away from the wall. The Pit awaited her.