Safi’s chest tightened. “Did it never occur to you that my uncle might be there?”
“Of course it did.” Leopold glared. “But my spies found only empty cells when I sent them.” Ahead, the fog and noise thickened. Three more long steps, and they rounded the final bend to the baths. The pillared pools stretched before them, unchanged from last night. Unchanged, Safi supposed, for a millennium.
As before, Leopold aimed for a bench—however, this time, he did not sit. Instead, he was the one to pace while Safi draped herself down.
“I will send more spies to look for Eron. Escape, however…” He shook his head, gaze fixed on the wet ground before his feet. “There is little I can do to actually remove him. Henrick will know if Eron leaves. But if he is sick, as you say, then perhaps some relief can be—”
“I will be going after him myself.”
Leopold stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me perfectly fine, Polly.” She set her jaw. “I will be going after him myself. Just as soon as I have … something.” She did not elaborate what that “something” was, but Leopold didn’t seem to notice. He was fixated on her first words.
“And how do you propose going after him, Safiya?” He sniffed. “Unless I am quite mistaken, even today at Hell-Bard Keep, you could not escape the Loom’s pull for more than several minutes.”
“Ah, so you haven’t noticed then, have you?” Triumph wreathed around her muscles. Purred into her toes. With two hands, she drew down the high neck of her dancing gown.
Leopold’s jaw slackened. “How?” he breathed. Then more forcefully, advancing on her, “Where is the noose?”
“I stowed it in your quarters,” she said matter-of-factly before opening the collar further to reveal quartz and thread and brass, all strung together and resting against the top of her breasts.
It took Leopold several moments to understand what he was looking at. Then suddenly, his head tipped back and he howled at the cavern’s ceiling. A laugh to rattle stones. “Brilliant,” he crowed. “Thrice-damned brilliant, Safiya.” He rushed the final steps to her and stared at the trappings across her chest. “The Truth-lens, yes? Half of your magic was bound to it, so when you became a Hell-Bard, only half of your magic was torn away.” His sea-green eyes met hers, laughter bright within them. “Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she admitted—because it did. A low scratching of cold shivered inside her. It made her want to run. To move. To do anything at all that might distract her from it. “But,” she added truthfully, “it’s not a pain I can’t sustain. As long as I have it on, I still have half my soul with me.”
He chewed his bottom lip. “If you leave, though, you will be going much farther than a few hundred paces. The Solfatarra is on the other side of the Ohrins.”
“I know.” She lifted a single eyebrow. “Which is why I thought we ought to go into the city tonight. See just how far I can travel before the pain becomes too much. If the pain becomes too much.”
“Indeed,” he murmured, a throaty quality to the word. He did not smile, but there was genuine delight in his voice and in his eyes.
He offered her his hands, and once she had them clasped, he helped her rise. “Follow me, Safiya fon Cartorra. I know exactly where we will go.”
* * *
The secret passage of owls and rooks stretched for at least a mile, some of it in darkness lit only by the single torch that Leopold carried—and all of it damp. Every few minutes as they walked, Leopold asked, “How do you feel?”
And every few minutes, Safi answered, “Fine. It’s annoying, but it doesn’t hurt.” She spoke the truth each time—and thank the gods for it. She had feared, when she removed the noose in his quarters and stuffed it in his armchair, that every step away would be agony. Instead, this perpetual shivering deep in her bones had not worsened.
The tunnel finally stopped at a wide set of stairs. At the top, a cedar chest waited. Leopold bowed over it and removed two loose, hooded cloaks of dreary, easily missed brown. After draping one over Safi and pulling her hood low, he slipped into the second. Then he lifted an alarm-stone and held it up for them both to see.
It did not flicker. It did not light.
“No one outside,” he said before replacing it, and several moments later, he took Safi’s hand into his and pulled her to the stairs’ end. A simple stone wall waited. Three taps with his fist, just like in the tower, and the wall disappeared.
A cold breeze and moonlight swept in—as did the muddy scent of water and the gentle lap of waves. It was the River Praga, which carved through the city, and the wall opened right onto it. Reeds drifted lazily nearby. Sounds of a sleeping city wafted down, as if a street were above, and Safi could just make out a stone wall on the river’s opposite bank.
That fact alone—that she could see depth and color and moonlight—sent a thrill winking down her spine.
She was free. For now, for tonight, she was free.
“We are near the Sarian Bridge,” Leopold explained. “And we will be getting wet.” He motioned to small rivulets swirling toward his feet through the open wall. “Since it is very hard to explain to one’s attendants why one’s dancing shoes are muddy, can you go barefoot?”
Safi nodded. A grim smile compressed her lips. Shoes should be a luxury, Habim had taught her. Not a requirement.
That lesson had served her well over the past two months. Her mentor and his Heart-Thread might have tumbled through hell-gates that Safi couldn’t comprehend, but she couldn’t deny how much they had taught her. How very much she owed them.
And they had sent her the Truth-lens. That had to count for something.
Safi eased off her shoes, dropped them into the chest beside Leopold’s, and after hefting up her skirts and cloak, she followed the prince into the water. He moved with silent ease through the reeds, like a heron who’d traveled this way many times. Safi felt clumsy and loud in comparison, each footstep splashing and squelching and rolling through her.
The water reached only to her upper calves, but the silt was unstable. It sucked her in. Fortunately, they were cast in shadow from the Sarian Bridge. When she glanced back, only once, she found the hole in the wall was gone. Slimy flagstone stretched as far as she could see, curving with the river and vanishing from sight.
By the time Leopold reached a small shelf onto which they could haul themselves, Safi had lost all feeling in her toes and ankles. The water was beyond frigid, and somehow withdrawing her feet to clamber onto the stone ledge only made her that much colder.
Leopold didn’t slow, though, so Safi pushed herself onward until they reached a rusted ladder leading to the street. Leopold ascended first, and Safi followed with a great deal less grace.
Weak streetlamps glared down, revealing the merchants’ shops Safi and Henrick had passed earlier that day. At this hour, no lights burned within, no shoppers milled about. Two guards patrolled, but they had their armored backs to Safi and Leopold, who now hurried for a nearby alley.
Once they were cloaked in shadows again, Leopold whispered, “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Safi said, and it was true. She still sensed no significant increase in the shivers at her heart; they remained easy to ignore as long as she kept moving.