Tuli raised her brows but said nothing. With a challenging grin and a flirt of her hand at Rane’s warning growl, she went out.
The big heavy door opened more easily than she expected and she almost fell down the front steps. Of course it’s cleared, she thought. Don’t be an idiot like Nilis. The norit came through, didn’t he? Pull yourself together, girl, and act like you know what you’re doing. She put her hands in her pockets and looked around as casually as she could.
The streets had been cleared of snow sometime during the day. The clouds hung low overhead and a few flakes were drifting down, caught for a moment in the fan of light coming from the hall behind her, enough snow to speckle the dark wet stone with points of ephemeral white, promise of a heavier fall to come. She waited there for several minutes, oppressed by the cold and the silence. There was no one about as far as she could see; not even her nightsight could find what wasn’t there. If there was danger, it was hidden behind the gloomy facades fronting the narrow street. I could use Teras’s gong, she thought. Maiden bless, I wish he was here. She looked around again and went back in.
Rane was waiting just inside the front door, tense and alert; she relaxed as soon as she saw Tuli, but shook her head when Tuli started to speak. When they were back in the stable beside that cumbersome body, she said, “Any vermin about?”
“None that I saw.” Tuli shrugged. “Late, cold, wet, starting to snow again, who else but us’d be idiots enough to leave a warm bed?”
“Good enough. Get his feet.”
Tuli went shuffling along, panting under the growing weight of the dead norit’s legs. She would have sworn that they’d gained a dozen pounds since they’d started. Conscious always of what they carried, she tensed at every corner and that tired her more. The cold crept into the toes of her boots and stabbed needles into her feet; the flakes blown against her face and down her neck melted and trickled into the crevices of her body, the icy water burning like fire. The wind was a squealing blast, sometimes battering at her, sometimes circling round her like a sniffing sicamar when the buildings protected them from its full force. She wondered why the streets were clear of snow, then remembered her own wretched time in the Cymbank House of Repentance where they tried to wear her spirit away by making her scrub and rescrub a section of hallway (until she threw the dirty water over the matron in charge after she’d made disparaging remarks about her mother). She grinned at the memory and felt a bit better. She decided the Followers didn’t seem to have much imagination; they probably worked those they wanted to punish in some lesser way than flogging, making them dig up and carry off the snow. She could see herds of sullen folk tromping through the streets filling barrows of the soggy white stuff and wheeling them out in an endless line to dump them in the river. Or somewhere. After a minute, she grinned again as she thought of the Carthise having enough of this endless and futile labor, turning on the Followers and dumping them instead of snow into the river, but the cold sucked away that brief glow and she was stumbling along, miserable again.
. Her feet slipped and nearly went out from under her if she didn’t set them down carefully; once the stiffening legs she held saved her from crashing. The snow was coming down faster; Rane was little more than a shadow before her. Tuli felt herself a shade, a being without substance, a conductor of the lower levels of Shayl, ferrying unblessed dead to their torment. She walked grimly on, half-blinded, concentrating most of her will on feet she could no longer feel. Then Rane turned into a narrow alley between two large buildings, solidly black, melting into the black of the strengthening storm. The sudden cessation of the wind’s howl, the withdrawal of its numbing pressure, made her footsteps boom in her ears and her face burn as if the skin was ready to peel off the bone. She started shaking, fought to control it, but could not; it was all she could do to keep her hold on the corpse’s legs.
Rane halted, shrugged off the sack, dropped the corpse’s shoulders, dragging the legs from Tuli’s grip, pulling her onto her knees. While the ex-meie knelt before a small heavy door and started work on the lock, Tuli crouched beside her listening to the faint clicks of the lockpicks. She wiped carefully at her nose, pulled off one of her gloves and used the knitted liner to wipe the wet from her face and neck, still shivering.
Rane stood, waved at the black gape. “Get in,” she said. “Ramp going down. Don’t fall off it.”
“What about him?”
“Never mind him. Here.” She pressed a firestriker into Tuli’s hand. “See if you can get a lamp lit.”
“Lamp?”
“On the wall by the door at the far end.”
The lamplight was a soft, rich amber, but there was only a fingerwidth of oil left in the reservoir. Tuli suspected they were lucky to find that much since this subterranean chamber looked as bare and deserted as the stables where they’d first come in. She watched Rane roll the corpse down the ramp, leave it sprawled at the bottom, dumping the sack beside it. Her nose was red and beginning to peel a little, her face was windburnt and strained. She came over to Tuli, cupped a hand under her chin and lifted her face to the light. “You’re a mess.”
Tuli moved her head away. “You’re not much better. I’m all right.”
Rane frowned at her. “I’ve got no business dragging you into this. Hal was right.” She pulled off her cap and shook the snow from it. “If I had the least sense in my head, I’d have sent you back the night we left.”
“I wouldn’t have gone,” Tuli said flatly.
“Dragged you then.”
Tuli glared at her. “I won’t melt,” she said. “Or blow away, I’ve seen winter before.”
“From a well-provisioned house with fires on every floor.” Rane touched her nose absently, quick little dabs, her eyes unfocused as if she was unaware of what she was doing. Then she shrugged. “It’s done.”
“Yah. What is this place?”
“Warehouse, part of a merchant’s home complex. Usually isn’t this empty, but I took a chance it would be. Not much trade the past few months.” She went quickly to the wall that fronted the street and began feeling along it. Tuli got to her feet and started walking about. It was appreciably warmer in this long narrow cellar, but the air had a used-up stale smell. She waved her arms about, wiggled her fingers, did a few twisting bends. Sitting down had been a mistake, she’d known it as soon as she was down, could feel her muscles seizing up as the minutes passed. She watched Rane fumbling about the wall, cursing under her breath as she sought the trigger that would let them back into the ancient dry sewerway.
Then Rane hissed with triumph and tore the panel open. She came striding back, thrust her arm through the strap of the sack, blew Tuli along before her to the corpse and swept on to haul his shoulders up and wait impatiently for Tuli to lift the feet.
Crawling on hands and knees they dragged the body through the long dark hole. In an odd way, Tuli found it easier hauling him where she couldn’t see him, not even with her special sight. Now there was only the stiff feel of wooden flesh wrapped in heavy wool. She could pretend it was something else she was helping to drag over the bricks. She had no idea where they were going, but plenty of confidence in Rane. Owl-eyes, Rane had called her once. Only a few months ago? So much had happened since, it seemed like several lifetimes. Moth, Rane called her now. She liked that, she liked the image, great-eyed winged creature swooping through the night, she liked the affection she heard in the way Rane said it.