I looked down at Ji-yeong.
“Oh, no.” Ji-yeong put up both hands and stepped away. “I am not doing this again.” She backed out of the doorway, turned, and ran.
Crystal gave me a look with eyebrows raised. “I see you’ve displayed your usual talent for making friends.”
“What happened with her?” Anne asked.
I started down the stairs. “Not now, all right?”
The shadows kept searching, but there weren’t quite enough yet to cover the whole keep and we made it down to the basement. I yanked the door shut behind us and we were in the tunnels.
“How did you find this place?” Anne asked, looking around.
“I got lucky,” I said, conscious of Crystal’s eyes on me. I looked at her. “Sagash is using the shadows to seal up the keep, right? How long do we have before he figures out we’re not there?”
“Five to ten minutes.”
“He’ll have sent another group to the front gate,” Anne said.
“I assume your way out involves the back door,” I told Crystal.
“Fortunately, yes,” Crystal said. “I suggest we go a little farther from the keep’s wards before gating.”
“You know, Ji-yeong thought you didn’t have any gate stones for the keep.”
“Ji-yeong is an apprentice.”
I led the way through the tunnels, the white flicker of my torch marking our path. Crystal followed and Anne dropped back, keeping Crystal between us. I was sure Crystal didn’t miss the subtext, but she didn’t say anything. Crystal wasn’t the only thing on my mind—I’d told the blink fox to find a place with a view of the exits and wait. Right now, the keep exits would be swarming with shadows. An obedient person would sit and watch. But someone who was used to thinking for themselves would see the shadows, decide that no one was getting out that way, and go looking for the one route that they knew did work . . .
We’d reached one of the choke points, where I’d had to squeeze past the remains of a rockfall on the way in. Something in the futures drew my attention, and as I tilted the torch beam down I saw a flash of amber eyes. “We should be far enough,” I told Crystal. “Put the portal there.” I pointed to the middle of the corridor. “I’ll check for where we’ll be coming out. Anne, you’re on lookout.”
I saw Anne’s eyes drift behind me. To her eyes, I knew the blink fox would be a beacon of life in the darkness. “Just watch for Sagash and his apprentices,” I said, putting a little emphasis on the words. “I’ll handle everything else.”
Anne gave me a look, then nodded. Crystal had been taking a small item from a hidden pocket. If she’d noticed Anne’s instant of hesitation, she didn’t show it. “Is our destination safe?”
“Well, I guess that depends on where you keyed that stone, doesn’t it?”
“If this gate is going to open into a pack of shadows, it would be helpful to know in advance.”
“I won’t be able to tell until closer to the time,” I said. Which was actually true. “Trust me, if your spell’s about to get us killed, I’ll make sure you don’t finish.”
Crystal raised her eyebrows, then turned and began focusing on the gate stone. Behind my back I held up a palm towards the blink fox, then one finger, then made a beckoning motion before taking my hand away. I knew it was smart enough to understand speech; I hoped it was smart enough to understand sign language. I didn’t turn around to look, but I sensed the fox draw back slightly.
Crystal’s gate spell was under way; there was no visible light but I could see the portal beginning to form. Her spellcasting was precise, controlled . . . better than mine, in fact, at least when it came to gates, which was mildly irritating. I let that annoyance occupy the front of my mind, using it as a shield to mask what I was really thinking.
I hadn’t forgotten that Anne and I were standing within arm’s reach of someone who not only had tried to kill us both multiple times but would do it again with roughly the same level of concern that most people give to clipping their nails. Crystal was standing only a few feet away with her back turned. My hand was only inches from the hilt of Ji-yeong’s shortsword. Very distantly, at a level of my mind that I did not allow myself to focus on, I was aware of how easy it would be to take a step forward, yank her head back as I brought up the sword—
I forced the thought away. Not yet.
The gate was forming and I focused. As the future in which the gate materialised became closer, I checked what would happen if I stayed put, went through it, moved left and right. “Clear,” I said just before Crystal finished and the oval portal appeared in the corridor, filling the dark tunnel with sunlight.
Crystal moved to the gate, looking to either side. Through it I could see the walls of a stone room, sunlight painting the floor. Crystal began to step through and I followed instantly, beckoning behind my back as I did. I felt a flicker of space magic, almost lost in the more powerful signal of the gate, as something blinked through the portal and out of sight.
We came down into a windowed room with dust motes floating in the air, a double circle of dark green stone set into the floor. “You don’t need to follow quite so closely,” Crystal said over her shoulder as Anne stepped through behind us.
“Just making sure.” It was the next gate I was worried about. I couldn’t let Crystal use it first; in fact, I didn’t want her to be the one opening the gate at all. Too easy for her to let it close while I was halfway through. “Anne? This the place?”
Anne nodded. As Crystal let the gate close behind us, Anne moved to the window and looked out, shading her eyes. “Alex?”
I already knew what I was going to see, but even so, viewing it with my own eyes gave me a chill. There was a swarm of black dots in the sky. I tried to imagine how long we’d last if that many shadows landed on us, and quickly stopped imagining. “Crystal? Does Sagash know that you know about this place?”
“I imagine we’ll find out within the next few minutes.”
“Guys?” Anne said, “I don’t want to rush, but about fifty of those shadows just started heading this way.”
Crystal walked back to where we were standing and held out a fluted rod. She’d drawn it out without my noticing. “I hope you brought a gate stone to an outside location.”
I looked back at her for a second, then shook it off, took the rod, and went through my pockets for my gate stones. My shop, the safe house, the park . . . I didn’t want Crystal near anywhere I lived. I held the rod and the stone to Anne. “Here.”
“Keep it touching the end of the rod,” Crystal said. “The encoding will do the rest.” She seemed quite unconcerned. What are you up to?
Anne moved to the green circle and started focusing on the gate stone, keeping the rod touched to it. You don’t realise how much of a hassle it is to try to get around wards until you finally use the right key. Green light welled up around her hands, and I could already see the gate starting to form; Anne knew this castle very well and the gate stone was doing the rest. Looking ahead, I knew that the shadows were on their way, but they wouldn’t make it in time. For the first time I started to let myself believe that we might actually make it out.
I couldn’t see the fox, but without turning to look I knew it had moved around to behind us, hiding in the doorway. It would be able to teleport straight through. A green-ringed oval was forming in front of Anne, the portal becoming opaque, and I moved forward casually, placing myself in front of Crystal. Crystal didn’t seem to notice.
The gate flickered . . . and opened. Leafy branches and green grass showed through the portal, a cool breeze blowing through. It wasn’t so very different from the greener areas of the castle, but it meant everything to me, and the sight of the world outside the shadow realm was a rush. I jumped through, coming down on grass, and into the beams of sunlight that came down through the leaves above. The hum of traffic sounded through the trees, and I could hear distant voices from outside the park. We were in London again, and I felt light-headed with relief. Just for an instant, my guard wasn’t up.