Blinking the flash from his vision, Idrian reached that other door and wrenched it open. Even with his sightglass he could only really see vague shapes: tools hanging from the walls, a massive hopper of some kind, a great furnace. He stuck his hand in the hopper, running his fingers through what felt like chunks of coal before it dawned on him: this was the palace furnace room. It smelled dusty, perhaps completely disused. He found the coal chute, but the latch was chained securely.
He felt his way to the furnace, with a door big enough he barely had to duck through it.
And looked up at a chimney. It was narrow and dark, ascending for a very long time but there, at the very top, he could see stars.
He could imagine the newspapers back home: BREACHER IDIOT DIES AFTER GETTING STUCK IN A DUKE’S CHIMNEY. There would be crude jokes. The Ironhorns would never live down the shame. Demir would pretend to have never known him. Piss on all of them, he thought. He lifted himself to a lip immediately above the firebox and was struck by sudden claustrophobia. He forced himself to push through it.
Here went nothing.
Bracing arms and legs carefully, Idrian began to climb his way upward. The chimney walls were dusty rather than properly dirty, lending credence to his idea that the whole thing was disused. Soon he could smell smoke. Had someone lit a fire under him? He stopped long enough to look. No flame. It was probably from the stables. The chimney narrowed very slightly as he climbed, causing his claustrophobia to grow. He was forced to pull in his arms and legs but still exert enough strength to keep himself from falling. Despite all his forgeglass his whole body trembled with the effort. Muscles burned like they hadn’t in years.
Idrian’s head bumped into something. He paused, breath held, and carefully looked up. He was at the top, and he only had to push past a narrow lip to squeeze his way out through the opening. The roll of sheepskin caught on the lip and for half a moment he thought he would lose the cinderite – and then he was free.
He pulled himself into a sitting position on top of the smokestack and appraised the situation: he was on top of one of the palace turrets, balanced precariously some sixty feet in the air. He could see what felt like forever in every direction with the lights of Grent and Ossa to his east and the rest of the delta spreading out to his south and west. There was a fleet way out there where the delta met the ocean. Probably Kerite’s mercenaries. If Idrian survived this, he would be fighting them in a couple of days. A shadow passed beneath the moon; a speck of an animal soaring through the night.
“That,” he whispered to himself, “is a big bat.”
Sound beneath him brought Idrian back to the present. There were voices, and then the flash of lights. They’d found his exit. Idrian fished into the sack of grenades and pulled one out at random.
Green for big boom, as Mika liked to say. Perfect. He pulled the string and dropped it.
The explosion caused the entire building to shudder violently. Idrian’s stomach lurched into his throat. He clung to the stone until he was certain he hadn’t just blown up the entire tower, then let out a long shaky breath and wasted no more time. He dropped to the roof, slid down the copper shingles, and then leapt across a gap to a windowsill one floor below.
How his arms and legs managed to carry him down without failing, dropping one floor at a time until he reached the ground, Idrian did not know. When he did hit the ground, he might have fallen to his knees to kiss the solid earth if not for a nearby shout.
“There he is! Rouse the troops!”
Muscles feeling like they’d been run through a washerwoman’s wringer, Idrian began to sprint downhill. A musket blast went off, then another, then another. Bullets whizzed overhead and thumped into the dirt around him as he silently prayed that the darkness would continue to foul their aim. He ran straight through the center of the camp on the ducal hillside, and could see soldiers climbing out of their tents to respond to the call of alarm, looks of surprise as Idrian passed them. One ill-advised young soldier tried to leap into Idrian’s way. Idrian lowered his shoulder and plowed over the poor bastard.
Idrian leapt a row of sandbags, crossed an artillery battery filled with small cannons, and then threw himself off a twenty-foot drop. He hit the ground hard enough to stagger, his legs buckling and finally giving out. He tripped, fell off another smaller drop, and twisted his body so as not to land on the cinderite. The landing knocked the wind out of him, only his forgeglass protecting him from a broken ankle or worse.
He had not yet caught his breath when he heard the sound of hoofbeats.
Would these pissing Grent not let up? He looked to see that he was nearly at the bottom of the ducal hill, probably less than fifty feet from the ring of trees that marked the no-man’s-land between armies. It was an easy jog, except that several squads of dragoons were riding toward him hard from the side. They would be on him in moments.
Idrian reached for his sword, remembered that he didn’t actually have it, and then fled toward the trees as fast as his tired legs could carry him. He was completely spent, and despite all his forgeglass would not beat the dragoons in a contest of speed. Without slowing, the dragoons drew their carbines. They would pepper him with bullets and then run him down. Sloppy, but effective.
The tree line of the park suddenly erupted in thunder and flame. Half the dragoons went down among the screaming of men and horses. Idrian stared at them for several moments, confused, before he heard his name shouted from the underbrush. He could see figures there, and then heard a shouted order to fire. Thunder and flame erupted once again, dropping even more of the dragoons. Those that hadn’t already fallen turned and fled.
Limping, still wary of any infantry nearby, Idrian made it to the tree line.
He found Tadeas and Valient waiting for him with over a hundred soldiers. They didn’t bother waiting for him to catch his breath before the whole group began an immediate withdrawal. Tadeas grabbed Idrian by the arm, pulling him along. They were soon out of the trees and back among the townhouses, where bewildered Ossan sentries watched them breeze their way back to camp. When they arrived, Idrian found Braileer waiting for him with a worried expression.
Idrian waved him off and collapsed in the street, panting.
“Well,” Tadeas demanded, “did you get it?”
Idrian gave him a flat look and unslung the sheepskin from his back, shoving it into Tadeas’s hands. “As long as it didn’t break in my fall back there, yes.”
“Did you, uh, light the palace on fire?” Valient asked, staring past Idrian back toward the ducal palace. Idrian glanced that way to see smoke and light. There was a lot of screaming coming from that direction. Part of him felt a little guilty – there was a lot of art in that undercroft – but another part of him realized he couldn’t hear children’s laughter.
“Mika will be proud,” he replied. “I dropped her biggest grenade right down the duke’s chimney. Tadeas, start coming up with excuses. I imagine General Stavri’s staff will have a lot of questions for us come morning.”
22
In an ideal situation, Thessa would have waited for several weeks before attempting to steal back the phoenix channel schematics. She would have gotten to know the guards, the other prisoners, and their habits. She would have a better grasp of Craftsman Magna’s personality. She might have even made several casual forays into the administration building just so she knew the layout.