In the few weeks since she’d arrived, Wren had watched Isabel become more detached and distant, often waking in the night screaming, then crying quietly. More than anything, Wren wanted to help her, but she didn’t know how, and Isabel had begun to withdraw, seeming to spend as little time with her as possible. She told herself that Isabel was afraid she might lose control and hurt her, that she was just trying to protect her the only way she knew how, but that didn’t take away the loneliness and isolation she felt.
She had just added a length of rope to her hidden cache of equipment when she heard an odd noise, muffled and distant. She froze, listening intently, holding her breath until she heard it again. Very quietly, she tiptoed across the room, away from the light of day streaming through the door she’d left ajar and into the shadows. She heard it again, coming from the corner of the room. Holding her breath, she crept closer until she walked on a section of floor that felt different.
Searching the darkness on hands and knees, she found a trapdoor. She pulled on the ring, gently at first, then harder when it didn’t budge, and then with all her might. All at once it broke free and she fell backward, knocking her wind out and leaving her sitting on the floor struggling for breath. When she was finally able to draw air, she nearly vomited from the fetid and rotting stench emanating from the hole in the floor.
She sat still for several minutes, regaining her breath and listening. The noise she’d heard didn’t come again, but the passage she’d found was an opportunity she couldn’t afford to pass up. As unpleasant as it smelled, whatever lay below might be the best chance she had for discovering a way out of the city. That task had been ever in the back of her mind-find a way to escape.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the faint glow of green lichen growing on the walls of the shaft provided just enough light to make out the ladder leading down into the stench. Fear crept into her mind, poisoning her resolve with all manner of foul possibilities, but she set it aside, choosing instead to remember Isabel’s lesson on courage. They needed a way out … she couldn’t abandon that necessity out of fear.
She tested the first rung and it held, then the second. Slowly, testing each rung before committing her full weight to it, she descended into the bowels of the city. The putrid air burned her eyes and turned her stomach, but she held her course until she reached the last rung and stepped onto a ledge that ran along a canal filled nearly full with slow-moving sewage. The light offered by the glowing lichen wasn’t enough to see by, so she picked a direction and began to feel her way along the wall. When she heard a noise echoing from behind her, she reversed course, her heart hammering in her head and her breath so loud in her chest that she was sure it would give her away.
In the dark, she couldn’t be certain of her direction but she thought she must be moving toward the city wall, and it seemed that she was following the flow of sewage, though it was difficult to tell because it moved so slowly.
When the wall she had been following abruptly disappeared, she stopped in her tracks, straining to see in the dark, then feeling for the wall and finding that the passage had turned, or perhaps intersected with another, though she couldn’t be certain. Cautiously, she reached out with her foot and found cold, hard stone. After several minutes of feeling her way in the dark, she found a bridge across a smaller canal that fed into the long canal she’d been following. Not long after that, she saw light … not the eerie light produced by the lichen, but white light.
She slowed her pace even further, focusing on moving without a sound, stopping when she heard voices. One was raspy and hoarse, the other merely a whisper. Light was coming from an open door in the passage wall. She crept closer, reaching the doorframe and peeking around with one eye. There were two figures standing in a small room with several large levers and hand-crank wheels set into one wall.
The first was a man wearing a Regency uniform with the rank of captain. He was holding a lantern. Wren edged an inch further and froze in fear when she saw the other figure. She was hunchbacked, leaning heavily on a stout cane with an oversized hand covered in scales, hooked bone spurs protruding from each knuckle. Her head was oversized and looked as if it had been sculpted from wax and then just slightly melted on one side, creating a hideous deformity. Warts and sores pocked her face and a forked tongue darted between her lips when she spoke.
“Lady Reishi is of no consequence … for the time being, anyway,” she said, her voice raspy as if it took a great effort to speak. “Kill the princess and bring me the black box she carries.”
“Yes, Lady Druja,” the man whispered, bowing respectfully to her. “Would you like her to suffer?”
“Yes, but it isn’t necessary,” Druja said. “Of utmost importance is that she not be allowed to open that box for Phane. Also, take care to avoid being caught.”
“I understand. Do you have any other tasks for me?” he asked, his eagerness to please such a creature beyond understanding to Wren.
“I would meet this Wizard Enu,” Druja said, “but not yet. For now, watch his movements, identify his patterns of behavior and learn his habits. Once I know his routine, it will be a simple matter to place myself in his path.”
“As you wish.”
“Go now, and close the door,” Druja said, turning away from him. He bowed deeply.
Wren withdrew into the shadows, panic welling up in her chest. She crouched in the dark, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t notice her … and he didn’t, turning away from her and lighting his way down the narrow ledge, opposite from the way she’d come.
Wren was torn, fear told her to retrace her steps, return to Isabel and tell her about what she’d heard. Isabel would know what to do. But another part of her told her to follow the man. Isabel had said that she should make her own decisions, base them on rational thought, especially when she was afraid. She was afraid now. After a brief internal struggle, she set out to follow the man, staying well behind him but keeping the light of his lantern in sight.
He seemed to know where he was going, turning this way and that, crossing over a narrow bridge at one point before coming to a ladder leading to the surface. Wren waited until he’d ascended into the shaft before hurrying to catch up.
She reached the base of the ladder just in time to hear him slide the sewer grate back into place, then she waited for the sound of footsteps before she started climbing, nearly falling when she trusted a rung without testing it first and it gave way. She clung to the ladder, her heart pounding and her breathing heavy while she struggled to regain her courage. After a few moments, she continued until she reached the grate. Only then did she discover that it was heavy, too heavy to lift with her arms, especially at such an awkward angle.
Her mind raced. The man was getting away. If she didn’t reach the street soon, she would lose him and someone-no, not just someone-a princess would die. She wasn’t sure why the distinction seemed to matter, but it did. She tested the rungs at the top and found them sturdy, then braced her back against the grate and pushed up. It lifted a little. With a heave, she raised it a few inches further and twisted her shoulders, sliding it off her back.
She emerged in an alley between two buildings occupying one block. Looking this way and that, she saw several boot prints leading away from the sewer grate, fading with each successive step. She raced out to the street looking for the man and found him rounding the corner a block away. She ran after him. A soldier frowned at her, scrutinizing her closely before deliberately looking away. She turned the corner and slowed to a walk, her quarry only half a block ahead.