Denson twisted the door lever sideways, and something heavy thudded into place inside the door. “Out the back door,” Denson said, hurrying on down the corridor. “Horses up there.”
“I’ll freeze,” Karl said, remembering the last time he had been marched barefoot through the snow. “I need boots at least, a coat-”
“You’ll be lucky if I leave you your head, you mewling piece of MageLord filth,” Denson growled. “I don’t care if your balls freeze off.” They’d reached the end of the hallway. Denson pulled open that door, revealing the room where Karl had found him playing cards with Jopps the day he’d arrived. A man Karl hadn’t met stood behind the overturned table, a crossbow leveled at the door. He lowered it at the sight of Denson and the Prince. “What’s-” he began.
“Royal rutting guards,” Denson said. He turned and slammed the door shut, then lowered a heavy oak bar across it. “Time to get the hell out. Where’s Spilk?”
The man with the crossbow jerked his head up. “Went up to watch the exit. Haven’t heard anything.”
“Then there’s still a chance. If you have to fight,” he said to the man with the crossbow, “watch for spells. Someone stops moving, gets a distant look like he’s taking a shit, shoot him. They got Lazy with a melonbreaker. Head came apart like rotting fruit.” He stared up the ladder leading to a hidden exit high above on the top of the hill. “If it was Jopps,” he said almost to himself, “they’re going to be waiting up there. Waiting for the first head to show itself…” He turned to the crossbowman. “Give me your helmet.”
“What-?”
“Give it to me!” Denson barked. The crossbowman hesitated, then slipped it off and handed it to him. Denson turned and jammed it onto Karl’s head, almost taking his right ear off. Breaking noises came from the other side of the barred door. Denson grunted. “Didn’t take them long.” He pointed up. “Climb. You stick your head out first and we’ll see if you keep it.”
“But-”
“If they’re out there, you royal turd, then Spilk is already dead and me and Riddler here ain’t long for this world. But I’ll still count it a good night if they kill their precious Prince trying to rescue him. Now climb, or I’ll shove this sword up your lily-white ass so far it’ll snick out your tonsils. Go!”
Terrified, Karl turned and started to climb.
The rusty iron rungs were cold beneath his feet, and once he had climbed a half dozen, he’d left the dim light of the guardroom behind him and moved upward through total darkness. The helmet, a size too small, squeezed his head so that he could feel his pulse pounding in his temples. The nightgown had come untied and flapped open around him, and the cold and the prospect of what lay ahead alike had his testicles trying to crawl inside his belly.
But he could do nothing but climb. Denson was behind him with sword in hand.
Suddenly he saw, over his head, a slightly less-dark circle within the black of the tunnel, a tinge of red to it. He slowed, then gasped as something sliced his heel, warm blood trickling from the wound. Denson wouldn’t let him stop. He could only go on.
With a deep breath and a prayer to the SkyMage he didn’t believe in, he poked his helmeted head up into the gray light, and suddenly everything happened at once.
He glimpsed half a dozen men, all guards, encircling the opening, saw a body lying in bloody snow just a few feet away-and then heard “Don’t! It’s the-” screamed at the same instant that blue light exploded all around his head, blinding him. There was a wet popping sound, and pieces of something wet struck his face and slid down it. He blinked, dazed but unhurt, then hands seized his shoulders and pulled him from the tunnel into the bitterly cold air.
“Down!” he heard Denson shout in the tunnel, then Riddler’s voice, “They’re underneath us, too!” and then an inferno of blue flame roared up from the tunnel behind him, followed by a plume of greasy black smoke… and then silence.
Someone was putting a heavy fur-lined leather cloak around Karl’s shoulders, someone else had found him boots, but Karl barely noticed. All he could see was the dead guard lying in blood-soaked snow just the other side of the secret exit, his headless body encircled by grisly bits of red, white, and gray.
Mother Northwind spent the day after Tagaza’s tragic death in her quarters, pleading fatigue. In fact, she was waiting: waiting for the magelink to come to life, with news of Brenna’s progress toward Goodwife Beth’s. Once Brenna was in the safe house, Mother Northwind thought with something approaching smugness, she could at last bid farewell for good to Lord Falk. After Kravon was dead, Verdsmitt was welcome to kill Falk, too, if he still wanted to-and she was pretty sure, after the speech Falk had “made” him make, that he still wanted to. Of course, by that time, if all went well, the Barriers would have collapsed and magic with them, and without his enchanted toys to help him, Verdsmitt would have to strangle Falk with his bare hands, but again, she thought he’d be willing to try.
As night fell, she began anticipating the call from the team collecting Brenna and Anton at Foam River. But the magelink did not activate.
Midnight came and went with no word, and at last, reluctantly, she decided she would risk magelinking to Goodwife Beth directly. She summoned the glowing blue globe, sent out the call… and got nothing in return. No link could be made.
She left the globe active so long that the temperature in the room dropped noticeably; then, shivering a little, she snapped it out of existence and moved closer to the fire.
What could have happened? Had they been forced to flee, move to a different safe house, Beth somehow prevented from taking the magelink-bracelet provided by Verdsmitt with her?
If that were the case, she might not hear anything for days, until someone managed to get a message to her through the Common Cause network of cells and sympathizers. She might get a knock in the middle of the night, a scrawled note slipped under her door… or she might not, if the message or messenger went awry. She’d be right where Falk was, wondering where Karl and Brenna were.
Frustrated and beginning to be worried, she went to bed. In the morning, there did indeed come a knock on the door. She hobbled to it and opened it to find a liveried servant holding a silver tray with a card on it. “Your pardon, milady,” he said formally. “The Honorable Lord Falk, Minister of Public Safety, requests your presence at dinner tonight in the Prince’s Banquet Hall. I am to tell you that the entire King’s Council will also be present.”
Mother Northwind was astonished, and a little horrified. What on Earth can Falk be thinking? she thought. He’s always kept me in the shadows. Why is he dragging me out to a formal dinner with the King’s Council, of all people?
Her first instinct was to say “No.” But… until she knew for certain where Brenna and the Prince were, she needed Falk, which meant putting up with his arrogance, his assumption that she was just a useful tool-a powerful, dangerous tool, but still a tool. A tool, she thought, does not refuse to be used.
And then she smiled a little. Besides, it would be interesting to see the Councillors. They wouldn’t recognize in her the much younger Healer Makala, who had once lived in the Palace and tended all of them at one time or another. She imagined herself, in the middle of the dinner, shouting, “I’ve seen you all naked!” Her smile turned to a chuckle. “Tell Lord Falk,” she said, still chuckling-the servant very carefully not reacting to that no-doubt unexpected response-“that I am honored by the invitation and will attend with pleasure.”
“Yes, milady.”
“And don’t call me milady,” Mother Northwind said. “I’m not yours, and I’m definitely not a lady.” And then she shut the door on the servant’s bemused face.