“Saltlick?” I asked.
“Easie!” Saltlick greeted me with such casual good cheer that we might as well have chanced upon each other in the street. He easily shouldered the beam aside, thrust out an arm to hold a leaning hunk of wall in place. The door opened a little further, then came to rest once more, this time against Saltlick’s foot. More stones bounced down to glance off his back, but he hardly seemed to notice.
There came a scrabbling from the shadows behind him. A moment later, Estrada ducked beneath his outstretched arm and brushed past me. She acknowledged me with a terse, “Damasco,” and called back, “Hurry, before it all collapses!”
There followed a stream of indistinct figures. First came Navare, who greeted me with a quick nod before hurrying on. Of the rest, half were in guardsmen’s uniforms, men I dimly recognised, and the rest were obviously Mounteban’s freebooters, looking powerfully disgruntled with the company they’d found themselves in. Every fourth or fifth man carried a lantern, so that the passage was soon bright with ruddy light.
“All right. Now you, Saltlick,” said Estrada.
I realised, suddenly, what was about to happen… but too late. Even as I let go of the lever, even as I flung myself forward, Saltlick was in the gap. I came up hard against his leg, bounced backwards. As he crammed himself through the too-small opening, dust billowed round him. Loose bricks tumbled past his feet, piling in the diminishing gap. Beyond the door, it sounded as if the entire barracks was settling to fill the hole that Saltlick had vacated.
“No!” The door was still open a crack, but I didn’t think for a moment that I could squeeze through — or if I could, get past the rubble on the other side. “No no no!” When Saltlick only hung his head contritely, I rounded on Estrada. “This wasn’t our deal!”
“Fine. I’m sorry, Damasco,” she said calmly, “but what’s done is done, and you might as well make the best of it.”
Did I detect that familiar look in her eye? That look that said, I know you better than you know yourself, so why not just let me decide what happens? “You planned this!” I hissed. “You want me dragged into this ridiculous expedition of yours.”
“Why would I possibly want that?” Estrada asked — and before I could begin to formulate an answer, she’d set off to catch the buccaneers and guardsmen, who’d already pressed on without us.
“I’m leaving,” I muttered. “First chance I get. I won’t be pressganged into another of your suicide attempts.”
In the immediate future, however, I had no desire to be left amidst the rapidly descending darkness. I hurried after Estrada, just as my exhausted lantern sputtered out the last of its life. As Saltlick shuffled behind me, bent almost to hands and knees by the low ceiling, I heard a crunch that could only have been its annihilation beneath a giant foot.
When I drew near to Estrada, she glanced back and said, “When you were making all that noise, Damasco, you said someone was coming. Did you mean the Palace Guard?”
Amidst the horror of realising I was caught up in another of Estrada’s hare-brained schemes, I’d almost forgotten the far more immediate danger. “I gave them the slip,” I lied, “but it won’t take them much effort to pick up my trail.”
“And Lunto and his men?”
“I don’t know.” Not quite a lie this time, though I had a fair idea. The likelihood of them fighting their way free from a palace full of highly trained soldiers was remote, to say the least. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that — not to Estrada, not even to myself. “I’m sure they’re fine. You know Alvantes.”
“So what went wrong?” she asked.
Yet again, my brain automatically resisted the honest answer; it was the suspicion in her voice that changed my mind. Just because she was right, it didn’t make her assumption that it was my fault any less insulting. “A misunderstanding,” I said. “To do with a few of the Prince’s personal effects finding their way into my possession. I could have explained it easily enough if anyone had cared to listen, and if Alvantes hadn’t started swinging his sword around.”
“Oh Damasco, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I snapped. “Commit a victimless… I won’t even use the word crime. A redistribution of no-longer-required wealth.”
“I thought you were past all that,” Estrada said, sounding more sad than angry.
A part of me wanted to explain my motives in precise and comprehensive detail, to point out how her meddling had done nothing but bring the Castoval to the edge of ruin, to propound my new understanding that so-called heroism brought nothing but trouble for all concerned. But even if she listened, what good would it do? “It seems you were wrong,” I replied sullenly.
Estrada shook her head — and the disappointment in that gesture cut me more than I’d have imagined it could. Then, as if she’d already dismissed me from her thoughts, she called to the next figure in line, who happened to be one of Alvantes’s buccaneers, “We need to hurry. We have company down here.”
He made some sullen reply, grunted to the man before him. It barely passed for language, but it had the desired effect. Seconds later, as whatever message he’d passed forward reached the end of the line, the entire column picked up pace. Estrada matched her speed to the man ahead and I did my best to keep up.
It didn’t take us long to reach the junction. I’d almost expected to see our assailants closing from the direction of the palace, or at least the distant glow of their torches; but the only lights were those of Estrada’s party, melting the blackness of the branch to our left into wavering pools of honey and amber. Given how straight the passage ran, the lack of any sign of pursuit meant we had a respectable lead — or that the palace guardsmen had given up altogether.
If I’d assumed that might be enough to make Estrada slacken our pace, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Whether she was erring on the side of caution or whether, as I came to suspect, she was simply punishing me, she let our column keep up its unreasonable speed. Soon my sides were burning once again and my breath coming in shudders; but the guardsmen showed no signs of flagging, Mounteban’s buccaneers seemed unconcerned, and Estrada herself wasn’t so much as short of breath. Of course, none of them had endured the travails I’d already been through that day. I had every right to be exhausted, and it was only stubbornness that kept me from pleading with her.
As it happened, however, it wasn’t me who eventually brought us to a halt. Estrada glanced over her shoulder for the first time since we’d left the junction, perhaps beginning to doubt whether our pursuers existed outside of my imagination. “Wait,” she called. “Everyone, wait!”
Relieved as I was, I couldn’t imagine what could possibly warrant a full stop — until I turned and saw that Saltlick wasn’t behind us.
For one strange moment, it seemed as if he’d vanished altogether. It was only when I concentrated that I realised a patch of the distant darkness was lumbering towards us. As Saltlick drew closer, as the lanterns illuminated his hulking form, it became more and more clear why he’d been lagging. He was bent double by the low ceiling, almost crawling on hands and knees. He looked miserably uncomfortable, and the rough walls and ceiling had lashed scratches across his arms and head.
“Oh, Saltlick! Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t keep up?” Estrada asked him.
His look of horror at the very prospect was all the answer she needed. Saltlick was always the dependable one; it was against his nature to be the cause of problems, however small. Now here he was, placing us all in jeopardy and not able to do a thing about it.