Pjerin gripped his son's chin between thumb and forefinger. "You are no longer the due. Do you understand?"
The small chest heaved with the force of a second sigh. "Yes, Papa."
"So, what about the drain?" Annice prompted. "We have to get to Stasya, Pjerin. We have to get to her as soon as we can."
"Not that way. The drain exits under the road in full view of the gatetower. If Olina has someone on watch, we couldn't get to it without being seen."
"Even at night?"
"It wouldn't matter, Annice. They'd hear you trying to get in. There's a heavy iron grille and it's bolted right into the mountain."
"The third due's stonemason and smith installed it together," Bohdan explained. "It would take a stonemason at least to free it."
"Or a kigh," Annice said pointedly.
"Earth and stone are not the same thing."
"They are eventually. If that grille has been in place since the third Due, it's begun to wear. I can Sing it loose." She twisted around and glanced at the shuttered window, trying to judge how much of the night remained. Stasya had been six days in that pit. She wouldn't leave her there one day longer.
"Your Grace, while I recognize the necessity of your retaking the keep and rescuing the young bard, may I remind you that the drains are barely four feet around. You'll have to crawl up a steady slope through debris that will be unpleasant at best. And don't forget, you're wounded, without full use of both arms. Why not just show yourself to the people? Surely when they see you're alive…"
"Some of them may try to remedy the situation." Pjerin stood, lifting the makeshift sling over his head and tossing it down onto the table. "We don't know who, besides Lukas, Olina has corrupted. Gerek, I want you to stay here." Gerek began to protest but cut it off at his father's expression. "Annice, once you've freed the grille, can you make it back here without being seen?"
She stood as well. "I'm going in with you, Pjerin. After Stasya's out of the hole, you can be a hero on your own."
"No. You're not taking the baby into the drains. Do you realize what you'd be climbing through?"
"Nothing will touch the baby. I'll breathe through a damp cloth if it makes you happy, but I'm going with you."
"I won't allow it."
"You don't get in without me."
He glowered at her. "We haven't time to argue…"
"Then let's not."
They left the packs. Pjerin slung the Ducal sword across his back and Annice slid her flute case into the deep pocket of her overdress. As they slipped out into the night—Gerek glowering with Bohdan's hands clamped firmly on his shoulders—Sarline's hand flicked out in the sign against the kigh.
"Well?" Pjerin demanded, the force of his whisper lifting the hair around Annice's ear. "Can the kigh get it off."
Perched carefully on a shelf of kigh above the gully's highwater mark, Annice gave the grille another shake. While brute force might be able to bash the heavy iron free, it would be, as Pjerin had said, impossible to work quietly. As to whether the kigh could manage…
Fortunately, although the keep could hold the whole village in need, not many people actually lived within its walls and the area around the drain stank less than she'd feared. On the other hand, it still stank. Annice sucked a shallow breath through her teeth and very softly Sang a question to one of her attendant kigh.
"It's attracting their attention that takes the volume," she'd murmured to Pjerin as they'd hurried through the village. "And right at the moment, attracting their attention is hardly something I have to worry about."
The squat brown body with its pendulous breasts and bulge of belly disappeared and tiny gray figures—identical in every respect to the first kigh save in color and size—flickered beside each of the bolts.
Frowning, Annice pitched her voice for Pjerin's ears alone. "They can do it, but it's going to take a while."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes." She rubbed her fingertips over the exposed bones of the mountain. Stasya? Do you
know I'm here? "Apparently, no one's ever tried to influence nascent earth kigh before. I'll have to keep Singing in order to keep pulling them from the stone."
"Can you Sing so they don't hear you in the keep?"
Annice looked up, past the drain, over the lip of the gully to where the crenellation on the gate tower appeared like dark teeth against the stars. "I don't have a choice, do I?"
The Song was so quietly insistent that Pjerin felt almost compelled to drive his fingers into the rock and yank the bolts free himself. He locked his hands together and tried to listen for any sign they were discovered—tried not to listen to the Song.
Stone became earth, very, very slowly.
Pjerin waited as patiently as he could, glancing only occasionally toward the east where the bulk of the mountains hid the approaching dawn. It wasn't until the Song grew both softer and deeper that he realized that the coming of the sun was not the only thing that could defeat them.
Only three days before, Annice had Sung her voice to a rasping croak. It couldn't have fully healed. He thought about stopping her, then he thought about what would happen if Olina closed off the keep with him still outside, and he let her Sing on.
Annice could feel her voice sliding from her control as the pain became harder to ignore. She struggled to hold the Song, allowing it to drift into a lower key, whispering the same request over and over. Stasya had been in that pit for six days. There would not be a seventh. Finally, the whisper faded and the kigh, taller and darker than when she began but still very small, disappeared.
The sky behind the mountains had lightened to a hazy blue-gray.
Wrapping her hands around one of the heavy iron bars, Annice yanked at it with all her strength. Was that movement or had her imagination supplied what she so desperately desired? Adjusting her grip, she yanked again. It was movement, definitely movement. The bolts were loose but still a long way from free.
Turning to explain, she saw the expression on Pjerin's face and silently moved out of his way.
Bracing his feet on opposite sides of the pungent mud in the center of the gully, Pjerin threw his weight against the grille. Flakes of rust dug into his palms. The bolts rocked in their anchorage, but held.
Breath hissing through his teeth, he continued to pull. The veins stood out on his forearms, muscles knotted across his back. The new tissue closing the hole the crossbow bolt had left in his shoulder tore and it felt as though hot knives were twisting in the wound. He bit off the cry of pain, couldn't stop the sudden blurring of his vision.
Then over the roar of blood in his ears he heard a single low note throb in the stone.
The grille began to shake.
Slowly, the bolts began to pull free.
One inch. Two. A handbreadth.
Panting, Pjerin collapsed against the bars, drenched in sweat, muscles trembling. Forehead resting on his arm, he managed to turn in time to see Annice break down her flute and slip it back into its case. "I thought," he gasped, "that you had… to Sing the… kigh."
"You do." He had to strain to hear her. "But the right notes will call them." She swallowed, wincing as the motion wrenched abraded flesh. "I thought calling them back might make room around the bolts."
"Seems you were right." Grunting with pain, he straightened, shifted his stance, and made ready to pull again. A handbreadth's worth of space between the grille and the mountain would do them no good at all.
"Pjerin?" She poked at one sweat damp arm. "Wouldn't it make more sense to use a lever now?"