“I can get you out with my shroud, but we’ll have to wait for your front door to open. When will that happen next? It looks like supper’s already been delivered, although that isn’t your typical supper—”
“Florian’s got me on prison rations. Bread and cheese. My lady’s maid should be in later, but she’ll be looking to help me with my clothes. It’s not a great time to sneak out. Other than that, the door won’t open again until breakfast. But we can go out the secret way, if you can get past Legaciatti.”
“I got past the ones at your door. I came when they delivered your dinner. I was watching you sleep for a while.”
“Then I don’t see a problem,” said Rhianne. “Wait until dark and I’ll show you. In the meantime . . .” Her voice became small. “Will you lie here with me? Hold me?”
“Of course.” Janto stretched out on the couch and pulled her body into the crook of his own, handling her gingerly around her bandaged areas.
She sighed deeply, feeling safe and secure with his hard, solid warmth all around her, and tried not to think about the fact that these might be her last hours of contentedness.
Hours later, after Rhianne had packed her bag and dressed in a sensible syrtos for travel, she moved a chair in her bedroom and shifted a silk rug several feet to one side. Janto watched, his eyes full of questions.
“This is the tricky part,” she said, kneeling on the floor and working her fingers into a seam between two squares of the parquet floor. “Fingerholds. It’s easier to feel them than see them. Ah—here.” She lifted the entire wooden square out of the floor, leaving a hole that led to blackness.
Janto’s brows rose. “Where does it go?”
“Into the hypocaust,” said Rhianne. “You’ll see. I’m afraid it’s not pleasant in there.” She grabbed her bag and shoved it through the hole. Then she sat on the edge and slid in herself, landing lightly on her feet and wincing at the impact. Her head and shoulders stuck out of the hole.
Janto chuckled. “Not very deep, is it?”
“No. That’s part of why it’s not pleasant.” She ducked into the dark, sweltering tunnel, turned around, and sat. “Come down.”
Janto’s legs and torso appeared through the hole, blocking the small rectangle of light that shone in. Then he crouched and turned about, searching for her in the darkness.
“Here,” she called, igniting a ball of blue magelight.
His eyes met hers.
She crawled to him and pushed him lightly on the shoulder. “Move, please.”
Janto dropped to hands and knees and backed up, twisting his head in alarm when his foot encountered a stone wall.
Rhianne reached up through the trapdoor, found the square of parquet floor, and lowered it back into place. The last slivers of illumination from her bedroom disappeared, leaving them in darkness except for the ghostly blue magelight.
A second ball of magelight flared in front of Janto’s face. He eyed a massive heat-glow mounted on the floor. “How did you discover the trapdoor?”
She crawled past him on hands and knees. The wounds on her back flared with new pain at the movement, but she’d have to live with it for now. Once she was free of the palace, she’d find a Healer. “I didn’t discover it. I had it made. Follow me—you don’t want to get lost in here.”
A scrape of fabric on stone told her he was trailing after her. “And Florian doesn’t know about it?”
“No. I’ll tell you the story. As children, Lucien and I had a tendency to get into trouble—”
“You mentioned that,” said Janto.
“We’d done something, I forget what. Oh yes, we put fish in the baths as a prank on Lucien’s older brothers. As punishment, Florian forbade us to attend the Consualian Games. We’d been looking forward to the Games all season, and I was a newly minted mind mage who’d recently completed soulcasting. I was drunk on the power, and I wanted to show off. So Lucien and I came up with a scheme. A carpenter came to repair a cracked seam, and I used my magic to control him. I made him create that door. And then I made him forget he’d done it. It was wrong of me, illegal in fact, but I was a child and not terribly sensible or ethical. We had a fabulous time at the Games, sitting with the commoners and watching Florian up in his box, looking all stern and imperial.”
“The trapdoor seems to have paid off for you.”
Janto’s voice sounded a little hollow and distant, so she paused and waited for him to catch up. “Lucien and I sneaked out so many times together. That was before he went away to war and lost his leg. I never anticipated I’d use it for something like this.”
“Aren’t these tunnels a security risk? Shouldn’t the emperor be concerned about spies getting into them?”
She gave him a stern look over her shoulder. “Don’t get excited. The floors of the Imperial Palace are spelled to muffle sound, as are the walls, so you won’t hear anything through them. Aside from my trapdoor, there are no exits except the one used by the servants who change the glows. So the hypocaust is not the spy’s delight you think it is.”
She counted heat-glows, turned in the right places, and found the access tunnel. As the ceiling ascended, she stood, shaking her arms and legs to relieve cramped muscles. Behind her, Janto rose to his full height and brushed the dust from his clothes. He pointed to the door ahead. “That’s the exit?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the guards? Are they just on the other side?”
“No,” she said. “There’s a short hallway first. They’re at the intersection of that hallway and the larger one.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Janto headed for the door.
“Are you going to shroud us?”
“Already have. See the shimmer?” He eased the door open, peered out, and beckoned Rhianne through.
The two guards did not look in Rhianne’s direction as she came out the door, but they were so broad in body they took up the entire hallway. “We can’t get past them,” she whispered to Janto, who slipped out beside her.
“Not to worry,” he said, and gave the door a shove, angling it on its hinges to make it squeak.
The guards turned, suddenly alert. “Door’s open,” one of them said to the other.
The other rolled his eyes. “Well, shut it.”
The first guard walked toward the door.
Janto placed a hand on Rhianne’s shoulder and guided her first around the walking guard, then the stationary one. They left the palace through the slave entrance, and Rhianne took the lead, heading for the stables. She needed a horse for her journey, although she would not be able to keep Dice for long. All the horses in the stable were too imperial in appearance, too conspicuous. Also, she was secretly hoping she would need a second horse.
Janto had said nothing about going with her. He’d only said he would help her escape. She’d been afraid to ask if he would go with her, fearing she wouldn’t like the answer, but there was no getting around it. She had to just say the words. When they were almost to the stables, she stopped him. “Will you come with me?”
He blinked. “You mean run away?”
“Yes.”
His answer was a long time coming. “I can’t.”
“I know there’s risk involved, but . . .” She blew out her breath, trying to settle her nerves. “I love you, Janto. I want nothing more than a life with you. We can run so far away that Florian will never find us—even out of the country, to Sardos or Inya. You choose which.” She took his hands and looked him in the eye. “I don’t care if we’re poor. I don’t care if I’m not royalty. I just want to be with you.”
“Rhianne . . .” He squeezed her hand, and he looked so sad that she knew his answer was not going to be the one she wanted. She felt the tears starting. He folded her trembling body into his arms. “What sort of man would I be if I ran off to enjoy a comfortable life in exile while my people suffer execution and enslavement? If I did that, I wouldn’t be worthy of you. I have to save my country first. If I accomplish that, then you and I can be together.”