The City (64 page)

Soon they were splashing through ankle-deep water again, and she asked the boy, ‘Is the Hall of Watchers on this level?’

He shook his head. ‘One down.’ He glanced at her face, which must have shown her concern, for he said, ‘But the water is rising unevenly, as it did in the lower levels – we might still get there.’

They came to a dry corridor lined with forgotten statues, glowering loftily at them from high plinths. At the end was a staircase leading down. Elija descended quickly, Indaro close behind, and at the bottom the water was waist-deep and visibly rising. Without hesitation Elija threw himself in, and started half wading, half swimming along a dark tunnel. Raising her light, Indaro could not see the end and she paused before following him, her heart in her mouth. After all they had been through she wanted to die with her sword in her hand, not drowned like a rat in a pipe. Garret and Stalker looked at each other, but there was no choice – they had trusted Elija this far.

The roof became lower and the floor dropped away and Indaro found herself swimming. She was finding it hard to keep her light above the water, and she struggled to keep up with Elija so he could see where he was going. He does not need to see, she thought; he is in thrall to this place.

At last the boy was forced to stop. They had come to a low arch which dipped to meet the water and they could go no further. Indaro felt panic rising in her chest. Her hands were shaking, from cold or fear. She held her little lantern high, and the light fell on Stalker, his face gaunt and shadow-haunted.

Elija said, ‘We must swim under this arch. There is probably a tunnel beyond.’

‘Probably,’ Stalker echoed.

‘The archway leads somewhere. Keep feeling the roof and eventually we will come out into a higher place, a hall or a staircase. We will be without light, but I know the way now, even in the dark.’

Elija spoke with such confidence that Indaro felt her nerves
steadying. Then she remembered that he had never been to the Hall of Watchers and shook her head, trying to dislodge the ominous memory.

The boy nodded to her, his eyes feverish, then he ducked under the black water and disappeared, leaving a few thick-skinned bubbles popping slowly on the surface. Indaro passed her light to Garret and, trying not to think, ducked her head and swam under the archway. It was icy cold. She felt rough ceiling above her and, with blind faith, she kicked out and followed Elija, hoping the tunnel was straight and there were no side ways to get lost in. She kicked and kicked, one hand out in front of her, one above. Once she felt something move under her searching hand and hoped it was Elija’s fleeing foot. She remembered the last time she had blindly followed his boots, through a crack in the rock – that too was terrifying but at least there had been light and air. She could feel agony in her chest as she kept kicking forward, her head bursting with pain, her limbs weakening, deprived of air for too long, the need to open her throat and let in the water too strong, the uncaring, peaceful, cold water …

She felt a hand grasp hers. She held on and kicked feebly one last time. Her head emerged into air and she breathed long and painfully, gasping and spluttering. Elija pulled on her arm. ‘Make way for the others!’ he said.

She scrambled clumsily on to a low stone ledge. Then she turned and reached out. She found a flapping hand and Garret came flopping up beside her, gasping. One more to come. ‘Stalker?’ she asked the darkness. There was no reply. They waited. After a silent count of a hundred, Indaro turned to Elija and ordered, ‘Lead on!’

As they shuffled through the utter blackness, hand in hand, the blind following a boy, Indaro felt a sob rise in her chest. Despite his injury, Stalker had followed her everywhere she had asked. She knew northlanders did not press their womenfolk to fight, and she suspected he despised women warriors, yet he had followed uncomplaining, fighting like a demon when asked to, burrowing in the earth like a worm, swimming to his death in a flooded drain under the City.

She felt Garret squeeze her hand. ‘Old Stalker, he was a one,’ he said. ‘I thought he’d be standing there at the end, when the rest of us were dead. Like Fell.’

She had scarcely thought of Fell for hours, and it was typical that it would be Garret who brought him up. Her mission in this
gods-forsaken place was to save Fell – but Garret was still expecting Fell to save them, as he always had. She coughed, then she could not stop coughing, feeling the sharp pain deep in her side. Am I injured, she thought? Impossible to tell through all her aches and pains. She remembered ducking a sword-slash during the ambush, and wondered if she had been cut. She put it out of her mind. It scarcely mattered as long as she kept moving.

In front of her Elija paused. Then he stepped forward more cautiously, letting go of her hand. She could tell from the air around her that they had come out into an open space, and guessed he feared falling down stairs or into an open drain. They could hear water gushing on all sides, and Indaro felt an urgent need to hurry. She would rather cut her own throat than swim blindly along another tunnel.

‘Where are we?’ she asked Elija, trying to sound calm.

But he made no reply and she could hear him shuffling forwards slowly, exploring. She let go of Garret’s hand and worked her way to her left, placing her feet with care lest the ground disappear from under her. Her hand reached the reassurance of a rough wall, and she let her fingers graze along it. She felt a pillar standing proud of the wall and on it, at head height, a carved shape. Eagerly she ran her hands over it. She could feel the smooth head, protruding eyes and sharp beak of an eagle. Her heart beat faster. She measured a long pace along the wall and found another pillar, another stone bird. In her mind’s eye she saw these creatures, and a dozen more like them, guarding a round chamber, brightly lit by torchlight. The watching birds.

Triumphantly she cried, ‘We’re here! Elija, you found it. This is the Hall of Watchers!’

THE QUESTIONER IN
the pit was now a boy, a lad of perhaps fourteen, who perched on the stone steps at the edge of the lair, his booted feet above the foul water. He asked Riis about the enemy’s plans and about Fell Aron Lee. Riis gabbled everything he could think of about the hostages, the trial, and the branding, as if his torrent of words could hold at bay the gulon which still crouched by the old man, watching him. He held back everything he knew about the invasion, and he buried deepest of all the name Shuskara.

‘Which way?’ Elija asked, relief in his voice.

Indaro thought. There were two entrances to the Hall of Watchers and they must have stumbled on the one which led to the High Halls, through which she had once helped carry the old man Bartellus and Elija’s sister. They must have walked straight through the gateway without being aware of it.

She reached out and found his sleeve in the dark. ‘This way,’ she said.

The other door was on the far side of the Hall, through a narrow gateway. She groped along, feeling each bird with surety of recognition. An owl, a seagull in flight, a songbird with its beak open. Along a corridor, then she came to the bottom of the winding stairs which she had once confidently run up and down a dozen times a day. Long ago.

Her eyes desperate for the smallest gleam of light, she hurried up the steps, losing the others in her haste. Through another doorway, then up a wider, straight flight. Then she stopped, her elation under check. She waited for the others to catch up and heard their boots stepping much more cautiously on the wet stone steps.

‘Elija?’ she asked the dark.

‘Here.’

‘In a moment we will be in the Library of Silence.’ If, she thought, they haven’t sealed off the door against the rising water. ‘So you must stay to the rear. It might be that they are waiting for us.’

She tried the handle. It moved grudgingly under pressure, but the door was warped and reluctant to move. She called Garret and together they forced it enough to slip through. Beyond was more darkness, more silence. She listened, every nerve jangling. All she could hear was a deep, damp quiet and the ever-present rush of distant water.

‘Wait,’ she whispered.

She walked forward, hands out, and found she was between high shelves full of books. Yes, she remembered, the little door came out deep in the stacks, hidden in the farthest recesses of the library. She walked forward more confidently, then to her right where her groping hand came to a pillar, and at head-height a bracket with a torch. The torch felt damp, but she hoped it would light. She went back with it, feeling the squelch of waterlogged books under her boots.

‘A light,’ she said. There was a long pause, and some rummaging, then she heard the scrape of a phosphorus stick Garret had somehow managed to keep dry. It sparked and flared, and she held the torch to it. For a worrying while it would not catch but at last the torch blazed. The old familiar light dazzled them painfully but their spirits rose.

‘Wait,’ Indaro said again, and this time she walked confidently through the library. Thoughts flashed into her mind of the last time she had been here, saying a bitter goodbye to Archange, and a time before, when she watched as a ragged little girl ate her first meal in weeks. She opened the main door and peered through, then thrust her torch out and glanced up and down the corridor. No one. She called softly to the others.

The marble and stone corridors of the Red Palace were lit only by high windows which grudgingly leaked in the sunlight, leaving the floors in gloom. Feeling like insects scuttling along the base of
a wall, they made their way towards the Keep. Servants and guards passed them from time to time, but in the vastness of the palace it was easy to hide in side rooms and dark arches. Indaro kept listening at doors and opening them softly. Finally she beckoned the others in through a doorway. The chamber they found themselves in was rich and elegant, furnished with thick carpets and soft upholstery. The air was chilly and damp and it seemed abandoned.

‘These are apartments for foreign visitors, I think,’ said Elija, looking round in wonder.

‘We could hide out for a year without anyone finding us,’ commented Garret. ‘Why are we here?’ he asked Indaro.

She rolled her shoulders and twisted her neck, trying to ease the tension. ‘If I am to die today,’ she explained, ‘I don’t want to do it looking like a rat dipped in shit.’

She tried the doors of the apartment and found the washroom. There was a deep sunken bath of some white stone and crystal basins, and she found embroidered drying cloths. In the corner was an ornate hand pump. Indaro smiled and closed the door against the men. She stripped off her clothes and investigated the wound in her side. It was still trickling blood, but not enough to matter. The edges of the wound were raw and inflamed and she washed it as best she could, then washed the rest of her body. She rinsed out all her filthy clothes, then wrung them out and put them back on with difficulty, flinching as the clammy fabric clung to her skin. Lastly she washed her hair and towelled it dry, then tied it back in her neck.

On a marble tabletop she found a round hand mirror of ivory and gold. She picked it up and stared at her reflection. She saw hot, feverish eyes, cheekbones like knives, and the pallor of the grave. She put the mirror down and washed her face again, rubbing at her skin, then looked in the mirror again. She had summoned an unhealthy flush to her cheeks. It was no improvement.
I look like a three-day-dead corpse decorated for the funeral
, she thought.

She ran her fingers over the back of the mirror, tracing the painted flowers and birds. She thought it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. She went to shove it into her backpack, then thought a moment and sat down on the floor and turned the pack out. There was no food or water left. Her medical supplies, such as they were, had been ruined by water and muck. Likewise the grubby pieces of paper holding the addresses of dead soldiers’ families, information
she had carried with her over the years, hoping one day to bring long-delayed consolation to mothers and brothers. They were all illegible now. From the bottom of the pack she took a sharp knife in a leather sheath. She left the sodden pack leaking onto the fine carpet and returned to the main chamber.

Elija and Garret were stretched out on couches, staining them with the moisture draining from their filthy clothes. Elija seemed fast asleep. She wondered whether to leave him there, quietly walk away and leave him asleep. He could stay for a long time without being found, then perhaps slip unseen out of the palace once it returned to normality, if it ever did.

‘They knew we were coming,’ said Garret. He offered her dried beef and she took some and chewed on it. She was well used to the taste, which was revolting, and she could feel new energy rallying. She ate some more and drank from his water skin. There seemed no point answering Garret. He was right.

‘I wonder what old Brog’s up to,’ Garret mused, out of the blue.

Indaro looked at him. ‘He’s with Fell.’ She wondered sometimes if Garret paid any attention to what was going on around him. Perhaps he was the perfect warrior: she just had to tell him to fight and he fought, without hesitation, without question.

‘That’s what I mean,’ he replied.

Then she realized he was being subtle, in his own way, as if mentioning Fell’s desperate mission might make her burst into tears. This cheered her and she grinned at him, then shook Elija awake.

‘Our other mission is to help Fell and Broglanh to kill the emperor and escape alive,’ she said. ‘If the Immortal knows why Fell is here, which he must do now …’

‘Not necessarily,’ put in Elija. ‘Whoever warned the Thousand we were coming might not have known about Fell, or if he did he might have kept it to himself for his own reasons. Diverting part of the Thousand to chase us down works in our favour. It is what we are here for.’

She shook her head, uncertain. ‘The emperor is not a fool. He must see that the arrival of this alleged son, on the same day as an attack on the palace, is not a coincidence.’