The Quartered Sea (52 page)

He dropped.

The rain came down thicker around him.

There had been a guard in the courtyard under his balcony, but that balcony was now some distance away. Between all the shouting from inside and the sound of the downpour smashing into the building, he should be safe.

Should be.

For the moment.

Now he had to get past the kitchen, into the cellars below, and then into the passageways below that. From overheard conversations, he knew there were at least two levels of cellar under the kitchen; he could only hope that they held an access to the old tunnels.

Getting past the kitchen turned out to be surprisingly easy. Between the initial destruction when the cistern blew and the continuing destruction caused by the xaan's cook, no one noticed either a bent figure racing for the stairs or the way those stairs got suddenly darker.

In the first cellar, Benedikt carefully set the lamp he'd taken from its bracket onto the floor and took a moment to still a rising panic. His empty socket throbbed in time to his heartbeat, the pain a constant reminder of what he'd face if he were caught.

If they found me in the house, I could say I just wanted to help with the flood. But if they find me down here…

He turned back toward the stairs, then turned himself around again. The cellar was quiet, the only sound the dripping of water from the floors above.

If you're a bard of Shkoder
—
be one. Pick up the lamp and find those tunnels
.

"What is going on here?"

The karjen dropped to one knee with a splash. "The cisterns, peerless one. It, they…" He really didn't have an explanation for what the cisterns had done. "Your rooms are flooded, peerless one."

"She can see that, you fool," Hueru growled from behind the xaan's left shoulder. "Tell her something she doesn't know."

Visibly tensing, the karjen stammered, "There's water everywhere, peerless one."

A light touch on his tattoo stopped Hueru's forward movement. "Leave it."

"Peerless one, you've returned early!" Serasti bustled out of the xaan's bedchamber wearing only her shift, her arms filled with billowing folds of multicolored cloth. "The Tulparax… ?"

"He lives, although there was an assassin dismembered in his private garden last night."

"Whose?"

"The remains were mostly eaten, impossible to tell." A brief flash of what might have been satisfaction was quickly replaced by the sardonic lift of a brow. "Have I returned at a bad time?"

As Hueru snorted, Serasti glanced down at the damp fabric in her arms and flushed. "The cistern wall collapsed into your bathing chamber, peerless one. Flying masonry has destroyed most of the tile work, the boilers were smashed, and the water had barely slowed by the time it reached your wardrobe. We're saving what we can, but the damage…"

A lifted hand cut off the flow of explanation. "Yes," Xaan Mijandra acknowledged softly, "water can be more dangerous than we suspect." She nodded toward the kneeling karjen. "He said cisterns."

"Yes, peerless one. All three."

"All three?" Her tone suggested she found it more interesting than upsetting. "Where is Benedikt?"

Serasti's fists clenched, bunching her burden into disapproving rosettes. "In his room, peerless one. The guard checked on him immediately, and he has been heard since."

Xaan Mijandra lifted the trailing edge of feathered robe she'd worn to court as a rivulet of water reached the mosaic at her feet, spread into the spaces between the tiles, and divided into a thousand tiny streams. "I think I'll go and have a word with him."

"Good." She turned, Hueru following like a shadow. "You see, cousin, I told you Serasti excels at her job. You shouldn't repeat such unfounded rumors."

Enjoying the sudden flash of fear on the house master's face, Hueru grinned. "I won't do so again, peerless one." It didn't matter that he never had.

The entrance to the old tunnels had to be fairly obvious if the pipe attendants used them for maintenance. Unfortunately, the cellars were large and Benedikt's one small lamp threw more shadows than illumination. Time after time, he started toward a certain opening in the wall, only to have it disappear when he came closer.

Stopped in mid-stomp by her matter-of-fact tone, Hueru's brows drew in. "You aren't surprised he's gone, peerless one? I could have sworn that he broke when I took his eye."

"He did," she told him, wiping juice from her hands with a scented cloth. "Apparently, he put part of himself back together again; enough to force the water through the cisterns to cover his escape."

"Force the
water
, peerless one?"

The xaan ignored her cousin's confusion and continued, speaking more to herself than to him. "The flood has gained Benedikt the freedom of the house, but it won't have distracted the guards on the exits." Pausing, she frowned slightly. "They'd better not have been distracted. Where's the First?"

Hueru jerked away from the platter of sliced fruit. "Making sure the failure of the cisterns wasn't meant to cover an attempt on your life, peerless one."

"It wasn't. Find him. Have him make certain Benedikt is still in the house, then have the house searched." Scooping up the small dog, she settled back on her cushions. "There are a limited number of places a one-eyed karjo that size can hide. When he's found, he'll pay for the damage he's done."

Benedikt found the entrance to the tunnels in a small room in the lowest level of the cellars. It was the second room he'd looked into. Sweating in spite of the cooler air, he'd peered into the first, expecting to see the desiccated body of a forgotten prisoner, and had seen only a double stack of small stone crocks.

Dungeons aren't the xaan's way. If she has a use for you, she puts you back into a parody of your life, reminding you constantly not only of what you've lost but of what you can have again if you only behave. If she has no use for you…

He remembered the body he thought he'd seen on the waste wagon and the xaan's reply.

"People die, Benedikt."

Dying would have been so much easier.

The tunnel was a great deal older than House Kohunlich, an arched passageway carved from the rock for a people still shorter than those who'd replaced them.

Hunched over his lamp, following the signs of use, Benedikt didn't look too closely at either the crumbling walls or the piecemeal attempts at repair. He ducked under angled, worm-eaten beams, stepped over piles of loose rubble, and tried not to think of the weight of stone above him.

Herexi had said she used the tunnels to get to the pipes under the fountain. The fountain was very close to the wall separating the xaan's half of the house from the tul's. If he could only get to the fountain, surely he could find a way across to safety.

Cazzes approached the house Second cautiously. His actions on the pier had made him a Second of Five and he was now discovering the down side to the promotion. Even such a small addition to his tattoo meant he was no longer hidden safely in the ranks. "Second?"

The Second smiled grimly. She'd shared food with the missing karjo before he'd lost his braids, and she couldn't help but feel that had tainted her slightly. Others who'd been in her position assured her it didn't, but she'd be happier if she were the one to return the fugitive to the xaan. "You, go find the First and tell him. The rest of you…" Her voice filled the kitchen, pulling the guards from their search. "… come with me."

He found the fountain by listening for the song of the water in the pipes, although an ancient rockfall closed the side tunnel to anyone even half his size, preventing him from actually reaching it. Standing with one hand on the damp rock and die other clutched tightly around the handle of his lamp, he tried to orient himself to the world above.

If the fountain was to his left, then the tul was to his right.

Unfortunately, the main tunnel continued parallel to the wall, heading out toward the Great Square.

Herexi had said that the tunnels connected the great houses to the site of an old temple under the Great Square. Perhaps he had to find that temple before he could make his way back in to another building.

Perhaps Herexi was wrong and the tunnels had collapsed everywhere but under the house of the Kohunlich Xaan.

Pushing his free hand against the edge of his empty socket, trying to press away the pain of a heated spike being driven back into his skull, Benedikt lifted his lamp and moved carefully through the rubble toward the Great Square.

It was simple really; he could go forward, or he could go back, and going back wasn't an option.

"Into the old tunnels?" To Cazzes' surprise, the First looked pleased. "Good. Rejoin your Five and tell the Second to follow him in. I'll have another group try and cut him off at this end."

Sketching a quick salute, Cazzes hurried less than enthusiastically back to the cellars with the message. He hadn't even known the tunnels existed until they'd followed the lamps into the lowest cellar and a quick search had turned up the ancient stonework. Clearly, the First not only knew they were there but knew of other accesses and planned to use them.

"Yeah, but I'll bet he won't be going down into the dark, dangerous things," he muttered. "Don't find house Firsts and Seconds marching into the realm of the dead with the rest of us."

Chasing the xaan's runaway out in the city was one thing, chasing him down into the bowels of the earth was another thing entirely.

A sudden draft indicated another passage to his right. Another passage leading back to the house. The wrong direction. Benedikt took his hand from the wall to protect the tiny flame in his lamp and froze.

Voices.

Guards.

He should have known there was more than one way into the tunnels. Should have known the xaan knew they were there and had worked out a way to use them to her advantage.

He should blow out his lamp, find a dark corner, and hide.

Glancing toward the house, he saw the glow of lanterns in the distance. They were bringing enough light to fill the corners. There was nowhere to hide. He had to keep moving.

He turned his lamp down as far as it would go, put his left hand back on the wall lest he miss the passageway he needed and began a desperate, bowlegged run.

There were lights in the tunnel behind him when his left hand finally fell away into nothing. Relief making him almost sick, he turned toward the tul and safety.

Relief lasted three steps. The side tunnel had been filled in with loose stone.

As far as he could tell, none of the pieces were larger than his head. Given time, he could clear the passage. But time was the one thing he didn't have. The guards would find him here, trap him here, take him to the xaan…