Alice shivered beside Jacob, and he didn’t think the cold had anything to do with it.
“Look at these coffins,” Smith said. “They are ancient.”
Something clanged in the distance, and everyone froze.
“Lights,” George whispered. “Lower your lights.”
Alice looked over her shoulder. “Was that behind us?”
“I don’t think so,” Jacob said.
George scooted deeper into the group so he could speak without raising his voice. “No. It was in front of us. I’m sure of it.”
“Either way, we’re not turning back now.” Jacob snuffed his lantern. “Wait here.” No one said a word as he walked into the darkness up ahead. He kept one hand on the wall of coffins until it solidified and became solid stone once more, and then nothing.
He crouched at the edge of the wall and leaned out just far enough to see an infinite darkness, and a tiny golden glow far down the next corridor. He clicked the igniter on his lantern and waved it back and forth. The shielded lights of Gladys and Smith bounced down the path toward him.
“The lake’s here,” Jacob said, pointing to the glassy, unmoving surface and the pillar-like columns formed from stalactites and stalagmites.
“This is a place of peace,” Gladys said.
Alice’s voice whispered through the shadows. “It will be after we end the bloodshed. This is the Butcher’s home, and he has sullied it long enough.” She stepped up beside Jacob and then pulled on his arm.
The lake seemed lower now, leaving plenty of space beside the wall to walk side by side. Jacob focused on the glow in the corridor ahead. It grew as they crossed the lake, and by the time they slipped into the next corridor, another clang sounded, freezing everyone in their tracks.
Laughter followed the clang this time. Who could be laughing after everything that had happened here? They’d murdered hundreds of people in Ancora alone. The death toll in Dauschen …
A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Jacob turned to attack, but then he found Smith staring at him. Jacob flinched, and frowned, and tried to understand what had just happened.
“You are shaking.”
He looked up at the tinker. “What?”
“You are shaking,” Smith said again. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine. I just … I don’t like that laughter. They’ve set out to exterminate the Lowlands, and I …”
“And they’ve done a good job,” Alice said. “It’s what people do after a successful mission. They celebrate.”
“They die,” Jacob snapped. The words felt foreign on his lips, but some acts deserved no redemption.
“Keep your head, kid,” Smith said. “We need you thinking straight if we want to get out of this alive.”
Jacob took a deep breath and started forward. All the lanterns were out now, and the only light flickered through the bars of the window up ahead. A few more steps and Jacob settled in beside Alice, looking at the room where they’d watched the Butcher and Benedict.
“This is it.”
Smith slid past Alice and ran his fingers around the bars on the window. “It will not be quiet, but I can break this out of the wall easily enough. We are below Parliament here?”
“I think so,” Jacob said.
Alice slid to the other side of the window. “We have to be. Charles said the catacombs were built below the Castle wall. We’re well past that. There’s nothing else this could be.”
A series of heavy bootfalls echoed up from the halls on the other side of the bars.
“Back!” Smith hissed.
Jacob threw himself to the other side of the window, settling into the shadows beside Alice. He caught a glimpse of Gladys and George vanishing into the darkness, and then one of the doors slammed open. Two men walked in, one carrying a helmet under his arm.
“I don’t know … I kind of wish the old pub, Randy’s Roof Jack, was still open in the Lowlands.”
“The owners were Lowlands sympathizers. We burned it down.”
“Did we?”
“Yeah, we locked the staff in.”
“Right, that was where they came running out like a shooting gallery.” The man laughed. “The extra pay was great.”
Rage. There is a simple anger in everyday frustrations, and then there is a rage that moves flesh of its own accord. Jacob’s lips quivered as he adjusted the biomech in his leg. He swung into the light and shouted.
“Hey!”
A pale knight looked up. “What the fu—”
The pistons in Jacob’s leg slammed together as he kicked the bars into the cellar with the force of a train. Stone shattered as the bars exploded out of the wall. The first soldier’s helmet collapsed, and blood sprayed across his comrade’s face.
Jacob was in the room before they finished falling to the ground. The safety was off his bolt gun and he had his arm wedged into the other man’s neck.
“Now, you son of a bitch. Where’s the Butcher? Where’s Newton Burns?”
The man tried to scream beneath the weight of his dead comrade and the iron bars, but Jacob just leaned into his jaw.
“You scream and I kill you now.
Where is he?
”
Jacob let the pressure off the man’s jaw enough that he could speak. “Throne room, he never leaves the throne room.”
“Where is it?”
“Through that door. The lift is at the other end of the hallway, third floor. Please, I have a family.”
“So did Randy.”
Jacob clenched his fist and the bolt gun rammed a shaft through the soldier’s forehead. The man’s jaw moved twice before his eyes rolled back into his head. “We know where he is. Now we just have to get there.” Jacob turned back to the window.
“Kid … fucking hell, kid.” Smith hopped down out of the window.
“They don’t get to live, Smith.”
“George, help me move the bodies. If no one has come yet, we may be in the clear.” Smith turned back to Jacob. “You
cannot
do something so reckless. You put us all at risk with that. Charles taught you better.”
The fire in Jacob’s gut flickered and died. He’d put their entire mission at risk, and he’d put his friends at risk. If they’d been caught, or killed, no one else could reach the Butcher.
“There’s a lot of blood in here already,” George said. “I don’t think a little extra is going to be noticed.” He grabbed one of the corpses and pushed it up into the window. Gladys and Alice dragged it back into the shadows while Smith grabbed the other.
Jacob looked around at the gore-splattered room. They’d killed a lot of people here. The shackles on the wall … the spiked chair … “They torture people here.”
“Yes,” Smith said. Once the bodies were hidden, the tinker turned his attention to the bars. He engaged his biomechanics and straightened the bars as best he could before wiping off the blood and setting them back in the window frame. “It’s not perfect, but I doubt they check this too often.” He pulled the bars back down.
Jacob climbed back up into the window.
Alice pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him before kissing his cheek. “I would have done it if I could have.”
He sighed at the realization Alice wasn’t disgusted by him, but he feared what that meant for both of them.
Smith climbed up into the corridor, dragging the bars with him. He leaned the straightened iron back into the window and turned to George. “What now?”
“Finish the sweep,” George said. “We need to know where the corridor ends. We get above ground and get a message to Mary. With any luck they’ll have reached Bat and the resistance behind the walls. Then we fight.”
S
amuel glanced at
Cage in the lantern light. He wasn’t sure what to make of the spy. One of Archibald’s best? What did that mean? It meant Cage could lie better than anyone in the Northlands, and how did you trust someone with that kind of skill?
“What?” Cage asked. He shifted and sat down on a barrel near the cellar stairs.
“Nothing. Just trying to remember the quickest way to Bat’s from here.”
Cage nodded.
“It isn’t the fastest, but it may be best if we stay on the outskirts near the wall.”
“I don’t know about that. If they’re keeping prisoners, they may be watching the walls more than usual.”
Samuel didn’t like it, but Cage had a good point. “Then we go left when we get out of the cellar, cut through the heart of the district. Drakkar?”
The Cave Guardian crossed his arms and stepped away from a rack full of linens. “Your people can handle the defense of the underground station?”
“Samuel gave us all the details we needed,” Cage said. “They’ll stay out of the Widow Maker lair, and seal it off in the meantime.” He paused. “I trust them with my life.”
Apparently that was enough for Drakkar. “Then we go.”
Samuel took a deep breath and walked up the cellar stairs, framed by dark stonework. He half expected to find a halberd pointed at his throat, but no one was there when the doors cracked open and the moonlight streamed into his eyes.
“Clear.” He gestured for the others to follow. He walked to the corner and looked down the street. Where once there would have been nothing but silence and shadows in the night, now there were drunken patrons stumbling from one bar to the next. Hooded figures exchanged small packages and coin purses on dim street corners, away from the brilliant lights of the Highlands.
“Gods, it looks more like the worst slum in the Lowlands.” He glanced back at Drakkar. “I don’t think anyone will take issue if you keep your hood up.”
“I agree,” Drakkar said. “I believe I may have been concerned at nothing.”
Samuel tuned out his surroundings as best he could, but the Highlands around the fourth watchtower had always been an elegant place. Now the streets were overflowing with garbage, and a sharp, pervasive stench of sewage and rot assaulted his senses.
A shattered guitar sat broken in the gutter of the street corner. Blood stained the pale wood and a crushed copper mug beside it. Samuel slowed when he recognized the old musician’s mug, and then he locked himself down, turning off any emotion that could be seen as weakness. This was no longer the city he knew. This was a city that would prey on the weak and eat them alive.
He kept his eyes straight ahead. Knowing Drakkar had his back gave him an easy confidence. Cave Guardians were well known for their stealth and ferocity in battle. Drakkar was no different. Cage was still a question.
Samuel led them around the corner. The dull thud and muffled screams of someone being beaten echoed out from a shadowed doorway. Samuel stopped and looked at the man holding someone down, another man raining punches. He caught snippets of their conversation.
“Stealing bread, maggot …”
“… off the cliff … knights won’t stand for it.”
Samuel started toward the men when Cage’s hand flashed out and stopped him. “We have a mission.”
Samuel needn’t have worried. When Cage turned his attention away from the conflict, Drakkar stepped into the shadows. He struck twice with his folded sword, bloodying the first man’s face and rendering him unconscious. Drakkar let him collapse to the stone walk while he raised his boot and delivered a sharp blow to the second man. A hollow thump sounded when the man’s head rebounded off the iron-barred door.
Drakkar bent down and scooped up a smaller form, and Samuel wanted to run the two men through when he saw a kid in the Cave Guardian’s arms. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, sixteen at the most. Close to Jacob and Alice’s age, swollen and bloody and bruised.
“We take him with us,” Drakkar said. “I cannot abide abandoning him.”
Cage cursed and let his hand slide from Samuel’s arm. “You risk too much.” He looked between Samuel and Drakkar and cursed again. “Hurry.”
The rest of the walk did nothing to raise Samuel’s spirits. “How can we ever bring the city back from this?”
“Reconstruction takes time,” Drakkar said. “The real damage is inside the leadership.”
Samuel led them around another corner, and Bat’s home loomed into view. “What …” The two sliding doors that led to the workbench were covered in a series of bars. Samuel didn’t see any method to open them.
“Some of the best locks money can buy,” Cage said. He ran his hand along one of the dark bars. “These would take hours to crack.”
Samuel retraced his steps and went to the front door. He knocked, and a small thunder of rapid footsteps sounded inside the home. After a while, the locks began to click open and the door swung inward.
It hadn’t been all that long since he’d seen Bat, but his uncle looked thin, and dark circles beneath his eyes told a story of exhaustion that was unmistakable.
“Samuel?” Bat’s eyes flashed around their group and then the street behind them. “Get inside. Now.”
They shuffled through the door and Bat slammed it behind them. He locked the deadbolts, turned around, and threw his arms around Samuel. The familiar strength felt like it might crush the armor hidden beneath Samuel’s cloak. “I’d heard from Archibald’s men that you were still alive, but it’s been so long since we heard from him.”
“Are we safe to talk here?” Samuel whispered, returning Bat’s hug.
“Yes, we’re well insulated.” He turned to Drakkar. “And Bobby, where did you find him? Here, put him on the couch. I have medical supplies.”
“Not that bad,” the bruised and battered form muttered from Drakkar’s arms.
“Bobby,” Bat said when Drakkar stepped away. “Bobby, what happened?”
Bobby squinted at Bat and the others. “Went by the bakery to pick up the day-old bread. Some of the knights walked in and saw me with the bread. Baker had to tell them I was a thief. Not his fault.”
“Get some rest, Bobby. I’ll let Reggie know you’re here. You’re safe now.”
“Some guys helped me. One of them looked like Samuel. Funny, huh?”
Bat glanced up at Samuel. “Yes, Bobby. Very funny.” He stepped away and said, “Come with me.”
They walked down the hallway that led to Bat’s workshop. Beyond the iron-barred door, three people huddled together. Two of them wore clothes spotted with dirt and blood. The third looked clean, and she wrapped a bandage around a man’s forehead.
“Bobby’s on the couch. They grabbed him on a bread run. He’d likely be dead if not for these three.”
The woman looked up, and Samuel almost froze. Alice’s mother met his eyes.