“Samuel!” She almost jumped out of her seat to embrace the Spider Knight. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”
“Alice will be so relieved.” If Alice’s mother survived, maybe Jacob’s parents did too. Maybe more of his Lowland friends did as well.
She smiled. “Bat, I’ll see to Bobby as soon as I’m done here.” She turned her attention back to Samuel. “Reggie said he’d seen Alice. Where is she?”
“She stayed with Jacob,” Samuel said. “Those two rarely separate without a good reason. After seeing what happened in Ancora, I’m glad she was with us as it was. Are Jacob’s parents still here?”
Bat shook his head. “After one of the raids, they decided to make a run for Cave. A lot of refugees tried. Some of them made it, but many didn’t. I don’t know if they did.”
“I am glad your friends and family are well,” Cage said, “but we need information, and time is of the essence.”
“Who are you?” Bat asked.
“I am Cage, and I serve Bollwerk.”
“My name is Drakkar. I am a guardian from the city of Cave.”
Bat extended his hand and shook Drakkar’s. “It’s an honor, guardian.”
Drakkar nodded.
Bat exhaled loudly through his nose and eyed Cage. “So be it. What do you need to know?”
“Do you have fighters?” Cage asked. “In your refugees?”
“A few, yes,” Bat said. Samuel had known his uncle long enough to know the man was lying through his teeth. They either had more fighters than he was letting on, or they had none.
“We need their help,” Samuel said. “Our people are going to strike at Parliament from the inside. We need chaos in the Highlands to keep the knights divided. The attack will be a good time for the refugees to escape if you can get them to the lift by the old observatory. It’s … There are a lot of bodies down there too. Be sure they’re prepared for the sight.”
“There is no one left in Ancora with a weak stomach.”
“Where was the resistance?” Cage asked.
Bat slowly turned to Cage. “We fought back a great deal. The Butcher slaughtered the Lowland soldiers like so much livestock. That’s when he turned the cannons against the city and burned it to the ground. You don’t understand what’s been lost here, Cage. They’ve set men along the walls with orders to kill anything that moves outside the perimeter. Our refugees can’t even leave the city.”
Three even knocks sounded from the wall. Bat frowned and turned away from Cage. He slid a framed painting of an armored tinker toward the ground, and something clicked in the wall. The paneling beside the workbench slid open and revealed a veritable army of men and women hidden away inside.
“You heard everything?” Bat asked.
The man in front nodded. He was young, emaciated, but a fire burned in his blue eyes that sent goosebumps down Samuel’s arms.
“You’re Jacob’s friends,” the man said.
Samuel nodded. The man’s voice wasn’t as deep as Samuel expected, and only then did he realize the person before him was barely old enough to be called a man.
“My name is Reggie.” He traded grips with Samuel and nodded to Drakkar. “We’ll do more than provide a distraction. We owe the Butcher his weight in blood.”
Samuel looked into Bat’s secret room. There were at least two dozen refugees hidden away there. Bat’s stash of bizarre guns and cannons hung from the far wall like a backdrop. The refugees didn’t look defeated. They looked determined, and that surprised the hell out of Samuel. How did you watch your city burn around you and still summon the strength to band together?
“I must see to my brother.”
Samuel stood to the side and let Reggie pass.
“Reggie and Bobby have more or less taken over the resistance inside the walls,” Bat said. “I help keep everyone fed, and hidden—”
“And armed,” a voice said from inside the room.
“—but they help pick the targets, and protect those who wish to run. We have two more safe houses hidden inside the Highlands and a few pockets of survivors out there in the Lowlands. They’re all fighters.”
Samuel looked up at Drakkar, and the guardian bared his teeth in a vicious smile. Samuel knew exactly what he meant. This was what they needed. These were the people they needed. Once they understood the plot to bring down the Butcher, there’d be no stopping them.
Samuel stepped into the dark room and slid into one of the empty chairs. “I’d like to tell you a story about the Butcher, and how we are going to take him down.”
J
acob couldn’t be
sure how much longer they walked through the catacombs. It’s hard to keep track of time in the darkness, and every minute stretches infinitely long when every sound could spell your death. Jacob hadn’t really expected the catacombs to lead anywhere else, but now they stood in front of an old iron door, rusted through by an unknowable stretch of years.
“Where does it go?” Alice asked.
“It may be from the old city,” George said. He ran his hand over the lock. “It’s rusted out.” He pried at something inside the door, grimacing in the lantern light until something popped.
The door wasn’t as loud as Jacob expected, but it sure wasn’t quiet either. He cringed at the short squeal of the hinges. The echo died away, and once more they were left in silence but for the distant scampering of some unknown creature.
Smith held his lantern up. “The corridor appears empty as far as I can see.”
Alice slipped past Smith. “What are we waiting for? Let’s find out where it goes.”
“Alice, wait,” Smith said in a harsh whisper.
Jacob smiled as Alice’s lantern bobbed down the hallway, and then it came to an abrupt stop. She held her light high and motioned for them to follow. When they were almost to her, Alice’s light vanished down another hallway.
Jacob heard Smith curse under his breath, but they followed. Gladys stayed close to George, and Smith led them all after Alice. The lantern waited on the floor when they reached the other end of the hall, and Alice was gone.
Jacob’s heart pounded in his chest. Smith had been right. They should have stayed together. They should have—
“Pssst.”
Jacob turned his head from one side to the other. He saw nothing but shadows and dark stone turned golden in the lantern lights.
“Up here.”
He turned his face up, and Alice was hanging out of the ceiling, a huge grin splitting her pale face. “How did you get up there?” he asked.
She brushed her hair back. “Jump. It’s a low ceiling.”
“What can you see up there?” Smith asked.
“Well … I left my lantern down there, so not much.”
Gladys scooped up the little light and passed it up to Alice. She vanished into the hole in the ceiling. The lantern light dimmed and brightened as Alice inspected the floor above them. It wasn’t long before she appeared in the hole again.
“There’s a barred window at the end,” she said quietly. “Looks like some narrow spiral stairs on the other side.”
“One of the watchtowers?” Smith said.
George let out a low laugh. “We’re inside the wall. It’s perfect.”
Smith glanced at him and then turned back to Alice. “Okay, we are coming up.”
Alice backed away.
“Princess?” Smith asked. “Would you like a hand?”
Gladys scoffed at the tinker, measured the distance with her eye, and jumped up to the square hole above them. Her cloak disappeared into the shadows, and George followed her up.
“After you,” Smith said.
Jacob reached up toward the hold, but couldn’t quite reach. He tried to jump, but the biomech in his leg kept him off balance, and he missed the grab. “Dammit.”
“Push off harder with your right leg,” Smith said. “You have more weight on that leg now.”
Jacob crouched down, and then he leapt. His body still tilted, but he was more centered, and his palms caught the rough, gritty edge of the opening. Someone grabbed his wrists as he started pulling himself up. Alice’s face greeted him in the golden light.
Smith grunted and pulled himself up the instant Jacob’s feet cleared the second floor.
George stood by the barred window. The rest of the room looked much like the first floor. The stone may have been paler, but the surface remained masked by the lantern light. Smith joined George and crouched down below the bars.
“This is a very old door,” Smith said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“A door?” Gladys asked.
Smith nodded. “The old builders used to cut them in at an angle. From the staircase, I doubt you can tell there is a doorway here. Look at the angle of the frame. We can open the door into the stairwell, but it would be impossible to push the door open. The stones block it.”
“Oh …” Gladys said. “And if they don’t have a handle on the other side?”
“Exactly, Princess,” George said.
“Have you heard anything?” Smith asked.
Alice walked closer and whispered. “When I first came up, I thought I heard voices. I haven’t heard anything else since.”
“Change of guard?” George asked.
“Possibly,” Smith said with a nod. “It would buy us a short time to contact Mary if this is a watchtower.”
George pushed down on the gleaming metal handle set into the stone and leaned on the door. It seemed impossible for a forgotten, entirely unmaintained mechanism to work in absolute silence, but it did.
“Built to last,” Smith said, echoing Jacob’s own thoughts.
George turned to Gladys. “Stay inside the room. If anyone walks by who isn’t us, kill them.”
“I’ll stay,” Alice said. “I’ll stay with Gladys.”
George nodded and then slipped into the stairwell. Smith followed, and Jacob stayed on their heels. He caught a glimpse of Alice as she closed the door, sealing the hidden room once more.
They stuck to the edge of the staircase, following the spiral ever upward. It seemed like half an hour had passed by the time the hatch came into view.
Smith kept his arm held high, with the safety off his bolt gun. A normal man would have been exhausted by the time they reached the top of the tower, but Smith’s biomechanics gave him an advantage. The tinker held his arm up, calling for a stop.
George slid around him, leaning to the left and right, trying to get a view into the tower. He turned back and put his hand over his eyes and pointed left. Once they started, there was no turning back.
George vanished through the hatch, and voices sounded in the tower. Smith leapt through the hole, and Jacob followed. He turned to find George with his arm around one man, and a crossbow aimed at the pair.
Smith shouted, drawing the bowman’s attention an instant before he hit him like a charging Walker. The man screamed as he fell out of the tower, vanishing into the darkness outside the wall. George jerked the other knight’s head to the side, and then there was only silence.
“Make the call,” George said. “We need to be elsewhere.”
Smith clicked his transmitter. “Skysworn, we are in the walls, come in.”
Something grunted in the stairwell below them before it gasped. A horrific gurgling sound mixed with the grunts, and then silence returned.
“Make ready,” Smith said.
Jacob slid around behind the hatch, ready to strike at whatever, or whoever, showed their face.
“Jacob? Smith?”
Jacob lowered his air cannon and peeked over the hatch cover. “Alice?”
“Clear?”
“Yeah, come up.”
Gladys appeared first, a long streak of blood glistening in the moonlight. Alice followed, the side of her face splattered in gore.
Jacob’s heart leapt and he stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “It’s not our blood.”
Jacob took in a deep breath through his nose and blew it out through his mouth. The pungent scent of rot and blood and decay filtered up from somewhere below. It was far from the crisp Ancoran air he remembered.
He leaned on the railing. It must have been an awful way to die. Jacob looked over the edge of the watchtower, into the infinite black abyss. He turned away from the edge. Alice rubbed her arms and leaned against Gladys. George stayed on the other side of the hatch, watching the stairwell from the shadows.
Smith clicked the transmitter on his collar. His breath formed a small cloud when he spoke. “Skysworn, we are in the walls, come in.”
Jacob waited, hoping to hear Smith’s receiver crackle to life. This was the tinker’s third, or maybe even fourth, attempt to contact Mary. Jacob shivered in the cold breeze. The watchtower didn’t seem much higher than the wall, but it must have been high enough to catch an occasional gust from the windstreams. “Why isn’t she answering?”
A moment later the speaker barked in the silent night. “Position?”
Smith leaned over the watchtower’s railing and stared up at the night sky. “Northeast corner of the house.”
“Is there another tower to your north?” Mary asked.
“No,” Smith said.
“You’re near the seat. Two buildings over on the north side is your target. The last load is on the rails.”
“Understood.”
“The knight reached his goal. I received confirmation of fifty guests.”
Smith glanced around the group. “We could not ask much more than that.” The tinker clicked his transmitter. “Let the guests know dinner is in half an hour.”
“I’ll prepare the hall,” Mary said.
Smith’s speaker fell silent once more. “You heard the lady. Our target is close by.”
Jacob turned his attention back to the city far below. “We’re by the throne room?”
“She’s right,” Alice said. “Look, that’s the old stained glass window over there.” Alice stood hip to hip with him and leaned on the watchtower’s railing. Jacob wrapped his fingers into hers and squeezed. His palm stuck to hers, mired in drying blood, and she squeezed back. Alice looked at him and said, “What are we waiting for?”
“They’ll have guards at the gates, no doubt,” George said. “We exit the watchtower and stay along the wall. Look for a servant’s entrance along the western edge of the Castle. I like the shadows there.”
“How can you be sure?” Jacob asked.
“Contingency plans,” George said with a small smile.
Smith tapped his fingers on the edge of the watchtower. “Be quiet. Use silent weapons. We get to the throne room and remove the Butcher.”