David Chandler - A thief in the night

“So your plan is to give the elves gifts, and tell them how beautiful they are before we slaughter them like pigs?” Croy asked. “That sounds like folly.”

Balint sighed deeply. “Perhaps you two should just follow me, and do what I say. It’ll make this much easier if you don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Fine,” Croy said. “Just tell me when the time comes for vengeance.”

The dwarf led them up a long ramp toward the level above. They emerged into a darkened infirmary, with rows of short beds lining the walls and in the middle a great slab marked with ancient bloodstains. Hundreds of iron tools-most gone to rust-hung by chains above the slab, knives and saws and pincers. Compared to the surgical equipment Croy knew, it all looked quite hygienic and advanced.

Beyond the infirmary ward the hall opened up into a broad cobbled space that was empty save for a pile of wheeled carts, heaped up and left to fall apart and rot. Wide-mouthed passages led away from the main chamber in every direction, heading straight out into darkness, some tending upward, some down.

“Mine shafts,” Balint explained, “probably long since played out.”

The knocker jumped down from her shoulder and ran along the floor, tapping its fingers arrhythmically on the cobbles. It scurried away into the darkness, then hurried back and tapped out a complicated pattern on Balint’s leg.

“Our way leads through there.” She pointed toward a stone arch at the far side of the big room. Beyond lay a staircase that curved away from view. “Up that way are the kitchens, and past them the leather works. Our destination’s there. But we have to be careful now. My blueling tells me there are revenants up those stairs, standing guard.”

Croy nodded grimly. Then he glanced over at Morget.

The barbarian met his eye and smiled broadly. He nodded and hefted his weapon.

“Wait here,” Croy told Balint.

“No! We must be circumspect as a whore with her hand in a man’s pocket, unsure if she’s found his purse or his pr-”

Croy interrupted her foul figure of speech by dashing up the stairs. Morget came after, bringing a single candle to light their way. At the top of the stairs they found three revenants waiting for them, lipless mouths wide open in noiseless screams, hands and weapons already groping toward the two humans.

Morget took one apart with his axe before it could even reach for his throat. Croy brought Ghostcutter up and decapitated one, then sliced the hands off another with his backswing. The revenants kept coming, so he kept carving-hitting hard at their bony knees, slicing one in half and taking the arm off another. Morget took the other arm, then reached down and pulled the remaining bits to pieces with his bare hands.

The two of them headed back down the stairs. Balint waited for them there. The knocker’s blind face was wide with astonishment.

“The way is clear,” Croy told her. “Find me some living elves next time.”

After Slag was taken away, the night passed without further incident.

Malden slept, finally-after a fashion. He mostly drifted on dark currents of his own thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts grew bizarre in character, sometimes incomprehensible, and he would realize that he had been dreaming. Yet there was no sharp disconnection between wakefulness and slumber.

Certainly he got little rest.

Cythera woke when they were brought food so they could break their fast. More mealy bread, this time accompanied by small beer with a distinct mushroomy flavor. It occurred to him to wonder how the bread was made without wheat flour. Probably ground bits of mushroom.

He wondered what had happened to Slag.

He was almost certain he didn’t want to know.

Cythera said little that morning, and moved less. She mostly sat watching the gaolers, the revenants who were themselves motionless. Malden wondered if she were doing something witchy. Trying to take control of their rotting brains with the hypnotic power of her gaze, perhaps. Or cause them to erupt into flame with an ancient incantation in some language lost in the mists of time.

Perhaps-maybe just perhaps possibly-she was coming up with some way of freeing them from the gaol. Maybe she had some brilliant idea. Maybe she could spring them from the stockade. Together they could make it up those stairs, slip past the guards that were sure to wait at the top. Find some way through the maze of elfin tunnels, then past the demons and the revenants. Perhaps together the two of them could make it back to the surface. To real daylight, to freedom.

He started sweating just thinking about it. He wanted out. He wanted out so badly he started convincing himself she was going to say something, that at any moment she would speak and tell him what she’d realized, what she had discovered, that would save them both.

He watched her face more carefully than he’d ever watched a guard patrolling outside a warehouse, with more rapt attention than he’d ever wasted on a fat purse he planned to snatch or a lock he planned to pick. He watched every twitch of her mouth, watched her eyes move from one revenant to another. When she was about to speak, he was ready, he could see her tongue start to form the words, and he nodded in excitement, in anticipation.

“That one’s taller,” she said finally.

Malden shook himself out of his reverie. “I beg your pardon?”

“The one on the left is taller. They look like they’re exactly the same height. But there-look. The floor isn’t quite level, so the one on the left is actually a hair taller than the one on the right.”

Malden’s entire body sagged with disappointment, every one of his muscles giving up a little more hope. “I think you have something there,” he said, and decided not to rely on her for any daring escape plans.

He’d gotten himself so worked up that when an elfin soldier came down the stairs, he jumped up and grabbed at the bars with white knuckles. It was probably just their next meal being delivered, he told himself. This soldier didn’t look nearly as bored as the others had, though. One of his pupils was larger than the other, as if he’d stolen a taste of the Hieromagus’s sacrament.

“Are you… Malton?” he asked.

“No.”

“Oh.” The soldier looked confused and stared through the bars for a moment as if he couldn’t remember why he’d come. Then he turned and started to head back up the stairs.

“Wait,” Malden said. “We need blankets. It got very cold last night. And we can’t live on just mushrooms. We need better food.”

The soldier turned around slowly. “You,” he said.

Malden waited for something more. Eventually he grew tired of waiting. “Yes?” he asked.

“Are you Sir Croy’s squire?”

“No,” Malden said again.

“Oh.” The soldier went away, back up the stairs without another word.

He came back an hour later. This time he asked no questions, but threw open the gate of the cage and grabbed Malden. Cythera screamed and begged him not to take Malden away, but the soldier ignored her.

“It’s all right,” Malden told her. “You’ll be all right. Croy is coming. Croy will save you,” he told her. Croy is dead, he thought. If he was coming, he’d be here by now. “Cythera. When I die-your name will be on my lips.”

She was still screaming when he was pushed up the stairs. As he was marched down the hallway, he could hear her.

The soldier dragged Malden down a side passage, then pushed him through a door. The room beyond could not have shown a greater contrast to the stockade, a riot of color and sound and fragrant smoke of incense, and the transition was so jarring that Malden fell to the rich carpet and barely caught himself on his hands.