Rebellion

CHAPTER 88

Holm was drifting up past her, unmoving, when Tobry came spearing down. He caught her hand with his, and the back of Holm’s belt with the other hand, and with mighty kicks drove them to the surface.

Tali turned onto her back and floated there, staring up at the dark roof and gasping as she dragged the unfamiliar air into her lungs. It hurt. It hurt dreadfully. She was drifting in a circle when she realised that her fear of the water was gone. She rolled over, pushed her arms forward and out, the way Tobry had tried so hard to teach her — and it worked. She was breathing and swimming at the same time!

The elbrot’s light reflected off distant stone walls, and along to a heavy iron grating that ran from stone ceiling to stone floor. They had emerged in the pondages, and they were locked.

Tobry swam across to the edge. Holm was already there. Tali followed and hung onto the low side wall, getting her breath. After a minute Holm climbed out and went, wobbly-kneed, to the grating. It was made of thick iron, rusty on the outside but solid underneath. The central part opened to let people in, though there was a massive lock on the other side.

He did not look at it. Holm was down on hands and knees, studying the floor where the grating passed into it. He began to pick at the edge with his knife, prising the caked dust away, then stood up wearily.

“There’s a second gate down there, spring operated, I’d say. Looks like it’s got a shearing blade on top. Even if I could pick the lock without springing the gate and cutting myself in two, I don’t think we can get through without setting off one of their clangours…”

Tali, who knew Holm by now, waited for him to go on. Tobry stared at Holm, a muscle jumping in his left cheek. It was warm and humid here, and rivers of sweat were pouring down his stubbled cheeks.

“Whatever you’re planning, you’d better make it snappy.” Tobry’s voice had a hint of caitsthe roar in it. “Don’t think I’ve got long left.”

“But you took two doses,” said Tali.

“Saw that, did you? It wasn’t enough. Could be touch and go, if you aren’t quick.”

Tobry got out his potion bottles and mixed a third dose. He poured the thick grey liquid into an empty potion bottle and held it out to Tali.

“What’s that for?” she said, not taking it.

“An emergency. You’ll need to force it down my throat…”

“I don’t think I could force it down a shifter’s throat.”

“You’ll see the signs. You’ll have a minute… if you’re lucky.”

“That’ll make it a triple dose,” said Tali. “It could kill you.”

“If I shift involuntarily, I could kill you both.”

With deep misgivings, she took the little, thick-walled bottle and tucked it away in her small pack. Holm was feeling in his own pack. He brought out a small package, carefully wrapped, and opened it to reveal a glass phial, tightly stoppered.

“Not you, too?” said Tali. “Bloody shifters, they’re everywhere.” She had seen a phial like it before but could not remember where.

Holm smiled at the feeble joke. “Lizue dropped this one in your cell in Rutherin. I’ve been carrying it ever since.”

He twisted the stopper out and white fumes wisped up. Holding the phial out carefully, he ran a line of liquid onto the bars in a large rectangle. The bars fizzed and dripped, and after several minutes he heaved and the section came away.

Holm put it down carefully. “We’re in.”

“But there’s still a long, long way to go,” said Tobry.

Tali did not need reminding. Nor what was at the end of it. “How long did all that take?”

“About twenty minutes,” said Holm, who always seemed to know the time.

“Lyf’s courier will be out the city gates by now.”

“And racing towards the Seethings.”

As they moved out into a carved and painted tunnel, she caught the faint, familiar scent of Cython: the quiet odour of the rock, an occasional whiff of sulphur from the hot springs that broke through the walls here and there, and the distant tang of the fish tanks and eeleries.

Her eyes stung, but she dashed the tears away. How could she possibly be feeling homesick for Cython? But she was. Her first eighteen years, and the lives of her ancestors for the past thousand years, had been lived here, and she had felt more at home in Cython than she ever had in Hightspall.

She took a few steps forward, a few steps back, listening to the rock and tasting the air with her nose. She could sense Tobry’s churning emotions but she put him out of mind. All depended on her now. Her knowledge and her instincts about Cython.

Tali knew vaguely where she was; as a child she had wandered down to the pondages several times. After being put to full-time slavery at the age of ten, however, she’d had no right to be in this area and would have been chuck-lashed if she had ever come here.

A faint boot scrape told her someone was coming; one of the enemy. The Pale slaves were mostly small, slender people and they went barefoot, making no sound on the stone floors.

“Enemy!” she whispered, drawing Tobry and Holm back to the dark pondages. “Put out the light. No fighting unless I give the signal.”

Tobry extinguished his elbrot and they crouched in the dark, hands on their blades. It would be a bad sign if they had to fight so soon after getting in. Any ruckus risked the enemy being alerted, and if that happened, they would have to try and get out the way they had come, impossible though that seemed. If the enemy knew they were in Cython there would be no hope of completing their mission.

The bluish light of a glowstone lantern cast streaks down the passage. It must be a pair of guards, patrolling the halls as they did every day and night. But there were many halls to monitor, so why had they come this way at this particular moment? Had the break-in set off a clangour somewhere else?

Their footfalls were regular; there was nothing to suggest that it was anything but a routine patrol. The light was bright now, and Tali edged back. They would pass by any second.

They reached the entrance to the pondages. A man and a woman, both big and strong. Then they stopped.

“What’s that smell?” said the woman, who was closest to the entrance. She held up her lantern. It revealed a broad, mannish face, black hair cut short, and tattoos like a pair of crossed ribbons across her forehead.

Tobry was still sweating rivers but Tali did not think the female had scented him. Now she noticed the smell too — a faint, acrid odour drifting from the grating, coming from the corrosive fluid Holm had used to eat through the metal.

“Alkoyl?” said the male guard.

“No,” said the woman, sniffing. “It smells like the new kind of vitriol.” She took a chuck-lash from her belt, a red and black one almost as thick as Tali’s little finger, and raised it over her shoulder.

The man drew a curved sword and followed.

Tali had been lashed with little chuck-lashes several times, which exploded against the skin with excruciating, blistering pain. But the big ones could take an arm off, or a lower leg, and if they hit in the face, throat or belly, they usually killed.

She made the agreed sign to Tobry and Holm, slashing her fingers across her throat. Silence the guards — as quickly as possible.

They already had a plan for this. Tali and Tobry would attack, while Holm stood by to cut down anyone who got away or went for the clangours, the system of alarms that ran along the ceiling of every tunnel in Cython. If the clangours were sounded, the alarm would be carried, and repeated, by a series of bell-pipes throughout Cython. Every Cythonian, anywhere in the underground city, would hear the sound within minutes.

The woman passed by. One step. Two steps. She raised her glowstone lantern, extended it ahead of her towards the pondages, and the light fell directly on the rectangular section that Holm’s phial of acid had eaten through the grating.

She spun around and raced for the clangours, shouting, “Intruders, intruders!”