Break the Chains

Chapter Forty-One

Ripka took a step backward, giving ground to Kisser and her guards. They herded her back until her thighs pressed against the low, thick edge of Nouli’s worktable. Honey lingered to her left, fingers tapping against her hip to some internal song. She had to diffuse this, quickly. Before it grew into a bloodbath they couldn’t escape drowning in.

“He wants out,” Ripka said, tipping her head toward Nouli without taking her gaze from Kisser. “See? All packed and ready to go. Wants to take you with him. We can do that. I can get you out of here, Kanaea. Back to the mainland.”

She snorted and kicked a crate out of her path. “You think I want to stay here forever?”

“You didn’t sell us out?”

“To the sand munchers? I might have whispered in their ear. But make no mistake, I want off this rock as much as you do, lil’ Miss Leshe. I’ve just got my own methods, my own loyalties, and you’re not on that list.”

“Loyalty?” Nouli clutched his bag to his chest, cheeks red. “You lecture on loyalty, child? Child of my sister? What do you know of it save that you scorned it?”

“Whoa,” Ripka held her hands out to Nouli and Kanaea, standing sideways between them. In the corner of her eye Enard slipped to the side, angling himself nearer the biggest of Kanaea’s pet guards. “I don’t know what blood’s gone sour between you two, but I know it’s not Nouli running around with the Glasseaters.” She jerked her chin at the two bruisers.

Kanaea snorted. “You think these men are Glasseaters? Are you crazy? Those rats are taking cheese from Radu’s hand, not mine. Not the empire’s. We all know it. Been traipsing around here like they own the place, getting freedoms no one else has to go tend their mudleaf crops. Radu thinks the inmates don’t notice, but they do. Guards do, too.” She tipped her head to the man standing closest to Enard. “That’s why they help us – help the empire–” her lip curled over the word, “because good men and women don’t want to bend knee to Radu and his scheming.”

“And yet you set them on us,” Ripka snapped.

She rolled her eyes. “Poorly, it seems. Thought those dogs had more teeth.”

“You sold them out!” The satchel squeaked in Nouli’s grip.

“Yes, Uncle, I did. For your own good.”

The guard nearest Enard stepped forward. Enard caught her eye, a question, and she gave a slight shake of the head. Best not escalate the situation until they had no choice. Nouli was a frail man, addled by age and addiction both. And she still held out hope of taking Kanaea and her chemical genius with them. If not for the saving of Hond Steading, then at the very least to keep her out of Valathea’s hands.

“Master Bern,” the guard said, “is it true that these two have devised a way for you to escape the Remnant?”

“Yes. These people, they’ve brought a way.”

“A way that is rapidly losing viability,” Ripka said, trying hard not to glance at the window she’d crawled through and think of the confrontation brewing in her wake. “We must go, now. If you both do want to leave, then–”

“I can leave whenever I want,” Kisser said. “The empress may want Uncle on lockdown, but no one cares what his sweet niece is up to. Not even Warden Baset would hold me here if I requested it. I’m just not ready yet. I don’t need you.”

“And would Radu let you walk if he knew about this?” Ripka waved a hand over Nouli’s worktable. “He’s hunting the source of Nouli’s experiments. It’s only a matter of time until he has you both hung for dipping into his profits.”

“Profits?” Nouli’s voice was tight, barely restrained. “You told me the subjects were addicts seeking temporary relief from their suffering. You said nothing about profits!”

Kisser spit and jerked her head to one of the guards at her side. “Protection doesn’t come cheap, Uncle, and I couldn’t let Radu know what you were up to until we had solid footing, not with the way Thratia has him wrapped around her fingers. The stuff works. My leaks via the guards into Petrastad are proof enough of that. We could make a fortune, selling it on both sides of the war. Me to the empire, and Radu to Thratia. Think of the gold. We could rebuild the Bern estates anew. You could rebuild your library.” Her eyes shone with genuine, if sickening passion. Ripka looked away, unable to stomach the stark fanaticism in her face.

“You mean this? Truly?” Nouli asked, his voice firm, even. Ripka admired him for that.

“You’ve earned it! This exile is a farce and everyone knows it. We need only the grains to restore you to your proper place.”

“To restore the Berns to their proper place,” he echoed.

“Yes!” Her fists clenched over her chest and she leaned toward him. Hopeful, vulnerable.

“No,” Nouli said.

“What–”

He kicked the leg of his table, a practiced jab, and the whole workstation collapsed in a rain of broken glass and spilt chemicals. Ripka jumped away as the many-colored fluids began to pool together. To fume wisps of cobalt smoke.

“Idiot!” Kisser hissed. “Honey, restrain that one.” She flicked a hand at Ripka and advanced upon her uncle. Nouli stepped backward, hesitant, his eyes glued upon the swirling puddles of his concoctions. Sweat sheened his brow, and Ripka realized he was waiting for something she didn’t want to wait around to see.

Honey didn’t say a word to Kisser. She slipped forward, smooth as a viper, stuck her knife in the neck of the guard closest to her, humming a soft tune as she danced away from his crumpling, spasming body.

Kisser whirled toward her once-accomplice, eyes wide. Honey grabbed her hair, yanked so that she bent over backwards and fell hard to the ground. The other guard turned toward them. Nouli’s eyes bulged.

“Get out!” Ripka barked, leaping over the felled guard and Kisser to grab Nouli’s arm and haul him out into the hall. Shouts and stomps and curses echoed behind her but she pushed on, shoving Nouli ahead, praying to the blue skies he knew where he was going.

A concussive whump sounded against the stone wall, the ground shaking as rivers of mortar streamed from cracks between the stones. She stumbled, fell to one knee. Enard was beside her in an instant, pulling her back to her feet, urging her forward while Honey sang a lullaby to herself somewhere behind them in the hall.

“Was that–” she began, but Nouli cut her off, shaking his head so hard sweat flew off him. “Wasn’t mine, not yet, hurry.”

Enard mouthed, “Lord Honding.”

She shivered and forced herself to run on, praying all over again that Detan and the others were safe. That whatever that was, he’d been in control of it.

Light fingers brushed the back of her neck and she almost jumped clear out of her skin. She whirled to find Honey pressed up close against Enard. “May I lead? The way behind is clear.”

Ripka looked back down the narrow stone hall, and saw no sign of pursuit. “How?”

“I closed the door.” Honey hummed.

The great wooden beam, used to keep Nouli tucked safely away.

“You locked them in?” Nouli demanded.

“Yes?” Honey cocked her head to the side, not understanding the horror writ upon his face.

A soft hiss echoed from down the hall, rising in pitch until it became a wail. Human voices joined the screaming, indistinguishable from the roar of the chemical firestorm Nouli had set off. Someone pounded upon the door, heavy, pleading thunks that echoed down the hall, and then the great brass alarm bells of the Remnant drowned them out. Nausea gripped Ripka. She swallowed bitter bile.

“Nouli – I… I’m so sorry.”

His expression hardened, his shoulders straightened. “She did this to herself.” He shuffled away, turning his back on his niece’s cries. Honey took the lead, and Ripka was happy to let her do it. She’d had enough of blood. Of suffering. Kisser may have betrayed them all, but that only earned her a place in a cell. Not a molten, screaming death.

The hissing shuffle of chainmail echoed ahead. Ripka tensed, preparing for a fight, and edged in front of Nouli. He may know the way better than she, but he was no use in a fight that didn’t involve rhetoric. He grunted, squeezing himself against the wall to let her pass, but by the time she’d gained the position Honey had done her work. She stood in the crossway of two halls, blood dribbling from the tip of her blade, humming a gentle tune and swaying as the man at her feet spasmed and choked on his own blood.

Ripka cleared her throat, then felt perversely guilty that she could do so while the man at her feet could not. “Which way?” she asked no one in particular.

“Left,” Nouli answered, voice cracking. He cleared it. “To the stairs at the end, then up and right. You’ll find servants’ stairs at the end of that hall. If you need guidance, ask, otherwise…” He glanced at the guard, now grown still, and swallowed. Ripka caught Enard’s eye over his shoulder and he nodded. Enard would guard the rear, Honey would be their spearpoint, and Ripka would shield Nouli from any more trauma, if at all possible. It would work. It had to. It could not be that far to the roof. Enard relieved the guard’s body of a cutlass. No one commented.

Honey started off, humming softer now as to not draw attention, and Ripka wished she’d go ahead and sing already. Any sound would be better than the suffocating silence of the stone walls, the frantic thundering of her heart, and the ragged breath of her companions. Detan damn well better hurry with that ship, for she was not certain they could make another stand if it came to it.

She wished they could pass through the halls like shadows, slipping through the dark corners of the prison unseen. Instead, they stumbled and shuffled and dragged themselves creaking and groaning and swearing at the occasional stubbed toe. Nouli whispered course corrections in her ear when necessary, Honey’s bright hair bobbed before her like a light. Like a ghost lantern leading her into the deepest dark.

At last they came across a ladder and Honey shimmied up the rungs without effort, throwing open the top hatch to spill cloud-greyed light down upon them. Ripka hesitated, remembering with a sense of foreboding the last time she’d climbed a ladder to a sun drenched roof in Aransa. That should have been her death, but she’d cheated it. She’d cheat it again, if it came to that.

Muscles burning in protest, she slung herself up after Honey and scrambled onto the dusty tiles of the roof. Her heels rang out against hard ceramic. It made sense, the part of her that gathered details and analyzed them thought wearily. Ceramic was light. She’d seen plenty of stone roofs collapse in the poorer districts of Aransa. Roofs thrown up by people who didn’t have the grains for ceramic, or the ability to weave sawgrass thatch.

She blinked, letting her eyes adjust while the others scrambled up behind her, and froze. Three guards stood at the edge of the roof, their backs to them, looking down on the mess that was the rec yard riot. Honey put a finger to her lips: shhh.

Motioning for Nouli to be still, Ripka crept after Honey. Enard’s shadow stretched out before her, each step she took crunching over the slight grit of the roof louder than any alarm bell to her ears. But the great brass bells continued to sound, drowning their advance in the thunder of their voices. Halfway there… a third…

The bells fell silent. Honey’s heel clicked against the baked tiles. One of the guards began to turn – Ripka lunged. Her world dissolved into shouting and grunting as she leapt on the back of the nearest guard, wrapped her elbows around his neck and squeezed. Honey took up her song. Enard swore somewhere distant.

Her vision swam as the guard jerked side to side, shaking her like a dog shakes its wet coat, jamming his thumbs up under her arms and wrenching, prying, clawing til her skin bled and she was roaring in his ear to stop, it was safer for him to faint. Honey’s song wouldn’t find him then. He staggered, swayed, the world pitched up and she saw nothing but blue as the backs of his thighs hit the low wall hemming in the roof. Her stomach dropped. The guard lurched, unconsciousness taking him at the most inopportune of moments.

Heavy hands grabbed her upper arm, the side of her jumpsuit, and yanked. She let go of the guard, swore as he tumbled over the roof without her.

“Thanks,” she said, panting, and forced herself to stand, rubbery though her legs were.

“I’m afraid we’ve begun a bigger problem.” Enard, stoic as ever, peered over the edge of the roof. Ripka forced herself to the edge, though her stomach protested at being too near the height that’d almost taken her life.

The guard’s body splayed in the rec yard, limbs twisted askew, a dark stain spreading out around him. He’d drawn other guards like flies, and they pointed toward the roof, shouting. Ripka grimaced and stepped back. They’d be swarmed in moments.

“How many entrances?” she asked, then realized no one would know. “Find them all!” She put some command into her voice, because at least that made her feel like she might know what she was doing.

Honey, Enard, and Nouli scrambled, searching the square roof for hidden doors, while she grabbed the heel of the guard Honey had, apparently, stabbed in the kidney, and hauled his corpse over to the trap door they’d come through. The other guard lay beside him, neck twisted. Ripka told herself Enard hadn’t had a choice. None of them had.

She stacked the corpses on top of the trap door and brushed her hands off as Enard trotted up to her.

“Well?”

“Only the one entrance, and an empty docking post, captain.”

She almost laughed with giddy relief. “Good. The guards’ weight should slow anyone coming through down.”

“Not for long,” Nouli said, staring at the door, his tanned face wan and sallow in the clear light of day. Poor bastard had probably never seen so much blood up close before.

“It’ll be enough,” she said, not believing it, and then reached down to peel the baton and cutlass from a fallen guard’s body. After a second’s thought, she took the coat too.

“You cold?” Honey rasped, her voice all motherly concern.

“Hardly. Come on, we gotta hang this from the dock post so Honding can find us.”

“Won’t he see the battle?”

Ripka grimaced. “I’m hoping he’ll get here first.”

Thudding pounded below the trapdoor, crushing her hopes as soon as she’d spoken them.