But first, escape.
Footsteps in the hallway spurred hope. She slid her hairpins under a cot, and edged close to the gate, poised if an opportunity came.
Unfortunately, there were a lot of footsteps. Hollowcrest came into view first, and then the four guards crowded behind him. Too many.
Hollowcrest unlocked the gate. “Search her.”
Guards flowed in. Two grabbed her arms, while the other two rummaged through her pockets and more personal places. They found the note. Amaranthe sighed as they took it. Now, even if she escaped, she had lost the only physical evidence that Hollowcrest was manipulating the emperor and that Sespian was in danger.
“Is there anything you don’t have your fingers in?” Hollowcrest asked.
“I’ve been trying to broaden my interests of late,” she said. “Since I’ve learned how dangerous it can be to blindly follow the orders of men you grew up thinking you could trust.”
“Take anything else she could use to escape,” Hollowcrest said.
They took her enforcer identification, her money, Sespian’s bracelet, and the key to her flat. She watched Hollowcrest to see if that bracelet would mean anything to him, but he let the guards remove it without an eye flicker.
He shut the gate with a clang. The lock clicked, and Hollowcrest led his men away.
Amaranthe threw her back against the bars and glared about the room. “All right,” she whispered to herself. “Nothing’s changed. I still have to escape.”
She checked the stove, but only a useless layer of ash lined the firebox. A narrow pipe exited the top and disappeared into the ceiling. The hole would not be wide enough to crawl through if she dismantled the stovepipe.
The cabinets were locked, but the mechanisms were simpler than the ones securing the door. She found a hairpin and soon defeated them. Empty canisters, a spool of surgical thread, and stacks of papers rested on shelves inside. Nothing particularly useful.
Her hand brushed against one of the jars holding the odious bugs. She jerked her arm away with a horrified yank. Then she snorted and relaxed. No reason to be afraid of them now.
Amaranthe paused. “No reason for me to be afraid of them.”
The beginnings of an idea percolated through her mind. There were a total of four glass jars, each with a wing-flapping, tail-flicking bug inside. Amaranthe spun out some thread and tied the jars together, leaving a long leash dangling. She placed them on top of the cabinet near the cell door. Next, she found an empty canister with a lid and scooped ashes from the stove into it. Thus prepared, she pushed herself up to sit on the counter under the jars. She clutched the thread leash in one hand and rested the canister next to her thigh, where it could not be seen from the gate.
Several hours would pass before the surgeon returned. She could only hope she retained the ability to act when the time came.
The awkward position and the knowledge of impending death made sleep inaccessible. Waiting had none of the distracting qualities of plotting an escape or trying to draw information out of Hollowcrest. One of the sick men stopped breathing during the night. The pained wheezing of the others finally cracked Amaranthe’s stoicism, and she wept quietly. Whether for them or herself or both, she did not know. The tears felt strangely cool on her cheeks. I have a fever already, she realized numbly.
In the morning, the surgeon’s voice drifted down the corridor. She checked the thread wound around her hand.
Two men stopped before the gate. Amaranthe, staring at the floor, saw them at the edge of her vision. The surgeon and a single guard, carrying a repeating crossbow. She feigned a stupor. She was not a threat; at least, that’s what she wanted them to think.
Amaranthe waited until the surgeon unlocked the gate and pushed it open.
She yanked on the thread.
The jars crashed down, and glass shattered as they hit the concrete floor. The surgeon and the guard blinked in confusion at first. Then an angry buzz educated the silence. Realization came to the surgeon first, and she smiled with grim satisfaction as a bug flew at his face. His eyes widened and he leaped backwards, smashing into the guards who did not yet understand the ramifications of the broken glass.
Amaranthe jumped to her feet and lunged for the exit. She grabbed a fistful of ash from her canister and threw it at their faces. The surgeon paid her little heed except to swat at the ash and run back the way he had come.
“The bugs are out, you idiots!” he called over his shoulder.
The guards, finally realizing the danger, raced after the surgeon.
Amaranthe paused only long enough to slam the lid onto the canister, then ran the other way. She headed deeper into the dungeon, hoping her captors would expect her to go up instead of down. Numerous shouts rang from the direction of the stairs. No, she would never escape that way. She wished she could stop to free the other prisoners, but she had neither keys nor time. The virus-laden insects might delay pursuit, but only temporarily.
After a few turns, ancient stone replaced the whitewashed concrete walls. The gas lamps ended, but a rack with a few lanterns provided a means to travel deeper. She grabbed one and considered destroying the others, but figured the task would take her more time than it bought.
Deeper she went, the lantern doing little to drive back the shadows. Perhaps it was for the best. The glimpses of ancient torture implements, rusty wall shackles, and rat feces did nothing to hearten her. Staleness competed with mildew to taint the damp air.
Under what circumstances, she wondered, had Sicarius spent time down here?
At each intersection, Amaranthe tilted her head and tried to feel breezes that might indicate an outside exit. She was putting a lot of trust in Sicarius, a man she barely knew and whose deeds hardly spoke well of him. Whether he had been lying, or her fever-befuddled senses were betraying her, she reached a dead-end before she felt any hint of a draft.
She sniffed liberally around the walls, trying to detect some hint of the outdoors amongst the must and mold. Nothing.
Amaranthe backtracked and tried other passages. The exercise fatigued her. She came to two more dead- ends before a faint breeze brushed her cheek. Voices sounded, not far enough away for comfort. She removed the lid from her canister of ash, yanked her shirt over her mouth and nose, then threw handfuls of the fine gray powder in the air. It assaulted her eyes, and she stepped back, bumping into the wall.
“Hear something?” a man asked nearby.
“She’s down here somewhere.”
“Don’t see why we have to bother searching. Can just wait until the corpse starts to stink and find her then.”
They laughed, and armor and weapons clanked. There might only be two of them, but they were armed. Amaranthe had nothing, not even Sicarius’s dagger. Besides, she doubted she could best a five-year-old in her present condition. This had to work.
She held her breath and squinted through blurry eyes into the cloud of ash, looking for a disturbance.
There.
A draft coming from the floor swirled the cloud at foot level. She groped around the area, searching for a switch or button.
At chest level on the left side, she found a crease in the mortar that depressed when touched. A mechanism ground behind the wall. She winced, sure the guards would hear.
In front of her, a jagged edge detached like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming apart. Amaranthe had to set down the lantern and use both hands to open the heavy stone door.
She threw more ash behind her to obscure her footprints. She grabbed her light, stepped inside, and pulled the door shut.
Cobwebs and dust owned the tunnel she entered. Too tired to swat at them, she ran-no, stumbled-straight through. Her clumsy gait evoked resentment; already, this disease was sapping her muscles. Her breath whistled as if she were at the end of a hard run around the lake. She doubted she had much time left where she could do anything useful.
