hunters.”
As if hearing him, another ringing echo droned through the stones. Laurelle felt it in her bones, along her spine. She had never been so desperate. Her heart pounded in her throat. She wanted to cry, but nothing would break loose.
“We can’t stay here,” he whispered as the ringing faded. “And I think I might know a way to get us safely past the others.”
“How?”
“A wyld tracker has keen eyes in the dark. The guards are also unwashed, easy to smell from several paces off. With care, going slow, we might be able to find a weakness through whatever snare has been laid.”
She considered his plan. She did not have his senses. She would be blind, totally in his care.
“Laurelle?” he asked, noting her silence.
She felt his breath on her cheek, heated, worried. Again she was struck by his scent and she turned to him, followed the breath to his lips. She kissed him.
He pulled back, startled.
She followed, making sure he knew it was no accident. Then she spoke between his lips. “I trust you,” she said.
She gripped his hand and shifted to her feet. After a stunned moment, he rose beside her.
“Stay with me,” he whispered as they set off.
He guided them down black corridors, moving in fast steps and sudden stops. They crisscrossed, then backtracked when he scented something. Finally the darkness turned gray ahead, but he balked.
She saw enough of his silhouette to see him shake his head.
Back they went into the darkness.
“Stairs,” he whispered, guiding her by the hand. “An old servants’ stair, I think. Dusty and forgotten.”
She hoped so.
He headed down it. To follow, she searched with her toes for each step. It was narrow and frighteningly steep, more like descending a ladder than a stair.
They finally reached the bottom. He led the way again. They continued more cautiously, then he slowed even further. “I think…I think we’re not far from the stair where Mistress Delia was pushed.”
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I also scent something…a faint trace…” His hand tightened on hers. “Blood.”
Laurelle felt her stomach clench.
“Stay here.”
“No.” Her answer was immediate and certain. Her fingers clamped onto his.
He didn’t argue, only edged forward. In another turn, darkness turned to a deep twilight. Ahead, a body appeared, sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Even in the gloom, Laurelle noted the unnatural twist to the body.
She bit back a sob, feet slowing. She didn’t want to see.
“It’s not Delia,” Kytt assured her and led her forward.
In another two steps, she saw he was correct. The body wore a guard’s livery. One of Sten’s men.
Kytt dropped to a knee and placed a hand on his neck. “Broken.” He straightened and stepped over the body. He touched something on the floor. “Drops of blood.” He sniffed at his fingers. “Mistress Delia’s scent.”
Could she still be alive?
Hope rising, they hurried forward. The trail led to a closed door. They hesitated-but even Laurelle could see the wet blood on the floor. She tentatively reached for the latch, but Kytt suddenly placed his hand over hers.
“Wait. There’s someone-”
“Get in here,” a voice barked, startling them both back a step. “Quit skulking and help. Before it’s too late.”
Though Laurelle recognized the voice, she pulled on the latch. She refused to abandon Delia again.
Inside, the room held scant furniture. Only a small lamp rested on the stone floor, dancing with a tepid flame. But it was enough to illuminate Master Orquell crouched beside Delia’s limp form, sprawled across a small plank bed. One side of the woman’s face was bloody, hair soaked and matted. The old master wiped her cheek with a wet cloth, then pointed an arm toward the lamp.
“Bring that closer,” he ordered.
Laurelle obeyed, reacting to the command in his voice. She picked up the lamp and carried it nearer.
Master Orquell slipped a tiny leather bag from inside his robe and dumped a gray powder into his palm, then held it before the lamp’s flame. The powder turned a rosy hue.
“You broke that guard’s neck?” Kytt asked, equally unsure.
“Before he could break hers,” Orquell answered sourly, weighing the powder in his palm, studying it closer. “Lucky I was down here. Then again, the flames guide us where we’re best needed.”
“The flames…?” Laurelle echoed, suspicions piqued again.
The master glanced up at her. His eyes appeared less milky in the close light of the lamp. They pierced through her, questioningly.
“We followed you,” she explained. “Earlier in the morning. Into the back of the master’s quarters.”
His eyes narrowed in confusion, then brightened with understanding.
“You saw me cast a pyre.”
She nodded.
“Ah…no wonder you are suspicious.” He reached again to the wet cloth. “Then perhaps this will steady your hand so you stop shaking the lamp.”
He sat back and wiped his forehead. Face paint, a perfect match to his yellow parchment skin, smeared away. Beneath the paint rose a hidden crimson mark, bright on his skin, resting in the center of his forehead like an awakening eye.
Laurelle gasped at the mark, knowing it well.
It was no eye. It marked where the bloody thumb of the fire god, Takaminara, had been burnt into his flesh, branding him as one of her true acolytes.
“I am rub-aki,” Orquell said quietly.
“One of the Blood-eyed seers.”
She pictured him rocking before his tiny pyre, sprinkling alchemy, and speaking to the flame. His fire had not been born of some forbidden Grace, but of something much older, a seer’s rites ancient and rare. His mistress was not the daemoness below, but a god in a distant land, the reclusive Takaminara.
But why the disguise, the face paint?
Before she could inquire, Orquell returned his attention to his ministrations of Delia. “We don’t have much time. We must get her back on her feet and moving.”
He leaned over and puffed his fistful of powder into Delia’s face. She inhaled it sharply as if it burnt. Her eyes fluttered open. She gasped, steam rising from her lips with some alchemy of fire.
She jerked as if startled awake, flailing an arm.
“Quickly now, boy,” Orquell said to Kytt. “Help me get her up. We must be away. They’ll be drawn by the smell of blood before long.”
Delia fought them, still dazed, but Laurelle reassured her and drew the focus of her eye. “You’re safe.”
Or so she hoped.
“Laurelle…?”
“I’m here. We must get going. You have to help us.”
Orquell met Laurelle’s gaze, nodded his thanks, and then he and Kytt helped Delia up. In a couple more steps, she was strong enough to need only Kytt’s support.
Orquell hurried ahead to the door. “We must get back to the others. Into flame and light. They’re already on the move. The blood and the dead will draw them.”
“Draw who-?”
A scream answered her, rising out in the hall to a curdling wail.
“Too late.” Orquell turned to them, his crimson eye blazing in the lamplight. “The witch is loose.”
