“I will,” Sasha agreed.
Sasha was waiting in the alley when she heard a soft shuffle behind her, and spun. Errollyn was there, a shadow in the evening gloom.
“Damn you!” Sasha whispered, as her heart started again. Errollyn looked one way and the other, bow in hand. The air was hot and still, and there was barely a sound. Even here, on the feudalist midslope not far from the docks, people stayed indoors tonight. “I said I’d come alone!”
“You say a lot of things.”
“They barely trust me!” Sasha insisted, back to the wall so as not to make a silhouette in the fading light. Errollyn leaned alongside. “They’ll certainly not trust a serrin!”
“They will if I’m with you. Everyone knows I’m
“Aye, well
Errollyn reached across her, a hand on the wall by her head, his eyes intense and close. Even now, as well as she knew him, those startlingly bright eyes in the gloom gave Sasha an involuntary chill. “Sasha, Alythia’s my friend too. I’m not sorry for what I did, but I am sorry for Alythia. If you think for a moment, you’ll realise that you need me.”
Need him? Abruptly Sasha recalled their passion in the Tol’rhen store room. She wondered if Errollyn might just take her here in the deserted alley, and did not mind the notion. But looking at his eyes, she realised that he meant his night vision.
She threw her head back in exasperation. “This is crazy. I don’t know whether to fuck you or hit you.”
“Can’t you do both?”
Sasha glared, angry at him for daring to remind her why she loved him.
“Cover me,” she told him, and slipped beneath his arm, edging toward the near corner.
Sasha crept about the courtyard, beneath the cover of arches. Errollyn followed, an arrow nocked to his bowstring, searching the darkness. Ahead, leaning against a column, there was a man in a cloak. A smoke stick flared orange, a gleam beneath his hood. Sasha left her blade sheathed…there was no advantage to feudalists in killing her, or taking her hostage now. But to recruit her to their cause…
“Sashandra,” said the figure. Sasha came closer, and recognised Councillor Dhael.
“Councillor.” She was surprised. She’d not seen Dhael since their voyage together, though she’d heard him spoken of. He was not a feudalist, nor was he said to have as many ties to them as some. “You are still free.”
“Indeed,” said Dhael, tapping his smoke. “There are those in Council who stand taller than I. I’ve long found that those who stick out their necks get their heads chopped off.”
Sasha glanced back at Errollyn, who peered from the shadow of columns, searching the windows above.
“But you work with the feudalists now?” she pressed Dhael. She was here on Lord Elot’s invitation. She did not want her time to be wasted. “I’d taken you for a friend of Saalshen. An idealist.”
“A pacifist,” said Dhael, with irony. “I know how you Lenays must dislike the word. Lord Elot asked me to speak to you.”
“Because you once stood with Saalshen? I still stand with Saalshen. I just want my sister back. The way Rhillian’s replacing high justices, she’ll have the votes to take her head off. Spirits know the people are demanding it.”
“Ah,” said Dhael. “Well, there are no means here to help merely your sister.”
“There’s a plan to help them all escape?” Sasha guessed. “A breakout?”
Dhael regarded her warily. Then he looked at Errollyn. “A serrin working against Saalshen?”
“I told you,” Sasha said impatiently, “we want Alythia. Nothing more.”
“Such odd distinctions,” said Dhael. “It is not an easy thing, Sashandra, to work for peace. Peace in this world is hard to find. Sometimes, its trail is confused.”
“Kill your enemies,” said Sasha. “Peace follows.”
“Yes,” said Dhael, amused. “Peace has followed you Lenays everywhere.”
“I didn’t say it would last. But that’s your problem, Councillor, it never does. You seek the impossible; men like you search all their lives and find nothing.”
“Saalshen, I think, has made a mistake.” Dhael took a long breath of smoke. “Saalshen loves freedom. That is why serrin and Lenays have long enjoyed each other’s company-you each have the love of freedom in common. But we humans…we know not what to do with serrin freedom. Rhillian now strives to preserve the order of freedom, by violence. I think perhaps Lady Renine has the best idea for the human future after all.”
“Kessligh warned me the pacifists would all side with the tyrants in the end-freedom is always violent, so tyranny must be for peace. I’m not interested in Lady Renine, Dhael, and I’m not interested in her plans to restore the throne of Rhodaan and put her son’s skinny backside on it, and I’m quite certain it won’t lead to a more peaceful world, just a world where the violence is more well controlled, and less inconvenient to the powerful. I only want to make sure that my sister’s head stays attached to her shoulders. Now what is this plan of yours?”
It was cool underground. In the blackness, even Errollyn needed a lamp. Sasha walked behind, blade sheathed, fingers trailing the tunnel’s stone wall. Behind them, five noblemen. She trusted none of them, and was uncomfortable to have them at her back, but reasoned well enough that if they wished to dispose of her, they’d surely wait until
They had entered the tunnel from the wall of a basement, downslope of the Justiciary, and Sasha figured that it would make a straight line for the dungeons. The basement had been part of an unremarkable house, owned by a family who owed allegiance. The tunnel had existed for quite some time, unbeknown to most, the Tracato nobility having long ago foreseen a day when such access to the Justiciary dungeons would prove useful. Certainly it was no rough-cut rabbit hole, its walls smooth stone, its floor paved, its ceiling a flat surface of timber planks.
After some distance walking hunched, the tunnel turned a bend, and stopped. Errollyn placed his lamp on the floor, handed his bow to Sasha (even in such tight quarters, he insisted on bringing it) and pushed on an overhead stone, uncovered by ceiling planks. The cell above was empty, they’d been told, courtesy of some inside source. That meant that it had been empty at the time the source had walked past it, most likely some time earlier today. A late transference of prisoners, or some newly captured person, would make things interesting.
The stone scraped as Errollyn heaved, then came free. He pushed it up, reached to set it aside, then heaved himself up on the lip to peer within. After a moment, he hauled up and disappeared, only to reach back down for his bow and lamp. Sasha followed, and rolled up onto a stone cell floor. The first of the nobles pulled himself through, unwrapped some keys from a bundled cloth and moved quietly to the door.
Sasha crouched beside him, and peered through the bars of the door’s small port, listening intently. She heard nothing but the clacking of the key, then the slow squeal of the lock. The cell door opened, and Errollyn pushed past into the corridor, handing the lamp to Sasha and gesturing for the others to stay back. He moved with catlike grace beyond the lantern’s dim light, past adjoining doors, and vanished in the dark. Sasha stood in the corridor, and could hear only her own breathing.
After a moment, Errollyn came back. “The first guards are not where they’re supposed to be,” he whispered. “They’ve gone.”
“Then our way is clear,” replied the senior nobleman-Torase was his name, and he was young, blond and brash. “Let’s go, quickly!”
Errollyn led the way, Sasha this time bringing the lamp. The corridor turned, briefly right, then left, and then some stairs leading to an arch. That was where the guards would be, they’d been told. Errollyn had been confident that even with their illumination, he’d have been able to approach and disable them without killing, guard duty being dull at the best of times, and in a hole deep underground, even more so. There was no illumination now besides the lamp.
Errollyn gestured Sasha to stay at the arch, and walked alone to where his eyesight gave him the advantage, without illumination to give away his presence to any guards. He’d barely gone ten paces before he stopped, and cocked his head, listening. Sasha listened also-serrin hearing was no better than humans’.
There, she heard it. A distant yell, echoing. And another. More yells, a shouted conversation, somewhere up the corridor. A rattle of metal, an armoured man running. Sasha’s hand moved to her blade, then stopped, as she realised the man was running away, sounds growing fainter.
She advanced on Errollyn. “An alarm?” Errollyn wondered.
“Guards won’t leave their post for a mere alarm,” Sasha muttered. “It’s an attack.”
