“Aren’t these tunnels a security risk? Shouldn’t the emperor be concerned about spies getting into them?”
She gave him a stern look over her shoulder. “Don’t get excited. The floors of the Imperial Palace are spelled to muffle sound, as are the walls, so you won’t hear anything through them. Aside from my trapdoor, there are no exits except the one used by the servants who change the glows. So the hypocaust is not the spy’s delight you think it is.”
She counted heat-glows, turned in the right places, and found the access tunnel. As the ceiling ascended, she stood, shaking her arms and legs to relieve cramped muscles. Behind her, Janto rose to his full height and brushed the dust from his clothes. He pointed to the door ahead. “That’s the exit?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the guards? Are they just on the other side?”
“No,” she said. “There’s a short hallway first. They’re at the intersection of that hallway and the larger one.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Janto headed for the door.
“Are you going to shroud us?”
“Already have. See the shimmer?” He eased the door open, peered out, and beckoned Rhianne through.
The two guards did not look in Rhianne’s direction as she came out the door, but they were so broad in body they took up the entire hallway. “We can’t get past them,” she whispered to Janto, who slipped out beside her.
“Not to worry,” he said, and gave the door a shove, angling it on its hinges to make it squeak.
The guards turned, suddenly alert. “Door’s open,” one of them said to the other.
The other rolled his eyes. “Well, shut it.”
The first guard walked toward the door.
Janto placed a hand on Rhianne’s shoulder and guided her first around the walking guard, then the stationary one. They left the palace through the slave entrance, and Rhianne took the lead, heading for the stables. She needed a horse for her journey, although she would not be able to keep Dice for long. All the horses in the stable were too imperial in appearance, too conspicuous. Also, she was secretly hoping she would need a second horse.
Janto had said nothing about going with her. He’d only said he would help her escape. She’d been afraid to ask if he would go with her, fearing she wouldn’t like the answer, but there was no getting around it. She had to just say the words. When they were almost to the stables, she stopped him. “Will you come with me?”
He blinked. “You mean run away?”
“Yes.”
His answer was a long time coming. “I can’t.”
“I know there’s risk involved, but . . .” She blew out her breath, trying to settle her nerves. “I love you, Janto. I want nothing more than a life with you. We can run so far away that Florian will never find us—even out of the country, to Sardos or Inya. You choose which.” She took his hands and looked him in the eye. “I don’t care if we’re poor. I don’t care if I’m not royalty. I just want to be with you.”
“Rhianne . . .” He squeezed her hand, and he looked so sad that she knew his answer was not going to be the one she wanted. She felt the tears starting. He folded her trembling body into his arms. “What sort of man would I be if I ran off to enjoy a comfortable life in exile while my people suffer execution and enslavement? If I did that, I wouldn’t be worthy of you. I have to save my country first. If I accomplish that,
“Mosar has fallen!” she said. “Your obligation is over.”
“It will never be over,” said Janto.
“Whatever plan you have, it is hopeless,” said Rhianne. “You cannot retake Mosar. Even if you did, Kjallan forces would take it back from you. You will wind up enslaved or on a stake. My uncle has destroyed your country. Why let him destroy you as well? Let this be your small victory, your way of showing him he cannot win every battle. Come with me, and we’ll build a life together.
“I can’t do it.” He stroked her hair. “However . . . you could come with me to Mosar.”
She looked up. “And assist in your rebellion?”
He nodded.
She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. “No. If you take back your country, I’ll be cheering for you, but I’m Kjallan. I can’t fight my own people.”
“Then it seems we’re at an impasse,” said Janto.
Indeed they were; she could see no way around it. Rhianne closed her eyes and warmed herself in Janto’s embrace until she could no longer bear the pain of their imminent separation. Why had she not brought a gift for him, something for him to remember her by? Perhaps she had never truly believed he would refuse her and stay behind. She would give him a well-wishing, since it was all she had to offer. “Soldier’s blessing upon you,” she whispered.
He smiled and drew three fingers down her forehead in the Mosari way. “Blessings of the Three: Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond.”
She reached up and kissed him one last time. Then she headed for the stable, alone.
Back at the palace, Janto felt Rhianne’s loss keenly, but he knew he’d done the right thing in helping her get away. Augustan was as bad an intended husband as he’d imagined—worse, in fact. He only worried that he had not helped her enough, that he should go with her to protect her and hide her from the guards who would inevitably be turned out to search for her. But he was king of Mosar, and his people needed him. Rhianne was smart and resourceful. He had to trust in her abilities. She had as good a chance of outrunning Florian’s minions as anyone.
He’d been of half a mind to confess his true identity to Rhianne at their parting. What harm would it do now? But then, what purpose would it serve? Their paths were diverging. Let her memories of him remain untainted. She didn’t need to grieve, as he did, about what might have been, had their countries never been enemies.
Donning his shroud, Janto collected paper, ink, and a quill and returned to the hypocaust. In showing him this secret passageway, Rhianne had given him a magnificent parting gift. And until now, he hadn’t even known of its existence! This underground heating system apparently lay beneath the entire palace, a thin layer filled with heat-glows that servants activated or deactivated as needed to keep the Imperial Palace at the desired temperature. Rhianne had claimed it was useless for spying, because it had only one entrance, and spells prevented sound from leaking through the walls and floors, but for all that he loved and trusted Rhianne, the uses of the hypocaust were easily something she might lie about. Or be ignorant about. She cared about him, but she was Kjallan, and, as she had just made so abundantly clear, she would not knowingly betray her people.
In a way, he was glad she’d refused to go to Mosar with him. It was a fool’s errand; he would almost certainly be killed there. Better she should stay here on Kjall and begin a new life.
Gasping in the stifling heat, he summoned magelight and, with paper and ink, mapped the entrance corridor and everything he could see from the place he now sat, marking each individual heat-glow on the map.
Rhianne said that she and Lucien had sneaked out together through the hypocaust. She could have meant they both sneaked out through the trapdoor in her room. But wasn’t it far more likely that Lucien had a trapdoor in his own room? If so, he needed to find that door. The rooms of the Imperial Heir could hold valuable intelligence about the attack, or feint, or whatever it was that was happening on Sardos. If Janto had to map every inch of the hypocaust to locate Lucien’s trapdoor, he would do it.
Hours later, around dawn, guards began pouring into the once-empty hypocaust, and Janto knew Rhianne’s disappearance had been discovered. They crawled up and down its sweltering passageways, searching perhaps for Rhianne herself, or else the exit she’d taken. No doubt they were bewildered, trying to work out how she could have slipped past the Legaciatti.
Their presence made any further mapping dangerous, so he left the tunnels. It was time for a new approach anyway. His all-night study of the hypocaust had impressed upon him the difficulty of mapping the entire system; the structure was enormous. Since his priority right now was finding a trapdoor into Lucien’s room, why not find out where Lucien’s room was located aboveground, and then, back in the hypocaust, map his way directly
