Soft thumps came from the street behind him.
“That should be it,” he whispered and started to back in that direction.
A clank-clunk-thump sounded, something bouncing off the wall and into their alley. Tolemek grabbed Ahn’s shoulder, images of grenades bursting in his mind, but not before she got two shots off. One of them seemed to strike the item, for the clanks sounded, going in the other direction. Tolemek had scarcely seen anything. He pulled Ahn toward the street.
A flash of light and a boom came from the object—it was farther away than he would have expected. Shouts of surprise—and pain—arose from that direction. Ahn must have shot the grenade itself, knocking it back toward the men who had thrown it. Tolemek could barely see in the shadows and fog and couldn’t imagine how she had made the shot.
Ahn, less constricted by the narrow walls, spun and pushed at him—as if he hadn’t been trying to pull her in that direction all along. “Time to go. That won’t stop them for long.”
Tolemek jogged into the street where he had rolled out the sphere. Even more fog had gathered, but not enough to hide the lanterns lying on the pavement, lanterns that had been in men’s hands before. He ran past the slumbering figures, leading Ahn up the street, across it, and into a new alley.
“You should have stored those leather balls somewhere obvious, so I could find them in your cabin,” Ahn said. “I wouldn’t have had to burn holes in the engine. Could have just knocked out everyone on the deck to escape.”
“Yes... In the future, I’ll make sure to organize and label my lab for the convenience of prisoners.”
“Maybe add a map and some diagrams too.”
Tolemek found himself grinning despite the circumstances—and the fact that he was going to have a difficult time walking about on the Roaming Curse outpost again without getting shot, assuming he made it off this time without getting shot. He took a final turn, then stopped before a brick wall at the end of an alley. Shouts echoed in the streets behind them, calls for reinforcements. So much for sneaking over to this end of the outpost without being noticed.
“You’d think they would have repairs to worry about,” he muttered.
Ahn tapped the brick wall. “Dead end?”
“No.” The fog obscured the ground, so Tolemek tapped around with his boot until he located a spot that clanged instead of thudding. He knelt and found a grate.
“Sewers? I wouldn’t have thought this place had anything intricate beneath the platform.”
“It doesn’t. These grates just funnel rainwater off the streets and into the sea below. But they also lead somewhere else.” Not surprisingly, the grate was locked.
“Want me to open that?” Ahn asked.
“Your opening method leaves a lot of destroyed evidence behind to mark a person’s passing.”
Shouts came from a nearby street.
“Is that a no?” Ahn bounced on her toes, one of the six-shooters in hand again as she watched the path behind them.
“Correct.” Tolemek pulled out a vial, uncapped it, and carefully poured a couple of drops of gray liquid into the lock hole. “We’re not going far once we crawl down here, so I don’t want anyone noticing that someone passed through.”
“With all this fog, you can’t even see the grate itself.”
“True, but it’s possible someone will turn that down at some point. I’m not the only one on the station who knows how to push a lever.”
“You should have booby-trapped it then,” Ahn said.
“That would have been needlessly destructive.”
She glanced back at him, giving a pointed look toward the grate. He didn’t think she could see the hint of smoke rising from the lock, but she might be able to smell the melting mechanism.
“And possibly a good idea,” he admitted. “Suggest it earlier next time.”
“Next time? Are you planning on escaping from a lot more angry mobs with me?”
“Judging by what I’ve come to know about you in the last twenty-four hours, it seems inevitable. If we continue to spend time together, that is.” Tolemek tried the grate. The locking mechanism had disintegrated, and he opened it with ease. “My lady. Your duct awaits.”
Chapter 9
Cas peered into the dark vertical drop below the open grate. From what she could make out, the walls were dark and slimy, and the lighter gray at the bottom suggested an opening about fifteen feet down. An opening that couldn’t lead to anything except a drop of thousands of feet, followed by a plunge into the ocean filled with sharks. Not that the sharks would truly matter. At the speed one would hit the water, it would be like landing on cement. “I think you should go first.”
“I need to close the grate behind us.”
“I can do that.”
“You’re too short. The shaft leading to the side is nearly seven feet down.”
“What shaft?” Ahn asked. “All I see is a well with a long drop at the bottom of it.”
“There’s another grate across the bottom, but I can lower you down, so you can crawl into the access shaft before landing on that grate.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“I’ve studied the blueprint.”
“Oh, that’s all manner of comforting.”
Weapons jangled in the street closest to their dead-end alley. Tolemek threw an exasperated look in that direction, then whispered, “Fine, you’ll have to crawl down me then.”
Without hesitation, he slipped into the hole, lowering his body until only his hands remained, gripping the sides of the rectangular opening. For a moment, they didn’t move. Was he patting around with his feet for that side passage?
Cas crouched in the fog beside the opening, ready to shoot whoever came into their alley. She heard scuffling. At least two men. They paused to have a whispered conversation. She caught snatches of it.
“...they go this way?”
“Don’t know... don’t really want to find them. You see all those men down? The Deathmaker is with her.”
“Solid gold coins on her head though.”
“It’s his head I’m worried about.”
A pat at Cas’s foot nearly made her jump up.
“Now,” Tolemek whispered. “Climb down me.”
Though Cas wasn’t convinced relying on vague memories of blueprints was a good idea, she put the pistol in her mouth and lowered herself into the hole. It was a tight fit with Tolemek there, standing on some ledge, and he hadn’t been joking: she had to use him for handholds. The slick, algae-coated wall on the other side didn’t offer much to grip. Questioning whether there truly was a protective grate below, she grabbed him harder than he might have had in mind, wrapping her legs around his, as if she was sliding down a tree.
“Interesting place to store a gun,” he remarked as their heads drew level. He probably couldn’t see it in the dark shaft, but when she clunked him in the eye with the handgrip, he must have figured it out.
“I like the taste of metal,” she grumbled, the words probably not intelligible with the barrel in her mouth.
“I didn’t understand that,” Tolemek verified, reaching up to pull the grate closed behind them. “I’ll do you a favor and not imagine it was something lewd or innuendo-filled.”
“Thanks. You’re a gentleman.” She lowered herself, hands gripping his shoulders, and reached down with a leg, patting around to try and find the ledge. Ah, there.
The horizontal shaft was larger than she had imagined, perhaps three and a half feet high. Once her boots were planted on the bottom, she swung in, landing in a crouch. It was another rectangular space, the sides still slimed with algae, a nice dense growth. It reminded her of the gunk in the ruins below Dragon Spit. She wondered if that meant the transportable pirate outpost spent a lot of time hiding in tropical climates. Once she was done picking the gunk out from beneath her fingernails, she would write down the intel for her commanders.
On hands and knees, she crawled in a few feet so Tolemek would have room to
climb in behind her. An oddly strong draft skimmed past her cheeks, and the rumble of machinery came from somewhere ahead, the whum-whum-whums reminding her of the propellers on a flier. She stuck her pistol into her holster and decided to wait for him before crawling farther. For all she knew, this was some underground labyrinth with plenty of spots where one could fall into the ocean below.
A light touch on her shoulder told her Tolemek had joined her. She couldn’t see much. She scooted to the side to let him pass. This space wasn’t much wider than the last, and it took some maneuvering and much brushing of shoulders and hips before he could crawl into the lead.
“You sure this hiding spot of yours is a good idea?” Cas whispered. “If we end up trapped, and they figure out where we are...” She frowned at the image of being stuck in a dead-end duct with pirates at the entrance, peppering them with bullets.
“It’s a maze down here, and there are other ways out. If they figure out we’re down here, there are only a couple of people on the station who will know it well enough to find their way around, and they’re techs, not fighters.”
“Hm.” Cas’s new mental imagery involved her and Tolemek getting lost in said maze, running out of food and water, and dying without the need for any shooting.
He reached back and patted her on the shoulder. “I have a good memory. It’s all in my mind. We won’t go far, either. Just ahead, there’s a spot where we can stand up and climb onto a ledge. Then our legs won’t be visible if someone does figure out we went through that grate and decides to come down for a look.”
He was moving off as he spoke, and Cas had little choice but to follow him. The lush carpet of algae squished beneath her fingers. “How long did you say we have to stay down here?”
“A few hours. We’re meeting the captain at midnight.”
“Oh, good. I’m sure he’ll be excited to see me again.” Nothing like rejoining the ship one had sabotaged.
“Perhaps not exactly the word I’d use, but he was distraught to learn you had left us.”
“I’ll bet.”
She caught up with Tolemek, or rather his legs. Another shaft opened up from their crawl space, this one heading upward at an angle. His legs soon rose out of reach. She crawled after him, running into him again shortly, as soon as the bottom of the duct leveled out. He seemed to be standing. When she tried to do the same, she clunked her head on some edge or corner above her.
“What is this place?” she grumbled.
“Access ducts to all of the propellers on this end of the platform and to the holding tanks for the hydrogen for the balloons.” His voice was hollow, echoing oddly from several feet above. He was definitely standing up.
Cas patted overhead, finding the outline of the hole, then maneuvered into a standing position too. She was facing Tolemek, squeezed close by the narrowness of the walls, her smock brushing his chest. Feeling overly intimate in the position, she shifted her hip toward him, though that involved some bumping of body parts too. She was glad he hadn’t made those innuendo-filled comments about the gun earlier.
“Is this our final destination?” she asked. “Maybe I’ll just sit.” Except then her butt would be in that squishy algae. Ugh, didn’t pirates clean their maintenance ducts?
“Your choice. And, yes, I think this is a good place to stay until it’s time to meet the captain.”
Cas didn’t sit. She sighed and leaned her shoulder against the wall, something that didn’t keep her other shoulder from touching his chest. Oh, well. So long as he didn’t prong her with those spiked wrist guards of his, she could survive the closeness. Besides, as far as chests went, it wasn’t a bad one to be pressed up against, as long as she didn’t think overmuch about his past.
“My apologies,” Tolemek said. “This spot looked bigger on the blueprint.”
“A closet would have worked if all you wanted was to get me alone in the dark.”
He snorted softly. “Oh? Would you have agreed to spend time in a dark closet with me?”
“If it was between all of those gun-slinging pirates and you, yes.”
He seemed to consider that—or perhaps something else—a moment before saying, “What if it was between me and some handsome Iskandian lad?”
“I don’t know,” Cas said, caught off-guard by the question. “Does he wash his hair?”
Tolemek chuckled softly but didn’t otherwise respond, willing to let the topic drop, it seemed. That was good. He would be a wholly inappropriate choice when it came to romantic dalliances. To sleep with him, or do anything with him, wouldn’t just be a betrayal to herself. It would be a betrayal to her people, to all those who had died horribly at Tanglewood, and to countless others who had been killed, raped, plundered, and gods knew what else at the hands of these pirates.
Still, she found herself asking, “When did that... become a concern for you?”
She wanted to know if he was genuinely interested in something physical—which would mean she should be on guard more than ever around him—or if he was simply making jokes to pass the time. They were going to be stuck in here for hours, after all.
“Sometime between you helping me escape,” Tolemek said, “and me getting the story from the young man in my cabin, who was apparently quivering and holding a flask of Fen Tree Oil above his head, while wearing his trousers around his ankles.” There was a fondness in his voice that should have made her wary, but she found herself smiling in the darkness. Not all men appreciated her... determined approach to dealing with problems.
Tolemek shifted his weight to lean his own shoulder against the wall and ended up behind her back. He was probably just searching for a more comfortable position. It wasn’t as if there was room in the shaft for any physical activities even if he had such in mind. Cas leaned forward, but that resulted in her forehead pressing against the algae-covered wall. Grimacing, she drew back, wriggling an arm up to wipe away the moistness. She tried to find a comfortable position that didn’t involve touching, but it didn’t work. Sighing, and telling herself it didn’t mean anything, she finally let her back lean against his chest. For a moment, he didn’t move, almost as if she had caught him by surprise, but then he slipped his arm loosely around her torso and rested his chin against the top of her head.
She waited very stilly, afraid she had inadvertently given him some invitation. Her heart beat faster as she wondered if he would presume to do more—and what would she do if he did?—but he didn’t. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest against her back. He seemed relaxed. Contented?
Cas licked her lips. “Is Fen Tree Oil dangerous, by chance?”
“No, medicinal. It’s one of the ingredients in my salve.”
Cas touched her cheek, the effects of that salve vivid in her memory. It hadn’t yet been a full day since he had applied it, but all of the swelling had gone down, and she had to press on the spots she had been struck to find a hint of lingering soreness. “Your army was foolish for not buying that from you. I’m amazed how much better I feel today, despite having just spent the afternoon dodging bullets and shrapnel.”
“Could be the healing power of being wrapped in my arms.”
“Please. Your awful bracers are an inch from eviscerating me.” They weren’t, but she was pleased that her response elicited another chuckle from him. He had a pleasant laugh.
For a murderer, she reminded herself and swallowed. Even if she could somehow forgive him for his choices, his history, there was still the matter of Colonel Zirkander and the fact that he wanted to use her to get to him.
“So,” Cas said, “where to after we meet with your captain?”
“Iskandia.”
“To drop me off and then leave without hurting anyone? Especially squadron leaders of mine?”
Tolemek lifted his head from hers and sighed, his breath stirring her hair. His arm fell away from her, leaving a cold chill behind.
“I thought so.” Cas didn’t pull away from him—as if there was somewhere to pull to—but
she did fold her arms over her chest and glower at the wall. It was what she had expected, but for some reason she had thought... what? That if he was developing some feelings for her, he might abandon his pirate ways? Sure, Cas. Sure.
“Did you see the ship that was destroyed?” Tolemek asked. “The one that seemed to be either the secondary or primary target for your squadron?”
“I saw it.”
“Did it have any significance to you?”
“No...” Cas wondered if he was deliberately trying to change the subject so she would forget about his ulterior motives or if he truly wanted to discuss this. “I didn’t see the name before they pounded it full of explosives. I might have seen it before, but pirate ships all look the same after a while. You’d be amazed at how many of them think it’s charming to paint the hull black.”
“It was the Burning Dragon, commanded by Captain Stone Heart.”
Cas wondered why he was volunteering the information. As they had just established, they weren’t exactly on the same side, cozy moments in dark ducts notwithstanding. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know why it would be targeted above all the others, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It’s not. I already know.”
Cas waited curiously. It had been almost three weeks since her flier had gone down and she’d been captured. That was an eternity in war time, and a lot could happen. She longed for information on what her squadron was up to, even if she couldn’t be there with them and a part of the action.
“Oh?” she prompted when Tolemek didn’t go on. Surely he wouldn’t have brought it up if he didn’t mean to explain it to her.
“I would like to trade this information to you, in exchange for you answering a few questions of mine.”
Cas stiffened. And just what questions might those be? “I’m vaguely curious about what the squadron is up to, but I’m not betraying any of my people, and certainly not my commander, for the information.”
“I know. What I would like to ask should not be a betrayal. I simply wish to know where you stand on some matters, so as to decide if there is a way we can work together instead of in opposition to each other.”