Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) (32 page)

“Stop!” said Loren. “Stop moving! It can feel you!”

The children did not take their eyes from the snake, nor did they stop pushing themselves back, trying to slip back through the bars and into the next cell. The snake was a foot away.

Loren swallowed hard and dropped from the window, drawing her dagger as she thudded to the floor. The serpent stopped, head snapping back toward her. With a cry, Loren leapt at it, swiping madly in a wide arc with her dagger. The snake’s head darted back, the blade missing by inches. Its fangs snapped forward, closing on the empty space where Loren’s hand had been. She fell back a step, and the serpent snapped again. She swung the dagger madly, too afraid to get within striking distance but desperate to kill it.

She backed up another step, and the viper paused. It settled back down, only the end of its neck still suspended in the air. Then its head pivoted again to the children in the next cell. Silent and swift as wind through the branches, it spun and darted for the bars.
 

Loren cried out and leapt.
 

Her dagger plunged into its body, impaling it to the wooden floor. The viper writhed, its flailing head whipping around, mouth open in agony. Fangs sank into the flesh between Loren’s thumb and forefinger—a burning venom seeped into her blood.
 

She screamed, withdrew the dagger, and stabbed again. The blade pierced the serpent’s head.
 

Its tail spasmed, milky film blinked across the eyes a final time, and the snake fell still.

thirty-eight

The burning in Loren’s hand spread slowly—slower than she feared, and yet outpacing her prayers. She screamed for the guards again, but no help came. With the serpent dead, the children sat silent and still, staring at her.

Surrounded again, and yet alone as ever
.

Loren rose to her feet and felt herself sway upon them. The poison. It had to be working upon her already. She silently thanked the stars that Damaris had left—were the merchant still here, Loren would no doubt tell her where Annis and Xain waited beyond the city walls.

Not that it mattered now, at least not to Loren. Here in this cell she would die, a victim of poisonous fangs. Perhaps a fitting end for a great thief who made her home in the shadows. But she was not yet a great thief. Nightblade would be but a dream in Loren’s mind, extinguished as her life faded away.

The idea held no justice. But then, none of this did, nor had Loren’s life ever done so. Justice would never have served her to hateful parents in a spot of a village, nor seen her beaten near daily. Justice would not have offered escape from that life only to hound her with constables, ruthless merchants, and mad weremages, all snarling for her blood. Justice, Loren saw now, did not come of its own accord. It found the weak only when the strong deigned to grant it.

Her thoughts grew hazy. She went to the bars and shook them. They did not budge in their iron fittings, and the burning grew worse.

She retreated to the corner and sank onto her pallet, eyes fixed upon the cream-colored serpent lying dead on the floor, her blood still staining its fangs.
 

Shadow surrounded her in the crook between wall and floor, and Loren thought of Mennet in the burning house. He had knelt and prayed to the shadows, and they had come for him, wrapping the man to take him for their own.
 

Mayhap they would do the same for Loren now. She rose to her knees, placing her forehead to the floor and splaying her hands out before her. The floor stank, but Loren ignored it.

Shadows that wreathe the world in darkness,
she said.
I beseech you, hear my plea. Save your daughter. Rescue me from prison and poison. Save me that I might serve you all the rest of my days.

Nothing happened. Loren repeated the prayer, and then again. But the burning climbed to her elbow, and the words came like a burden to her mind. And all the while, dust motes danced in sunbeams pouring through the window.

“Shadows that wreathe the world in darkness. I beseech you, hear my . . . hear me and save me, your daughter . . . ”

Loren stopped, realizing she had said the words out loud. Children stared throughout the jail. Even the older boys fixed her with disbelieving looks.

Save your daughter,
she thought.
Save me, Father. No, Father never saved me. He only hurt me. Why would I want his help?

I do not want his help. I ask only the shadows for succor.

She seemed to be talking to herself, and it occurred to Loren that she might be going mad. Had Mennet ever lost his sanity? She did not recall. Only that he prayed to the shadows.

And. And, and, and. And
what
?
 

Loren knew another tale. No, she knew a thousand tales of Mennet, every word about the thief that Bracken had ever divulged to her endless hounding. But Loren always wanted more.

Why was she thinking of Bracken’s stories? Ah, for Mennet. Mennet had many tales, and Loren knew them all. But why did she think they mattered? The shadow story mattered not. She had prayed, and the shadows ignored her. Why consider them now?

No. Not the shadow story. Another. One she told Annis by firelight, surrounded by darkness on the road.

She straightened from the floor and looked again at the bars of her window.

She slowly pushed herself to standing, reaching up to clutch the bars. She shook them, but they did not move.
 

Loren looked down at her tunic. Idly, her mind wandering, her fingers found and played with its fabric. So rough. So coarse. She had not taken it off in days, not since she left the Birchwood. It stank.

Loren shook her head and forced her thoughts to clarity. The fabric was rough, too lightly woven. It would not do. She pulled at the cloak still draped at her shoulders—a gift from Damaris. Thick, like velvet, and strong. It hardly stretched as she pulled.

It would serve, or she hoped it would.
 

Loren removed the cloak. She reached up to tie it around the bars, but stopped before she did.

There had been another part to the story, the part she had withheld from Annis. Mennet had asked the Wizard King for water and used it to wet the cloth. That had lent his fabric the strength to conquer iron.

Loren looked toward the jail’s front, to the thick wooden door leading out. The guards had ignored her cries—she would not be getting water from them. She went to the chamber pot but found only a thick sludge that made her retch. She backed away, hand over her mouth. Her heel struck the dead serpent’s head, and its body twitched as she kicked it.

Loren dropped the cloak on the floor against the wall and undid the drawstring of her pants. She squatted over the cloak, mind growing more hazy by the moment. At first, she feared not having enough, but finally her urine soaked the fabric in a thick stream.

She glanced up. At least these children had some level of decency; their eyes were averted as she did her business.

Loren stood and retied her pants, nearly vomiting as she rolled the cloak into a short rope. But soon it was done, and she stretched up. Without too much trouble she tied the cloak around the middle of the window’s center bars. She pulled the knot, but not too tight. She would need some slack for what came next.

Her boots had wooden soles. Loren removed one. She stuck the sole through the cloth and gave it a half twist. The cloth wrapped the boot, crushing the leather against it. She turned again. The cloth tightened farther, and Lore saw—she
felt
it stretch.

Do not break
.
Please, do not break.

Loren kept turning. With every movement, her head spun harder. She could not keep her feet and soon was hanging from the wooden sole, letting it support some of her weight.
 

Still, she did not stop turning.
 

She heard the cranky, groaning noise of iron bending. Loren looked up to see the cloth had done its job. The bars bent inward. To their left she saw a small gap, one she might slip through.

Loren withdrew her boot, slipping it back on her bare foot before painstakingly untying the cloak. She had thought for a moment she might leave it behind, but she could not bring herself to do so. It was too fine a gift, even now, stretched and reeking of piss.

She glanced over her shoulder one final time and found nearly every eye in the jail upon her. Silent, they watched. She saw no more hatred; instead only awe.

“No cell may hold Nightblade.”
 

Her voice came weak and cracked.

Loren leapt and grabbed the iron bars, hauling herself up. Though a tight fit, her head slipped through, and as her hair blew in open air Loren knew she would be free. One arm came through at a time, and then she hung suspended against the building’s exterior.

The alley behind the jail lay beneath her. No constables patrolled the cobblestones below. She was ten feet up—an easy drop. She hung low, and then let go. The cobblestones came hard and fast, and she tumbled prone upon them, wincing from the earlier pain. The street felt deliciously cool against her face, and she let herself enjoy the moment. She felt herself drifting off, until she remembered where she was. Then Loren scrambled to her feet—head spinning from the effort—and fled down the alley, into the darkness and shadow that had turned a blind eye to her prayers.

thirty-nine

Loren stumbled from corner to corner, alley to alley, hiding from every flash of red leather armor. She missed one constable and walked right by him, but he did not seem to recognize her, merely recoiling from the smell of her cloak.

She could think only of Jordel. If any man in Cabrus could save her now, it had to be him. Loren directed her feet to where she believed the Wyrmwing to be, hoping the snake’s poison had not dimmed her sense of direction.

Her arm burned, and the sensation crept into her chest. Worse, it moved faster now that she walked the streets. She knew something of poison, and that it crept through the body with blood. Now that she moved, her blood would flow quickly. So would the poison.

It seemed a week before she spotted the Wyrmwing over buildings far away. Her steps quickened, and she almost burst into the street to rush headlong for the inn. Loren had to force her caution, keeping an eye out for constables.

At long, long last, she reached the square before the inn. Looking around, she could see neither the King’s law nor any sign of men in bright mail. She took a moment to compose herself, stretching to her full height and steadying her steps. Then, as she had the day before, Loren strode straight to the front doors. As before, the guards started to see her. This time, she paused about ten feet away, far enough that they would not catch her stench.

“I am here to see Jordel,” she said. “I assume he has told you of my coming?”

What?
 

Loren had meant to ask for Damaris, whom the guards had already seen her converse with.
 

With a shudder, she remembered the merchant’s words. The venom had softened her mind, compelling her toward the truth when she would rather loose a lie. She must not let that happen again. Without a tongue for deception, she stood no chance.

The guards exchanged a look. “No, my lady, but I will deliver your summons to his room—though I do not know if he is within.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Loren, forcing her mouth to produce the words. “He will not wish to be disturbed.”
 

Loren brushed by the guards and into the common room. That would give them her smell, too late she hoped. And indeed, they did not follow her as she passed into the room, heading for the bar and the serving maid behind it.

Her composure took effort, and Loren slumped to the side as she eased between tables. Her hands came down hard on the back of a chair, her wrist cracking against the wood with enough force to make her wince. She clutched it with her other hand, thoughts swimming.
 

The burning.
 

The burning.
 

It had spread to her gut, on some roundabout route to her heart that Loren did not understand.
 

“Are you all right, miss?” asked the barmaid.
 

Loren feared she might call for the guards.

“Fine. Only a bit too much wine, that is all.”

The maid relaxed. Drunkenness, it seemed, was a familiar sight, and one she could easily deal with.
 

“And so early in the day. Fancy a bit more? We’ve a lovely brandywine I’m partial to.”

“No.” Loren gripped the back of the chair. “I am here to see . . . ”

Her mind swam. Why had she come?
 

She could not for the life of her remember.
 

The burning.
 

The burning.

Loren turned away from the maid and stumbled toward the back of the inn. Damaris. She had last come here with the merchant. She remembered the way. The steps were in back.

“Are you all right, miss?” the maid called out to her back. “Need help to your room?”