The Dragon of Despair (63 page)

“You have teached me and Edlin both,” Firekeeper had told him firmly. “No need.”

She hoped she was right.

They emerged from the back door and side yard into the dark alley that ran along the rear of this row of houses. Although some areas of Dragon’s Breath had streetlamps, this neighborhood did not. It might be within the main wall and so superior to the areas without, but it did not merit such flourishes.

Firekeeper was glad. Dark streets did not encourage night traffic. Moreover, she and Blind Seer would be aware of any potential thieves long before the thieves were aware of them.

A small corner of her mind remained troubled over the distinction between thief and bandit, between necessary self-defense and what humans saw as excessive violence. She understood surrender—indeed, her honoring of such had been her weakness—but such fine lines made her restless and unhappy.

They turned on to a side street where a heavy stone capped an entrance into the sewer. Not wishing her human companions to strain themselves, Firekeeper lifted the stone, tilting it against its iron hinges without the lever Peace produced.

The New Kelvinese raised his eyebrows, but said nothing, merely tucking the implement back where he had extracted it. Firekeeper motioned to the ladder.

“Go. I come last with Blind Seer.”

She knew she should go first and so scout the area and avoid being blinded by the light from the lanterns her companions carried. Either Edlin or Peace could close the hatch with little difficulty, but the sewer stench was more powerful than she had imagined.

Peace’s slight grin before he clambered down awoke a momentary flare of anger in the wolf-woman, but she recognized that this wasn’t really anger, but shame at her own delaying, and so hung her head in mute apology.

When the two men were below, Firekeeper took a few steps down the ladder, then Blind Seer—complaining vigorously about the omnipresent reek of human shit—backed into her grasp and let her carry him down. In an emergency the wolf could have leapt, but neither of them particularly wanted to risk his slipping from the comparatively narrow walkway into the filth that flowed alongside.

Taking one last breath of the good night air, Firekeeper pulled the hatch closed after her and felt her way down the rungs to the tunnel floor. The stones beneath her feet were cool and damp, but not wet enough to be treacherous. After a few deliberately deep breaths, she could even sort the difference between the smell of the sewer flow and the air in the tunnel, tasting even the scent of burning lantern oil. Whether she would be able to make any finer distinctions waited to be learned.

Blind Seer was also making every effort to translate the scent of the sewage into the olfactory equivalent of background noise. Grumbling slightly, but admitting that he was less overwhelmed than he had been initially, he shook to announce his readiness to go on.

“As I expected from a creature who will perfume himself in the reek of rotting carrion,”
Firekeeper teased.
“You can revel in any stench.”

Blind Seer bumped his head against her in a wolf’s equivalent of an embrace.

“If the others are done choking at the smell,”
he said cheerfully,
“let us move ahead. Ask Peace what we should watch for. I know he has some concern that the humans will have taken precautions against the easy use of this trail.”

Firekeeper nodded.

“Ready?” she asked Edlin and Peace, keeping her voice low but not whispering, for Peace had warned them that the sibilance of whispered talk would carry through the tunnels.

“I say!” Edlin replied, also guarding his tone. “A bit strong, what?”

Peace, carefully holding his dark lantern so that the small light he let through the shield illuminated only the stones at his feet, said nothing, but Firekeeper saw his curt nod.

“What should we look for,” Firekeeper asked, “to know if there are traps?”

Peace considered.

“Wire or string stretched at any level where a trespasser might touch it unaware. I think that we need not fear more complex pressure traps, at least here. They have not had time to do such engineering. Initially, there should not be many traps. The sewers must be serviced and killing workers would not serve at all. The Artificers will have kept their finer work for nearer to the Earth Spires.”

Firekeeper nodded. Then, letting Blind Seer go a few paces in front of her, she led the way. The wolf was to give his full attention to the way ahead while she split her attention between their path and any word from their companions. This much the men who followed her knew.

What she hadn’t bothered to tell Edlin—and of course would not tell Peace—was that she did not completely trust their New Kelvinese companion, and was ready for the slightest indication of betrayal on his part. It would have been too easy for him to get word to allies in the city and prepare an ambush.

Not one of their group had overlooked Grateful Peace’s delight at returning to New Kelvin. Firekeeper’s own strong feeling that she should be at home with her pack made her ever conscious that Peace could not be trusted. King Tedric had been righter than she had realized. She could not have stood neutral or even merely defensive if her people went to war. Why should any of them expect Grateful Peace to act differently?

If truly he saw Melina as a threat to his homeland, then they stood together. What if Peace thought that he might make amends for his earlier transgressions by offering the new queen something she wanted? A daughter and the very people who had ruined her earlier plans might be as tempting to Melina as a wolf would find a marrow-filled bone or a chunk of still-hot liver.

For a long while they paced in near silence. The two men had worn soft-soled shoes, so they made no noise that the moving of the filthy river did not cover. Firekeeper and Blind Seer made no sound at all.

Occasionally, Peace would tell them to take one turn or another. At these times Edlin would halt to make notes for his eventual map. Firekeeper felt acutely aware of the weight of stone surrounding her, of the closeness of the walls, but she didn’t complain. After all, hadn’t she been the one to suggest this expedition?

To distract herself, Firekeeper concentrated on the map Edlin was drawing. She was quite impressed with how Edlin was measuring by counting his paces. It spoke of a coolness of mind and self-discipline that she admired. She was also secretly impressed that Edlin found a use for such large numbers. Once again it seemed Derian and Wendee were right when they pressed her to acquire a human education to complement her wolf one.

The tunnel in which they had begun had been comparatively narrow, hardly more than a channel to carry local sewage to the main “river.” Eventually, the tunnels into which Peace directed them became progressively wider, the walkways large enough that a wheeled cart could be rolled along. They encountered no workers, but this was no real surprise. There had been sufficient rain that the sewer was flowing steadily and no one who was not desperate would descend into the filth and stench.

Despite a growing desire to be anywhere but in this close, stinking place, Firekeeper forced herself to remain alert, but she located nothing out of the ordinary. The failure to find a trick, trap, or guard became an obstacle of its own. Firekeeper found herself moving more and more slowly lest she miss anything significant.

When they encountered the gate that blocked the walkway it was almost a relief.

“This no here last time,” Firekeeper said softly.

“No,” Peace agreed. “It is new. See where the rivets were driven into the stone to hold it?”

Firekeeper looked. The tool marks from cutting and grinding in the rock were still pale against the dirtier stone. Cautiously, Peace raised the shield on his lantern so that they might better inspect the obstacle.

“Ceiling to floor,” he murmured. “That’s to be expected, but the gate extends out into the channel, too. Someone has been careful.”

Firekeeper looked to where Peace indicated. The gate did not cross the flow—with insight born of too great proximity to this place she realized that was to keep debris from becoming hung up and creating a blockage point. However, the fence did extend far enough that intruders would not be tempted to hang themselves around the edge and so swing to the other side. With a further bit of genius, the fence did not suddenly end, but instead tapered. Anyone climbing that would take a dip in the sewer.

She heard Edlin abort a whistle of admiration in midbreath.

“I say,” he commented hopefully, “I don’t suppose it’s unlocked.”

Peace gave the obstruction a careful inspection before touching it. When he did touch it, he used the end of the lever he still carried. Nothing happened, so he placed a hand on the gate and softly pressed the latch.

“Locked,” he said, but there was a note of satisfaction in his voice. “But I never did turn in my keys.”

Firekeeper held the lantern for Grateful Peace while he inspected the bunch of keys he drew from a pouch on his belt. He was very careful in how he handled them, making sure he did not rattle them in the slightest. Indeed, Edlin taking advantage of this stop to update his notes and make a rough sketch of the gate made more noise with the scratching of his pencil across the paper.

Peace chose one key, identical in Firekeeper’s opinion to at least three others in the bunch, and once again subjected the lock to a close inspection. When he was satisfied, he inserted the key, working it slightly, as if it were a very small lever. The end result was a satisfying click, loud only because of the comparative silence.

“Siyago,” Peace said in satisfaction. “I thought I recognized his work.”

He put the keys away before again pressing down on the lever. The gate opened without even a squeak of hinges.

Again Firekeeper and Blind Seer took point. She vaguely recognized the section of tunnels they came to next as a central area at which a large number of tunnels converged. It was not so much a hub as a confluence, smaller stinking streams joining a main river.

Walkways such as the one they had made their way along were linked in a ring by a system of small bridges that could be dropped over the stream or drawn back so that they would not provide the least obstacle to anything that needed to flow through. The bridges were cleverly made, each going back into a recess in the wall. The walkways were solid masonry, much wider than those elsewhere. She assumed that this was because greater labors must be carried out here where several streams joined the main and more than one man needed to have room to easily pass.

Even as Firekeeper committed the place to her memory, she marveled at the care taken to first bury a river, then give it a place of its own. She thought that the river had become rather like a horse, bridled and saddled so that it could be put to human service.

Edlin insisted on pausing long enough to sketch this complex and to clearly label both the tunnel from which they had emerged and the one toward which Peace was leading them.

“Good place to get confused, what?” he explained. “Bet my inheritance that if we went a bit down each of those tunnels we’d find a gate like the one we came through. Good security. Only wonder why it wasn’t done sooner.”

Peace stiffened a touch defensively.

“Because sewers are made to facilitate the disposal of waste. Anything that blocks the flow could have serious consequences.”

Edlin looked up from his drawing to favor the other with one of his ingenuous grins.

“So you’re not taking my bet?”

Peace sighed. “What would I have to match your stake?”

Hearing this byplay, Firekeeper grinned. Blind Seer, leaping carefully over one of the narrower feeder streams, had already confirmed that Edlin was right. She wondered if Peace’s pique came from the fact that he had not taken similar precautions when he had been the Dragon’s Eye.

Despite her amusement, the wolf-woman felt edgy. This complex was the last landmark she recalled from their first journey. Unlike her companions, she had been through the tunnels only once. Her own escape from Thendulla Lypella had been overland.

In the first tunnel away from the confluence, they encountered the expected barrier. Once again Peace subjected the gate to a careful inspection before opening the lock—with a different key, Firekeeper noted. Then they went on. Their path was now taking them up a slight incline. After a few more turns and several more gates, the four intruders left the sewer entirely. Its channels served Thendulla Lypella, but Peace had a different route in mind, tunnels intended for humans, not for their waste.

He was also taking them beneath a different part of Thendulla Lypella. The Granite Spire, which had been their goal on their last venture, had been reported nearly empty by Bee Biter and his wingéd allies. Going there would get them no closer to Melina.

The Illuminator looked soberly at his companions as he pulled the latest gate closed behind them so that their passage would not be noted by sewer workers going about their duties.

“Now we must be more careful than ever,” Grateful Peace said, “for in these tunnels there need be no consideration of hapless sewer workers. The Artificers will not have constrained their cleverness. Perhaps I should take the lead?”

Firekeeper refused with a quick shake of her head. There was a different feel in the air now. When questioned, the two men said they sensed nothing—Edlin even attributed her response to nervousness—but Blind Seer agreed with her.

“The scent in the air is altered,”
the wolf clarified, lifting his head and sniffing.
“Not only fresher, but something…”

He growled, frustrated by his inability to place something apparently outside his experience. Desperate for Blind Seer to pin down her own vague awareness, Firekeeper forced herself to remember that the wolf was only four years old. Even in the forests in which he had been born much might still be new to him.

Here traveling alongside caged rivers beneath an artificial mountain range—for so Firekeeper couldn’t help but think of Dragon’s Breath’s towering buildings—even a Royal Wolf could be excused for not knowing everything.