The Gypsy King (46 page)

Then the stinking brute yanked his pike free of the bread sack, gave her a hard shove and laughed. “Just checking to make sure you're not trying to sneak anyone inside to enjoy our hospitality, slave!”

“'Course not,” mumbled Azriel, grabbing Persephone's hand to keep her from reaching for her dagger and plunging it into the brute's belly. “Be back as soon as may be.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

A
S IT HAPPENED, Persephone and Azriel were not the only ones preparing to descend into the darkness.

“You're late,” said Mordecai as Murdock silently crept into his office.

“My apologies, Your Grace,” replied the General blandly. “I had assumed you'd want to wait until after the king's birthday feast.”

“Well, you assumed wrong,” snapped Mordecai, using one gnarled hand to awkwardly knead a painful cramp in his neck. “After the monstrous way the king behaved toward me earlier, I'd sooner see his liver served raw on a golden platter than dine with him.”

General Murdock nodded, unconsciously licking his thin lips at the mention of liver.

Mordecai pursed his own lips in distaste.
Murdock really is a disgusting specimen
, he thought. Out loud, he said, “So tell me, Murdock, do you think the Gypsy brat we will attend to this night is of an age that he will understand what is happening to him?”

General Murdock's eyes gleamed. “They are always of an age to understand pain, Your Grace.”

“Yes,” said Mordecai in a satisfied voice as he rose to his feet and began lurching toward the door. “I suppose they are.”

THIRTY-NINE

D
EEP WITHIN THE MAZE of dungeon tunnels, Persephone stifled a scream for the third time. First it had been the filthy, withered hand that had shot out of the tiny, barred window to claw at the air mere inches from her nose. Then it had been the small, rusted cage that she and Azriel had nearly bumped into—a cage that dangled from the ceiling and contained a twisted, half-rotted corpse with its mouth hanging open in a silent scream. This most recent time she'd had to stifle a scream at the feel of sharp little teeth sinking into the tender flesh at her heel.

Twisting her head around, Persephone saw what she'd known she would see: a grotesquely fat rat latched on to her foot, blood welling from the corners of its mouth.

Panic rose like a living thing inside of her. “Get it off!” she hissed, shaking her foot. “Get it—”

CRUNCH.

Panting heavily, Persephone stared down at the twitching tail of the rat whose head had just been crushed beneath Azriel's bare heel.

“Come on,” said Azriel softly. He paused to mark the wall with charcoal so that they'd be able to keep track of where they'd already been, then started forward once more. “We have to keep moving.”

Persephone followed him without speaking. She didn't know how long they'd been wandering around this terrible place already nor how many glaring guards they'd passed nor how many corridors they'd explored nor how many barred windows they'd looked through in the hope of seeing the child nor how many clutching hands they'd shoved bread into. It seemed as though they'd been down there for an eternity but Persephone knew from experience that places like this did strange things to the mind.…

Even as this thought occurred to her, she heard something that did not fit at all with the place she was in.

Stopping abruptly, she cocked her head to one side and listened harder.

And heard it again.

It was the sound of a child—
singing
. It was very far away and she could barely hear it over the sound of another, louder voice singing, but she could definitely hear it.

One look at the electrified expression on Azriel's face told Persephone that he heard it, too. As quickly as they could do so without arousing the suspicion of the guards, they began walking toward the eerie sound of the singing child. The sound grew louder with each step they took and—miraculously!—did not stop until they were directly outside the locked door from behind which it issued.

After quickly looking up and down the corridor to make sure it was truly deserted, Persephone pressed her
ear to the door and heard a gravelly-voiced man say, “No, no, Mateo. I know you're doing your best, lad, and I don't like to hurt your feelings, but I must tell you that you're every bit as tone deaf as your kinsman Balthazar used to be. Listen to me again, and try to sing as I do.”

As the man warbled loudly and tunelessly in an effort to educate the child with the voice of an angel, Persephone turned to Azriel and was about to despair that they had no key when Azriel knelt down, pulled a thin metal file from the folds of his robe and began purposefully poking it into the lock.

“I'm a thief, remember?” he said, grinning up at her.

“I remember,” she said, grinning back at him until a noise from a nearby corridor wiped the grin off her face.

As the lock fell open, Azriel—who'd obviously heard the noise, too—jumped to his feet and muttered, “I think it would be a good idea for us to hurry, don't you?”

Persephone did not waste time answering but instead shoved open the door and stepped inside. The room was low ceilinged, stiflingly hot and bathed in the glow of a fire that crackled as though fed by the demons of hell itself. Near one wall, in a hanging cage much like the corpsestuffed one she'd seen earlier, there slumped a small, yellowy creature that Persephone immediately recognized as a Gorgishman. Chained to another wall was a gaunt but enormous (and enormously hairy) man who glared at her with such defiance that she immediately guessed him to be one of the bloodthirsty, mountain-dwelling Khan. Pushed into the darkest corner of the room, past a dusty blond skeleton, beyond a bloodstained butcher block and
several trays of gruesome-looking implements, was a small rectangular cage.

And in the cage was a thin, dirty, badly frightened little boy.

Without a word, Persephone crossed the room, grabbed the key from a nearby hook, unlocked the cage and reached for the child, who promptly bit her as hard as he could.

She snatched her hand back with a grunt and a scowl.

“What do you think you're doing?” demanded the Khan in alarm, his dark eyes bulging beneath his bushy eyebrows as he watched Azriel fling open the trapdoor in the floor near the butcher block.

“I think we're fetching the boy out of this place,” replied Azriel, dumping the last of the bread in his sack into the water below.

“Why?” barked the Khan, straining against his chains as he watched Persephone drag the squirming, kicking child out of the cage and hurry across the room with him. “Who is he to you?”

“He is my tribesman,” replied Azriel, holding wide the mouth of the now-empty bread sack. “What concern is it of yours? Who is he to you?”

“He is my friend,” rumbled the Khan.

CLANG.

Persephone, Azriel and the Khan all jerked their heads toward the sound of a door slamming shut in some distant corridor.

Distant, but not distant enough.

“That would be the Regent, come to play his little
games,” said the Khan with renewed alarm. “If you truly mean to fetch the boy out of this place, Gypsy, you'd best do it now.” And then, to the child: “Mateo! Mateo, listen to me—you must stop your squirming, lad. You are making an unseemly spectacle of yourself and besides, these two are Gypsies come to free you.”

“I'm not a Gypsy,” clarified Persephone, who was struggling to stuff the boy's kicking legs into the mouth of the sack.

In response to this news, Mateo bit her again.

CLANG.

“But I am,” said Azriel, with an involuntary glance over his shoulder. Yanking up his robe, he tugged down the waistband of his breeches just enough to reveal a dark-blue, tear-shaped tattoo upon his hip: the Mark of the Gypsies.

At the sight of it, the child sagged in Persephone's arms. Quick as a wink, she slipped him into the sack and told him to be as still as he could be and to not make a sound no matter what happened.

“Pretend you are bread,” advised Azriel.

With a tiny smile, the child nodded and huddled himself into a loaf.

CLANG.

“For the love of strong sheep
,
go!”
begged the Khan, frantically jerking his hairy head toward the door as though this encouragement might speed them on their way.

“We will,” said Azriel. “Only—we cannot afford to leave behind witnesses.”

Persephone's mouth dropped open in horror.

The Khan looked surprised and not surprised. “I understand,” he said gruffly, lifting his chin.

“I don't think you do,” said Azriel. Using his metal file, he swiftly unlocked the big man's fetters and also the door of the hanging cage.

CLANG!

TAP, TAP, TAP.…

“Those would be the footfalls of the henchman Murdock, who must have come along for the fun,” informed the Khan, falling away from the wall and stumbling only briefly before finding his footing. “And unless I'm very much mistaken—and I'm not, for we Khan never are—he and his master are almost here!”

“Can you make it through the trapdoor?” asked Azriel, swinging the “bread” sack over his shoulder, grabbing Persephone by the hand and starting for the door.

“Aye,” nodded the big man as he unsteadily pulled open the door of the hanging cage, reached inside and grabbed the hissing creature by the scruff of his hairless neck. “And I'll take this surly little sneak with me when I go. Good luck, Gypsy.”

“And to you,” said Azriel over his shoulder.

TAP! TAP! TAP!

“Go!”

FORTY

P
ERSEPHONE AND AZRIEL made it out of the stifling room but were too late to escape the corridor.

As luck would have it, however, the big Khan had been mistaken after all, and rather than the Regent and his henchman, Persephone and Azriel found themselves shuffling past a pair of guards who took no notice of them except to shout at them to get on with their miserable task. Bobbing their hooded heads in compliance, Azriel shuffled faster, with Persephone right behind him, shielding the “loaf of bread” lest one of the guards decide to use the pike to check the contents of the sack.

Neither of them did.

Nor did any of the other guards they encountered as they made their way through the dank, dark corridors. And with each step she took, Persephone found herself feeling a little more hopeful that she, Azriel and the child might actually escape with their lives.

Then, as they turned the final corner and were headed for the winding staircase that would lead them back up
into the land of the living, Persephone saw the legs of two men descending the staircase toward them.

The legs of one man were strong and sturdy.

The legs of the other were withered and bent.

The Regent and his henchman had come to play their little games, after all.

Realizing that she, Azriel and the “loaf of bread” stood directly in the path the two monsters would take as they made their way to the stifling—but now-empty—room, Persephone grabbed Azriel's arm and dragged him into the shadowed doorway of a nearby cell. As she shrank against the ancient iron door, it miraculously gave way. Hastily, she and Azriel ducked inside and eased the door shut behind them.