Wintercraft: Blackwatch (16 page)
‘Hey!’ He snatched the bag out of reach and slapped his hand on the ground. ‘Go on. Get out!’ The rats just stood there watching him, so he opened his bag, broke a small piece of bread from a loaf he had hidden there and threw it towards them. The rats set upon it at once and scuttled away before Edgar’s match burned out and he lit another.
He put the bag down and opened it carefully in case there was anything lurking inside. Apart from the bread everything looked untouched; there was a knife, a few apples, a length of thin rope, a chunk of cheese wrapped in cloth, a glass bottle filled with water, a bundle of spare candles and a couple of pies that were at least three days old. It wasn’t much, but it had been all he could find and it was going to have to last them until they could find some more food. With the Skilled out there looking for them, that was not going to be easy.
At least he recognised a good hiding place when he found one. They were in the front room of a cavelike house that had been dug out centuries before for use by the bonemen when they had worked this far underground. There wasn’t much left of it – the rest of the house was already buried – but it was enough to keep them safe. The doorway had been crushed beneath an earth fall years ago and the only way to get in or out was by slithering through the glassless window.
Edgar had left the window exposed so he could see any light spread by people searching for them. Kate lay asleep beneath it, her skin sickly and clammy to the touch. Edgar had only seen her like this once before, in the first week after they had gone to the Skilled for help. She had gone too far into the veil too fast and had trouble separating herself from it again. He should never have suggested using that stupid spirit wheel. Things like that always caused more trouble than they were worth. Whatever Kate wanted to do next, he was going to help her.
Kate was scowling in her sleep, and when he felt her forehead he found it even colder than it had been before. He shrugged off his coat and laid it over her, shivering despite his layered jumpers, which were all holey and threadbare. We are going to get out of here, he told himself. We can do this. Just keep heading up. If a tunnel heads up, it heads out. That’s all we have to—
A wash of light spread suddenly along the wall outside. Edgar stepped over Kate and leaned out of the window.
Two lamps swung in the darkness, carried by two women wearing brown dresses with hoods over their heads. They were talking to each other and had large packs slung on their backs, but they did not seem to be in any hurry to get where they were going. Their voices carried softly along the tunnel.
‘Which way now?’
The lights stopped moving, and both women held their lanterns up to the wall.
‘Left.’
The two women headed off round a narrow turning and the light from their lanterns disappeared.
‘Traders,’ whispered Edgar. ‘What are they doing here?’
Making sure that Kate was still asleep, he lit a fresh candle in his lantern, stepped over her and clambered out of the little window. He crept forward, and when he reached the point where the women had been standing he looked up at the same patch of wall. There was nothing there. ‘What were you looking at?’ he murmured. Then he found it. Just before the turning the two women had taken, a collection of deep scratches had been cut into the wall a few inches below the ceiling.
‘Path 63,’ he read out loud. ‘TW – E. SM – S. What is that supposed to mean?’ A sound in the tunnel behind him startled him. He swung his lantern round and a face came towards him in the dark. ‘Kate?’
‘That light is bright enough to tell everyone where you are,’ said Kate. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Two traders passed by here and read something on the wall,’ said Edgar. ‘I came to have a look. How are you feeling?’
‘As good as I’m likely to feel down here,’ said Kate. ‘Sleep helped.’
‘Did you bring the backpack?’
‘Right here.’ Kate turned so he could see it on her back.
‘All right. Give it to me and take a look at this. What do you make of it?’
‘It looks like a signpost,’ said Kate, sliding the bag off her shoulders and passing it and his coat back to Edgar. ‘The first two letters must stand for a place, and the last one tells you which direction it is in.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘What else would it be? You said yourself it’s easy to get lost down here. Signposts like this must help the traders find their way around. Maybe we could follow them.’
‘That sounds like a good plan to me,’ said Edgar. ‘Are you all right to walk?’
‘I told you, I’m fine,’ said Kate. ‘Show me where they went, but keep your voice down.’
The wall curved round to the left and Edgar led the way. There was no sign of the traders and small paths branched away from the tunnel in so many directions it became impossible to guess which route they had taken.
‘Maybe this wasn’t such a great plan,’ said Kate.
Edgar held his lantern high, checking the walls for more directions. The same letters kept appearing over again: SM – S.
‘We’re heading somewhere, at least,’ said Edgar. ‘There must be something down here.’
The tunnel eventually forked into a wide Y-shaped junction, and sunk into the wall joining the two paths was a large black door. It was made of old wood but it had been rehung on new metal hinges not long ago.
‘Where do you think that goes?’ asked Edgar.
‘Up, hopefully,’ said Kate. ‘I can’t see anything written on the wall.’
‘Do you think someone lives in there?’
Kate dared to press an ear to the door. ‘I can’t hear anything. The floor is worn away here. Lots of people have walked this way.’
‘Then either the person who lives here is very popular, or this is a public place,’ said Edgar. ‘Do we risk it?’
Kate was about to answer when a loud voice echoed down the tunnel to their left. She grabbed the door handle and swung the door open. ‘It’s our best chance,’ she said.
The two of them ran inside and closed the door behind them.
‘There’s no lock,’ said Kate, searching for a way to seal the door, and when she turned to see where they were her heart sank.
They were standing on a stone landing at the top of a circular shaft that cut deep down into the earth. A staircase curled down the walls, illuminated dimly by yellow lights far beneath them. There was no guard rail to prevent anyone from stepping over the side and the steps were ancient and uneven. Shadows danced along the staircase and musty air fogged up against their faces as Edgar’s lantern bathed the walls in a flickering glow. Part of the staircase led up to their right, but the only doorway Kate could see up there had long been bricked up.
‘It looks like we’re already at the top,’ she said. ‘The only way is down.’
‘Good news, as ever,’ said Edgar, looking away from the dizzying drop.
The staircase was just wide enough for the two of them to run side by side. Edgar stayed close to the wall and took care where he was putting his feet, while Kate took the steps two at a time and was already two levels down when someone opened the door they had just passed through. Kate and Edgar stopped where they were and pressed their backs against the wall as a voice carried down the shaft.
‘… no reason for them to go down there,’ it said. ‘They’ll be heading for the surface, or hiding somewhere. Let’s keep moving.’ The door squealed shut.
‘Who was that?’ asked Kate.
‘I didn’t recognise the voice,’ said Edgar. ‘Probably one of Baltin’s men.’
‘It’s very quiet down here. We’re lucky they didn’t hear us.’
‘Quiet is good,’ said Edgar, slapping his hand nervously against another bricked-up doorway. ‘I like quiet. Doesn’t look like we’re getting off here, though. Let’s try the next level.’
They followed the staircase deeper and deeper down but any exits they came across were blocked up, locked or, in the case of one particularly ancient door, crossed with a dozen chains with a warning painted on the wall beside it.
FELDEEP PRISON
NO ENTRY. NO ESCAPE.
‘Nice,’ said Edgar. ‘I vote we leave this one far behind.’
The stairs spiralled on and Kate was glad when the bottom finally came into sight. There were more lights down there, a welcome sign of life, and she led Edgar towards a small wooden sign that was marked with an arrow and the letters SM. They followed the arrow into a low tunnel, which looked promising enough until a battered gate blocked their way.
The gate had been welded together using salvaged metal from at least three other gates and it leaned at an awkward angle across their path, with the twisted letters SM bent into its centre. Beside the gate, three long pull chains snaked down the wall.
‘What are those for?’ asked Kate.
Edgar shrugged in the dark and something creaked up ahead. A small wooden shutter was tucked in between two stones and it flapped open, chased out by a thick plume of pipe smoke. A wrinkled face appeared in the space behind it and a thick rasping voice said: ‘Buy, sell or trade?’
Kate and Edgar looked at each other, neither knowing what to say.
‘I don’t have all day,’ said the voice, dissolving into a glut of choking coughs. ‘You want in, or not?’
‘In where exactly?’ asked Edgar.
‘Stupid kids.’
The shutter slammed shut, wafting bitter smoke into Kate and Edgar’s faces.
‘Wait!’ Kate tried to open the gate, but it was sturdier than it looked. Edgar reached up for one of the chains and pulled one at random, sending a tiny bell ringing inside the wall. The shutter opened again and the face returned.
‘Trade then, eh?’ he said, squinting at them with suspicion. ‘Let’s see what ya got.’
‘Er …’
‘No stock, no way in,’ said the man. ‘The Shadowmarket’s no place to be wandering about without good reason. Specially not for young ’uns.’
Edgar turned his back on the man and whispered to Kate. ‘SM! The Shadowmarket! I should have realised it before.’
‘What’s the Shadowmarket?’
‘The City Below has four main places where people come to trade with each other,’ said Edgar. ‘The Shadowmarket is the biggest. If we can get in, no one will be able to find us in there.’
‘But we don’t have anything to trade,’ said Kate.
‘Maybe not,’ said Edgar. ‘Or nothing he can see anyway.’ He turned back to the gatekeeper. ‘Whisperers carry their stock in their memories,’ he said proudly. ‘We are here to trade secrets, and unless you are willing to pay for them, we will not be sharing any of our stock with you today.’
The gatekeeper grumbled and sank back into his little room. ‘Whisperers,’ he mumbled. ‘Should’ve guessed.’
A shriek of metal sliding against metal sounded from the gate, and a narrow bar slid out of its locks and into the wall beneath the shutter.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Edgar, giving the man a smart nod.
‘Just keep to the left. And no wanderin’.’
With the way clear, Kate and Edgar stepped through the gate and rounded a short curl of steps, where the distant sound of people echoed from the walls.
‘Do you really think this is a good idea?’ said Kate.
‘Not really,’ admitted Edgar. ‘But maybe we can find someone down here who knows the way back to the surface.’
‘And how are we going to find someone like that?’
‘I said it wasn’t a good idea,’ said Edgar. ‘But right now it’s the only one we’ve got.’
The steps took them into a wider tunnel that doubled back directly beneath the gatekeeper’s room. A voice bellowed down from above them and the gatekeeper’s face glared down through a hatch in the ceiling.
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