“No, no, no…”
Lorien mumbled that to himself as we all scrambled back down again. Past the boxes, dust puffing up in clouds as we went. The boxes on top of the trapdoor were found and then were dragged aside.
Right as the door to the warehouse was jerked open.
It’d started raining, I’d missed that, and right now the man dead set on killing us was limned by lightning as he stood in the doorway.
“You don’t need to do this.” His voice sounded like gravel being ground together. “Boys, you?—”
“Will face the wrath of Drathnor before we’ll see the end of your axe,” Kael shouted, right before he dropped down into the hatch. Lorien hesitated, so I picked him up and then leapt into the darkness myself, pulling the hatch down with my spare hand.
Chapter 4
Kael
The tomb of Drathnor was not where I expected to end up tonight, but we’d do whatever it took to stay alive.
We just needed to get Lorien on board with the plan.
“No!” He lunged for the trapdoor, wanting to haul it open, but if he could, so could the Executioner. Dain nodded to me and then strode deeper into the caves.
There was a network of them below Blackreach. Some said the devil himself created the tunnels in an attempt to get to the Duke of Harlston, but I was pretty sure he’d succeeded already, taking the form of the man who ruled the city.
My father.
The common people sang dirty ditties, mocking the fact that the duke never seemed to be able to get legitimate children on his current wife. Didn’t seem to have the same problem with women who he wasn’t married to, my mother included. She’d had little choice in the matter when the Duke decided she would warm his bed. Some coins and some herbs to take to stop her from getting with child, and still nine months later, she had me.
I was the one who drew the Executioner’s ire. That was his entire purpose, according to my father. Remove bastards and women who were likely to cause a problem, discarding them from the city like crumbs brushed from the dining table and with as much care.
“I’ll go,” I said, when I heard the trapdoor rattle. “If he takes me?—”
“He takes all of us.” Lorien pushed free of Dain with a wary look and then grabbed my hand. “Or the ghost of Drathnor will.”
With that, we started to run deeper into the cave network, which was a whole other problem.
“I remember the smuggler’s map,” I said, looking around. There were three tunnels we could go down, and at the sound of the creaking trapdoor, we needed to choose one of them. “We’ll go?—”
“This way.”
Dain was a strange one. Fey, that’s what the people of Coalbottom called him behind his back, though not when I was around. Touched was the other thing. Whatever devil drove him, his instincts were rarely wrong.
“Well, we can’t stay here.”
Lorien squinted into the darkness, just in time to see the Executioner drop down into the tunnel. We both took off after Dain, his white hair a beacon to follow in the darkness. Our feet picked up, flying over rock, sand, and gravel. Right as we got close, he turned to glance at us, looking almost surprised, then said, “This way.”
“Where are we—?” Lorien hissed, but I just grabbed his collar and hauled him after us.
“Down here, the Executioner can’t see us,” I muttered. “And if you shut up, he might not hear us either.”
If we were concerned about that, we needn’t be. Our footsteps didn’t echo through the tunnels anymore. Loriengrimaced as he lifted his feet, because we’d stepped into something disgustingly viscous. Strands of goo formed each time we lifted our feet, only to see something oozing from the ceiling.
“The sewers?” Lorien barely squeaked that out.
“Something worse,” I replied, “but I’m not sure what.”
Before we could discuss the matter, a voice echoed through the caves.
“You bloody brats…!” If the old man was scary before, the way his voice got louder and louder with each iteration just made him all the more terrifying. “If you’d?—”
