“We can swim.” Nim’s disembodied voice.
He didn’t waste any time wishing it was different. “Do it. Tor first. Jos, take Nim and Keely. Mathos, help me.”
He could hear Tor muttering under his breath. Water lapped and echoed. The sounds of soldiers shouting in the garden drifted through the tunnel.
Then Tor was through, calling quietly. He heard someone take a deep breath. Another swirling pull of icy water. The seconds dragged by.
And then he heard a shuddering gasp on the other side. Jos whistling the signal. The women were through.
Mathos followed next.
Val was shivering where Tristan still held him on his shoulders. But he couldn’t hold him out of the cold water any longer. They were out of time.
He swung his friend down and into the moat, feeling like a brute as Val gasped in shock. “Wake up!”
“Tris?” Val’s rough voice was confused.
“We have to swim. I’m going to pass you to Mathos, but you must keep your mouth closed. Do you hear me?”
Nothing.
“Do you understand?”
He felt a small nod. It had to be enough.
Tristan took hold of Val’s shoulders and pushed him down, following him into the icy, muddy, silted bottom of the tunnel. The water was so cold that not even his scales could protect him, and it would be infinitely worse for Val. It was pitch-black. There was no way to know where they were or which way to go, other than to recall where they’d been.
He could feel the shudders wracking through Val’s body as he gripped him and hauled him forward through the water. Agony ripped into him as the spikes of the portcullis tore into his shoulder, but he was grateful for the focus the pain gave him. It helped him know exactly where not to put Val.
And then another pair of hands nudged his, and he let go. Felt as Mathos pulled Val out of his arms, the rest of the way through the portcullis and away.
He forced himself through, then up to the surface, only allowing himself a second of relief when he heard Val spluttering and coughing.
They had escaped the palace.
But they still had the moat ahead of them and the archers looking down from the ramparts.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nim’s skinburned with the cold as the water lapped around her neck. She and Keely clung to the broken stones along the outside edge of the rampart, trying to keep their heads out of the water, the heavy sword abandoned somewhere in the garden behind them.
In reality, she was doing most of the clinging. She had one arm around Keely, helping to prop her up; the other hand gripped the rough stone.
The ground had dropped away sharply after the tunnel, and there was no way they could stand, or even swim, with the chain dragging them down. And Keely couldn’t use her free arm with the arrow lodged in it. It was all they could do to clutch onto the tiny jagged bits of stone and keep their heads up.
At the tunnel entrance, she could just make out Mathos taking a deep breath and diving back down to the portcullis to help Tristan with Val.
She held her breath, scanning the silty black water again and again.
And then they were up. Mathos dragging Val out of the water and thumping him hard on his back as her brother spluttered weakly.
A few seconds later, Tristan followed, and she was finally able to let out a shuddery breath of relief.
Archers and soldiers called orders on the ramparts above them, a whispered discussion carried over the water as the guards debated whether it would be better to kill the escapees outright. No one wanted to take responsibility for making the wrong decision.
And then she heard a sound that she honestly hadn’t ever expected to hear again. The high-pitched hunting whistle of a hawk.
Beside her, she heard a low rumble from Jos that could almost be a chuckle. And then something even better. Oars, dipping and sliding almost silently through the water nearby.
