Our speculations were interrupted by the arrival of Reed and Evangeline.
“Are you ready?” came Reed’s voice near my head.
Ilsit and I began gently shaking the shoulders of the others. Once all six of us were awake and ready, Daisy in a satchel slung across Fox’s front, we made a chain of eight people with Reed at the front, his hand extended behind him to Adelaide. Evangeline and I brought up the rear. I had asked Reed if he remembered how to get to the first door with a flame. He countered that even if he did not, he was the only one of us that could really see in the dark.
All around us were shadows and shapes barely lit by the torchlight from the street outside. The farther away we walked from the two eye-socket openings of the first level, the less light we had. We went from a difficult dimness to a pitch black. Someone stubbed their toe and swore. It was Ilsit, and Tessa snapped at her to be quiet.
It was slow and felt childish, walking in a line, one hand stretched before and one behind, our small selection of belongings stuffed into satchels or into apron pockets. I had impressed upon everyone the need to take little. The less we carried, the faster we would go.
All we had to do was make it down the staircase, walk the length of the tongue river to the door in the city wall, walk through the thick tunnel-like doorway and, as Reed and Evangeline had timed it, step outside at the right moment to evade the wall guards. There was a stretch of uncovered land between the walls of Skow and the timber forest where we would meet Dermid and Keir to take the dust road at a hushed walk and then, when it was safe, at a gallop.
I told myself I could let this frenzy in my chest subside once we had a day of travel behind us and the eternal walls of Skow—and the tower that seemed to split the sky it was so tall—were out of sight.
Ahead of me, Jade’s cold hand gripped mine. Behind me, Evangeline’s was callused and strong.
It felt like it took us an hour as we went, one careful step after another. In the dark, perhaps I imagined it, I could have sworn I started to see the partitions where the stables were built. I must have been correct as we painstakingly made one turn and then another.Finally, there was a halt to our progress, and then I heard the key I had given to Reed slide into a lock.
“We’re so close,” Jade said.
I thought she was speaking to me, but I realized she was comforting Fox.
The hinges of the door may as well have been a woman’s shriek. Had they been this loud the other times we had opened it? Ahead, I heard Reed coaxing Adelaide to follow him down that steep drop of a staircase.
This was even more treacherous than trying not to rouse a tower full of a thousand or so sleeping people. This was more dangerous. Each step was so tall that one was forced to slide their forward foot down the height of it instead of blindingly stepping out and misjudging the depth. And there were eight of us struggling, floundering forward in the dark.
“Adelaide,” I heard Reed say. “Let go of Tessa’s hand. Ilsit, let go of Fox’s. Jade, let go of Robbie’s. This is too steep without using the wall for purchase.”
After we did this, each with one hand supporting another but the other hand on the wall, we proceeded a little faster, but then Ilsit ran into Tessa’s back, and Adelaide gave a small scream when her stepmother pitched into her from behind.
“My gods, be quiet!” Jade rasped out.
I heard Fox make her little wheeze. My heart twinged knowing it was not from laughter but from a powerful fear.
“Keep going,” Evangeline ordered from behind me.
“Why can’t we have a torch?” Adelaide whined.
“Because,” Ilsit shot at her, “It’s the first rule of this godsdamn place. No flames. Signs everywhere saying that very thing. Don’t you think a torch is the fastest way to draw attention to ourselves? How empty-headed are you?”
“Oh my goodness, Ilsit,” Jade pleaded. “Just keep stepping down.”
Lower and lower, we went. Every few steps someone would stuba toe, stumble, or bump into someone else. There would be a flurry of whispering and then a shushing, and we would start again.
Just when I thought my knees could take no more steep steps, I heard Reed whisper, “Go carefully, make room for the person behind you at the landing.”
We had reached the floor of the tongue chamber, the jaw of a fate.
Adelaide started to cry. “We’re in the room of the poison river. I can sense it. What if we fall in?”
As we were already past the first door, no one felt like correcting her. But Tessa reminded her, for perhaps the fifth time, that Reed could see in the dark.
“No need for his heathen eyes,” came an all-too-familiar voice with a satisfied ring to it. “There is light to be had right here.”
And the metal scrape and snick of several cresset torches twisting open echoed off the bone walls, and the tongue chamber flooded with torchlight.
88
NOW: CRESSET
