The stair goes down in pieces it did not have an hour ago. A step is missing where there had been one. The fire Varek set beneath the foundations has eaten into something it should not have reached, and Leoric's weight shifts on my shoulder every time his right foot lands.
He doesn't pretend the bleeding isn't bad. He doesn't ask me to slow. He moves like he does through everything—pain handled as a door he chooses to walk through, on purpose, narrow—and I match him because dropping back would force him to wait, and waiting in this corridor is how Varek gets his back shaft.
"The prison chambers open south," I say, smoke pressing voices small. "He'll take them. The service shaft is in the back wall."
"He won't reach it."
"He thinks he will."
"That's how we have him."
The corridor below is warmer than the one above. The cells we passed coming up have started to take heat at the floor. Somewhere behind us I left a whittled bird the size of my thumbwedged in a seam. I didn't pick it up because it was a decision I wasn't ready to make. I leave it again now by walking past.
At the second turn, the floor sounds off. Hollow under the boot. I shift our weight to the wall side and Leoric makes a small sound I pretend I didn't hear.
Drogan's original plan showed a low arch under the cell row, one that comes out behind the administrative store. I slow at the lintel.
"Tell me what you see," Leoric says, when I slow at the arch.
"Pitch on the lintel. They set it here for a reason. He doesn't plan to come back through."
"Then we don't either."
I duck us under. He has to bend further than I do, and pain shows at his mouth when the bad side pulls. He steadies against me. He's been doing it since the stair—whatever weight he can spend on me instead of stone, he's spending. I don't know how to hold that without putting it into words, and putting it into words would slow us, so I hold it where it is. We come up behind the administrative store. The door stands open. The lamp is lit. Varek has not been quiet about this room.
He's in the prison chambers beyond. I hear him before I see him—the case hitting the table, then his voice low and quick to whoever. One guard. The other will be at the service shaft, holding it for him. Leoric eases off my shoulder onto the lintel and motions me forward. He would go first if he could. He can't. We've both already decided this.
I step through. It's the room with the drain. Of course it is. He has the lid off a brazier set in the floor and is feeding tablets of pitch into it, and the heat coming off it is the only honest thing in the chamber. The black case lies open on the table at his elbow. Two of the original execution orders are already in his hand, half-tipped toward the flame. He sees me before the guard does.
"Corrine." He says my name. "I had hoped not to have you in this room with me."
"You hoped wrong."
"You can't broadcast from down here. The relay above is gone."
"There's an administrative relay in this chamber. Bolted to the south wall. You had it sealed when the cells were active. You forgot you didn't pull it."
His eyes don't move to the wall. He knows where it is. He simply hadn't expected me to.
"It won't change anything." The page is still tipped toward the brazier. "The story is already in their mouths. Put twenty pages through every crystal in Protheka and they'll call it forgery. Peace between your kind and mine is the lie, Corrine. I am the corrective. The world only offers slow death or fast."
"Drop the page."
"No."
Leoric steps through behind me. The guard moves toward him, and Leoric puts him on the floor with one short stroke. He keeps his palm against the wall afterward. He won't be standing in a minute. I cross the chamber.
Varek tilts the page lower toward the brazier, watching me. I don't run. Running tips the page into the flame. I walk to him. Varek lowers it another inch. The corner browns. Curls. The first thread of smoke lifts from it.
My body moves before fear can finish speaking. I close my hand around the burning edge and wrench it up. Pain opens white and clean across my palm. Varek does not let go. Men like him never release anything unless they can sell the release as mercy. He twists the page, trying to tear it. I catch his wrist with my other hand and drive it sideways into the iron lip of the brazier. It goes through him. Through me. Sparks spit up between us and bite my sleeve.
"Careful," he says, almost smiling. "You'll burn it yourself."
I hold still. Harder than pulling. Harder than striking. The page smokes between us, the heat chewing at my skin while every instinct screams to snatch, tear, win. I fold the burning corner against my palm and smother it with flesh. I nearly make a sound. Varek's smile thins. Leoric says my name once, low and lethal.
"No," I tell him, though my eyes stay on Varek. "Not yet."
Varek pulls again. This time I move with him. Not against the force. With it. I step in so his elbow jams against his own ribs, and he cannot use the full length of his arm. Then I hook my fingers into his sleeve seam and drag his wrist down onto the brazier rim. Bone meets iron. His grip breaks, and I take the page.
