Chapters 26-28

(In which Elizabeth wakes as a prisoner of the Guard, attempts a daring escape, and the tunnels come under attack)

Twenty-sixth

Noises and thoughts arrived in bits and pieces, like missives adrift on an intermittent wind. The clearest signal came from her left shoulder, the pain hauling her through the veil of unconsciousness. Following its biting insistence, she acquired other details until, finally, she burst through the borderline of wakefulness like a swimmer breaking surface for a long-awaited breath.

Her arm had been wrenched into an awkward position, held as high as it would go, rotated and stuck to the wall by something wrapped around her wrist. Her feet touched the ground, though in her slumped position, the arm supported most of her weight. Her back rested flat against a hard, stone wall that felt cold and emitted a musty smell, as though the space she occupied had not been opened for a very, very long time.

A glance around assured her of her imprisonment: the iron bars, oriented vertically; the keyhole; the slot for food. She looked up to see that her captors had manacled her left hand to the wall by a short chain. She probed her scalp with her free right hand, finding a tender spot at the top of her skull. Concentrating came in the form of slow, thick thoughts barely strung together.

She was alone in the cell, which had been outfitted as sparsely as possible...no windows, no toilet, only the grays of rock and iron to stare at. Patches of glowing fungus, like those on the walls of the basement of the Griff, clung to the ceiling and provided the only light. The air felt different, and she wondered if they had secured her underground. Elizabeth craned her neck to see what lay outside her chamber. Another cell, apparently uninhabited, waited across the hallway. She strained her ears, listening for conversations, moans, screams, anything. But the only noise was a low humming, too regular and mechanical to be the wind.

They had taken her armor and left the simple clothes she had worn underneath. Her pockets were empty, but they had left her boots on. Her limbs all moved, and she didn’t seem to have suffered any further injuries while unconscious.

But Ever was dead. Walton, too, most likely. The city had been overrun with Silas’s men. Either Walton’s estimation of the city’s Guard had been way off, or else Silas had been funneled advanced knowledge of the revolution's presence, and had planned an invasion even before their sabotage of his ship. But if the troops had come from ships, how had they gotten past the outer ring without Adri or Walton or Graves knowing about it?

A flicker at the periphery of her vision. It was one of the Guard, a woman with a cloth mask pulled down over her nose and mouth, a flash of braided blond hair protruding from its posterior. She stopped at the door, glaring in, the gaze of her dark eyes meeting Elizabeth’s. Then she turned and walked swiftly away.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what that meant; maybe they had been watching her, waiting for her to wake, and now the interrogations and tortures would begin. Time to figure a way out.

She pulled her left wrist away from the wall. Steady pressure at first, then several staccato yanks. The chain was linked metal, soldered shut into interlocked O's; it looked new, certainly newer than the rest of the cell. Not a speck of rust on it.

She could twist her forearm slightly, but her fingers couldn’t reach the too-short chain. She tried flexing her wrist to the maximum angle until she could scratch her middle finger across the bracelet portion of the restraint. It might be enough to weaken the metal to a point where she could bend it.

Keeping her wrist fully flexed quickly grew uncomfortable, as the border between the metal and her arm rubbed together. But a fine metallic powder started to flake to the floor, a sign that she was indeed making progress. She had to periodically stop to stretch her fingers and her wrist. This was harder work than it seemed.

So it was that she found herself unprepared when a key was noisily inserted into the lock. Elizabeth scrambled to rub her foot over the metal powder. She flicked her wrist as unobtrusively as she could, trying to dislodge any stray detritus collected on her skin. The groove she had excavated might be noticeable, but only if the cuff was closely examined.

The Guard struggled with the key; the lock did not want it to turn. "Hello?" she finally said. He looked up, his face flushed, but he finally managed to slide the door open.

 The man squared his shoulders and attempted to swagger into the cell. Such bravado hardly suited him, though, with his long worried face and slight squint that made her think of a bookkeeper, not a warrior. He said nothing, but Elizabeth found herself sympathizing with him-—if for no other reason than the fates that entwined them both in places where they did not naturally belong.

But a thought nagged at her from deep within the framework of her brain: Graves. One of the fiercest and most capable men she had ever known, and yet she dismissed him as harmless when she they first met. It was not unthinkable that this guard's antics had been planned, a ruse meant to set her at ease, to quell her suspicions.

He stepped within the confines of the cell, placed a hand on the door to shut it, paused in thought for a beat, then left it open. He turned to face Elizabeth, opened his mouth to say something, casted about for a chair to sit in, found none, then settled to standing with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Eliza, is it? I know that's not your real name, but we assume that's what you wish to be called. If you'd rather we call you something else, we can. But given your..." He indicated her hand, chained to the wall, with a slight nod and raised eyebrow. "...Your commitment to your role, we assume that you wish to be called Eliza."

She cleared her throat. "Elsie, actually. Elsie would be fine." As soon as she said it she wondered why she had bothered.

He squinted at her. "So, you are recanting the claim that you are, in actuality, Eliza the Knife-Fingered reborn?"

"I never made such a claim."

"The rally? In the outer ring of the city?"

“Well...yes, I did make a speech to a crowd in the outer ring."

"Yes. Are you recanting that?" His words were tidy, taking up no more time than they had to.

"I think I'd better be silent until my lawyer gets here."

He beamed, revealing uneven and surprisingly sharp teeth. Icicles that had been stuffed too hastily into the pink flesh of his gums. An island of disorder within his otherwise uncluttered manner. "Oh, your lawyer? My, you're a clever one. Central-born, are you? Or just did your homework?" She remained silent. "Well, Elsie, you do not need me to tell you that you have gotten yourself into a spot of trouble." He counted off her offenses on his gloved fingers. "Prophecy-chasing? Treason, and inciting others to same? Attack and murder of Silas's Guards?" He tutted and shook his head. "There are only two reasons you're still alive up here, rather than in front of a firing squad."

'Up here,' he had said. So she wasn't underground. In a tower? She tried to remember all of the buildings Silas' Guard held, and which had windowless upper floors. She could think of two...one in the outer ring, and one not far from where she had emerged into the old city with Ever and Walton.

"One, Silas prefers to do this sort of thing himself. But that's not an absolute. If we feel your usefulness has ended, or that you are a risk to escape, then he would forgive our eagerness in your dispatch.

"And two, we think you could, if properly motivated, speak to the people of Aldergate and convince them this little insurgency has failed, that they should lay down their weapons and allow the Guard to restore order. Clearly, Eliza's words still carry some weight in these backwaters, and that could cut both ways. Your cooperation might just make the difference between prolonged imprisonment and your death. And the unnecessary deaths of many of your compatriots." He shrugged, a tiny gesture that did nothing to convey the intended indifference. "The choice is yours."

She tried to give the appearance of thinking this over. "May I have some food? And water? And some method of...ah...relieving myself?"

He stammered. This was not the answer he had expected. But he recovered his conversational footing adeptly. "O-of course. We do not want to pressure you into too hasty of an answer. I will send someone back to you right away." He gave a stiff little bow, a butler's self-dismissal, and left the cell, closing the door behind him with a groan from its hinges.

Alone again, Elizabeth started to scratch at the manacle, more frenetically, not caring if she made noise. She strained at it between scratches, pulling against the weakened portion of the metal, feeling it give, the newborn edges biting into the flesh of her wrist. She altered her position, so the metal of her hand was flush to the cuff's edge, and jerked at it, feeling it shift a bit more with each tug.

Finally the restraint gave up, and its cleaved edge separated completely. Elizabeth let her arm drop down, felt the muscles of her shoulder give thanks as it fell back into a normal position. She rubbed at the joint with her right hand, massaging the soreness into submission.

“Impressive,” A voice whispered.

She looked up. The man before her was tall and thin, his clothes tattered and filthy. His head had been shaved, and his right eye was swollen shut the grotesque slit of a losing prizefighter. It took Elizabeth a moment before she realized that she knew him.

It was Lang.

If she had met him at night, she would have thought she was seeing his ghost. Even before he moved or spoke, she could see that the confidence and haughtiness that had defined him had now been beaten out of him.

“How did you--?”

Lang laid his finger across his lips, silencing her. His other hand held a keyring. He hastily put first one key, then another into the lock, finally locating the one that opened the door. He grabbed Elizabeth’s hand, and they ran down the corridor.

The hallway terminated in a stairwell with spiraling steps that led both upwards and down from this floor. Elizabeth started to walk down, when a hiss from Lang stopped her. “Not that way.” She looked at him questioningly. “Too many guards. No way we could fight our way through. We’ll have to try the roof.”


    "The roof?!? How would we get down?" They'd be trapped like treed raccoons. 

"This structure wasn't built as a prison; the Guard retooled it. It abuts the structures on either side...I could see them from the window of my cell. Once, when they thought I was unconscious, I overheard two of them, one male and one female, talking about sneaking over to the rooftop of one of the neighboring buildings for a tryst. If we make it to another roof, we might be able to sneak down."

The staircase was deserted, and their climb to the top silent, with no audible alarm nor pounding of footsteps to suggest that her absence from the cell had been noted. The exit to the roof was a broad trapdoor set into the ceiling. It refused to open with her initial pull and she feared it was locked, that they would have to risk the ground floor entrance after all, but a second, harder pull caused a catch to slip. She tumbled back into Lang as it swung open on its hinges with a noisy creak culminating in a bang as it struck the wall, echoing like an accusation down to the depths of the building. Elizabeth cursed her own impatience, and waited for the sound of boots running up the stairs.

A distant voice called out, "Callie?", the word rolling up the floors. They held still, light rain blowing in through the open door. She see the sky, a leaden gray, and the wooded peaks in the distance. Lang's eyes met Elizabeth’s, and silently they began to climb.

The roof was flat rather than peaked, and unadorned, giving it a modern look discordant with the rest of the city. The falling rain was cold on her face, the growing wind whipping hard enough that she held a hand up for protection. Lang's rags were already soaked, and she saw him start to shiver. The clouds over the sea were darker, almost black, and she could see the faint flashes of distant lightning.

The building closest to them bordered the prison without any intervening alley. But its roof was maybe ten feet lower and inclined sharply. Its walls held no drainpipes or anything else to shimmy down, but the bricks gapped enough that she should be able to find hand- and foot-holds. Even if she could lower herself four feet, she could drop the last six without too much risk. But any injury that slowed her down, even something as minor as a twisted ankle, could spell the difference between capture and freedom, between life and death.

Lang sidled next to her, then hung his head and upper torso down below the edge. "The windows are frosted," he whispered. "We could be seen if we're not careful." With that, he chose a space at the midpoint between two of the windows and swung himself over, angling his feet to wedge them between two rows of bricks. She watched as he released one hand from the rim of the roof and stretched to grip the brick wall. He walked down the wall until he could jump safely, his bare feet skidding on the shingles as he landed. He looked up at her expectantly.

Elizabeth clasped the ridge of the rim and swung over. But as she lowered herself below the level of the roof, her left hand caught on some hidden crack of the brickwork, slicing free a chunk of the masonry and unexpectedly throwing her balance off. She tried to twist her body to allow her other hand to grab at the wall, but instead she plunged down, rotating as she fell so that she landed on her right side, striking the wet roof and rolling down. Her body bounced off the prison building's wall, her boot striking a window pane with a loud crack.

Voices erupted from inside. She leapt to her feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in her side, and held her left hand at the ready. Lang tapped her shoulder. "We should go," he said, speaking loudly over the gathering wind. He drew her attention to a window set in the peaked roof. It faced the street, set back from the front edge of the building. No light shone from within, and the wood the small panes were cemented to did not appear reinforced.

The dark clouds grew closer, and the rumbles of thunder louder. Elizabeth waited for a resounding crack almost overhead, then aimed her heel at the glass. One pane broke, and another kick cracked the wooden struts. She used her left hand to sweep aside the remaining jagged shards and let herself inside.

She entered into a single large room, like a loft apartment; she grabbed a thick, downy blanket off a bed and tossed it on the ground so Lang could get in without cutting his feet. As he eased through the window, Elizabeth ransacked drawers until she found a pair of pants and a shirt she thought might fit Lang. There was a pair of worn boots under the bed. With the addition of two long men's coats from hooks on the back of the door, they had a semblance of disguise.

Lang donned the clothes without removing his wet rags. "Not the sort of fashion I would normally go for, but any port in a storm." 

"You'll be less conspicuous, even with the tight fit."

"I'm sure the society pages will be abuzz tomorrow. I won't be able to show my face in public for months." His bravado was starting to be rekindled.

They exited the room into a hallway, which was clean and well-lit with wall-mounted oil lamps. There was only one other door into the corridor, presumably from another apartment, and she heard no one stirring within. Lang led the way down the staircase to the ground floor. Whether from his taste of freedom or the change of clothes, he bounded down the steps two at a time, his shorn scalp bobbing in and out of her view as he rounded the corners.

Muffled voices sounded through the thin wooden walls, but none seemed concerned. An elderly woman, pinched and miserable beneath her soaked scarf, grumbled as they altered their descent to avoid her. On the ground floor, they discovered remnants of the building’s better days: flagstones made of marble; tall, imposing columns supporting the ceiling; and front and back exits.

She approached the back door and opened it just enough to glimpse a courtyard, dark and hairy with unkempt weeds, but no visible path to the street. They could try to sneak out, but if one part of this building was being watched, it would be the front door. If they burst through fast enough, they might catch any guards unaware. Maybe they could outrun them and lose them in an alley, or an entrance to the underground. But then she looked at Lang’s malnourished frame and the deep circles that ringed his eyes. She couldn't expect him to keep up with her, either in a skirmish or in a running escape. 

Elizabeth hazarded a look out the front door. A pair of plains-clothed Guards loitered on the street, the air of authority in their movements giving them away. She turned to Lang. "There's only two, and they don’t appear to be searching for anyone. If we keep my hand and the manacle hidden and don't draw any attention to ourselves, they might look right at us and not even realize we're escapees."

He shook his head. "Too risky."

"We'll just be two people walking through the street. The storm will give us some cover; we can lift our coats over our heads to keep the rain off, and they won't even be able to see our faces."

"What about a distraction? We could go back to that apartment we came through, start a fire, and escape in the confusion."

She checked his face to see if he was serious. "Are you crazy?!? People live in this building. Do you want innocent blood on your hands, just so we could make an escape?"

He shrugged. It came back to her how chilling his nonchalance could be. How matter-of-fact he had been after Maisey's death. "If they're not helping the revolution, then they're enemies."
"Set your fire if you want. I'm going out the front." She wrapped her hand within the sleeve of her coat and drew the collar up over her head.

"Fine." He caught up with her at the front door. "Fine. No fire. But if they recognize either of us, you'll pray for a fire to break out."

She took a deep breath and remembered Graves' advice from when she had first met him, his trick for traveling without looking suspicious. "Lang?" He looked at her. "Tell me about the last meal you really enjoyed eating." His look became quizzical, but he rolled his eyes upward in thought for a moment, then launched into his description.

It turned out to be of Clara's corn-and-potato chowder; Elizabeth remembered serving it the night before her meeting with Adri and Walton. She recalled helping to peel the potatoes, remembered Clara playfully striking Winnie's hand with her wooden spoon. The memory stopped her for a moment.

If Lang was alive, why couldn't Winnie be? Why couldn't Adri and Walton's son be? Would she be abandoning her friend if she ran away now But she and Lang had to get to the underground, to tell the others what they had found. Then they could attempt a full-scale prison break. 
Yet the possibility of Winnie alone in a cell haunted her, and as she and Lang entered the rainy street, her cheeks were already wet. With her focus thus divided, Elizabeth failed to notice the shadows gathered on the roofs or their drainpipes obscured by the dark bodies of suspiciously watchful ravens.

Twenty-seventh

The guards--more than two, as it turned out--were drenched and distracted, displaying no evidence that they had been alerted to escapees. Lang and Elizabeth hurried by each in turn, as Lang stretched his description of his favorite meal into a lengthy monologue. Perhaps all the silent months in prison had taken their toll; the words erupted from him with the force of bubbles from a shaken soda can.

Elizabeth was grateful that she only had to nod, interject a noise of agreement where his occasional need to breathe allowed, and watch her footing through the puddles. She directed the remainder of her attention to recalling and organizing details about the prison: possible entrances, weaknesses in security, and the surrounding edifices. If--when--she returned, she would need as much knowledge as possible.

As they rounded the corner of the block, finally out of view of the prison, Elizabeth exhaled audibly. They walked determinedly for a few more blocks, trying to maintain the facade of inane conversation, before ducking into an alcove beneath an awning to shake off their coats. The cold rain, unexpected for this time of year, made her back teeth chatter.

Elizabeth stuck her head back into the deluge to survey the street for tails, but she saw only a lone straggler. She pulled back into the shelter and watched the wretched pedestrian--an elderly, birdlike man whose hands traced violent motions in the air--pass by without acknowledging their existence.

Lang quietly stomped his feet to warm his legs. "I don't suppose you've anything to eat? I think I was last fed yesterday morning. Though in The Guard’s defense, the days do tend to run together, so I might be less than completely accurate in my tallying." Elizabeth shook her head. 

"How long were you--" She started to do the math; Alasia had said she had been in the pocket for nine months, and it had been between two or three additional months that she had been with the underground. "They held you for a year?"

He nodded. "More or less. It's difficult to say. They kept moving me around."


    "Just within that building? Were there any more of us there?"


    He looked guilty. “I think so. I would hear the guards speaking, talking about the revolution and their victories. It sounded like they were holding some of us there, and moving others to Pendulum for more intense questioning.” He raised his hand to prod at his injured right eye. “Though they had no problem questioning me there.”

“How did you find me?”

Lang grinned. “You’re a kind of celebrity, did you know that? Adri and Walton were right about the effect you would have on people. Your presence was such a distraction to the guards that they forgot to be as careful with me as they should have been. I caught one of them with an elbow to the face. Threatened to cut him with his own dagger until he told me where you were. Knocked him out, locked him in my cell and started running.”

“Did you free anyone else?”

His eyes left her face, and he shook his head. “There are so many cells in that building. I didn’t want to risk it. Better to get two out successfully than fail with three or five.”

A moment of silence passed. Elizabeth’s breath steamed through the dripping rain. "We all thought you'd been killed, Lang," she said, guiltily. "That's what we thought about all of those who had been captured. Killed or taken to Pendulum or some other stronghold. As far as I know, none of us even knew that there was a prison building in Aldergate, let alone that it had revolutionaries housed in it."

He sighed, then nodded. "I don't blame you for not trying to rescue me. It was a long time before I knew where I was. " Yet he looked unconvinced, as though suspecting they had forgotten as soon as he was out of their sight. "Tell me, how goes the revolution? I have heard some snatches of gossip, enough to know of an attack at the harbor, but nothing more detailed than that."

She gazed into the rain. "It had been going well, up until...well, all hell broke loose just before I was captured. We were rallying the city and doing what seemed to be a decent job of it. The remaining Guards were trapped in their buildings, but it seems reinforcements arrived from somewhere. Enough to take the old city."

A brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the street, followed almost immediately by a peal of thunder. "I don't know who controls this part of the city, but it doesn't seem to be a major battle front. I'm surprised it's so quiet. I don't know if that's good or bad."

Lang nodded. "How...how has the Queen been? In my absence?"

Elizabeth was taken aback; she hadn't seen any bees at all during her time underground, much less the Queen. Neither Graves nor Adri had revealed where their intelligence came from, but she had assumed the bees still worked with the revolution. "I'm not sure."

He nodded as though this confirmed something within him. His jaw set. "Can you get me to the tunnels?"

"Do you really need me to go with you?" She had planned to make her way to the outskirts of the city, near the great forest where the refugee camps would stand. She wanted to see if the Guard had taken the whole of Aldergate, or if they had circled the city for a prolonged siege.

"My work was always above ground, aiding the Queen in her spying. I know nothing of the tunnels, other than that they are riddled with traps and blind ends. And," he continued, lowering his voice even further, "the thought of enclosed, dark spaces does not...I am not saying I couldn’t, but having a seasoned guide would minimize the aimless wandering."

The idea of going back to the tunnels made a lot of sense, but Elizabeth couldn't face Adri. Or Graves, or the other trainees. Despite all her training, she had failed her mission. Failed to save Ever and Walton. She had been surprised and unprepared, rendered useless, and had tried to run even as Ever was being cut down. She had no right to be a part of their revolution anymore. Not as a totem, and certainly not as a leader.

Giving Lang detailed instructions would not be enough. She knew about the traps, most of them designed to immobilize rather than kill. But unless the revolution had people to spare to check the snares regularly, a person trapped could die from starvation before being found. "Why do you even need to go to the tunnels? Why not make for the borders of the city?"

He drew close to Elizabeth. "I must speak with Adri and Walton. I am not sure, but I think...I am almost certain their son is alive in that prison."

******

The closest opening to the underground was only a few blocks away. They could sprint for it, and there certainly were parts of her that wanted to; now that her decision had been made, now that her own pride had been pushed away, she found herself filled with an almost pathologic need to see if her friends were still safe. To see what the rebellion's response to this new situation would be. To make sure she still had some solid footing on which to stand.

But running through the city streets was sure to draw attention, and it would be far better to enter the underground undetected. She instructed Lang to follow at a decent distance behind her--if Silas’s men were searching for them, they would more likely look for a pair rather than single walkers. This caution might be overkill, but it might just save their lives.

Signs in spiral-writing covered the walls of buildings along their route: the Guards controlled this part of the city and had instituted a curfew for all citizens, starting at one hour prior to sunset. Barring any run-ins with soldiers, Elizabeth calculated they would at least get close to the entrance within that time.

No one seemed to be pursuing or tracking them, and though the streets were strewn with debris and signs of recent battle, there were no checkpoints or gatherings of people to avoid. Through the rain and occasional thunderclaps, though, she could hear distant sounds that could be battle, deep rumblings distinctly different from the thunder.

The entrance to the tunnels was concealed within a two-story building, a nondescript brick one in a section of the city that, even before the recent uprising, had clearly seen better days. The front door was locked with a thick padlock. Elizabeth pressed her face close to the opening of the windows but saw little: wooden planks, affixed from within, blocked the view, and no lights shone between the boards.

Elizabeth examined the brick surface of the outer walls, concentrating at a strip at knee-level. At one corner of the building, deep within the alley that bordered it, she found what she sought: subtle scratches, hieroglyphs describing the entrance to the underground.

Too many ways existed into the tunnels to memorize each, so part of her training had been learning to decipher these shapes. Five symbols were etched into the brick, simple enough to mistake for a child's attempt at letters, but distinct to the trained eye.

First was the sign for ladder, then a chimney, then one indicating descent, then a water symbol. Last was the sign to use this porthole as an entrance only. The etchings were purposefully vague, meant more as reminders than as detailed instructions. 

Lang had caught up with her, his eyebrows raised while she ran her hand over the bricks. "We have to climb," she explained. "The entrance isn't within the building...well, it is within, but separate. The building has been constructed around it. The only way in is from outside." She squinted, shielding her face from the rain. "We're going to have to get up to the roof."

She hoped Lang would have strength enough for the task. Fortunately, the brickwork was offset enough that there were plenty of hand- and footholds for easy traction, even when wet. And the building was only two stories high, so the actual climb, during which they would be undefended and obvious targets, would be short. It was getting on toward evening; there would be less chance of detection if they waited until after dark, though finding their grips might be more difficult in the gloom.

A siren sounded from somewhere nearby, making them jump in surprise. But its tone was one of notification rather than alarm: the start of curfew. Now, their very presence would alert any official who happened to spy them, even if the Guards weren’t actively searching for escapees.

Elizabeth probed the slats of the windows, finding one that was loose. She pushed the board into the room beyond, creating an opening just large enough for her to fit through, then climbed up and clumsily slid inside. She widened the aperture by yanking an additional board off, and pulled Lang inside after her.

The floor was carpeted in a thick layer of dust. The air smelled of mildew and of something in a mid-stage of decomposition. In one corner, a disturbingly human-shaped stain darkened the floorboards. Elizabeth took a hasty tour of the first floor of the building; it was in a horrible state of disrepair, and the stairs both to the top floor and to the basement had long since rotted and collapsed, isolating the levels of the building to a state of divorce, adjacent but not communicating in any meaningful way. She could hear squeaking and skittering from the depths below, the sounds of a sprawling rat metropolis somewhere in the darkness. She hoped the entrance to the tunnels went around rather than through it.

The fireplace mantle was large and what was left of it was ornately carved, but years of neglect had ruined it, and what remained was not much more than a jagged outcropping. Kneeling down to the level of the opening, Elizabeth found it just large enough for her to enter. Inside it was dark but not pitch-black, as some light trickled down from the dusky sky above. As her eyes adjusted, she could see the way above tapered to a smaller opening, perhaps two feet by a half-foot. She reached into this gap and felt around a ridge on one side of it, too wide for her fingertips to reach the other edge. She realized the shaft of the chimney must split, with one branch leading to the fireplace and the other to the underground. She knelt and crawled back onto the hearth, her legs covered in black soot. Lang was thin, but neither of them was going to fit through that small an opening.

Evening fell quickly, aided by the dense cloud cover. The rain had stopped, but the air still felt misty and thick. The building had no working lights, but the glow of the gaslights from the street filtered through the wooden planks, tracing haphazard patterns of geometry on the floor and walls.

Lang stayed within while she scouted the outside. Down the slope of the street, shadowy figures moved with the telltale orderliness of soldiers. She watched until she could predict the general shape of their patrol path, judging they would have plenty of time between passes to ascend to the roof. The darkness and the mist would impair visibility for all involved. She could use it to their advantage.

Elizabeth called softly through the window to Lang, then grabbed his feet as they emerged from within, helping him out into the alley. She went up the wall first, hissing instructions to Lang to warn of loose bricks and slippery spots. Soon she reached the edge of the roof. Lang followed, only slightly winded by the exertion. 

The chimney stood at the roof’s peak. The agle was periolously inclined, the shingles slippery and the wooden surface beneath felt soft, so much so that more than once she had to shift her footing quickly to avoid breaking through. Behind her, Lang whispered a curse as he accidentally loosed shingles that landed with a clatter on the pavement below. She grimaced, hoping the sound of debris falling from these old buildings was commonplace enough not to alarm the patrols.

Like the building, the chimney was composed of brick, but of a different size and quality: the blocks that made up the entrance were a muddy grey, smaller, and more tightly fit, as though confirming that the larger edifice had been built around a preexisting fireplace. She leaned over and stared down into the darkness, calling softly down into it. Her echo was slow in returning. 

Lang joined her, thoughtfully clucking his tongue. "I don't suppose you've brought any rope with you?" he asked. "Or that anyone has stashed any nearby?"

There may have been some hidden in the alley, behind a false brick in the wall, but a trip back down to the ground would be risky. "I think the passage is small enough that we could wedge our bodies in between the walls. Walk ourselves down," she suggested, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt. A fall would be least two stories, and perhaps further, if the shaft continued past the ground level of the building. And no telling what might lie at the bottom.

They could hear the Guard growing closer, then arriving in front of their building. Their pace was more frantic than before, and shouts echoed off the walls, the words muddied as they bounced off the brick. A moment later, footsteps sounded in the bordering alleys. The deep cracking of a heavy body against the front door vibrated through the roof, then again as the wood gave way and the soldiers clamored in. In the ruckus below, Elizabeth caught snatches of voices.

“--tracks in the dust! And an open window!"

"--bootprints--soot! Someone's been tracking--"

“--no one on the first floor, sir!"

"--ladders in here! I want the basement and upstairs secured!"

"How did they find us?!?" she whispered.

"We must have been tracked. Or spotted. I don't know, you're the revolutionary."

"Yes, well, you're the spymaster."

He scowled. "Hardly. I'm the beekeeper."

"Well, we're trapped unless we can sneak down without being detected. Do you think you can shimmy down that shaft?"

"I'd rather die in a fall than go back to that prison. I'll go first," he volunteered. "I'm larger. It would be a shame for me to fall and land on top of you." She started to protest, but even in his emaciated state, Lang outweighed her by thirty pounds and would be the more likely to fall.

He eased into the mouth of the chimney, wedging his feet and backside against the walls of the passage. He walked one foot down the wall, then shuffled his backside down a few inches, before repeating the process with the other foot. Soon he had disappeared into the blackness, leaving room for Elizabeth to start her own descent.

Rain and soot made the stones slick, but she was able to move in near silence. Maintaining the constant pressure exhausted her hamstrings, and some of the stones had projecting edges that dug into her as she slid down. She was sure that--if she lived long enough to catalogue her injuries--she would find gouges and bruises marking her backside.

Perhaps twenty feet down the chimney, they found the fork of the passage, and Elizabeth could see the guards’ flickering torchlight through a small opening between the two shafts. Wordless rumbles of conversation reached her; the Guards must be on the opposite side of the room. 

The shaft narrowed to accommodate the jutting-in of the fireplace. Lang shifted so his backside rested on the ridge, his feet dangling into the tapered shaft beyond. Through the dark shape of his silhouette against the lighter background of the hearth, she could see the expansion of his chest as he breathed heavily. She hoped the passage ended soon.

Lang slipped into the constricted shaft beyond the fireplace gap, and Elizabeth inched down to take her turn resting on the ridge. The voices were louder and more distinct now, either because the guards were moving about the room, or because her ears were closer to the opening into the main part of the house.

"D'ja check the basement yet?" The Guard's accent was new to Elizabeth. It was like his words were being enunciated around a chewed stick.

"Still waitin' on the ladder."

"Sure this the right buildin'?"

"The birdman said they followed the prisoner to it. They's gotta be in this house somewhere."

"Whyn't he call out?"

"Mebbe he don' know how t'get below yet. Mebbe he's waitin'."

The voices moved away, becoming too muffled to interpret. Elizabeth’s mind raced. Despite the guards' accent, she thought she understood the words correctly, but not the thrust of their meaning. Was Lang the prisoner? Was the implication that, once he knew how to get below, he would signal to them? Or was the 'he' someone else, the birdman they mentioned?

Had birds tracked them the whole time they'd crossed the city? She had been so stupid...not once had she thought to check the rooftops or the sky. Now the guards knew she and Lang were close by; they would have a perimeter set in the surrounding streets to ensnare them should they try to bolt to another part of the city. She might be able to overpower two or three, if they weren't ready for her, but these officers would be looking for her specifically.

If the Guards remained in the building and off of the roof, she didn't think they would find the entrance. But if they figured it out, if they followed her into the underground...well, if that happened, maybe she could find a way to collapse a tunnel and render this entrance useless. She knew such booby-traps existed, but had never seen one. Maybe there would be hieroglyphics making them, as they had the entrance.

Lost in thought, Elizabeth failed to watch where she placed her foot and was taken by surprise when a section of brick sent a shower of gravel down onto Lang. She flung her other leg out to compensate, but couldn't find enough purchase to slow her newfound momentum. Her hands slapped the bricks, but found no handholds or anything else to stop her fall.

Down she plunged, slamming into Lang and undoing his hold on the walls. He bellowed as his head struck and scraped against the wall. They fell together, entwined, engulfed by the darkness as they descended into the unknown.

Twenty-eighth

Elizabeth involuntarily tensed her muscles, anticipating impact onto an unseen floor. As she fell, the shaft widened to the point where the blackness became absolute; when she flailed with her hands she felt nothing but air. Wind whipped past her face and--

Then she was submerged, enveloped in the cold wetness of an underground lake. She kicked wildly, encountering a soft solidness that startled her until she realized it was Lang. She swam until her face surfaced, and she began to cough, splash and choke, too stunned to be thankful she was still alive.

Finally, she slowed her own thrashing and listened for other noise in the darkness. "Lang?" she called, her stage whisper echoing off invisible walls. She swam back and forth, trying to cover as much area as possible. If the blow to his head had rendered him unconscious, if he was underwater, there was virtually no chance she would--

But then her arm struck his floating body. She felt her way to his head, mercifully face-up, and wrapped one arm around him. He was breathing and began coughing spasmodically and writhing within her grasp. She spoke his name, quietly at first, then more loudly, until he slowed his struggling.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"I...I think so. I'm just dizzy." She released him and he remained upright in the water, treading. His teeth chattered and so, she noticed, did hers. She wondered how long they could stay in the water. "Where are we? In the tunnels? Are they always underwater? Did they flood?"

"I think we're in the tunnels. But no part I've ever been in. There are some underground streams, but I've never found a pond or a lake like this one. Can you swim?"

"I'll try. Which way?"

The cavern had no glow fungus or other light source. Elizabeth tried to locate the shaft they had fallen through, but the nighttime sky provided little light by which to find it. She called out, a short, indistinct yell, and listened to the quality of the echo; she twisted what she thought was 90 degrees and repeated it, then again, and again. "This way," she said, tugging at Lang’s shirt to indicate the direction. The echo had seemed a bit faster coming from that way; she hoped it wasn't her imagination.

They swam cautiously, pausing to listen for any motion from the shaft above, for any sign that the noise they had made in their fall had been detected, that pursuit had begun. Her fingers and toes grew numb, a subtle aching settling in her bones.

Her fingertips scraped against something hard, making her yelp in surprise. She reached out with both hands and confirmed they had reached a wall. She probed with her feet, but found no shallows below. "We can follow the wall around the edge of the lake. There's bound to be some sort of opening into the tunnels."

As she spoke the words, though, she realized that if the tunnels had been flooded, then the entrance could be underwater. Fortunately, not far from where they found the wall, it bent inward, and Elizabeth found a smooth uprising. She stumbled up the slope on numb feet, feeling the sand and gravel shift as she slid. She heard Lang trip behind her, then the splash as he landed face first in the shallow water. She helped him up, and they walked slowly across the beach.

She found the wall again, and they walked with their backs to it, using one foot to probe ahead for any sudden drop-offs. She had seen enough deep cracks in the tunnels to make her wary of the potential to fall. Some had visible bottoms. Many more did not.

Traversing the wall led to an opening of a stone-floored tunnel. She felt around its borders and determined it was no wider than the breadth of a single person, and as she squinted down its length, Elizabeth thought she could see a weak glow. They steppes warily down the narrow hallway, and the intensity of the light strengthened until she became sure it wasn't just a trick of her eyes. And then they were upon its source: a thin strip of the luminescent fungus running along the top of the hallway.

"Well, that's certainly novel." Lang's voice made her jump. He had been silent for an amazingly long time, and his voice echoed weirdly in this enclosed space.

"You've never seen the glow-fungus before?"

He snorted in indignation. "No, no...I've certainly seen it often enough. I've just never seen it oscillate in that manner." She started to ask what he was talking about, but then she noticed it, too...a subtle brightening of the strip which moved down the length of the tunnel, as though a tiny creature contained within was running along it with a flashlight. "I think we’re meant to follow it."

She had lost her bearings in the fall, so was unable to say if this path would lead to what she thought of as the main underground compound or to another section altogether. But she did not relish returning to the water to seek another exit. They could follow this for as long as it held, and then make a decision about what to do next.

The tunnel extended more than a hundred paces, the gently pulsating light drawing them onward. The way curved gently to the right and sloped downward subtly; rather than getting closer to the surface, they were delving deeper. The air grew colder and more humid, and the walls shone with condensation. Elizabeth turned back to say something to Lang, only to find him tracing the surface of the walls with his hands.

Lang looked up at her. "Fascinating! The smoothness of these walls...the revolution didn't excavate these, did they? They couldn't have. This must have taken decades!"

Her annoyance was tempered by a memory, recalling how she had asked Graves the same question on one of her first days in training. "We didna make them," he had told her, "Nor did anyone we know of. Some of them must've been present for centuries, some for longer. There's writin' on the walls of the deeper tunnels that none of us can make any sense of, pictures that defy description.

Graves had paused as though unsure if his next words would be believed or ridiculed. "Some of us have heard...voices bubblin' up through those rock piles. What sounds like voices, anyway. Some claimed to see faint glowin', blue or grey, that sometimes shows through the cracks in the rubble."

He had laughed, a barking she remembered finding insincere. "It's probably nothin', just the tricks the mind'll play when it's starin' inta the darkness. But there's no need t'go inta the deeper parts, so we'll just stay away from those particular tunnels."

And that had been the end of it, at least as far as it concerned Graves. She knew that Hachi would often go off walking by himself, and she had heard him speaking with Ever about finding new shortcuts and interesting underground rock formations, rooms full of mushrooms, and, she now recalled, an underground lake. And Quill would certainly disappear for hours at a time, but she never spoke of where she might go during those hours. But Elizabeth’s memory was free of any other information that would help them navigate from this oddly-lit hall.

She snapped back to the present. "The tunnels predate the revolution. But I don't know any more than that." She put her hand on his shoulder. "We should get moving."  

Lang winced, limping on his right foot. "I think it must have caught awkwardly in the fall. It's been throbbing since I woke up in the water, but worse since I started walking on it."

She knelt and rolled up his wet pant leg to look. The ankle didn't appear bruised or swollen, but she supposed the cold water might have slowed the swelling of an injury. Elizabeth pulled and rotated on the foot, and he grunted in pain with the forced motion. "I can support you," she said as she stood. "It'll be slower, but it's not like we have much choice."

"That is not exactly true," he said. "You could leave me behind, go on ahead and warn the revolution that this part of the underground needs to be isolated."

"I don't have any way to mark the correct path, either. You might get lost or captured if I leave you behind."

Lang's face looked grim. "I've been captured before. The worst they can do is kill me. As for marking a path..." He reached inside his shirt and drew out a partially burned stick. "I took this from the fireplace. It's still got soot on one end. If the lighting holds, you can make markings along the path you take. If it's dark...well, you could always lay down a pile of rocks." 

She started to protest, but he cut her off. "I know it's not a flawless plan, but it's the best I can come up with. I'm too slow and not worth the risk."

"What about Adri and Walton's son?" She scanned her memory for his name. "What about Esteban? Your knowledge of the prison?"

"I only know there was mention of a son of one of the revolution's leaders. I cannot say for sure it was him, or even be sure he’s alive. You need to press on. I'll make it, or I won't." He smiled. "I was dead to you as recently as yesterday. I'm sure you will all get over it."

She was unsure how to interpret this...self-mockery? Veiled anger? He certainly had a right to harbor a grudge. But she saw the wisdom in his advice, and appreciated his self-sacrifice. "You're a good man, Lang. The revolution is lucky to have you. I'll be back as soon as I can. Keep quiet, and make use of hiding places if guards do come down here." 

Elizabeth held out her right hand to shake his. He took it, then held out his left hand, open-palm. "I have never bought into that religious, prophecy claptrap," he began, "but if you do not mind, I would like to touch the knife fingers. For luck, you understand. Which I do believe in."

She acquiesced, and he stroked the dull backside of her fingers with his. "Now get out of here. Don't come back unless it's safe." She took the charred stick, still wet with the lake-water, and nodded her thanks.

*****

She left Lang hobbling down the dim corridor. Without having to wait for him, she walked quickly and soon lost him behind the tunnel's curve. She steeled herself against the guilt; this was what he wanted, and it was truly the wisest choice for both of them, and for the revolution.

A few hundred yards down the path the first turn-off came, an unlit tunnel that started from an opening not much larger than her circumference at about knee-height. She bent and felt inside; like the longer, larger path, the walls were worn smooth. Stretching further in, she found that within a few feet, the floor of this passage angled sharply upwards. At the same time the slope changed, the tunnel grew narrower. If she tried this way, it would be a tight squeeze.

Elizabeth backed out and walked down the larger path for a few minutes. The glow fungus continued to light the way, but the pulsation had stopped, or had become so subtle that she couldn't detect it...in fact, she didn’t remember seeing it since before she left Lang. Pressing on, the path forked into two directions. One ended in a cave-in with head-sized rocks blocking the way. The other ran into a wide chasm, too far to jump, too deep to risk a fall, and walls too steep to climb down safely without any equipment. But, on the other side, she saw a path leading away and a dim light marking it. She squinted at the distant wall of the gap, picking out the remnants of a rope bridge still clinging to its edge. Did it fail from neglect, or had the revolution cut it down to make this way impassable?

Reversing direction, she returned to the smaller aperture and considered. She should at least explore it a little bit; even if it wasn’t the way on, there might be a cache of food or first aid supplies. She pushed herself into the nook until the rock walls closed in. With difficulty, she could wriggle herself past the bend and into a standing position, but she quickly realized her mistake; she had left her arms down against her sides, and it was too narrow for her to be able to rotate them overhead. She could barely move her neck to look up, but she thought she saw a ledge above. It might be within reach, if she could stretch her hands up.

She backed out and tried again with her arms extended. But before she reentered, she made a small mark at the mouth of the opening with her charred stick.

The way was tight, her ribcage squeezed and scraped by the wall, but she gripped the corner of the ledge and pulled herself through. It was dim but not dark, certainly not the deathly darkness of the lake’s cavern. The ceiling was high enough that she could kneel.

She cast about for something useful, anything to justify her exertions. The cave was long and broad, but she could see more than would be explained by the trickle of light coming in around the bend from the pathway. Then in the distance she detected another opening, and in the corner of the cave a hinged box with a supply of dried fruit and jerky inside. She divided the food in half and devoured her portion.

She could lower this food down to Lang, and he could wait by the opening until she could return with help. Even if he couldn’t fit into the narrow part of the opening, maybe he could get far enough in to hide from any Guards that might come through. It might be tight, but worth a try, especially if she could be reasonably sure to get back soon.

The padding of footsteps, heavy on the stone floor, reached her through the opening. She was about to call out, to let Lang know of their good fortune, but stopped. There was too much noise, even accounting for the echoes of these tunnels.

The footsteps slowed, overlaid with conversation: several voices, none discernible with the complications of the echoes. But she could tell they had stopped in front of the hole. Elizabeth started to panic. Would her mark be noticed? If she stayed still, remained silent, they might go on to the fork in the pathway. Maybe they would think she had crossed the chasm somehow, and would try to find their own way across it.

“There it is,” a deep voice sounded. “Could she fit through there?”

“I believe so. She’s not that big.”

Elizabeth had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out in surprise. That voice, the second one. That was Lang.

She cursed her stupidity. He had been leading the Guard the whole time. She had been tricked. The lack of guards during her escape, how simple it had been to pass through the city. It hadn’t been easy because she had been lucky, it had been easy because the guard had wanted it to be. And, like the silly girl she was, she had led them right to the tunnels. She had become the undoing of the revolution.

 “Get Machiko up here. Is she through the water yet? Tell her we need her to get through a tight space. Bring Jones if she’s come through, too. Make sure they have daggers and torches.”

Elizabeth’s heart pounded. At least two guards coming, and maybe more, once they figured out how to get past the chasm.

A new voice, higher and feminine, floated up through the curved passage, “I can fit. I just need to readjust.” Elizabeth acted without thinking; she grabbed a heavy rock, big enough that she needed two hands to lift it, and hurled it downward as the head emerged. The woman wore no helmet, and her hands were pinned by her side; she had no chance of defending herself.

There was a nauseating crack, and the body slumped. Blood flashed onto the rock walls, spurting out with surprising force.

Voices exploded from the tunnel. Concerned at first, then angry. Elizabeth heard Lang yelling, then his voice cut off, as though forcibly silenced. She scrambled through the cavern, her hands blindly searching for rocks, pitching them in the direction of the opening, acting without thought as the images of the rock striking the unguarded skull played over and over again in her mind.

You have got to get moving. The words resonated within her mind. Stop trying to plug the hole. They will find a way through. Your friends will not be safe unless they know of this danger. She was halfway across the cavern before she recognized the voice, smoky and curt, as belonging to Grim.

Elizabeth made it across the broad expanse to the far wall. There, glow-fungus was splayed over the surface, intensifying near an opening. She hurried through onto a walkway, a foot-wide path with a flat wall extending up on one side, and a sheer drop-off on the other. There was a sort of handhold, a railing carved into the rock; she locked her fingers into it, pressed her front against the wall, and shuffled up the path. A single light hung in the distance, a luminescence trumpeting though the black.

Her feet slipped a few times on crumbling rocks, sending gravel skittering over the edge and down into the unseen depths; the noise of pebbles breaking into water rose up from far below. She negotiated the whole of the slight path, reaching the light source, which turned out to be an overhead opening. Hand- and foot-holds had been dug out of the rock, but no safety lines; if she slipped, it would be a long way down.

Luckily, the holds were firm and evenly spaced, and once through the circular gap she found herself in a passage so well-lit that her eyes were momentarily dazzled. She held still, listening for anyone who might be approaching.

Gradually the space came into focus, and she was relieved to realize she recognized it. She had emerged into a tunnel not more than a half-mile from the training area. The path back to home base had several forks and twists, which she was thankful for; if it was a straight shot, her pursuers would have an easy time tracking her. The meandering and complicated layout should provide some cover.

She traversed the intervening distance as quietly as she could, extinguishing lights she could as she went. She scanned the passage for anything with which to block it, but all the freestanding rocks were either too small, or too large for her to move without aid.

When the training area came into view, she almost wept with relief. Her legs had grown tired, but she found a reserve of strength somewhere within and started to sprint. She plunged through the doorway into the dormitory.

Only to find it empty. Of course, she thought, they're all on the surface. They would be fighting the Guard, directing the insurgent army. How foolish to think that they would be here waiting for her. The battle went on, no matter what individual soldier might be killed or captured along the way.

She had hoped that Graves or Adri, someone with extensive knowledge of the tunnels and what was happening overground, would be available. If the guards found their way here, they could find all sorts of things that could spell disaster for the revolution. Elizabeth knew Adri kept her most sensitive files hidden somewhere in the caves...names of operatives, numbers of troops, locations of caches of weapons and safehouses. Maybe it was in some sort of code, maybe not, but Elizabeth knew it would be trouble to let it fall into Silas's hands.

She whirled around, blades held in ready position, before her mind realized what had triggered her instinctive response: harsh intakes of breath, something between a snore and labored breathing. She scanned the room, her eyes ping-ponging from corner to corner, before she realized it came from a pile of blankets on one of the beds. 

A bandaged head rested on the pillow, facing the wall. The white gauze was soaked through with dried blood, and short, grey-brown hair poked through the white-red strips. She hovered over the body, keeping her hand at the ready in case this turned out to be some sort of ruse. But the face, though bruised and swollen, was unmistakenly that of Graves.

She shook him gently, and he groaned. "Graves? You've got to wake up, Graves! The Guard is in the tunnels!"

His eyes snapped open. "Wha--Elsie?" He grimaced and squinted his eyes shut, racked with pain from an unseen source. The moment passed, and his eyes focused on her face again. "What're ye doing here? Was the rescue successful?" His voice was hoarse, sandpapery.

"The rescue...?" Her heart sank. "Did you send people after me?"

He licked his mouth, dry tongue on cracked lips. "Hachi and Quill. The Queen found out about the prison building. Sent the two of 'em to get ye back."

"Oh, no. I escaped. I found Lang, and we got out, but...oh, Graves...I think Lang's betrayed us, and I led the Guards into the tunnels."

He threw the blankets off, and she could see more bandages wrapped around him, wide swaths constricting his torso and thighs. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, she caught a glimpse of irregular stitches through a wound over his ribs and noticed he was breathing in short gasps. "Where?"

"We came through down a chimney, into an underground lake." Graves nodded in recognition. "I found a small passage...I don't think they could follow me through it, but there was another way."

"I know it."

"The bridge was out, but they could cross it in time."

"We'll have to--" he paused, clutching at his chest, stunned by a spasm of pain. "--Collapse the tunnels."

"Can we do it from here? Is there some sort of remote detonation device?"

"Have t'be in the tunnels. It's no' tha' far. Can cut off the western part entire." He tried to stand but fell back onto the bed. "Hand me somethin' t'use as a cane, would ye, Elsie?"

She cast about the dormitory, finding only a bo-staff. He pulled a shoulder bag from under the bed and slung it over his neck, then gripped the staff firmly in both hands and pushed against the floor until he stood.

Now that he was standing, Elizabeth could see the full extent of his injuries. One shoulder looked burned, and the tails of linear lacerations poked out from beneath the bandages. Beneath the fresh wounds, old scars held sway, veteran keepsakes that covered his exposed flesh.

Graves hobbled across the room, pausing often to catch his breath. She found a pitcher of water and offered it to him; he gulped it lustily, then just as quickly vomited it back up. She looked away, pretending she didn't see the bright red blood threaded within it. She heard him take a long, resigned breath, then start forward again.

“Graves, how did the guards get through the city? Where did they come from?”

He shook his head. “We’re no’ sure how, but they hit the city from the backside. We were concentratin’ on the shore, watchin’ for an armada, readyin’ for a siege, and they caught us with our pants down, if ye’ll pardon the expression.”

“They came from the woods?”

“I dinna think so...movin’ that many troops through so many acres would no’ be easy, and I think someone would ha’ seen some sort of sign...campfire smoke, at the very least. Also, I dinna think Silas a fool, and there are things in those woods that would make the passin’ dangerous. Those woods are no’ meant for man t’ walk through unscathed.”

He swallowed. “I fear we may’ve underestimated the resourcefulness of our opponent. It’s been said tha’ Silas had all the gatemakers killed years ago. But he may have held some in reserve, or have some other way of openin’ a door ‘tween Pendulum and here. Enough Shades might do it, but ‘twould take an army of them damnable sots to carry tha’ many men through.”

His remark about gates gave her pause. Could Priest have been forced into helping Silas? It didn't seem likely; the man hated her brother with a passion, and with his immortality, what leverage could Silas hope to hold over him? But if there were another gatekeeper, one that was being forced to help Silas against their will, then maybe she had hope of finding a way home. Maybe she had an unknown ally hidden among the forces amassed within Aldergate.

 Graves moved slowly, wary of reopening his wounds, as they retraced her path back to the tunnels. She had thought herself careful not to leave tracks, but now she easily picked out evidence of her crossing. Though Graves passed these marks without comment, every scuff in the rocks, every ghost of a bootprint made her cringe.

They reached the darkness of the deep, the lantern throwing sinister shadows across the topography of Graves' swollen face. The tunnel's serpentine convolutions prevented the light from extending farther than a few feet. 

Graves stopped, alerted, and abruptly extinguished the light while pulling her back into an alcove. A shuffling sound reached them--like a burrowing creature, but without the haphazard quality of beastly meandering. The sound stopped, then started again, growing louder. Graves tapped three times on her upper arm: three guards were coming. They would have to ambush them. She hoped he was right, and it was just a few scouts. If there were more, if she and Graves had to run...

A trio of guards shuffled down the passageway. One of them carried a spotlight lantern, three sides blacked out so its light streamed in only one direction, a glow visible for a long heartbeat around the corners of the tunnel. Two elongated shadows stretched in front of the group, like skeletal fingers reaching for their hiding place. Graves held her back, his hand on her arm, waiting until the group walked directly in front of them. The guards remained focused on the ground, and Elizabeth cursed her own incompetence in covering her tracks. 

The two striding ahead of the lantern were just passing the opening to the alcove when one of them turned to examine its depths. Elizabeth, her time-sense slowing, felt Graves' tap on her shoulder, the silent signal to begin their attack.

She sprang forward, marking the three figures as she moved: one tall one, hidden behind the light; one medium-sized man with a clipped beard, wearing leather armor and armed with a short-sword; and a slight woman with a round face and narrow eyes. This woman had already passed the surprised stage and was reaching for a dagger from her belt.

Elizabeth was on the smaller man before he could turn toward them. She sliced through the exposed joint on his right forearm. His weapon fell, its landing muffled against the silty floor. Her elbow smashed into his nose with a satisfying crunch, and she swept him to the floor with an expertly placed leg, immediately following with a strike to the face with her left hand. He slumped to the ground.

The woman’s dagger sliced through the air, just past Elizabeth's face; had she not pulled back, she would be missing part of her nose. On the next thrust, the knife met the metal hand, and Elizabeth twisted it out of the guard’s grip. She brought her other fist around to catch the woman on the chin, then rushed at her and knocked her to the ground, landing on the woman’s chest with her knees.

The light swung crazily in the background as Graves sparred with the man with the lantern. Graves had a knife in each hand and dodged the man’s clumsy sword strikes with ease. The smaller man struck at him between each attack, cutting away parts of the Guard piecemeal. Elizabeth could see that Graves' movements were several steps slower than usual. But even in a lower gear, he was still far faster than most people could handle.

Elizabeth was just completing this thought when the giant, his sword having just been thrust aside, brought the lantern down upon Graves’ skull. Her teacher cried out as the tunnel went dark. She punched the guard who lay prone beneath her, two quick jabs to the face. The woman stopped struggling, and Elizabeth rolled off and went to help Graves. 
She called out to him, but no response came, just the meaty smacks and harsh exhalations of hand-to-hand combat. In the absolute darkness, she could do nothing except wait; any intervention she might give could just as easily doom Graves as help him. She felt along the sediment on the floor, praying to find anything useful. Her fingers closed on the shortsword of the first guard she had dispatched, which she pushed back into the alcove, and the knife of the second guard, which she tucked into her pocket of her tunic.

Then, finally, she found a cool, cylindrical object, half-buried in the gravel. It took a moment before realizing it was the lantern Graves had been carrying. It was still lit, just obscured by the silt. She pulled it up and pointed it at the melee.

Graves was being overpowered by the larger man. Their weapons lay at their feet, the two apparently having disarmed one another in the darkness. The guard twisted and threw his weight forward, knocking Graves down and landing on top of him. Elizabeth saw the giant glance up at her, then watched as his face twisted in fear as his focus reached the sharp edges of her fingers.

“Get off him.” The voice that came out of her chest was half growl. She slashed her left hand through the air. The guard eased to a kneeling position, his eyes never leaving her hand. “Stay on your knees. Hands behind your head.” He did as she asked. She could see his leather armor had been shredded to strips by Graves’ knife strikes, though none of the wounds appeared deep.

Graves, on the other hand, had suffered what looked to be serious damage. His bandages were soaked through with blood, and there was one fresh gouge in his abdomen. Dark liquid pulsed out of the hole with each breath, and there were things hanging out that Elizabeth would rather not have thought about. Graves had thrust one fist against it, trying to staunch the blood loss, but dark rivers streamed out around his fingers. His face looked pale and defeated.

“Are you okay?” Her eyes did not leave the guard.

A weak laugh erupted from Graves. “Dinna matter. One of us has to stay behind. Easy decision, now.”

“What do you mean?”

“The trigger for the collapse...it’s deeper'n the part it affects. Whoever sets it off'll be trapped on the other side.”

She saw immediately what this meant...either she could let Graves set it off, and he would be stuck between the cave-in and the guard, or she could do it herself, and he would be alone on this side, slowly bleeding to death.

“You’ll have to take care of this lot, though.”

The conscious guard spoke up, “Wait! I’m a prisoner! You can’t just execute a prisoner!”

Graves swung at him. She hadn't realized he had recovered his knife from where it lay on the ground, but a fountain of blood exploded from the throat of the guard. The man’s death-mask would forever catalog the surprise of his final moment.

“One of the few favors I can give t’ye, Totem. Ye dinna have to kill a conscious, unarmed man. My soul will be goin’ t’the deepest part of the Vineyards anyways, a few last sins will na’ matter.” He limped over to the two prostrate guards, and slid his blade into the chests of each in turn. Each body spasmed as their hearts were pierced.

“Ugly. But necessary. Ye will na’ want any of ‘em around t’ chase ye from behind, an ‘twill be too difficult to carry them beyond the collapse.” She knew she should feel gratitude, but the act horrified her. And the battle was not yet done.

She put his arm around her shoulders, and walked him down the tunnel. The staff he had been using was in pieces on the floor of the passage, broken in a part of the battle she had not witnessed. They kept silent, stopping at every small noise and waiting for more guards to emerge from the darkness. None came.

Finally, Graves motioned her to stop. They had reached a widening where the path approached the cavern side. He pointed to a dark line snaking up a boulder. “See that root? Fake. It’s a rope, with its other end looped around a small rock, holdin’ back a rockslide that’ll bury the entrance to the hallway we just came down. That’s the only known connection ‘tween the upper parts of the underground and these deeper recesses. The Guards can muck about for as long as they want down here, and it willna do them a bit of good. Maybe they’ll wake up somethin’ in the depths and it’ll do some of our work for us.”

“Does it have to be this way? Can’t we...I don't know...rig up something to pull it from beyond the collapsing point?” She hated to lose him, to sentence him to death just to save her own skin.

“With enough time, surely we could. But it’s far more important t’keep the revolution safe. We’re out of options, Totem.”

She tried to stem her tears, to halt the sobs, to find some bit of the legendary Eliza hidden away within her. But it was no use. Graves put his hands on her cheeks. “Dinna cry, Elsie. I always was goin’ t’ die this way, gut-stuck or knifed in the back in a tavern brawl. I’m just grateful to have had it mean somethin'.”

"I..." Elizabeth swallowed. "I can't do this without you, Graves. I've got to save Hachi and Quill, they don't know how much danger they're marching into. I won't stand a chance without you to help me."

He laughed, then launched into a coughing fit, sending blood spraying through his fingers. "Oh, Totem. I'm not worried about ye. Ye'll be fine." His eyes found her face, all laughter gone from his. "D'y'know what it means t'be a teacher, Elsie? It means lookin' through what your student is t'see what they can become, and knowin' what ye've got t'do t'be gettin' them there." His speech trailed off. His teeth clenched together, a grimace of pain. "I never met Silas. Nor was I around when Eliza of old walked these lands. But I have a hard time believin' that she was any better of a fighter'n ye turned out t'be."

"Graves, don't--"

" I'm proud of how ye turned out, girl. Ye did us all proud. I fear for Silas. I really do. He doesna know what's comin'." 

She turned away, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “What will you do?” She swallowed hard. “After?”

“I’ll wait a bit. See if any of the guard come my way. See if I can help any of ‘em over one of the cliffs down there.”

Elizabeth smiled. That was Graves: plotting against the Guard to the end. He raised his head to speak again. “If y'see Quill, tell her I’ll see her in the next life. Tell her..." He paused, gathering his voice. "Tell her the past only makes us what we let it. Can ye remember all of that? I need her to hear it.”

She nodded and hugged him hard as she dared. Then she turned and walked up the dark tunnel, navigating by touch alone. She had almost reached the guards’ corpses when the rumble of a rockslide, deep and guttural, echoed up from below.