Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
I ducked so Cirillo had room to swing the sword, which was more like hacking in the tight space. Once we were through, having to walk over fresh corpses, we reached a larger space—probably the room where the men gathered before they made their way through the corridor, single file, to reach our room.
Keres and Carice had been hugging the side of the dark room, and the way they unfolded from the wall reminded me of spiders, and I shivered involuntarily. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and my mind was playing tricks on me.
“Something’s wrong,” Cirillo rasped. “I feel sluggish and slow.”
Their faces were all ghoulishly elongating, and I had to breathe through my nose.
“We’ve been drugged,” Keres confirmed my fears. “It was probably whatever wood was burning in the fire.”
Since I’d been the only one who ate anything but they were all feeling the effects, that had to be right.
There were two ways out of the room.
“Which way?” I asked Cirillo, who looked normal one moment, and as though he had twenty eyes the next. “And for the record, I’m trippin’ balls.”
“It will wear off now that we’re away from the smoke.”
I really hoped so.
Keres said the path to the left was less used—she could, she assured us, smell the difference. Since I trusted her, we went that way, Cirillo first, then Keres, then Carice, and finally me. He armed me with a hand axe he stole from one of the guards we’d had to walk over—there was no room in the corridor to step around them—and I was holding on to the weapon for dear life while at the same time praying I wouldn’t have to use it.
Why there were so many small rooms where we had to open and close doors, I didn’t understand, and I asked Cirillo when we stopped and he had us crouching on the ground.
“These are kill rooms,” he explained. “The palace has these as well. Panels slide open, and whoever is in the room can die where they stand, stabbed to death by people positioned on either side, or both. If I had a light, I could—”
A small mullein torch—which I knew because I was familiar with them, we sold them at Spark & Ember, the store I co-owned with Ode in New Orleans—was passed from Keres to Cirillo.
“How many pockets are in that skirt, lady?” Cirillo asked her.
She smiled at him, pulled her padded silk jacket more tightly around her, and passed me a small roll of jute. “I pilfered this from the room,” she explained as she gave me the end, had Carice take hold, and passed the other end to Cirillo. “We can move faster if we run together.”
“Agreed,” Carice whispered. “Don’t let go. Everyone stay together.”
It was easier to move, and running over ground that Cirillo had gone over first was also helpful. When we heard people rushing toward us, we all froze at once as we heard panels sliding open. It was terrifying, as we were in the dark, but so were they. When they had to lift lanterns to look for us, they were treated to Cirillo’s slicing sword.
Running to another door, it was like the room tilted, and I tried so hard to get my balance, but whatever the drugs were, they were overwhelming. There were two doors, and when I opened one, there was a blast of icy air, while from the other one the air was warm. The latter seemed like the better idea, but Cirillo chose the freezing one, and when the other three went through, I followed, only to have the ground tilt again, and then I was on a slide.
The rock we slid over reminded me of the tumbled stones Ode and I sold in our shop, so smooth, no edges. It was sort of soothing, even with Carice screeching in fear in front of me, and then the chute ended and we tumbled out into what appeared to be a large bin.
“I don’t know which I like less,” Cirillo groused, kicking a door I didn’t see, which opened into a cavern.
“The other door had shit clinging to the inside,” Keres told him. “I cannot even conceive of a cistern that holds that much waste. Being in what I can only assume sits under the castle is far preferable to falling into where the soiled sheets are stored.”
“Vastly preferable,” Carice seconded with a shiver.
“I didn’t smell anything,” I said as Cirillo walked over to a torch burning in a sconce, and I saw that there was one every ten feet along the wall.
“It was bracing,” Cirillo assured me. “My choking didn’t alarm you?”
“I didn’t hear you do that.”
“There’s water there, and I suspect moving under the ice. I’ll make a hole, and you splash some on your face. You must clear your mind,” he said irritably, like I had any control over my reaction.