I looked over the rest of the room, taking in its dim shapes, grainy textures, hints of a shadow here and there. Why the hell couldn’t it be darker out?
There was nothing beneath Fedim’s bed but dirt, same for the lone table.
I threw myself at another spot on the wall in desperation, bounced off it. As I staggered back, my heel caught on the hard corner of a mat and sent me over. I scrambled back up, wondering how fast I could cut through the weathered lumber of the ceiling. Then it hit me.
Hard
corner of a woven mat?
I dropped to my knees and pulled the mat away. Or rather, I tried to, since it was attached to the floor by long pegs that ran into the dirt.
I ran my fingers around the edges, felt a sunken wooden frame beneath it. There were two rope handles tucked beneath the mat. Grabbing one in each hand, I crouched and lifted.
It was heavy.
“Ah, Angels!” I gasped as the trapdoor slowly came up out of the ground.
“Door” was generous; it was a nothing more than a wooden box filled with dirt, placed in a shaped recess in the floor. Unwieldy, but it would sound as solid as the rest of the floor to anyone walking on it.
Beneath, there was a crude shaft running straight down into darkness. A horrible, familiar stench rose from the hole—sewage.
Suddenly, staying here and dying didn’t seem like such a bad option.
Nevertheless, I yelled, “Degan! Let’s go!”
Degan came running into the room, sword in one hand, a hefty-looking vase in the other.
“They’ll rush soon,” he said. “The pots slowed them down, but not enough.” He looked at the hole and moved toward it. Then the smell reached him.
“Ugh!” Degan wrinkled his nose and looked at me pointedly. “You always manage to find a sewer, don’t you?”
“Only when you’re around,” I said.
Pushing his hat down more firmly on his head, Degan climbed into the shaft. Grumbling something about Noses liking the worst scents, he disappeared into the darkness below.
I set the “door” near the edge of the hole, sat down, and swung my legs in.
The stench was nauseating, ten times worse than anything we’d encountered in Ten Ways that night. As I slid into the hole, I heard a yell from outside. The Cutters were coming.
I pulled on the box of dirt, trying to shift it back into place as I sank the last few feet into the hole. My feet met round, slippery resistance: a peg or spike of some sort set into the shaft wall. The box moved two fingers’ breadth, then stopped. I tugged at it again. Nothing. Larrios
had
been stronger than he looked to move this thing by himself. Then again, he hadn’t had ten Cutters breathing down his neck, either.
I gave up on the box and started climbing down the peg ladder set in the shaft wall. I hoped the smell would be enough to keep the Cutters off our blinds.
The darkness was thick with moisture and odor. After eight pegs, my foot met nothing but air.
I shifted in the hole, trying to find the next peg, and something poked me in the shoulder. I felt behind me, found a niche dug out of the earth. In the niche was a long, thin object, like a small case of some sort. So, this was where Fedim had kept his swag. Clever bastard. Larrios must not have known it was here; otherwise I doubted he would have left it behind. I pulled the object out and tucked it between my back and my belt. Damned if I was going to leave this place empty-handed.
“Degan?” I called.
His voice rose up from below. “It’s a short drop. Just let go.” His voice echoed and reechoed.
I went down to the last peg and hung by my hands. Dropping off into darkness is always an unnerving proposition, but twice so when you’re used to being able to see in the stuff. I was tempted to hang and wait for my night vision to adapt, but I could hear Degan splashing about below. He had no such advantage to wait for; for him, the darkness was there to stay. Every moment I held on was another he had to spend listening and groping and wondering at every sound and sensation.
I let go and fell.
Darkness and the rush of air. My feet hit light resistance, then firmer, slicker stuff. Sewage and then the bottom of the sewage tunnel, respectively. I staggered, legs wide, and went to one knee and a hand to keep from falling over completely. The sewage would have come up high on my calf if I had been standing. As it was, I could feel the muck at my hips and past my left elbow.
The stench! My stomach started rolling over and over within me. I felt my throat tighten, my guts lurch, and I tasted bile. Force of will kept everything else down, but there was no telling how long that would last.
“Larrios,” I said, gasping, “is a dead man.” I stood and shook off my left arm. “You hear that, Larrios?” I yelled. “A dead man!”
I heard my own voice echo and reecho down the sewers. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I caught the faintest hint of laughter from far away. It was hard to tell in that place.
Bastard.
“You all right?” said Degan from off to my right.
“Superb.” I spit to clear my mouth, slogging toward his voice. “What kind of idiot has a rabbit hole that drops him into the middle of a sewer?”
“One who’d rather smell bad than die.”
“Uhm.” I had taken to the sewers for much the same reason a few years ago, although it had been out of desperation. But the idea of anyone choosing to dig into the streams and pools of filth that ran beneath Ildrecca of his own accord—
that
was beyond me.
The thrum of a bowstring and thwack of something striking water came to us out of the darkness. Another whoosh and splash followed moments later.
“Arrows,” said Degan. “They’re shooting down the shaft.”
I smiled and put my clean hand to the side of my mouth.
“Bene!” I yelled at the ceiling. “You just skewered a piece of shit.” Unless we were standing directly beneath the shaft, there was no way they could hit us.
“Then we got you!” a voice called back.
I barked a laugh. “Come down and try me, Eriff.”
The sound of voices drifted down. Another arrow hissed through the darkness into the slop. If they were dumb enough to follow us down, we could wait beneath the hole and cut them down as they landed. I doubted they were that stupid, but one could always hope.
“Another time, cousin,” called the voice from above.
There was a dragging sound, followed by a thud. They had put Fedim’s “door” back in place.
“Well?” said Degan.
“Almost,” I said.
We stood in the darkness. To my right, I could hear Degan breathing through his mouth, just as I was. It only helped foil the smell a little, and I knew we would start tasting the air after a while. I didn’t want to be down here that long.
I stood still and let my eyes slowly roam the blackness around us, looking for the first hint of amber that would mean my gift was beginning to work. It was not long in coming.
The first thing I picked out was a jutting brick in the far wall, showing dark red against the black. Next came the crimson and yellow flecked surface of the sewage, sluggish in some spots, fluid in others. I had forgotten how strangely serene it could look this way, a slow dance of colors that would have disgusted me in the light of day.
Degan appeared next, rapidly followed by the arching walls and ceiling. I looked overhead and saw Fedim’s shaft closer than I had expected it to be. A true trapdoor was hanging open above the sewer from it. Larrios had neglected to shut it in his haste to escape. Good thing, too; otherwise Degan and I would be a pair of arrowriddled corpses by now.
To the side of the trapdoor, a rope ran along the ceiling to a stone walkway. Anyone knowing what they were about would be able to shinny along the rope and land, dry and filth-free, on the pathway the imperial engineers used to inspect and repair the city’s sewers.
I considered climbing back up for a moment, then considered the ambush that might very well be waiting for us on the other side of the trap box.
“There’s a causeway to our left,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell Degan our dunking could have been avoided.
I led him over to the causeway and helped him find footing to climb out. I followed.
“Recognize anything?” he asked, crouching to avoid the arch of the wall as it rose toward the ceiling.
I looked up and down the tunnel. There was an empty torch bracket nearby. I suspected the torch had made its way out with Larrios.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think I ever made it this far in.”
“Any sign of Larrios?”
“None.”
“There must be a way out nearby. I can’t imagine he came down here just to stumble around in the dark.”
I nodded, then remembered Degan couldn’t see me. “Probably a drainage shaft or access tunnel,” I said.
“Lead on.”
I placed Degan’s hand on my shoulder and headed to our right. It seemed as good a direction as any.
The stones of the walkway were slicked over with slime and rat droppings. In one spot, the edge of the causeway had crumbled away, forcing us to sidle past, our backs against the wall. Rats confronted us continually along the path, and I soon had my rapier out before me, sweeping the more belligerent rodents into the river of waste that flowed beside us. The rats squeaked in protest, and their cries formed a sharp counterpoint to the otherwise soft sounds of dripping and squelching that surrounded us.
It was a short time later, while I was leaning over the sewage, emptying what little remained in my stomach for the second time, that Degan’s grip tightened on my arm.
“Feel that?” he asked.
I spit, stood up, and leaned back against the wall as best I could. The damn smell—it had always gotten to me.
“What?” I gasped as I fumbled at my herb wallet with my cleaner hand. Thank the Angels, the oiled lining had kept the water out.
“Cross breeze,” said Degan.
I lifted my head and waited.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said.
I returned my attention to my herb wallet and managed to pull out two small parchment packets. One held echember roots, the other ground mysennius seeds. I ripped open the first with my teeth. Half of the echember fell out before I got the packet to my mouth. The powder was easier, and I poured what I hoped was half of it in with the roots. I chewed. The echember wasn’t bad, but the mysennius tasted awful without wine to mix it in. With any luck, my stomach would settle down soon and my senses would become sufficiently dulled to keep the stench from getting to me further.
“There it is again,” said Degan, more excited now.
This time I felt it, too—the lightest brush of air across my face.
“Yes,” I said.
Air movement meant ventilation. Ventilation meant a way out.
We tracked the breeze to a side tunnel. Fresh air, or at least the ghost of it, met our nostrils.
I went first. The tunnel had a low ceiling, forcing me to hunch my shoulders and Degan to bend nearly double. As we slopped along, I began to see a brighter patch of amber ahead—starlight and the smallest hint of moon glow coming in from above.
“Something up ahead,” I said. “Either a grate or a small cave-in.”
Degan made no response.
After ten paces, the smell began to lessen. After another five, I allowed myself a small smile of relief. It was a sewer grate, set in the ceiling of the tunnel. Despite the drugs, I could even hear voices coming from the street above us.
“It’s a gra—” I began to whisper, but Degan suddenly grabbed me and shoved me against the tunnel wall. He put a warning hand over my mouth.
“Hsst!” he whispered through clenched teeth.
I fell silent. Degan held me a moment longer, then released me. I turned to him for an explanation, but his attention was elsewhere. He had his head cocked, eyes staring off into the darkness. I realized he was trying to listen to the voices coming down the tunnel. After a moment, he shook his head in frustration.
“Closer,” he whispered, his voice so faint it was almost lost in the few inches that separated us.
We crept forward, one soggy, sucking pace at a time. When we were practically beneath the grate, we stopped again. The voices were still there.
“. . . found nothing?” said a female voice from above us.
“No swag worth taking, no,” replied a man.
They couldn’t have been more than five paces from the grate, by the sound of it.
“And the book?”
“No sign of it.”
The woman swore—proficiently.
“All the payoffs,” she said, “All the damn planning, and we miss it by minutes!” Someone kicked something.
“It wasn’t a total loss,” observed the man. Gravel being ground under a boulder, that voice.