I thought about retreating towards the cell. But my advantage cut both ways. Odds were that anyone so proficiently furtive would identify my tread just as I had theirs. Whoever they were, the fact that they were sneaking at all made me doubt I'd want to make their acquaintance. Who knew what went on in the dungeons of a mad king? Who could say what types might stalk its mazy depths?
I glanced around for an alternative. To my astonishment, luck was on my side. I'd passed the last cell door, but between me and the next junction was another entrance, a wooden gate with no grille or lock. I guessed it was a storage cupboard or some such, since no light showed from the wide gap at its base.
Sure enough, when I opened the gate it revealed a small alcove. The walls were lined with wide shelves, empty but for a few bags and loose bric-a-brac; the remaining space looked just big enough to contain me. I slipped inside, drew the gate closed. Sure enough, there was ample room. So long as no one happened to glance at the gap beneath the door, I'd be perfectly safe.
Unless this cupboard was exactly where the approaching steps were headed.
Trapped in that close darkness, I felt sure of it. Poised perfectly still, listening to that negligible rasp of cloth on flesh drawing nearer, I convinced myself beyond question that I'd concealed myself in the most dangerous place imaginable. Only the tiniest voice of doubt kept me from running as the near-inaudible steps drew closer, closer…
And passed.
They continued down the passage. They began to fade. Soon I doubted whether I could hear them at all.
Still, I waited. I stayed motionless – determined to catch even the minutest sound. Even when I was sure beyond doubt there was nothing to hear I continued to listen, until the very silence itself began to roar like distant surf.
It took all the strength of will I had to force myself back into life. Maybe the steps had passed and maybe they hadn't. Either way I didn't intend to starve to death in a closet.
At the last moment, it struck me that the alcove might contain something useful to my escape attempt. By the dim light from beneath the door, I appraised the contents of the shelves. Mostly, they were almost empty, but high on the shelf behind me three bags were piled together. They looked oddly familiar – and taking one down, I realised why. It was my own.
Once I got over my initial surprise, I realised it made sense. The alcove could only be a temporary store for prisoners' goods. Everything was as I'd last seen it; my pack didn't appear to have been so much as opened. Even my coin bag was there, and judging from its heft as I slipped it into a pocket, undiminished. Whatever the royal guards might lack in competence, they were at least honest. I reclaimed my cloak and boots and drew them on. I slung my pack over one shoulder. I was about to slip back into the corridor when my brain caught up with what had been staring me in the face the whole time.
Two saddlebags.
Alvantes's saddlebags.
Alvantes's apparently undisturbed saddlebags.
Which meant…
Instinct took over, the force of a lifetime's habit, so powerful that I couldn't have resisted even had I wanted to. In the darkness it was hard to judge which bag was the one I wanted, so I dragged a couple of shirts from one, spread them over the stone floor to mask the sound and emptied both out. That done, I found the false bottom easily by touch. It had been carefully stitched in place, but I wasn't in any mood for niceties. I prised my fingers through the seam and pulled with all my strength. It held for just a moment and then began to tear, with the ping of individual stitches reaching crescendo with one steady, brutal rip.
Too excited by then even to heed the noise I was making, I tossed the scrap of fabric onto the clutter of Alvantes's belongings and reached into the freshly revealed portion. My fingers closed around metal – perfectly smooth, not at all cold to the touch. I drew it out. It was splendid, so refined and elegant in design that it was hard to believe it had ever sat on fat, fop pish Panchetto's head. Yet I hardly glanced at it. Instead, I shrugged off my cloak, wrapped the crown in it, crammed both together into my pack and slung the pack back across my shoulders.
Just as I was about to leave once more, I noticed something amidst the heap of Alvantes's turned out possessions. It was a tube of metal, catching the scant light from beneath the door. I recognised it as the telescope – the one I'd used outside Altapasaeda, the one I'd coveted until its existence had been crammed from my mind by the events that followed.
I reached down. Now it was mine, after all.
As I stepped back into the passage, my heart was hammering. Rationally I knew I'd been condemned to death anyway; but somehow, having indulged my light fingers in so grand a fashion seemed to make it all the worse. Now, not only was I condemned, I was actually guilty of something. I glanced left and right, disorientated by my time in the darkness of the closet.
I heard footsteps.
I knew straight away that it wasn't the same tread as before. This person was striving for quiet as well, but they weren't half as capable. They were moving too quickly for a start, as though they weren't quite decided which they cared more about, stealth or speed. What was going on? Just how many people were wandering around these dungeons? I'd been in less lively market streets. This time, I was sure the steps were behind me, approaching from the direction I'd arrived by. It was tricky to judge distance, though; the naked stone seemed to distort and re-echo sound.
I wasn't about to take any chances. Nor was I trapping myself back in the storeroom. Instead, I scuttled around the next bend, keeping low, ready to drop into the shadows at the slightest provocation. Once I'd passed the corner, I paused again to listen. Had the steps drawn closer? It was impossible to judge. Those dim passages were disorientating. One moment the sound seemed to be behind me, the next in front. Or could it be that there were two people approaching? I didn't think so, but my nerve was slipping. It was easy to imagine a teeming horde of guards closing from every direction.
The corridor beyond the junction was much the same as the one I'd left, but bare this time of cell doors. Again, it ran to left and right. This time I chose left. The passage seemed to go on forever. I was sure I wouldn't reach the end before whoever possessed those phantom steps came into view. The more I lost my nerve, the surer I felt it wasn't one set of feet but many – that I was hurrying into danger, fleeing from one threat towards another.
However, the next junction revealed not guards, nor even another passage. It opened onto a short landing between flights of stairs.
I managed to calm myself a fraction. This was progress. Every instinct told me I was underground – weren't prisons always underground? – and so the logical choice was to ascend. Yet something made me doubt. Maybe it was only my natural sense of direction awakening, or maybe the sudden realisation that perhaps the reason those distant footsteps seemed all around was that they were reverberating from the floor above.
Yes, that must be it. Now that I concentrated, with the worst edge of my fear receding, it made perfect sense. It was easier to judge here, too, with the uninterrupted access of the stairwell. These stone walls were like the coil of a seashell, siphoning noise down into their depths. I was confident that what I'd actually been hearing was activity from the higher level, a constant, barely audible rapping of feet against flags.
Or maybe not. With a shiver, I realised one set was different. One set was definitely behind me. And it was definitely getting nearer.
That settled my decision.
I plummeted down the stairs, taking them three at a time. At the bottom was a small antechamber, with one low door to the right and another, larger and heavier, in front of me. There was a narrow, barred window set high in the door ahead. Through those bars, I could see darkness and the vague impression of distant walls. Close up, I could feel the faint breath of cool night air.
I'd found a way out.
There was only one problem. I knew there'd be a guard waiting on the other side.
There had to be. I'd been far too lucky getting this far. Luck always ran out eventually, and when it did, it generally went with a bang. I might have the element of surprise, but he'd be armed and armoured and infinitely better at fighting – not to mention capable of calling his many colleagues to his aid.
Above and behind me, the footsteps were drawing nearer. They must be in the second corridor by now. My bid for freedom was rapidly coming down to a choice of who got to catch me first. If I was quick, perhaps I could overpower the guard outside. I could put him down long enough to make a run for it at least. I might even get as far as the first gates. And then… and then…
One step. One step at a time.
Gently, hoping beyond hope that it wasn't locked, that its hinges were well oiled, I gripped the great ring that served as a door handle, twisted, pulled.
The hinges hardly complained; a whisper of metal on metal, like a breeze through dry grass. The door drew inward. A rectangle of purple velvet sky unfurled in the opening. I pressed against the wall, craned my neck to see through the slim gap.
There was no guard.
What there was, however, propped against the wall at the top of the short flight of stairs leading down to the courtyard, was a halberd that must surely belong to one. For reasons I couldn't quite explain, the sight of it sent a shudder through me. Perhaps he'd just gone to empty his bladder and would be back at any instant? No, it wasn't that. Something about the incongruity of it there, something about the angle… I didn't know why, but it felt wrong.
I knew I should run, take the opportunity while I had it, but I couldn't. I ducked back inside.
The footsteps were close now – still soft, but near. Unless I was very much mistaken, they'd almost reached the landing above. That only left the smaller door. Hardly even thinking, hardly trying to be quiet, I wrenched it open and darted through.
My heart stopped dead. My breath turned to ice in my throat.
I'd found the missing guard. The guard who should have been outside. The guard who'd so carelessly left his halberd.
I wouldn't need to worry about him.
Whoever had killed him, though – they were another matter.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My first instinct was to forget the guard's spread-eagled body and make a run for it, before the approaching footsteps could catch up.
I was already too late. They were on the stairs. I wondered, absurdly, if it would go more badly for me to be found over a dead guard's body with the crown of Altapasaeda in my rucksack. Or was it so absurd? There were more terrible fates in the world than a swift beheading.
I pressed myself against the wall, as though that would somehow hide me. The steps were quiet, cautious, but rapid nevertheless. None of those characteristics suggested their owner was meant to be here, any more than I was. Yet the fear sliding cold fingers around my throat told me they could just as well be an over-cautious guard – or someone worse.
After all, there was a corpse at my feet. Whoever had killed him might still be nearby. Whoever had killed him might be killing
me
next if I wasn't careful.
The muffled patter reached the last steps. My
lungs clenched in my chest. The footsteps paused in the alcove. I could hear breathing – muted but laboured. I very much wanted to run, I didn't care where… but fear had nailed me in place. I could only stand and listen – to the whisper of a door beginning to ease open…
Fortunately, it wasn't the door in front of me. There came another brief tapping of footsteps. Then the noise was swallowed in silence, and presumably by the night outside.
The wash of relief made my head swim. I almost let out the breath I'd been holding.
Lucky for me I didn't.
Had I been breathing, had I not been mute with fear, I might never have heard the second tread. As it was, I recognised it immediately; the first set of feet I'd noticed upstairs. Just as before, their possessor moved with consummate skill. He – or she, or it – was close upon the heels of whoever had just passed by. They didn't hesitate at the door. Almost before I registered their presence, they too were gone.
I waited. I couldn't guess for how long, except that it seemed like an age. I had no idea what could be going on, or if it was over. What kind of prison was this, where disembodied steps roved the halls all through the night? I felt as if my nerves had been grated. Even by the standard of escape attempts, this was proving extraordinarily stressful.
When I could stand it no more, when I was certain as I could be that neither set of feet was returning and that my heart had stopped trying to wrestle its way out of my chest, I turned my attention back to the corpse at my feet.
It was impossibly convenient that this particular guard should have chosen this particular moment to get himself murdered. Could it be another part in the mystery Alvantes had hinted at? Yet that made no sense. I couldn't believe Alvantes would have gone along with the killing of a royal guardsman, not even to secure his own freedom. Anyway, unless he was capable of plotting and effecting a brutal prison escape whilst chained in a cell, there had to be another explanation.
If so, whatever it was it eluded me. Moreover, given my immediate circumstances, it hardly mattered. For careful inspection had revealed one useful fact. The corpse I stood over was about my height and build.
Not having a clue as to why he was dead needn't stop me from exploiting that fact. Whoever had taken his life had at least been good enough to do so in a fashion that left his uniform – loose trousers and shirt with a knee-length jacket and helmet of studded leather – unmarked by blood. His uniform wasn't so much as crumpled. It couldn't have been more convenient if he'd been left there for my benefit.