Different Senses (76 page)

My imagination had Shardul
dying before my eyes, and it made me desperate. I nudged him as
hard as I could. “Shardul.”

He made a sound—a grunt, a
moan, I wasn’t sure—and inhaled sharply. “Javen?” he whispered
groggily.

“Here. Shhh, there’s a guard.”
He grunted again. “Are you hurt?” I asked, wishing he’d roll
over.

He took some time to answer.
“No. Sore, though. I think we weren’t handled very carefully.”

“They knocked you out when they
did me?”

“Yes. No questions first, which
was odd.”

“No need. We were
betrayed.”

“Largosen?”

“No idea. We have to get out of
here.”

He chuckled dryly. “I know
you’re amazingly talented, but I suspect making ropes evaporate is
beyond even you.”

“Wasn’t planning on evaporating
them, just cutting them. In my boot heel, there’s a knife. I need
you to get it out and use it on my restraints. We should hurry. I
have no idea what their plans are for us.”

“The things we don’t know about
all this are too numerous. Move back, will you?”

I did so and awkwardly
manoeuvred around so my head was level with Shardul’s feet. I
couldn’t do much else to help him. He had to open the magnetic
catch on my right boot heel and winkle out the little knife on his
own. His fingers were probably numb, like mine.

He couldn’t do the cutting
himself, I realised after a few fumbled attempts, so I had him hold
the knife as hard and firmly as he could, while I rubbed the rope
around my wrists against it. The knife was small, and the rope
tough and new. I couldn’t even tell if I was making any headway at
all, or if I was cutting skin instead of the bonds. Both of us were
working behind our backs, and my hands had lost all sensation.
“Should teach this stuff at University,” I said, grunting with
effort.

“Quite. And all heels should
have bigger knives installed. This isn’t working, Javen.”

“It’s all we have.”

“I could pray.”

“So go ahead. Just hold the
fucking knife while you do it, okay?”

He went silent, and I kept
working. Whether it was his prayers or sheer blind luck, I didn’t
know, but five seconds later, I thought I felt some give. I tried
forcing my wrists apart, and fell forward in shock as it worked.
“Bloody hell!”

“What? Are you all right?”

“Yes. It worked. Give me a
minute or two.”

“Thank the Spirit,” he
breathed, and I was inclined to give him that, since praying might
have helped him concentrate, at least.

I dragged my numb and useless
arms around in front of me. “Bloody” was the right word—we’d made a
mess of my skin. But it was all superficial. The most important
thing was I had use of my hands...or would do, once the blood
supply returned, which it did, slowly and very painfully. I had to
bite my sleeve so not to moan at the additional agony.

Cutting the rest of the ropes
away took a lot less time. Shardul wasn’t as pleased as I was at
being free from them. “You look terrible, and I think that cheek
wound is becoming infected.”

“If we don’t get out of here,
an infection is the least of my worries, and so’s a head injury. I
need your brain, Shardul. Mine’s wrecked.”

He snorted with amusement,
which cheered me a little, even though nothing about this was
funny. “I can’t see how my brain is going to get us out of this
room.”

“Any idea where we are?”

“Not in the slightest. Rural is
my only guess, which covers ninety-five percent of Medele. We
didn’t know where we started from, remember?”

“Take a look around the room,
see if you can find something we can use as a weapon. But
quietly.”

He slipped his shoes off and
climbed silently to his feet, while I watched the ankles of the
guard outside. He had the tiny torch from my heel pack to help him.
The only other light we had came through the crack at the bottom of
the door, and that wasn’t much.

I didn’t attempt to get up off
the floor—I was far too dizzy for that, and the exertion of getting
freed from the ropes had nauseated me. I lay with my ear to the
floorboards, hoping to maybe hear conversations in the rest of the
house, figure out how many people were holding us.

The building we were in creaked
and groaned quietly, and I guessed it was wood all the way, which
carried sound nicely. I heard no voices, but what I did hear
surprised me. Water. Not running through pipes, but lapping softly
against something underneath us. I listened for a good two minutes
before my sluggish brain figured it out. “I know where we are, I
think.”

Shardul padded quietly over to
me and crouched down. “Where?”

“Demultan Flats. It’s the rainy
season, so the river’s in flood, right? This building is over
water. Is there anywhere else where they build like that?”

“Not that I know of. But does
that help? We’re still without a weapon, or transport, and you’re
hurt.”

“Details, details. Help me up,
and give me the torch.”

Jyoti had told me when I was
out here the last time that the floorboards in many houses weren’t
fixed for easy replacement and drying during excessive floods. I
hoped she was right, and that it was true for this building. I
pried at the crack between two boards with the little knife, not
making any obvious headway.

“What are you trying to do?”
Shardul whispered.

“Lift one of the boards so we
can drop through.”

“You’ll make too much noise,
and the boards will be tight from all the moisture.”

I glared at him, realising he
was right, but annoyed he had ruined my great plan. “We can’t just
sit here.”

“No. Let me have the torch
again, please.”

I was out of ideas, and his
brain worked better than mine, so I handed it over, still
irritated, and now worried. If we couldn’t get out of here in the
next few hours, while it was still dark, we would be helpless to
prevent Dandak doing whatever the hell he wanted. Up to and
including shooting us and dropping our bodies into the river to
drift out to sea. The only question was why he hadn’t already done
that.

Shardul moved a sack.
“Careful,” I breathed. He turned and gave me a look I couldn’t see
in the shadows, but my empathy told me he had already considered
the noise issue, so would I please shut up?

He moved some other items, not
making a single sound, though the boards creaked a little. The
guard’s feet didn’t move. Maybe he was asleep. Hoped so.

“There.” He pointed at the
floor, and I slid over to see. “A hatch, unlocked. They must unload
and load through here in the wet season.”

Dandak had either forgotten or
not known about it—or assumed that two tied up men wouldn’t be able
to use this escape route. “Hinges make noise.”

“Yes. No help for it...ah, in
your heel. Is there anything in the medical kit?”

I stuck my foot out and he
opened the heel catch, taking out the sealed kit. The antibiotic
cream? It was usually greasy, wasn’t it?

He examined the content, and
extracted the tube of ointment, and a minijector. “What’s
this?”

“Mahozil. Painkiller.”

“Use it, Javen. If we get out
of here, you’ll need to be as active and alert as possible.”

He had a point, and after I
stuck the minijector against my neck to deliver the Mahozil dose,
he used some of the cream on my cheek injury. “Waste of time,” I
said.

“Possibly. Hold the torch, will
you?”

He squeezed the tube against
the ancient metal hinges. There didn’t look like enough of the
cream to make the slightest difference, but we had to try—and hope
like fuck the hatch wasn’t locked on the other side, or stuck from
swollen wood.

He must have had the same fear,
because he took the knife and carefully eased it all the way around
the edge of the hatch. That wouldn’t have occurred to me. If I had
to be stuck in this mess with anyone, I was glad it was Shardul.
Except I would never forgive myself if anything—anything else, at
least—happened to him.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I said,
trying to sound less anxious than I was. The painkiller had taken
effect, but even in peak condition, I’d be worried. It was the
middle of the night, the middle of the flood, and I had no idea
where in the Flats we were or if we were in the Flats in the first
place. Rural Medele wasn’t friendly toward Kelons, as I knew well.
Getting out of this storeroom wasn’t even half the problem.

He nodded, and gave me back the
knife. “Whatever you do, don’t lose that or the light. They’re all
we have.”

He eased the heavy ring grip
up, then put his strength behind lifting the hatch itself. I held
my breath, willing the wood to move smoothly. It did, years of
constant use making it loose and easy to move.

I gave Shardul a thumb’s up and
his grin flashed white in the dark. “Hope you can swim,” he
said.

“
Like a
quirnel
.
You first.”

There was a ladder leading down
from the hatch, fairly logically, and Shardul went down, slow and
silent. A smell of damp rotting vegetation wafted out of the hole,
and I wondered how I could have missed that unforgettable odour in
the first place.

“Torch,” he signalled, and when
I gave it to him, he swept the darkness below him. He popped up out
of the hole. “There’s a boat tethered to a support just here.”

“Chain or rope?”

“Can’t tell. Knife?”

I passed it to him, and
he dropped down again. I bit my lip. A boat was unimaginable good
luck. Even if I had no idea where we were,
away
from here could only be
a good thing.

Shardul reappeared. “It’s only
tied. Come on.”

I eased over to the hatch, and
climbed down carefully, still dizzy and suffering an alarming
vertigo as soon as I was upright. At least the pains and aches had
receded. I needed to make the most of that before the painkiller
wore off.

Shardul waited for me in the
little boat, holding the torch to give me as much light as he
could—which wasn’t much. The boat rocked as I climbed in, and he
hissed in a breath, as worried as I was. My heart was thumping by
the time I found a seat, and the boat stabilised.

“Let it go,” I murmured. “We
can drift with the current, can’t we?”

“There are oars, but yes. Keep
down. We’re high under the house.”

And I’d already had too many
knocks to the head. I leaned forward, going flat. Shardul slipped
the knot holding the boat to the pillar with the confidence of a
born sailor, and we began to move. In which direction, I didn’t
know. Didn’t matter—we were out of our prison, and the boat had
given our chances of surviving a significant boost.

We cleared the house, and found
it was drizzling. There were no lights anywhere, our torch all we
had to avoid any obstacles such as trees and house supports. “Which
way should we go?” Shardul asked.

“With the current. If we hit
the river, we can head to Verzet. If we’re going inland, we’ll have
to take our chance. If you spot a light, head towards it. Chances
are it’ll be the local police station.”

Shardul looked like he knew
what he was doing with the oars, and since I didn’t have a clue, I
let him take charge of them. He let the current do the work, using
the oars only for guidance, and a couple of times to push the boat
away from an obstruction.

The rain increased, which made
us less visible, but also made our progress miserable and cold. The
torch was close to useless in these conditions, Shardul having to
wait until we hit something before he knew to push the boat clear.
We were moving at a walking pace, and at least we were now well
clear of the building we’d been held in. It was impossible to
otherwise judge how far we had travelled, or the direction, but I
thought we had left the original settlement long since. I had only
a vague idea how many were situated on the flood plain, though.
Jyoti’s relatives lived in one and I knew there were more, but that
was it.

“Javen, can you see that?”

I wiped my eyes. “That light?
Can we get there?” The light was high up, like it was on raised
ground, and I hoped that might mean a police station, or possibly a
clinic.

“Yes, but what if they’re
friendly with Dandak?”

I considered. He had a point,
but we were wet, cold, and in my case, injured. I didn’t know how
long it was until daylight, and once the sun came up, we’d be
sitting targets. “We have to risk it, I think.”

“All right.” He dipped the oars
and began to row with a will.

The light looked deceptively
close, the rain and water distorting perception. However long
Shardul rowed, we seemed to come no closer, and I wondered if it
was all an optical illusion, until suddenly we had bumped up
against a bank. Another boat close by was tethered at a small
mooring pier. We tied ours to the mooring, and pushed the boat
under the pier to keep it hidden.

“That doesn’t look like a
police station,” Shardul said.

I blinked away the rain and
stared up at the building. “It’s a clinic.”

“Yes, I see now. Safe?”

“You tell me, Shardul. They’re
your people.”

He hesitated. “Chances are
fair.”

“Good enough for me. Help me up
the stairs, will you?”

He gripped my arm and together
we made it up the slippery steps. I was pretty much done now. Even
if this place turned out to be Dandak’s centre of operations, I
almost couldn’t care, I was so cold and sore, and sick. I wouldn’t
risk it on Shardul’s behalf, but for my own, I didn’t have anything
else to pull out.

The sign on the clinic door
said the place was closed, but for emergencies, we could go to the
doctor’s home behind it, so we stumbled along the unlit path, and
banged on the door of the house. No response. I slid down the wall
I was leaning on. “Leave me,” I said. “Take the boat. I can wait
here until morning.”