Grizelda (24 page)

“Kricker?”

The first thing she thought was that a cat
must have eaten him. It couldn’t be, there weren’t any cats this
far underground. That’s what she tried to tell herself, anyway, as
she turned back to look for him. But oh, it would be like him, ever
since that belling the cat incident.

No. Kricker wouldn’t be dead. Please. She
sped on.

She didn’t have far to go before she found
Kricker and the bat both, sitting on the floor of the tunnel.

“Are you hurt?” She landed and ran over to
him.

He definitely didn’t look great. There was a
sheen of sweat all over him, and he was turning a bad shade of
green.

“I can’t do it anymore.” He stared at
nothing, some point on the opposite wall.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s the heights,” he said in an utterly
miserable tone.

“What?”

He didn’t reply.

“You’re afraid of
heights?
”

“It’s not funny.”

“I never said it was funny,” she said,
irritated.

“You’re still thinking it’s funny.”

What was the
matter
with him? He was
the one who’d screwed up and now he was looking at her like he was
furious. “You think it’s funny because I’m supposed to be the big
ratrider daredevil and now I’m afraid of heights. Just go on
without me.”

“No, I can’t just leave you here.” She was
starting to seethe. “Big shot you are! You can’t finish the
breakout and you’re not even hurt!”

“Leave me the heck alone, Frizzface!”

She gasped. For a moment she was unable to
speak, digging her nails into her palms. Then she turned around and
hopped onto Snapdragon’s back.

“I’m going to go get Laricia so she can save
your sorry ass!”

And she flew off.

Toby grabbed Grizelda’s wrist tight and
started to run. She stumbled along behind him, her breath coming
ragged now.

“You’ve got to slow down! You’re hurting
me!”

“We can’t afford to slow down! We’ve got to
find a corner – a niche – something. I–”

“No.” She stopped, and her hand tore out of
his. She stood doubled over in the middle of the passage,
aching.

“Come on, Griz, you can make it!”

“I can’t.”

Toby went back and stood by her. He couldn’t
stop fidgeting. He looked behind them – whatever it was was coming
closer – the way they’d been going, to her, back to the way they’d
been going. She could tell he wanted to go on without her, but he
didn’t do it.

In a matter of seconds, the thing with the
clacking steps would come around the corner and see them. She
looked ahead at the tunnel, knew she would never make it. There was
only one thing to do, and she had to do it
now
.

She clapped a hand over Toby’s mouth and
pointed to the wall. He looked at her like she was crazy, but she
held a finger up.
Silence
. Together they pressed themselves
flat against the side of the passage, not moving.

She could too do it under pressure. She had
to. Grizelda took a deep breath, and then she froze – totally
froze; not even her eyes moved but stared, unblinking, up the
passage. She didn’t breathe. She willed herself to blend into the
stones. And somebody came around the corner.

It was a gendarme, she could tell that by the
dark blue of his uniform. He walked with an unhurried pace down the
corridor, looking at nothing in particular.
Clack, clack
. He
was middle-aged and edging towards portly. For several agonizing
seconds, he walked toward them.

When he was right up next to them, he turned
his head and looked straight at her. For a terrifying moment she
was afraid it hadn’t worked. But his eyes were unfocused; his gaze
slid past them and away. There was no hint on his face of any
concern. And then he started to whistle, of all things. Whistling,
he walked on, and then he was gone.

They stayed frozen in terror where they were
for several minutes more. Finally Grizelda limpened, pulled away
from the wall. All of a sudden her legs turned to jelly and she
found herself on her knees.

“Are you okay?” Toby said.

“I don’t think so.”

“What was that?”

She pulled a damp strand of hair out of her
face. “I don’t want to talk about it. We need to go.”

“Was he
blind
? He didn’t see us.”

Toby helped her up, but she didn’t meet his
eyes. She was exhausted. She didn’t want to go into this, not now,
not knowing that Toby would never be her friend again
afterward.

“I made us invisible,” she said.

His look was blank.

“I’m a witch.”

“No, you’re not,” he said automatically.

Oh, here it goes,
she thought.

“Then what do you think this means?” She tore
off her headscarf and pointed at her hair.

“You were framed.” She could tell he didn’t
quite believe it, though. He was starting to look at her funny.
“The Committees took a disliking to you – maybe it was something
you said – and they used your hair and you were framed.”

“They arrested me because I really
am
a witch. Somebody caught me making living origami and turned me
in.”

He was starting to put it together now.
Grizelda, not a revolutionary but a freak, a traitor to the
Republic. The look in his face was … she couldn’t look at him.

“Don’t you know what they
did?
” he
said finally.

She only winced.

“They
ate
people.”

She still couldn’t look at him.

“The blood tax. The platform in the middle of
the square… The Auks were on top of it, the sorcerers and
sorceresses were on the stairs. They helped the people up … pushed
them. Then the Auks … the Auks ate them.” His voice had gone
distant, like he was remembering something, but he snapped back.
“Do you even remember this?”

“How could I? I was three years old when the
revolution came.”

“I was
five
. I watched the whole thing
from my attic window. You helped them kill your own people!”

“I didn’t do it!” she cried.

“All this time you talked about freedom. You
talked about the Republic.”

“Damn it, Toby!” She glared at him, pushing
back the hair that had fallen into her face. “Do you think I wasn’t
hurt by the Auks? I’m a war orphan!”

That made him speechless. She took a sort of
vicious delight in it, watching him gape at her like a drowning
fish. She brushed past him, going back down the hall the way they’d
come.

“There isn’t time for this. We have to
go.”

Chapter 24

Laricia went as fast as Apollo would carry
her, careening down the tunnels, cutting her corners dangerously
close. Wit the air whistling past her ears, she went through her
mental map of the tunnels around here. This was way too far out.
The kids would have to be halfway to the Fish District if they were
here. She would have to turn back soon.

Just as she had that thought, she spotted
something moving up ahead. It wasn’t necessarily friendly, so she
took what measures she could to avoid being seen – rose up so she
skimmed the ceiling, pulled her lantern in.

When she got into close enough range to see
it, her heart leapt. It was Toby and Grizelda. They were walking
along the tunnel toward her, side by side, looking exhausted.
Neither of them would look at the other. Something was up there,
but this was no time to ask.

She joyfully swooped down to their eye
level.

“Grizelda! Toby! We’ve been looking for you.
This way!”

Grizelda and Toby finally reunited with the
rest of the Undergrounders on the river side tunnel Laricia had
designated as the place to enter the cell blocks. The mood was
subdued. The Undergrounders welcomed Toby and Grizelda back in, but
there were no shouts of joy, no claps on the back. Everyone had the
sense that something had gone terribly wrong with the breakout.

And it had gone wrong. More than she could
ever tell the other Undergrounders. Grizelda told Jamin what had
happened to them, leaving out the part about turning invisible.
Toby beside her was silent. Like he didn’t really have anything to
do with her anymore, she thought painfully.

“This place is swarming with gendarmes,”
Jamin said. “My group had to dodge three guys just to get here.
Mitchell says he ran into them, too.”

“The goblin tunnels were supposed to be
unguarded,” she said.

“I know. I don’t get it.” He shook his
head.

“Jamin, something weird happened at the train
station. Now there’s all these gendarmes down here that aren’t
supposed to be here. Something’s going on.” She didn’t want to
mention her vague sense of foreboding. It would sound too much like
some unnatural psychic power.

He took a long breath, looked down. “The
breakout plan was your baby, Griz. If you want to call it off … you
be the one to say so.”

How many people were there trapped in
Promontory? The cell blocks were three stories high, and deeper
than she’d been able to tell by that gendarme’s lantern, when he’d
taken her down there, three long weeks ago. Maybe fifty cells all
in a row. Times six because the three stories were on both sides of
the aisle. The Committees had managed to start filling the fourth
block like this back when she was arrested. And that was some time
ago. More men and women joined them every day.

“No, we’ll keep going,” she said.

At least all the human members of the
Underground were accounted for and safe. Laricia’s fliers drifted
back to the group in ones and twos. After a quarter of an hour,
Tunya and Kricker still had not come back. Finally, Tunya came
alone. She didn’t look grief-stricken, more angry than anything
else. She landed and spoke to Laricia briefly. Grizelda wanted to
ask them where Kricker was, but the two of them flew off without
saying anything to the rest.

Even getting into the cells did not do much
to lift the Undergrounders’ mood. An excited whispering rose up
among the prisoners as soon as they got there. They drifted up
against the bars, trying to get a better look. When Jamin explained
to the prisoners what was going on, their excitement grew. This was
it. This was supposed to be the Underground’s heroic moment, the
point where they changed history. But as Grizelda looked at these
mere shadows of human beings, she could only feel revolted.

The first time she’d seen the cell blocks she
couldn’t believe any place could be so geometrical. When the
gendarme led her into the first staircase, his lantern had lit them
up suddenly, hundreds of blinking eyes. Shadows moving around
inside. When he’d slid open the cell door for
her
, what was
it? “I can’t do this! I can’t go in there!” That was what she had
screamed.

Katarin grimly started handing out crowbars
and they set about prying open locks and bashing in cell doors.
They helped the prisoners to their feet and guided them into the
aisle.

“Grandpa!”

On the other side of the cell block, a
middling-old man struggled out of his cell, helped by two
Undergrounders. Toby dropped his work and ran over to hug him
fiercely. Grizelda couldn’t help but let her crowbar go slack, turn
and watch the joyful reunion. She had been looking forward to being
introduced to Toby’s grandfather, but it didn’t look like that was
going to happen now.

She tried to focus on her work, focus on the
jerking and twisting of the metal in front of her. But after a
while it got mechanical and her mind wandered. How soon would Toby
tell the others? Not while they were still in the cell blocks, no.
This was his mission now, and he wouldn’t derail it. But with such
a supposed traitor to the cause in their midst … he wouldn’t wait
long.

“Grizelda?”

Her thoughts crashed into each other at the
sound of that voice. She could not believe it. She dropped her
crowbar and turned.

Elisabet. It was
Elisabet
. She stood
there in the aisle with her hands clasped in front of her, head
cocked. She was as moon-faced as ever, though a lot thinner than
Grizelda remembered.

They rushed to each other and embraced,
laughing, crying, she didn’t know. Grizelda felt the torrent of
words pouring out, words she’d saved up in the weeks they’d spent
apart, lying awake at night and imagining all the conversations she
would have with Elisabet if they ever saw each other again.

“Are Miss Hesslehamer and the girls safe? Did
anybody get targeted because of me? Oh, but maybe they did,
you’re
here–”

“I’ve been so worried about you!” Elisabet
cried.

“It’s okay! I’m all right, I’m safe.” She
pulled back to look at Elisabet better. “But what are you doing
here?”

“Well, this was after the raid–”

“There was a raid, then?”

“It was a couple of days afterwards,”
Elisabet said. “Nobody was home. When Miss Hesslehamer found out,
she and a couple of girls made it over the border to Salinaca. The
rest of us have had to fend for ourselves.”

“Is that how you got here?”

“I got arrested for stealing a necklace. Me,
of all people!” There was a ghost of a smile on Elisabet’s
face.

They hugged again, and it was like they were
back to their old selves again. Back to those days when they would
whisper to each other across the beds after lights-out, hushing
whenever the mistress came near. Despite everything, Grizelda began
to feel hopeful.

That hope was quickly dashed when Stevry came
running down the stairs.

“There’s people coming, fourth level! We got
to split!”

Everything the Undergrounders were doing they
sped up, and with feverish speed the last few cells were cracked
open, the crowbars packed up, the lanterns dimmed. They almost
didn’t make it. The prisoners were weak, and many of them were
still confused; they needed to be gently herded into the downward
stairwell. Pale people, men, women, children. They obeyed the
Undergrounders without question.