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Uncle Ryn had assured me that this tu
There would be nine of us going down into those tu
“Nervous?” Phaelan asked.
My eyelid fluttered under my finger; I pressed harder. “Guess.”
“Sarcasm won’t help,” he told me.
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Tell me again why we’re going into a rotting, dark hole in the ground rather than taking our chances on the streets.”
“Carnades.”
Vegard and a crewman moved the desk in the corner of the office, exposing an iron ring attached to a trapdoor in the floor. Vegard opened it, and Phaelan and I gingerly leaned forward and looked down. Way down. It was just your basic nonthreatening, perfectly harmless, yawning black pit.
“Maybe that demon’s still chasing Carnades,” Phaelan ventured, still looking into the hole. “We’re not all that far from Sirens. I’m always up for a good sprint.”
“It’s across town and you know it,” I said. “It’s just dark and damp. There shouldn’t be anything down there, but if there is, we can handle it. There’s nothing down there. Right, Vegard?”
The big Guardian shrugged. “Just the usual. Rats, spiders, salamanders, maybe some larger-than-normal crabs-”
Phaelan stopped looking down the hole and stared at Vegard. “Define ‘larger.’ ”
“Just Guardian rumors,” Vegard assured him. “Ruben was coming off leave and a three-day drunk when he said he saw it, so we’ve never put much stock in that one.”
Phaelan didn’t bat an eye. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The big Guardian sighed. “Supposedly there’s some kind of crablike thing with pinchers the size of your head ru
“Which coincidentally is exactly where we are.” My cousin did not look amused, and Uncle Ryn’s boys had become noticeably less thrilled with our choice of routes.
“Captain, it was dark and Ruben was wasted,” Vegard assured him.
“I’ve been wasted and seen plenty of things that turned out to be real,” muttered one of the elven pirates.
Time to put a stop to this. I slapped Phaelan on the shoulder. “We’ll just refill one of our water skins with melted butter and we’ll be good to go. You like seafood.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like seafood that likes me.”
He did have a point, but I chose to ignore it. I jerked the strap tighter that secured my two new short swords across my back. Uncle Ryn had replaced the ones I’d stuck up the demon’s nose. I pushed the crab out of my mind, prodigious pinchers and all. Of today’s problems, carnivorous crustaceans ranked way down on my list of worries.
Vegard and I made a pair of lightglobes and sent them through the trapdoor and into the tu
As I climbed down, the rickety wooden ladder creaked, but held. I looked around. Wooden beams supported a packed-earth tu
I shone my lightglobe down the tu
“Most of them are,” Vegard replied with a shrug. “Some of them aren’t.”
I had a spell in mind should this particular tu
“I should lead,” I told Vegard.
“That wouldn’t be wise, ma’am. I should go first.”
“Then I would have to bring up the rear, because these men are experts with steel. They don’t have enough magic between them to light a candle, let alone torch a demon-or whatever might come ru
The Guardian scowled. “You lead.”
I turned to one of Ryn’s men, a young elf named Galen. “I want the most direct way to the entertainment district, no scenic routes.”
“Understood, Miss Benares.” He flashed a nervous grin.
“We know the quickest way to the best bars, including Sirens.” He looked down the dark tu
“Hopefully you won’t find out anything different this time. And if you do hear pinchers clicking, just walk faster.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Good.” I sent my lightglobe ahead of us. “Let’s go. And just tell me where to turn.”
The tu
Time was next to impossible to keep up with underground. I didn’t know how long we’d been down here, but it’d been long enough for me. I was ready to see the sky or the inside of Sirens, anything but tons of rock and packed dirt looming only a couple of inches above my head. Vegard had to walk in a perpetual hunch; I knew he was ready to get out of here.
The tu
“Okay, Galen, where are we now, and which way do we go?”
“We’re under the center of town, near the college campus.”
“And which way?”
“Sirens and the other higher-class establishments are on Rathdowne Street. That would be down the tu
“Where does it come out?” I asked.
“It forks after a hundred yards or so. One tu
Phaelan and I exchanged hopeful glances.
“The door, what’s it look like?” I asked.
“About this tall,” Galen held his hand to the middle of his chest. “Looks like solid iron.”
“Is there a knob or handle?”
Galen thought for a moment then shook his head. “Nothing. Not even a key hole.”
Last time Phaelan and I had been down here, we’d left Sirens by a door that had a handle on one side, but not the other. It hadn’t been a problem for us; we needed to get to the elven embassy, not back into Sirens. Tam didn’t need a handle, knob, or key to open his basement door; he’d use magic. I was sure he kept it locked and warded. Tam had arranged it so that his wards in his nightclub in Mermeia always let me in. I’d find out soon enough if these wards liked me, too. Get there first, Raine. One problem at a time.
I smiled. “Things are going right. That’s the place. Let’s-”
Our lightglobes died, leaving us in the pitch dark.