Aelin didn’t bother being quiet as she slammed into the roof door. The men already knew where she was. Balmy night air smothered her, and she gulped it down as she scanned the roof and the streets below. The alley behind was too wide; the broad street to her left wasn’t an option, but—there. Down the alley. That sewer grate.
Perhaps pay a visit to the southeastern section of the tunnels tonight. You might find the person you’re looking for.
She knew who he meant. Another little present of his, then—a piece in their game.
With feline ease, she shimmied down the drainpipe anchored to the side of the building. Far above, the shouts grew. They’d reached the roof. She dropped into a puddle of what smelled undoubtedly like piss, and was running before the impact had fully shuddered through her bones.
She hurtled toward the grate, dropping onto her knees and sliding the last few feet until her fingers latched onto the lid, and she hauled it open. Silent, swift, efficient.
The sewers below were mercifully empty. She bit back a gag against the reek already rising up to meet her.
By the time the guards peered over the roof edge, she was gone.
Aelin loathed the sewers.
Not because they were filthy, reeking, and full of vermin. They were actually a convenient way to get around Rifthold unseen and undisturbed, if you knew the way.
She’d hated them ever since she’d been bound up and left to die, courtesy of a bodyguard who hadn’t taken so well to her plans to kill his master. The sewers had flooded, and after freeing herself from her bonds, she had swum—actually swum—through the festering water. But the exit had been sealed. Sam, by pure luck, had saved her, but not before she’d nearly drowned, swallowing half the sewer along the way.
It had taken her days and countless baths to feel clean. And endless vomiting.
So climbing into that sewer, then sealing the grate above her … For the first time that night, her hands shook. But she forced herself past the echo of fear and began creeping through the dim, moonlit tunnels.
Listening.
Heading southeast, she took a large, ancient tunnel, one of the main arteries of the system. It had probably been here from the moment Gavin Havilliard decided to establish his capital along the Avery. She paused every so often to listen, but there were no signs of her pursuers behind her.
An intersection of four different tunnels loomed ahead, and she slowed her steps, palming her fighting knives. The first two were clear; the third—the one that would take her right into the path of the captain if he was headed to the castle—darker, but wide. And the fourth … Southeast.
She didn’t need her Fae senses to know that the darkness leaking from the southeastern tunnel wasn’t of the usual sort. The moonlight from the grates above didn’t pierce it. No noise issued, not even the scampering of rats.
Another trick of Arobynn’s—or a gift? The faint sounds she’d been following had come from this direction. But any trail died here.
She paced with feline quiet in front of the line where the murky light faded into impenetrable blackness. Silently, she plucked up a bit of fallen stone and chucked it into the gloom ahead.
There was no answering sound when it should have landed.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Aelin turned toward the cool female voice, casually angling her knives.
The hooded guard from the Vaults was leaning against the tunnel wall not twenty paces behind her.
Well, at least one of them was here. As for Chaol …
Aelin held up a knife as she stalked toward the guard, gobbling down every detail. “Sneaking up on strangers in the sewers is also something I’d advise against.”
When Aelin got within a few feet, the woman lifted her hands—delicate but scarred, her skin tan even in the pale glow from the streetlights in the avenue above. If she’d managed to sneak up this close, she had to be trained—in combat or stealth or both. Of course she was skilled, if Chaol had her watching his back at the Vaults. But where had he gone now?
“Disreputable pleasure halls and sewers,” Aelin said, keeping her knives out. “You certainly live the good life, don’t you?”
The young woman pushed off the wall, her curtain of inky hair swaying in the shadows of her hood. “Not all of us are blessed enough to be on the king’s payroll, Champion.”
She recognized her, then. The real question was whether she’d told Chaol—and where he now was. “Dare I ask why I shouldn’t throw stones down that tunnel?”
The guard pointed toward the tunnel closest behind her—bright, open air. “Come with me.”
Aelin chuckled. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
The slender woman stepped nearer, the moonlight illuminating her hooded face. Pretty, if grave, and perhaps two or three years older.
The stranger said a bit flatly, “You’ve got twenty guards on your ass, and they’re cunning enough to start looking down here very soon. I’d suggest you come along.”
Aelin was half tempted to suggest she go to hell, but smiled instead. “How’d you find me?” She didn’t care; she just needed to feel her out a bit more.
“Luck. I’m on scouting duty, and popped onto the street to discover that you’d made new friends. Usually, we have a strike-first, ask-questions-later policy about people wandering the sewers.”
“And who is this ‘we’?” Aelin said sweetly.
The woman just began walking down the bright tunnel, completely unconcerned with the knives Aelin still held. Arrogant and stupid, then. “You can come with me, Champion, and learn some things you probably want to know, or you can stay here and wait to see what answers that rock you threw.”
Aelin weighed the words—and what she’d heard and seen so far that night. Despite the shiver down her spine, she fell into step beside the guard, sheathing her knives at her thighs.
With each block they trudged through the sewer muck, Aelin used the quiet to gather her strength.
The woman strode swiftly but smoothly down another tunnel, and then another. Aelin marked each turn, each unique feature, each grate, forming a mental map as they moved.
“How did you recognize me?” Aelin said at last.
“I’ve seen you around the city—months ago. The red hair was why I didn’t immediately identify you at the Vaults.”
Aelin watched her from the corner of her eye. The stranger might not know who Chaol really was. He could have used a different name, despite what the woman claimed to know about whatever it was she thought Aelin was seeking.
The woman said in that cool, calm voice, “Are the guards chasing you because they recognized you, or because you picked the fight you were so desperate to have at the Vaults?”
Point for the stranger. “Why don’t you tell me? Do the guards work for Captain Westfall?”
The woman laughed under her breath. “No—those guards don’t answer to him.” Aelin bit back her sigh of relief, even as a thousand more questions rattled in her skull.
Her boots squished something too soft for comfort, and she repressed a shudder as the woman stopped before the entrance to another long tunnel, the first half illuminated by moonlight streaming in through the scattered grates. Unnatural darkness drifted out from the far end. A predatory stillness crept over Aelin as she peered into the gloom. Silence. Utter silence.
“Here,” the stranger said, approaching an elevated stone walkway built into the side of the tunnel. Fool—fool for exposing her back like that. She didn’t even see Aelin slide free a knife.
They’d gone far enough.
The woman stepped onto the small, slick staircase leading to the walkway, her movements long-limbed and graceful. Aelin calculated the distance to the nearest exits, the depth of the little stream of filth running through the tunnel’s center. Deep enough to dump a body, if need be.
Aelin angled her knife and slipped up behind the woman, as close as a lover, and pressed the blade against her throat.
6
“You get one sentence,” Aelin breathed in the woman’s ear as she pressed the dagger harder against her neck. “One sentence to convince me not to spill your throat on the ground.”
The woman stepped off the stairs and, to her credit, wasn’t stupid enough to go for the concealed weapons at her side. With her back against Aelin’s chest, her weapons were beyond reach, anyway. She swallowed, her throat bobbing against the dagger Aelin held along her smooth skin. “I’m taking you to the captain.”
Aelin dug the knife in a bit more. “Not all that compelling to someone with a blade at your throat.”
“Three weeks ago, he abandoned his position at the castle and fled. To join our cause. The rebel cause.”
Aelin’s knees threatened to buckle.
She supposed she should have included three parties in her plans: the king, Arobynn, and the rebels—who might very well have a score to settle with her after she’d gutted Archer Finn last winter. Even if Chaol was working with them.
She shut the thought down before its full impact hit her. “And the prince?”
“Alive, but still at the castle,” the rebel hissed. “Is that enough for you to put the knife down?”
Yes. No. If Chaol was now working with the rebels … Aelin lowered her knife and stepped back into a pool of moonlight trickling in from an overhead grate.
The rebel whirled and reached for one of her knives. Aelin clicked her tongue. The woman’s fingers paused on the well-polished hilt.
“I decide to spare you, and that’s how you repay me?” Aelin said, tugging back her hood. “I don’t particularly know why I’m surprised.”
The rebel let go of her knife and pulled off her own hood, revealing her pretty, tanned face—solemn and wholly unafraid. Her dark eyes fixed on Aelin, scanning. Ally or enemy?
“Tell me why you came here,” the rebel said quietly. “The captain says you’re on our side. Yet you hid from him at the Vaults tonight.”
Aelin crossed her arms and leaned against the damp stone wall behind her. “Let’s start with you telling me your name.”
My name is not your concern.”
Aelin lifted a brow. “You demand answers but refuse to give me any in return. No wonder the captain had you sit out the meeting. Hard to play the game when you don’t know the rules.”
“I heard what happened this winter. That you went to the warehouse and killed so many of us. You slaughtered rebels—my friends.” That cool, calm mask didn’t so much as flinch. “And yet I’m now supposed to believe you were on our side all along. Forgive me if I’m not forthright with you.”
“Should I not kill the people who kidnap and beat my friends?” Aelin said softly. “Am I not supposed to react with violence when I receive notes threatening to kill my friends? Am I not supposed to gut the self-serving prick who had my beloved friend assassinated?” She pushed off the wall, stalking toward the woman. “Would you like me to apologize? Should I grovel on my knees for any of that?” The rebel’s face showed nothing—either from training or genuine iciness. Aelin snorted. “I thought so. So why don’t you take me to the captain and save the self-righteous bullshit for later?”
The woman glanced toward the darkness again and shook her head slightly. “If you hadn’t put a blade to my throat, I would have told you that we’d arrived.” She pointed to the tunnel ahead. “You’re welcome.”
Aelin debated slamming the woman into the filthy, wet wall just to remind her who, exactly, the King’s Champion was, but then ragged breathing scraped past her ears, coming from that darkness. Human breathing—and whispers.
Boots sliding and thumping against stone, more whispers—hushed demands from voices she didn’t recognize to hurry, and quiet now, and—
Aelin’s muscles locked up as one male voice hissed, “We’ve got twenty minutes until that ship leaves. Move.”
She knew that voice.
But she still couldn’t brace herself for the full impact of Chaol Westfall staggering out of the darkness at the end of the tunnel, holding a limp, too-thin man between himself and a companion, another armed man guarding their backs.
Even from the distance, the captain’s eyes locked onto Aelin’s.
He didn’t smile.
7
There were two injured people in total, one held between Chaol and his companion, the other sagging between two men she didn’t recognize. Three others—two men and another woman—guarded the rear.
The rebel they dismissed with a glance. A friend.
Aelin held each of their gazes as they hurried toward her, their weapons out. Blood was splattered on them all—red blood and black blood that she knew too well. And the two nearly unconscious people …
She also knew that emaciated, dried-out look. The hollowness on their faces. She’d been too late with the ones in Wendlyn. But somehow Chaol and his allies had gotten these two out. Her stomach flipped. Scouting—the young woman beside her had been scouting the path ahead, to make sure it was safe for this rescue.
The guards in this city weren’t corrupted just by ordinary Valg, as Arobynn had suggested.
No, there was at least one Valg prince here. In these tunnels, if the darkness was any indicator. Shit. And Chaol had been—