“We’re going deeper into the wet rooms,” she noted ridiculously after a moment, trying hard not to make it sound as though she was questioning his judgment, and just as hard not to make the observation sound as stupidly obvious as it was.
His only reply was to give her that half-baked smile again and touch it off with a mischievous lift of both brows.
“I’m going to need you to keep quiet for a moment,” he instructed her as the elevator slowed to a stop on the lowest level. “And if you could just take a little step backward.” He nudged her toward the wall on the right, and her back touched the cold metal planking just as the doors hissed open.
“Freeze!”
The command was followed with the cock and whine of what seemed like a half-dozen stunners at once, all of them pointing into the elevator. Of course, she realized. The guards on the lower levels had been alerted by the cameras to their unauthorized access to the elevator. All the guards had to do was sit and wait for them to come to them. Dismay and dread sank deep into her gut. What had she been thinking? She’d been out of her mind to attempt the impossible and to trust a total stranger. She had just thrown away her entire life.
And then he was bull-rushing the entire lot of them, yanking two of them into the elevator by the muzzles of their guns so hard that they were pulled right off their feet. They passed so close to Ambrea that one of the gaoler’s gun belts snagged the skirt of her gown for an instant. And then both guards were planted face-first into the metal planking at the rear of the elevator so hard that the distressed pinging of the metal echoed loudly all around them. Blood streaked the shiny surface as the men collapsed unconscious at Suna’s and Ambrea’s feet.
Meanwhile the Tarian had toppled three other men outside the lift, and before they had finished hitting the ground he had disarmed another and used that gaoler’s stunner on the final standing guard. Then he methodically cranked up the stunner to its most painful setting and shot every guard left conscious. The setting was brutally painful, but it was also the most expedient way of robbing them of consciousness without doing them further lasting physical harm. The memory of the pain would last only about as long as the pain itself before they were completely out.
Ambrea was speechless at his efficiency and speed, but also grateful that he was not going to subject the gaolers to undue violence. After the way he’d been stunned, she might have thought he would extract some kind of revenge. But perhaps, she thought as she read his enigmatic smile, stunning them back at such a high level was its own satisfaction.
“My lady,” he said politely as he reached into the elevator to help her pick her way over the carpet of fallen men. He had hooked the stunner’s strap over his shoulder and kept it aimed down the corridor. “How much are you willing to bet they sent every last guard on the floor here at once?”
“I wouldn’t take that bet,” she hedged.
“Neither would I,” he agreed cheerfully. He made sure that she and Suna were both out of the elevator and heading down the right-hand tunnel. Then he paused to yank the unconscious men, two at a time, several feet down the corridor to the left. He pulled at another stripe on his pant leg, bent to slap it onto the floor of the lift, and then strung it over the saddle of the elevator door and all the way across to the opposite wall. He straightened and then herded them ahead of himself and quickly to the right.
The explosion followed immediately after, but they were already around the next bend in the tunnel. Still, it was easy for Ambrea to imagine the elevator being blown out of use and perhaps the tunnel collapsing at their backs. If that were the case, they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming up behind them.
Clearly that was the Tarian’s intention, because he kept all of his focus straight ahead of them, moving from one side of the corridor to the other like a pacing Hutha lion, a gigantic wilderness cat from Ebbany that easily outweighed and out-bulked the man in question. It wasn’t lost on her that he was keeping his big body between her and any potential dangers that might pop up.
They were truly in the worst section of the wet rooms now. The lighting down on this level was below substandard and not at all dependable. It flickered if it worked at all, the electrical connections buzzing unsteadily and noisily. Every last wall gleamed with wetness, small rivers having formed at the creases where the walls met the floors. All the tunnels graded downward, so the water was running that way as well. There were the telltale squeaks of hair rats, and before long the creatures were dashing side to side over their feet and under her skirt. Everything in her wanted to scream at the idea of the filthy rodents coming near her, but she was even more afraid of further two-legged dangers than she was of the four-legged ones, so she swallowed her would-be cries and danced quickly around the vile little creatures. She assumed that Suna was equally determined because her companion didn’t bat an eye, pausing only to kick one of the critters off her shoe with such violence that they heard it smack into the wet wall.
They met no further human intervention, however. That didn’t surprise her because the tunnel they had chosen was clearly unused and had fallen into heavy disrepair. Furniture littered the hallway where it had been shoved out of the way into temporary or permanent storage.
It began to rain as they moved deeper into the bowels of the catacombs, the walls so wet that the ceilings dripped heavily. The small rivers on either side of them now melded into one large one. Before long their feet were entirely under water.
Ambrea couldn’t take it any longer. She had to know.
“Where are we going? How can we possibly escape this way?”
That earned her a smile that wasn’t exactly directed toward her and wasn’t exactly not, either. It was hard to tell in the increasing darkness and with all of his attention facing forward.
“What do you see around you, Blue Eyes?”
She was being baited. She decided to bite. What else did she have on her plate at that moment?
“Darkness. Cold. Wet.”
“And it smells like some of those hair rats have died down here, too,” Suna joined in. Ambrea didn’t correct her about that being a smell, not something she could actually see, as he had requested.
“Wet. A lot of wet. And it’s all going in the same direction,” he noted. “Makes you wonder why these tunnels don’t all just fill up and drown out every last room, doesn’t it?”
It was such a simple point, one she ought to have considered on her own. She was smart enough for that. Unfortunately, she wasn’t exactly functioning in her comfort zone.
“The aqueducts. Allay is made up of solid bedrock with natural aqueducts networking through it. The aqueducts are probably what formed all of these lower tunnels. They bored through the stone over many thousands of years and have changed their path over time. When the upper tunnels were originally dug out for the catacombs, the workers stumbled onto the lower tunnels and decided to connect all of the tunnels. But the pressure of the aqueducts all around them and the coldness of the water is why the walls are constantly wet down here and why they can never be made warm enough no matter what kind of technology is tried to regulate it.”
“Not that the gaolers are interested in the comfort of their guests or anything,” Suna noted dryly.
“More likely it was an effort to make the guards more comfortable. Can’t imagine many people lining up to volunteer at working the catacombs,” the Tarian mused.
“This is the duty you get when you’re new and just starting to make an impression on your superiors, or older and having screwed up at your last posting,” said Ambrea.
“At least that’s the case under the current regime,” the Tarian noted.
And that was when they stumbled into foot-deep water. It rapidly became knee high and then mid-thigh as they took a few more steps. The Tarian shouldered his stunner and then looked around.
He closed his eyes for a moment, almost as if he were doing an internal check of his own brain. Then he pointed down a right-hand branch of the tunnel.
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“This way,” he said.
“How are you so sure?” Suna demanded suddenly as she gripped the skirt of her sodden day dress. “It’s only going to get deeper, and I hate to break it to you, but I can’t swim. This is a bad idea. A bad idea all around. You should never have let him lead you away like this, Ambrea!”
“Hush, Suna,” Ambrea scolded, in spite of being riddled with doubts herself. The fact was, she had thrown all-in with this man, and she had no choice now but to play the hand she had through to the end. Griping about doubting her choices wouldn’t help any of them now.
“Look at it this way,” the Tarian said with a smile that touched coldly in his eyes. “No one else is going to think you’ve survived this any more than you think you’re going to survive it.”
He had a chilling point.
The right-hand tunnel was also so full of water that the lighting had long since shorted out. Debris floated darkly on the surface. Ambrea knew it would be impossible to see. Tarians were reputed to have keen eyesight, but she imagined he would be unable to make out anything any better than she could.
He moved forward, reaching to grasp Suna by her upper arm, effectively controlling the only factor he must feel he had unsatisfactory control over. Ambrea didn’t know if she should be insulted or not by the idea that he was confident she would follow him like a meek little sheep. In any event, what choice did she have? He was the one in control of all this. The one with a plan. A plan he didn’t think was necessary to share with the two of them.
But she wasn’t a meek little sheep.
Was she? That she had spent an entire lifetime obeying all the rules that her father had imposed on her did not make her meek. She’d truly had no choice. She would have been long dead if she’d done anything else.
But now was not the time for her to inspect her possible shortcomings. The water was quickly becoming breast high and was bitterly cold. Her teeth began to chatter. She would have wrapped her arms around herself to conserve her body warmth, but there was so much debris in the water that she had to constantly push her way through and around it. As it was, it was banging into her the moment she released one piece to grab for another. She would be pretty bruised come the morrow.
Provided there even was a tomorrow.
She didn’t want to think so fatalistically. At least now the water was cool and clean. It was washing away a world of sins and stink from her body. After appeasing herself with that silver lining, she tried to play a game with herself in the darkness, attempting to identify what each item in her way was or once had been. Most of it was furniture or bundles of wiring, its insulation making the metal float.
“Stop.”
His command was so sudden—disturbing the almost rhythmic quiet of moving through water and the sound of their own breathing that had descended on them, that she startled and lost her footing on the slick floor under her feet. She went completely under. The moment she did so the panic she had been pushing aside all this time came bubbling to the surface. She became completely disoriented, unable to figure out which way was upward because the water was too dark to see even an air bubble rise. She thrust out both hands, forcing herself not to open her mouth and scream again as she had when she’d first gone under. The water was only a few feet deep. How could she feel so lost?
Suddenly a bright orange light streaked through the dark water. The brilliance of it was fast and fierce, blinding in its intensity. Then she felt a strong hand locking onto her arm, dragging her sharply to the surface, where everything was just as dark as ever. Still there was nowhere to put her feet down. Through water-filled ears she heard Suna crying out for her, understanding that she and the Tarian had traveled quite a distance from her companion. That was when Ambrea realized there was a powerful current in the water, one that was even stronger now that she had no foothold and they had come so much farther into the tunnel. The current dragged on her so powerfully that she was certain, had it not been for that hand on her arm, she would have been swept away.
“Hold on to me,” he instructed calmly, pulling her arm up and around his big neck.
Ambrea had never been so grateful for the warmth of another body. In truth, it was a terribly unfamiliar sensation. No one ever had or, she imagined, ever would touch her with such familiarity. She was a princess of the blood, whether she was approved of or not, and no one was allowed to touch her in such a way, nor would they even think of doing so. The last person to touch her so fully had been, she realized, her mother. She remembered her mother hugging her brutally hard because, Ambrea now knew, they had been about to take Junessa away to the wet rooms, from where she had never returned. Perhaps this was the real reason why Ambrea felt such suffocating dread whenever a command was handed down that sent her to the catacombs. The catacombs’ reputation had begun for her long before her first childhood incarceration.
But the Tarian did not give Ambrea any chance to dissemble about the familiarity in his handling of her, nor did she want to as her heart raced with fear. If she had been cold before, now she was freezing. The cold, wet weight of her hair dragged behind her in the water as he hoisted her up against his chest, seating her backside onto his forearm and guiding her legs around his thick waist. Her skirt was wrapped around her thighs and she was still submerged up to her chin, but clearly he had his feet on the floor of the tunnel and was pushing against the current to bring them back to Suna.
“For the love of Kintara, will you stop screaming?” he bellowed down the tunnel. “Would you draw them a map to find us?” He spit out water. “You’d best hold on tighter than that,” he warned Ambrea.
She awkwardly tried to do so, but she was hyperconscious of how close in contact they were. She didn’t care about propriety in these circumstances, but it just felt so alien, as did the strength of his radiating body warmth. On the one hand she wanted it because she was about to shake out of her own skin with the coldness of it all. On the other hand there was something so indelibly strange about being this close to him. The heat he exuded was only part of it. It was the peculiar burning sensation from within herself that truly baffled her. She had never felt anything like it before, and it was overwhelming. She went hot with a blush, feeling embarrassed without knowing exactly why.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” she shuddered, fumbling at his wet, bare shoulders. His skin was so slick, and he had done away with the stunner apparently in his bid to come after her, so she couldn’t find the strap to hang on to.
“Like this,” he instructed, making her lock both hands together at the base of his neck.
And just like that she was able to settle down against him. She was amazed that he wasn’t shivering as much as she was, or maybe she couldn’t feel it because she was shaking so hard herself. Maybe the fact was that everyone was tougher and more stoic than she was.
“I thank you,” she thought to say. For years she had been punished for thanking anyone of lower rank, but once her governess had been taken from her and after her first incarceration, she had been in charge of her own household. She had felt more and more compelled over the years to be grateful to those who served her. Especially when they did so in spite of her being in arrears of their payroll for months, once even as long as a year. In those times she had fed and housed those servants and their families, selling her Delran platinum plate and jewelry to do so. She had been indebted to them for their loyalty and services. The least she could do was thank them for those services.
This man had just saved her life. Of this she had no doubt. It remained to be seen what his motives were for everything else he had done. But she at least owed him thanks for his rescue of her.
“You’ll be warm soon,” he promised her.
“It feels like I’ll never be warm again,” she confessed.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Oh! No!” She was horrified for a moment until she realized he was teasing her. How did he do it, she wondered. How did he remain so calm and at ease given the circumstances?
“You should be an old pro at this,” he noted as he pushed them through the water.
“Old pro?”
“Cold and wet. You’ve been in here for long periods of time before. I hear that’s what it’s like. So cold and wet that you feel like you’ll never be warm.”
“Which I suppose makes all of this worse. I wasn’t warm to start with. I’ve been in here at least a week or two.”
“Much longer than that,” he corrected her. He couldn’t see her surprised look, but he must have somehow sensed it. “Time goes by differently when you’re imprisoned, remember?”
She didn’t ask him how he knew how long she’d been there, or how he knew she’d been there for long stretches before. He would tell her everything in his own time, she imagined. All she could do was go along for the ride until she decided it was no longer in her best interest.
“I should think you might want to give me your name. I ought to at least know the name of the man who has come to my rescue.”
“Everyone calls me Ender.”
“Ender? Why?”
“Because I put an end to things. You could say I’m really good at getting the last word.”
She believed him.
They began to draw up to Suna, the water level dropping and allowing her to get back on her feet. He gripped Ambrea firmly by her backside and drew her away from himself and onto her feet. He thought nothing of it, whereas Ambrea could only squeak out a sound of surprise and shock. His hand was gone in a second, but the feel of its intimacy was the only warm spot on her body, and it lingered. His hand was so big that his fingers had reached all the way between her legs to her private places, albeit through the layers of her sodden clothes. So why did it feel as though those cold, wet clothes hadn’t even existed? She was so shaken by that and everything else that she almost lost her footing again. But he made sure he kept hold of her elbow and set her steady in a second.
“We’ve been in the water much too long,” he told them brusquely. “Hypothermia is already setting in. You’re already losing control of your limbs and probably your reasoning. We’ve got to get out of here quickly. Besides, there’s still a chance we’re being pursued, although I find it highly unlikely.”