“And drown us,” she added.
“As the night goes on,” Deret said, raising his voice as if he expected the people outside to hear, “I’m more and more happy I didn’t vote for that smiling shrub!”
“Did you vote for Starcrest?” Amaranthe had left before the final votes had been tallied, but she remembered four people running for the office.
“Yes. I almost didn’t because I didn’t want to show warrior-caste favoritism, but I ultimately thought he was the best man for the job, and that he would usher in a period of peace and prosperity.” He raised his voice again to yell, “And I didn’t want idiotic religious fanatics in charge!”
He sputtered the last few words, not out of anger, Amaranthe realized after a moment, but because cider had flooded his mouth. The liquid level was already rising.
“How long can you tread water?” she asked, wondering about his leg. Would it trouble him as much in water—cider—as on land?
“Probably longer than it takes for the tank to fill up,” Deret said grimly. “I never thought I’d be in a position where I was hoping an assassin would come save my life.”
“In the event that he arrives late, we might want to see if we can find a way out on our own.”
“I’m open to ideas.” He hissed, then gurgled and spat. “I may have to revoke my earlier statement. The bullet grinding against my shoulder bone is making treading water very painful.”
“I’ll see if I can figure something out.”
Amaranthe didn’t think they would have many options until the cider filled enough to let them reach the hatch. Maybe she could find a way to break the seal at that point, but the priests had taken her sword and dagger, and she didn’t have any tools secreted away. Not that a lock-picking kit would work on the bottom of a hatch anyway, but her fingernails weren’t going to do the job. Maybe when they reached the pipe, she could plug it with a boot or sock and stop the flow of cider coming in. In the meantime, she ducked beneath the surface, probing the dark cold bottom with her hands, hoping to find some weakness or some fallen tool she might use to pry a way out. On the third try, she found the pistol she had forgotten about. It had flown from her hand when she hit the cider.
“Found my pistol,” she said when she broke the surface. “I doubt it’ll fire, but maybe I can bang a nice medley on the wall for someone.”
“It might,” Deret said. “That’s one of the new guns... with self-contained... bullets, right? The powder... might still be dry.”
“Well, I don’t think shooting it while we’re in a sealed metal tank would be a good idea.” Amaranthe imagined a bullet zipping all over the place, clanging off walls and finally lodging in someone’s flesh. “We’re almost up to the pipe. I’ll try blocking the outlet.”
“Good.”
With Deret’s words more labored now, his breathing ragged, Amaranthe worried about him. She swam over and caught him beneath the armpit, trying to give him some support.
“Shouldn’t you... be removing your socks... to stuff in that pipe?” Deret grumbled. He didn’t push her away though.
“I can’t reach it yet. The cider is rising quickly though. It shouldn’t be long.”
“Great.” Deret spat out a mouthful. “If we get out of here, I’m not touching this stuff ever again.”
“We’ll get out of here.”
Deret didn’t respond. It was probably wiser for him to save his energy for treading water.
As soon as the cider level rose enough, Amaranthe paddled to the pipe. It was about six inches wide. It would take more than a pair of socks to staunch the flow.
She debated on the rest of her clothing, then started unbuttoning her shirt. If this didn’t work, she would try the trousers, but those would be hard to get off without removing her boots, and she didn’t want to be running around the compound barefoot if they managed to escape. “Won’t be the first time I’ve taken off my shirt in recent weeks,” she supposed.
“What?” Deret asked.
“Nothing.”
“I thought you were offering to go topless for me in my dying moments. I was going to approve of the notion.”
“What does it matter when it’s dark?” Amaranthe pulled off the shirt, shivering as the cold cider bathed her bare arms. She had a light sleeveless undergarment, so at least she wouldn’t be running around completely topless if they escaped. When they escaped.
“Didn’t Sicarius tell you? Men have wonderful imaginations when it comes to these things.”
Amaranthe wadded up the shirt and stuffed it into the pipe. Cider sprayed her face, and the flow dumped the garment out onto her again. She huffed in frustration and groped around for it. Fortunately, she found it before it sank. She returned to the wall beside the outflow, deciding the task might be easier once the level in the tank rose to the pipe.
“We don’t talk about his imagination often,” she said, though he had admitted to speculating about her a few times, after she had breached the topic of becoming “bed friends”—her silly words—and before he had agreed that this would be a “desirable event”—his words.
“What do you talk about?” Deret asked. “It’s hard to imagine—” he sputtered and coughed. “Hard to imagine... you being a part of... such a... mute relationship.”
“It’s not mute. I talk plenty.” Amaranthe tried the shirt again. They were floating even with the pipe now, so maybe she could get a better angle. “Ugh, the flow is too hard. This won’t work unless I can glue it to the walls somehow. Or maybe with a bigger, heavier shirt. I don’t suppose you would like to shed?”
“At the risk of sounding... even more unmanly than I’ve already been... I think I might pass out if... I tried to remove it. My shoulder... is already unhappy... and I’m a little... dizzy. Not sure how much... blood I’ve lost. Also... I doubt you could... hold both of us up... indefinitely.”
“Ah, don’t risk it then. I’ll just strip off more of my own clothing.” She would have to try the trousers. Maybe the two pieces combined would be enough to stop up the flow.
“Just so long as... you don’t tell Sicarius... that was my idea... if he shows up.”
Amaranthe would risk running into him in her undergarments if it would stop the cider from rising. She struggled to remove the trousers without losing the shirt or her boots; they had to be ten or twelve feet from the bottom now, and she didn’t want to go diving for her garments. She wadded them into a ball and stuck them in the pipe again.
For a moment, the flow lessened. She was on the verge of spouting her success when they slipped free, gushing into her along with the pent-up cider.
She snarled in frustration and tried again, but it was as if the walls of the pipe were greased. Her clothing wouldn’t stick.
“It would be nice if... floating were easier,” Deret said. “Is it just my injury speaking or... is it harder to stay up in this... than it would be in water?”
“No, it’s harder.” Amaranthe almost said that if Books were there, he could explain the science to them. She pushed away the sad twinge the thought evoked.
“I can’t believe there’s... not a ladder on... one of the sides. You’d think... someone has to climb down... to clean this place... now and then.”
“That’s the first thing I checked for. Maybe they took it out, knowing they would have guests.” Amaranthe wished he would stop talking and save his energy. Maybe if she stopped talking, it would discourage him from continuing to do so.
“Unfortunate,” Deret said. He did indeed fall silent after that.
Amaranthe tried stuffing her clothes in the pipe several more times, but the cider level continued to rise, and all she did was wear herself out diving down over and over again. She finally gave up when she lost her shirt, the sodden garment disappearing in the current and sinking somewhere in the darkness. After a vain search for it, she swam back to the top.
“Still with me?” she asked, remembering Deret’s comment about dizziness. It had grown quiet once the gushing
of cider from the pipe fell below the surface. The quiet was more unnerving than the splashing somehow. Maybe because it meant they were getting close to the top and running out of time.
“Yes,” he rasped.
“We’re two-thirds of the way up.”
“Glad you’re... keeping track.”
“It’s just that... well, if my fiddling with the gauge had worked, someone would have seen the tank as full now and turned off the cider.”
“Maybe they all left.”
Amaranthe stretched her hand up, wondering how far they were from the top of the tank. Her fingers brushed only air.
Faint squeaks arose from somewhere below. She held her breath, afraid to hope that was the cider being turned off.
The squeaks ended. It had already been quiet, but it grew quieter.
“Be right back,” Amaranthe whispered, then took a deep breath and swam down to the pipe, or where she thought the pipe was. The current had stopped, so she had trouble locating the opening. She laughed to herself. What did it matter? The current had stopped.
“They turned it off,” she said when she came back up.
“Good.” Deret sounded tired, no, exhausted. “Can you reach the hatch?”
Amaranthe stretched up again, kicking this time to thrust herself out of the cider. She dropped back down without touching anything. “No. I’d better be careful about splashing and sloshing too. If they hear us chatting, they’ll know the tank hasn’t filled all the way.”
“Right.”
Amaranthe guessed whoever was out there would wait a few minutes, to make sure they had drowned, then come up top to check. She wished she could have set that gauge to wait a few more feet before showing the tank as full, but she hadn’t even been looking at it, so what could she expect?
She stuck the pistol in her mouth and tugged on her trousers. She didn’t want to be caught sans leg wear by the enemy. It was more of a struggle than the swimming, diving, and treading had been. She gripped the pistol, ready to test Deret’s thought about waterproof bullets on whoever stuck his head through the hatch.
Soft tinks drifted through the wall.
“Someone’s climbing the ladder,” Amaranthe whispered.
“Do we shoot him or play dead?”
Amaranthe considered. If they lay face down in the liquid, would the priest be fooled? Would he stick a pole in and try to pull them out? No, they weighed too much for that. He would probably just shut the hatch again and turn the flow back on. To make sure.
“I don’t know. I’ll figure out what to do when the hatch opens.”
Deret snorted.
Squeals drifted down from above, the hatch being unscrewed. She wished Sicarius would be standing out there, waiting to help them out, but they never would have heard his light feet on the ladder.
The hatch lifted, and the faint yellow of lantern light seeped through the hole. Someone crouched by the opening and peered inside. He frowned straight at Amaranthe, thought she doubted he could see anything. It was one of the robed men, though his cowl had fallen back, and she could make out short brown hair and a large nose. She didn’t recognize him.
She treaded water quietly, not certain whether to talk to him or pretend she and Deret had long since drowned.
Perched on the edge of the hole, he started to lower his lantern inside for a better look, but his head jerked up. He froze like a rabbit, staring in the direction of the door.
At that moment, Amaranthe knew she had an ally. He wasn’t supposed to be there.
When she spoke, she kept her voice low, not certain if other priests lurked about. “I don’t suppose you’d like to drop a rope or something down here?”
The man jumped back, disappearing from view. The light faded too.
“Hm.”
“You scared him away,” Deret said. “You should have told him you were... shirtless and trouser-less.”
“Actually I got my trousers back on.”
“Ah, so he left in disappointment.”
“Every time I start to feel sorry for you because you sound like you’re on the verge of passing out and drowning, you make jokes.”
“My father always found my humor... inappropriate too,” Deret said.
Something fell through the hole.
Amaranthe lurched backward, images of blasting sticks and grenades filling her mind, but her eyes caught up with her imagination. A rope dangled down from the hole.
The priest hadn’t reappeared. Maybe he wouldn’t.
Amaranthe tugged on the rope and found it attached to something sturdy up there. “I’ll go first.”
Deret grunted. “I’ll go... whenever this bullet works its way out of my shoulder.”
“Ah, maybe I can pull you up.”
“I weigh two hundred pounds. We better hope our helper up there hasn’t wandered off.”
“I’m sure I can figure something out if he has. A block-and-tackle system or... a fast-acting diet program.”
“Funny, Lokdon. Funny.”
After making sure her trousers were securely belted again, Amaranthe shimmied up the rope.
“It’s all muscle,” Deret called up after her.
Amaranthe had reached the hatch and didn’t respond. She poked her head over the lip, twisting her neck for a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view before climbing the rest of the way out. The robed man who had dropped the rope was crouching by the ladder, watching the rest of the mill. A lantern burned by the door and at his side, but the rest of the lights—and the men holding them—were gone. Somewhere in the distance, machinery—or perhaps vehicles—let off blasts of steam, but silence had come to the mill.
“Thank you for the rope,” Amaranthe said. “Do you mind helping again? My friend is too injured to climb out on his own.”
“I thought he was dead.” The man returned to the hatch. “I thought I’d be too late and that you would both be dead.”
“That would have bothered you?”
“Not so much before you started talking, but then...” He grimaced. “I’m only twenty-three. I don’t want to be killed by an assassin.”
“I hear it’s unpleasant at any age.”
There was a long coil of rope, with only the last few meters dangling into the tank from a bolt hole, so Amaranthe waved for Deret to wait a moment, and untied the knot. She slung the rope over a beam above them and directed the tail back into the tank. Not exactly a block-and-tackle, and Deret still wouldn’t be light, but it ought to be easier pulling him out that way. She handed the end of the rope to her new ally and gripped a section for herself.
“Say when you’re ready, Deret,” she called softly, not certain whether guards might be roaming around outside the building. “I’m Amaranthe,” she added over her shoulder. “What’s your name?”
“Verosh. They sent me back in to turn off the cider when it was done. When I saw the gauge already at full, I thought I’d be pulling out two corpses.”
“Gauges can be faulty,” Amaranthe said.
“Ready,” Deret called up.
“He’s two hundred pounds and refuses to diet, Verosh. Pull hard.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“One-two-three,” Amaranthe said and pulled on three.
The rope scraped a few inches over the square beam—it definitely wasn’t a block-and-tackle. She and Verosh repeated the move countless more times before Deret’s head appeared, his short wet hair plastered to his skull. He was only holding the rope with one hand and had the other arm tucked into his chest. Seeing that he would struggle to lever himself out like that, Amaranthe ordered several more pulls, not stopping until his legs rose above the hole. She left Verosh leaning back, holding their burden aloft, then jogged to Deret’s side and pulled him onto the tank.
“I told you,” Deret said, “it’s muscle.”
Even with the weak lighting the single lantern offered, the paleness of his face was visible. Treading cider with one good leg and one good arm couldn’t have been easy, and he had t
o be in a lot of pain.
“Let’s get you down from here.” Amaranthe kept her second thought, and steal a vehicle to drive back to the city, to herself. There was probably a limit to how much help their sympathetic priest was willing to give.
“The door is open.” Verosh dropped the rope and backed away from the lantern, his gaze skimming the darkness. “It wasn’t a minute ago.”
A cool draft whispered against Amaranthe’s damp, bare arms. “Someone checking up on you?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
She handed Deret the pistol she wasn’t sure would fire. “I’ll go down first.”
He nodded with understanding and stood at the edge, ready to cover her.
Amaranthe hated putting her back to the open room to climb down, but she had little choice. She skimmed down the rungs as quickly as she could. At the bottom, she put her back to the tank and watched the dark nooks and alcoves between the other tanks and the machines. Deret tossed the pistol down to her, then followed her to the ground. Nothing stirred out there in the shadows, but more than the cool draft was raising gooseflesh on Amaranthe’s arms. She sensed they were being watched.
She felt better when she and Deret stood on the ground, but wished they had their own weapons. Up top, Verosh knelt by the ladder and chewed his lip, as if he wasn’t sure coming down would be better than staying up there and maybe tossing himself into the tank. Then he could pretend to be a victim rather than an accomplice when someone noticed the prisoners roaming the compound.
Ultimately, he grabbed the lantern and came down.
“Any chance you know where our weapons are?” Amaranthe asked. “Deret’s... cane especially?”
Deret scowled at her for calling the swordstick a cane, but if Verosh didn’t know it held a blade, he might be more willing to share the information. Who would deny a lame man his walking aid?
“I can’t tell you.” Verosh stepped away from the ladder—away from them—his hands spread. “I’ve already done more than I should. Please go. Follow the dirt road, then take a right at the main road. It’ll take you back to the city limits in ten miles.”