The urgency in her voice was real, even if her words were a lie. The guard heard it, but he was uncertain about Astrid’s request. She could see it in his face.
“I haven’t heard any rumors,” he said.
“You need to open the gate and let me in,” Astrid said calmly. “Right now.”
Voices echoed down the passageway. Terror clutched at Astrid’s heart. She kept it hidden.
“That’s the commodora,” she said. “She’s right behind me. Perhaps you’d like to explain to her your refusal to follow the admiral’s orders?”
The guard blanched, clearly unwilling to cross Rylka. He fumbled for the large iron ring dangling from his belt, then inserted a long skeleton key into the gate’s lock.
Astrid’s heart was beating so hard now, she could barely breathe. She heard fins beating the water, and then Tauno came hurtling around the curve with Rylka right behind him.
“You there, stop her! That’s an order!” Rylka shouted.
They were only yards away. Astrid had a heartbeat in which to get her next move right.
As the guard pulled the key out of the lock, she struck. Whipping her powerful tail around, she caught him broadside. The impact sent him sprawling into the wall. He hit it hard, then sank to the floor with a groan, dropping the key ring.
Astrid snatched it up and was through the doorway in a flash. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled the gate closed. She jammed the key into the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. A whimper of fear escaped her. “Come on…come on…” she pleaded.
She wriggled the key and tried again, and this time it turned. Just as the lock’s bolt shot home, Tauno slammed into the gate. He thrust an arm through the bars.
He can’t get the key ring! Astrid yanked the key out of the lock with her right hand and tossed it behind her. Tauno swore and grabbed her left arm, his fingers digging into her flesh.
“I’ve got her, Rylka! Find another key!” he bellowed.
Rylka swam into the guards’ office and proceeded to ransack it.
Tauno thrust his other arm through the bars, trying to get a better grip on her. His body was pressed up against the bars. His face was jammed between two of them.
Astrid saw her chance and took it. She cocked her arm, then drove the heel of her hand though the gap in the bars, straight into Tauno’s nose. He let go of her and fell backward, blood gushing from his nostrils.
Astrid grabbed the key ring and swam flat out. Dead ahead, the tunnel split into three, as the one in the Hall of Elders did. Speeding down the middle passage, she barely registered that there were cell doors on either side of her or that there were prisoners behind them. She was focused on one thing only: getting out.
The tunnel got smaller. It veered left, then right. Astrid swam with arms over her head, palms together, to reduce drag. She rounded bend after bend, hoping each time that the exit would appear in front of her, but it didn’t. Her breath was coming harder; she was tiring. A sharp hairpin turn loomed in front of her. She rounded it, then stopped short, skidding through the water.
A guard—an elderly merman, stooped and shuffling—was a few yards ahead of her, pushing a cart that held a large black pot and two stacks of bowls. Luckily, his back was to her. Beyond him, maybe twenty yards away, was another gate, much like the one at the dungeons’ entrance. The exit, she was sure. One of the keys might open it. If only she could get there! But she feared there wasn’t enough room in the cramped tunnel to allow her to get past the guard. She would have to wait until he went inside a cell, then swoop by.
The guard unlocked a door now and pushed it open.
“Prisoner up!” he shouted.
Astrid heard a chain dragging. The guard slowly ladled slop into a bowl.
Come on! Hurry up! she silently urged him, nervously glancing back the way she’d come. She didn’t dare retrace her strokes—what if she swam straight into Rylka and Tauno? She flattened herself against the ceiling, ready to inch by the guard. Why was he taking so long?
Finally he put his ladle down. “Hands on your—” he started to yell. The rest of his command was drowned out by shouting. It was Rylka.
“Come out, Astrid Kolfinnsdottir! I have prison guards searching every tunnel!”
Astrid moved along the ceiling toward the gate as fast as she dared.
The guard turned and squinted down the tunnel. “What in the gods’ names is going on?” he asked cantankerously. He banged the bowl on his cart, then passed right underneath Astrid, missing her by only a scale’s breadth.
Astrid was about to try for the gate when Rylka shouted again, from much closer, just on the other side of the bend. Astrid was hopeful that one of the keys on the ring would open it, but which one? And how long would it take to try them all?