A Thief in the Night

chapter Sixty-seven

Malden and Cythera each took one of Slag’s arms, but the dwarf had to move his own legs. He stumbled forward, clearly moving only by instinct. His eyes rolled in his head and eventually caught on Malden’s face. “Lad,” he moaned. “Lad. Is that you?”

Malden hoisted the dwarf’s head up so he could see better. “It’s me,” he said. They were marching still through the rough tunnel, with elfin warriors ahead of and behind them. “Are you feeling any better?”

“I think I was sick,” Slag said.

“Many times,” Malden told him.

“Oh. That explains it, then.”

“What’s that?”

“Why my beard smells like somebody’s arsehole.”

The dwarf’s head drifted forward abruptly and he stopped walking. His dead weight was too much to bear and he slid toward the floor, out of Cythera’s hands, even as she tried to grapple him and keep him upright. Malden tried to prop him up again, but Slag had gone completely limp. He wouldn’t take another step. Malden looked over at Cythera and shook his head.

“You,” she said, addressing the elf in front of her. “Our friend can’t go any farther. He’s sick and he needs to rest!”

The elf turned to look her up and down, as if sizing up a horse he was buying. “Carry him. Or, if you prefer, I can run him through and we can leave him here to die.”

Cythera glared at the elf. “Your orders are to bring us in alive.”

The elf shrugged. “Orders! We receive so many of them, honestly. And sometimes they contradict each other. By the time we reach home the Hieromagus will have forgotten why he gave that order. Pick him up, keep moving, and don’t bother me again.”

The elf turned away, and Malden knew it would be no use arguing further. He’d met far too many watchmen, guards, and soldiers in his life—and been on the receiving end of their ire more often than not—to mistake the look on the elf’s face. The elf had been given a job to do, a job he didn’t care for and wanted to get over with as quickly as possible. Slag was merely an element of that task, an impediment at best. Any minor irritation, anything that made the elf do more work, would be enough to spur him to violence. Malden turned to Cythera and whispered, “They may not be human, but it’s nice to see some things are universal.”

“Please, Malden—I can’t hold him on my own,” Cythera said as she wrestled with keeping Slag from lying down on the floor and going to sleep.

Malden sighed and bent to help. He got his hands underneath Slag’s armpits—they were slick with sweat—and lifted most of the dwarf’s weight while Cythera took the ankles. She had to walk backward, facing Malden.

“Watch your head,” he told her. “The ceiling gets lower ahead of us.”

She ducked her head just before it struck an overhang.

“I’ve been trying to think of a way out of this,” she told him, keeping her voice low. “I’ve come up with nothing useful. I could turn invisible and make a run for it. I could go and look for . . . help. But I fear they would hurt you two in reprisal.”

Malden knew she was probably right. “They have orders to bring us in alive, but clearly they don’t care what state we’re in when we get there. We just have to be breathing. I fear we have no option but to see where they’re taking us.”

Cythera nodded. She pursed her lips and looked down at Slag. “Will he be all right? You must have caught up with Balint. Did she tell you what poison she used, or what the antidote was?”

Malden shook his head. “She was hardly forthcoming. She hit me with a wrench.”

“No!”

Malden grinned, though it made his jaw hurt. “In her place I would have done the same. She told me only that the antidote will keep him alive, though he will be sick for a time.”

“You saved him,” she said. She favored him with half a smile. Then she blushed and looked away.

“I’m glad for one thing, at least,” he told her. “I got to see you smile one more time. I would have preferred different circumstances, of course. But when I got back to the hall and found the two of you gone—well, I didn’t know what to think.”

She frowned. “They came with no warning. They pushed open the door and suddenly they were all around us. I couldn’t fight them all, and Slag was barely conscious at the time. So I surrendered.”

Malden nodded in understanding. “I don’t think any of us were expecting living elves down here.”

“There was no time to leave you a message, or any kind of warning. They asked me where the others were and I said the two of us were lost and alone. Then Slag woke up a little and asked if you had returned yet.” She closed her eyes in frustration.

“Mind your head again,” he told her.

“I think they’ve been watching us since we arrived. They know about Mör— I mean, they know there are more of us. I don’t think they’ve caught the others yet. I said a lot of things to try to convince them you had fled the Vincularium, but—”

“I heard some of them. You called me a scoundrel.”

“I was trying to throw them off your track, Malden.” Her face changed. “What of Balint and her crew? Did they make good their escape? I suppose it’s unlikely they would help us, but—”

“They’re most likely dead,” Malden told her. He didn’t know it for a fact. But he had heard their screams, and hoped, for their sake, it was true. Those screams had not sounded like the cries of people who were surprised by being taken captive. They were shouts of agony. “Though I don’t know why they were killed, and we were spared.”

Cythera looked down at Slag’s feet. “They have orders to kill dwarves on sight,” she whispered. “I think they blame the dwarves for their imprisonment more than they blame us.”

Malden frowned. “It was the dwarves who betrayed them, and sealed them in here. But then—why is Slag—”

She glanced over her shoulder, as if to see if any elf was listening. Then she whispered to Malden, “I told them he was a human.”

“Slag? A human?”

“A very short human. He wears human clothes, after all. And none of the elves have ever seen a human or a dwarf before. They asked a lot of questions, but I managed to convince them.”

“And saved his life. I wish Balint and her friends had been so quick of mind. No, they won’t be coming to help us, not now.”

“So our only hope is . . .”

He knew she didn’t want to say Croy’s name out loud. She didn’t want to give the elves any information they didn’t already have. “Assuming he’s still alive. And that he can stay free, with every elf in the Vincularium looking for him.”

“You two,” the elf behind Malden said, and jabbed him in the back with the point of a spear. Not hard enough to pierce his skin. “What’s that you’re saying? Your accents are so thick I can’t understand you. Are you scheming something? Humans are supposed to be tricky sorts. What are you planning?”

“We were discussing which of you is the prettiest,” Malden said.

The elf jabbed Malden again with his spear, harder this time.

“Actually,” Cythera said, “we were just wondering about your accent.”

“Accent? I haven’t got one,” the elf replied. “I talk like an elf.” He did not seem to possess much in the way of imagination.

“Of course, of course,” Cythera said, her voice warm with soothing tones. “Forgive me. I actually meant to inquire how it is that you speak our language, the tongue of Skrae?”

The elf looked deeply confused. Judging by the way his brow beetled and his eyes narrowed, it was a common expression for him to wear. “I don’t speak Skraeling. I speak the tongue of the ancestors.”

“Ah, well,” Malden said, “that explains everything.” He made a face at Cythera, crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out of one side of his mouth. She almost giggled in response. She had to raise one hand to her mouth to stifle it.

In the process she dropped one of Slag’s ankles. The dwarf stirred in Malden’s arms. One of his eyes opened a crack. “Lad? Am I dead?” he asked.

“I got your antidote, old man,” Malden told him.

“Ah,” Slag said, his chin drifting up and down with the rhythm of Malden’s footsteps. “And then . . . the elves . . .”

“They’ve taken us captive. But they have orders not to kill us. We don’t know why that is.”

“Well,” the dwarf slurred, a sleepy smile playing around his mouth, “that’s easy. They haven’t killed us yet because . . . because . . .”

“Because?” Cythera asked.

“. . . because they’ll want to torture us first. That’s an ancient elfin custom.”