“It’s dark down there, so you’ll need to follow me. This part and the last stretch will be the easiest, but the water gets high in the middle.” He grimaced. “At least it’s not spring. It’s really high then. And cold.”
She stared at Rone. Then the manhole. Told herself the grafters couldn’t find them this way and the longer they squatted here talking, the more likely Kazen would track her down.
Talbur Gwenwig. Her best hope had always been to find him.
Rone dropped into the hole. Sandis expected to hear a splash, but there was only the soft landing of his shoes on something hard.
“I’ll catch you,” he called.
Swallowing, Sandis lowered herself into the manhole until the muscles in her arms started to burn. She let go, and for a split second, nothingness surrounded her. Then two hands grabbed her waist, and she ungracefully landed half on a cement slab and half on Rone, nearly knocking him over.
Easing her aside, Rone grabbed a long stick from the wall and used it to pull the manhole cover back into place. Darkness surrounded them, save for a muted glow of moon and street light through the holes in the manhole cover. Rone replaced the staff in its brackets. “This way.”
The platform narrowed to a passage barely wide enough for a person to walk on. Worse, it slanted toward the water. The cold, foul water lapped at Sandis’s toes as she turned herself sideways, following after Rone. How deep was the water? What would happen if she slipped?
She silently thanked her father for teaching her how to swim as she continued sidestepping through the darkness. It went pitch-black for a moment, and Sandis’s heart began to race, but she followed the sound of Rone’s movements, and gradually new wisps of light lit up another chamber of the sewers, identical to the last.
When the sewer branched ahead, Rone led them to the right. “This part will be less pleasant. Watch your step. You don’t want this in your mouth. Or eyes. Or other holes.”
Sandis cringed, thinking of what other holes the wastewater might contaminate.
“Don’t worry—this is the cleaner stuff,” Rone said, voice low, but it sounded like he was laughing. “Chances of us getting some horrible disease are much lower than in the west sewers. Higher elevation here. The wastewater hasn’t been sitting for as long.”
Sandis slicked her hair back from her face. “How much farther?”
Rone sighed and looked ahead. “A ways.”
The tunnel narrowed, and the walkway vanished. Sandis stepped into the water, following Rone’s movements exactly, cringing when something solid brushed by her leg. The water started at her ankles, then moved up to her calves, her knees, her thighs, her hips . . .
She could barely make out an archway up ahead, its crest only a foot above the water. Rone pushed off the wall of the sewer and swam toward it, his chin grazing the water’s surface as he sliced through it.
Pinching her mouth firmly shut, Sandis followed. The water slowly receded after that, and they were able to walk on a concrete platform for half a mile before the ceiling got painfully low. Sandis hunched with her face inches from Rone’s backside—or so she imagined, for the dim light came and went. Rone lifted her into a dry but rank tube—“It’s for winter overflow”—and she crawled on knees and elbows until the skin on both was raw and threatened to tear. Then they swam through another underground canal, walked, swam, walked, crawled. Rone checked a couple of covers on the way. When he finally climbed up a rusted ladder to another and said, “We’re here,” Sandis could have kissed him. He dropped back down to another platform, barely large enough to fit both of them, and opened his bag.
“Can’t do much for the smell, but you won’t leave a water trail this way.” He handed her a change of clothes from the sack.
Sandis waited for him to turn before getting dressed. It was dark, yes, and Kazen often undressed her before summoning Ireth. But she still had some semblance of modesty. More importantly, she couldn’t let Rone see her script.
She quickly dressed, keeping her back away from him and out of the light trickling through the manhole cover. Because of that, she caught him when he started to turn his head to peek. She grunted her protest, and he whipped his face forward as if nothing had happened.
The tips of her hair were still dripping when she climbed the ladder and crawled out of the sewer. The first thing she noticed was that the cobblestones here were much wider and paler than they were elsewhere in the city. Lamps, bright and burning, illuminated the courtyard with tawny light. The buildings around them stood clean and tall, their architecture much more aesthetically pleasing than the factories and flats that crowded the smoke ring. Eaves were thick and long and angular, fences with fancy balusters wrapped around well-maintained walkways, and the windows had geometric panes and were rounded on the top. There was even a fountain nearby, though its water was stale.
Sandis crept toward it and washed her hands and face as best she could.
“This way.” Rone moved into the shadows of a long white single-story building. There was a tablet above its front door, but it was too dark for Sandis to read. They didn’t go far—their destination was next door, a three-story structure much less glamorous than its neighbors. In the light, it looked rectangular and brown, with fewer windows and no special design.
Two men entered the courtyard, walking and chatting. Scarlet uniforms. Policemen. Sandis pressed herself against the stone wall.
Rone pulled out a shiv of some sort and crammed it between the door and its frame. It opened with a soft creak.
Sandis guessed this was the back of the building, for the door was unremarkable and somewhat small. She slipped inside the moment Rone opened it, and he followed, carefully closing the door behind him.
“Security should be light in here, if not nonexistent. Few people care about stealing genealogy.” They were in a stairwell. He paused for a moment before climbing up. “Come on, hurry.”
“Thank you,” she whispered after him.
“Just hurry.”
Rone assessed the first floor they reached, then led her up to the next, changed his mind, and hastened her back to the first. He paused in the stairwell as footsteps sounded nearby. Sandis held her breath, waiting for them to fade.
Silence descended upon them like heavy snow.
Rone reached for the door handle.
“Rone.”
He paused, glanced back at her.
She hesitated a moment, then asked, “Why did you go to Gerech?”
It was dark, but she saw his lips press into a thin line. He pulled the door open an inch, then eased it closed again. His voice was so low and hushed she could barely pick out his words. “My mother is there.”
Shock prickled outward from Sandis’s chest and into her shoulders. His mother, his family, was in that horrible place? When Sandis was a child, her parents had used two frightening stories to encourage her and Anon to behave: one about misshapen demons—numina—hiding beneath the city and the other about scarlets carting bad children away to Gerech.
“I made a mistake, and she’s paying for it,” he added, not meeting her eyes. He eased the door open. “Let’s go.”
Rone got several steps ahead of her before Sandis found the strength to urge her own legs forward. Gerech. What would she do if her mother were in that terrible place? Sandis had been bitter for a long time after her mother’s selfish passing, but living with the grafters—losing Anon—had broken her hard feelings into dust. Were her mother alive, Sandis would stop at nothing to free her, even if that was an impossible goal.
Bright white light exploded to her right, and she winced, eyes tearing. The scent of kerosene filled her nostrils.
Her heart quickened before she realized it was just a lamp.
“This way.” Rone moved forward with the newly lit lamp, which he’d taken from the wall.