The smell I followed grew stronger – excrement and decomposing garbage. Per made a small disgusted noise and lifted his hand to cover his nose and mouth. The outflow from the castle flowed in an open trench gouged into the rock. It gaped, foul and slimy, exposed rhythmically by the retreating waves. Standing saltwater sloshed shallowly back and forth in the ditch with every wave.
‘How deep is it?’ Per whispered in trepidation.
‘One way to find out,’ I said reluctantly. I sat down on the edge of it, the waves lapping to my waist. My groping feet found no bottom in the thick sludge. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said to Lant, and he knelt to offer it to me. I took it and eased one foot down into the trough of sloshing filth. I was already soaked to the waist, but that had been clean saltwater. Beneath a layer of seawater, my boot sank into muck. I held tight to Lant’s hand, stepped down with the other foot, and gasped as I sank. The filth and seawater came halfway up my chest.
The stink and the pressure of the cold water squeezed my voice to breathless. ‘Tide is still going out. I think we can go in this way.’ I made a final effort. ‘No one has to follow me. This trench will become a tunnel into the side of the island, and slope up to the lowest dungeons. It’s going to be a foul walk through total darkness. The tunnel will end in the castle’s waste tank. The Fool said it was in the lower dungeon.’
‘You warned us back at the inn, before we slept,’ Per said sourly. ‘We said we still wanted to come.’
‘If Amber has been captured, I suspect they’ll hold her in the lower dungeon,’ Spark added.
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s go. Dawn is coming,’ Lant pointed out.
‘Step down,’ I invited them, and one after another they did. Per gave a shuddering gasp, for the filthy water came nearly to his neck. In a line, we trudged forward. We left the open sky and the sea wind behind us as the trench became a tunnel into the chiselled side of the island. No light beckoned at the end. I led them into darkness. Slowly the incline became steeper. The sludge was slippery and we fought to keep our footing as it sloped slowly upward.
It was a stinking, hunched walk. I led with Per holding onto my belt, then Spark and finally Lant. I cursed quietly when my groping hand encountered vertical metal bars, but more groping found them badly eaten by the sea. Together Lant and I bent two until they broke. I squeezed past the obstacle, my belt of pots catching briefly, and the others came behind me. We went as silently as we could through the breathless stench and clinging muck. I heard Lant ask, ‘Will we be able to come back this way?’
‘No. When the tide comes in, this will fill with water.’
He did not ask how we would escape the castle. He knew I didn’t know. We walked against a slow shallow flow of filth as the castle’s tank emptied past us to join the retreating tide out into the bay. We slipped in filth, we clung to one another, we cursed quietly. And still they followed me. The darkness was absolute. The slimy wall I touched with my right hand was my only guide.
We trudged on. Then, in the distance, a faint half-circle of yellow light appeared. ‘We should go faster,’ Per suggested breathlessly. I understood his wish. My back was cramping and the stench made me even more breathless.
‘We don’t know who might be waiting for us,’ I reminded him. We kept our steady, quiet pace and the dim light grew. I reached the arched opening into the vat and motioned in the dusky light for the others to stay back. The tank had a sloping floor, with the day’s fresh excrement and offal to wade through. I heard Lant gag. The light that reached us was less than dimness. I found a corroded ladder by touch and pitied those who periodically descended to shovel out the tank. I turned back to Lant and motioned him forward while signalling the others to hold where they were. Lant joined me at the base of the ladder. ‘I climb. You follow. If there is a guard, the two of us handle him.’
He gave a tight nod I barely saw. When I was six steps up the ladder, I felt him mount it behind me. Rung by slow rung, I climbed, trying not to think of what filth I put my hands on. Up, and up and up. The light became marginally stronger. Finally and slowly, I poked my head up above the side of the vat and looked around. Fat pot-lamps burned on shelves at the far end of the long room. I saw no one.
The thick walls of the vat were of worked stone. I clambered out on top of the wall and discovered steps descending to floor level. Of course. The vat’s edges had to be above high tide level. I admired the engineering of it. A high tide would flow in to mingle with the waste in the vat; at the low tide, saltwater and waste flowed out again. Lant joined me, and then remained on the top step as I went down the steps, knife drawn.
I moved swiftly and as silently as I could through the large room. I saw what the Fool had warned me would be there. A table where chains dangled. A large hearth, cold now. The racked tools beside it were not for tending a fire. I hurried past them and heard a rhythmic sound. I halted until I was sure of what it was. Snoring. But was it prisoner or guard? I sought the shadows at the edges of the room and crept forward.
A wooden table and a bench outside the cells. A guard slept, face pillowed on his arms and turned aside from me. Only one guard? So it seemed. Quieter than a cat, I crept forward. With one hand I gripped hair and lifted the head. With the other I cut her throat. I clapped a hand over her mouth as her body jerked and pumped blood onto the table. Done. I turned and went back to Lant. I climbed up the steps to speak by his ear. ‘I think there was only one and I’ve done for her.’
He motioned to the others and they came quietly out of the tunnel and into the tank. Spark climbed up quickly. Behind her, Per gave a muffled huff and pointed to a body lying on its back in the sloppy filth at the far side of the tank. It was not quite floating. I walked the tank’s edge and looked down on it. ‘It’s not the Fool, or Bee,’ I assured them. It was coated evenly with filth. The tides had not been strong enough to carry it away. A terrible scar marred one side of the bloated face. ‘It’s just a body,’ I said softly, for the boy’s face was lit with horror. ‘Much too dead to do us harm. Discarded in the waste pit. Maybe Symphe?’ I dismissed the body from my thoughts; it could not harm us. Failing to be aware of our surroundings could.
‘Where are we?’ Per demanded in awe.
‘In the lowest level of the stronghouse. The bottom dungeon. Just above the high tide level outside.’