“Grab his legs.”
Kelsea took the jailor’s legs and helped Emily haul him off the ground. The page was much stronger than Kelsea, carrying more than her share of weight. Kelsea stared at her, honestly confounded. Was it possible that she remained loyal to the Tearling?
“Not a sound,” Emily murmured. “The cell to your right is empty, but the rest are occupied. The prisoners may not be asleep.”
“What about light?” Kelsea whispered.
“I have mapped this dungeon well. Just follow my lead, and don’t make a sound.”
More questions sprang into Kelsea’s mind, but she swallowed them and followed Emily out of the dungeon. They turned right, and Kelsea saw that Emily had been correct: the cell on her other side was empty. The light waned as they turned a corner, and finally they were traveling in total blackness. Beneath Kelsea’s fingers, the jailor’s legs were still warm, and with each step Kelsea became more and more tormented by an irrational certainty: he was not dead, only asleep, and at some point she would feel his hands slide over hers, hear his voice only inches away.
Pretty.
“Who’s there?” a man screamed to Kelsea’s right, so close that she veered left, stifling a cry, and nearly dropped the jailor’s legs. Sweat had broken out on her brow. She could hear other people in their cells, coughing and crying, and her mind called up the Security compounds she had seen in Lily’s time, vast black labyrinths of suffering.
We’ve learned nothing, she thought again. We all forgot.
Ahead, Emily cleared her throat, bringing Kelsea to a halt. She felt the other end of the jailor’s body begin to drop, and lowered his legs to the ground. Metal clinked beneath her: Emily, depositing the jailor’s key ring on his body. She was very cool under pressure, this woman; she reminded Kelsea of Andalie. A moment later Emily grabbed her arm, guiding her back the way they had come. Kelsea wondered what Mace would say if he could see her now, wandering the Palais dungeons in her underwear. She was truly cold, her teeth chattering behind her clenched lips. She thought of the naked woman down at the far end of her hallway, shivering on the bare floor. Kelsea would need some clothes, and quickly.
They turned a final corner, and Kelsea saw that they were back on her hallway. Looking down, she found her hands and arms covered with tacky patches of drying blood. But the corridor was clean.
“Get back in there,” Emily murmured, shooing her into her cell. She held the stained remains of Kelsea’s dress in her hand. “I’ll bring back cleaning supplies and a new dress for you.”
“Then what?”
“It will be as though he never entered your cell.” Emily held up the silver key to Kelsea’s cell. “He was not supposed to have this key. I will dispose of it.”
Kelsea hesitated, reminded again of Andalie’s terrifying efficiency. Emily began to swing the cell door closed, and Kelsea grabbed the bars, holding it open.
“Who are you? Do you serve the Tear?”
“No. I serve the Mace.”
Emily jerked the door from Kelsea’s hands, locked it behind her, and disappeared down the corridor.
“Wake up, you pathetic sot.”
Javel bleared his way back into reality. It was a slow process. There were so many sensations to ignore: headache, backache, the heavy, empty feeling in his stomach. The Mort brews were much stronger than those of the Tear. He almost remembered trying something the bartender had laid on him, a very brief period of the mindlessness that drink always gave him, and then nothing more. He became aware of wetness on his cheek: a line of drool.
“Wake up, damn you!” Something slapped the back of his head, and Javel’s headache intensified, becoming almost blinding. He groaned and batted the hand away, but then his hair was seized and he was yanked bodily upward, the pain in his head making him screech. He found himself staring at Dyer.
“You. Stupid. Fuck.” Dyer shook him with each word, his voice a low hiss. “We’re here to do a job, a discreet job. And here I find you passed out.”
Javel’s mind was a muddle. What was he doing in a pub? He’d been sober for months. Did he really have to start over now, at the bottom of the ladder?
Allie.
Memory came tumbling back, painfully clear. Allie had brought him here. Allie, in a whore’s dress and makeup, no longer herself but someone else. She wanted no part of him. They had been in Demesne for months, chasing a ghost. Javel wished Dyer would go away so he could order another drink and start the carousel all over again. At least another drink would ease the headache that threatened to crush his skull.
“What ails you, traitor?”
“Allie,” Javel mumbled. “My wife. She . . .”