She fled.
Javel came around the final corner and found the Gate Guard preparing to brick the gate. This was a contingency for which they all prepared, and a small storeroom was kept just off the gatehouse for this purpose. Guards moved back and forth from the storeroom, carrying piles of bricks, and several more were already laying a triple layer of bricks and mortar behind the barricade. Javel was relieved to recognize two of them: Martin and Vil. As he approached, Vil straightened, holding a trowel.
“Javel! What—”
“What’s happening?” Javel shouted. The blows of the ram were so loud out here that they seemed to make his spine shudder.
“They came out of nowhere!” Vil replied, shouting as well. “We dropped the gate, but we didn’t have time to get the bridge up! The gate won’t hold unless we brick!”
Javel nodded. “Give me work, Vil!”
“I thought you were with the Queen’s Guard!”
“I’m a Gate Guard!” Javel shouted back. “Give me work!”
Vil stared at him, measuring, for a long moment, then said, “I could use another man to mix mortar! Gill’s already in the storeroom. Go!”
Javel nodded, smiling, for in this simple order he felt somehow blessed. He belted his sword to his waist, stepped lightly over Martin’s back, and went to work.
Aisa crouched in the shadows of a recess, her hand on her knife. She was filthy, covered in the grime of the tunnels, and she could smell herself, a mixture of long-congealed sweat and the rotten dampness that seemed to reign down here. Her arm throbbed dully from a long scratch she had taken yesterday. But the song of the fight was upon her; her blood coursed with it.
Merritt stood behind her, and across the tunnel, in another recess, were the Miller brothers, barely visible in the thin torchlight. Daniel’s neck was wrapped and bandaged; he had taken a terrible burn when he surprised a woman who was cooking chicken in a pot of boiling oil. She had thrown the pot at him and then tried to flee with her charges, two boys and three girls, all under the age of ten. They had managed to save the children, removing them to the large holding area up in the Gut. But the woman had fled into the dark. Another of the handlers, a man, had tried to club Christopher with a shovel, and ended up with the shovel buried in his ribs. Aisa didn’t know whether the Miller brothers were typical Caden or not, and she no longer cared. She meant to join them or die trying.
But that dream was still years away. The first step, the one she could accomplish now, was to have them treat her as though she were anyone else, a tool to be wielded.
Christopher leaned into the light, pointing to Aisa. Merritt poked her in the back.
“That’s you, girl. Give us another good show.”
Aisa tucked her knife into the back of her trousers, covering it with her shirttail. She took a deep breath and darted out into the main tunnel. It was a wide bore, perhaps twenty feet from side to side, and another twenty to the arch of the ceiling over her head. Water seeped through the cracks and dripped down to form wide puddles on the floor. Aisa thought they must be somewhere near the Keep moat, perhaps even underneath it.
Ahead, the tunnel branched into three passages, each leading into darkness. Down one of these three passages were several men, a pimp and his clients, holding at least ten children. Aisa and the four Caden had been tracking them for more than a day in this underground labyrinth. The upper levels were lit by scattered but consistent torchlight; down here, there was none but what they brought themselves. Aisa held her torch higher, but she could see nothing of the three passages beyond their entrances, vast black mouths opening into more dark.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anybody there?”
Silence. But Aisa could feel eyes upon her. She tottered forward, wrapping one arm around herself in the manner of a cold child. In the five days she had been down there, she had seen many children, both living and dead. James had explained to her, in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, that some pimps chose to slaughter their stables, so that the children could neither implicate them nor slow them down in flight.
“Hello?” she called again. “Mrs. Evans?”
They had put Mrs. Evans under arrest three days ago, and she was now being held at the New London Jail. She had not gone easily; it was she who’d given Aisa the knife wound on her arm. But her name was very useful, for she seemed to be well known in the Creche, and no one knew that she’d been arrested. Aisa had already pulled this trick successfully twice.