Aisa took a deep breath. The children’s faces calmed her, reminded her of how much was at stake here, and her own shame receded. She did not even need to dig for the words; she had heard them so many times in the past week that they were right there, within easy reach.
“In the name of Her Majesty, Queen Kelsea Glynn, you men are under arrest for pandering, trafficking, and facilitation of assault. You will be held in the New London Jail until such time as you account for yourselves before a judge. You will not be harmed further unless you attempt to escape.”
“Come on,” Daniel said brusquely. “Let’s get them topside. You keep an eye on the children, girl. Make sure they don’t stray.”
They started back the way they had come, James and Christopher in the front and Aisa, Merritt, and Daniel bringing up the rear. Aisa’s arm throbbed, and she saw that the long scratch, which had sealed itself yesterday, was beginning to swell beneath its reddening seam. As adrenaline wore off, the pain from this scratch became difficult to ignore, but Aisa swallowed it as best she could, holding a child’s hand in each of hers.
After more than an hour of walking uphill, they came to a broad intersection of six tunnels. Aisa recognized this place; they were only some thirty minutes from regaining the surface. Blue light filtered down, diffused through several layers of gratings, and Aisa realized that up there, topside, it must be dawn already. The idea of sunlight seemed almost fanciful; down here long enough, one forgot that there was anything more than the amber glow of torches.
The children were tired; one little boy, who could not be more than five, had begun to lag every few steps, and Aisa had to lightly jerk his hand to bring him along. The entire group walked without speaking, no sound but their staggered footfalls echoing against stone, and it was this void that allowed Aisa to hear a man’s voice, low and urgent, somewhere behind her on the right.
“Please God.”
Aisa halted. The acoustics in these tunnels were strange; sometimes she could hear distant voices clearly enough to understand the words, while at other times she could not hear Daniel’s murmured commands from ten feet away. The voice she had just heard had been clear, with no peculiar quality of distance or dead air. The speaker must be very close.
“What is it, girl?” Merritt asked, turning back to wait for her.
“Give me your torch.”
“Hold!” he shouted to the Miller brothers, then handed his torch to Aisa. Holding it high, she wandered a few feet down the tunnel, examining the walls. The intersection was now at least a hundred feet behind them, and she didn’t think the voice could have been so far off as that. A hidden nest, perhaps? They had found one of those already, cleverly concealed under a drainage grate. The Caden had been forced to kill the six men and women who ran that particular pod, but Aisa counted them no loss; one woman, realizing she was cornered, had put a dagger to the throat of a young girl, little more than a toddler. But Daniel could throw a knife just as well as he could wield one, and the woman went down with the blade planted squarely in her jugular, the child not even scratched. Aisa ran her fingers over the uneven surface of the tunnel, working her way backward, and her breath halted as she felt a gap in the stonework, not more than ten inches wide.
“Light!” she shouted up the tunnel. “More light!”
The Caden ushered the children and prisoners backward, crowding close to examine the gap. It would barely admit a thin man, but would certainly admit children. Aisa fancied she could hear—not with her ears, perhaps, but with her mind—a rapid heartbeat on the far side of the wall.
“There’s someone in there,” she told Merritt.
“Can you squeeze through?”
She gave him the torch. Her own heartbeat had increased, for there was certainly danger here, but she was pleased that none of them protested sending her in, on her own, where they could not follow.
Holding her knife in front of her, she bent down and eased through the crack. It was a squeeze, but not too tight. At any moment she expected to meet resistance: adult hands, grabbing her. But nothing came, and then she was on the far side of the wall, reaching back through so that Merritt could hand her the torch.
“Be on your guard, child!” Daniel called outside.
Aisa held the torch high, looking around. She was in a narrow room, almost a tunnel itself. The smell was much, much worse in here, enough to make her eyes water. The walls dripped with mold. Trash littered the floor, and in the near corner Aisa saw what appeared to be a pile of human waste. She jumped, gasping, as a rat’s thick body scuttled over her foot, and for a moment she wanted to simply flee, flee this room and these tunnels and run the long road back up to the Keep. Her arm ached, her mind ached, and she was only twelve years old.
Pain. The voice was little more than an echo, deep in her mind, but still it made Aisa stand up straight, for it belonged to the Mace. Pain only disables the weak.
A killer of children, her mind returned, but that thought had no power here. What happened in the Creche was worse than murder. Far worse.