Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick

parries before I took a single breath.
    No one.
    No light, either, except for sunset’s dirty leftovers coming in from the front room. Not enough to see by, but too much for my night vision to help.
    I stood and scanned the room. Woven mats on the floor prevented footprints. No walls appeared out of place, no hole made itself invitingly apparent in the ceiling. I stamped the floor. Dirt beneath the mats.
    “Larrios!” I called.
    No answer. No surprise.
    “Well?” yelled Degan.
    “Hold on.”
    Degan mumbled something I couldn’t catch.
    I ran a circuit of the room, four paces for each wall, striking the plaster with my blade. Everything sounded equally solid. I guessed where I might put a concealed door and threw my weight against the spot. The wall surrendered a thin snow of dust, but nothing more.
    I looked over the rest of the room, taking in its dim shapes, grainy textures, hints of a shadow here and there. Why the hell couldn’t it be darker out?
    There was nothing beneath Fedim’s bed but dirt, same for the lone table.
    I threw myself at another spot on the wall in desperation, bounced off it. As I staggered back, my heel caught on the hard corner of a mat and sent me over. I scrambled back up, wondering how fast I could cut through the weathered lumber of the ceiling. Then it hit me.
    Hard corner of a woven mat?
    I dropped to my knees and pulled the mat away. Or rather, I tried to, since it was attached to the floor by long pegs that ran into the dirt.
    I ran my fingers around the edges, felt a sunken wooden frame beneath it. There were two rope handles tucked beneath the mat. Grabbing one in each hand, I crouched and lifted.
    It was heavy.
    “Ah, Angels!” I gasped as the trapdoor slowly came up out of the ground.
    “Door” was generous; it was a nothing more than a wooden box filled with dirt, placed in a shaped recess in the floor. Unwieldy, but it would sound as solid as the rest of the floor to anyone walking on it.
    Beneath, there was a crude shaft running straight down into darkness. A horrible, familiar stench rose from the hole—sewage.
    Suddenly, staying here and dying didn’t seem like such a bad option.
    Nevertheless, I yelled, “Degan! Let’s go!”
    Degan came running into the room, sword in one hand, a hefty-looking vase in the other.
    “They’ll rush soon,” he said. “The pots slowed them down, but not enough.” He looked at the hole and moved toward it. Then the smell reached him.
    “Ugh!” Degan wrinkled his nose and looked at me pointedly. “You always manage to find a sewer, don’t you?”
    “Only when you’re around,” I said.
    Pushing his hat down more firmly on his head, Degan climbed into the shaft. Grumbling something about Noses liking the worst scents, he disappeared into the darkness below.
    I set the “door” near the edge of the hole, sat down, and swung my legs in.
    The stench was nauseating, ten times worse than anything we’d encountered in Ten Ways that night. As I slid into the hole, I heard a yell from outside. The Cutters were coming.
    I pulled on the box of dirt, trying to shift it back into place as I sank the last few feet into the hole. My feet met round, slippery resistance: a peg or spike of some sort set into the shaft wall. The box moved two fingers’ breadth, then stopped. I tugged at it again. Nothing. Larrios had been stronger than he looked to move this thing by himself. Then again, he hadn’t had ten Cutters breathing down his neck, either.
    I gave up on the box and started climbing down the peg ladder set in the shaft wall. I hoped the smell would be enough to keep the Cutters off our blinds.
    The darkness was thick with moisture and odor. After eight pegs, my foot met nothing but air.
    I shifted in the hole, trying to find the next peg, and something poked me in the shoulder. I felt behind me, found a niche dug out of the earth. In the niche was a long, thin object, like a small case of some sort. So, this was where Fedim had kept his