door. Before he could get there, the eyes vanished with a muffled curse and the sound of the viewing panel slamming shut. A moment later, an alarm bell started to clang.
That accelerated the schedule.
I closed and locked the door at my end, then broke the key off in the hole and wedged it before heading for the window. It was narrow, but if we could cut a few of the bars loose, I’d fit through all right, and it was a better bet than fighting our way out through an unknown building. I called to Triss and made my hand into a knife shape to let him know what I wanted, but he kept sliding back and forth along the surface of the door, either not listening or ignoring me again. He wanted more blood.
I did, too, but this wasn’t the time.
“Triss!” I snapped. “Do you think you can drop that for a minute and help me with these bars? We’ll come back later and we can kill them then. For now, we need to get clear and see what happened to Maylien.”
He turned his head my way and hissed something angry and unintelligible.
“Triss, please. Let it go for tonight.”
With a sigh, he came back toward me. I made the knife-hand gesture again, but rather than settle around my hands and shoulders, he threw his wings wide, hiding the window and a good bit of the wall around it. For nearly a minute he hung there like a leaf pressed in a book. With a brutal effort I could feel through our bond, he flexed his shoulders and snapped his wings forward, contracting into a pinpoint in an instant. The section of wall vanished into the everdark along with the window it contained. It left behind a hole in the shape of a man-sized dragon. Then Triss collapsed back into my shadow for a moment in exhaustion. This newly revealed talent took a lot out of him.
“That’ll work.” I climbed up into the hole, using the outline of a hind leg as a step.
About half the hole lay below the surface of the ground. Between that and my still-rocky condition, I ended up slithering my way up and out, smearing myself with dirt and nearly losing my breechclout in the process. I came up in a narrow stone-flagged alley, quiet, dark, completely empty.
No girl. But then, I hadn’t expected her to be there. No girl’s corpse either, which was a relief.
Though I didn’t recognize the alley, I could tell by the paucity of trash in the corners and the lack of sewer smells that I was in one of the city’s better neighborhoods. Maybe professional, maybe residential, but still not rich enough for street lighting. Tailor’s Wynd or the Underhills or someplace like that. By the stars, it was still a couple of hours short of dawn, which explained the quiet.
Glancing back at the hole I’d just climbed out of, I wondered briefly why anyone would put a dungeon someplace like this. But the very affluence of the neighborhood would provide good cover. And someone who could keep even a petty mage like Lok in their pocket could also afford the spells that would keep the screaming and stink from passing through the window. That reminded me again of the girl, who must have broken the spell to find me. The fact that I needed a reminder said very bad things about my general state.
I took a quick look around for signs of what had happened to her though I didn’t hold out much hope on that front. I’m no tracker, and even if I were, deep city is no place to go hunting without a hound. When I didn’t find anything in the brief time I figured I had before my new enemies started to be a problem again, I turned to leave. That’s when Triss, who had recovered enough to look around the alley behind me, made a noise like a kettle boiling over onto the coals.
“What is it?”
Triss circled an apparently unmarked spot on the cobbles. “Zass was here. He came from above. I can taste him in the stones where he and Devin landed.”
I could feel my eyebrows heading for my hairline in surprise. Zass meant Devin, but that wasn’t what had startled me. I’d more than half
That accelerated the schedule.
I closed and locked the door at my end, then broke the key off in the hole and wedged it before heading for the window. It was narrow, but if we could cut a few of the bars loose, I’d fit through all right, and it was a better bet than fighting our way out through an unknown building. I called to Triss and made my hand into a knife shape to let him know what I wanted, but he kept sliding back and forth along the surface of the door, either not listening or ignoring me again. He wanted more blood.
I did, too, but this wasn’t the time.
“Triss!” I snapped. “Do you think you can drop that for a minute and help me with these bars? We’ll come back later and we can kill them then. For now, we need to get clear and see what happened to Maylien.”
He turned his head my way and hissed something angry and unintelligible.
“Triss, please. Let it go for tonight.”
With a sigh, he came back toward me. I made the knife-hand gesture again, but rather than settle around my hands and shoulders, he threw his wings wide, hiding the window and a good bit of the wall around it. For nearly a minute he hung there like a leaf pressed in a book. With a brutal effort I could feel through our bond, he flexed his shoulders and snapped his wings forward, contracting into a pinpoint in an instant. The section of wall vanished into the everdark along with the window it contained. It left behind a hole in the shape of a man-sized dragon. Then Triss collapsed back into my shadow for a moment in exhaustion. This newly revealed talent took a lot out of him.
“That’ll work.” I climbed up into the hole, using the outline of a hind leg as a step.
About half the hole lay below the surface of the ground. Between that and my still-rocky condition, I ended up slithering my way up and out, smearing myself with dirt and nearly losing my breechclout in the process. I came up in a narrow stone-flagged alley, quiet, dark, completely empty.
No girl. But then, I hadn’t expected her to be there. No girl’s corpse either, which was a relief.
Though I didn’t recognize the alley, I could tell by the paucity of trash in the corners and the lack of sewer smells that I was in one of the city’s better neighborhoods. Maybe professional, maybe residential, but still not rich enough for street lighting. Tailor’s Wynd or the Underhills or someplace like that. By the stars, it was still a couple of hours short of dawn, which explained the quiet.
Glancing back at the hole I’d just climbed out of, I wondered briefly why anyone would put a dungeon someplace like this. But the very affluence of the neighborhood would provide good cover. And someone who could keep even a petty mage like Lok in their pocket could also afford the spells that would keep the screaming and stink from passing through the window. That reminded me again of the girl, who must have broken the spell to find me. The fact that I needed a reminder said very bad things about my general state.
I took a quick look around for signs of what had happened to her though I didn’t hold out much hope on that front. I’m no tracker, and even if I were, deep city is no place to go hunting without a hound. When I didn’t find anything in the brief time I figured I had before my new enemies started to be a problem again, I turned to leave. That’s when Triss, who had recovered enough to look around the alley behind me, made a noise like a kettle boiling over onto the coals.
“What is it?”
Triss circled an apparently unmarked spot on the cobbles. “Zass was here. He came from above. I can taste him in the stones where he and Devin landed.”
I could feel my eyebrows heading for my hairline in surprise. Zass meant Devin, but that wasn’t what had startled me. I’d more than half
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