Previous Chapter

“I offer you the name Uncertain,” Andre said, stepping away from Ragi and the others, keeping Phillipe’s attention on himself. The Maestro always said when you dominated the stage, no one paid attention to the scenery. It was how a stagehand did their work unseen and, hopefully, it would be enough for Ragi to whisk his family to safety as well.

“I don’t need anything from you, creature,” the captain snarled. “What use could I have for your names?”

It was a fair question, though Andre had no idea what the answer was. “Strange are the courtesies overhill,” he said, which was hopefully cryptic enough to suit a Fair Folk. He took a step forward and made a conscious effort to speak in the Maestro’s cadences. “What shall I know of you, then? Are you unstoppable, as the Guardian of Grapes says?”

Phillipe mirrored him, taking a single step back. “What if I am? What do such things matter to man, when he is doomed to spend his short and miserable life chasing after the petty wants of his stomach and his loins? And you would name me Without Certainty! Ha!” His laugh was flat and hard. “Men who chase after such things are as foolish as those who treasure the Gifts of their birth. I am more than these things, Blacklight. I am a Borgia.”

Some kind of breakdown in communications must have occurred because he could hear the others doing something behind him. Which meant they weren’t escaping. Still, the Maestro always insisted the actors had to trust the stage crew to do their jobs while they focused on their lines. Andre was new to that side of the equation but from his time on the other he knew it was true. He’d have to keep talking.

“What is a Borgia, then?” Andre asked, pacing back and forth as he studied Phillipe. Even now, as he matched Andre’s movements, fire building behind his eyes, the captain moved with a purposeful, deliberate pace that seemed out of place.

“We are a promise, Blacklight.” He drew a basket hilted rapier from his waist with one hand and fished something out of a pocket with another. Phillipe held it up between them, making it clear that it was a half eaten piece of bread. He must have been pulled away from dinner when the alarms started. “We are a family, not by birth but by choice, wedded to one another by the breaking of bread and the grace of our Father, Grigori the First.”

The captain spread his hands wide, holding bread and blade like twin blessings offered to all. “We nourish one another when we are hungry. When we are hurt we bear one another’s wounds. And when our family is threatened, we take up arms to destroy all our enemies, without fear or mercy.”

Andre tasted bile in the back of his throat. “You kill in the name of your father?”

“For the sake of our Father!”

“How many enemies can one man have?”

Phillipe lowered his arms, looking resigned. “I forget you are not human, Blacklight. If you were, you would know that every enemy who sets himself against a family is an enemy to its father, whether he wills it or not.” He snapped his sword into a guard position, its point directly aimed at Andre’s head. “Human or not.”

“And your family… how many are they?”

The captain hesitated, clearly unsure of what to make of the question. “Hundreds, I suppose. Perhaps thousands, now. A dozen newly made men were with me when I broke bread with the Father three years ago, when we were only two hundred strong.”

“So many.” A shiver ran up Andre’s back then around and down into his hands, curling them into a single knot of muscle that would not let go. “And in the name of your father you chase two girls through the Nernonan countryside, though one of them is pledged in marriage? How is that fair?”

“Fair!” Phillipe barked a laugh and flicked the point of his sword to their left. They had moved far enough that the goblin cat’s corpse lay in that direction now and Andre could just make it out while keeping an eye on the captain if he stood just so. What he saw astonished him.

The cat’s body had mostly transformed to a lumpy, pinkish mass. Charissa knelt by it, a knife in hand, shaving its fur with an eerie, effortless grace as her daughter stood by, the fur spinning into a thread that wove itself into a single sheet of silk black fabric. In the few minutes he’d been speaking they had somehow taken the fur from all but the tail and hindquarters. The work was done too fast to be anything but a Gift.

“You have killed the beast,” Phillipe said, “and now the Talisman maker seizes its magic for herself. A few such crimes and she will hold more power than even the greatest armies in Nerona. Do you think such things are fair? Tell me, creature from underhill, is it fair that humans are born so different from one another, that one person can so easily trample others underfoot?”

“There was no one under their feet when I found them in your tower. There was no one under the feet of the girls who you chased through the roads that wind overhill and I see no one beneath them now. Yet there are many feet that stamp down to trample them and each boot bears the name of Borgia.”

Phillipe’s brought his sword back to bear on Andre. “What of it? Those underhill have never cared about our affairs before. Why does the fate of a few girls matter to you, Blacklight?”

Staring at the point of the sword should have made it difficult to answer but Andre found his reply flowed as easily as if he’d rehearsed it his entire life. “Because look! You have so much light.” He pointed overhead at the blazing beacon in its reflective bowl, shedding light out towards the sea and sky but leaving none to reach the roof below. “Yet you won’t shine it on yourself.”

“We can still see the light to guide us.”

“Perhaps. If that is the way you wish to go. But for those who grope through the darkness, seeking another way, what is there for them?” Andre slowly lowered his hand and closed his eyes. He pictured the beacon in his mind but shrunk it down and took away the dancing flames, then he let his Gift do the rest. When he opened his eyes again a small light hovered over his outstretched palm. “For them, I will be their blacklight.”

For a second Andre thought the captain was about to back down. He wavered, at least, his gaze uncertain as he stared at the small yellow pinprick Andre had conjured. Then Phillipe shook himself off and said, “Hubris. The world is too vast for such a small light to make a difference.”

Andre closed his hand and stopped conjuring. “We shall see.”

There was a breath of air by his neck then Ragi whispered, “We’re done, Blacklight, it’s time to go. Don’t worry about him. He can’t run and use his Gift at the same time.”

“This isn’t over, Corragio!” Phillipe called.

“If you were still the Phillipe I knew it might not be,” Ragi replied, stepping up beside Andre. “He would risk his life and limb to get what he wanted when he was a bravo with no master but himself. But a Borgia must put the family first! What will they do without an unyielding avalanche to crush their enemies into the dirt? They cannot risk losing such a thing.”

Ragi started to pull Andre back towards the roof’s edge, clearly expecting that to be the end of it. His judgement was good enough for Andre and had already started to turn towards the others when he saw Ragi’s expression turn to shock. He spun back to find Phillipe charging towards them in an insane burst of speed. He looked like a gymnast, about to leap into a triple summersault, except for the sword in his hand and his murderous glare.

For all his surprise, Ragi reacted quickly, planting his feet and lunging forward with his own sword point directed squarely at the captain’s stomach. For a moment, Andre thought the exchange was over with that. It looked like Ragi would run him through and be done with it. Then Phillipe somehow managed to plant both his feet under him and he came to a sudden stop. He didn’t slide or crouch. He simply stamped his feet down and snapped upright, perfectly straight, like a spear that had just been thrown into the dirt. Ragi’s thrust hit him squarely in the middle and slid off, doing nothing. It didn’t even slice through the captain’s jacket. For all the world it looked like the captain had planted his feet and transformed from a running man made of flesh to a motionless statue made of stone.

He only stayed that way long enough to avoid getting stabbed. After the point of Ragi’s blade was turned he stabbed over the shorter man’s sword arm, aiming for Ragi’s considerable neck. Ragi managed to grab Phillipe’s arm with his off hand, levering himself partly up and away from the point, but it still opened a nasty cut on his back. Worse, for all Ragi’s considerable strength, he couldn’t stop the captain.

Phillipe slowly dragged his arm back towards himself, preparing for another strike, while he locked eyes with his opponent. Andre tried to read what was going on. He remembered Sophia trying to wrap the captain in an awning when he’d discovered her and Charissa under the Maestro’s caravan. He’d had his feet planted, holding perfectly still that time, too. Then Phillipe had patiently pulled the fabric off of himself using one hand.

Just like that, Andre could see the picture in his mind. A man who was invincible when he held still, who became more impossible to stop the slower he moved – a man who was inexorable so long as he was patient in how he moved. Yet if he picked up his feet and ran he must become a normal person, or he wouldn’t have reacted like he did to Ragi’s attack. He wondered how far Phillipe’s invulnerability went.

As the captain finished setting up his next strike Andre pushed into the melee, holding one hand up in front of Phillipe’s face, and he conjured the brightest light he could. The captain cried out and jerked away from it. Amazingly enough, he kept his feet planted but from the way he began to blink frantically Andre could tell he was dazzled at least. For a follow up, Andre switched from light to smoke, filling the air around the captain with a dense cloud of oily smog while he grabbed Ragi and ran.

Blinded and coughing, Phillipe still managed to force himself after them at his purposeful, inexorable pace. But with no idea where they were, his sword swung aimlessly and the other two were able to get out of its reach easily. Sophia waited for them at the edge of the roof, a rope twisted out of old costumes in her hands. She worked the rope around to lift all three of them off the roof and down to the walls, where Bella and Charissa waited for them. From there she lowered them again, to the ground this time, before spooling the rope around her waist.

“Excellent work, all,” Ragi said. “Now we just need to find this wine cellar of Andre’s. Do you know where it is?”

Andre cast about, looking for landmarks, but realized with a sinking feeling he didn’t recognize anything. “I think it’s on the other side of the fort, sir. I don’t think we can make it there without getting spotted.”

Charissa grinned, holding her hands up as if displaying a cloth. “Well, think again.”

Previous Chapter

Things unravelled very fast once Phillipe called in the guards.

Andre had been at the rear of their group as they descended the stairs but once Ragi turned them around and they started for the roof he wound up at the front. He found it very difficult to lead them back towards the roof. Not only was his side burning from the goblin cat’s scratch, he found that the cold chicken he’d just wolfed down sat very poorly in his stomach. Worse, in the hurry to climb the stairs again it was hard to see where he was going in the dark. Out of habit, he conjured a lantern.

Nothing appeared in his hands.

Instead, the image of Leaves tucking a lantern away into its robes came to mind and Andre began to suspect what his deal with the Fair Folk truly entailed. Stumbling and cursing, he dragged his pack off his back, fished out Gravel’s hat and shoved it onto his head. The stairs became a bit clearer and he continued on his way.

“Who’s up there?” Phillipe’s voice demanded from below. “Giovanni? Is that you?”

“Here, Captain!” A new voice replied. “I’m here!”

“Then who is that above?”

“We’ll find out, sir.”

New footsteps joined theirs in the mad rush to the roof and Andre did his best to put on more speed. After a seemingly endless ascent, no more than ten seconds to be truthful, they arrived on the roof once again. Andre pushed his spear into Bella’s grip and charged for the corner, a new ladder forming from nothing in his hands. He had just started lowering it over the side of the keep when something heavy crashed into its top, smashing it to kindling.

Andre immediately jumped to one side, the goblin cat’s gnashing jaws snapping through the space his head had just occupied. It saved his life but nearly killed him at the same time. His evasive leap left Andre off balance, teetering on the edge of the roof, and for a moment all he could see was the blurry green of the courtyard spinning far below. Andre dove towards the roof, choosing to fall himself so he could control his landing.

It worked, but only in part.

His side spasmed in pain midfall and twisted him around, so he landed badly and nearly rolled off the roof. The low lip around the roof was just enough of a handhold for him to arrest his slide. For a brief moment it was all Andre could do to cling to the roof’s edge then Bella and Sophia grabbed one arm each and dragged him up on to solid footing once more.

The roof was in chaos. The goblin cat was scampering back and forth across the rooftop, swiping at Ragi and the guards, hissing and yowling, showing equal hostility to everyone around it. The guards had formed a ring with their backs facing inwards. Their swords made the creature hesitate but they weren’t enough to keep it at bay, one of them was bleeding from his arm and another’s tabard hung in ribbons, his mail shirt the only thing that had kept him from getting worse.

Ragi and Charissa had positioned themselves between the three young people and the guards. Ragi was alternating between brandishing his spear at the cat and the guards while his wife worked to reload the crankbow. For the moment, both human groups were directing their attention towards the cat. Even so, Andre doubted they would be granted the time to climb off the roof via ladder unless they did something to make it happen.

His gaze wandered up to the beacon in its metal bowl, burning brightly overhead, and inspiration struck. Andre grabbed Sophia’s arm and started towards the beacon house, saying, “I need a hand!”

“What are you doing?”

“Just watch!”

The beacon was about twenty feet over the keep’s roof and he wasn’t confident he could make a ladder that tall in his current condition. Fortunately, he didn’t need to get that high. The door was locked but making a simple skeleton key was a much easier task. It did take long enough that Bella caught up to them, yelling, “That’s the wrong way!”

Andre ignored her, shoving the door open and pushing into the small tower at the base of the warning tower. There wasn’t much inside it besides a staircase spiraling up to the top and a stockpile of wood and oil for fuel. Candles in narrow niches provided just enough light to see. Thankfully, that was all they needed.

There was no such thing as a jar made for throwing or, if there was, Andre had never seen it. So he conjured normal ones and handed them to the girls, who filled them from the barrels of oil until the shredded tunic he’d given Sophia from his pack couldn’t hold any more of them. Then she carried them to the door, manipulating the tunic with her Gift, while Andre and Bella filled another four jars, one in each hand. Meanwhile, Sophia used the tunic as a sling, throwing the full jars with shocking accuracy.

In all, she launched nine jars full of oil about the roof, the five she started with plus the four extra the other two brought her, before they ran out with lit candles and used them to set the oil ablaze. The outcome was grizzly. 

The guards, who had not fared well against the cat or the steady stream of flying jars and crankbow bolts, finally fell back down the stairway but they left two of their number behind, lying injured on the roof. They could not get to their feet before the flames reached them. Their screams as they caught fire were horrifying and Andre felt his brief burst of triumph on seeing the others withdraw vanish. 

The goblin cat had somehow avoided all the projectiles launched in its direction. It danced through the field of burning oil, hissing and yowling in rage, but didn’t catch fire itself. Even so, the fire was dense and it didn’t try to force its way through towards them.

“Good work,” Ragi said, falling back to join them. He was cradling his off hand, the sleeve of his tunic saturated with blood from a nasty claw mark that had left two parallel furrows in his arm. “Now let’s get off this roof.”

Andre nodded, panting hard as he said, “Give me a moment and I’ll get us a ladder.”

“I don’t know if we have a minute,” Charissa said, gently moving them away from the raging fire. “Did anyone see where the cat went?”

“No,” Bell said, “but it does vanish from time to time.”

The oil burned with a dense, heavy smoke that drifted down rather than up and Andre found himself coughing on it as he tried to catch his breath. He leaned down, trying to find fresh air, and froze. A small, black creature was trotting across the roof, keeping a healthy distance between itself and the various oil fires burning there. It paused to watch one of the guards, no longer screaming but still twitching as he burned.

Andre would later swear he saw it baring its teeth in a vicious grin. That was when he recognized it, in spite of its drastically reduced size, as the goblin cat. As if that spark of recognition drew its attention, its head swivelled around to meet Andre’s gaze. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but the cat leapt forwards and suddenly grew to its original size, slamming into their group with claws flashing.

Charissa lost the crankbow as the cat bowled her aside. The weapon flew out of her hands, bounced along the roof and disappeared over the edge, taking it firmly out of play. Andre and Bella were thrown to the ground. Only Ragi kept his feet, fending off the cat’s claws with his spear and stepping forward towards its jaws. The cat’s teeth gnashed at him but never quite reached.

Instead, the squat man dropped his spear, wrapped his enormous arms around its front leg and dragged the entire creature along, swinging it around twice and slamming it into the wall of the beacon tower with a titanic thud. The creature let out an almost pitiable yelp, its legs flailing as it tried to get back to its feet. Andre grabbed Ragi’s dropped spear, charged forward and slammed it into the cat’s flank.

The creature kicked him with its hind legs for his trouble, knocking him away. As Andre folded over and slid along the ground he felt his hair standing on end. A brilliant flash of light lit the world overhead along with a deafening crack then a bitter, acrid scent filled his nose. Coughing, he pushed himself to his feet.

Ragi stood a few feet away, his broad hands still outstretched and crackling with the power of the lightning bolt he’d just thrown. The power of his Gift had arced through the air, split the spear in the cat’s side and killed the vile creature dead. Its fur stood out around it in a bizarre halo and its slitted eyes were rolled back in its head. The air was mixed with the scent of burning oil, charred flesh and the strange, bitter scent that accompanied every thunderstorm.

The older man grabbed Andre by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet, saying, “Good work. I’ve never had great control over my Gift. Without that spear to guide the lightning I never would have hit that creature.”

“I’ve always found it amusing that a man with your level of discipline would lack control anywhere in your life.” Captain Phillipe Borgia stepped through the curtain of fire and smoke as casually as the Maestro stepped on stage.

Andre felt his stomach sink. Would this mess never end? Beside him, Ragi tensed as well, his expression transforming from impressed to wary in an instant.

“Corragio del Rhodes,” the captain said, the hint of a smile crossing his face. “As always, your work is impressive. I shouldn’t say this but I’m grateful for ridding us of that menace. I’m afraid the Magistrate’s daughter will not be as well disposed.”

“Phillipe Inexorable.” Andre glanced at Ragi, wondering what that name meant. He’d never heard of the inexorable Gift.

“I am a Borgia now, Signore Rhodes.”

“So I hear.”

The captain came to a stop about twenty paces away and the two men studied each other with open hostility. Then Phillipe’s gaze shifted to Andre, causing him a jolt of terror. “Once again, the Rhodes family keeps unsavory company. I understand why your masters keep their treaty with Underhill but I’ve always wondered what they see in you.”

It took a second for Andre to realize what Phillipe was on about. He’d been fooled by the hat, and didn’t recognize the stagehand he’d been introduced to two days ago but rather thought he was looking at something otherworldly. Andre seized on that at once. He squared his shoulders and met the captain’s gaze, asking, “Do you offer me a name?”

Ragi spun to stare at him in surprise. Phillipe’s amused expression slipped for just a moment as well, replaced by a shadow of uncertainty before a mask of neutrality covered it over. “No, creature. I don’t.”

With that simple rebuttal Andre’s hopes of swindling the captain into letting them go were dashed. The fire on the roof was starting to die down as the oil ran out. Soon the guards were going to be able to get back on the roof and then they were trapped for certain. He would have to buy time and hope the others had a good idea. So Andre tugged his hat tighter down on his head and said, “Then you may know me as Blacklight.”

Previous Chapter

Bella didn’t open the door first, Ragi did.

He spent a minute or two peering at the courtyard and assessing the lay of the land before gently closing it again. Andre easily peered over top of his head but he struggled to make out any details in the shadows of dusk. The only thing that was clear to him was that they were, indeed, on the opposite side of the keep’s courtyard. Ragi apparently wasn’t as challenged by the dark. “It looks like the guards are doing a loop of the courtyard. I’m not sure if they’ll look up but if they do I don’t think they’ll see us on the walls, the beacon is lit and it makes the keep’s roof throws some very deep shadows. Once we’re on the roof we’ll need to keep low so we don’t do that ourselves.”

“How can the guards avoid the cat?” Andre asked.

“According to our friend in their midst, someone in the Magistrate’s family has a Gift that lets them control it, although I’m not sure how. I’ve never heard of a Gift that influences animals.” Ragi glanced at Andre. “What about you? A travelling theater group has a lot of opportunities to encounter the strange and unknown.”

“I’ve never heard of goblin cats before today, much less a Gift that can control them.” Andre tapped his chin thoughtfully. “It could be an Invoker, though. In which case that’s not a real cat, goblin or otherwise, but rather an elemental someone’s bound with their Gift. Wind spirits sometimes show themselves as cats and we are on the ocean. It’s not impossible.”

“No. Elementals look like animals but they don’t act like them.” Bella gave him a flat look. “Have you ever met a cat?”

“You’re right,” Andre admitted. “It was definitely a real cat of some sort.”

“Then we won’t worry about how they control the thing unless we learn something new,” Ragi said. “We all saw it turn invisible, yes? Well, at least I wasn’t hallucinating that part. Unfortunately it leaves us with no way to know it’s coming ahead of time unless by some chance it smells bad. I don’t suppose you noticed anything like that, Andre?”

“Sorry, smell was the last thing on my mind.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have helped us that much anyways. The air is very still tonight.” Ragi nodded towards the door. “Bella? Would you do the honors?”

She did, rapping a quick pattern of knocks on the door before yanking it open and motioning them through. Once again she clung to the door, holding it open while Andre and Ragi hustled past her. Then she moved through herself and closed it with a firm but painfully loud thump.

Andre gritted his teeth and conjured a ladder. It felt much harder this time compared to the last, like he was starting to run out of something essential to the process. Never in his life had he conjured so much in one day. He wasn’t sure how much more he might be able to make before his Gift failed him entirely.

At least while he was bracing the bottom of the ladder so Bella and Ragi could climb up he got a moment to catch his breath before making his own ascent. Bella went first and Ragi passed her their short spears and his crankbow before joining her. Once Ragi was firmly on the roof Andre began his own climb, the other two holding the top of the ladder in place as he did. Ragi apparently thought he wasn’t moving fast enough because the older man grabbed him under the arms as soon as he was able, pulling Andre up onto the roof with little effort. He felt a twinge in his side as the other man lifted him.

Andre let the ladder vanish as they hustled across the roof, stooped nearly double, and down into the prison tower. It was a short trip down the stairs to the locked doorway on the floor below. Ragi got there first, grabbed the knob and gave it a vicious twist. There was a metallic snapping sound and the door came open, a bit of the door’s latch tumbling out as it did so. Ragi had broken it, though Andre couldn’t guess how.

Ragi rushed in, one hand on the hilt of his sword, but there was no one on the other side other than Charissa, who jumped up and ran over to him as soon as she realized who it was. It was a touching reunion but Andre didn’t pay much attention to it. The room where the Magistrate had kept her was more comfortable than Sophia’s cell by quite a bit. There was a bed on one side, a small table with an oil lamp on it and a chair with a cushion for sitting near an open window.

The chair seemed to draw Andre in with some otherworldly power and he found himself collapsing on top of it, exhaustion overwhelming him. Once there he realized he was very uncomfortable. Every few seconds he would shift position, trying to pay attention to what the others were saying but unable to focus. Instead, he found himself yoyoing between dozing off and wiggling in discomfort.

“Ah, he’s so pale!” Charissa said, her voice breaking through the fog filling his head. A cool hand pressed against his forehead. “And he’s bleeding! What happened to him?”

“A goblin cat got him by the shoulder but it didn’t look like that broke the skin,” Ragi said. “Besides, that’s on the wrong side. Maybe it swiped him with its claws.”

Andre jerked upright, fully aware once more, as something prodded his side and sent a burning bolt of pain running up and down it. “Careful!”

“Looks like a light scratch.” Charissa pulled the sheet off her bed and the knife from her husband’s belt, quickly slicing the fabric into strips. “We’ll take care of that, dear. Go find Sophia and bring her here, we should probably leave once this is handled.”

“Right.” Ragi propped his crankbow against the wall and turned to Bella, drumming a pattern on the stone not that different from the one she used on doors. “If someone comes through the door without this signal, loose that bolt into them.”

She nodded understanding. As Ragi started to leave Andre said, “She’s on the next floor down. Last cell in the hall.”

Ragi nodded. “Is the door locked?”

“Just a bar across it.”

“Then I’ll only be a minute.”

Andre wasn’t sure how long he was actually gone but it must have been more than one minute because by the time he got back with Sophia the other two women had stripped off his tunic, applied a compress dampened with a bit of wine to his scratch and bound it in place with strips of cloth. He was in the process of wriggling into a new, black tunic when Ragi got back. Sophia swept in behind him and hugged her mother fiercely.

“We’re all here,” Ragi announced. “Andre, are you ready to move?”

He didn’t feel ready to move but he knew if they stayed it was only a matter of time before Captain Phillipe came to check on Charissa again. So he struggled to his feet and said, “Of course.”

Charissa pushed him back into the chair with one hand, saying, “Of course not. You’re going to pass out on the stairs. When was the last time you ate anything?”

“Breakfast.”

She took a plate of half eaten chicken off the table and shoved it into his hands then poured some more wine into a wooden cup. Andre wolfed the meat down in a few bites. It was cold but also one of the most delicious things he had ever tasted. He emptied the cup of wine when it was offered to him then belched when it was all gone.

Once he was done Ragi gave him a critical once over. Frowning, he said, “Raise your right arm as high over your head as you can without pulling your wound.”

Andre did as instructed but barely got his hand over his head before wincing in pain.

“Why is this an issue?” Sophia asked. “Can’t we just head back to the walls and take the door there back underhill?”

Bella shook her head. “The Queen Below wasn’t happy that I brought Andre with me on my last trip and she closed the door there to me for a year and a day. Even if she hadn’t, I’m not sure she’d let Andre leave a second time.”

“Which means we need to get out of here under our own power,” Ragi said. “I don’t suppose you ladies saw anything that would help us get out when they brought you to the keep?”

“We were thrown in a covered wagon,” Charissa said. “We didn’t see much until we arrived in the main courtyard and from there they brought us straight here. I haven’t left this cell since.”

Ragi glanced at his daughter. “Sophia?”

“The same.”

“The keep has a secret canal that leads out to sea,” Andre said. “The Fair Folk let me out from underhill there.”

“A bolt hole, is it?” Ragi rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Splendid. They probably keep some kind of boat there for emergency escapes, as well. The Magistrate’s insurance policy will play in our favor today.”

“Uh…” Andre shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “There was a rowboat at the docks but there isn’t anymore.”

“What happened to it?”

“The guards used it to row some blind man out to sea. I overheard him telling the guards they planned to move Charissa elsewhere using the channel to row her out to a ship at sea so I burnt the docks. So they couldn’t have brought it back.”

“That was shortsighted.” Ragi’s words were harsh but his tone was gentle. “However, I’m not sure I would have done any different given the circumstances, especially with the Blind Man in play. By all accounts he’s a ruthless character. And given our situation it still might be the best way for us to get out of the keep.”

“What about the door?” Sophia asked, glancing at the entrance behind them. “Is there anywhere you could take it, Bella?”

“No. I think the planks it’s made of are a mix of different kinds of wood or something like that, plus the iron bands are held in place by a mix of steel and bronze nails. There’s no door remotely like it anywhere close enough to matter.”

“I’ve never heard of the Gift of Doors,” Andre said. “How can this whole keep have doors that she can’t use?”

“It’s not as rare as you might think,” Bella said. “There’s been one of us every few generations of the Vinoverdes. I know the Doomsman for the King of Dawn is one as well, he taught me how to control my Gift when I was young. There’s probably a half a dozen others scattered around the country but we don’t speak about it much. Even if you settle for something as simple as nailing a carving to a door it’s impossible to defend every door in a city against the Gift. There’s a great deal of sabotage you can do with nothing more than normal doors.”

A thought occurred to Andre. “What if you had two identical doors, made to be identical to each other and totally different from others?”

She met his gaze evenly. “Then they would be very easy to join together with the Gift.”

“Even if one of them was moving around?”

“Yes, Andre,” Ragi said. “That’s why all we need to do to get out of the city is reach the ship the Prince sent to meet us and have Bella open the door to the captain’s cabin.”

“I see.”

“We can’t do that until we get out of the keep,” Charissa pointed out.

“We can use the barrels.” Everyone in the room stared at him and Andre hastened to add, “The entrance to the bolthole is in the keep’s wine cellar. If we dump the wine from a few and lash them together we can make a raft. A bad one, but it will work.”

After two seconds of consideration Ragi nodded. “It doesn’t have to take us far, just to one of the canals or a beach nearby. So long as we can make landfall inside the city we’ll be fine. Take us to this wine cellar, Andre.”

They left Charissa’s cell and started down the stairs. Just as they reached the entrance to the hallway where Sophia had been kept the door at the base of the tower slammed open. Ragi hesitated, then waved them upwards again. “Back to the roof,” he whispered. “We’ll find another way down.”

“What about the goblin cat?” Bella whispered back.

“Guards!” Phillipe’s voice echoed through the tower like thunder. “Check on those prisoners!”

Ragi scowled. “Believe me, the cat is less dangerous. Go!”