CHAPTER 82

“Why does that sound familiar?” I ask.

We’re waiting outside. Wyl’s knock went unanswered, but she doesn’t appear worried.

“What does?”

“The store name. Ready Roderick’s. I’ve heard it somewhere.”

Wyl looks at me weird.

“Because you once went hunting for relics in Red Harbor’s most halfway decent antique shop?”

“Most halfway decent?” I crinkle my brow. “Do you mean it’s the only alright antiquarian in Red Harbor, or that it’s the most… just barely acceptable?”

Before Will can answer, there’s a barely audible noise. Metal sliding on metal. I tense. It sounds for all the world like a trap about to spring. The voice that follows does not come from behind the shop’s wooden door, but from directly below our feet.

“Fair for a favor, fair for a dime,” it says, singsong.

“Fair for my word, for only one time,” Wyl completes without missing a beat.

I look down. There is nothing to be seen there, only darkness and the barely-visible cobblestones. Nothing, that is, except for a thin strip of deeper shadows right under our noses. Is that… An underground room? I lean forward, but before I can get a good look into it, the sound of metal-on-metal comes again, and whatever I was looking at disappears, the dark strip becomes just a metallic rectangle at an angle between two rows of cobblestones.

Ready Roderick’s lock comes alive, well-oiled and discrete. The door swings open, and a boy, younger than I am from the looks of him, darts out to observe the street. I look along with him, and find no activity in the sedate row of shops and houses.

“Inside,” the boy whispers.

We pass through the crack the boy leaves us into complete darkness. There a smell in the air, age mixed with good wood and dust. Before I can ask what’s happening, something presses against my throat. Something cold and thin and sharp.

“Not a move, boy,” says a second husky voice behind me. “Or I’ll bleed you right here.”

Should I turn into a weapon, Malco? Rue asks.

The possibility hangs in the air. A moment before I give the command, Wyl speaks up.

“All friendly here, guys. No need to be nervous.”

“Yeah, right,” says someone to my left. “We’ll be the judge of that, won’t we?”

Godsdamnit. How many are there? Between the password, the boy at the door, and these two voices in the dark, there should an entire gang inside this room.

Steps sound out in the room, slow and deliberate as someone comes up a flight of stairs. The glow of a candle permeates he room as they approach, throwing shadows over dusty furniture, shining on old trinkets protected by thin layers of glass, and revealing large shapes looming in the corners.

A tall, gaunt, shabbily dressed figure appears from the deep well of a flight of steps, holding a hand in front of a cheap, guttering candle. He approaches us slowly, taking his time navigating the labyrinth of antiques, his face hollow and cadaverous, his large, dark eyes illuminated strangely from underneath.

“Wyl,” the figure, a young man, smiles quickly, without warmth. “What joy to have you back. But you weren’t supposed to bring friends, naughty girl.”

“Well, I know I didn’t do that, Crow,” Wyl says without looking at me. She has no knife at her throat.

Without moving my head, I try counting the bodies that the candlelight illuminates, but give up quickly. Even with Observant it’s hard to keep track of the dancing shadows. But what faces I do see in the darkness are children. All younger than even Wyl. The little gang is almost enough to laugh at, if the knife against my neck wasn’t still as frozen branch.

“Hmm,” the boy, Crow, considers me. “Why’d you bring him, then?”

“Cuz Roderick will want to talk to him,” Wyl says. “Better, I want him to speak to Roderick.”

Wyl isn’t the smallest bit afraid, but from what I can see of Crow’s face, the boy isn’t happy about me presence. Murderously unhappy, maybe?

“Roderick is busy tonight,” he says. His big, vacant eyes turn to me, travel up and down my body and finally stop on my face.

“I do know that,” Wyl smiles. “I’m his favorite, remember?”

But Crow doesn’t seem to be listening. He steps carefully around Wyl with stick-thin legs that put me in mind of the movements of a spider and stands in front of me. We eye each other silently.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” I say, my voice strained by the knife against my throat. Hopefully that’s not too stupid a thing to say.

Crow hand jerks down in a sudden movement and a long, thin blade shoots out into his hand. I move by instinct, but the knife presses more insistently, reminding me of my position. Physically, Rue is as quiet as the grave, but mentally he shouts my name over and over, asking for my permission to turn into a weapon.

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“Hey,” Wyl says, appearing at Crow’s side. “Roderick trusts my decisions. If I bring someone for him to see, it’s because he wants to see him. Got it?”

Crow doesn’t respond. Instead he raises his strangely thin blade to twitch my robe aside. I feel Rue move further up, away from prying eyes, but the tall boy’s eyes still flash in recognition at what he finds. My arm, ending at the wrist.

“You brought a Challenger here,” Crow mutters. He doesn’t sound angry or upset. He’s simply stating a fact. But the tip of his blade travels up, scarcely a finger’s width from my heart.

Wyl’s eyes twitch in my direction.

“And?” she demands. “Is he dangerous?”

Crow closes the distance between us. His lips move soundlessly, like pale worms twitching together in the dirt.

MalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalcoMalco— Rue’s thoughts are incessant.

“He is,” Crow says.

I can activate Mantle of Flames, I think, panic rising. Burn the one behind me, slash at Crow with Rue, then—

“But you all are,” he finishes, and leans back. The thin blade lowers, and, with a twitch of Crow’s arm, disappears up his sleeve. “You’re right, Wyl. Roderick will want to see him.”

If Wyl was at all worried about the result of this interaction, she recovered remarkably quick.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Crow has already turned, retrieved his candle, and is walking towards the flight of creaky wooden stairs he turned up from. The knife in my throat disappears as if by magic.

“A bit of warning would have been nice,” I say. “Where the hell have you brought me?”

“To the people you need to meet. We’re not the kind to make warnings,” Wyl replies. The use of we catches my attention. Her grin falters. “But I didn’t know Crow was going to be on door duty tonight. That could have gotten dicey.”

Before I can answer with the appropriate acidity, Wyl walks off after Crow. The knife reappears behind me, poking me in the back and urging me forward.

Some of the children’s gang fall in line behind and in front of us. A strange procession we are, with gangly Crow descending ahead, candle held tight in front of his chest, then Wyl and me, and a line of children dressed like homeless urchins. Like a long, segmented, deformed caterpillar, we walk down the stairwell into a large basement, stuffed to the brim with boxes and more old furniture.

Crow steps aside and a couple of children dash forward and, huffing and puffing, drag a large box into a corner. The gangly young man stoops and presses down on one of the revealed wooden boards, which springs up, revealing a narrow passage into a cold stone stairway. Crow regains the lead, the caterpillar regroups, and we descend into the bowels of the city.

The steps turn into a long corridor, low and long. Before we’ve walked too far, I’m sweating. It has nothing to do with exertion, but with the oppressive environment. Even the knives on my back can’t compete with the clammy walls and tight corridors, because I know what they remind me of, and the memory is what to spurs my heart into a trot.

Ahead of me, Wyl readjusts her cloak and turns her neck side to side, making me grimace. It’s nice to know that at least I’m not the only one to have come back nervous about tight underground spaces.

But nervousness won’t do. If I’m here to gather information for Lysander, I need to be calm, collected. I focus on the walls, trying to gauge where in the city we are; a hopeless effort by any metric. This passage crisscrosses others in a dizzying network of underground tunnels. Sometimes Crow will take a different path from the one we’re in without the slightest warning, diffusing my sense of direction even further. It’s not long before I’m completely lost.

We walk for long enough that I begin to wonder if we’re even in the city anymore. There’s no way to tell under the earth; as far as I know these tunnels connect to the hill doors in the Barrow Hills.

Once, I spy shadowy figures the distance scuttling as quietly and intently in another corridor as we do in ours. For another period, I think I can hear waves, distant and ominous.

Crow turns a final time, and we shoot down a straight and unwavering corridor towards the glow of a distant candle. There’s a faint rumbling echo in the air which I cannot place, and the corridor suddenly angles up. I lean down to ask Wyl where we are, but the sharp point of a knife against my back warns me not to. There’s nothing to do but wait.

At the door, a scarred-faced man in a simple white tunic watches us with interest. I can see no weapons on or around him, but he carries himself with the assuredness of someone who knows violence intimately. He knocks on the door, a sharp rap, and someone else opens it from inside. We proceed past the door without a word exchanged.

Beyond the door, there is a small stone room, this one containing a woman with short black hair and the flowing robes of a Mage. She doesn’t challenge our crossing; Crow doesn’t acknowledge her in the least, and we traverse a second door.

Beyond it, there’s the source of the rumble I’d been tracking at the edge of my awareness.

I remember the arena. When Father and I went to see Rev off, after I’d decided I was going to get into the Challenge no matter what. I remember the seats, the people, the sand. This is like that, almost exactly. A miniature version of the immense construction in the world above, and just as packed with people.

Where did they all come from? I thought this place was secret. An illegal hideout for a resistance working just under Valkas’ nose. Instead, it’s a wide cavern where rich but soberly dressed people occupy seats dug into the rock itself and look down to an empty arena where the sand is branded red.

A few eyes turn to us as we walk in. I’m used to it since I go through the same thing in the Godtouched in the keep. But here, no pair of eyes lingers more than necessary, and there’s no uproar. The myriad conversations continue smooth and sedated, audible in the corridor outside only because there are so many of them.

I feel another annoying pricking in my back, and turn around to see a long-haired girl of about ten with a wicked edge in hand. She gestures with the knife towards Crow and Wyl, already making their way around the seats.

Should we kill her, Malco?

I blink. I’m sure my face contorts in some suspicious way, because the girl frowns and gestures more forcefully. I do as she says, hurrying after Wyl.

Some day very soon you and I are going to have a conversation, Rue. Because whatever’s going on with you isn’t right.

Rue seems to ponder this. The hum against my back grows more intense and I can feel the furious working of his confusing thoughts.

Of course it’s right, Malco, he says. I’m your weapon. I’m thinking like a weapon.

The words cut as deep as knife.

Crow and Wyl lead the way past a partition and onto a balcony of sorts, with a good view of the arena below and yet more secluded and away from prying eyes. There are only a few people present, all together in a group, and when we enter a man rises from among them and walks to us with arms extended.

Suddenly, everything clicks into place. Dove Lane. Ready Roderick’s. The last time I saw this man he was bandy-legged, jolly, and had prominent paunch. He tried to pickpocket the Refresh Potion and was only stopped by Medrein’s attentiveness.

But this man is different, somehow. There’s no curve to his legs now, and his belly, though present, is not as prominent. Between his bald pate and a bushy mustache and beard combo that leaves his chin bare to the world, his eyes shine with intelligence. It’s only when he smiles that the same geniality from that day shines through.

“Dearest Spider,” he says to Wyl, patting her shoulder with a ringed hand. But his eyes are fixed on me. Weighing, calculating, considering. “And Malco of Reach, within my reach at last.”

There’s no threat in his expression. Nothing beyond amusement at his own joke. At yet, studying those shining, watery eyes, I can’t help but realize that I’m in way over my head.

Should we kill him? Rue asks.