She raised an eyebrow, obviously waiting for an answer. And maybe it was the way she’d said it, or that I wanted to think about pretty much anything apart from down there, outside the gates, in a war, for fuck’s sake – that made me blurt out something close to the truth.
“I’m scared, that’s it.”
Of course I regretted it as soon as I’d said it, because she cocked her head on one side like a little bird and waited for me to go on.
I wasn’t going to let her fool me that way. There were things I would rather die than say, and that was one.
“Lise has built a new machine,” I said instead. “Like my pistol, only bigger. Could really help, a lot. Only Perak won’t let us use it.”
She laughed at my obvious tactic, but didn’t push things and took up my strand of thought. “Why not?”
“Too dangerous. Lise says she’s not sure what it’ll do to the mage in question.”
“Then Perak’s right.”
“Maybe. And maybe we should try it anyway. If the Storad get in, it won’t be one mage we’ll be worrying about. It’s everyone.”
Erlat began clearing the plates and cups away. “Ah yes, but it’s you he’s worried about.”
“Then why exactly am I due to go down there, right in among a load of Storad? I’d rather risk the machine, thanks for asking. Lise is pretty good at machines. I am crap at sneaking about in the middle of a group of men with guns who would all like to shoot me.”
Then it was time to go, and it was strange. I had this odd sense of weight in my stomach, a dread of leaving, of thinking that if I left now it would be too late to say or do any of things I needed too. Only… only I didn’t know what the hell those things were, I only knew that they were scaring me badly.
Erlat was odd too, more nervy than I think I’d ever seen her. She seemed half about to say something, then changed her mind and saw me off with a luscious smile and a soft “Come back.”
I couldn’t help thinking that, if that was it, the last time I saw her, I’d missed some golden opportunity, missed some cue in our conversation that would have perhaps made me see what I was supposed to see.
I stepped out into the frigid air of the Buzz, watched my breath freeze in a cloud in front of me and pushed it all away. Whatever it was, I’d have time, lots of time, to figure out later.
I made it back down to the ’Pit without screaming in the lift, which counted as a win. Perak’d had all the blocked-off tunnels marked on the map, and there was just one left that led Outside. Well, one we knew about other than the booby-trapped one, which I really wasn’t going to risk. “Fingers crossed” isn’t really a good tactic in anything other than kids’ games, let alone a war, but it seemed about all we had.
Luckily, said tunnel wasn’t anywhere near the bad memories encased in a room of broken glass in the heart of the keep. Instead Pasha, Halina and I found ourselves at an innocuous building near to the inner wall of the castle. If the piles of fossilised crap were anything to go by, this had once been stables. Or maybe those piles counted as art for our illustrious ancestor.
A half-dozen guards eyed us suspiciously and came towards us with that look I’d come to know so well – the “I-don’t-like-you-so-I-think-I’ll-arrest-you” look. Quite satisfying to show them the official bit of paper that said they weren’t allowed to, see the look of smug superiority bleed off their faces as they realised that no, we weren’t just some scum from Under they could do what they wanted with.
They were all as tense as hell, if the way their shoulders were up round their ears was anything to go by, and I couldn’t blame them. There wasn’t much between them and an invading army, just ingenuity and a hidden tunnel that might not be hidden for long. Worse, Perak’s note indicated that some of them would be coming along for a little rearguard action.
Bizarrely, the smell of cooking food was everywhere, strong enough to send me mad with it, make my stomach growl like Namrat. I shook my head. Ridiculous, but that didn’t stop me smelling it. Maybe Dench was using it as a form of torture – I wouldn’t have put it past the bastard. Actually, I wouldn’t have put anything past him, up to and including tap-dancing through the gates dressed in nothing but a hat and a modestly placed hand, if he thought it would give him an edge. He never liked to lose. Who does?
Like most of the other tunnels I’d seen, this one started, or finished, no wider than your average man. The walls either side were sheer and slick, except where handy little holes, far above where any man could reach, allowed arrows or guns to poke through; larger holes had boulders teetering on the edge, relics of a simpler kind of warfare. Ones that gave me a tickle of an idea, which I saved for later.