He flipped the case open, revealing a startling selection of lock picks. Carefully selecting the longest and thinnest, he leaned down until his nose brushed the door. He held out his hand, and, without further prompting, Josef handed him a knife. Eli expertly wedged the slender blade into the hair-thin crack between the iron and the stone. Then, using the blade as a lever, he carefully lifted the door out of its niche. It opened just a fraction before sticking again with a soft clang.
“Lever and padlock,” Eli muttered, switching out the thin lock pick for a slightly longer one with a crooked head. “Josef, if you would.”
Josef took the knife from him and held it where Eli pointed, putting just enough pressure on the lever to keep the opening as large as possible without snapping the blade. Eli took a pair of delicate, extremely-long-nosed pliers out of his case and, using both hands, neatly slipped the pliers and the lock pick through the knife-thin crack.
He gripped with the pliers and began to deftly maneuver the lock pick, wiggling it right, then left, then right again, like he was trying to hook something. At last there was a loud click. Eli released the pliers and a muted crash came through the iron as the padlock hit the ground on the other side. He tucked his tools back into their leather case and opened the door with a flourish. The whole operation had taken less than a minute.
When he caught Miranda gawking, Eli’s grin became unbearably smug.
“What were you expecting?” he said, still grinning. “I’m the greatest thief in the—ow!” He yelped as Josef punched him in the arm.
“Enough bragging,” the swordsman grunted. “Inside, quick. The patrols move in a circle, you know.”
Still rubbing his injured arm, Eli slid feet first into the dark bolt hole. Nico went next, casually wedging herself, bulky coat and all, through the narrow opening.
“You next,” Josef said, looking at Miranda.
She swallowed. Suddenly, the bolt hole looked impossibly narrow and abysmally deep. However, she had an image to maintain as a Spiritualist, and that image did not include being afraid of holes, no matter how narrow or deep they might be. She sat down stiffly and began easing herself in, feet first. Just when she’d managed to convince herself it wasn’t going to be that bad, she heard the crunch of men moving through the forest. She looked frantically over her shoulder in time to see the first patrolman reach the edge of the forest. She was about to whisper a warning when Josef shoved her, hard. Miranda yelped and lost her balance, sliding the rest of the way down the bolt hole. She landed in a pile on a cold, hard-packed dirt floor. A second later, Josef landed on top of her. The iron door clanged shut above them, and the room plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 18
The next few seconds were a confused, painful scramble as Miranda did her best to get out from under Josef. The man was amazingly heavy and, she grunted as she cracked her ribs against his elbow, full of sharp edges. It didn’t help that the ground was horribly uneven. Just when she’d finally managed to untangle herself from the swordsman, a soft, yellow glow winked to life. Miranda’s relief was almost physically painful as the darkness resolved itself into familiar shapes. They were in a root cellar. Other than the four of them being in it, it was a very normal root cellar, with potatoes, apples, and turnips rolling across the floor where Miranda and Josef’s landing had knocked them loose from their bins.
Eli held up a tiny blackout lamp, one shutter cracked just a fraction, the source of the unsteady light. “Nice landing,” he said with a grin.
“I would have been fine if someone hadn’t pushed me,” Miranda hissed, hurling a potato at Josef.
“If I hadn’t pushed you, we would have been spotted,” Josef said, catching the potato in midair, “and that would have been that.”
“Well, now that we’re all here and uncaught,” Eli said, swinging his lamp toward the squat wooden door half hidden behind a large bin of potatoes, “let’s get on with it.”
Miranda stood up, slipping a little on the rolling tubers. “Where are we?”
“Under the city, inside the walls,” Eli said, popping the crude lock on the wooden door with a wiggle of his lock pick. “I told you, we’re in the bolt hole. Most castles would have their own tunnel to safety in case of invasion, but Allaze is so close to the river, a deep tunnel would flood, so it looks like they had to make do with linking a bunch of cellars together.”
“Lucky thing for us, in any case,” Josef said, walking through the door Eli held open and into the next cellar.
Nico followed close behind him, stepping between the rolling potatoes as if she had no problem seeing in the dark. Miranda tried to mimic her path, but ended up slipping on her second step. She fell with a stifled yipe, catching the demonseed’s shoulder at the last minute. The strange, thick material of the girl’s coat shifted like a living thing under her fingers, and Miranda jerked her hand away. Despite the Spiritualist’s full weight landing on Nico’s shoulder, the smaller girl had not so much as stumbled. She turned to meet Miranda’s horrified look.