Steamsworn (Steamborn Series Book 3) (33 page)

Alice tugged on Jacob’s arm and pulled him toward the hatch. “This ends tonight.”

No one protested, and the entire group followed Alice onto the staircase. Just above the hidden door, a knight stared at the ceiling. His throat showed three separate cuts, and blood pooled around his body. An anchoring bolt stuck through his chest plate.

George shuffled past Jacob and Alice, paused, and then continued down the stairwell. His voice stayed at a whisper. “I’d say we should hide the body, but with that much blood it’s pointless.”

“Agreed,” Smith said.

The air warmed as they descended the stairs. The lower they got, the more Jacob strained to hear around the next bend, wondering if they were about to be discovered. Something scraped and shuffled nearby, and he froze. It sounded again, but it seemed farther away. Farther was better, and he crept down past Alice, trailing behind Gladys and George.

George held up his hand at the bottom of the stairs. An open doorway stood between them and the outside world, but what caused the pounding in Jacob’s chest were the two guards to either side of the door.

George pointed to Gladys as she walked out the door.

Jacob wanted to scream, to stop her, but by the time he realized what was happening, the first guard shouted, “Halt!” He stepped quickly after Gladys, abandoning his post.

George moved like a Tail Sword. He swept up behind the nearest guard and something crunched in the man’s neck. The sound wasn’t loud, but the falling armor drew the attention of the first guard.

Gladys’s blade cut a smooth line through his neck. The only sounds he made were the thrashing of his armor and an awful gurgle. George dragged both men into the shadows of the stairwell.

Alice tightened her heavy nail glove while Gladys wiped her blade off on the knight’s cloak.

Smith looked at each of them in turn. “Everyone in this city is our enemy until we know different. If you hesitate, you die. Now move.”

They slipped around the watchtower and disappeared into the shadows, moving silently toward the western edge of the Castle.

“Y
ou heard the
lady!” Samuel said. “Our people are already inside the walls. Let’s make damn sure they have all the time they need to kill the Butcher. March! And don’t be shy about it!”

Some fifty men and women shouted their support. The time for silence had passed, and their boots fell heavy in the passage beneath Bat’s home. Samuel couldn’t believe what Bat had carved out beneath the streets. He’d dug a byway that led underground to a network of tunnels connecting his safe houses. It was a testament to his ingenuity, and his dedication to Ancora’s people.

Drakkar interrupted Samuel’s thoughts. “We need to create more of a distraction than stomping our boots beneath the streets.”

Samuel patted his pocket, and a small stash of Burners clinked together. He looked up at Drakkar and smiled. “I have some ideas.”

Samuel took a deep breath and shouted, “So I heard the miner’s song!” Two more voices echoed him.

“Tell me of that miner’s tune!”

A dozen took up the chorus, and then the entire line began to sing.

Well he sat and sang inside that mine

That mine that claimed his brother

He sat and sang inside that mine

That mine that claimed his mother

No mine can come to take his son

No man survives that story

A butcher’s tale is not the end

For us there is another

The song didn’t speak of the Butcher—he knew it was far too old for that—but today it did. Today it was a righteous anthem.

*     *     *

Jacob felt a
moment of rising panic when they first reached the side of the Castle. There wasn’t a door to be seen until they walked farther back, deep into the shadowed corner. The iron door sat tucked behind a stone turret, almost invisible in the dim moonlight.

George and Smith had a lantern out at the door. Small and shielded, but it still felt like they were all but asking to be captured.

“I should be able to pick it,” Smith whispered. “It will take some time.”

“I’ll hold the lantern,” George said. “Gladys, watch the back wall. Signal if you see guards. Jacob, Alice, keep your eyes forward.”

A burst of light cast the turret into a silhouette. Jacob tried his best not to flinch, sure they’d been discovered, but then something boomed in the distance. A fireball half the size of the Skysworn billowed into the air, and then another.

“Samuel …” Smith pushed George to the side. “Enough, this is our distraction.” Something hissed in his shoulders. The short scream of metal died away in the boom of another Firebomb, and the door fell. Smith slid the broken door into the bushes and vanished into the Castle.

Jacob followed Alice into the short corridor. A pile of half-folded linens sat off to their left, and a room filled with steam and shouts waited at the other end of the hall. Smith slipped into a shadowy doorway. Jacob turned the corner, expecting to find a closet of some sort, but it was another corridor. He hurried beside Alice, as silent as he could be.

A glance backwards showed him Gladys and George, quiet enough to be ghosts. The corridor ended in a dining hall grander than anything Jacob could believe, every plate framed by golden dinnerware. Jeweled goblets sat beside napkins made of finer material than most Ancoran’s clothes.

Smith led them to a back corner, drenched in darkness. Near the head of the table sat a small goblet engraved with
NVB
. Jacob snatched it up and dropped it into his pocket. If they survived this, he’d melt it down and make something of it, a memorial for Charles.

They crouched in a small circle beside a curio that stood over ten feet in height. Smith looked at each of them in turn. “I do not know the fastest way to the throne room.”

“Multiple exits,” George said, “We cannot stay together and keep eyes on them all.”

“Then we split up,” Gladys said. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”

Something boomed in the distance, and people screamed somewhere else inside the Castle. The echo of armored boots stomped through the corridors and faded with the shouts and orders belted out by nearby knights.

George glanced up and smiled.

“There’ll be more guards,” Alice whispered. “Just because a few are being drawn off doesn’t mean there aren’t enough left to put us in a world of shit.”

Smith reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Keep to the shadows. You find a lone soldier, you kill them. If there is a group of guards, we attack as a group.”

“Signal?” George asked.

Smith looked around the room. “There, horns.” He pointed to a wide cluster of brass pipes. “They will be in every room. Hit the entire assembly with three rapid taps and we will regroup here as fast as we can.”

“We will take the far end of the hall there,” George said, pointing at the far door.

“Jacob, Alice, check the hall behind Gladys and George. We do not want them to get flanked. I am going back through the corridor. There is almost certainly a path to the throne room from the kitchens.” Smith placed one hand on Alice’s shoulder and the other on Jacob’s. “Be careful. If you need to run, run. Do not engage if you do not have to.” He gave them a sharp nod, stood, and left.

George jumped to his feet and ran across the hall. Gladys followed close behind. They paused at the far door, and then they were gone.

Jacob and Alice were left there in the darkened room, staring at each other.

“If we don’t …” Alice said. “If we don’t make it out of this. I want you to know you mean a lot to me.”

“You too,” Jacob said. Those words weren’t enough. They weren’t what he wanted to say. He stared into her eyes, but the words wouldn’t come.

They made for the same door Gladys and George had gone through. Jacob stood in the shadow of the doorway, looking south through the hall while Alice looked north. She nodded, and he stepped out into the hall. The wooden floor creaked, and he sped his pace to get away from the awful sound, his heart pounding.

Jacob took a sharp right into a dimly lit hallway. A thin rug ran the length of the corridor, flanked by useless tables and more paintings than any wall could ever need. He adjusted the brace on his arm and then cursed.

“What?” Alice whispered.

“Brace is getting in the way of the bolt gun.” He untied it as quickly as he could and moved it to his other arm.

“Here,” Alice said. She looped the trigger over his fingers and grabbed the leather straps to tie the bolt gun down, stealing glances down the hall. She patted his arm when she finished.

Jacob nodded and continued down the hall. They made it to the end before he heard voices. Alice pulled on his backpack and almost threw him into the dim corner of a recessed doorway.

“I’m telling you I heard something,” a voice said from the opposite hall.

“No one’s in the dining wing. We’re locked down.”

The voices began to fade. “You think any of those people are stupid enough to steal from him? I imagine …”

Mumbling followed the footsteps of the speakers, and that became all they could hear.

Jacob held up a finger, asking Alice to stay put. He peeked around the corner and then shifted to the other side of the door before motioning for Alice to follow.

Alice took the lead, sprinting up a short flight of stone stairs on nothing but her toes. Jacob followed, albeit less quietly. More voices sounded above them, and the pair hurried into the next corridor.

Where the last hall had been bathed in artwork, here they were closed in by ancient weapons and broken swords. Some flickered in the lamplight beside stone and bronze plaques. Others seemed to be covered in ancient gore, rusted and unclean.

Footsteps echoed behind them and stopped. Jacob didn’t take a chance at looking back. He grabbed Alice around the waist and pulled her through an open door. Heavy boot steps came closer, and Jacob readied himself for the kill, holding the bolt gun level with where a man’s head would appear.

The heavy steps stopped in front of the door again before fading as they walked away. He felt the breath leave Alice’s lungs. They didn’t speak, only snuck into the hall once more and continued toward the next. Something boomed in the distance, and orange flames lit the stained glass in the southern wall.

“Stained glass …”

They were close. Very close to the throne room. He thought the throne room was right behind the stained glass, but here was the glass, and there wasn’t a room in sight. They were at the edge of a wide hall.

Alice nodded toward the end of the hall and whispered. “Guards up there, it has to be something.”

“No way we can get by them.”

She tugged on his arm and led him into the last room in the corridor. “These old buildings always have extra doors. They’d never build something for Parliament without an escape.” She walked over to the back of the room.

“Now!” A voice shouted from outside the room.

The door opened fast. Faster than Jacob could move. Alice’s bolt took the first man through the temple, and he collapsed. The other man wasn’t ready, and Jacob flexed his wrist, sending a flurry of bolts into the soldier’s face and bouncing more projectiles off the stone wall behind the man. Jacob’s senses came back long enough for his brain to remind him to let off the trigger, and the bolt gun snapped to a halt.

Alice grabbed the first soldier’s feet and started dragging him back into the room. “Get the other one.”

Jacob slid his hands under the man’s arms and started to lift him. The soldier jerked, and blood poured from his mouth. Jacob cringed, but he kept pulling on the soldier until he was fully inside their hiding place.

“Close the door and go,” Alice said.

“We can’t just kick in the main door. They’ll have more guards.”

“They have to have a side entrance for the kitchen staff,” Alice said.

“Where?”

“It has to be in the last hall before we get to the entryway.”

Jacob pulled on Alice’s arm, and they dashed down the hall. It was only a matter of time before someone found the bodies, or the blood. The corridor came up quick, and Jacob slipped into the shadows as fast as he could, Alice pressed up beside him.

She leaned forward and squinted into the dim light from the hanging lanterns and nodded.

Jacob crept forward. He shivered at every creak in the floor, every faint breeze that could be a soldier’s breath. Deeper into the shadows, the voices grew louder, and then Alice pulled on his backpack.

She pointed into a pitch-black recess in the wall. A golden bar of light peeked through at the bottom of the door. With his ear nearly touching the ironwood, the voices became clear, distinct.

“Benedict, I will not send out the city knights. The uprising is well in hand, and they will hold position here until it’s over.”

Benedict made an exasperated noise. “You murdered their
King
, Newton. And then you exterminated half the city. Of
course
they will come for you in force.”

“One must remove the disease before it corrupts the body, and the Lowlands had been ill for far too long.”